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TAYLOR COUNTY, FL GENWEB

Taylor County's Old Watermills Gone Now By: W. T. Cash

Thanks to the Perry Newspapers, Inc. for allowing us to reprint this article.

"I can eat that corn as fast as your old mill can grind it." "How long can you hold out?" "Till I starve."

The above conversation was reported to have once taken place between Old Man Zack Lovett, lone owner of a water mill ten miles north of Perry, and a boy who was there to get some grinding done. While the dialogue more than likely never occurred the water mills of Old Man Lovett’s day were certainly slow motioned. Lovett’s was only one of several water mills operating in Taylor County from about 1870 to the end of the nineteenth century, some running until maybe as late as 1905. Among them were the Quiette mill on Blue Creek, the Murphy mill above the falls on the Steinhatchee, the Tom Hendry mill near or possibly on the place Boss Wilcox recently sold, the Rev. J. H. Wentworth mill a little north of Old Shady Grove bridge on the Econfina, the Mims mill on the Fenholloway near Fenholloway Springs, the Blanton mill about one mile north of the Donaldson Bridge and the R. E. Wentworth mill on Cypress Creek, a little southeast of Old Shady Grove. These probably by no means include all – my friends J. E. Moody, Mrs. Laura Holt and T. Z. Faulkner and other old-timers doubtless remember several not herein named. So Far I have left out the Old John E. Jenkins mill a half mile or so below what is generally known as "The Rise" on Rocky Creek, and the Courtney Mill on Spring Creek, about two miles west of Perry, the most famous of Taylor County’s water mills from about 1885 (a few years before I was born) until around 1896 or 1897 when it had to stop because of a whirlpool in the creek just above the mill which put an end to its activities. The Jenkins Mill was erected by John E. Jenkins Sr., probably by or before 1855. Jenkins about 1849, when Taylor County was still a part of Madison, went to California to see if he would get in on the gold discovered there in 1848. After perhaps three years he returned to Rocky Creek with more money than he carried away but made chiefly by the high wages paid him rather than through any mines he located. He now put this money to use by erecting a nine-room frame house and a water mill where he was able to get a good fall of water on the nearby creek. The house was used as headquarters by Major Charles H. Camfield in March 1864, when he was down here hunting deserters – Jenkins, whom I understand, was originally from Ohio, did not choose to fight the good old USA, and so with his family went to join the Federals who then held Cedar Key. But he had already ground corn some five or more years before the War Between the States and probably also sawed some lumber on it. Very likely his nine-room house was built of lumber cut by his mill. A portion of the old dam still remained three or four years ago, or so I was told by Sidney Hendry who lived not far from the mill site. The Courtney mill was I think first set in operation by Mills W. Parker, grandfather of Theodore and Cuthbert Parker and also blood relation to numerous other Florida people of the same name. I am of the impression that J. H. Courtney, a native of South Carolina, bought the mill from Mr. Parker before 1875, but here I can be mistaken. There may have been one or more in-between owners. I knew it was the Courtney mill the first time I ever heard of it. As a boy of 10, I probably first went to mill at the Courtney mill about the summer or fall of 1888. I carried on horseback probably as much as a bushel of corn for grinding into meal and when I asked the miller what time I’d get my meal he replied "about 12 o’clock." That was all right with me for I didn’t like farm work and I was afraid I’d be put at it as soon as I got home. The miller, as I remember, always took the corn off the horses for boys as small as I was and carried it into the mill house. Not only were thousands of bushels of corn ground at the Old Courtney mill, but hundreds if not thousands of bales of long cotton were ginned there by the power, and I rather think a little lumber was sawed at times. Ree Matthis or John Grubbs, whose sister married a Courtney, would know. The large mill pond was in the 1880’s and 90’s the greatest swimming hole in Taylor County and on Sunday there were sometime probably as many as two dozen men and boys "in washing," as they called it, at one time, with only their natural garments on. The males of those days never wore bathing suits and probably for the most part had never heard of them. "Going in a washing" was not confined to Sundays. On weekdays there were some times half a dozen or more in the pond. At one time while waiting for their corn to be ground into meal and hominy. Of this more later. Not all who waited for their grinding swum in the pond. At times there were games of "Seven-up," a popular card