Thanks, Norma, for sharing this valuable and interesting history info. I've never read a better description. Can you please check to confirm the 40 gallons of distillate from 10 bushels of corn and small grains? This seems a rather high yield but I've never made any. (I can 'dowse' for water in underground veins and lines.) What was the time-frame or setting for this book? This is needed for the following exercise. Just for the exercise: 40 gallons @ $0.25/gal. = $10.00 sales value from maybe $1.00 worth of corn if corn could be sold at something like $0.10/bushel. That's $9.00 profit from about six hours work, a tidy sum in those days if my assumptions and math are correct. Does anyone know the actual market value of corn in the 1700's or early 1800's to check the accuracy of this exercise? I suspect most of our ancestors' corn crops were probably used for animal feed and for grinding into meal for consumption by the family -- but there must have been a grain market as well, I should think the local millers purchased grain for example. Thanks again, Norma, for sharing this informative info. Henry M. Robinson writes in a very descriptive style. I somehow get the impression he enjoyed the research for his book, "Water of Life." I mean this in a nice way in that he obviously wanted 'to feel' the life of his ancestor and tell others about that life of long ago. Neil McDonald