Glade Creek
mill at Babcock State Park
At the Babcock State Park in West Virginia,
a new grist mill was developed in 1976 to replicate the 500
old mills which used to abound in West Virginia. Fully operational,
the mill was created by combining pieces and parts that had
been salvaged from historical structues dating back to the
late 1800s. While the basic structure came from Stoney Creek,
the overshot water wheel was salvaged from the Spring Run
Grist Mill -- likely the "Sites Mill" built along
the old Iman's Run. According to Grant County Historical
records, the Sites Mill was built by Conrad Sites, who was
born in 1806. If so, the mill was likely a replacement for,
or a companion to the earlier mills operated by Christian
Iman.
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Christian and Catherine Iman lived on land called Mill Place
Plantation. They acquired a number of pieces of land south and east of Petersburg
in parts of today's Grant County, though in earlier days it was part of Hardy
County, and before that, Hampshire, Frederick, and Augusta. Not all of the
pieces of Iman land adjoined one another, though boundaries of the land and
the nearby lands of Jacob Eyman and Peter Eyman have not been specifically
mapped. We believe, however, that Imans lived along Spring Run (a tributary
of the South Branch of the Potomac), which was called Iman's Run, very near
today's Spring Run Fish Hatchery. On a map, this would be at Masonville (sometimes
called Masontown), near Dorcas, and the property may have been exactly on
an early understanding of the Fairfax Line.
In earlier days this area was
called Barbeetown, or Barbetown after it's first postmaster, Joseph S. Barbee,
though between 1859 and 1894 the post stop and town were called Mountain
Home (1). This 350 acre Northern Neck property was acquired from Joshua Pettit,
likely referred to by Yokum in his 1850 Draper interviews as "Jaq.
Pettit" --
one of the very first to visit this area. A Joshua Pettit, known to have
done business with Jo Neville, the surveyor of Iman lands, was an Indian
Trader with a second family who ran into problems in the deep south after
acquiring land rights by virtue of his half-Cherokee son. Other Iman parcels
bounded by Richardson Run (now Friend's Run) seem to have been toward the
village of Rough Run toward Upper Tract in Pendleton County.
There is no mention in the deed of improvements on the Pettit
land, though there is a possibility that a mill or mills may have
existed prior to the entry of Eymans to the South Branch. As early as 1781,
the Reverend Frances Asbury(2), backwoods Methodist preacher who was to
be baptized Brethren described the strong spring with mills at which me preached
to 90 Germans though he did not share their language. Footnotes in his published
journals noted these mills as being at Iman's Run.
The potential of this
site for mills had been noted even much earlier. Thomas Lewis was the first
surveyor in Augusta of Georgia, and he conducted the earliest Fairfax surveys
of the area with Peter Jefferson, the father of the president-to-be. The
aim of his 1746 survey was to fix the Fairfax line which passes about 1000
feet from the spring which discharges 3300 gallons per minute at a cool 54
degrees all year around. In his 1746 daily journal, published as "The
Fairfax Line: a Historic Landmark", Lewis noted ""...an Exceding
Large Spring whose Stream would be sufficient to turn a mill within a few
poles of the head." Almost certainly, this referred to the Iman
Spring. The
mills were located approximately 300 yards downstream from the spring
and maybe 300 feet lower in elevation.
Given the changes of time,
some features of the environment may not be as they were. A resident of the
area who has known the area first hand for many years commented, "When
I was a kid, the spring was covered by rocks and dirt that had slid from
the hillside so that one could not see anything, except the water
flowing out from among the rocks over a span of maybe 40 feet. When
the State of WV bought the property, the debris was removed, revealing what
appeared to be a vast lake of some depth under a limestone ledge. The
State then ran a large pipe back under the ledge, sealed the opening and
ran the pipe into a concrete tank some 50 feet downstream. From the
tank, some water was piped down the gap to the fish hatchery and the remainder
was allowed to flow back into the stream.
Historical Notes:
- On June 1790, Christian Iman was appointed "overseer
of road in room of Philip Crites". (Crites is believed to have lived
in the vicinity of Elkhorn Run or the village of Hiser.)
