Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon was the plantation of George Washington, the first President of the United States, his wife, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. The estate is situated on the banks of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, near Alexandria, across from Prince George's County, Maryland; the Washington family had owned land in the area since the time of Washington's great-grandfather in 1674. Around 1734 they embarked on an expansion of the estate that continued under George Washington, who began leasing the estate in 1754, but did not become its sole owner until 1761; the mansion was built of wood in a loose Palladian style. George Washington expanded once in the late 1750s and again in the 1770s, it remained Washington's home for the rest of his life. Following his death in 1799, under the ownership of several successive generations of the family, the estate progressively declined as revenues were insufficient to maintain it adequately. In 1858, the house's historical importance was recognized and it was saved from ruin by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.
Escaping the damage suffered by many plantation houses during the American Civil War, Mount Vernon was restored. Mount Vernon was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it is still owned and maintained in trust by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, is open every day of the year, including Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Allowing the public to see the estate is not an innovation, but part of a 200-year-old tradition started by George Washington himself. In 1794 he wrote: "I have no objection to any sober or orderly person's gratifying their curiosity in viewing the buildings, Gardens, &ca. about Mount Vernon." When George Washington's ancestors acquired the estate, it was known as Little Hunting Creek Plantation, after the nearby Little Hunting Creek. However, when Washington's older half-brother, Lawrence Washington, inherited it, he changed its name to Mount Vernon in honor of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, famed for the War of Jenkins' Ear and capture of the Portobelo, Colón.
Vernon had been Lawrence's commanding officer in the British Royal Navy. When George Washington inherited the property, he retained the name; the current property consists of 500 acres. The property was 8,000 acres; the present mansion was built in phases from 1734, by an unknown architect, under the supervision of Augustine Washington. This staggered and unplanned evolution is indicated by the off-center main door; as completed and seen today, the house is in a loose Palladian style. The principal block, dating from about 1734, was a one story house with a garret. In the 1750s, the roof was raised to a third floor garret. There were one-story extension added to the north and south ends of the house, these would be torn down during the next building phase; the present day mansion is 11,028 sq ft. A two-storied wing was added to the south side. Two years a large two-story room was added to the north side. Two single-story secondary wings were built in 1775; these secondary wings, which house the servants hall on the northern side and the kitchen on the southern side, are connected to the corps de logis by symmetrical, quadrant colonnades, built in 1778.
The completion of the colonnades cemented the classical Palladian arrangement of the complex and formed a distinct cour d'honneur, known at Mount Vernon as Mansion Circle, giving the house its imposing perspective. The corps de logis and secondary wings have hipped roofs with dormers. In addition to its second story, the importance of the corps de logis is further emphasized by two large chimneys piercing the roof, by a cupola surmounting the center of the house; this placement of the cupola is more in the earlier Carolean style than Palladian, was incorporated to improve ventilation of the enlarged attic and enhance the overall symmetry of the structure and the two wings. The rooms at Mount Vernon have been restored to their appearance at the time of George and Martha Washington's occupancy; these rooms include Washington's study, two dining rooms, the West Parlour, the Front Parlour, the kitchen and some bedrooms. The interior design follows the classical concept of the exterior, but owing to the mansion's piecemeal evolution, the internal architectural features – the doorcases and plasterwork – are not faithful to one specific period of the 18th-century revival of classical architecture.
Instead they range from severe Palladianism to a finer and neoclassicism in the style of Robert Adam. This varying of the classical style is best exemplified in the doorcases and surrounds of the principal rooms. In the West Parlour and Small Dining rooms there are doorcases complete with ionic columns and full pediments, whereas in the hall and passageways the doors are given broken pediments supported only by an architrave. Many of the rooms are lined with painted panelling and have ceilings ornamented by plasterwork in a Neoclassical style.
