Hundreds of iron artifacts were recovered from the Beavers' Mill site in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. All of the iron artifacts are crudely made by a blacksmith, because in the period when Beavers' Mill was operating all items made with iron would have been crafted by a Blacksmith. Of the artifacts recovered there are some that reveal that the tools we take for granted today had to be made by a highly skilled Blacksmith two centuries ago. Look at the following pictures of the iron artifacts and see if you can recognize these tools. We have tried to keep only the identified artifacts in this section, but you may see some artifacts in the group pictures that we have not identified. If you would like to try to identify these artifacts for us they are also featured in the
In this picture there are a few unidentified artifacts that are featured in the "What is It" Artifacts section of this website. There are several washers, nuts, bolts, and a very heavy section of an iron gear.
Closeup picture of the heavy iron section of gear. We found no other sections of this gearing, which leads us to speculate that either this was brought to the location for scrap iron or it was the only piece that wasn't recovered by salvagers of one of the three mills that was on this site from 1792 to the second half of the 1800's.
The drive iron is two pieces of iron "welded" together by a blacksmith and was inserted into and turned the top grinding stone. It is a remarkable find and it weighs 11 1/2 pounds!!
Picture from a book showing where the millstone driver was used on the millstones.
