Today's plan was to see some religious sights in northern Ohio. Since McConnell's Mill is on the way to northern Ohio, and the mill is open today, I decided to stop and tour the inside of the mill before continuing on to Ohio.
-- McConnell's Mill State Park --
Besides hiking trails, waterfalls, and the mill, McConnell's Mill State Park also has some cool rock formations that attract rock climbers. I didn't see any rock climbers today, but I saw some of the rocks.
The millhouse was indeed open today. The building is actually 3 stories high, and is designed to process corn, wheat and buckwheat. When the mill was operational, it ground corn into cornmeal, and ground wheat and buckwheat into flour. The park volunteers explained that buckwheat is more of a fallback crop. It has a shorter growing season than wheat, and is easier to grow. If bad weather ruins the wheat crop, there is typically still time to have a successful buckwheat harvest.
The volunteers explained that the local faramers brought grain to this mill to be processed into flour for their personal use at home; they didn't bring it to be sold to others.
The grain was first weighed, and the mill owner set aside a negotiated percentage of the grain (typically 1/6) as his processing fee. A door in the floor below the scale sent the grain to the next floor down to begin the processing.
To keep a small footprint, the mill had 3 processing floors. The grain passed up and down between the floors during different stages of the processing. There were machines on all three floors, and a series of belts and chutes carried the grain up and down between floors. The belt shown below, for example, had small metal cups that carried the grain upwards between floors to continue processing.
There was a different sequence of movements between machines for each type of grain... corn, wheat or buckwheat. The sign below shows the process for wheat.
Corn was fed into a hole in the top in the top of a grinder, to be ground between the surfaces of two grinding wheels, one on top of the other, as shown below.
The grinding wheels were textured and ground to have sharp cutting edges. A stone dresser cut the stones and had to sharpen them periodically.
The mill originally had a water wheel, but it got replaced by smaller water-driven turbines because they were more efficient.
After touring the mill, I drove across the covered bridge and followed a series of turns to Hell's Hollow Falls.
The trail to the falls was peaceful, but I noticed that there wasn't much water in the creek.
The falls weren't much more than a few trickles this time of year.
I saw this cool looking fungus on one of the trees.
-- Johnson Farmhouse in Hiram, Ohio --
The first stop in Ohio was the Johnson farmhouse in Hiram, Ohio. This was a religous history stop. The Johnsons let Joseph and Emma Smith stay with them for awhile in the 1830s. Joseph Smith was the first LDS prophet. Below are the farmhouse and the barn.
The kitchen fireplace inside the farmhouse was nice. Mrs Johnson could bake over a dozen loaves of bread at a time in the deep oven to the right of the fireplace. Much of the woodwork in the house, such as the mantle, doors, and trim around the doors, was painted with decorative swirls.
In the upstairs room shown below, the prophet and one of his companions had a vision of what becomes of people after death. Instead of a heaven and hell, they saw three major divisions or degees of glory, and variations within those divisions. How you live your life determines where you end up, but all of the places are better than what we have here.
Joesph got persecuted for his teachings. One night a mob dragged him out of this house, beat him up, and tarred and feathered him. They did the same to another church leader that night who was staying in a nearby cabin, They dragging the leader by his feet, beat him, tarred and feathered him, and left him for dead. They both survived. It wasn't easy being a controversial figure on the frontier.
-- Towner Mound in Kent, Ohio --
My next stop was to see an Indian mound in nearby Kent. The mound is called Towner Mound. I want to get a better understanding of the Indian mounds that were built in the Ohio area and midwest. They didn't leave any written or oral history to go along with the mounds, so all our clues are based on the archealogy.
I would have thought this mound was just a natural hill, except for the engraved sign that was placed there by archealogists.
Evidently this was a burial mound, since they found 11 burials when they excavated the mound. I wonder what triggered the archeologists to think it was more than just a hill. Maybe someone was digging and found the bones?
I plan to visit more Indian mounds while I'm in Ohio. Hopefully I'll get a better understanding of the history, although I think there are a lot of unknowns because they didn't leave any written history.
-- Dinner and Music in Kent --
I was hungry and ready for dinner, so I drove to downtown Kent to find a restaurant.
While wandering downtown, I came across an outdoor concert in a small park. Someone on the sidewalk was eating a burrito, and was going to ask him where he got it, when I saw some restaurants across the street. One of the restaurants was named Taco Tontos, and it had great reviews, so I ordered myself a burrito!
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