Butter tubs were the first product of the Granville Manufacturing Company when it opened in 1857. Soon after, the mill owners began making wooden bowls.
In 1913, new owners stepped in and added the clapboard mill to the business.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, land abandoned by Vermont farmers migrating west began to revert to hardwood forest. Cherry, poplar, beech, and maple replaced the spruce and pine that had been cleared by the lumber industry and helped foster the post-Civil War growth of the region’s wood products industry by ensuring a local supply of quality hardwoods.
The Granville Mill was built by R. N. and Daniel Hemenway in 1857 for the purpose of producing butter tubs using the power of the nearby White River. In 1860, the Hemenways decided to make wooden bowls and built custom lathes to do so. The Granville Bowl Mill was born.
In 1913 the Rice family took over the Bowl Mill from the Hemenways, and added a new product of their own. They helped design, and the Lane Co. of Montpelier built, a special saw rig to mill “quartersawn” clapboards. This saw is still in operation producing quality clapboards the same way to this day.
Changes in the production process over the years were few but notable. A devastating flood in 1927 washed away the Granville Dam, which fed water to the mill’s turbine, and forced the mill owners to switch to electricity.
In 1981, Bob Fuller with his sons Jeff and Doug, and daughter Cindy, took over the Granville Mills. Today, the Fuller brothers are still selling clapboards milled the old-fashioned way, and some of the oldest homes in the country still have original clapboards from Granville protecting them from the elements for over 120 years.