Clapboard (architecture)
Clapboard or clabbard called bevel siding, lap siding, weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of these terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards overlapping. Clapboard in modern American usage is a word for long, thin boards used to cover walls and roofs of buildings, it has been called clawboard and cloboard. In Australia and New Zealand, the term weatherboard is always used. An older meaning of clapboard is small, split pieces of oak imported from Germany for use as barrel staves, the name is a partial translation of Middle Dutch klapholt and related to German Klappholz. Clapboards were riven radially producing triangular or "feather-edged" sections, attached thin side up and overlapped thick over thin to shed water; the boards were radially sawn in a type of sawmill called a clapboard mill, producing vertical-grain clapboards. The more used boards in New England are vertical-grain boards. Depending on the diameter of the log, cuts are made from 4½" to 6½" deep along the full length of the log.
Each time the log turns for the next cut, it is rotated ⅝" until it has turned 360°. This gives the radially sawn clapboard its true vertical grain. Flat-grain clapboards are cut tangent to the annual growth rings of the tree; as this technique was common in most parts of the British Isles, it was carried by immigrants to their colonies in the Americas and in Australia and New Zealand. Flat-sawn wood does not hold paint as well as radially sawn wood. Chamferboards are an Australian form of weatherboarding using tongue-and-groove joints to link the boards together to give a flatter external appearance than regular angled weatherboards; some modern clapboards are made up of shorter pieces of wood finger jointed together with an adhesive. In North America clapboards were made of split oak and spruce. Modern clapboards are available in red pine. In some areas, clapboards were traditionally left as raw wood, relying upon good air circulation and the use of'semi-hardwoods' to keep the boards from rotting.
These boards go grey as the tannins are washed out from the wood. More clapboard has been tarred or painted—traditionally black or white due to locally occurring minerals or pigments. In modern clapboard these colors remain popular, but with a hugely wider variety due to chemical pigments and stains. Clapboard houses may be found in most parts of the British Isles, the style may be part of all types of traditional building, from cottages to windmills, shops to workshops, as well as many others. In New Zealand, clapboard housing dominates buildings before 1960. Clapboard, with a corrugated iron roof, was found to be a cost-effective building style. After the big earthquakes of 1855 and 1931, wooden buildings were perceived as being less vulnerable to damage. Clapboard is always referred to as'weatherboard' in New Zealand. Newer, cheaper designs imitate the form of clapboard construction as "siding" made of vinyl, fiber cement, or other man-made materials. Clinker Shiplap Siding § Wood siding Tongue and groove Research report containing photos of a clapboard roof in Virginia, U.
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Millstone
Millstones or mill stones are stones used in gristmills, for grinding wheat or other grains. Millstones come in pairs; the base or bedstone is stationary. Above the bedstone is the turning runner stone which does the grinding; the runner stone spins above the stationary bedstone creating the "scissoring" or grinding action of the stones. A runner stone is slightly concave, while the bedstone is convex; this helps to channel the ground flour to the outer edges of the stones. The runner stone is supported by a cross-shaped metal piece fixed to a "mace head" topping the main shaft or spindle leading to the driving mechanism of the mill. Neolithic and Upper Paleolithic people used millstones to grind grains, nuts and other vegetable food products for consumption; these implements are called grinding stones. They used either rotary querns turned by hand; such devices were used to grind pigments and metal ores prior to smelting. In India, grinding stones were used to grind spices; these consist of a stationary stone cylinder upon.
Smaller ones, for household use, were operated by two people. Larger ones, for community or commercial use, used livestock to rotate the upper cylinder; the type of stone most suitable for making millstones is a siliceous rock called burrstone, an open-textured, porous but tough, fine-grained sandstone, or a silicified, fossiliferous limestone. In some sandstones, the cement is calcareous. Millstones used in Britain were of several types: Derbyshire Peak stones of grey Millstone Grit, cut from one piece, used for grinding barley. Derbyshire Peak stones wear and are used to grind animal feed since they leave stone powder in the flour, making it undesirable for human consumption. French burrstones, used for finer grinding. French Burr comes from the Marne Valley in northern France; the millstones are not cut from one piece, but built up from sections of quartz cemented together, backed with plaster and bound with shrink-fit iron bands. Slots in the bands provide attachments for lifting. In southern England the material was imported as pieces of rock, only assembled into complete millstones in local workshops.
