Little Old Mills, by Marion Nicholl Rawson, 1935.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Genesis, 3:19.
Pounders The first mill of all was the human hand. Even a baby will beat the air when it want to make an impression on an unsympathetic world, and so did men beat with their fists anything which they wanted to reduce to usefulness or submission. When they wanted to break up some natural substance they "ground, comminuted it," or beat it up with their strong palms or knuckles. To reach out and seize a club was the next natural step, and worked nicely upon grain which was to become bread dough. The simple mortar and pestle has always been a most dignified adjunct of living, and even for the grinding of heavy grains, continues to be so today in some of the Southern mountain sections. The first of our grinders were really pounders, and one of the earliest of these was the stationary rock chipped into a hollow at the top to form a basin, where a smaller stone with a rounded end could be used to rub or pound the grain into meal between these two hard surfaces. This was the method of the Indians, and some of their old mortars, both stationary and movable, are found today, one of the former standing beside the road near the village of Meriden, New Hampshire. Their pestles are sometimes dug or ploughed up and are of various kinds of stone, two which came to light in New York State, being of black rock and another of soapstone. These have made good rolling pins for the farmer folk who found them, so it is evident that they were long and cylindrical, but always - and this did never fail - the curve of the bottom of the pestle must fit in the curve of the bottom of the mortar. These pestles were grasped about the middle and pounded upon one end. Any one who has tried to chisel a rock, even with modern tools, knows that it is a hard task, and it must have been infinitely harder in the days of primitive tools. It is not surprising then that the settlers turned to some easier substance for their mortars and pestles. A cross-section of a tree would not last forever, as would stone, but a hardwood tree burned and gouged out into a cavity large enough to hold two or three quarts of grain was to prove itself able to outlast its maker and a long line of progeny, as is evidenced by the occasional finding of these old "grist mills" at auctions of old farms. The wooden pestle was the natural made of a wooden mortar and these varied in shape from the short thick club to the natural twisted root which made a hammer, while in the South the pestle for hulling rice, as we shall see, was man-high and strangely pointed at the using end. Even a slight woman could pound corn in one of these small hand mills, for the motion was much like that of churning with a paddle churn. Then came the restless, inquisitive type of man who could not let well enough alone, but must be spying here and there to find something which would make this latest pounding hand mill invention look like a back number. If was not enough that the straight pestle had become the hammer type with a chance for the use of both arms behind it, he must even squint up among the high treetops and keep on squinting until he had found another and easier way. The morning sun was shining very sweetly upon a high sapling which swayed back and forth in the breeze, bowing this way and that and yet always straightening back to its erect position. Here was power, but going sadly to waste. The man's next step was to harness this beautiful sapling, or pull it down and fasten a heavy knob of wood to its crown, then stand a hollowed tree-trunk in just the right spot to catch the new pestle when it came down under his strong pull, and thus have all in readiness for a new kind of pounding where half of his work was done, the sapling picking the pestle up every time that he pulled it down for a stroke. Although the turn post almost ageless, here was the beginning in American of these primitive mills known as the "pounding mill," "sweep mill," "stump and sapling mill," " sweep and mortar mill," "plumping," "beating," or "hammer mill," according to the countryside which it graced. On Long Island such mills were used for grinding samp - broke maize - and wee known as "samp mills." "Upstate" the springing sapling was often tended during its grinding activities by small Negro boys who found strength and vigor enough to pull it down for a leisurely thump and let it slip up a few feet, until the corn was ground. In this section this method was called "niggering corn." The various off springs of this sapling mill mentioned above, were all really "sweep mills" with all sorts of original devices for power at the off end. The "plumping mill" stood out because of its water-power, as described in a later chapter. Quernes A "querne," or "quarne," or "quern" was a hand mill in which the aid of stone was borrowed but in a different way from the supplied by the stone pestle. It was the first and simplest use of millstones and some of these little mills were brought over as early as the 1630's from Europe, ready for the grinding of the first New World crop. The querne stones were small in comparison with the regular millstones which were turned by water or wind power, measuring some eighteen inches across and not more than two and half or three inches in thickness. They were turned by hand. A hole big enough to hold the end of a stout stick was chipped out either near the rim, where the power was greatest, or near the