Grinding Out a Plan

Historical group sets out to buy it, keep it in Stokes
By Lisa R. Boone
Winston-Salem Journal

DANBURY

Every now and then, Frank Blount and Charles Parnell, the owners of Sheppard's Mill, get the old machinery wheels of the two-story mill turning. The machines whir to life as the smell of old belts and dust fills the air.

But the sounds of times past are incomplete. There's no clatter from the old automatic sifter, no rumble from the granite and French buhr millstones.