It was necessary to balance the completed runner stone with lead weights applied to the lighter side. Composite stones, built up from pieces of emery, were introduced during the nineteenth century. In Europe, a further type of millstone was used; these were uncommon in Britain, but not unknown: Cullen stones, a form of black lava quarried in the Rhine Valley at Mayen near Cologne, Germany. The surface of a millstone is divided by deep grooves called furrows into separate flat areas called lands. Spreading away from the furrows are smaller grooves called feathering or cracking; the grooves help to channel the ground flour out from the stones. The furrows and lands are arranged in repeating patterns called harps. A typical millstone will have eight or ten harps; the pattern of harps is repeated on the face of each stone, when they are laid face to face the patterns mesh in a kind of "scissoring" motion creating the cutting or grinding function of the stones. When in regular use stones need to be dressed periodically, that is, re-cut to keep the cutting surfaces sharp.
Millstones need to be evenly balanced, achieving the correct separation of the stones is crucial to producing good quality flour. The experienced miller will be able to adjust their separation accurately. Grain is fed by gravity from the hopper into the feed-shoe; the shoe is agitated by a shoe handle running against an agitator on the stone spindle, the shaft powering the runner stone. This mechanism regulates the feed of grain to the millstones by making the feed dependent on the speed of the runner stone. From the feed shoe the grain falls through the eye, the central hole, of the runner stone and is taken between the runner and the bed stone to be ground; the flour exits from between the stones from the side. The stone casing prevents the flour from falling on the floor, instead it is taken to the meal spout from where it can be bagged or processed further; the runner stone is supported by a cross-shaped metal piece, on the spindle. The spindle is carried by the tentering gear, a set of beams forming a lever system, or a screw jack, with which the runner stone can be lifted or lowered and the gap between the stones adjusted.
The weight of the runner stone is significant and it is this weight combined with the cutting action from the porous stone and the patterning that causes the milling process. Millstones for some water-powered mills spin at about 125 rpm. In the case of wind-powered mills the turning speed can be irregular. Higher speed means more grain is fed to the stones by the feed-shoe, grain exits the stones more because of their faster turning speed; the miller has to reduce the gap between the stones so more weight of the runner presses down on the grain and the grinding action is increased to prevent the grain being ground too coarsely. It has the added benefit of increasing the load on the mill and so slowing it down. In the reverse case the miller may have to raise the runner stone if the grain is milled too making it unsuitable for baking. In any case the stones should never touch during milling as this would cause them to wear d
Persimmon
The persimmon is the edible fruit of a number of species of trees in the genus Diospyros. The most cultivated of these is the Asian or Japanese persimmon, Diospyros kaki. Diospyros is in the family Ebenaceae, a number of non-persimmon species of the genus are grown for ebony timber; the word Diospyros comes from the ancient Greek words "dios" and "pyron". A popular etymology construed this as "divine fruit", or as meaning "wheat of Zeus" or "God's pear" and "Jove's fire"; the dio-, as shown by the short vowel'i' has nothing to do with'divine', dio- being an affix attached to plant names, in classical Greek the compound referred to'the fruit of the nettle tree'. The word persimmon itself is derived from putchamin, pasiminan, or pessamin, from Powhatan, an Algonquian language of the eastern United States, meaning "a dry fruit"; the tree Diospyros kaki is the most cultivated species of persimmon. The tree reaches 4.5 to 18 metres in height and is round-topped. It stands erect, but sometimes can be crooked or have a willowy appearance.
The leaves alternate, are oblong with brown-hairy petioles. They are leathery and glossy on the upper surface and silky underneath; the leaves are bluish-green in color. In the fall, they turn to orange, or red. Persimmon trees are dioecious, meaning male and female flowers are produced on separate trees; some trees have both male and female flowers and in rare cases bear the'perfect' flower. Male flowers are pink and appear in groups of 3, they have a 4-parted calyx, a corolla, 24 stamens in 2 rows. Female flowers appear singly, they have a large calyx, a 4-parted, yellow corolla, 8 undeveloped stamens, a rounded ovary bearing the style and stigma.'Perfect' flowers are a cross between the two and contain both male and female reproductive organs. Persimmon fruit can stay on the tree until winter. In color, the ripe fruit of the cultivated strains range from glossy light yellow-orange to dark red-orange depending on the species and variety, they vary in size from 1.5 to 9 cm in diameter, in shape the varieties may be spherical, acorn-, or pumpkin-shaped.
