Without a flour mill to supply the whole community, people had to make do with various awkward and tedious methods of hand grinding, or they had to travel long distances to find a town with a flour mill. The difficulties were summarized by Brigham Young in 1846: "There has been considerable difficulty to get flour and meal in significant quantities to feed the camp; a little grain has been ground at Week's Mill twenty-five miles distant, built by the government for the Potawatomies; the balance by mills in Missouri, upwards of one hundred and fifty miles distant, which make very coarse flour and meal. The inhabitants of Winter Quarters have had to grind wheat and corn by coffee and hand mills which in many instances only cut the grain; others pounded it with a pestle suspended to a spring pole and sifted out the finer for bread, the coarse for hominy. Some ate their wheat boiled; others boiled their corn in lye and made hominy, while some boiled corn in the ear until it was sufficiently soft to be grated; many pieces of old tin were converted into graters for this purpose."[3]

Brigham Young saw the need for the pioneers to supply themselves with bread flour and cornmeal, and the need for the pioneer men to find employment so they could support themselves through the winter and earn enough money or goods to get ready for the journey across the plains.

He decided that building a flour mill in Winter Quarters was the solution to both problems, and the First Presidency contracted with several individuals to begin construction in September, 1846.[4] The mill was almost complete before he found a way to pay the workers. "I had not five dollars in money to start with, but I went to work and built a mill, which I knew we should only want for a few months. . . How did I do that? By faith. I went to Brother Neff, who had just come in the place, and asked for and received $2600, though he did not know where the money was going. He kept the mill another year, and it died on his hands. I say, God bless him forever, because it was his money that he brought from Pennsylvania that preserved thousands of men, women, and children from starving." [5]

When the Neff family left Winter Quarters in 1847, John’s son Franklin and his new wife, Elizabeth Musser, stayed to run the mill. They later joined the rest of the family in Utah, and the Winter Quarters mill passed out of Neff family hands.

John began planning to build a mill almost as soon as he arrived in the Salt Lake valley. His niece, Susanna Musser Sheets, wrote from Salt Lake to her mother Anna on January 11, 1848: "Uncle is talking of putting up a mill."[6] That spring, the Salt Lake City High Council granted a mill site to him,[7] and in March, 1848, the Journal History of the Church reported that "Bro. John Neff intends to build a good flouring mill, to be ready to grind by harvest, if possible."[8] The fast-growing pioneer community needed not only flour mills, but lumber mills and shingle mills, and they were going up as fast as building materials could be found. The brethren reported to Brigham Young on August 9, 1848, that there were "450 buildings in the Fort, besides quite a number of temporary farm buildings; 3 saw mills in operation and 1 partly finished; one temporary grist mill; and an excellent one nearly finished by Brother Neff." [9] In October, George A. Smith wrote to Orson Pratt in England: "One temporary flour mill is in operation; a good one is nearly finished by Brother John Neff; he gets the stones from the quarry near the Salt Lake; one pair is four feet in diameter, the runner to weigh forty hundred; their quality is said to be not inferior to the French Burr."[10] Another pioneer miller, Archibald Gardner, recorded in his diary that "We . . . erected the second flour mill in Utah, in 1849, Brother John Neff's being the first."[11]

In fact, John is recognized as one of the most prolific mill-builders in Utah history: "Although there may have been nearly one hundred millers and millwrights in Utah by 1869, the achievements of three men overshadowed those of their peers. Among themselves, John Neff, Archibald Gardner and Frederick Kesler were responsible for the design and construction of about one hundred mills of various kinds."[12] John Neff is given credit for building "thirty mills of various kinds during his career." [13]

It took a considerable amount of knowledge and skill to choose the site for a mill, construct it properly, and keep it running. Run entirely by water power, a flour mill was a miniature factory, complete with gears, pulleys, conveyor belts, and several different sets of machinery for cleaning the wheat, grinding it, and sifting the bran from the flour. The earliest pioneer millwrights accomplished this without nails, as Archibald Gardner indicates: "The mill was built without nails. Wooden pins and mortices were used instead. All shafts, bearings, cog wheels, etc. were of wood, our mountain maple."[14]

The illustration below shows how the wooden gears were constructed. [15] If one of the gear teeth wore out, the miller simply carved a new one and put it in place. As better machinery became available, the wooden gears were replaced with metal.

John supervised the operation of the original mill. All of his sons helped with the work, but Franklin and John III were the ones who were most closely involved. People brought their corn and wheat to the mill as soon as it began operating, even though crops were small and of poor quality. In fact, according to Albert Spencer’s history of the mill, "Some people brought. . . soft and half moldy corn to be ground and were glad to have even that. None of the bran or shorts was wasted; it was all used for bread and people were eager even for the sweepings of the floors of the mill."[16] The mill charged a toll of one-tenth for grinding.

