Tripp Saw Mill (formerly known as Tripp Up & Down Saw Mill)

Early settlers in Michigan needed homes, barns, and shops. As farmers cleared the forests for more farm land, the trees provided a plentiful supply of wood. Sawmills were among the first mills established in towns and farming communities, and it was at these sawmills that the wood was cut into lumber to build the homes, barns, and shops.
Sawmills were not only important to the setting in Greenfield Village, but they were also used extensively by architect Ed Cutler's crew to provide lumber for numerous construction and re-erecting projects.

The 1855 Tripp Sawmill was originally from Franklin Center (now Tipton), Michigan, near Tecumseh in Lenauwee County and built by British immigrant Henry Tripp. (For years, Henry Tripp's son, J.D., was listed as the original builder, but recent information proves this to be false.)
The sawmill featured an up and down saw similar to the one Henry Ford operated in his youth. Powered by a steam engine on the bottom floor, the vertical blade flashes up and down while suspended between the two floors of the building, hence, the name "up and down" saw mill. The original machinery in this mill cuts lumber in the 19th century style, by emulating the same motion of cutting lumber by hand with a pit saw, which was invaluable for accurate restorations in the Village.

(The following in italics is a brief excerpt written by Marc Greuther from Technology and Culture
Volume 45, Number 4, October 2004):

In the fall of 1926 Henry Ford paid a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Willis Tripp of Tipton, Michigan, sixty miles or so southwest of Dearborn by the Detroit-Chicago road. Ford dropped by the farm with a group of friends and associates to look over a steam-driven sawmill built about seventy-five years previously by Mr. Tripp's grandfather, the Reverend Henry Tripp. According to a brief report in the Adrian Daily Telegraph, Ford was intrigued by a number of items in the family's possession—a Howe sewing machine, the reverend's hickory cane, a pair of ice skates—but it was the mill, built by a man who had died eleven days before Ford's own birthday, that really interested him.

Much Michigan timber went through this mill when the Tripps owned and operated it from 1855 until 1916.

The Tripps did no logging themselves, and the mill operated just four months out of the year—probably during the winter with just three or four workers when farming was less demanding and logs could be sledded or hauled over hard-frozen roads to the mill.  

During those few months, the workers cut all the lumber that the surrounding community needed.  
The operation was quite self-sufficient: the boiler was fed with waste wood and sawdust, while water came from a well on site, supplemented by rain guttered in from the roof. This economy of means extended to the mill's construction. Part of the boiler setting was built up from field stone, and waste wood—with the bark still on—was used for siding and interior partitions. All in all it was a lean affair, slotted as seamlessly into the Michigan countryside as a steam-powered installation could be.

The mill was closed in 1916 when competition from the railroads made it easy to move lumber throughout the region from large scale logging operations.
Henry Ford had it moved to Greenfield Village in 1932.
Please click HERE to see information on the Village's other up and down saw mill, the Spofford Mill)


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