The Millstones at the Town Park

    We got the millstones around the time when the CETA program was in Hopedale.(the
    1970s) Among the CETA people were a couple of highly skilled masons. I was on the
    Park Commission and one day when I was down at the park, Johnny Johnson, who was
    the Highway Department superintendent at that time, said that there were a couple of
    millstones way out in back of the sewage plant. He thought maybe we could put them to
    some use. They were huge wheels and they were buried in a remote area. The highway
    guys had come upon them by accident. I have no idea where they came from. I brought
    another member of the Park Commission down with me to take a look at them. I think it
    was Charlie Hensel. He said, "How about at the entrance to the park?" I had a license to
    operate a front end loader so I took one from  the Highway Department and went down
    with a couple of guys. They were pretty much buried. There was a lot of grass around
    there. It wasn't as overgrown with trees as it is now. We pulled them up, brought them to
    the park, the masons set them in place, and there they sit today. Dave Guglielmi,
    March 2014

    It seems to me that the millstones almost certainly had been used at the Thwing mill,
    which was just a little downstream on the Mill River from the bridge that used to be used
    for getting from Thwing Street to the recycling center. That would seem to fit with Dave's
    description of the stones being in a remote area well behind the sewage plant. Also, I
    can't imagine why anyone would take anything as heavy as they are from some other
    location just to dump them there.

    After contact between Peter Metzke and a contact in Tennessee a little more is now
    known about the millstones, thanks to John Lovett of Falls Mill in Tennessee : http:
    //fallsmill.com/

    "Regarding the millstones, they appear to be corn stones from the depth of the furrows.
    The one on the right is the upper runner stone, the one on the left the bedstone. It would
    take about 8 to 15 brake horsepower to run these, depending on the size, so they
    usually taxed the standard size water wheel."


                               The remains of the Thwing mill                    Millstones

                    Park, Pond and Sports Menu                                              HOME