MEMORIES OF THE 



wheel with gearing, with a long, wide belt to drive a '^muley" 

 saw. It took a year's hard work and fifteen to eighteen hundred 

 dollars to make the change, and when completed the mill was 

 not what he had hoped for, and would saw no more lumber 

 in a day than before the rebuilding, and not as much in a year. 

 It froze up easily and early, and was difficult to thaw or cut out. 

 Indeed, by that time there was not a great deal of lumber to be 

 sawed, as the mill was a custom mill and the country round 

 about had become pretty well cleared and built up. 



Still later he put in a circular saw and made other changes, 

 which took all the money he could raise, and then sold it for a 

 few hundred dollars. Whether the mill ever paid or not, it 

 made a heap of heavy, hard work. When logs were plenty, 

 which they were for the years when I was very small, every 

 winter the mill-yard and even the highways about the corners 

 were filled with logs, which were often piled high upon each 

 other. A sawyer was then employed to help run the mill, or 

 sometimes to saw by the thousand, he hiring somebody else to 

 help him saw nights. 



In the early days of the mill brother Gilbert had charge of it 

 and gave the most time to it of anybody. William Johnson, 

 who subsequently married sister Sarah, lived in our family for 

 several years while a boy, and as soon as old enough was exten- 

 sively employed in the mill. He was a young man of energy, 

 with great inventive and mechanical genius, and got his first 

 practical lessons in the manufacture of lumber in this old mill. 

 From it he went to the pine woods and worked for quite a while 

 in the Ferguson mill, above Richland. He then went West, 

 and finally to Minneapolis, where he engaged as foreman and 

 manager of a lumber mill just built on St. Anthony's Falls, and 

 subsequently was superintendent of the S3mdicate of lumber 



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