We know that William H. Yates began pressing cider at his mill on the Clinton River in 1874, but how big was the apple production in the local area that his mill served? In the 1880 agricultural census, Avon Township’s 166 farmers reported that collectively, they had...
If you had visited Yates Mill back in 1874 when Bill Yates first started pressing cider, you’d have traveled there by horse or on foot. And you might have brought a wagonload of your own apples, fresh from the orchard, for him to press. Times may have changed, but...
This photo of our mill is one of our favorites. It shows us what daily life was like at Yates nearly 110 years ago. Because the photographer, Bruce Kingsbury, left his stamp on the photo, we know it was taken in 1914 or 1915; it was during that short time frame that...
After Michigan became a state in 1837, its leaders looked for ways to encourage settlers to move into the state’s interior. They were inspired by the success of the Erie Canal, which had opened in 1825 in New York state and had brought many new residents from the...
Our mill’s founder, William Henry Yates, had a long family history in the United States, with lineage that stretched back to the seventeenth-century Dutch settlers of colonial New York. His wife, Scholastika Caroline Hamer, who was called Caroline, was born in...
