The following month was a flurry of activity as the harvest season approached. The mills were scheduled to be completed only a week or two before the first garnering of grain much to the entire family's excitement.
John had taken it upon himself to construct a larger wood mill using a scaled-up version of the twins' design. Knowing that with the mills, grain cradle, and a few other innovations he would be introducing to the fields, the family could tend to much larger acres of crops and they would need to deforest. He offered his grandfather an idea to make a lumber company to harvest, process, and mill our wood, we already have enough to meet our needs and any more we can just buy,” he asked when he brought it up at the family dinner.
“We could use wood in ship making to get precisely what we need, It could be used to construct a few more projects in the back of my head and we could begin rebuilding parts of the worker's town nearby for a low cost,” said John, the last thing on that list immediately caught both his grandfather's and mother's attention.
The grouping of houses on a road near the farm was a sore spot and a small source of pride for the family.
It had sprung up thirty or so years ago to support all the farmers who worked for the carpenters, and over time it brought a few tradespeople to service the laborers, and a small tavern/inn called the workman’s folly. While a few people like the Eversons lived away from the town most tradespeople lived there.
While it was a nice thought that a town sprung up to support the people working for the family, the name “town” was often a bit generous. It was a mess of shacks tents and other rough accommodations with only the tavern being a proper structure even after almost three decades.
“You want to renovate the town?” his grandfather said with visible shock in his tone, “that place is a dump, why would we rebuild it.”
John took a deep breath in, “If we renovate the town we can attract more workers with the prospect of a nice place to spend their pay, on top of that we could start up a small business or two to earn a little of our worker's payback. We would also gain an increase in prestige as most who come to our estate from the city pass through the town and if it were to be a nice, clean, and prosperous place then it would be a way to display our wealth while not seeming gaudy.” Finishing his short spiel he waits to see the response.
Martha seemed intrigued and if he had asked she would like to see the town turn into a nice place as his mother always wanted a place to go and socialize while not having to take the full day trip to Philadelphia.
For his grandfather, his mind was working as he thought through this idea at a thousand miles a minute. Always the proud and showy man William has always been intrigued by the prospect of improving the town, and in his youth he financed the construction of the Inn to try and make it a more presentable place, but life got in the way and those plans were put on hold. Now hearing his grandson present the idea to him so many years after he had forgotten about it made him excited.
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“This is an excellent idea,” he said sitting up straight, then turning to John, “Do you have an idea of what to do with the town, this is your idea so I am hoping that you do.”
The approval made John shoot up and over the next few hours, they discussed rebuilding the town. As they technically owned the land they didn't need to purchase any of it. As it wasn't good farmland they let the people live there as it provided some utility. They decided on a plan where six roads would branch off a central point with stores and workshops lining the main road while the offshoots would have houses and a few other less important businesses. The Workman Folly was the center point the built town around as it was the only building that truly had any thought and work put into it.
With the new mill soon to be underway, the refurbishment of the town was planned for early 66’ so that any building would be done before the winter of next year.
With both John and Eli now both being thirteen years old their studies began to become harder. William wanted both boys to understand everything they could about the world and on a whim acquired a math tutor to teach them. But this wasn't any normal math, Mister Astor, a mathematician from Connecticut, began to teach them from the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a book on gravity, motion, and other physics topics written by Sir Isaac Newton. Both boys enjoyed these new lesson as they were much more infrequent than previous math seminars and the challenge was rather intriguing.
Eventually, the mill was completed only a few days before the harvest began and the entire family was at the new mill watching as the first shipment of grain was fed into the mouth of the machine.
Sitting slightly off to the river a small canal was built with a sluice gate so that they could stop and start the mill whenever they needed to. John signaled to a worker by the gate and a pulley was turned that raised the sluice letting the water flow to the mill.
Everyone watched with bated breath as the water wheel turned and with it, the gears began to spin. The grain elevator began to carry the kernels up toward the top of the mill to begin their processing. It was slow at first but as the wheel reached its maximum speed the speeds inside the mill stabilized. Over the next ten minutes everyone except for the workers watched as the flour was milled and stored in sacks.
Once the first pile of flour bags was done and had begun being loaded onto carriages for transport William walked over to his grandson.
“You did it,” he said with a smile, not the manic but happy one that he saw often but a soft smile conveying pride and contentment. “You had this idea and with a little help you saw it though, I could not be prouder of you.”
Looking up at the man he looked up to most, “Thank you, grandfather, this project meant too much to me, and seeing it working flawlessly makes me happier than you can imagine.”
“I would assume so, Let's get home, I had the cooks prepare a special meal for us to celebrate your success.”
Getting into the carriage that they took to the mill they set off. Looking back at the mill working without breaks filled him with pride and determination to build bigger and better.
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