The Mill & Its Laborers. Upon his purchase of Benton County property, Peter Van Winkle set up a mule or oxen-powered sawmill--the first Van Winkle's Mill. Soon after (according to some sources as late as 1858), Peter built a steam-powered mill with the financial help of James Sutton, a prominent local merchant and venture capitalist. By 1860, "P. Van Winkle & Co." engaged 30 hands at the mill and was turning out pine lumber to feed the growing towns of Northwest Arkansas (1860 US Census, Schedule 5).

It is not certain when the gristmill was added to the complex, but confederate Major Van Dorn utilized the Van Winkle grist during its period of abandonment during the war.

Unfortunately, no record books related to Van Winkle's Mill have surfaced in the archival data, making a clear understanding of exactly who the mill laborers were difficult to determine. At this juncture, it is not clear if the "average number of hands employed" at the mill in 1860 includes enslaved individuals or not. Slave Schedules from the same year reveal that Peter claimed to own thirteen human beings (although the number is up to eighteen by the time of their flight in 1862; Hicks 1990:350).Of these, six were "working age" men all possible hands at the mill.

Other workers at Van Winkle's Mill are just as difficult to get at through the documentary record. The 1860 Census lists few people who claim any occupation other than "farmer" in War Eagle Township, and only two of them are clearly related to the mill's operation-J. B. Steele, the 'turner' living with Peter, and Littleberg Macon, a sawyer from Tennessee. Additionally, William Vines (a day-laborer from Georgia) may also have worked at the mill, as might at least one of the two blacksmiths (Daniel Sharp and Thomas Clifton). It is less clear, however, what connection the three clergymen or the "trader" might have had with the Van Winkle establishment, if any.

Thus, if we accept all the aforementioned parties as possible members of Peter's 30 hands, there are still twenty laborers unaccounted for in the archival data. These men were likely employed on a seasonal basis and drawn from the surrounding farmsteads. They therefore would have listed "farmer" as their occupation for the census taker, rendering themselves "invisible" in the documentary record.

A surviving invoice tells us that by 1861, Peter contracted with the newly formed Confederate Government. For the handsome sum of $20,920.00, P. Van Winkle & Co. were to mill the lumber for, and construct a CSA barracks and stables in nearby Cross Hollows, Arkansas to aid the war effort. Peter, however, would never collect the money owed him since, as mentioned earlier, he and his family took their slaves and fled to Texas in 1862. Nonetheless, when Peter returned from his exile (1866) he quickly recovered with renewed vigor.

The new mill's machinery was purchased from a St. Louis firm, shipped via barge down the Mississippi River and up the Arkansas River to Van Buren, Arkansas. From there it was shipped overland through the rugged Boston Mountains and up to Van Hollow. "Roads had to be chopped, bridges improvised, camps maintained, food provided for men and oxen. The story of that trip should be worthy of a saga" (Rothrock 1973:65). More specifically and dramatically, it has been widely described as "an epic probably unsurpassed to that time except by the Egyptians in propelling on rollers the heavy blocks of stone cut from the quarries to the distant spots for erecting their pyramids" (Rose 1953).

The equipment included a 150 horsepower engine (with a 22" x 30" cylinder) powered by three steam boilers driving the large, legendary flywheel with a smoke stack 60 feet high and five feet in diameter that towered over the whole affair. Several auxiliary-manufacturing facilities were also added and the workshops at Peter's mill could produce cabinetry, doors, and windows. With this mill, Peter "developed the most extensive lumber business in the southwest" (Fayetteville Sentinel February 15, 1882) and became the "wealthiest man in this section of the country." He added many improvements, established other mills and purchased thousands of acres of pine lands until he owned nearly all the pineries in Benton, Madison and Carroll Counties" (Easley and McAnelley 1996:157).

By 1880, Peter's mill was producing 1,300,000 board feet of lumber annually valued at approximately $134,250. His steam engine with three boilers powering a circular saw, two rip saws, two molding saws, one gang lathe, one shingle machine, two planers and a variety of other machines, easily out-paced the other water-powered sawmills in War Eagle Township. Oddly, the mill apparently employed only 15 individuals (including 4 "children and youth") working six months out of the year, between 8 and 10 hours a day, and making between 75 cents to $2.00 a day.

One of those fifteen individuals was a 28-year-old Missouri man named Simm Stevens employed as a "clerk at [the] lumber mill"-the first time a non-labor job is listed for Van Winkle's Mill. The teamster Perry Van Winkle is no longer listed as working at the mill by 1880. Aaron Van Winkle is, however, and his household had grown to include his wife, 9 children and his 80-year-old father who was born into slavery in the "Old Dominion" of Virginia.