Soon as I was big enough to sit on a horse, it became my job to
take corn to the mill. The bags were sometimes too heavy for me to
lift, so Pa would tie the bag on my horse's saddle and
away I would go. When I got there, out would come the miller,
Mr. Villines. He would offload the bag and put it in line with all the
others, as first come first served was the rule. Waiting my
turn would mean time for a swim in the creek with the other
kids from the Valley, so the way I'd see, it the longer the
line the better! While we would play at the creek, Mr. Villines would pour
the corn into the hopper at the old mill. The machine would
begin to whirl and twirl, grind and sift, and after an hour or
so, the mill made corn meal out of that bag of corn I brought.
Since Mr. Villines took his share, no money had to be exchanged.
Those trips to the mill made me and my family happy 'cause we knew
we'd eat plenty of cornbread for a while after. For a long
time, the mill nourished the Valley and provided a gathering place
for our community, but it sits quiet now...yet I can still hear
the whirling, the twirling, the grinding and the sifting each
time my travels take me past.
Welcome to the Boxley Grist Mill. I'm Ranger Kevin Middleton. We're in the
Boxley Valley at the Buffalo National River, and this is one of our most historic structures that's
left at the Buffalo River. Today I'd like to take you on
a short tour to explore this treasure.
We're about to enter what we today call the Boxley Grist
Mill, but when it was built in 1869, it wouldn't have been
called that because Boxley didn't exist. When this was built,
it was built by Robert Villines and it would have been known as the
Villines Grist Mill. Mr. Villines owned property here before
the Civil War, and the Valley was devastated during that
time. But as people came back to the Valley after the war,
they were hoping for prosperity. Obviously to build
such a large large building in those times, he was very
optimistic about the future. So he built this in 1869, and we think
it was in operation in 1870.
As we enter the building, I wanna talk just a little bit
about how it was built. As you can see here in the corner, it
was put together with posts and beams, and those were attached
to each other by wooden pegs, which you can see sticking out
from several of those. This beam that runs through the center of
the building is 35 feet long. It came from one tree
probably cut just right outside the door, and you can see the
axe marks that were made by those original men that built
this. You can just imagine how much skill and hard work it
took to make a beam like that out of a tree that was cut down
outside and have it still standing here after 150 years.
Okay, right behind me, we have the mill race that provided the
water to the mill...the power that operated the whole
thing. The water comes from the mill pond about 100 yards
through the trees. Most of the mill race is gone now. It was washed
away by floods and over time it disappeared. Here you can see a small
portion. This one's made of concrete. The original one was probably made of
wood; they would not have had concrete. But the main purpose
is to get the water from the source, which is the mill pond, to the mill through
the millrace, to the water wheel, initially, and then the turbine, and that's
what powers the Boxley Mill. Through this door, we have where all the
power to operate this mill came from. Originally when it would have
been built in 1869, there would have been a big wooden water
wheel. Most people think of that when they think of a grist
mill: a big wheel with kinda paddles on it that the water
turned, and that's exactly what was here when it was built. But
when they upgraded the mill in 1900-1901, they changed it.
They put in what was called a turbine, which is more powerful
and more compact. So the mill changed a little bit. The main
power source was still the water, [which] came down here, turned the
turbine, the turbine turned the shaft, and that's where all the
power for everything in this mill came from.
Here we have the heart of the mill. These are the actual mill
stones. As far as we know, they've been here this whole
time, and this is what they would have used originally to
grind all the grain. As far as we know, these, like many mill
stones throughout the United States, came from France, but
there are two stones here and they have a series of
grooves and ridges on them. So the corn would fall through the
hopper. It would go between the two stones and that would grind
it. It would kick it out into a bin, and it fell underneath the
floor.
Right here we have what we call an elevator. That's not what
most folks think of as an elevator these days, but in
those times, this was called an elevator and it worked
perfectly good. These little scoops on this belt would carry
the grain, the meal, whatever was underneath the floor up to
this floor or to the floors above us to be further
processed or packaged. Some of them are also chutes or
shafts where they bring product back down. If you'll notice on
this one, that is exactly what it is and this is how they control
the flow. Pretty simple. It's just a wooden...kinda looks like
a paddle, so product would come down. I can imagine them
filling a sack full of flour or corn meal right here and
when they wanted to shut it off, they just put that right
in there. So if you look around the mill, you'll see different
things that look similar, but some are elevators and some are
chutes or shafts that brought product down after it was
processed and finished.
This piece of equipment is called a scourer. The raw wheat
grain would come into this piece of equipment and this
would take off the outer husk, the outer part of the grain of
wheat, and this chute... this large, wooden chute...it would just
blow that waste product outdoors. With the rest, it would
sort it and then it would go into the next piece of
equipment, which was a roller, where it would be crushed and
then it would be further processed in these bolters behind us.
Here we have a piece of equipment that we know wasn't
originally here in the mill. It was added later. They remodeled
the mill in 1901, and we're pretty sure this would have
been brought in. It's called a roller mill and its main
function was to grind wheat into flour. So this would have
been a big improvement over the old mill stones that do a
better job on corn. So we know Mr. Villines had two of these here in
the mill. If you look at it, it has these big wheels on
all sides and each one of those would have had a belt that
operated it. It didn't of course have any electric motors.
Everything was run by a belt on these wheels that turned all
the internal parts. As we get closer to the mill, we can see
a door that we can open up, and this shows you exactly how it
worked. It had these big steel rollers that I can turn the
wheel by hand, and they could be adjusted...the gap between
them...and so you can have finer grinds or coarser grinds. So
that was one of the big improvements over the old mill stones.
This piece of equipment is called a bolter. To make it
more clear I like to call it a sifter. It had this wheel up
top where the raw ground wheat... it's not really flour yet...came
in here. This frame was covered with a fabric and the wheat
went inside of it and as it spun around, it sifted it and
it fell down to yet another shaft with paddles on it and
that stirred it and sifted it and then from here it dropped out
and it could either be further processed or it was ready to go
as nice white flour like we think of today. So this
machine filtered out or sifted out all the unnecessary pieces
and out of the bottom of it came nice white flour that you and
I would use today.