Oldest Woolen Mill In Canada

The Asselstine Mill Near Odessa Was Built in 1853 and is Still in Operation

Toronto Star Weekly August 11 1923

A visit to the famous old Asselstine woolen mill at Odessa is described in the Toronto Star Weekly by C. Roy Greenaway as follows:

For hundreds of miles, people come on purpose to buy woolen bats for comforters and other staples to the oldest woolen mill in Canada, the Asselstine Mill, near Odessa, fifteen miles west of Kingston.

“Where do you think these are going?” a woman asked Michael Asselstine, the owner, a few days ago. She was fingering the white fluffy heap of bats, almost as famous as eiderdown for bedspreads, which she had just bought. “To Japan,” she added. She was a missionary. In two weeks she will be sailing from a Pacific port with some o f old Mr. Asselstine’s famous wool.

A chance meeting on the streets of Kingston brought up the fact of the old mill. Among the people of Kingston who acted as hosts to the Ontario Historical Society at the recent annual meeting held at Kingston this year was a bid fair, genial man. Listening to a discussion about the old things of the vicinity, he suddenly broke into the conversation and suggested: “Why don’t you go out to see the oldest mill still standing in Canada?”

The natural question then followed: “Is it still running?”

This suit that I have on,” the stranger replied, fingering his grey coat and holding it out proudly for inspection, “was made there.”

Later on, it proved that the broad-shouldered man was Tom Asselstine, as he is familiarly known, the clerk of the high court at Kingston..

You come suddenly upon the old weather-beaten frame building as you round a bend in the road. Spreading trees shade it and give it a peaceful, old-world atmosphere. On the east, the Odessa stream, which comes through Sydenham, forms the millpond and flows through the ancient sluiceway to turn the wheels of the machinery inside. Not many mills in Ontario are left that use water-power.

As one approaches the old building with Mr. Asselstine, about the first thing one sees is the wool drying and bleaching on a sort of platform at the front second-storey door. Long tails of it hang from the sides of the doorway and the clapboarding, swaying from side to side as the wind puffs through them.

The whole history of woolen manufacturing in Upper Canada is around Mr. Asselstine’s mill. It was on this site that Isaac Fraser built the first mill in 1810. Michael Asselstine, father of the present proprietor bought it. Close by the mill today the old stone foundation is still standing. The present building dates from 1853. Mr. Asselstine tells you that he has owned it since 1866, the year before Confederation.

You go into a dark lower storey through the front door under the platform. It is heaped with wool in bags. Then you look up and stare at the huge pine beams, each of them rough-hewn with an adz, twelve inches square and as wide as the building, thirty-six feet in all.

The machinery is all upstairs. It is quite modern. But Mr. Asselstine spoke with pride of having owned the first cards in Canada. “I sold them to Breeze Bros., who owned the Forest Mill, eleven miles north of Napanee” he said. “I put the cards in upstairs in ’78. They were Knowles Looms – wonderful inventions in those days.

The deep silence of the summer afternoon was broken as a sort of automobile steering wheel in an apparent wooden box was turned and the big wheel down in the sluice-way below began to turn and the machinery in its turn. The long grey and white ropes of wool stretching from the first machine began to move on the journey that would make them into yarn.

All summer the mill is silent. It is only from January to June that the spinning goes on now. Modern competition on a big scale and the piling up of the years have slackened its production appreciably. It is more of a hobby with Mr. Asselstine now, for he is 77 years of age. There was a time when, as a young man, he used to make 100 pounds of wool yarn a day. Once the mill would handle 20,000 pounds of wool in a season. Now 10,000 pounds is the average amount.

Large scale manufacturing may have made it unprofitable for the old mill to make suiting any longer, but with woolen bats for bedspreads, sheeting and yarn, it can still hold its own. People prefer to come great distances to get the Asselstine wool. Even the board of trade of Winnipeg has yarn sent from this historic mill.

The whole atmosphere of the place is far removed from the hurried roar of the large industrial centres. The old mill seems to be a friend for life to the people who have worked there and become attached to the place. Mr. Asselstine likes to speak of Maggie Gibbs, still working with him in the old building. She came to him as a girl. She left to marry, but when her husband died, there was still the old mill. She came back. Now as a grandmother, she is working there yet. Mr. Asselstine’s mother, who once lived in the shadow of the mill is living in Kingston to-day, a remarkable woman of 99 years.

Kingston Whig Standard May 21 1946

Kingston Whig Standard December 5 1961

The Asselstine Mill was, a short time ago, taken down board by board, removed to Upper Canada village and set up there. The old mill has come back into its own, for every summer now, tourists may see it in operation, turning out the products once so essential to the welfare of settlers who had no order houses to supply their needs.

Kingston Whig Standard June 19 1997 [condensed]

The first woolen mill was established on Lot 25, Concession 3 [Ernestown], by Isaac Fraser. It was taken over by his son-in-law, Michael Asselstine, He rebuilt the mill and in 1866 he sold all the original equipment and replaced it with new machinery from the United States. This mill operated until 1947 at its oringal location and was moved in to Upper Canada Village.