Samuel Stover was born in Pipersville and attended the Doylestown Academy with his brothers. He married Anna Beidler of Plumsteadville on December 20, 1836. In that same year Samuel bought the Stover Grist Mill from his father, Jacob Stover.
When Samuel inherited the mill it was powered by a water wheel. He soon replaced the wheel with more modern turbines.
On the first floor of the grist mill were three sets of French Burh millstones that were used for grinding grain. The millstones weighed one ton each. Each stone was grooved. The bottom stone was stationary while the top stone spun, crushing and cutting the grain between the two stones, the grooves acting like scissors.
Likely Samuel, sent his grain through their gristmills only once. In crushing the grain the stones separated the bran (the outer coating) from the inner wheat germ. For the best results the grain couldn't be too wet or to dry and the groves in the stone had to be dressed weekly to keep them sharp.
Stover Myers Mill stationary Millstone with dressed grooves in front, turning stone leaning against the back wall.
Samuel and Anna Beidler had one daughter, Eliza Beidler Stover. She married Christian Myers of Plumsteadville in 1863. That year Christian assumed management of the mill.
Samuel died on February 18, 1888 at the age of 88. His obituary describes him as "Ingenious, with a mechanical turn of mind, and his counsel sought by people in the community." When he passed, Christian and Eliza inherited the Mill.
As manager, Christian improved the mill several times with the latest machinery. In 1885, he invested in a new “roller milling” technology which processed wheat into flour much faster than stone mills.
Roller mills separated out the wheat kernel into its three components. The first pass through rollers broke the wheat into their constituent parts—the endosperm for white flour, the germ, and the bran.
A succession of increasingly smoother rollers ground the flour finer and finer. Sieves and blowers separated out particles of different sizes, yielding various grades of flour.
With the advent of steam power, the mill was eventually augmented with a steam engine. In 1903 Myers installed the Gyrator system of bolting so he could refine or “whiten” the flour. The bolter contained spinning screens with various hole sizes. The flour entered one end of the bolter, the end with the finest screen. The lightest part of the flour, the fines and superfines came out from this screen. Gravity carried the remaining flour, first separating out the "middlings," and the "shorts," and finally, the bran.
In the early years, grain was brought to the mill by horse and wagon in bags which were unloaded on the main floor, weighed, and then dropped down a chute to a bin in the basement.
Myers Rolling Mill circa 1908
The Myers Rolling Mill ground wheat, separating and selling the bran, the middlins and the fine flour in various degrees of fineness. They also ground, corn, rye, oats into flour and animal feed.
He used metal stencils with which he could mark the bags with his name, and information about the grade and type flour.
The customers paid by the weight so the bags were weighed on a scale and marked accordingly.
In later years, as competition grew it was cheaper for Christian to sell flour shipped by train from the Midwest.
He offered Victor rye flour from Crete, Nebraska for sale, rather then rely on local farmers to supply him with the harvested grain.
There were some who preferred cornmeal ground by millstones rather than rolling mills, also called "water ground," They believed the slower speed of the millstone protected the germ.
Winter wheat was planted in October, dormant for the winter, ready for harvest in June or July.
Once the flour was ground to the desired grade it was bagged and put on a scale and weighed.
Samuel and later, Christain kept detailed ledgers which noted the date of purchase, the customer, type of grain and number of bags.
In "The Good Housekeeper" it notes that a "large family would need a bushel of flour—60 pounds—for their weekly bread." Grain was also ground at a lesser quality at the mill for animal feed.