Vernon landmark Glenwood Grist Mill celebrates its bicentennial

VERNON-The Glenwood Grist Mill has been a Vernon landmark since Nathaniel Townsend built it in 1805. To celebrate the mill's two-hundredth anniversary, the new owners, Hank and Sue Capro, staged a gala event on Sept. 10 , complete with Civil War re-enactors, tours of the historic building and grounds, and an assembly of men and women descended from the mill's early owners. Hank Capro, who says that 15 years ago he was scarcely aware of Vernon's existence, now serves on the Vernon zoning board and on the township's historical commission. "We came to Vernon to look at another old mill, but when we saw Glenwood Mill, we knew we had found the right place," he said. The Capros bought the mill in 1998, and transformed the old building into a luxury bed and breakfast, incorporating into the interior décor pieces of the mill's machinery and grain storage bins. They also used the original rock walls and the mill stream to set off a tiered garden that features millstones and pieces of farm equipment among the yellow cone flowers, lavender and Russian sage. The mill's history is interwoven with the pre-Revolutionary history of the Vernon region. The earliest owner of the wilderness land, James Drummond Lundin, the earl of Perth, sold the land in 1794 to Stephen Bailey, its first American owner. Nearly 100 years later, after the mill had passed through several owners, Captain Daniel Bailey, great-grandson of Stephen Bailey, would purchase the mill at a sheriff's sale in 1886 and make it into Glenwood's entrepreneurial heart and soul. John Bailey, who had donned Civil War dress for the occasion, told how his great-great-great grandfather, fought at the Civil War Battles of Bull Run and Fredericksburg. President Abraham Lincoln later recognized Bailey's ability to lead by assigning him to command a company of black troops assigned to Fort Pillow, Tenn. Fortuitously, Bailey was absent from Ft. Pillow on another mission, when in April 1864, Confederate General Nathan Forrest and his men captured the fort during a bloody battle in which most of the Northern troops perished. When he returned from the war, Daniel Bailey threw himself into country life, eventually owning the mill and two dairies. He also served as postmaster and justice of the peace. After he succeeded in bring a spur of the Lehigh and New England Railroad to Glenwood, Bailey also acted as stationmaster. The last wheat passed through the mill grindstones in 1919.