Etowah NC Heritage
  • Home
  • SPECIAL
    • Virtual Tour of Selected Historic Places
    • History Displays in Etowah & Library Notebooks
    • Etowah Heritage Day 2019 - 130 Years
    • Etowah Treasures Exhibit, Sept/Oct 2019
  • PEOPLE & PLACES
    • Maps
    • Memorabilia
    • Places, Early Homes, Other
    • French Broad River & Valley Views
    • People - early times
    • People - later times
    • People - Gash Family descendants
    • Veterans
  • HIST. I
    • Timeline
    • Formation of Henderson County, est 1838
    • Etowah History Notes - Research To Date
    • 1889 Money, then Etowah
    • Etowah - Creek/Muskogee Translation
    • How Etowah Got Its Name
    • Postmasters 1889 - 1968
    • Etowah Train Depot - 1895 >
      • Trains of Etowah
    • The Railroad - Hendersonville to Toxaway
  • HIST. II
    • 1900 U.S. Census
    • Farms of Early Etowah
    • Historic Etowah High School 1928 - 1960 >
      • 1st Annual 1938 -The Chief
      • Little Chief - Gleanings from
      • Students & Faculty EHS
      • EHS Memorabilia
      • Etowah High School - Memorial Plaque 2014 - HCEHI
    • Historic Schools 1800s - 1928 >
      • Etowah Institute 1911
    • Schools of Nearby Communities
    • Historic Churches
    • Historic Cemeteries >
      • Thomas-Fletcher Cemetery
      • Adopt-A-Cemetery: Thomas-Fletcher
  • HIST. III
    • Sheriff Robert Thomas
    • Civil War Union Monument
    • Orr Cabin Homeplace - early 1800s
    • Mountain Lily - 1881
    • Welsh Colony 1880s
    • Grist Mills
    • Shape Note Traditions
  • HIST. IV
    • Community Fairs 1938-1941, 1950s
    • Stores of Early Etowah
    • McKinna General Store
    • More Business Ads 1938 - 1960+
    • "Etowah Brick" Moland-Drysdale Corp. - 1923
    • Calx Mfg. Company - 1919
    • Camp Peep-Out - 1935
    • Etowah Grange #984 - 1937 >
      • Grange - 25th Anniversary 1937-1962
      • Grange Quilt - 1953
  • HIST. V
    • 1952 - Hatheway Floral Company
    • 1954 - Etowah Lions Club, Park & More
    • 1960s - Growing & Changing
    • 1964 - Etowah / Horse Shoe Volunteer Fire
    • 1966 - Water & Sewer System, Tower
    • 1966 - Etowah Riding Club
    • 1982 - A Library Comes to Etowah
  • Stories
    • Eade Anderson, Reverend
    • Lois Adcock Bayne
    • Emma Louise Curtis Bradley
    • Richard Brown
    • Patricia Bell Cantrell
    • Jerri Whiteside Lambeth
    • Wanda Sumner Love
    • David S. Mallett
    • Opal Dalton Parkinson
    • Jeannie Huggins Revis
    • Glenda Maxwell Simpson
    • Marylin Annette Jones Thomas
    • "The Follies" & "Matilda's Folly"
  • About
GRIST MILLS

 .  . . that served family farms of Etowah Valley . . .

Burns  /  Blythe Creek  Grist Mill
Moland  Drysdale Corp.,    "The Brickyard"  Grist Mill
Willow Creek Grist Mill

Picture
The remnants of the stacked stone dam on Blythe Mill Creek (former Burns Creek).
Picture
Blythe Mill Creek (former Burns Creek) looking downstream from the what's left of the mill pond dam.
Deed research on this mill and the Blythe family connection is in progress.  More to come . . . 
  • Burns  /  Blythe Creek  Grist Mill site,  Burns Creek Road
PictureA barn at the Burns / Blythe Creek mill site.
The mill property (28 acres) was bought by Lawrence Landers' maternal grandparents, Luther and Nettie Justus in December 1948.   Lawrence was born in the mill house in 1949.   Lawrence’s parents, Neil (Cornelius) Landers and Nettie Christine Justus (daughter of Luther and Nettie), Lawrence and his brothers and sisters lived in the mill building until 1957, at which time they moved to Florida for approximately a year. When they returned from Florida they lived in the Justus grandparents’ house until eventually Neil (Lawrence’s father) tore down the old mill building in 1967.   He replaced it with a Jim Walters home (a shell finished by the family on the inside) which still stands today.

Lawrence was told that his Grandfather Luther Justus, Luther’s son Herschel, a man with the last name of Pridmore and his father, Neil, dynamited the dam [that held back the mill pond, now just a swamp].   This occurred before Lawrence was born (1949), and the time of the dynamiting is unknown to him.   Neither does he remember having heard a name for the mill.

 While the creek where the dam stood is called Blythe Mill Creek today, a 1935 Horse Shoe quadrangle map  shows the name, Burns Creek.   What caused the name change?   What was the name (or names) of the mill?   

Changing creek names on Horse  Shoe  Quadrangle  Maps:
1935  map:    Burns Creek
1942 & 1978 maps:    Blythe Mill Creek
Google  Maps, current:    Blythe Mill Creek, next to Burns Creek Road

What is certain is that the mill house stood until 1967, and there still stands today some of the rock work of the dam.

