Independence Day- George washington's Mill and Distillery

After leaving GW's Estate, we headed up the road to
Georgie's grist mill. GW's mill was state of the art when
built, using U.S. patent #3 [1] [2], which passed his desk
while in office.

The mill and distillery were rebuilt about 7 years ago and
this past spring they ran their first batch of whisky. The
Ladies Assoc. plan to do another batch in the fall, and
maybe regular distilling in the coming years.

Best 4 tourist dollars spent evar.


The mill master/tour guide. It used to take 15
slaves to run the mill before the water wheel
automation was built in. The automation cut the
man power needs down to 5 slaves.

Working videos (~ 1 - 3 mb):

Video: water wheel (bottom left), stone mill (a 2ooo lbs. stone spinning fast on top of another), the guide	Video: gears
Video: more spinning things	Video (sideways): hopper boy - cooled the flour on the top floor, before sending to the 2nd floor for sifting

The water wheel, 4.9 meter diameter.









In the last years of his life, GW was convinced to begin
brewing whiskey. So next door to his mill he built a
distillery and was able to use the same water source that
was powering his mill.

This land was originally excavated in the 1930s. As this
was prohibition it was re-covered because the
government did not want to remind anyone that the
father of the country was a distiller (the most famous
prohibition moonshiners - the Kennedys, making them
rich in time for JFK to become president during the 60's).

Inside the distillery he had a standard distilling set up.
There were 5 barrels like this making him one of the 3
largest distillers in the US (at the end of the 18th
century).

Rum trade was controlled by the English and was the
drink of choice until the American Revolution period.
Around this time it became increasingly popular to drink
whisky because it could be made in America and rum
became 'unamerican'.