I’ve had an opportunity to look in depth at Varles 1809 map that contains Frederick County, VA. He has an enormous number of mill symbols. What separates his map from the slightly later Boye map is that Varle uses symbols to denote various types of mills plus taverns whereas Boye shows the standard mill symbol with no annotation as to what it did for a living.

Varle’s symbol for a tavern is a circle with a sort of “F” sticking out of the top of it whereas a sawmill has a backwards “F” sticking out of the mill symbol. The problem I have is whether the person who drew the map got things wrong and confused a forward “F” with a backwards “F”. Tavern symbols with the mill symbol are shown as are what Varle labels as taverns which are a circle with the forward “F”. and which appear to be nowhere near a roadway. Obviously a mill with an approach roadway is essential.

There are enough mill symbols that area also with the tavern symbol to make me wonder if by some chance taverns and mills were conjoined as in next to one another and due to the scale of the map, are shown as one. Bob Jolley related that mills were easily spotted due to broken whiskey bottles, harmonica plates and .22 cartridges which were all part of the wait for your grain to be run through the mill. But that was a BYOB situation versus an actual tavern.

Has anyone run across conjoined/nearby mills and taverns? My inclination is to consider these as cartographic errors and to go with assigning them depending upon proximity to water as mills and as taverns if they are close to a road.

Lyle Browning, RPA
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