Baraboo weekly news. [volume] (Baraboo, Wis.) 1912-197?, 1915-05-20


County Historical Society, and
was read before a recent meet
ing.)
In the days OF which l am writ
ing, transportation was only by team
or water. This made mills a neces-
sity, where the settlers could get
their grain ground into flour and feed,
where they could have logs sawed
into lumber. Nearly every river town
had a saw mill, getting its supply
Of logs from RATS floating down the
river to market, from the pineries on
the head waters Of the rivers, and
from logs hauled to it by the settlers.
Many also had feed and flour mills
with steam as motive power.
All these sooner or later passed
into 'innocuous desultude" for sew
eral good reasons A lawyer once
said in court, Your honor, l have
forty reasons why my client does
not appear in court. The first OF
which is that he is dead" Never
mind the other thirty -nine," replied
the judge.
So l will only mention two reas-
ons for the disappearance of these
mills.
First, steam power cannot compete
with water power. Secondly, in the
case Of the saw mills, the supply
Of logs from the river was cut off
when the lumbermen found it more
base of supply, and built larger mills
in the pineries, rafting only lumber
down the river In the case Of the
flour and feed mills, the blow came
later. With the advent of railroads
increasing transportation facilities,
the Introduction of the roller process
in milling establishment Of monster
mills as at Minneapolis, these sound
ed the doom Of small grist mills, and
one by one they succumbed to the
inevitable Now we see the dam
by the mill site, but do not see the
mill by the dam site"
With others, my father saw the
need of mill at Merrimack. He was
promised aid in the construction Of q
grist and saw mill, by two parties,
one agreeing to furnish the machin-
cry for a saw mill, the other the
machinery for a grist mill, if he would
furnish the buildings. This agree
ment unfortunately was not reduced
TO writing as it would have been if
my father had been a good business
man. In 1857 he began his part of
the contract.
A few acres Of ground were secured
as a mill lot several rods up the
river, from the old tavern. On this
he built a tWostory building, about
30x50 feet, to be used as a grist
mill. Next adjoining this building on
the north, he built a One-stOry build
ing with basement, about 24X60 feet
extending east, past the end of the
larger building. The upper part of
and the basement as an engine room.
North of the saw mill was the boiler
shed, extending the length of the
engine room.
None of these buildings are left
now where they then stood. Only the
building intended for a grist mill, is
still in existence. That is doing good
service as a barn on the farm once
owned by Chas. Pigg and sold by him
to the Heinze Bros.
If anyone is curious to know what
an old fashioned timber frame was
like, it is a perfect example and we'll
worth the trip there to see. The
timber in this frame was hewn out
in the pineries and was on its way
down the river in raft, when my
father bought it.
Saw mills must have been in oper-
alton further up the river at this
time, as he also bought the boards
used in the construction of this
building in a raft and l am quite
certain that George Shepard took
the contract to draw this lumber out
Of the river and pile it on the bank
where it could dry off
This may have given origin to the
saying, Let George do it." AS the
buildings neared completion the panic
of 1857 occurred and the parties who
were to furnish the machinery de-
clined to keep their promises, leaving
the buildings vacant.
If my father had taken this first
loss, it would have saved him sew
eral years hard work and part
of his money. In trying to save
what he had already invested, he at
tempted to carry the project through
alone by eliminating the grist mill.