Plainwell · Michigan · United States
J. F. Eesley Milling Co. Flour Mill–Elevator, Plainwell
The flour mill John F. Eesley built in Plainwell, Michigan in 1887 — converted from a downtown roller rink, then moved and merged with a grain elevator in 1903–04 — that grew into the second-largest producer of buckwheat flour in the United States under the 'Sunshine Brand Flour' label. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010; now The Old Mill Brewpub.
Why this place matters
The family surname literally on the historical register. Three generations of Eesley millers — Joseph in Hanwell, John in Old Stratford, John F. in Plainwell — and this is the building that closed the chain. It is the only piece of physical Eesley infrastructure to survive into the 21st century.
The roller-rink beginning (1869): A roller-rink structure was built on West Bridge Street in downtown Plainwell.
The industrial conversion (1887): John F. Eesley, an English emigrant who had moved up from Birmingham, bought the rink and converted it into the Sunshine Flour Mill.
National success: Under the “Sunshine Brand Flour” label, the mill expanded to producing up to six hundred barrels of buckwheat flour a day — the second-largest such producer in the United States at its peak.
The big move (1903–04): John F. Eesley physically divided the timber-frame mill building, moved it to the 700 block of East Bridge Street, and merged it with an existing grain elevator. The result was an architecturally integrated mill-and-elevator: a three-story gable-roofed mill joined by a central section to a gambrel-roofed elevator.
End of the milling era (1929): John F. Eesley ran the operation until his death. The Plainwell Elevator Company acquired the facility and turned it from consumer flour production to regional farming support — livestock feed, corn, hay — for the next six decades.
Recognition and reuse (2010 – ): Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. The building’s 100-year-old wooden floors, posts, and post-and-beam architecture were preserved during renovation, and the site now operates as The Old Mill Brewpub — a local restaurant, coffee shop, and brewery.
No family photographs of the mill in operation are yet in this archive, and no Eesley descendant has yet stood at the building in the present generation. Chuck plans the first family visit in November, on the same trip as a talk at the University of Michigan; the page will move from
unreachedtophotographedafter that frame is made. The surviving present-day evidence for now is what others have photographed of the building — the EESLEY MILL · BUILT 1903 sign on the present-day façade — visible in the historical marker on hmdb.org and the mlive coverage when the building made the National Register in 2010.
The “Historic Eesley Mill” sign
The Eesley name on the current downtown Plainwell sign — carrying John F. Eesley’s 1880s milling enterprise into the 21st-century commercial life of the building. The four panel businesses all operate on or around the mill site today.
Sources: J. F. Eesley Milling Co. Flour Mill–Elevator, Wikipedia; Plainwell mill history at mlive.com; historical marker at hmdb.org/m.asp?m=74530; The Old Mill Brewpub opening, mlive.com.