- At the June 1791 session of the Hardy County Court, Christian Iman petitioned
the Court to open a road through the ridges to his mill. Minutes and orders
of the Court session on October 10 of 1791 note that "Thomas Parsons
and others having been appointed to view the ground thru the ridges to
Iman's Milll, this day made their report. Ordered that the same be established
accordingly." Guy
Mongold, a researcher of families in the area reports that it is known
that some years later there was a road running from near Elkhorn Run to
Rts 9/1 and 9/2 near the mill site where 9/1 and 9/2 separate, and there
is still evidence of the road in certain places.)
It's believed that the mill fell into disrepair after 1800 and was sold
to Martin Garber, a Brethren Church leader of Rockingham. Garber died soon
thereafter and left the lands to h is son Jacob who sold the property to
George Harness by indenture dated 20 May 1815. George Harness soon died,
leaving much of the land to his heirs as undivided shares. It may have been
at this time that Conrad sites acquired an interest in some of these lands
adjoining his own for a total of about 750 acres at his death. Born 1806,
he and his sons renovated, built, or rebuilt both a saw mill and grist mill
on the property which subsequently were burned and replaced though they were
in operation until 1946 when the State of West Virginia bought the mill site
land for the Fish Hatchery.
According to the notes of a Mongold family researcher in the area, at the
time of sale of lands to Garber, there had been a division of land to four
tracts, with a 2-acre lot reserved upon which a house stood and in which
Jacob Eyman lived. In the deed, Iman is said to have reserved the right to
remove a powder mill and place it on the 2-acre plot. A powder mill produces
gunpowder, and perhaps Iman produced from Spring Run (Elkhorn) Cave. In nearby
Pendleton county there were other gunpowder production facilities using the
very refined limestone found in caves in the aera, or in particularly pure
outcroppings of limestone available at the surface in some areas.
The Imans who remained in the area seem to have resided at various spots
within the community ranging from the Spring Run area to further up into
Pendleton county. If one follows Spring Run (Iman's Run) north from the likely
location of the mill, one joins South Mill Creek near Dorcas and proceeds
to the confluence with North Mill Creek. Following the departure of much
of the family, William Iman returned to the area and purchased up to 1500
acres of Middle Mountain (circumscribed by North and South Mill Creeks).
While most of those parcels were sold off, there are proud Imans living there
today. There is a family cemetary from the late 1800s near Pansy on the
West side of a hill SSE of the intersection of Route 220 from Pansy to Petersburg
and North Mill Creek Road.
Notes:
(1) This indeterminancy of town and area names is pretty
challenging to the student of the area from a distance. One often hears of
mountains by the different names they seem to be known by people from various
communities. The Spring Run Cave, for instance, is sometimes called the Elkhorn
Cave since it serves as an underground drain from the extensive hillside
of Elkhorn mountain. A nearby marker is called Ketterman Mountain by some,
and South Fork Mountain by others. There is a Looney's Creek to the West
of the city of Petersburg a few miles north of our location, though a Grant
County Historical publication notes that at one time the area directly south
and east of town of Petersburg itself (which was for a period called Luney's
Creek in order to differentiate it from a second Petersburg of Virginia)
was called Luney's Creek. This name appeared in the 1860 census and then
got changed to Milroy Township of Grant County.
(2) June 17, 1781 "We had hard work crossing the Fork
Mountain being sometimes obliged to walk where it was too steep to ride.
(This would be walking from the Seneca Rocks area of George Sites, whose
lands one parcel of Iman land adjoined) toward Iman's Run.) I was much blessed
in speaking to about ninety Dutch folks, who appeared to feel the word. Here
is a spring remarkable for its depth,(3) and the quantity of water it discharges
sufficient for a mill within two hundred yards from the source, which sometimes
in freshets throws its mass of waters considerably above the ordinary
level of the surface." -- The Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury,
Volume 1 1771-1793, Chapter 10, published 1821
(3) "The spring forms Spring Run, South Mill Creek,
and has a flow of four thousand gallons per minute. It is noted for the power
generated because of its location. It was formerly called Eyman's Spring
and is now known as Spring Run or Spring 29. (West Virginia Geological Survey,
1936, Springs of West Virginia.) -- -- The Journal and Letters of Francis
Asbury, Volume 1 1771-1793, Chapter 10, published 1821 and republished 1852. |
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