77 Grist Mill

The original mill is the John Miller Grist Mill from Miller's Creek, 31 miles south of Icard. The mill was built for Conrad Hildebran in 1760, and is documented by an article written in the Hickory Daily Record on August 15, 1940.

When flood waters washed away parts of its structure, it was rebuilt by Tom K. Smith and Dr. F. B. Hicks. They used the same stones, crane, and drive shaft, nethers, runner stones, rind and damsel, along with many hand forged levers.

We moved the basic mill some 15 miles to Hart's Square in 1983. Many of the logs used to reconstruct this building came from an early mill located on Muddy Creek on the Robinson Farm. The wheel itself was built from cyprus by a well-known 70-year-old builder from Boone, North Carolina.

An old meal bag found under the mill is now framed on the wall of our mill. This bag depicts water ground cornmeal from Kickory, North Carolina by its last user in 1957, Richard Bradshaw, from whom we purchased the mill in 1983. The reconstruction took two years.
Tom Bishop, who was a retired engineer, spent hundreds of hours reading and researching other early mills.

As you watch our mill grind corn meal, you can visualize the 4000 pound stones turn at about 70 RPM's. These hard "buhr" stones were brought to America from France by ship in 1760. Our native stones were too soft to use as grinding stones, since they gave off stone dust along with the grist. These buhr stones were transported from the port of Charleston to Hickory by wagon, which would have required two or three weeks in transit.

Grinding corn meal or maze as our early American Indians referred to it, was first done by using a mortar and pestle made from rocks (see one found in Catawba County). Other methods of grinding included use of horse-powdered mill stones, hand-powered small stones
(querns), and hollowed logs and wooden pestles (see one found in Buncomb County) similar to the early rice mill found along the coastline.

The grist mill functioned as an economic and social center. It frequently required the investment of several local citizens. Construction usually required two or three years of careful planning of raceways, and using detailed knowledge of stream flows. The use of horses and dragpans preceded construction. Mills quickly became community centers where farmers gathered to exchange gossip and news while awaiting their turn to have their corn ground.

Many millers were wealthy by local standards, and were considered to be among the most prominent citizens of the community. The location of mills literally determined the placement of early roads. Mills were almost universally associated with blacksmith shops, sawmills, and country stores. A community which had a mill and one or two other places of business, was well on the way to becoming a town. The mills were so necessary to the settlement of backwoods areas that they were given special legislation in 1715 offering tracts of 50 acres of land and exemption from taxes to grist mill entrepreneurs.

A survey in 1981 revealed 45 mills grinding meal and flour in North Carolina (included in this figure are modern and old country cousins). In the 1800's, grist mills were purely business terms and were seldom, if at all looked upon as scenic gems.

The old grist mills which survived, chiefly did so due to the continued demand for . fresh, locally ground corn meal, a distinct Southern delicacy. In a new generation, many believe that stone-ground flour and grains not only have a superior taste, but also have a fundamental integrity about them. In North Carolina in the 1800's, there were over 1000 grist mills recorded.

Where there was a settlement, one almost always found a grist mill. Late one summer afternoon, Becky and I found remnants of five grist mills within ten miles of Hart's Square by just asking a number of older people we passed on the highway or sitting in their front porches, "Where did you take your corn to be ground?"