In 1768, Samuel Lewis, a miller from Franklin Corners in Basking Ridge, built a water-powered grist mill and a barn on the Passaic River on land originally acquired from William Penn. His grandson, Richard Southard, bought the property in 1777 and soon found that the convenient location along a major thoroughfare between New York and Philadelphia, so practical for commerce, placed him smack in the middle of the Revolutionary War. His small wooden mill supplied desperately needed flour, meal, and feed to the Continental Army encampment at Jockey Hollow, Morristown, during the bitter winter of 1779-80. Since the barn was used to store the army’s grain, it is known today as “The Grain House.”