Searight's Fulling Mill

Although the more famous mill in Perryopolis, Pennsylvania, is George Washington’s grist mill, built in 1776 on land owned by the nation’s first president and still standing in Harry Sampey Park, there’s an even more significant mill located just 1,000 feet down Washington Run. Searight’s Fulling Mill is one of the few remaining fulling mills in the United States! Surviving grist mills are more common; George Washington even has another one you can visit at his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.

What, exactly, is a fulling mill? Most simply, fulling was the final stage in the creation of woolen textiles, when the cloth was cleaned and strengthened. If you wanted to sew a woolen garment, first you had to shear the sheep, comb out its wool and spin it into yarn. Then the yarn was woven together on a loom to create cloth. Once this was done, the oils in the wool needed to be washed out and the cloth needed to be felted (tightening the weave and entangling the fibers to make the cloth softer and stronger). Before the Middle Ages, this was done by placing the cloth in a trough of water and detergent (like fuller’s earth) and beating it with your feet or hands, or with clubs.

The mechanization of this process in Europe at some point during the 12th or 13th century made the job a lot easier. Like mills that ground grains to flour, fulling mills were built along streams and rivers whose current would turn a water wheel. The revolutions of the wheel powered wooden hammers that beat up and down on the cloth. [1]

Searight’s Mill was built at the turn of the 19th century by two Englishmen, who sold it soon after to Thomas Cook. Cook then leased it to William Searight beginning in 1814. Searight was already operating another mill in Fayette County, and he went on to open an even bigger one in Perryopolis. He ceased operations at this mill in 1820. [2]

Just as the invention of the water-powered fulling mills made the old system of stomping on cloth obsolete, as the 1800s went along the fulling mills were replaced by new technologies in the textile industry that made producing cloth cheaper and faster. Searight’s Mill is one of the last reminders of how wool used to be processed. [3]