The History of the Greer Mill, Oregon County, Missouri

History of the Greer Mill

The Greer Mill

My cousin, William Howard Morman, wrote the "History of Greer Mill," published in The Missouri Historical Review Volume LXVI Number 4 (4 July 1972). Howard was the son of George Mormon and Alta Williams. Alta was the oldest daughter of Ira Williams and Kitty Harrod.


Howard cited conversations with Ira M. Williams between 1915 and 1930 as a major source of information for the article. The land upon which the Greer Mill was built was homesteaded by Thomas Simpson in June 1854. (Thomas Simpson was Ira Williams' maternal grandfather.) Samuel W. Greer acquired it from the Simpson family on 1 August 1860 and built a gristmill there. During the Civil War, Greer earned the rank of Captain for service in the Confederate Army but while he was away bushwhackers burned the gristmill at Greer Spring and had driven off most of the livestock from the farms in that area leaving the farmers in economic difficulty.
   
Although the area was in dire economic straits, Greer rebuilt the gristmill and began milling operations immediately.
   
Oxen hauled logs and grain up and down an extremely steep hill and Greer had a team that was trained to make these trips without a driver. This mill operated until about 1883 at which time a new and larger dam was built and a roller mill was constructed on a hill about three-fourths of a mile above the spring. Greer installed a turbine waterwheel and built a three-story mill building. Until the roller mill was constructed the community had little access to flour. Ground wheat products had to be hauled into the area in wagons over long distances from railroad towns and river ports along the Mississippi River. The scarcity of flour made it too costly for most settlers who had to be content with corn bread and cornmeal mush.
   
Construction of the new mill was completed in 1899 and began operating immediately. Greer had defied engineering logic by placing the mill machinery uphill from the power source which was the dam below but with ingenuity and creativity, he found a way to make it work.
   
The new mill was so popular they could scarcely keep up with demand. Farmers who lived some distance away would have to stay two or three days while their grain was processed. A log house was built to house these customers. It included a corral to contain the horses or mules of the farmers. A well was dug and lined with rock to supply the guests with water.
   
In 1899 Captain Greer sold his interest in the mill to George Mainprize who continued to operate it until 1909. Captain Greer sold the land, including the Greer Spring, to Louis Houck on 22 December 1904. Houck sold it to the Missouri Iron and Steel Corporation of St. Louis in August 1919, and they sold it to Louis E. Dennig on 28 April 1922. In the 1990s the land was purchased by the Nature Conservancy for preservation of wilderness.
   
In 1909 George Mainprize sold the mill building and machinery to Sampson Williams (Ira Williams' brother) and Louis Parrott but quickly sold it to Ira M. Williams and George F. Morman who operated it together until 1916 when George F. Morman purchased a roller mill in Fremont, Carter Co., Missouri and sold his interest in the Greer Mill to Ira Williams. Cleve Bockman bought an interest in the mill and it continued in operation until 1920 when it closed permanently. Both George Morman and Cleve Bockman were Ira's sons-in-law. George married Alta Williams and Cleve married Laura Williams.

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Ronnie Hayes (a descendant of Ira Williams through his daughter Sarah Ellen) sent a copy of the Greer Mill's listing in the Register of Historic Places (United States Department of the Interior, Park Service). I extracted the following information from the document:

The late 19th century mill also known as the Greer Roller Mill is located on the west side of State Highway 19, 10 miles north of Alton in Oregon County, Missouri. The foundation is sandstone, the walls are wood and the roof is metal. Samuel Greer and George Mainprize were the builders.

Completed in 1899, the mill replaced an earlier water mill and utilized up-to-date technology to grind grain for farmers in isolated hamlets in the nearby hills. By 1920, railroads penetrated the Ozarks, providing access to the products and services of larger roller mills in the surrounding cities. Although Greer Mill ceased operations in 1920, the building has survived intact in a wooded setting on a hill above the dramatic landscape of Greer Spring. The Greer Mills' period of significance is 1899- 1920.

 Greer Spring

Greer Mill stands as a picturesque reminder of a successful, if short lived attempt to bring modern industrial technology into a rural Ozarks setting. Between 1883 and 1899, Samuel Greer and his partner, George Mainprize, struggled heroically to harness the power of Greer Spring to run a flour mill on an isolated hilltop in south central Missouri. 

Greer's son lost his life in the process (see narrative below). Mainprize and his son ran the mill for a decade, enjoying some initial success, but finally losing their business to larger and more sophisticated mills in faraway cities that became accessible with the spread of railroads. The simple rustic form of the mill with its gabled cupola blends harmoniously with its wooded setting and seems to suggest the enduring qualities of the rugged Ozarks, which have long resisted the forces of modernization.

In Water Mills of the Missouri Ozarks, historian George Suggs, Jr., noted that Greer Mill differed from most other such buildings in Missouri because of its location on high ground approximately three-fourths of a mile from the spring that was its source of power. This location provided easier access for farmers bringing their grain to the mill, but necessitated a complex system of cables and pulleys to transmit power from the spring. Some remnants of the cable survive on the steep hill between the mill and the spring. The mill building remains substantially intact, and in Suggs' words, "is a majestic structure even in old age."' Missouri artist Jake Wells commemorated this picturesque building in a painting, reproduced in Suggs' book.

