Corvallis Museum: Grain Auger

 

This is the first of a series of posts providing additional information about some of the items on display in the Benton County Historical Society's Corvallis Museum. The item featured here-- a grain auger-- is from the Benton County exhibit.

Chambers Mill Grain Auger
from Kings Valley, Benton County, Oregon

 

19th Century Grain Auger
on Display at the Corvallis Museum

The story begins in 1844 when a flood in Carroll county, Missouri destroyed the farm of Nahum and Serepta King. They decided to emigrate to Oregon along with 11 of their children.  The group included daughter Sarah, her husband, Rowland Chambers, and their two children (ages 1 and 3).  When the wagon train reached Fort Boise, the group decided to follow Stephen Meek on his promised short-cut across central Oregon.  Sara Chambers died on September 3, 1845 in the Malheur Mountains. Her sisters helped care for the young children with one, Lovisa, marrying Rowland Chambers after the party reached Oregon.

After spending the winter along Gales Creek (west of Forest Grove), they located what they viewed as prime unclaimed land in a valley along the Luckiamute River.  The area was well-drained but near water, with nearby forest that could provide wood, and open grasslands they could clear for farms.  The different families drew lots for which areas they would claim.  Rowland Chambers promised to build a gristmill for the community if he could be the first to pick a site.  He chose land along the river where a four-foot rock outcrop created a waterfall.   

In 1852, using money he had made growing and selling onions to miners on their way to California, Rowland Chambers and millwright A. H. Reynolds, began construction of the water-powered gristmill.  They used principles of a fully automated grist mill design introduced by Oliver Evans in the 1790s.  The grain auger, one of Evans' innovations, moved the grain through a wooden trough using paddles arranged in a spiral around an octagonal shaft and working like a screw.  Unfortunately, we don't know exactly who hand carved all the parts of this grain auger.

Chambers Gristmill and Mill Dam
on the Luckiamute River, Benton County, OR

The mill used stone burrs imported from France by way of ship around Cape Horn to Portland and then by ox cart to Kings Valley. The stones, which were used to grind the wheat, had hand-carved grooves which had to be re-chiseled and sharpened on a regular basis.  Today, those grind stones are on display in Avery Park, in Corvallis, Oregon.

Martha Henderson Gross at the Old Mill Stone Monument,
Avery Park, Corvallis, OR, circa 1939

According to Reynold's account books, the mill cost Chambers at least $7500 to build. It began operating in early 1854 and continued to be used throughout the 1910s and possibly into the 1920s. Over the years, modern machinery was installed and the mill shifted from grinding wheat into flour for human use to grinding grain for animal feed. The building burned in 1936.

Rowland and Lovisa Chambers raised the two children he had with Sarah and 14 of their own. Rowland died in Kings Valley in 1870; Lovisa died in 1889.  A. H. Reynolds moved around Oregon and Washington building mills until the 1860s when he embarked on a career in banking. 

By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon