Buckingham County: An Inlet at Perkins’ Falls, Part II
Hocker’s Mills (a. k. a. Slate River Mills). Courtesy Historic Buckingham.
In 1844, Richmond’s Whig published a letter to the editor signed “Many on Slate River.”
To catch up, click here: Buckingham County: An Inlet at Perkins’ Falls, Part I
The correspondence from a collective of farmers and mill owners along Slate River continued:
The manufacturing Mills of Hocker, situated 4 miles north of Buckingham Courthouse and about 12 miles south of Perkins’ Falls, the same from Warren’s Ferry, and 16 or 17 from Scottsville, have to encounter most serious inconveniences. The New Canton inlet is 25 miles distance from Hocker, where the whole of his Flour is now waggoned at the most enormous expense, averaging 50c per barrel, which would almost ship it from Richmond to England. This burden falls not heavily on the Miller but on some 200 farmers—the producers of the Wheat out of which his Flour is manufactured.
There will probably be some 35 or 40,000 bushels of Wheat ground at his establishment this season. Give Hocker the inlet at Perkins’ Falls, where he is most desirous of approaching the Canal, and you at once not only supply him with a convenient inlet to which he could with his own teams haul his own Flour and make daily trips, but it would enable him to give some 4 or 5 cents more in the bushel for Wheat, which would as you really perceive, amount to no inconsiderable sum saved to the Wheat growers in the adjacent country.
For much more about Hocker’s Mills search the archives at Slate River Ramblings.
Coming next: Chambers Mill on Slate River
slate river ramblings . . . . 
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