174 Singing Valleys 



other in a garden close to Albany, New York. John Taylor 

 Arms is a collector of millstones in his Connecticut garden. 



South Carolina, so its sons boast, is the best-watered state 

 on the Atlantic seaboard. It is also a state of old mills. Many, 

 like the one in Middleton Gardens, ground rice, but all of 

 them ground corn which was and still is the state's chief cereal 

 food. The old Bluff, or Cornwallis Road, running west to the 

 mountains and over them, passes a score of old mills, many of 

 which are still in operation. One, in the city of Columbia, was 

 built prior to 1740. General Sherman set fire to it on his march 

 to Georgia. The present owner rebuilt the ruin, dug the old 

 French buhrstones out of the brook, and set up a wheel again 

 for the grinding of corn. 



In all the mills it was usual to use stones of American granite 

 to grind corn for cattle and poultry feed. Granite was sup- 

 posed to make a smooth meal, and buhrstone a meal with 

 round particles. Most old mills were furnished with both types 

 of stone. A very large one, of Vermont granite, which served 

 in the Yellow Mill at Bridgeport, Connecticut, is now part 

 of the equipment of Rose Mill at Milford, near by. Very early 

 in colonial days the German Palatines who settled near New 

 Paltz, New York, began quarrying in the Shawangunk Moun- 

 tains. They did quite a trade in millstones from the granite 

 along Esopus Creek. 



When the stones were in constant use most country mills 

 ran steadily from November to April it was necessary to lift 

 the tedder every two or three weeks and spend a day or two 

 dressing the surface. Moving the stone was no easy task in 

 itself, and cutting it called for skill and proper tools, which in 

 most instances the miller had to make for himself. No ordi- 

 nary chisel would carve the excessively hard buhrstone. 



At Jennerstown, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, a sum- 

 mer theater has been made out of an old grist mill. It was 

 built, early in the last century, of heavy chestnut logs and 

 chinked with plaster. Originally the mill stood at Roxbury, 

 some miles from its present site. At the time of building an 