Blythe Mill  Creek .  .  .   on a beautiful clear spring day  . . . hear the rushing waters of the creek .  . . the large boulders in the creek over which there were some small  waterfalls . . . the remaining rock work of the dam . . .  a place of beauty!   What tales those rocks could tell of days gone by when farmers brought their corn to be milled.

Wanda Love
Etowah Native & Lifelong Resident
Photos by permission of Lawrence Landers


Picture
  • Moland Drysdale Corp.,  "the Brickyard"  Grist Mill

According to a local source,  a grist mill was located on the "the Brickyard" property, Moland Drysdale Corp.  for  the  employees.

Picture
The mill on Big Willow Creek, circa 1920
Picture
The mill today, now a private residence.
Picture
A "weight" stone that sat atop the grinding stones.
  • Willow Creek  Grist Mill site,  Hebron Road
The  grist mill on Big Willow Creek , circa 1920.    Jesse Pritchard Huggins Sr.  (1892-1976)  bought the mill property from  James A. Brock (1856-1932) in 1932.      (Source:    Terry Ruscin)
According to J.P. Huggins Jr., his father  operated the mill for 12-15 years, until the onset of WWII.    The original mill  was on the bottom level with  a mill stone imported from England via Charleston.    The second level milling operation contained  a  French Burr  stone, purchased by  J. P. Huggins, Sr.

Coming soon,  J.P. Jr.  describes what it was like working in the mill as a young boy:   " . . . You'd have to watch  'cause everybody  wanted  their mill  just a little bit finer, just a little bit finer."

Memories of the Old Mill
Big Willow
by Jeannie Huggins Revis, b. 1932
 To say that it was the greatest place on God’s green earth to be born and raised by the mill would be under defining the joy, pleasure and happiness I experienced as a child.

 My first recollection that there was a mill is from about two years old.   It was hot, and we were still living in what we referred to as the “Old House” (the house where I was born).   It was across the road from the mill and on a high bank overlooking the mill and shoals as well as the millpond that later became the love of my life.

[continued]    Read Jeannie's full story

Picture
Big Willow Creek
Picture
L & above, MIll stones from the days when Jesse Pritchard Huggins operated the mill, 1932 to early 1940's.

Willow Creek Mill photos courtesy of
Barbara Hudson,  Bob Edwards,  Jean Huggins

Additional old mill sites?   More information to be discovered.
  • Home
  • SPECIAL
    • Virtual Tour of Selected Historic Places
    • History Displays in Etowah & Library Notebooks
    • Etowah Heritage Day 2019 - 130 Years
    • Etowah Treasures Exhibit, Sept/Oct 2019
  • PEOPLE & PLACES
    • Maps
    • Memorabilia
    • Places, Early Homes, Other
    • French Broad River & Valley Views
    • People - early times
    • People - later times
    • People - Gash Family descendants
    • Veterans
  • HIST. I
    • Timeline
    • Formation of Henderson County, est 1838
    • Etowah History Notes - Research To Date
    • 1889 Money, then Etowah
    • Etowah - Creek/Muskogee Translation
    • How Etowah Got Its Name
    • Postmasters 1889 - 1968
    • Etowah Train Depot - 1895 >
      • Trains of Etowah
    • The Railroad - Hendersonville to Toxaway
  • HIST. II
    • 1900 U.S. Census
    • Farms of Early Etowah
    • Historic Etowah High School 1928 - 1960 >
      • 1st Annual 1938 -The Chief
      • Little Chief - Gleanings from
      • Students & Faculty EHS
      • EHS Memorabilia
      • Etowah High School - Memorial Plaque 2014 - HCEHI
    • Historic Schools 1800s - 1928 >
      • Etowah Institute 1911
    • Schools of Nearby Communities
    • Historic Churches
    • Historic Cemeteries >
      • Thomas-Fletcher Cemetery
      • Adopt-A-Cemetery: Thomas-Fletcher
  • HIST. III
    • Sheriff Robert Thomas
    • Civil War Union Monument
    • Orr Cabin Homeplace - early 1800s
    • Mountain Lily - 1881
    • Welsh Colony 1880s
    • Grist Mills
    • Shape Note Traditions
  • HIST. IV
    • Community Fairs 1938-1941, 1950s
    • Stores of Early Etowah
    • McKinna General Store
    • More Business Ads 1938 - 1960+
    • "Etowah Brick" Moland-Drysdale Corp. - 1923
    • Calx Mfg. Company - 1919
    • Camp Peep-Out - 1935
    • Etowah Grange #984 - 1937 >
      • Grange - 25th Anniversary 1937-1962
      • Grange Quilt - 1953
  • HIST. V
    • 1952 - Hatheway Floral Company
    • 1954 - Etowah Lions Club, Park & More
    • 1960s - Growing & Changing
    • 1964 - Etowah / Horse Shoe Volunteer Fire
    • 1966 - Water & Sewer System, Tower
    • 1966 - Etowah Riding Club
    • 1982 - A Library Comes to Etowah
  • Stories
    • Eade Anderson, Reverend
    • Lois Adcock Bayne
    • Emma Louise Curtis Bradley
    • Richard Brown
    • Patricia Bell Cantrell
    • Jerri Whiteside Lambeth
    • Wanda Sumner Love
    • David S. Mallett
    • Opal Dalton Parkinson
    • Jeannie Huggins Revis
    • Glenda Maxwell Simpson
    • Marylin Annette Jones Thomas
    • "The Follies" & "Matilda's Folly"
  • About