into mill-stones for James C. Smith's mill on Long Dick Creek, comes near akin to patriotism. These things were the fulfilling of the law: " I was an hungered and ye gave me meat."
Although the time of the construction of James C. Smith's mill is given as the summer of 1856, such was its importance that a town was laid off, and hopes were entertained that the locality would become a seat of commercial enterprise. It was patronized by people from the south part of the county, at least fifteen or twenty miles distant, and probably from a much greater distance to the northward. The facilities which it offered were not equal to its early popularity, nor to the hopes it inspired. From the frequent repairs to the dam which were necessary to keep the power in form, it is probable that the civil engineering skill employed in its construction was not of a high order. It is told by Ballard that one of the tolls exacted was that the customer and his team should work at repairing the dam while the grist was being ground. Thomas Fitzgerald says that the mill would grind " about as fast as a coffee mill, but not so fine." If both statements are without exaggeration the popularity of the institution would naturally have an early decline.
About the same time, or soon after, Dr. W. H. Grafton and Jairus Chandler erected a mill at Cambridge, and Nathan Webb built one at Webb's Point, just north of Iowa Center. These mills were on quite a liberal scale, and should have rewarded the enterprising and sanguine builders by the return of a fortune. It is to be feared their hopes were not realized. The expense of purchasing the furnishings, and the transportation of heavy machinery for long distances over the unbridged and miry roads of the early times, the price of labor and the want of skill in those employed, were costly beyond expectation. It is said not less than $13,000 was invested in the mill at Cambridge-an amount which invested in unimproved real estate should have yielded a princely fortune. Webb's mill was used for sawing as well as grinding, and was a convenience to many in improving their farms. Subsequently mills were built on Skunk River, one of them in Franklin Township, west of Bloomington, and the other in Milford Township, near the mouth of Keigley's Branch. These were respectively known for many years as " Hannum's " and " Soper's " mills, and did much custom and merchant milling in their days of prosperity. Other mills were in time erected at points on the railways--that at Nevada about 1868, one at Ames in 1873, others at Sheldahl, Ontario, Iowa Center and Story City still later. Meantime as the "wheat belt" moved north and west, and railway transportation became convenient in every locality, custom milling was neglected, and the people began to rely more on the grocer and less on the miller for their daily bread.
In the present days of easy access to the lumber yards at every railway station, where are piled high the contributions of the pine forests of the North and the South and Canada, and the treasures of the cedar and cypress swamps, it may be a surprise to some to recall the time when the buzz of the saw and the sound of the steam whistle was heard in nearly every grove in Story County. When settlers were rolling in on every trail, in 1855-56-57, the demand for lumber was such, and the expense of hauling it from points on the Mississippi River so great, that it really seemed that a saw-mill would soon cut its way into a fortune for its possessor. As told elsewhere, George Childs hauled the lumber from the first log cut on the Jairus Chandler saw-mill, just above the bridge, at Cambridge, for his dwelling in Nevada, how occupied by Mr. War-