Plaque commemorates accomplishments of Richard Hatt
Hatt became one of most influential men in region after emigrating from England
Jim Green, Special To The News
Published on
Nov 13, 2009
On
behalf of the Ancaster Township Historical Society, Jim Green and the
joint plaquing committee recently presented the Hatt plaque, which will
be erected at Devils’ Elbow, corner of Old Dundas Road and Lion’s Club
Road.
Hatt family members, along with the new owners of the property,
Mark and Joan Tamminga, were on hand for the presentation. The land was
formerly owned by Art Whipps.
The plaque reads: “Richard Hatt became one of the most influential
men in this region. He emigrated from England in 1792 and worked in a
store in Newark (Niagara). In 1795, he petitioned the government for
land for himself, his siblings and father. They arrived in Canada in
1796 with equipment to build a mill and operate large farms.
“To obtain a source of waterpower, Richard and his brother Samuel
purchased this site on Ancaster Creek in 1798 and built a gristmill and
sawmill 200 feet downstream on the western edge of Old Dundas Road.
They painted the structure red with the only available paint. It was a
large mill for the time with a 36-foot undershot water wheel that
turned three millstones. It could produce thirty bags of pot barley and
twenty barrels of flour a day. To utilize inferior grain, the brothers
built a distillery supplying the mash to adjacent hog fattening pens.
The mill served farmers from as far away as Galt, Guelph and Woodstock.
“The Hatt brothers widened the Indian trail to Dundas to improve
business but in 1804, they sold the mill and moved to Dundas where they
eventually purchased mills and water rights on Spencer Creek.
Subsequent owners of the Red Mill leased the property but it never
flourished. In 1887, the machinery was dismantled and by 1908, the mill
was gone.”