Peninsula In Passage

Millstones in Pughsville A row of large, wheel shaped stones lined along Towne Point Road near a tidy white bungalow in Pughsville hark back to when the community was primarily farmland. Anita Brabson says that her father, Jasper Lee Brabson, ran a gristmill in Pughsville from 1948 to 1959. “He made bran and meal which he sold to area supermarkets and housewives,” she says. “His trade name for the product was “Pilgrims’ Progress” because he was working by himself and felt like a pilgrim”. “The product, he declared was delicious and profitable, he made it so. At first, he gave it away to housewives. They enjoyed it and about a week later, he had more than enough customers. The corn he used came from his 350 acre farm.” Phyllis Taylor, Anita Brabson’s sister, remembers that in the mid-80s her father sold some of the mill equipment to the owner of a store called “The Grist Mill” in North Carolina. “The owner bought what he wanted from my father’s grist mill and a crane was used to pull the mill stones out of the mill,” she says. “The crane operator placed the mill stones where my father requested in the location facing Town Point Road, about 30 feet from where the mill had been. There are scripture references that were painted on little signs and placed in a visible setting on the millstones where travelers passing through on Town Point Road could read. We have the scriptures, but the signs would have to be repainted” According to Brabson, one of those scriptures was Luke 17:1& 2 – “Then He said to the disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”

John H. Sheally II

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