What was a grist mill used for?

A gristmill grinds grain into flour. The name refers to the grinding equipment as well as the building. Gristmills, powered by water wheels, have been around for many centuries, some as early as 19 BC. In the United States, they were common by the 1840s.

What is a old grist mill?

A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separated from its chaff in preparation for grinding.

What happened to the grist mill in 1850?

The gristmill was torn down about 1850 and rebuilt in 1932 by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

What were mills used for in the 1800s?

What is a mill? A mill is a building housing a set of machinery that processes raw material into finished products. Waterford’s mills produced flour from grain; building lumber from logs, fabric from cotton and wool fibers, and lime for fertilizer and mortar from limestone.

How does an old grist mill work?

Grain is fed in at the center of the running stone, and the turning of the stone shears the grain without crushing it. Centrifugal force carries the cut grain, called meal, through chiseled grooves in the bed stone to the rim of the millstones, where it collected in a vat and funneled down to the basement.

What did George Washington use the gristmill for?

George Washington’s merchant gristmill was capable of producing 5,000 to 8,000 pounds of flour and cornmeal a day.

How did old mills work?

The mill and its machinery are powered by the force of gravity as water pours over the water wheel and causes it to turn. The main shaft of the water wheel enters the mill in the basement, where a complex assortment of oaken gears and shafts mesh together to power machinery located on all four floors of the mill.

Who invented the grist mill?

The new system was invented by Oliver Evans, a Delaware native, who had been actively working on developing and refining his milling system since the early 1780s.