User:Ernest3212/Sitton's Mill

Sitton's Mill, Trenton, Dade County, Georgia The Union Army in northwest Georgia. Sitton’s Mill property on Lookout Creek in Trenton, Georgia was purchased in 1836 by Jake Sitton who built the first mill in 1838 and rebuilt and enlarged the mill in 1857. Sitton personally operated the mill from its beginning until about 1860 when he employed a miller to run the operation. The 1857 building was constructed from lumber cut and sawed on Sand Mountain by Edward Price, grandfather of W.I. Price  He sawed the timber at the old Miller Mill with an old time upright saw. All of the lumber was sawed of pure heart pine and hauled to the site with a tar-wheeled (the axels lubricated with tar) wagon drawn by oxen. All of the lumber in this mill building was mortised and assembled only with wooden pegs. By 1863 the miller for the mill was Matthew Mashburn. In September of that year during the Civil War the Federal army occupied the mill south of Trenton and for some reason called it “Payne’s Mill” rather than the locally used name of “Sitton’s Mill”. This may have been because Mashburn was 56 years old at the time and possibly had a younger man named Payne as the miller when the army took over the mill. Some historians believe there was a connection between this mill and the Empire Iron Works which was located further up Lookout Creek. The iron works were built under a contract with the Confederate Government. The mill was taken over by the Union Army as a pat of the Battle of Chickamauga and used as a supply facility. On September 4, 1863 General James Negley sent a detachment out to find a mill in a central location that could be used to grind grain for the army. “The next morning,” Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Blakely led the 78th Pennsylvania Regiment on this reconnaissance. The men went “up the valley to a mill on Lookout Creek,” he wrote. “This mill was filled with wheat, corn and rye. I halted here and placed Captain Marlin of Company A, in charge of the mill. We ground out all there was in it; we scoured the Lookout Valley, and gathered and ground all the grain we could find, turning the product over to the passing army. We also gathered and turned into the troops all the cattle we could find fit for beef, taking care to leave with each family enough for their support.” “The Pennsylvania men complained about the work at the mill, and General George Thomas relieved them with King’s Brigade from Reynold’s division that had been camped at Trenton. ‘We were relieved from guard duty about nine o’clock a.m.,’ Private William B. Miller, 75th Indiana Infantry Regiment, wrote on September 8th, ‘and returned to camp. The 75th did not move but relieved a Pennsylvania Regiment who was guarding a mill on Lookout Creek.’” A few soldiers were left behind as the army crossed Lookout Mountain. After the Battle of Chickamauga, Colonel Archibald Blakely of the 78th Pennsylvania Infantry wrote: “When the army had passed us [at the mill], we had a squad of 16 men too sick to march, and we had no transport for them. I therefore detailed Private W. S. Hosack, of Company G, an excellent physician, to take charge of them and remain with them, leaving them tents, supplies, and medicine. We have not heard from them and I suppose they have been captured. Our location at the mill was very unhealthy, and we suffered much sickness there.” Following the end of the Civil War Sitton's Mills was in continuous use until the late 1960's. In November 2001 the mill was destroyed by an arsonist"s fire.

Article by Ernest Clevenger.