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[Cathy <goosecreekfarm AT gmail.com>]

Something about mills in North Carolina I just ran across--interesting.
I'll have to get around to reading the whole book.

 http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/johnson/chapter4.html


 THE CROSSROADS STORE AND MERCHANT MILL
            The country store was another important public social center for
the rural population of the State, and even today it has lost little of its
former popularity. Here the country folk for miles around met about the
roaring fire, exchanged jokes, and learned the news of the neighborhood.
These stores, often owned by planters, were located at the crossroads, at
junctions of two creeks, or near some important bridge.  (clip) 77
           As the century progressed toward 1860, these stores came more and
more into the hands of men who made storekeeping their chief business.
Village storekeepers would sometimes enlarge their enterprise by opening
stores in the country or a northerner might come into the State and, by
associating himself with a native, set up a thriving country store. It would
be the polling place for elections. Here militia musters would be held and
important holidays celebrated by those who could not take a trip to town.
            "It is very well known," wrote "Y. Y." in the Weekly Post in
1852, "that in every neighborhood through the country, there is a store, and
a blacksmith shop; and often a merchant-mill or factory.
 ________________________________
 Page 99
 It very often happens that country merchants keep spirits for sale. And not
a few among them think themselves obliged by policy, or the laws of
hospitality to ask a customer who comes in to take a drink of grog. This
pernicious practice as surely draws together neighborhood loungers, as honey
gathers flies. A man in the neighborhood has an axe to be jumped, or a
coulter to be pointed. He very prudently determines not to stop one of his
hands from work." Giving his orders for the day, he goes to the shop himself
and, while waiting for the work to be done, saunters over to the store. "And
there he sits, whittling a switch with his pen-knife, talking about hard
times and heavy taxes . . . and drinking grog . . . and thus the whole day
is wasted.  (clip)
 78
             Those who had "more spirit than to sit all day on the counter
of a country store to get a drink of grog," gathered at the "merchant-mill"
of the neighborhood. The mill might be one which ground corn into meal or
grits, or wheat into flour; it might be one which converted rags into
wrapping paper or newsprint or which spun cotton into coarse thread. Those
who congregated about the "merchant-mills" were usually "gentlemen farmers,
who rise at eight, and breakfast at nine o'clock; ride out into the fields
and ask a few questions of the overseer, and then repair to some place of
customary resort, whether a tavern, or a store at some cross-roads, or to a
merchant-mill." There, with gentlemen farmers like themselves, they would
"spend the day in playing marbles or pitching quoits, and drinking toddy;
and perhaps, at intervals, sneering at the efforts for agricultural and
other improvements."

[76 MS in Thomas Henderson Letter Book, "Edgecombe County."]
[77 An article entitled "On the Manner in Which Some People Spend Time," in
the issue of March 27.]
[78 Hillsborough Recorder, June 8, 1825.]