Going to Mill

        In the "good old days'' they had to resort to various expedients in preparing the food for the table. Perhaps no phase of it is more interesting than the story of how they ground their corn and wheat.

       In many families they had a grater. They perhaps called it a "gritter. " It was made of a piece of tin, most any size, that it was possible to get. They punched it full of holes, bent it with the rough side convex and nailed it to a piece of board, thus forming a sort of semi-cylinder. The corn on the cob was rubbed on this, like rubbing clothes on a washboard, and it was ground into meal which fell on the board and ran down into a wooden trough made for the purpose. This was a laborious process, but it was the best that many of them had.

       The next step was what some have called the "hominy block'' It was arranged on the top of a stump or a block cut from a tree and set on end and hewn out or burned out so as to make it something like a large mortar. For a pestle they sometimes used a large, smooth stone weighing some fifteen or twenty pounds. This was very much like the plan the native people had of putting the corn in a hole in a rock and rubbing it with another. They sometimes made a sort of maul, perhaps three feet long and weighing ten or fifteen pounds. They even improved this and bent a sapling over, attached a piece of timber, six or more inches in diameter and six or eight feet long, in such a manner as to allow the timber to be brought down by pulling it. By this process, the labor was lessened.

       The inventive mind, prodded on by necessity, devised another plan. If a sapling were not handy, they sometimes laid a pole twenty-five or thirty feet long across a fork and with the heavy end under the corner of the house in such a manner as to allow the spring of the pole to lift the weight.

       Next comes the hand-mill, very much like those used in the Holy Land today, and to which Jesus referred when he said, "Two women shall be grinding at a mill, the one shall be taken and the other left." It was made of two stones, one of which was stationary and called the bed stone. A movable one above it was called the runner. A shaft was put thru the runner, one end terminating in the bed stone and the other in a hole in a piece of timber above. Thru this shaft, a pole perhaps ten feet long was put in such a manner as to make two handles against which two people could push. The corn was fed thru a hole in the runner and the meal fell out from under it at the edges. This was free for the neighborhood and every family did their own grinding.

       Perhaps the next step was the horse mill, made very much the same way only larger, allowing the horse or oxen to go in a circle twenty feet or more in diameter. This was still improved by putting the horse, or team of horses, or yoke of oxen, to a separate "sweep" fastened to an upright beam which was the axle of a wheel fifteen or twenty feet in diameter. This large wheel carried a deer-skin or cow-hide belt working on a much smaller wheel on the axle of the runner. About that time they began to charge toll and the law said it should be one-tenth. They had not then worked out a system of weighing the grain and giving them their milling, but each had to wait until his own was ground. People went long distances and often had to wait a long time. This gave rise to the expression, "like going to mill," when you are expected to await your turn. It is said that when General Logan was a boy, he drove thirty miles to mill. He, of course, had to stay all night, but that night it rained. The belt got wet and stretched so that it fell. Some hungry dogs chewed part of it up so badly that they had to kill an ox, tan the hide and make part of a new belt. In this way, he was detained several days. My father, when just a lad, drove a yoke of oxen fully that far with a load of corn and wheat. Part of the wheat he sold at fifty cents a bushel.

       The next step in this evolution was the water-mill, which was very much the same, but was run by water-power. If for no other reason, this kind of mill will be remembered threw out the ages on account of the popular poem, "Little Jerry, the Miller".

       Near the close of pioneer days, the steam mill came into existence. Not until then was there a definite system worked out whereby people could exchange corn or wheat for meal or flour and get away without waiting for their own to be ground. Mills became more plentiful and people took smaller amounts to mill, often not more than three bushels of corn and three of wheat, and sometimes less than that. They spoke of this as a "turn of milling". Very little wheat was used for it was so hard to harvest and to thresh. Fifty bushels was considered a large crop of wheat. If it was bolted at all, it was thru a deer-skin full of small holes, punched with a red-hot wire. In few things have people changed more than in preparing "bread-stuff".

See George Washington's Gristmill at Work!