CHAPTER VI.

                    PIONEER AND INFANT INDUSTRIES.

    The first industries of a newly settled area of country, for supplying
the immediate wants and demands of a primitive population, are neces-
sarily in their infancy and crudity. To classify them in the order of time
and development would be a difficult task, as the simple needs and require-
ments of frontier life, though but comparatively few, are equally immi-
nent. But as self-preservation is the first law of nature, food and clothing,
with protection from exposure and outside dangers, would be the prime
necessities to be relieved by industrial production. Corn was the first
grain produced and to reduce it for the making of bread was practically
the first process for which the mechanism, however crude and cumber-
some, must be provided. How this was primitively done is told by
S.  A. Edmonson in his contributed reminiscence on “Pioneer Times.”
The first mills for the grinding or cracking of grain were operated by
hand-power, consisting of the “upper and nether” stones, which were
usually boulders of the desired size and conformation confined within
a section of a hollow tree, cut to proper length, after the manner of the
“bee-gum,” or hive, and so adjusted as to revolve the upper upon the lower
one. There is not now intact any such mill in preservation anywhere
in the county, nor were they at any time numerous, as one was made to
do the work of a number of families, and the territory was but sparsely
populated at that day. In the evolution of the mill horse-power and ox-
power were also utilized. Mills of this description were operated in dif-
ferent parts of the county. There is said to have been one at Bowling
Green on ground adjoining the old Thompson hotel property, and another
at Leonard Killion’s, on the Killion hill, a mile west of the town. Another
was operated on the Thomas Vest place, afterward the Morgan Bryant
farm, in Posey township. In the south end of the county were two—one
at Middlebury, the other on the Joel Owen, later the Nathan Cook farm,
both of which began business about the year 1848 or 1849. That at
Middlebury was a tread-mill, operated by Elias Cooprider, which he pur-
chased at Cincinnati, on the wheel of which four horses were used, two
abreast, while that operated by Owen was a mill of home design and
make, run by lever power. Another, in the locality of the Daniel Harris
place, near Eel river, of a different make, known as a “Stump-Mill,” was
operated by Charlton Bateman. Customers of these mills were required
to provide the power, using the horses or oxen with which they hauled
or carried their grists. The proprietors paid close attention to the tolling
of the grists, taking an eighth, or more, in case they provided the power.

                                24