Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook. [Illustration: (cover)] TWO MEN ON A MILL _The Story Of THE RESTORATION OF BAXTER’S MILL_ _The Baxter boys they built a mill, Sometimes it ran-- Sometimes stood still. But when it ran, it made no noise, Because ’twas built by Baxter’s boys._ _By_ A. HAROLD CASTONGUAY 1962 _Copyright 1962 by_ A. HAROLD CASTONGUAY _Sketches by Gordon Brooks_ _Printed on Cape Cod by_ THE WAYSIDE STUDIO SOUTH YARMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS [Illustration: _This_ OLD WATER MILL _Is Being Restored_ (IT IS HOPED) BY TWO LOCAL CHARACTERS ] I _Time goes, you say: Ah, no! Time stays-- We go!_ --DOBSON A few days before Christmas of 1961 we will raise a pen gate in a flume adjoining the Mill Pond in West Yarmouth, on Cape Cod, and a 250-year old water grist mill will again grind corn into corn meal. And so, a vanishing part of Americana, especially old New England dating to our colonial days, has been restored. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of people have been going by this little old building, especially in the summer, without giving it a thought but the mill’s visitors from now on, growing up in our modern world of television, jet airplanes, and high-powered automobiles, to say nothing of electric can openers, will get a glimpse of early America, a view of the simplicity of the mechanism, and the quiet dignity of the building itself. The mill is the only one of its kind on Cape Cod, the few others being either windmills or outside water wheels. The original mill was probably built about 1710 by John and Shubael Baxter, sons of Thomas, who arrived in Yarmouth from Rhode Island after the close of King Philip’s War. Originally a mason, the loss of a hand in the war made it impossible for Baxter to continue his trade, and he became a millwright. His will, probated in 1714, disposes of fulling mill equipment. This equipment was from the fulling mill which he built on Swan Pond, now Parker’s River, in West Yarmouth. He probably offered no more than advice to his sons when they built the grist mill near the South Sea neighborhood, but it is undoubtedly these sons who are immortalized in the little verse on the frontispiece of this saga. The poem was already old when Amos Otis reproduced it in his 1880 _Genealogy of Barnstable Families_.