A steam-powered mill with a variety of functions
Offering a look at some of mill methods of operation, Shuping describes how his steam-powered mill ground corn, bran, and wheat, and processed lumber.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Orlin P. Shuping, June 15, 1975. Interview H-0290. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- BRENT GLASS:
-
You'd rather be here. When the father brought his wheat here,
which machine would it go to first? Let's say the corn
first.
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
-
Corn we'd run through the sheller if he didn't
already have it shelled. Sometimes he had a sheller of his own. If he
didn't, he'd have a bunch of children and
they'd shell it by hand. They'd take it out and
let the wind blow through it and blow the chaff out of it. Then
they'd bring it to the mill and have it ground. And
we'd toll it. Right up there is the toll
. You can see it there and that's the
old one too. I mean of the old mill. We'd take a toll for a
bushel, for grinding a bushel.
- BRENT GLASS:
-
You'd take a certain amount out of a bushel. You'd
grind the bushel and take a certain amount for yourself?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
-
No, we'd take the corn out before it was ground. Then we
ground it. He probably would want some flour or some gran or some hog
feed, something else. That would be the corn. The other angle on the
corn--we'd buy some corn. If somebody wanted to sell it
we'd say, oh we'll see it. We'd shell
the corn and run it through the cleaner and then we ground up
…
- BRENT GLASS:
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Which is the cleaner? Is that the one upstairs?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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No. The corn cleaner is back here behind you. We'd clean the
corn. (Around the corner there, Mr. George. You can't quite
see it.) We'd get all the dust and everything out. Then
we'd grind up a couple hundred poundsand then we'd
bag it up in small bags for distribution. If we had an ear of corn that
had a little rotten on it, we'd throw it over for the feed.
We sold feed too. We didn't put nothing but choice meal, corn
for the meal that was sold. You grind corn granular I can't
say that word) instead of fine. You don't grind cornmeal too
fine. If you do you haven't got anything. It got too
flour-like. That's why it's better ground on
rock than it is on rollers. And grind it slow and
not heat it. That's the story on that.
Sometimes they'd want a dollar or two, they'd bring
a bushel or two along. Sell a little on that trip. They'd
need a little change for some reason. That's happened many
times. Another thing too, they'd come with wheat. Sometimes
they'd bring corn, sometimes they didn't. At one
time, we ground buckwheat here for many years.
- BRENT GLASS:
-
Where?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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In that corn mill. Not much buckwheat raised here. We got a number of
people who started it and they raised it here. It's just
hotcake. You know what buckwheat is. It's eat a lot in
Pennsylvania and in the North, not too much in the South. They eat
grits. Anyway, they'd bring the wheat here. We'd
weigh wheat and then we'd give them in proportion.
We'd always see whether the wheat was good or bad or medium.
If it was bad and trashy, we'd have to dock them a little for
dirt. Then we'd give them flour for that wheat and bran for
the cows and hogs. We kept pushing up for our expense.
- BRENT GLASS:
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What did you use the gyrator for?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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To give it to you in your language, the gyrator has got in it. The ground
wheat would go in there and it would sift it. We'd call it a
sifter, like you'd take a piece of screen wire and sift sand.
That's just full of sifters, that whole
. It did that all the way along when it was running.
- BRENT GLASS:
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Using your language, how would you describe it? What would you say?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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We just call it a gyrator. Sifter is really …
- BRENT GLASS:
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What it's called.
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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… is really correct. They call it gyrator. It's
both; I reckon either one would be right.
- BRENT GLASS:
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Was the dust collector going around and around?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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There's a dust collector too. You see, the bran would always
have a little bit of flour in it. We'd run the bran through
the dust collector … no, we'd run the bran through
the bran duster. It would get some of the flour out of it then. The bran
duster would go to the dust collector and there you'd get
some more flour. Then we had to black shorts and red shorts.
- BRENT GLASS:
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What do you mean by that?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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That's part of the wheat grain. Then you had to rerun it
through some other mills. There was a lot of different rollers that you
run it through.
- BRENT GLASS:
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You actually put it right in the dust collector?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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It went through. It was in the bran duster but just the dust came over
there.
- BRENT GLASS:
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That was all run by steam?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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Everything was run by steam. Didn't have nothing else.
Didn't even have electric lights 'till 1925 and
then we made it.
- BRENT GLASS:
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What would be the process with lumber? Where would you take that
first?
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
-
The first thing is we usually bought the logs. I had someone to cut them
and bring them here. We'd roll them in and saw them into
lumber. If it was finished lumber, what you might say you wanted it dry,
you'd stuck it for several months but it was for chicken
house lumber. If you had a grainery maybe you'd take it to
the planer and fix it there. They'd take it home on their
wagons and nail it up. That's general procedure. Depending on
what they wanted to use it for, it varied. Cme man might have a tree
that lightning struck. Another one was clearing a corner of land and
he wanted some wood. He'd get a few
logs and bring it and repair his hogpen, whatever he needed to do to his
barn. Sometimes you wouldn't get but a few logs from each
farmer but when they all came in they kept you busy. This was just one
of the places. The whole country used to have other places sort of
similar to this. I had the sawmill and the cotton gin, just about the
same thing. My great granddaddy run his sawmill by water. That was below
the dams that we looked at, about a half mile down.
- BRENT GLASS:
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He had a water-powered mill.
- ORLIN P. SHUPING:
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They run it like this. There was a water one like you might say, a
handsaw that went up and down like this. You take a stick and push the
carriage along to get your plank off. You've probably seen
some of them old planks that was sawed. I used to see a lot of them but
I haven't seen any around lately.