Early Mills of Jefferson County, Iowa

Описание: "Early Mills of Jefferson County, Iowa" is an excerpt from the film "Ahead of Their Time". ©2022 Fair Field Productions
To watch the trailer or stream the entire film, visit www.vimeo.com/ondemand/aheadoftheirtime
The footage of the mill in this video is from Pine Creek Grist Mill in Muscatine County.

When Jefferson County was just being settled in the late 1830s, the only way to get high-quality bread flour from your grain was to send a mill boy to Illinois on a 100-mile journey, which took 28 to 30 days. But in 1838, Henry Rowe, a settler in the northwest corner of Lockridge Township, erected a treadmill for grinding grain. Customers would bring their grain, put their horses in the tread, and pay a small fee for use. The mill would produce a coarse but edible product.

Later that year, a mill was built on Cedar Creek, situated only a few miles south of Fairfield. John Troxell’s flouring mill aroused much interest and excitement as everybody within 50 miles was invited to the mill raising, the first major social event in this area. A great layout of food was prepared - chickens, venison, wild turkey, wild honey. Oh, and one big barrel of whiskey. The party lasted three days.

Although of great value to the community, Troxell’s mill was destroyed a year later by flood. More mills cropped up throughout the territory.

”Probably no mills along the river or creeks have served more people in Jefferson County than the mills at Merrimac, just within the county line. In the earlier days, Merrimac was known as "Deedsville," which was derived from the name of early entrepreneur Silas Deeds. In 1849, Deeds built the first dam there on the Checauqua or Skunk River and a sawmill was set up on the west side in 1850. Silas Deed sawed the timbers for the grist mill and hauled them across to the east side. There was no bridge at this time so Deeds started a ferry service and used it to ford and ferry the wood across.

The high water of 1851 washed away the mill, timbers and lumber. Undaunted, Mr. Deeds sanded out another frame and lumber and the Deedsville flour mill was finished in 1853. This mill was two stories with a basement and a flat roof. It had four pairs of buhrs, three for flour and one for corn meal. It was later sold and renamed Merrimac Mills, and the town name changed to Merrimac and by then had a grist mill, flour mill, carding mill, sawmill, and general store connected to each other like a mini-mall of today.  In 1895, Peter Salzman bought the entire business, and "Superlative Roller Mills" was painted on the building. He continued making flour until 1903 when all small flour mills along the rivers became unprofitable.

Eventually, shipping got easier and less expensive, mills started getting bigger and bigger and located farther apart, and the local flour mills disappeared from the local landscape.