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.
known about the millstones, thanks to John Lovett of Falls Mill in Tennessee : http: //fallsmill.com/
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." Park, Pond and Sports Menu HOME |