center, and the stick inserted and held up above by passing through a hole in a steadying board which ran out from a timber to hold it. The stick being thus lightly fastened was free to revolve at one end within the small hole of the support, while at the bottom it clung to its cavity and swung the whole stone about. One or two men could grasp the stick and work at the same time in the grinding. These quernes were made with a heavy plank frame which raised them to table height, but they were probably more often fixed firmly within a hollow tree stump into which the grain might fall, and out of which it might slide through a circular opening in the side into a waiting receptacle. In the South the gum tree has always been a stand-by for hollowing purposes, for making beehives, all sorts of casks or bases for the little hand mills, until the word "gum" has come to mean a hollow receptacle. Some one caught the spirit of the little old querne and handed it down for posterity in these words: "..........the grumbling at the gristmill as he (the miller) swung the stone around in the cypress gum, filling a peck measure." West Jerseyites,in the vicinity of Trenton, used quernes for grinding their corn until 1680, and those in their regular "flouring mills" are described as "a simple device of a nether stone and an upper, the latter moving against the former by means of a peg in the hand." This sounds as though a shorter stick were used with no steadying support above, giving us the method of the English Jerseyites as against that of the Pennsylvania Swedes whose mills had the longest lever. The word "quern" was still found in our dictionaries published at the beginning of the Revolution, but was dropped in later editions, into the limbo of antiques and obsoletes, and among the no-longer-wanted oddities. IT is nevertheless a good old American word and should not be forgotten, especially as some of the old quernes still exist in the country. Animal Power "Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" Perhaps not thunder as we know it today, but surely strength as it was know and needed before water or wind had come to help man with his work. Not only the horse but the ox and mule and sheep and dog all had to bend their backs to do man's work, poor beasts. Their task was oftenest to tramp or trot round and round a turn post, in what was to them a useless circle, getting nowhere at all but finding the going monotonous if not hard. Both the lever and the wheel and axle wee now in play. Sometimes it was their lot to tramp endlessly in the treadmill so that power might pass though wheel and rope or belt to its desired point. The earliest ferry boats upon our rivers were run by horses being driven round and round in the hold - while the passengers sat on the open deck above - cog and wheel and post making the necessary connections with the paddle wheel. We may pity all beasts when they are overworked, but the mill work was probably not too heavy for four feet when we remember that some of the mills in which they started working about 1700 had before this had their turn posts turned by a man on two feet, chained fast and obliged to trot whether he would or no. Ralph Wormely on his Virginia plantation had a horse-mill in 1680, but we do not know whether the horse was ridden and driven by a man or boy, or whether it was guided by a lead-pole which projected from the long wooden sweep and kept urging him always in a circle without a driver's guiding hand. The horse which had employment at a mill might or might not have a covered shed in which to work. He was known as the mill-horse, the mill-nag, the mill-jade, or simply as the power without which the neighborhood could not be fed. If a horse had to wind a rope around a capstan, that was one job, and if he was made to twist, upon a turn post, a gigantic tree - with natural bend enough in it to make it a sweep - that was another, but the "thunder" of his neck was always called upon to function. From the power of a single horse came our expression "horse power," still in active service today - as a standard of power. Early horse power was a relative rather than a positive achievement, depending upon whether the horse had a minimum number of working hours, or had been left without a code. If he worked three hours and was kept in good condition he naturally accomplished much more than if he wee worked from six to nine hours, and neglected. It is said that a proper estimate of horse power would be that which measures the weight that a horse would draw out of a well, the animal acting by a horizontal line of traction turned into the vertical direction by a simple pulley whose friction should be reduced as much as possible. During the time when much of the heavy work of the country was being done by animal strength, the average measure of power of a horse was estimated as "32,000 pounds to be raised one foot high in one minute." Less than this was not enough, and more than this for a long period of time was apt to kill. There is always that good thought - a nice hole in the far corner of the family apple orchard, for the poor beast who has knocked off because of overwork. The hard-hearted mule, the dainty burro, the sagging cow, the temporarily tamed bull, and the ram and dog all has their share of work around a mill or a farm, the last named learning patience by treading faithfully his wooden wheel which turned the meat spit before the open fire.
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