Grinding Away

          Anyone that has stopped in at our museum has probably seen this stone before, but it may not have caught your attention as it isn’t in one of our buildings. Believe it or not, the stone out front is actually an artifact in our collection – one very large, heavy and rugged artifact that has thus taken its place outside of our museum.

            William Redstone moved to Springfield Parish in 1836 along the Joliff Brook. Some land he purchased and some he leased from the Trinity Church in 1837. It was here that he built two watermills, one a gristmill and the other a sawmill, both on the Joliff Brook. One was located at his home, where the water came from a head pond at the foot of Bull Moose Hill Road. The water flowed down a flume or ditch to the gristmill. The second mill was across the highway from where Roy Northrup lived. This mill, with its undershot wheel, was used for sawing lumber and in its later days it may have been used for grinding buckwheat.

These mills were taken over by William Joliff, an Englishman. He came to New Brunswick in the year 1830, a son-in-law to William Redstone. Mr. Joliff did very well with his mills until his interest turned to prospecting. Later this place became home to Thomas Marr who was the last to operate the mills. Eventually, it became the property of the donor, William Tremain.

Following is some brief information on how millstones actually work. Millstones come as two pieces, a base or bedstone that doesn’t move and a runner stone that sits on top of the base and does the grinding of material. The runner stone is connected to different pieces that lead to the source of power – water. The surface of the millstone is divided into furrows that continue on as smaller grooves, called feathering or cracking. Our millstone only seems to have furrows – it doesn’t appear that the grooves get smaller continuing outwards. When the two stones are set against each other the patterns and movement allow for the stones to create a grinding action.

Next time you’re in be sure to stop and check out the millstone by our door! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millstone

Fresh Cut

            There’s something about the smell and sight of a freshly cut lawn that brings memories of summertime and sunshine to many. The practice of keeping lawns freshly cut for the duration of the warm months may be fairly recent, but the activity of mowing lawns is not.

            In the 1830s lawn mowers were invented and put to good use. Mainly used for keeping sports fields under control and play ready, some reel mowers were purchased by those with large gardens that needed to be kept ever so perfect, like those at Oxford Colleges. Eventually, more thinking and tweaking took place until there were mowers large enough to be used by farmers and drawn by horses. Scythes were replaced by these more efficient mowers.

At some point in time the rotary mower equipped with a motor came into play, and now most of us make use of a ride-on or push mower that has a motor. We doubt very few people would want to use one of these old push reel mowers to mow their lawns on a hot afternoon – especially those of us with large lawns.

            Our push reel mower consists of a wooden shaft and handle, three twisted blades, and a barred drum for catching and throwing grass clippings. Marked in raised print on the cast frame is: "New Easy Lawn Mower 1888 Blair MFG. Springfield, Mass. U. S. A.  Pat'd Oct. 7, 1879, Nov. 16, 1880, Sept. 16, 1884". It may not seem very appealing to you but, with the rise in HST coming, this push lawn mower that requires nothing but man power could be a pretty economical choice. Not to say that we’d put our artifact on loan, but it may be worth looking into finding one of these!

            We've included a short clip of the push mower moving to give a better idea of how this would have cut grass! Basically the spinning bars would push the grass up against the low blade-like-bar, and that would                                               allow the grass to be cut.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/05/23/in-praise-of-the-push-reel-mower/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn_mower

http://americangardening.net/victorian-vase-appeared-in-1888-lawn-mower-ad/