By Chris Fennewald, Editor, MFB Publications

   
Hulston grist mill - A Dade County Gem

	The smaller corn milling operation is now in working order, with power coming from a 4-cylinder gas engine below the first floor. Corn is ground by a 24-inch buhr stone, left, then sifted through screens. One screen allows coarse ground corn for chicken feed and another screen allows the finer corn meal to fall into a bucket. A huge wheel turns the gears that run the grain elevators, sifter and grinder for the wheat mill.  The wheel was originally powered by water turbines. The wheat mill is not yet in working order and restorer David Coplen says it will be years before it is fully operational. The flour sifter alone will take at least two years to research and fix.
	War re-enactors await final preparations for another battle. The mill’s front porch was added after it was relocated, but provides the perfect place for musicians. The mill was a social hub in its heyday. Families entertained in summer evenings as they camped overnight while their grain was milled.

Civil War re-enactors camp in the hollow near Hulston Mill preparing for another skirmish. More powder is needed, more ammunition, for the spectators to see, hear and smell what war was like in the 1860s.

An hour drive northwest of Springfield, the Hulston Mill is off the beaten path, but events like the annual Civil War Days are worth the drive. There would be no re-enactments without Hulston Mill, and the mill would not be in the hollow if not for the efforts of the Dade County Historical Society. The corn grinding operation is now working thanks to Dave Coplen. Since 2007, this Farm Bureau member has spent every Monday restoring the grist mill.

There was no actual Civil War battle fought at Hulston Mill, originally located at the confluence of the Sac River and Turnback Creek a mile northwest of where it now stands. That has not stopped re-enactors from making the mill a centerpiece of Civil War Days held each June for the past 7 years.

In fact, grist mills were a strategic part of the war. Soldiers had to be fed. Grain from Hulston Mill was used to feed 6,000 Union troops in Springfield led by General Nathaniel Lyon. Lyon, who commanded the Union Army of the West, was the first Union general to die in the Civil War at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek.

Area mills were so important, 60 percent of them in western Missouri were burnt to the ground to prevent opposing sides from grinding flour for food. Union troops often posted security details at mills to protect them from bushwhackers sympathetic to the Confederate cause. Mill owners favoring succession from the Union often refused to grind flour for Union soldiers. The Dade County Home Guard, in fact, was called upon to furnish flour from Hulston Mill for Union troops.

Fast-forward 150 years and Hulston Mill is slowly coming back to life. As recently as forty years ago, it was nearly swallowed by Stockton Lake.

According to Coplen, the Dade County Historical Society was created to save the structure from the newly formed lake in the early ‘70s. Somehow, they managed to lift the main 2-story structure off its foundation, with milling equipment inside, and place it on wheels to move to its current idyllic setting.

Coplen came on the scene in 2007 looking to contribute his talents as a woodworker. He was given a set of keys to the building, and every Monday since then he and his friend, Ken Miller, work on the restoration.

“When I came here, it had set idle for three years. It was a mess. There were broken windows, pigeons everywhere. It took two years to get it back to operation,” said Coplen. This year they moved the grist mill to a location where it can be fed from a corn sheller. The corn grist mill was working for a few years after a 4-cylinder gasoline engine was installed in 1996 to provide power. Corn, however, had to be hand-fed into the grist mill because other pieces of equipment were not in the right place.

As much as Coplen tries to maintain authenticity, much of the restoration is done by common sense. “I have no pictures of how it looked in the old days, so I am going by where the process starts and where we want to finish. We are trying to put things in the proper place we think they should have been.” Concessions have been made to power the pulleys and create an environment for visitors to safely tour the mill.

Coplen says Hulston Mill changed a lot since the original stone building was built in 1840, operated by Ezekiel Campell until 1848 when he sold it to Henry Engleman. It was not until 1875 when new owner James Hulston gave the mill its name. In 1892, John Christopher Hulston rebuilt a larger wooden structure and modernized it with steel rollers and a steam engine. The new engine allowed the mill to operate in times of drought. The Hulston family operated the mill until John Christopher was murdered in 1897. After several owners, Samuel Farmer bought the mill and installed three stands of roller machines that currently remain in the building. The rollers expanded capacity to 25 barrels of flour daily.

“The equipment is still in a lot better shape than other mills I have been in,” says Coplen. “Every bit of it is original equipment except for one grain elevator we built.”

Now, corn milling is the start-to-finish process Coplen envisioned. Corn still on the ear is elevated into the building, shelled by machine, elevated to the second floor to flow down into the grist mill on the first floor, then fed into the sifter.

In between Civil War Days re-enactments, Coplen rings a bell to signal visitors that corn grinding demonstrations are about to begin. Those visitors are surprised at the mill’s inner-workings.

Yet, restoration work on the mill is far from finished. The building actually is two grist mills, one for corn and a much larger one for wheat grinding. While the corn operation only has a 24-inch stone buhr mill, the wheat grinding operation is far larger and far more complicated.

“The wheat purification had a lot of regrinding and separations. It is all involved and I have not gotten into that part of the mill yet. The swing shifter alone will probably take two years to figure out,” said Coplen.

Understanding the process is daunting. For example, Coplen explained millers would take whole dried beans and mix them with the flour. The beans would keep screens from clogging. When they flowed to the output side a special screen would separate the beans. A spiral elevator would take up and drop them into the flour to repeat the process.

“This is 1890s technology, but this was their rocket science. It is quite fascinating to see what they had and how ingenious they were,” says Coplen, who acknowledged the amount of research necessary to get the machinery set up correctly. The Dade County Historical Society plans to become of member of the Society for the Preservation of Old Mills to provide a new resource of information.

Coplen said today people think nothing of going to the store and buying a sack of flour. “Back in those days being the most efficient possible to feed people was very important.”

Mills were built one-half day’s wagon ride from every other mill. The mills were not daylight dependent, but water dependent, so they could run in shifts throughout the night grinding grain. People would return home the next day with their sacked flour.

Coplen never knew what a grist mill was until 2007, much less their historic importance. As a woodworking shop owner, his expertise struck a nerve in tackling the restoration project. “I knew the mill had potential. I thought this was a piece of our heritage. If we don’t save it we are going to lose it.”

Nathan Wehrman is a Dade County resident, but this was his first visit to Civil War Days. “This was more than what I envisioned. The re-enactors say they like coming here because the setting is so unique with the old cabins and mill,” he said. Wehrman and his wife frequently ride area trails by horseback and last saw the mill one-and-a-half years ago, but it was locked. “It is impressive to see it operating and grinding corn into meal,” he said. Next year he plans to return with friends.