Mills and Millstones
Yesterday Ray and I enjoyed a snowy-then-rainy drive from Louisville through eastern Kentucky and through Cumberland Gap National Historical Park into Tennessee and then North Carolina. I was reading aloud to Ray while he braved the wet roads.
Part of our route was on Kentucky Highway 229, which follows the historic Wilderness Road that Daniel Boone and his helpers built to help pioneers move into Kentucky. As we rode along, suddenly Ray said, “Levi Jackson State Park!”
We were curious because one of our favorite American contra dances is the fast-paced, intricate, and fun Levi Jackson Rag. We decided to check it out. When we arrived at the park, we learned that the complete name is Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park.
Our schedule didn’t allow us enough time to wait for the Mountain Life Museum to open (now we have a reason to go back), but we were delighted with the McHargue’s Mill and its “Library of Mountain Millstones.”
I loved watching the raindrops fall on the water . . .
. . . seeing the ducks fluff up their wings, and . . .
. . . watching the ducks swim with the Canada geese.
I counted 88 millstones lining the path to the mill.
The first sign on the path told us that the Works Progress Administration (a New Deal program in the 1930s) built the mill in 1938-39 to illustrate the hundreds of mills that once stood along Kentucky streams. This reproduction contains parts of a mill that the McHargue family operated ten miles away. Those mill parts include millstones brought into Kentucky on the Wilderness Road.
At the top of that first sign was this quote from Numbers that tells what the Israelites did with the manna God gave to them in the wilderness:
The people went and gathered it and ground it in mills.
Numbers 11:8
Our visit prompted me to find out who Levi Jackson was. He was the first judge of Laurel County, Kentucky. He married the daughter of John Freeman, a pioneer who came to the Kentucky frontier in 1802. Freeman came to Kentucky to take possession of a land grant he received after fighting in the American Revolution.
Thank you, homeschooling mama, for the sacrifices you make everyday to train your children, children who are precious to Jesus.
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said,
“Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
And He called a child to Himself
and set him before them, and said,
“Truly I say to you, unless you are converted
and become like children,
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Whoever then humbles himself as this child,
he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives
one such child in My name receives Me;
but whoever causes one of these little ones
who believe in me to stumble, . . .
. . . it would be better for him to have
a heavy millstone hung around his neck,
and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:1-6