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New life restored to old mill

October 14, 2003 1:08 am

WHEN WATER was sent spilling into the 56 slatted "buckets" on the 17-foot water wheel at Stratford Hall Plantation's working gristmill three years ago, the Westmoreland County example of Old World know-how would creak to life.

For a while, spillway water would turn the wheel, spinning a drive shaft that inside the mill bore a massive pit gear--a 14-foot wheel of oak spiked with 122 envelope-sized teeth of hard-rock maple.

When the drive was engaged and the teeth meshed into a smaller gear with dowellike bars, the wheel's power was sent through a series of smaller wooden shafts and interlocking gears to rotate the mill's main component, a 2,000-pound circular slice of Pennsylvania sandstone grooved for grinding.

On good days, miller Steve Bashore could turn 100 pounds of yellow corn into meal or grits before the wheel ground to a stop because of leaks from rotten sections that bled away so much water it quit turning.

Other times, wear and rot in the gears, teeth and even the frame of the heavy mill machinery halted milling, or made Stratford officials worry about the structural integrity of the site where corn and grain was ground.

"When we pulled some of those posts and beams out of there, you could flake off whole chunks with your hand," he said. "Insects and rot had caught up with it."

That's why, for the past 27 months, Stratford Hall Plantation, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, has undertaken a nearly total, $260,000 renovation of its gristmill.

There are two reasons this mill became one of the first Colonial era mills to be fully renovated:

First--the integral role it has played in the estate's history, including the part played by business giant General Mills in the construction of the current mill in the 1930s.

Second--The arrival of Bashore, a young history major who developed a passion for mills through his involvement with an international group dedicated to their preservation.

Thomas Lee, founder of the Ohio Company and acting governor of Virginia, purchased the land for Stratford Hall Plantation in 1717 and built the the brick Georgian Great House there from 1730-38.

Though a mill near the current mill site along the Potomac River had operated before a flood took it in the 1720s, the pond was repaired and a new mill was up and operated again by 1745. It was a source of food and produced profits for the plantation through the sale of meals, flours and more.

By the Civil War, the mill had fallen into disrepair. But received a major rehab in the 1870s from partners named Jenkins and Muse, who added a sawmill and modernized machinery. It operated for years until a storm broke the dam once again and destroyed the operation.

In 1929, the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association purchased Stratford. The group dedicated to the preservation of Lee's birthplace was interested in renovating the old gristmill. One of its organizers was so committed that she and her husband agreed to pay for a new pond, dam and mill building.

General Mills got involved as well and sent one of its engineers to Stratford to assist. The engineer supervised the salvage of an old mill in Linesboro, Md., and its installation at Stratford.

Crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps, at work building Westmoreland State Park, lent a hand by building a mill road.

There have been several smaller, makeshift fixes and replacements to keep the mill running off and on since the General Mills installation. But the renovation started in June 2001 and finished last week is the first complete reconstruction.

A miller at heart

When Steve Bashore, who spent some youthful years in Northern Virginia, graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in the early '90s, he left with a history degree and an appreciation for the beauty of Old World solutions.

It was not surprising, then, for this son of a career military man to find himself setting up programs in historic sites such as Sully Plantation and Colvin Run Mill for Fairfax County.

He eventually took a job at Colvin Run, and, fascinated with its machinery, learned as much as he could about operating it.

There, Bashore met someone who would deepen his love of milling history and operations, Derek Ogden. The millwright from England got Bashore involved in the International Molinological Society and, in 1998, invited him on a whirlwind mill tour through England, Holland and Germany.

"I learned more on that weeklong trip than I learned in a year and a half at the mill," said Bashore. "We saw so many different kinds of mills, both water and wind, with so many different systems of operation."

When Bashore signed on at Stratford in December 1997, he became the first full-time mill coordinator. Previously, it had been just one of many duties of Stratford's farm manager.

Besides preserving the mill and expanding knowledge of its history, Bashore interprets the site for visitors. He also manages to mill corn, wheat and barley into a whole line of flours, meals and pancake mix sold at Stratford,

His arrival expanded the time the mill was actually operated. Those increased hours helped hasten the inevitable wear on the mill's wooden parts.

By the time Bashore and Stratford Hall hosted the international milling association's symposium in 2000, drawing more than 100 participants from 15 countries, a full fix was necessary.

It would take several years, with Bashore and others at Stratford pursuing grants, donations and other funding, to get the project completed.

To reach ROB HEDELT: 540/374-5415 rhedelt@freelancestar.com