Millstones

Old millstones are no longer a common site at a mill. Once the old stone had seen its useful days, it would be placed outside the mill for decoration. Sometimes the millers would place the millstone in the ground and they would act as part of a sidewalk. You can find millstones partially submerged in stream beds such as at the Lanterman's Mill in Youngstown, Ohio. Once a millstone was spent, it was no longer of any use to the miller and it was discarded in one way or another.

The first millstones used in the United States were in the windmills and early gristmills on the eastern seaboard. The millers who settled in Massachusetts and New York imported these stones. The millers brought the stones with them when they came to this country with the intention of building a mill and using them to grind grain. These stones were often from France and that is where the term French buhr came from. It was a granite quarry in La Ferte-sous-Fauarre in France that the finest millstones were quarried. The granite from this quarry was extremely hard. This is why it made such high quality millstones. The few photographs that have been taken of the true French buhr stones show the stone's color as white. During the late 1700's and the early 1800's the French buhr stones were imported to the United States from France and carried here in ships as ballast.

The quarry in La Ferte-sous-Fauarre was depleted by the middle 1800's. The true French buhr stones were in great demand by millers in the United States but they were very expensive. Because of the high demand for such quality stone and because the true French buhr millstones were so expensive, a miller devised a method of using fragments of the granite stone and banded them together to create millstones. This served many purposes. While mining and preparing the true French buhr stones at La Ferte-sous-Fauarre, fragments of the quality granite were discarded at the site as useless. Once this banding method became known in France, the quarry started shipping just the fragments over in the ships as ballast. These fragments and the banding method allowed millers who could not afford the true French buhrs the ability to buy stones that still offered the superior quality of the granite from France.

To obtain millstones in Ohio, millers would often cart stones for hundreds of miles to their mill. Consequently, the demand was high for millstones and a number of quarries opened in Pennsylvania and a few in Ohio, which helped supply the stones locally.

"Dependence upon imported French buhrs and buhrs from Pennsylvania quarries was eased somewhat about 1805 at least for millers in southern and western Ohio when a man named Musselman, in present Vinton County, discovered granite of excellent quality and in ample quantity to justify the manufacture of buhrstones. Because the quarry was located near Raccoon Creek, the millstones were called Raccoon buhrs. For many years this was an active industry; by 1822 the quarry employed fourteen men and two women shaping the buhrs." (Garber, D. W. Waterwheels and Millstones: A History of Ohio Gristmills and Milling. Page 78).

Millstones made of granite were the superior stone to mill wheat and corn and the only kind of stone used for the milling of grains for human consumption. Sandstone millstones were used to grind grains for animal feed. The sandstone could not be used for human consumption because during the grinding process the sandstone would disintegrate and be ground into the grain. Because the sandstone stones were ground away during the process, there are few examples of these old millstones left today.

Today, granite millstones can be found throughout Ohio on display at museums and privately at old mill houses. They are used as decoration and as walkways. Millstones that are operating are identified in "Ohio's Operating Mills Today." At many of the operating mills, there are displays of discarded millstones. There is a millstone that is used as a base for a water pump at the Algonquin Mill in Caroll County. A banded millstone is on display at Bear's Mill in Delaware County leaning against the mill building. One of the best displays of millstones at one of Ohio's mills is found at Lanterman's Mill in Mahoning County. (Adams, Brozek, Erickson, Garber, Neagley, Nicosia, Page).

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