The flesh is astringent until ripe and is yellow, orange, or dark-brown in color. The calyx remains attached to the fruit after harvesting, but becomes easy to remove once the fruit is ripe; the ripe fruit is sweet in taste. Like the tomato, persimmons are not considered to be berries, but morphologically the fruit is in fact a berry. While many species of Diospyros bear fruit inedible to humans or only gathered, the following are grown for their edible fruit: Asian or Japanese persimmon is the commercially most important persimmon, is native to Japan, Korea and Nepal, it is deciduous, with broad, stiff leaves, is known as the shizi, as the Japanese Persimmon or kaki in Japanese. Its fruits are sweet and tangy with a soft to fibrous texture. Cultivation of the fruit extended first to other parts of east Asia and Nepal, it was introduced to California and southern Europe in the 1800s and to Brazil in the 1890s. Numerous cultivars have been selected; some varieties are edible in the crisp, firm state but it has its best flavor when allowed to rest and soften after harvest.
The Japanese cultivar'Hachiya' is grown. The fruit has a high tannin content, which makes the unripe fruit bitter; the tannin levels are reduced. Persimmons like'Hachiya' must be ripened before consumption; when ripe, this fruit comprises pulpy jelly encased in a waxy thin-skinned shell. "Sharon fruit" is the marketing name for the Israeli-bred cultivar'Triumph'. As with most commercial pollination-variant-astringent persimmons, the fruit are ripened off the tree by exposing them to carbon dioxide; the "sharon fruit" has no core, is seedless and sweet, can be eaten whole. In the Valencia region of Spain, there is a variegated form of kaki called the "Ribera del Xuquer", "Spanish persimon" or "Rojo Brillante". Date-plum known as lotus persimmon, is native to southwest Asia and southeast Europe, it was known to the ancient Greeks as "the fruit of the gods" and referred to as "nature's candy". Its English name derives from Persian Khormaloo خرمالو "date-plum", referring to the taste of this fruit, reminiscent of both plums and dates.
American persimmon is native to the eastern United States. Harvested in the fall or after the first frost, its fruit is eaten fresh, in baked goods, or in steamed puddings in the Midwest, sometimes its timber is used as a substitute for ebony. Black sapote is native to Mexico, its fruit has green skin and white flesh. The Mabolo or Velvet-apple is native to East Asia, ranging from China down into the Philippines, it is bright red when ripe. In China, it is referred to as shizi, it is known as Korean mango. Indian persimmon is a slow-growing tree, native to coastal West Bengal; the fruit turns yellow when ripe. It is small with an unremarkable flavor and is better known for uses in folk medicine rather than culinary applications. Texas persimmon is native to central and west Texas and southwest Oklahoma in the United States, eastern Chihuahua, Coahuil
Virginia Landmarks Register
The Virginia Landmarks Register is a list of historic properties in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The state's official list of important historic sites, it was created in 1966; the Register serves the same purpose as the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination form for any Virginia site listed on the VLR is sent forward to the National Park Service for consideration for listing on the National Register; the Virginia Landmarks Register is maintained by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. All of the over 2800 sites listed on the national register are listed on the state register. For those listings see: National Register of Historic Places listings in Virginia. Virginia register only The following are listed on the Virginia register, but not the national register: List of National Historic Landmarks in Virginia National Register of Historic Places listings in Virginia Virginia Department of Historic Resources: Virginia Landmarks Register — & National Register of Historic Places in Virginia
Gristmill
A gristmill grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to the building that holds it; the Greek geographer Strabo reports in his Geography a water-powered grain-mill to have existed near the palace of king Mithradates VI Eupator at Cabira, Asia Minor, before 71 BC. The early mills had horizontal paddle wheels, an arrangement which became known as the "Norse wheel", as many were found in Scandinavia; the paddle wheel was attached to a shaft which was, in turn, attached to the centre of the millstone called the "runner stone". The turning force produced by the water on the paddles was transferred directly to the runner stone, causing it to grind against a stationary "bed", a stone of a similar size and shape; this simple arrangement required no gears, but had the disadvantage that the speed of rotation of the stone was dependent on the volume and flow of water available and was, only suitable for use in mountainous regions with fast-flowing streams. This dependence on the volume and speed of flow of the water meant that the speed of rotation of the stone was variable and the optimum grinding speed could not always be maintained.