As more equipment was transported from the East, John Neff’s mills added new equipment and new processes. One of the acquisitions was recorded in the Journal History on October 2, 1851, when "Smut machines belonging respectively to Pres. Brigham Young and John Neff arrived in G.S.L. City from the east."[17] (A smut machine was a device for cleaning mold and dirt from the wheat.) Eventually, some mills had enough capacity to turn out up to 90 barrels of flour per day.

The drawing below shows the interior of a typical mill, and how the machinery was arranged for efficient operation.[18]

When the grain arrived at the mill, it was brought in the entrance on the main floor. The miller weighed each sack, then poured the grain into a hopper which fed into a conveyor belt. The belt lifted the grain to the attic of the mill and into a machine which cleaned out dirt and extraneous material. From there, it fed on down in between the millstones.

The miller carefully adjusted the stones so they were just close enough to grind the grain without touching stone on stone. The bottom stone, called the bedstone, did not move. The top stone, called the runner, turned as many as 125 revolutions per minute.

A pattern was carved into the millstones so that as the grain was ground, the flour would follow the furrows in the pattern to the outer edges of the millstones, and then fall into the bin surrounding the stones. The millstones wore down through constant use, so every few weeks the patterns had to be carved out once again. This process was called "dressing the stone."

A skilled miller could judge the quality of the flour and know if the machinery needed adjustment just by rubbing the flour between his fingers and thumb. The ability was so well-known it led to the folk saying "rule of thumb."

"'It’s not beautiful, but it’s historic.' Meigs said. 'Anybody who would buy that building has to be interested in history and has to be an optimist.’

"The big, pink building contains at least the skeleton of a flour mill built by Mormon pioneers in 1847 [sic.]. Depending on how much of the original structure is left, that could constitute the oldest building in Nebraska. It was instrumental in the early development of Florence.

"Though flooded, moved and surrounded by road construction, the mill continued to be used for grain-grinding and storage into the 1990s. But its cost began to exceed its usefulness, and 34-year owners Ernest and Ruthie Harpster put it up for sale in January. Mormon church officials and local historical societies said they couldn’t afford the mill. The Harpsters said they wanted it to be preserved, but they expected that the buyer would tear it down and use the land for a business. "Meanwhile, Meigs, the author of a children’s book on Nebraska history, Nebraska From A to Z, had recently returned to Omaha from a trip to England and France. 'I was so struck in Europe by the history and the way they preserve it,’ Meigs said. 'And we tear ours down.’

"Then she read an article in The World-Herald about the mill's plight. She thought it was one piece of history that one person could save from destruction - and she could be that person. Meigs bought the mill for $61,000. The Harpsters threw in sheets of corrugated metal that they had bought to patch holes in the roof. "When contacted by telephone Thursday, Meigs was on the line with an industrial vacuuming company that she is hiring to suck old grain, dirt and other detritus out of the mill. She said she anticipates a lot of other expenses. 'This was not a purchase of the mind,’ Meigs said. 'This was a purchase of the heart. I'm trying to talk my favorite bread company into having an outlet there, kind of keep the grain theme going,’ Meigs said.

"She said she hopes the building, across the street from a restored 1888 train depot, will help draw attention to other historical sites in Florence. "The sale was welcome news to historic preservationists. 'I think it’s terrific,’ said Christine Basque, executive director of the historic preservation group Landmarks Inc. 'It’s one of those things where we knew that if that building was going to survive, it needed some kind of off-the-beaten-path kind of use.’

"Basque said having an art gallery in the building would allow the community access to it, thus giving people an opportunity to understand their history better.

"'Talk about your best possible solution.’ Basque said, 'This is it.’"

In talking with Linda Meigs this month, we have learned that she is now having more people come to look at the mill than at her art. She is working to clean out the building. About a ton of old wheat was removed from the top floor, but without the wheat to absorb the moisture, rain is dripping through the leaky roof to the main floor. The first estimate she received to replace the roof is $75,000.

Linda is working toward having the Winter Quarters/Florence Mill become a tax free entity and is accepting donations for restoration. Members of the LDS Church in Florence and Omaha are grateful to Mrs. Meigs for buying and working toward preservation of the mill and are willing to help with labor, but the roofing project is a little out of their league.

Besides the problem with the roof, all the windows have been broken and are boarded up. Linda is researching the ownership and the history of the mill and its surroundings, and has requested that the area between the mill and the Missouri River be designated as an historic park. She is open to our family creating a Neff Interpretive Room in the mill once it is fixed up.

As stated, this article was written in 1998 but Meigs was still struggling to restore the mill in 2003. the contact info may or may not still be correct. If you would like to be part of restoring and preserving the historic Winter Quarters/Florence Mill, you should contact Linda Meigs, 5215 Jackson, Omaha, Nebraska 68106-1331. If you will be in the area and wish to visit the mill, please call 402-551-1233 to make arrangements. http://www.historicflorence.org/FlorenceMill/index.htm