Grandpa Moses and The Granite Quarries of Vermont

"Windmill Open Today", read the sign which pointed the way to the Chatham Windmill (built in 1797 by Benjamin Godfrey), a still functioning windmill in Chatham, Massachusetts.  The two huge granite millstones that are presently housed in the windmill were brought there in 1885.  Marash Girl wondered aloud:  Could those two millstones be created from  the very granite that Grandpa Moses had hauled out of the granite quarries of Vermont all those many years ago?

No, said the guide; in 19th Century New England, it was too expensive to haul granite over the rough roads all the way from Vermont to Chatham, Cape Cod; before these millstones were placed in this mill, this granite was used as ballast in a ship which came over the ocean from Germany in 1885!