Lord’s Mill in the 19405, formerly Couldrup‘s Mill, then Ives’ Lower Mill. Light plant on left and saw mill on right. Evelyn Lord collection.

Charlottetown to Southport bridge construction project. 11 He installed the DC dynamo at the Upper Grist Mill about 1910. It produced electricity to light his home and mill as well as those of his brother, George Ives, and to power the various electrical motors around the houses and farm. Sheldon Dixon remembers seeing a DC powered motor driving a grain threshing machine on the second floor of the barn at Charlie Ives’ farm in the mid 1920s. The first electric lighting outside the Ives properties occurred on November 26, 1913, when a DC motor was taken to the Lower Mill and hooked up as a water driven generator. This makeshift hookup supplied power through a temporary line run on tripods across the fields to light the home of Hedley Weeks (presently the Wendell Muttart residence) on the occasion of Hedley Weeks’ marriage to George Callbeck’s daughter, Laura Etta. 12

The official purchase of Ives’ Lower Mill three days later laid the foundation for the realization of Charles Ives’ dream of a Rural Light and Power Company to supply the surrounding communities. A 133 cycle AC generator was installed at the Lower Mill and was hooked up to replace the DC lighting generated by the Upper Mill. The Presbyterian Church was next to be lighted, and then in 1914, the homes of James Dawson (now Steven Thomson) and DJ. Thomson (now Ethel Thom- son).13The non standard 133 cycle power was good for lighting, but not suitable to run the standard 60 cycle electric motors used to power water pumps and clothes washers. Charles remedied this situation by removing the 133 cycle generator and installing a 60 cycle generator on

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