History is grist for the mill at Washington's home
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — George Washington is most famous for the military leadership and political prowess that led to him becoming our nation’s first president. But as you learn at his reconstructed gristmill near Mount Vernon, the Virginia native also had a pretty good head for business.
After leaving the military following the first stages of the French and Indian War, Washington became a successful farmer at his nowfamous plantation 15 miles south of Washington, D.C. Tobacco grew well and sold profitably in England, and Washington — married in 1759 to the wealthy Martha Custis — was only too happy to devote himself to the care and development of his vast land holdings along the Potomac River. Farming was in his blood: his father, Augustine, who built Mount Vernon in 1735 (then known as Little Hunting Creek Plantation), was a planter until his death at age 48 in 1743.
Upon inheriting the 2,000acre estate from his half-brother, Lawrence, in 1754, the young Washington soon discovered that producing tobacco was a labor-intensive occupation that’s as hard on the dirt as it was on the backs of those growing it. Not only was the crop subject to disease and insects, but also the plants eventually sucked all the micronutrients out of the soil, leaving it useless for anything but grazing. Some years he made a good profit, but in others, his revenue fell short of his expenses.
So in 1766, Washington was among the first Virginia farmers to switch from tobacco farming to growing grain for merchant trade. Wheat was a more dependable source of income than tobacco. And customers from as far away as England and the West Indies were happy to pay top dollar for the high-quality flour he was producing by the 1770s, after replacing the deteriorated gristmill of his father’s with a larger, more efficient operation.
The mill fell into disrepair in the decades after Washington’s death and was dismantled by the 1850s. In 1932, the Commonwealth of Virginia purchased the property and after carrying out archaeological research, decided to reconstruct it. After acquiring the mill in 1997, The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association — which owns and operates the estate — embarked on a five-year renovation culminating with the site being listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Open daily to tourists from April through October, The Gristmill at Mount Vernon is a meticulously reconstructed version of the mill Washington built three miles west of his house on Dogue Run Creek in 1797. History comes noisily alive in this 2 1/2-story stone structure, with millers in early-American attire giving demonstrations of Colonial milling, a process in which cleaned wheat and corn are ground into flour, grits or cornmeal between a pair of 4-foot millstones.
Exposed masonry walls with heavy timber framing and pine floors add to the mill’s rustic charm. But it’s the swoosh of moving water and bang, bang, bang of wooden gears that truly transport you to Colonial times.
It took workers more than a year to build a mill dam and hand dig the mile-long, 8-foot-deep millrace (canal) that would divert water, via gravity, from Dogue Run to the mill. The water turned two sets of millstones with upper “runner” stones that could rotate at more than 100 times a minute. The pair, made from high-quality, super-hard French burrstone, ground the “superfine”-quality flour for export; the other set, thought to be less-choice German imports known as “cullin” stones, were used to grind the corn to feed the paid staff, enslaved community and livestock.
Washington was something of an innovator when it came to farming methods and new technologies. In 1791, after learning of a Delaware inventor’s new design for an automated grain mill, he became only the third person in America to buy the rights to Oliver Evans’ patent. His invention, in which all the work was done by a variety of machines geared to the same water wheel, would go on to revolutionize the milling industry in the young nation and also worldwide.
Using the Evans automated system, which featured bucket elevators to move the grains between floors, the mill flourished. Yet it wasn’t turning all of the wheat and corn into flour and cornmeal. Some of the barley, wheat and rye grown by Washington’s slaves was turned into alcohol at his nearby whiskey distillery.
The mill is a great way to discover Washington via the food he ate.
Word is, he loved hoecakes for breakfast with butter and honey.