Original Construction & Location

 

In 1818, War of 1812 veteran Isaac Wolf came to Ashland County and settled on 160 acres in the northwest quarter of section 25 of Green Township.  He chose a site over a mile from any other dwelling and constructed a log cabin from local timber.  He married Nancy Small and had eight children.

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In 1831 Isaac Wolf leased out land to Isaac Meanor, who built a Grist Mill on the property that same year.  The mill was powered by the water flow from nine different hillside springs, which makes it different from most mills, which are traditionally powered by taking advantage of the elevation change along the course of a river.  Meanor named it Wolf's Mill, in honor of the landowner.

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Eventually, years later Isaac Wolf's grandson, also named Isaac Wolf, purchased the mill with his brother and operated it successfully for many years.

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Oliver Evan's Design

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Wolf's Mill was built based on the Oliver Evans design for an "automatic flour mill", laid out in Evans' 1795 book The Young Millwright and Millers Guide, which was a detailed engineering explanation of Evans' patented milling system.  This system mechanized many of the tasks that had previously been done by manual labor and evolved the milling process from batch production to continuous flow production.  This was accomplished with the use of various bucket elevators, chutes, hoppers, and milling machines designed for material to continuously flow through.  His patented system was considered cutting-edge manufacturing technology at the time.

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Prior to the publication of the book, the Evans system was issued the 3rd ever US Patent in 1790, and was signed by the President at the time, George Washington.  Washington was so impressed by the technology, he paid Evan's licensing fee of $50 per set of millstones, and had his own gristmill at Mount Vernon, in Virginia, converted to the Evans system, starting in 1791.  Learn more here: 

https://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/gristmill/oliver-evans-systems

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How the Mill Works

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In general, the flow of raw grain (either corn or wheat) through the mill coming out as finished products looked something like this:  1) Raw grain is brought to the mill by a farmer, which is then weighed in by the miller, and dumped into a receiving hopper.  2) The grain is then transported to an upper floor of the mill by a bucket elevator, and run through a grain cleaning machine, or fanning mill, which used air and screens to separate any foreign material from the grain to be ground.  3) From there, the cleaned grain went through a chute into a bin above the grinding floor, where it would be fed into the millstone via another chute with a wooden gate to control flow.  4) At this point, the grain would pass through the millstones, being ground into different size pieces, from larger pieces of husk and bran, down to fine dust, or flour.  5)  This mixture of all the parts of the ground grain, or grist, would then pass through another chute to an elevator, and be transported back to the top level of the mill to the hopper boy, which is an automatic rake system that spread the raw ground grain onto a cooling floor, and gradually moved it toward another chute as it naturally cooled.  This was required to dissipate the friction heat created during the grinding process.  6) After cooling, the mixture would pass through another chute to a bolter, which is a large rotating sifter, with the grist passing through a horizontal rotating cylinder, which is covered with progressively coarser screens and fabrics, allowing the different particle sizes to fall through as the material works it way through the machine.  The finest material falls through first, and then progressively larger and larger particles, which separated the raw grist into the various grades of flour or cornmeal, grits, bran, animal feeds, etc.  This process was generally repeated in several steps to fully separate the grist into its final, finished products.  7) The finished products coming out of the bolters would then be stored in separate bins, ready for packaging and sale, or to be returned to the farmer, less the miller's toll.

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For wheat flour, the finished products were generally superfine white flour, fine flour, middlings, and shipstuff, which was generally animal feed.  For corn, it was corn flour, bolted cornmeal, unbolted cornmeal, and grits.

 

Wolf Creek Mill has a 16' overshot water wheel, powering 2 sets of 42" French buhrstones.  The stones at the mill were studied by geologists from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and confirmed to have been quarried from a specific quarry outside of Paris, France, based on the inclusion of specific fossilized microorganisms.  The stones were transported to the U.S. in pieces as ballast in ships, and were then reassembled in port, and shipped to the mill site.  These French buhrstones were sought after over locally available stone due to their hardness, texture, and most importantly, color.  The French stones were white, which disguised any stone particles in the white flour, making the flour more appealing to customers.

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This is a simplified diagram of how an Evans mill is designed and closely reflects how Wolf Creek Mill is set up:​​​​​​​​​​​​