The Woodson`s Mill Documentary
From The
Woodson's Mill Home Page:
In the shadow of Mount Pleasant, seen
in the background, is Woodson's Mill, located near Lowesville, Virginia in
Nelson County, is a working water powered grist mill that dates back to the late
1700's. It was operated for many years by Dr. Julian Belmont Woodson, a medical
doctor and five term State Senator representing Amherst and Nelson Counties. It
became known as "Woodson's Mill" and the name was retained by its current owner
and operator, J. Gill Brockenbrough, Jr. He purchased the mill in 1983 and
restored it to its current state.
Description: A unique 18 minute video of an old, still operating grist
mill in rural Virginia. This mill, started in the 1700s, and is still in daily
operation and producing stone ground flours. The owner and the miller guides you
through the entire process from water power to the huge millstones via massive
gearing to the final product.
Cost: $18.00 dollars plus $3.20 for
postage and shipping.
Payment: Money Order/Cashiers Checks, or
Personal Checks.
Contact: Rod VanAusdall
Please contact Rod
VanAusdall , Producer/Director, VIP Productions, for purchase of this film.
Cost $18.00, plus shipping/handling charges of $3.20. Mr. Van
Ausdal now takes PayPal. Please mention you saw this on the Pond Lily Mill
Restoration Home Page.
Thank you.
Rod VanAusdall, 3585 Pinewood, Keswick,
Virginia 22947. E-mail: rodvan@adelphia.net
The video presents how a single individual can restore a old mill. In the
"before" photos the mill, it looked a bit too far gone, and most people would
have left it to fall completely to the ground. The video shows the
stages of the restoration, from the water wheel and the building are shown in a
few brief seconds the time. It is evident that they took care to rebuild the
mill and the water wheel the way it was originally. The new owner was not
interested in converting the mill into a home so he could sit there and purely
watch the water wheel turn. They made the mill operate once again. The
mill was once again made to do what it was originally intended to do, grind
flour and meal products.
I receive a great many letters and emails from people who would like to
restore a mill and perhaps just don't have the money it would take, but very few
are willing to take the next step to make the mill actually produce a
product. What is nice about the video is the fact that there is no real
commercial product endorsement. It is a given, that Woodson's Mill sells
the flour and meal that produce but it never placed in front of the
camera.
This is what makes the educational value of the video much
more important than just a tool for selling more cloth bags of Woodson's
products. They talk and show in the video the "how," and the "why" of
making stone ground flour and meal. It is just because of the love of for what
they do which is operating an old mill and make flour the old fashioned
way.
There are a number of mills around the country selling
organically stone ground flour and meal that make a six figure profit each
year. You get the feeling that they love what so much that they do so much
that is not important that anyone would ever see the mill operate and they would
happy enough just to take a bag of meal home for their own use. The folks
at the Woodson's Mill are like many rural Virginians who would rather take that
extra step to ensure the quality of the mill products that they took home to
their families. This kept many rural mills in Virginia operating well into the
twentieth century and hopefully will for a long time into this century.
It is a very uplifting film.
The most photographed mill in the United States is Mabry Mill along the Blue
Ridge Parkway near Meadows of Dan, Virginia. The saw mill portion was
constructed in 1910, the woodworking shop built in 1914, and the center grist
mill section built in 1928. The second most photographed mill in the
United States is the Glade Creek Mill in Babcock State Park, near Clifftop, West
Virginia. This mill was constructed as a commemorative mill from cannibalized
parts of three grist mills for the American Bicentennial in 1976. The next
on the list is the grist mill at the Wayside Inn that was built by the Fitz
Water Wheel Company in 1926 with money from Henry Ford and his friends. I
know people who have worked on that mill. I know Donald C. Wisensale who
worked for the Fitz Water Wheel Company and John B. Campbell who worked for both
himself and Fitz. My grandfather was a millwright. These three (above mentioned)
mills were built within my fathers and my own lifetime. So what does that
tell you? Perhaps we have short memories when it comes to things old or what is
really should be termed nostalgic?
The speeds that wind and water
mills grind grain is perfectly fine, and at one time there were literally
hundreds of mills not just in some states but on the county levels. The
problem was that instead of thousands of mills supplying flour and meal products
on a local level just a handful of mills wanted to supply the demands for the
whole country and much of the world. And you can't do that by grinding grains
the old fashioned way. Water power was the main means that powered
industries up until the 1890's. In 1790 there were some 7,500 small mills in the
United States. In 1825 Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York had about
16,000 mills. By 1850 some 60,000 mills existed, scattered all across the
country. Most of these mills were grist and sawmills, operating seasonally as
demand and water were available. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania alone
in 1900 there were 350 flour mills operating flour mills not to mention all of
the other types of mills there were. In the twentieth century the demand
for personal consumption of flour declined and the larger merchant milling
operations over took the local markets. After the second world war the country
mills gradually became a thing of the past.
Woodson's Mill was built at
the beginning of the American Industrial Revolution. Oliver Evans with his
improvements (as he like to call his inventions) for his automated flour milling
system were developed in 1782-3, patented in 1787, and he published his classic
book that became the millwright's and miller's bible, "The Young Mill-Wright and
Miller's Guide." That was published in 15 editions beginning in 1795 to
1860. Woodson's Mill that was built in 1794 and has seen it all. It may
have produced flour for various American war efforts and survived the American
Civil War. The mill continued to operate and was modernized with improvements at
the turn of the twentieth century with the installation of the Fitz Water Wheel
and power train. When the mill was restored by the present owner they took
the trouble, time, effort and money to restore the water power system of the
mill rather than using simply an electric motor. The only thing the mill
owner did not mention is that when the water turns the wheel, oxygen is mixed to
the water that actually improves the water for aquatic life.
So
this is a win-win situation for everyone and everything. Mills and water power
are still a practical and environmentally friendly alternative technology.
