When Wommack Mill’s boiler gave up the ghost a couple of years ago, the 1883 Missouri mill’s unique status as one of only two operating steam-powered gristmills in the U.S. appeared to have ended.
Thankfully, Leon Beaty, board chairman of the Fair Grove Historical and Preservation Society, found out about Jeff Lund. Jeff, who operates Lund Machine Works in New Ulm, Minnesota, specializes in historical boiler replacement. Among his credits are two boilers for steam locomotives at Silver Dollar City, a theme park in Branson, 50 miles south of Fair Grove.
“I quit teaching high school music 15 years ago, and haven’t looked back,” Jeff says. “Working on steam boilers is very interesting.”
In one recent project, he restored the boiler for an extremely rare admiral’s boat. Steam Cutter #873 NJ1, a 40-foot launch, was assigned to the battleship USS New Jersey BB 16 when it was commissioned in 1907. After a nine-year restoration, the small boat will be displayed in the Annapolis Maritime Museum. It is the only one of its kind known to exist.
Steam sets Wommack Mill apart
Just two weeks before the 2018 Fair Grove Heritage Reunion, Leon and Carl Buckner, president of the historical society, made a 25-hour round trip to the Lund Machine Works in New Ulm. Their mission was to pick up the mill’s brand-new boiler.
“I only stopped for an hour’s nap on the way home,” Leon says. Time was running out: The small Missouri town’s 41st annual two-day festival would begin Sept. 29.
Before the boiler could be placed inside the mill, an octagonal base/ash box for it was constructed at D&D Welding & Fabrication in Tin Town, 8 miles northwest of Fair Grove. Owner Dennis Dukes thought the Wommack Mill boiler project was important enough for welder Tegan Wallace to interrupt his work on an ornamental stair railing commissioned for Missouri Governor Mike Parson’s new home.
After the new boiler was in place, a crew from Springfield Mechanical Services piped it into the system that supplies steam to a horizontal single-cylinder engine built by Southern Engine & Boiler Works, Jackson, Tennessee, and an upright E.H. Wachs single-cylinder engine manufactured in Chicago.
Instead of utilizing a water-powered wheel or turbine to turn the mill’s grinding equipment, as was typically done in many early milling operations, Fair Grove’s mill was fitted with a steam power plant that required only enough water to keep its boiler filled. That also meant that milling operations could continue year ’round, independent of a river’s fickle temperament spurred by drought or flood.
Old mill buttoned up
My involvement with the old mill dates to 1974, when, with permission from Ethel Wommack, I inspected an old mill near her home. She and her husband, Clifford, had operated it until his death in December of 1969. Signs reading “keep out” and “no trespassing” were painted on its doors.
Not long after I looked inside the teetering old structure, I read A History of the Village of Fair Grove. Written in 1932 by early resident William Long, the book explained that John Boegei and Joseph W. Hine had the mill constructed in 1883. They installed one run of burrstones to grind corn and one run to grind wheat.
When he was a kid in the early 1920s, Fred Williams used to stop by the mill to visit with his father, who was in charge of the steam boiler. In 1981, he shared memories with Jerry Thomas and me of how the machinery there worked.
Rebirth of the Wommack Mill
In 1984, the Fair Grove Historical & Preservation Society purchased the tumble-down building and 2 acres of land from the Wommack family. After a dozen years of restoration, the structure was in good enough condition that work on the machinery could get underway.
John Lovett, a millwright who owns and operates Falls Mill in Belvidere, Tennessee, sharpened the burrstone’s furrows. He said the stones had come from the Paris Basin in France, likely brought across the Atlantic Ocean as ballast in the bottom of a sailing ship. John figured the two stones cost about $2,000 when new, but were well worth the expense considering their grain-grinding qualities.
French burrstones are made of silicified fossiliferous limestone where the calcareous cement of the limestone has been replaced by silica cement and the fossil shells have dissolved. If crystals are visible, it is called quartz; if they cannot be seen, it is called chert.
According to a 1934 inventory recorded by mill owner Frank King, much of the machinery, along with the 42-inch burrstones, came to Missouri from Nordyke & Marmon Co., Indianapolis.
During an initial two-year trial period after restoration, power was provided to the burrstones via the belt pulley of a 1939 F-20 Farmall tractor. Later, a retired steam engine built by Southern Engine & Boiler in about 1900 was purchased at an Oklahoma sawmill in 1983 and hauled to Fair Grove. In 2004, it was restored and put into service at Fair Grove’s mill by members of the historical society.
I’ve worked in Wommack Mill since the mid-1970s, and have been the miller for the past 20 years. I’m now teaching Steven Barry and his son, Evan, what I have learned while operating the machinery, especially the burrstones. It will soon be their responsibility to grind corn in Fair Grove the way it’s been done since 1883. FC
For more information:
Wommack Mill, 81 Main St., Fair Grove, Missouri; (417) 759-2807. To see Wommack Mill grinding grain under steam power, attend the annual ice cream social in mid-July and the Fair Grove Heritage Reunion held during the last full weekend of September.  Â
Dan Manning has been writing freelance magazine articles for 40 years on everything from early-day machinery to draft mules. The third volume of his memoirs, Fish Kisses, comes out next spring. Email him at manning39@msn.com.
Email photographer Ron McGinnis at ronsphotos2@gmail.com.
Jeff Lund operates Lund Machine Works in New Ulm, Minnesota. Email him at lundmachineworks@yahoo.com.