Vertical wheels were in use in the Roman Empire by the end of the first century BC, these were described by Vitruvius. The peak of Roman technology is the Barbegal aqueduct and mill where water with a 19-metre fall drove sixteen water wheels, giving a grinding capacity estimated at 2.4 to 3.2 tonnes per hour. Water mills seem to have remained in use during the post-Roman period, by 1000 AD, mills in Europe were more than a few miles apart. In England, the Domesday survey of 1086 gives a precise count of England's water-powered flour mills: there were 5,624, or about one for every 300 inhabitants, this was typical throughout western and southern Europe. From this time onward, water wheels began to be used for purposes other than grist milling. In England, the number of mills in operation followed population growth, peaked at around 17,000 by 1300. Limited extant examples of gristmills can be found in Europe from the High Middle Ages. An extant well-preserved waterwheel and gristmill on the Ebro River in Spain is associated with the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda, built by the Cistercian monks in 1202.
The Cistercians were known for their use of this technology in Western Europe in the period 1100 to 1350. Geared gristmills were built in the medieval Near East and North Africa, which were used for grinding grain and other seeds to produce meals. Gristmills in the Islamic world were powered by both wind; the first wind-powered gristmills were built in the 9th and 10th centuries in what are now Afghanistan and Iran. Although the terms "gristmill" or "corn mill" can refer to any mill that grinds grain, the terms were used for a local mill where farmers brought their own grain and received back ground meal or flour, minus a percentage called the "miller's toll." Early mills were always built and supported by farming communities and the miller received the "miller's toll" in lieu of wages. Most towns and villages had their own mill so that local farmers could transport their grain there to be milled; these communities were dependent on their local mill. Classical mill designs are water-powered, though some are powered by the wind or by livestock.
In a watermill a sluice gate is opened to allow water to flow onto, or under, a water wheel to make it turn. In most watermills the water wheel was mounted vertically, i.e. edge-on, in the water, but in some cases horizontally. Designs incorporated horizontal steel or cast iron turbines and these were sometimes refitted into the old wheel mills. In most wheel-driven mills, a large gear-wheel called the pit wheel is mounted on the same axle as the water wheel and this drives a smaller gear-wheel, the wallower, on a main driveshaft running vertically from the bottom to the top of the building; this system of gearing ensures that the main shaft turns faster than the water wheel, which rotates at around 10 rpm. The millstones themselves turn at around 120 rpm, they are laid one on top of the other. The bottom stone, called the bed, is fixed to the floor, while the top stone, the runner, is mounted on a separate spindle, driven by the main shaft. A wheel called the stone nut connects the runner's spindle to the main shaft, this can be moved out of the way to disconnect the stone and stop it turning, leaving the main shaft turning to drive other machinery.
This might include driving a mechanical sieve to refine the flour, or turning a wooden drum to wind up a chain used to hoist sacks of grain to the top of the mill house. The distance between the stones can be varied to produce the grade of flour required; the grain is lifted in sacks onto the sack floor at the top of the mill on the hoist. The sacks are emptied into bins, where the grain falls down through a hopper to the millstones on the stone floor below; the flow of grain is regulated by shaking it in a sloping trough from which it falls into a hole in the center of the runner stone. The milled grain is collected as it emerges through the grooves in the runner stone from the outer rim of the stones and is fed down a chute to be collected in sacks on the ground or meal floor. A similar process is used for grains such as wheat to make flour, for maize to make corn meal. In order to prevent the vibrations of the mill machinery from shaking the building apart, a gristmill will have at least two separate foundations.
