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. If any descendants of John F. Eesley’s American line surface — and they almost certainly exist — their photographs would fill this page. Until then this is a description-only entry, with the building’s status as a public landmark standing in for what the family record cannot yet show.
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.