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From: Bill Utterback <>
Subject: [KYJP] Calloway County - Brandon's Mill - Selection From "Fidelity Folks"
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 15:20:44 -0600


My friends -

I had planned on moving over to Marshall County for today's data post, but,
in lieu of that, I would like to go to Calloway County instead.

I had indicated that I would, from time to time, bring to the lists some
selection from Gordon Wilson's small book, printed in 1946, entitled,
"Fidelity Folks", which contains some excellent local color on the area
around New Concord, in Calloway County(which was "Fidelity" in his work).
There is always interest in the history of Brandon's Mill in Calloway
County, and there is a small section in the Wilson work about that old
establishment. The text of that section is shown below.

Tomorrow, we will, in fact, move into Marshall County.

-B
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Fidelity Folks"
By Gordon Wilson

BRANDON'S MILL

"Down toward the Tennessee River, a little to the left of the road, stood
and had stood since the very earliest days of the Jackson Purchase as the
home of white men, a water mill that became for us an institution. It had
formerly been a pretentious thing, with a sawmill, a grist mill, a cotton
gin, and a flour mill, all in one. Long before I grew up, cotton had ceased
to be a farm crop in our area, and the old flour mill had got in bad
repair, but the sawmill and the grist mill continued until the old
structure was cleared away before the advancing waters of the great
Kentucky Lake. On Saturdays the grist mill received all the attention of
the miller, for people for miles around wanted the good meal that only
water mills could grind. Formerly there had been several mills on Blood
River, but all had disappeared by the time I was old enough to be
interested in them. The old mill ponds remained as good fishing places,
especially the one at Mill Jimmy's, just above the mouth of Panther Creek.
Even after Bud Smith installed his steam-power grist mill in his shedroom
at the blacksmith shop, many people preferred to take their corn the
several miles tied Brandon's Mill, particularly the corn that was to be
baked into hoecakes, or corn pones, or muffins.

Going to mill was nearly as great as going to town. One was likely to see
fewer people, but with these few he was thrown intimately for several
hours, while his turn and those of others were going slowly through the
mill. The typical turn was a two-bushel sack of shelled corn thrown across
a horse's back and used as a saddle. After the grinding, the sack was still
full even though the miller had taken out his eighth as toll. Riding home
was easier, for a bag of meal makes a good saddle. A more pretentious trip
was made in a farm wagon, when two or three neighbors sent their corn by
some half-grown boy. With a half dozen sacks tied down to be ground, we
could count on staying all day.

There were many things that one could do at the mill. It was always great
sport to watch the miller with his "thumb of gold," as Chaucer says, feel
the meal as it poured out and adjust whatever machinery was necessary to
keep the meal the same texture that his practiced fingers knew was just
right for his customers. Tiring of watching the miller, we could wander
over the rambling old millhouse and wonder at the uses of the abandoned
machinery of the cotton gin and the flour mill. We could go out on the
catwalk that connected the grist mill side with the sawmill side and watch
the water racing over the dam, carrying, in the fall, whole fleets of
colored leaves. Sometimes the miller would let us take the canthook and
push drift over the dam. Sometimes, also, we imagined ourselves raftsmen or
flatboatmen and used the logs and brush to illustrate the best methods of
reaching New Orleans with our rafts or arks. Inside the mill we played Odd
and Even with grains of corn or ate raw meal with a zest that only growing
boys have. Since I have been thoroughly grown, I have tried to eat raw corn
meal and have decided that I had as well starve as try it again. In summer
we waded in the shallow water below the dam or went in a-washing around the
bend where we could not be seen, for in those days bathing suits had not
yet arrived. The mill always drew us back, as machinery in any form always
fascinated us.

The old mill had one thing that I wish I owned, a toll cup made into a
bucket-like shape by cutting off a section of a cypress knee and fitting a
bottom into one end. This cup was used so long that it was worn as smooth
as some oriental wood. Another thing that I would like to have is the two
original millstones, which had been cut out of the stone right near the
mill itself. Two men, so said tradition, had spent the better part of three
months in quarrying the stones, rounding them off, and chiseling in the
burrs. Later on, millstones from the East took the place of these primitive
ones. All of my childhood they were piled up to form a stileblock for those
who brought their turns of corn on horseback. A cousin of mine has them now
at the county seat, in a slap-dash museum of things that pertain to the
earlier days in our county. The fishes that swim over the site of the old
mill will be too dumb to know what a great part that area had in keeping us
supplied with food and lumber and cotton in the older times.

I am a little afraid that only a very few creatures like me will even stop
to shed a tear of remembrance for a passing institution like Brandon's Mill."

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