Samuel Greer, an early settler of Oregon County, Missouri, played an important role in building the first, second, and third mills at Greer Spring. Born in Rockingham County, North Carolina, in 1828, he moved with his family to Tennessee in 1849 and Missouri in 1859. In that year, he and his father, John Greer, purchased property that included the spring, constructing a mill the following year. Samuel Greer became a captain in the
Confederate Army during the Civil War and returned to Oregon County to find that Bushwhackers had burned his mill. By 1870, Captain Greer constructed a dam, a  waterwheel, and a three-story mill, in which he installed machinery to grind corn, saw lumber, and gin cotton. This mill was located on the spring branch far below the site of the surviving mill. In 1883, Greer began construction on the new roller mill on top of the hill....

In an attempt to modernize his operation and respond to a local demand for ground wheat products, Captain Greer formed a partnership with George Mainprize, who owned roller milling machinery in Howell County. Mainprize agreed to move his operation to Greer Spring and help with construction of a new mill. This was an arduous undertaking which required rebuilding the old dam and creating the complex mechanism for transmitting power. The process resulted in the death of Samuel Greer's twenty-three-year-old son, Lewis Greer, who died March 3,1884, when a timber fell on him and pushed him down into the rocky ravine, filled with swift water, below the dam. Construction resumed a month later, but the family suffered greatly from the tragedy.

Note: Lewis Greer had married Lydia Harrod, daughter of William H. Harrod, on 18 March 1883. Lydia Harrod was a sister of Ira M. Williams' wife, Kittie Harrod.

Lydia Harrod Greer

The mill operated without electricity, so power was derived from Greer Spring. Since the mill was unusually located 1140 feet above its source this made it a rare type in the state. The distance necessitated the ingenious method of transmitting power from the turbine operating in the water below to the mill positioned on top of the hill. The sophisticated drive system consisted of continuous steel cable strung on pulleys carried in three towers. The cables entered through the back connecting to drive gear that turned belts that in turn moved the machinery on the upper floors.

The new mill did not begin operation until 1899. In that year, Captain Greer, who was seventy-one years old, sold one-half interest in his property to Mainprize. Three years later, Mainprize sold his half-interest to his son George B. Mainprize. In 1904, Greer and Mainprize sold the spring and the land surrounding it to railroad entrepreneur Louis Houck. Greer and Mainprize retained full rights to the use of the mill machinery. Mainprize continued to run the mill with great success until 1909. Demand for his services was so intense during this period that farmers sometimes had to camp out for two or three days waiting for their grain to be ground. Since neighbors in the area were widely scattered harvest time brought them together in one spot where they renewed associations and gathered news. Here, at the mill they had the chance to meet new people, exchange information about deaths, marriages, land sales, politics, and religion. The mill provided the campground, a general store, and a cookhouse for its customers. Greer Mill facilitated social intercourse and helped to make living in isolated areas more acceptable. The mills success however was short lived.

In 1909, Mainprize sold the milling operation to Sampson Williams (Ira's brother) and Louis Parrott, who quickly discovered that they did not want to continue in this business. Ira M. Williams and George F. Mormon took over and ran the mill until 1916, when Mormon purchased another mill at Fremont. Williams and his son-in-law, Cleve Bockman, operated the mill until 1920, when it closed down permanently.

 George Morman's Fremont Roller Mill

Railroads, which Houck helped to finance, contributed to the downfall of the enterprise. Bigger mills in the surrounding cities couId ship flour by rail into the villages and hamlets of the Ozarks. Local farmers no longer had to grow grain except to feed livestock. Houck sold the Greer Spring property to the Missouri Iron and Steel Corporation of St. Louis in August 1919. Three years later, the Missouri Iron and Steel Corporation sold the land to Louis E. Dennig. The Dennig family held the property for more than sixty years. By the 1970s, the dam had blown out, and most of the cables had rotted away and disappeared, but the old weather-beaten mill remained intact.


In 1987, the Anheuser-Busch company offered to buy the 7,000-acre property containing Greer Spring. Newspapers reported that the famous St. Louis brewery wanted to bottle water from the spring. Conservationists protested, and environmentalist Leo Drey of St. Louis stepped in to purchase the tract from the Dennig family, including the mill. Drey offered to hold it for eventual sale to the United States Forest Service of the United
States Department of Agriculture (USDA) at a price of $500,000 less than he paid.


The Forest Service had a long-standing interest in acquiring the property as part of the Eleven Point National Scenic River area in Mark Twain National forest. Anheuser-Busch subsequently decided to match Drey's donation, presumably in an effort to reestablish their good name and concern fbr the state following unfavorable media publicity.


By the 1990s, The Forest Service had effected the purchase of the Greer Spring property, including Greer Mill. In 1991, Congress approved the purchase of the property. On January 12,1993, Leo Drey sold the entire tract (known as the Dennig Tract) to the Forest Service. The River Network, a non-profit corporation acted as an intermediary to facilitate the complicated transaction. For the benefit of the Dennig family an easement related to use and occupancy of a small portion of the property (including the mill), extends until 2013 in order to provide for continued use of some cabins accessed by a road that runs next to the mill. The Dennigs have no objections to any efforts the Forest Service wishes to undertake to protect, stabilize, or restore the mill.


Oregon County had other grain mills in operation during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Located in an isolated area in the Southwest comer of the Mark Twain National Forest one other mill remains extant in Oregon County, The Falling Spring Mill. At this time the United States Forest Service has no plans regarding the buildings future. Two other mills were also in operation, The Boze Mill and Turners Mill. Both buildings are gone, however their locations are being considered as future archeological sites.

 Falling Springs Mill