Baker’s Grist Mill - S Front Street on Limestone Run
Looking east from Front Street circa 1883
From the book Milton, Pennsylvania, the 19th Century Town on Limestone Run
by Homer F. Folk; photo courtesy of the Milton Historical Society:
Baker’s Stone Grist Mill looking east from Front Street. The stone mill was
constructed by George Eckert, Jr. in 1815 on the same site as Andrew Straub’s wooden mill,
which Eckert razed. After Eckert’s death, the mill went to his brother-in-law, George Baker.
Part of it was swept away by the Great Limestone Run flood of 1817. It was quickly rebuilt.
Water-powered until after
the fire of May 14, 1880, it had two overshot wheels with a fall of sixteen feet. Water
turned the wheels thirty revolutions per minute generating thirty horsepower on each wheel.
From June 1, 1879 to May 31, 1880 the mill, with ten full time employees, produced seven
hundred barrels of wheat flour, twenty barrels of rye, 20,280 pounds of cornmeal and 67,800
pounds of feed with a value of nine thousand, six hundred and seventeen dollars. Profit for
the year was one thousand, seven hundred and fifty-seven dollars. The mill operated four
stones and paid skilled workers one dollar and fifty cents a day. Laborers were paid ninety
cents a day. Unable to compete with steam operated mills with roller grinders, the Baker
estate built a brick smoke stack and a brick building to house a boiler and steam engine.
No longer needing Limestone Run, they closed the mill race. If they ever installed a boiler
and steam engine, these would have been taken to his new factory when Samuel J. Shimer began
to negotiate with the Baker estate and mortgage holders. All deeds were completed by August
1889 and Samuel J. Shimer owned the land and buildings from the main line of the railroad
to the Susquehanna River. He used the limestone from the mill in his factory buildings.
