Editor’s note: Carol Crady, President of Lyndon Area Historical Society, forwarded this vintage article. It was written by Morrison’s George Thiem, Farm Editor to The Chicago Daily News and is dated Tuesday, March 11, 1941. Note his spelling of Annen. There are illuminating descriptions of how the mill worked and its prominence. Photographs were taken by Stephanie Vavra.
The Middle West’s oldest water-driven grist mill is being swept out and cleaned up this week, preparatory to starting its 82nd year of continuous operation.
The old landmark, a four-story building of sandstone quarried from a near-by cliff, is located on Rock Creek, at the foot of the Village of Unionville, just west of Morrison’s city limits….Built in 1858, the mill was completed the next year when the latest flour milling equipment of the day was imported from the East and installed.
Today, this same equipment with minor improvements is turning out wheat and buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and whole wheat breakfast food, famed as far east as Chicago and throughout western Illinois….
A Sawmill preceded the grist mill…erected in 1839, to provide the early settlers with boards and framing timbers cut from the 6000 acres of oak, hickory, maple, poplar, and elm growing in the neighborhood. A simple brush and earth dam sufficed for the sawmill, but when the grist mill was built, a stone and frame dam replaced the original one.
[Partners were John A. Robertson and William Annen, a Scotch setter.] Annen bought out his partner in 1867 and he, his son, and grandson ran the mill continuously for 70 years, finally selling out to Hartman and Claridge 12 years ago [1929].
Mrs. Mary Annen Schroeder, granddaughter…lives in a white frame house on the hill above the dam, where she was born. “When father and grandfather had the mill, both farmers and town people came for 40 miles around with their grist….The mill ran every day, and at times it ran day and night to take care of the trade.”
“The mill was busiest during the World War. When the food administration required people to buy part substitutes for wheat flour, everybody, it seems, brought their wheat for milling, because it relieved them from buying corn meal, rice flour, and other substitutes.”
A year ago [1940] the mill passed out of the hands of George Hartman to a new owner, H. B. Strong of Earlville, who acquired it along with other assets of a closed bank. Howard Hartman, son of the former owner and present operator, grinds two days a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
“People come longer distances with cars and trucks now than they used to in wagons,” Hartman said. “Not long ago, one of our old customers from down in Henry County came in with grist. He told me about the time he drove a team 40 miles to have a year’s supply of flour ground. There were so many ahead of him, that he and 10 others had to stay all night in a cabin. You know, the capacity of the mill is only 40 barrels of flour in 24 hours.”
The big steel water turbine pulls all the machinery in the plant, including the grain elevator that lifts the wheat, corn, and buckwheat to the top of the mill, where it passes through two cleaners, then into the crushers, separators, sifters, and rollers, on its tortuous descent to the bottom, where the grist comes out as finely ground white flour, midlings, and bran.
Throughout its 82 years of operation, there has always been plenty of water to run the mill. Even in winter with a foot or more of ice on the pond, the water flows on, pulling the turbine when there is work to do. The wheel generates 400 horsepower with a nine-foot head of water.
“Quite a few people from Chicago come here to get wheat or corn ground, or a supply of ground whole wheat for mush,” Hartman commented. “One man comes every year from Indiana. There aren’t many mills like this one doing business any more.”