Vintage Photos: Gorby

Ruth Biggs Mason and others at "Old Water Mill" on Piney Creek 1925

 A friend has lent us her collection of vintage photos of the little community of Gorby on Piney Creek. There was once two churches standing in the area where the Olive Branch Schoolhouse is shown in these images. I believe there are two separate swinging bridges shown here as well - the high one spanning the creek at the Palestine Church and the other providing a footbridge across the creek on the other side of this little "peninsula" where the Olive Branch Church and School building was located.

Just upstream from the Palestine Cemetery was the "Old Water Mill" (photo from volume cited below).

From Ruth Biggs Mason's article in the January 1987 Volume 16 Number 1 edition of The Izard County Historian:

"There are several old mill sites on Piney Creek and the old timbers are the evidence uncovered in recent years. The only old mill in this century that many of this generation remembers being in operation is what most people called the "Old Water Mill". This mill was about two miles up Piney Creek from the Gorby community and approximately three and a half miles down Piney Creek from Highway 56 bridge."

Later, Mrs. Mason writes,   "My uncle, Alex Gillihan, tells me the Benbrook Mill was moved in the 1870's or 1880's to the site we are calling the "Old Water Mill". He said it was moved by his grandfather, Jessie Ball, and was moved before his time. The mill at the new location had a large mill pond and he tells about one winter when the pond froze over and a bunch of kids and young folks were skating on the ice...Mr. Calvin Jones told me of my uncle, Joe Biggs, being on the pond in a John boat and it started down the water shoot. All that saved him from going into the water wheel was that he stood up and grabbed onto the foundation of the mill."
She goes on to write, "Most of the old mills were two-story buildings with the lower level used for grinding corn and the upper level for grinding wheat...The "Old Watee Mill" washed away in one of the big floods on Piney Creek about 1928 as far as I can recall. Years later, a son-in-law of ours (Leonard Goodson) was fishing on Piney and found the old mill stone or burrs. He carried it home and it is interesting to see. I read that the dressing of mill stones is an old craft that demands a great deal of skill. The surface of a mill stone is called the "land" while its cutting grooves are called "burrows".