Chapter XVII: The Continental Mills of the Valley

Among the vicissitudes incident to the settlement of the valley was a very serious one, in the shape of sometimes an absolute want of flour--not always owing to a lack of grain, but the want of mills. Especially did this operate seriously during the Revolution. The few mills at such great distances apart rendered it necessary for parties of neighbors to join in company, arm themselves, and go to mill together--all waiting until the grain was turned into flour. The want of adequate machinery prevented the erection of mills, and those that were built prior to the Revolution, and during the continuance of the war, could scarcely do the requisite amount of work for the country, sparsely as it was settled. To look at some of the old gearing and machinery in use then would only confirm the adage that "necessity is the mother of invention."

The late Edward Bell, of Blair county, who rose to competence by his own indomitable energy and perseverance, and commanded the esteem and respect of all who knew him, once boasted to us that the first shoes he ever wore he made for himself in Fort Lowry.

"And," said he, "I made them so well that I soon became shoemaker to the fort. There is no doubt but that I could have followed the business to advantage; but I never liked it, so I served a regular apprenticeship to the millwrighting."

It is to this circumstance, then, that we are indebted for the following unique description of the old continental mill, which still stands at J. Green & Company's (formerly Dorsey's) forge, on the Little Juniata, in Huntingdon county. It was built before the Revolution,--as near as can be ascertained, in 1774,--by Jacob and Josiah Minor. Mr. Bell, in his manuscript, says:--

It was a curious piece of machinery when I first saw it. The house
was about twelve feet high, and about fourteen feet square, made of
small poles and covered with clapboards. There was neither floor
nor loft in it. The husk was made of round logs built into the
wall; the water or tub wheel was some three feet in diameter, and
split boards driven into the sides of the shaft made the buckets.
The shaft had a gudgeon in the lower end and a thing they called a
spindle in the upper end, and was not dressed in any way between
the claws. The stones were about two feet four or six inches in
diameter, and not thick, and in place of a hoop they had cut a
buttonwood-tree that was hollow and large enough to admit the
stones, and sawed or cut it off to make the hoop. The hopper was
made of clapboards, and a hole near the eye of the stone answered
for the dampsil, with a pin driven in it, which struck the shoe
every time the stone revolved. The meal-trough, made out of part of
a gun, completed the grinding fixtures. The bolting-chest was about
six feet long, two and half feet wide, and four feet high, made of
live-wood puncheons, split, hewed, and jointed to hold flour, with
a pair of deer-skins sewed together to shut the door. There was not
one ounce of iron about the chest or bolting-reel. It had a crank
or handle on one end, made of wood--the shaft, ribs, and arms, of
the same material; and the cloth was leona muslin, or lining that
looked like it.

Rather a one-horse concern for our day and generation! and its capacity must have been about as one to one thousand, when compared with the mills of the present age. We should like to see how some of the people of the valley _now_ would relish bread baked from flour bolted through Leona muslin! It might do for dyspepsia; indeed, we doubt whether such a disease was known in the valley at so early a day.

The mill of which Mr. Bell speaks, although it may have been the first in his neighborhood, was by no means the first driven by the waters of the Juniata. William Patterson erected a mill, where Millerstown now stands, as early as 1758, which, however, was carried off by a flood a year or so after it was in operation.

The first mill in the Upper Valley was built on Yellow Creek, by the squatters, previous to the edict of the Penn family which destroyed the cabins; but in what year, or by whom built, or what its ultimate fate was, we are unable to say.

The second mill in the valley was built where Spang's Mill now stands, in Blair county, then considered a part of the Cove. It was erected by a man named Jacob Neff, a Dunkard. This mill was burned down during the Revolution by the Indians, but speedily rebuilt, and stood for many years thereafter.

The third was the "Tub" Mill, of which Mr. Bell gives a description. The term _tub_ was applied to it in consequence of the peculiar formation of the water-wheel. Nearly all the mills of those days were worked with a tub-wheel.

Directly after, a mill was erected by a Mr. Fetter, near where McCahen's Mill now stands, near Hollidaysburg. No traces whatever are left of it.

About the same period, two brothers, named Beebault, built a mill, almost the counterpart of the Minor Mill, at the mouth of Spruce Creek. Relics of this mill stood until within a few years.

The next was a small mill built by a man named Armitage, at Mill Creek, below Huntingdon.

Nathaniel Garrard built one in Woodcock Valley, about six miles from Huntingdon.

Another was built in the vicinity of Frankstown; another near where Martha Forge, in the Gap, now stands.

Cryder's Mill, above Huntingdon, was finished about 1776.

These were all the mills that existed in the upper end of the valley prior to the Revolution. Although small, they were evidently of immense value--people having sometimes been compelled to travel some forty miles to obtain their services. The vestiges of _all_ are gone, like shadows that have passed away, save the old Continentaller described by Mr. Bell. It alone stands, a relic of the past.