The Smith Mills building on Hamburg Turnpike near the intersection of Route 23 is seen when Daniel Smith operated a store there decades ago. The building is now privately owned. (Photo provided) (
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The long-ago busy community of Smith Mills, once a significant stop along the Hamburg Turnpike in the early days of the iron industry, sits quietly today as a private residential area near the Route 23 border with Butler and Kinnelon. But in its time, it played a central role in the commercial life of neighboring Charlottenburg and the surrounding countryside.
The settlement was named for homesteader Daniel Smith, who migrated from Hesse Castle, Germany, in the late 1700s and went on to establish Smithville. Smith built six homes, all occupied by members of his family, and operated two grist mills and a general store that carried just about anything a local resident might need. The store also housed a U.S. Post Office. Published reports say the lumber for the homes came from the Kinnelon woods, where the Smith name appears throughout that area’s early history. (There is another historic Smithville in Atlantic County, though unrelated.)
Smith’s mills quickly became gathering spots. While grain and flour were being processed, the men—many wearing the long beards of the era—discussed politics and local concerns. Women in their bustles sat around the pot-bellied stove to exchange community gossip. Cider presses operated at the mill, and an eel-weir beside them trapped spawning eels, providing a delicacy for winter meals. Horse-drawn wagons and sleighs carried wheat, flour and ground corn from Smith Mills to communities that would become part of Passaic and Morris counties.
The Daniel Smith at the heart of this story is one of several by that name connected to the area across generations. Another Daniel Smith died in Egg Harbor Township in July 2025, and yet another is said to be buried in Butler’s Mt. Calvary Cemetery. But the early-settler Daniel Smith was known as a savvy businessman who allowed the New Jersey Midland Railroad to cross his property. A station was built at Smith Mills, and even after the station moved to Oak Ridge, local residents continued to stand by the tracks to signal the engineer when they needed a ride. The line later became part of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad.
Smithville faced hardship in 1908 when a dam broke and destroyed one of the mill’s water wheels. The sturdy Smith homes survived, but the mills, cider presses, store, post office and an old family vault eventually vanished. Local families—the Smiths, Meads, Deckers and others — trace their ancestry to Daniel Smith, whose property once stretched through Apshawa, Echo Lake and Lower Macopin.
A “Macopin Death Book,” discovered years ago in a Westbrook Road attic, lists Smith’s death on April 15, 1882, noting it as a suicide. Local lore says Smith slit his heel and sat in a tub to bleed to death because he did not want to soil his wife’s spotless floor. Smith and his wife were buried in the Newark Watershed woods near Macopin Road, where their primitive grave markers could still be found a decade ago.
During Smith’s era, another notable figure, Dominy Conrad Vreeland of Macopin, owned large tracts of land across southern West Milford. Vreeland and Smith likely interacted, particularly through the property where film director Cecil B. DeMille later spent part of his youth. John F. Mathews later purchased the Smith home, adding it to the Mathews estate. Before Mathews died in 1934 from pneumonia, he created what is now Van Nostrand (Apshawa) Lake atop Apshawa Mountain. He envisioned a home community there, but the land remains vacant due to a landlocked parcel that once served as a Boy Scout camp.
The origin of Vreeland’s title “Dominy” remains unclear, though old-timers used it regularly. A 1913 obituary in the Paterson Morning Call described him as a “millionaire preacher” who lived frugally, farmed modestly and amassed a surprising fortune. Born in 1838, Vreeland founded 14 Baptist churches at his own expense. Each Sunday he preached at Echo Lake Church, traveled to Green Mountain Church in the afternoon and ended the day at Canisteer Church—more than 40 miles traveled.
More than 200 mourners journeyed by carriage and automobile to his Echo Lake mansion for his funeral. His mahogany casket dominated a front parlor filled with simple floral displays. Although he hoped to establish a home for retired Baptist ministers, that plan never came to pass.