game of fifty years or more ago, which was played somewhat like "set-back," only in the latter no trumps are turned while in "Seven-up" they were. Through the years of the mills operation doubtless numbers of "one-horse" fights (those in which nobody was badly hurt) occurred: but there was at least one which had a tragic ending. I cannot give the date, but I am sure it was prior to 1880, when one H. H. (usually known as Ky) Wilder and Tom Gray got into a cutting scrape. Wilder got the better of the fracas and for some time it was thought the knife wounds he inflicted on Gray would kill him. However, Gray, who was miller at the mill, managed to get to the home of Mr. Courtney where he found a gun. Here he waited for Wilder to pass by and when he did fired a shot that hit him. At first it was not thought Wilder’s wounds were serious, but after sometime, probably a month or two, they proved fatal. Gray in spite of his serious knife cuts recovered and afterward went to some place in South Florida. I do not know who was to blame for the fracas, but I know it was much talked of for a number of years – long after Wilder’s death and Gray’s moving away. At all those water mills considerable hominy was ground. Hominy bears some resemblance to our modern grits, the difference being that hominy was coarser and was generally washed on the night before it was cooked to get out the husk. Next morning it was our breakfast food instead of having a sugar and milk covering had bacon gravy in liberal amounts put over it. At a short distance hominy looked like soft cooked rice. It was very tasty. Among the millers I remember are Darling Sapp, father of County commissioner Ferd Sapp, Will Lundy, Jim Jenkins, Charley Jurrels and "Buck" (real name Moses) Ellison. These were all at the Courtney mill. "Gin" York was for a time miller at the Tom Hendry mill and J. O. Cliance I think was miller at the Lovett mill during the final years of its operation I am told that during his last year there (he left Taylor County for Canada in the late summer or early fall of 1902) he took in 300 bushels of toll corn. As I remember the toll taken was one-eighth of the corn carried to the mill for grinding. The Countney mill toll must have in its best days reached over 500 bushels a year and maybe 1,000, for people went there from miles away. Bread made of water-mill meal certainly tasted better to me than that ground on steam mills. One no longer a water mill in Taylor may wonder then why there is county. In the first place those mills ground slowly, probably not much if any over two bushels and hour or less than 25 a day and folks who had corn to grind did not like so much waiting after they could do better. Water supply was uncertain. Streams did not always run. Spring Creek on which the Courtney Mill was operated never entirely ceased running, although in Perry a little over two miles above the mill it sometimes nearly dried up. Lovett’s Mill Creek, flowing out of Lake Bird as it does, probably never ceases running though it gets very low at times and the little Blanton Mill Creek and Cypress Creek during dry spells gets to be nothing but a line of water holes. The Steinhatchee where Joe Murphy operated his mill never dries up, but after the turpentine and saw mill industries developed people quit farming to such an extent that a mill there just wouldn’t pay. The Quiette Mill on Blue Creek even ceased operation before the naval stores and lumber industries got started. It was always too much off to one side to be very profitable anyway. About 1890 or maybe a little before S. H. Peacock Sr. started a steam mill in Perry where in addition to grinning cotton and sawing lumber he ground much corn. Then the Carlton and Kelly mill southeast of Perry and the Moran mill in the same direction got their share of corn grinding. People went to these mills because they could get their grinding quicker and not a few didn’t see enough difference between the taste of water-mill and steam-mill meal to matter much. Anyway it is unlikely that a bushel of meal has been ground on a water mill in Taylor County since 1905 or probably 1903. Then again corn growing has so nearly stopped in Taylor County that no sort of a mill for grinding corn would now pay. The old water mill days constitute an interesting period of Taylor County history. They bring to mind such men as Old "Uncle Zacky" Lovett, Old Man John Courtney, Rev. James H. Wentworth, Old Man Tom Quiette and Joe Murphy. They bring to mind the mill houses where political questions were discussed and maybe sometimes settled. They remind us of the mill ponds where some of us learned to swim. More than all this we who remember the water mills are reminded that we live in a completely changed world where there are no more "stick" and "dirt" chimneys, sassafras tea, big rounds of calomel, families of ten children, swans down for face powder and silver finger rings.

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