If you look at an old map of Freeport to find this island, you will see it under the; name of Manufacturers' Addition, though it was most generally called 'the island.' This was a man-made island and the stream which made it an island, long ago was filled up and so the 'island' was no more. But the land is still there and figures heavily in the industrial life of Freeport.

The interesting history of the mill-race as developed by Wright and Hanchett in 1847 is all told in the Tilden History. To procure power from the water of the Pecatonica river, a dam, about six feet high, was constructed. This dam supplied power, near its westerly end, first for a saw-mill and later for a flour mill on the same site which the saw-mill had sat on. And beginning just above the dam a large mill-race ditch was dug (of course by hand at that early time), which was about 900 feet long. At the lower end of the race, this stream with its head of water about six feet high, supplied water for two turbines. One of these operated the machinery of the Rosenstiel Woolen Mill, and the other one operated the Webster Flour Mill.

In the early settlement days streams from which power could be obtained were considered as very valuable natural assets. But within our county only three power dams were built on the Pecatonica river. Beside this one in Freeport there was one at Fisher's Mill, above McConnell (then known as New Pennsylvania or Bobtown) and at Brown's Mill, close to the easterly border or" Silver Creek township. Most of the water-power mills in the county were on the smaller streams.

As I remember the mill here in Freeport, the Goddard mill, it was built right at one end of the dam, and that also beneath the mill there was another flow of water through a high, timber-constructed box sluiceway to another turbine, which by means of a heavy shaft, boxed in at the ground level, carried power into a small brick factory building. Through the years, and commencing in early times, various small enterprises used this factory. Among them, in later years were the Burdette Organ Co. which came here from some city in Pennsylvania, and the J. W. Miller incubator Co. Near the outlet of the mill-race stood the C. H. Rosenstiel Woolen Mill and the Webster Flour Mill. The Webster mill burned down sometime during the 1880's but the woolen mill still stands, hidden away among the newer and larger buildings of the Burgess Battery Co. A picture of this building, a drawing, appears in the Stephenson County Plat Book, published in 1871, and it clearly shows where the water flowed into the turbine which operated the machinery of this early day industry.

Sometime another wooden building was built on the north side of the woolen mill and possibly at a still later time a brick one was added on the south side of it. This latter one may have been built by the W. G. and W. Barnes finn, who for some years used it in the manufacture of some farm implements, one of which I happen to know was a hand turned com sheller. I believe that the next user of these buildings was the Freeport Carriage Co. of which Mr. J. L. Robinson was the head., Then, about 1910, the Moline Plow Co. bought this business, adding to it all, or nearly all, of the large factory buildings which are there now. When farmers, quite suddenly, turned to the use of automobiles, all of this plant, together with the Henney Buggy Co. plant which the Moline Plow Co. had also bought and enlarged, was used for the manufacture of the Stephens Automobile. In the financial panic which followed the First World War, the Moline Plow Co. became bankrupt, this entire plant was sold, at receiver's sale, to the Burgess Battery Co., then located at Madison, Wisconsin.

There is a picture in 'Illustrated Freeport' a book, published in 1896 by the Freeport Journal, which was a fake advertising cut used by the Freeport Carriage Co. It shows a vast expanse of buildings with one large smoke-stack, and further back a double row of about fourteen other stacks, all blowing dense clouds of black smoke. Why a carriage factory should have been supposed to have so many furnaces is hard to understand. Actually, this factory had one small sheet steel smoke-stack.

At the foot of Bridge St. (now Exchange) there was a road crossing the railroad tracks as there is now, and this road continued nearly the full length of the island, to connect with another railroad crossing a short distance from the end of Webster St. (now Clark), and that crossing also is still there. At each end of this island road there was a bridge over the mill-race. Near the upper bridge was the wooden gate that controlled the flow of water in the race. The transfer track connecting the railroads on each side of the river also crossed the mill-race on a wooden bridge of overhead construction.

Now all is changed, for the big ditch of the mill-race was long, long ago filled up and the large five story building of the Burgess plant stands lengthwide in its former location. The large three-story building of this plant stands on what was once flood-land, built up year after year with silt from the river's floods. This too is one of the reasons for the floods which in later years have inundated the entire east side of our city. I think that the first of these disastrous floods was in 1916, and a full survey made after that flood showed plainly that it was this narrowing of the river channel through the city that caused the east side to be flooded.

Written by Leslie T. Fargher in "Life & Times in Freeport Illinois" 1967