The Baxter mill passed from John and Shubael to their children, Richard and Jennie, first cousins who were wed. From them, it went to their son, Prince, and from him to his son, Prince, Jr., whose guardian, David Scudder, sold one-half of the mill to Timothy Baker and his son, Eleazer, and the other half to Alexander Baxter, a remote cousin of Prince, Jr., through their common great-grandfather, John. Extensive repairs were made to the Baxter mill around 1850. It is likely that Prince, Sr., who inherited the mill on the death of his father, Richard, in 1785, either made the repairs or caused them to be made. After about two hundred years of continuous operation, the mill was finally abandoned around the turn of the century, the last miller being a man aptly named Dustin Baker, who earned the magnificent sum of 68¢ per day for his work. The mill did lend itself as a gift shop and a lobster stand in the past few years, but as it stands today, completely restored in all authenticity it is doing exactly the work it did originally, with the same machinery, except the turbine which had to be replaced. [Illustration] II So many people have asked me, “What are you doing this for?” “Is there any money to be made grinding corn?” “What are you ever going to do with this useless old building?” And most people, when they get an answer, sadly walk away shaking their heads, wondering. I suppose no one person or no one episode gave rise to my thought in acquiring the mill and entering upon a program of restoration, unless it could be what I have heard in the various entertaining stories of people such as C. Milton Chase, Dean of the Massachusetts Town Clerks, and retired Town Clerk of Barnstable, who tells most engaging tales of his trips as a young lad to the mill with a horse and team, carrying corn to be ground. Perhaps I was fired by my friend, George Kelley, a ponderous, phlegmatic, Cape Codder, attempting to perpetuate some of the characters of old Cape Cod, personified in Joe Lincoln’s stories; and perhaps by the stories of Walter B. Chase and Howard Hinckley of their nostalgic remembrances of the old mill. If you ever meet Milton Chase, see if you can get him to tell you of the adventures, and strange doings of an old-time travelling barber, one Frank Clifford, who went around to all the business places, livery stables, and grain stores with his little black bag, plying his barber trade, and who employed a most ingenious method of warming the shaving lather for his customers.