Master: John Childers Apprentice: Joe Wright Garrett County Master-Apprentice Grant Recipients 2008
John Childers was born into a family of millers in Hazard, Kentucky. He came to Western Maryland to ‘save’ the Stanton Mill, a working mill that has served the community of Grantsville in Garrett County for more than a century. He was fortunate to find restoration woodworker Joe Wright of Accident, Maryland, who shared his reverence for wood and traditional technology. The art of dressing stone is practiced by very few craftsmen today. The work is strenuous and can be dangerous; millers who sharpen stones such as Childers and Wright are marked by the metal particles embedded in their hands. When not grinding the best buckwheat flour around, Childers is traveling the country to keep millstones in other mills in working order.