America
Water wheel
A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface. Water wheels were still in commercial use well into the 20th century but they are no longer in common use. Uses included milling flour in gristmills, grinding wood into pulp for papermaking, hammering wrought iron, ore crushing and pounding fiber for use in the manufacture of cloth; some water wheels are fed by water from a mill pond, formed when a flowing stream is dammed. A channel for the water flowing to or from a water wheel is called a mill race; the race bringing water from the mill pond to the water wheel is a headrace. In the mid to late 18th century John Smeaton's scientific investigation of the water wheel led to significant increases in efficiency supplying much needed power for the Industrial Revolution. Water wheels began being displaced by the smaller, less expensive and more efficient turbine, developed by Benoît Fourneyron, beginning with his first model in 1827.
Turbines are capable of handling high heads, or elevations, that exceed the capability of practical-sized waterwheels. The main difficulty of water wheels is their dependence on flowing water, which limits where they can be located. Modern hydroelectric dams can be viewed as the descendants of the water wheel, as they too take advantage of the movement of water downhill. Water wheels come in two basic designs: a horizontal wheel with a vertical axle; the latter can be subdivided according to where the water hits the wheel into backshot overshot, breastshot and stream-wheels. The term undershot can refer to any wheel where the water passes under the wheel but it implies that the water entry is low on the wheel. Most water wheels in the United Kingdom and the United States are vertical wheels rotating about a horizontal axle, but in the Scottish highlands and parts of Southern Europe mills had a horizontal wheel. Overshot and backshot water wheels are used where the available height difference is more than a couple of meters.
Breastshot wheels are more suited to large flows with a moderate head. Undershot and stream wheel use large flows at no head. There is an associated millpond, a reservoir for storing water and hence energy until it is needed. Larger heads store more potential energy for the same amount of water so the reservoirs for overshot and backshot wheels tend to be smaller than for breast shot wheels. Overshot and pitchback water wheels are suitable where there is a small stream with a height difference of more than 2 meters in association with a small reservoir. Breastshot and undershot wheels can be used on high volume flows with large reservoirs. A horizontal wheel with a vertical axle. Called a tub wheel, Norse mill or Greek mill, the horizontal wheel is a primitive and inefficient form of the modern turbine; however if it delivers the required power the efficiency is of secondary importance. It is mounted inside a mill building below the working floor. A jet of water is directed on to the paddles of the water wheel.
This is a simple system without gearing so that the vertical axle of the water wheel becomes the drive spindle of the mill. The earliest known reference to water wheels dates to about 400 BCE, the earliest horizontal axis wheels date to about 200 BCE, so vertical axis mills pre-date horizontal axis mills by about two centuries. A stream wheel is a vertically mounted water wheel, rotated by the water in a water course striking paddles or blades at the bottom of the wheel; this type of water wheel is the oldest type of horizontal axis wheel. They are known as free surface wheels because the water is not constrained by millraces or wheel pit. Stream wheels are cheaper and simpler to build, have less of an environmental impact, than other type of wheel, they do not constitute a major change of the river. Their disadvantages are their low efficiency, which means that they generate less power and can only be used where the flow rate is sufficient. A typical flat board undershot wheel uses about 20 percent of the energy in the flow of water striking the wheel as measured by English civil engineer John Smeaton in the 18th century.
More modern wheels have higher efficiencies. Stream wheels gain little or no advantage from head, a difference in water level. Stream wheels mounted on floating platforms are referred to as ship wheels and the mill as a ship mill; the earliest were constructed by the Byzantine general Belisarius during the siege of Rome in 537. They were sometimes mounted downstream from bridges where the flow restriction of the bridge piers increased the speed of the current, they were inefficient but major advances were made in the eighteenth century. An undershot wheel is a vertically mounted water wheel with a horizontal axle, rotated by the water from a low weir striking the wheel in the bottom quarter. Most of the energy gain comparatively little from the head, they are similar in design to stream wheels. The term undershot is sometimes used with related but different meanings: all wheels where the water passes under the wheel wheels where the water enters in the bottom quarter. Wheels where paddles are placed into the flow of a stream.
See stream above. This is the oldest type of vertical water wheel; the word breastshot is used in a variety o
