A French buhr stone
Two granite stones
The stone crane
An old oak-toothed iron gear

Teeter Mill

Over Two Hundred Years of Milling

The Teeter mill is one of our oldest buildings, having been built around 1760. It comes from the hilly area of northwestern New Jersey settled by German Moravians and known as the Long Valley.

“Beginning at a large white oak marked for a corner standing near a small swamp on the south west side of the brook below the mill . . . .”

This excerpt from a 1768 land deed is the first known written record of our Homestead Gristmill along the Hollow Brook in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, when a German immigrant named Asher Mott decided to sell his share of the family property to his older brothers, John and Gershom, for £1,000. The property stayed in the family until 1800 when Robert Emiley purchased the mill and 30 acres for $213.30.

In 1814 John Teeter, another German immigrant and local resident for over 30 years, acquired the mill and property. By then, the mill was the business and social center of a village that included six residences and another mill located downstream. This hamlet was referred to as Teetertown. Six years later, the mill was extensively remodeled and turned over to Mr. Teeter’s son-in- law Samuel Dorland. The family operated and maintained the mill until 1881.

In 1908, following several ownerships, Philip Sliker purchased the mill, constructed a miller’s residence, and began to process flour under the brand name of “Teetertown Brand Flour.” But in 1918, after 10 years of operation, Mr. Sliker retired and closed the mill. After it last ground grain in 1918, the Teeter mill went through a series of owners, most looking for a quiet getaway from the bustle of New York City. Left neglected for decades, by the turn of the twenty-first century it needed either demolition or restoration. When we first heard about it, the owners wanted to part with it because it was falling down.

Original Construction

From the outside, the first difference you will notice in the Teeter mill is the roofline. It is a gambrel roof as opposed to the gable roofs of our barns. The gambrel roof allows for more overhead space on the second floor. Mills such as this relied in large part on gravity feed and so were often many stories tall. When we found the mill it was another story taller, but we have restored it to its original, pre-Revolutionary War size of two stories.

The way that such a mill worked was that the grain in sacks was hoisted to the top floor where it then began the process of being ground into flour. The Teeter mill ground not only wheat but also corn, oats, rye and buckwheat (a plant originating in Asia, which is not really in the grain family of plants).

Water Power

Though when we found the Teeter mill it was set up to be run by a water-powered turbine housed in a deep, stone-lined pit under the mill, we knew that since it was built in the 1700’s it must originally have been powered by a water wheel, a method of power used for centuries before the turbine came into use in the 1840’s. The advantage of the turbine over the water wheel was not only that the turbine used water more efficiently but that it could also be housed inside the mill and so could be run for a longer time during the year without freezing up like a water wheel exposed to outside weather.

Dutch Doors

Doors with a separate upper and lower part are called Dutch doors. The top alone could be opened for ventilation and bottom left closed. This allowed cooling breezes in and when located on the first floor kept wandering animals out of the mill. The second story Dutch door at the front of the mill retains its original hardware.

Millstones

Inside the mill you will see a number of pieces of equipment. Our miller may be grinding on a newer mill but we do have a set of the original stones in place. They weigh nearly one thousand pounds each and are what are known as French Buhr stones, and were considered the finest millstones in the world.

Millstones were once made from single large pieces of rock. These are called monolithic stones. There is such a monolithic stones set on edge at the garden entrance. The French buhr stones come from the Marne River valley in France. But by about 1820 all the rock available to make these monolithic stones was quarried out, used up. No more millstones made from one piece could be gotten. It was then that they developed a method of taking the smaller pieces of rock, cutting them into wedges like pie slices and banding them with iron bands to form large millstones. One of these later buhr stones is set in the pathway in front of the mill.

Inside the mill, the oak arm that reaches out over the stones is what is known as a crane. It is used to lift the top or runner stone off of the lower or bed stone. This is necessary so the stones can be flipped over and dressed or sharpened. As the stones grind, they wear down and become duller. It takes about a month of heavy use to wear one of these stones down to where it needs redressing.

Iron Gears with Wooden Teeth

In our restoration of the Teeter mill we rebuilt the water wheel and flume that carries water to it. We also used some of the old iron gears for displaying the flour in the front room. You may notice that one of the gears has wooden teeth. These wooden teeth were more practical than the irontoothed gears because if an iron tooth broke, the entire gear would have to be replaced. But if a wood gear broke, it could be easily replaced.

Cut Marks on Interior Beams

If you look carefully you might also notice what are called “marriage marks” on the interior beams. Look where two beams join to each other in a mortise-and-tenon joint and you may see cut marks like Roman numerals on each adjoining beam. These were scribed into the beams before the frame was assembled to indicate which beams went where.

Marriage marks

The water Flume

A monolithic stone