Pictured above is the Venice Mill, run by the
Gallagher brothers, John R., Arthur P., and James S. Gallagher, dating back to
the 1930s or 1940s. The site is now occupied by the Margaritaville restaurant.
According to an article in the July 3, 1988 issue of the Sandusky Register, the Gallagher
brothers purchased the Venice Mill in 1897, which had formerly been run by
several generations of the Heywood family. Russell Heywood purchased the old
mill in Venice in 1831, at the southeast corner of what now is Fremont Street
and Venice Road, along with the rights to Cold Creek and five hundred acres of
land. A second mill was built by Mr. Heywood in 1841, but was destroyed by
fire. An early canal system transported the wheat and flour from the mills to
the bay, where it was shipped by boat. Later railroad cars transported the
grain. Members of the Gallagher family operated the mill until the late 1940s.
The family also owned a flour, feed, and coal business in Sandusky on East
Water Street. This building still stands and is known as the Granary. In 1955 Harold Coker bought
the old mill. He and his wife Gertrude built a restaurant and bar known as the
Old Mill on the site of the Venice Mill. Three of the original walls from the
mill were used in the new tavern. In the early 1980s John Kubicek and Nick
Porozynski remodeled the Old Mill tavern and re-named it Margaritaville. An
early history of water powered historic mills, found on the back of an old menu
from Margaritaville, is now housed at the
Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.
This old flour sack from the Venice
Mill, when it was run by the Gallagher family, is at the Follett House
Museum.
