Industrial
power
It is a mere
sliver of water, one of hundreds right here in New England.
When it comes to majesty or size, you won't find it on a list of the world's
greatest rivers Ð or even in the footnotes.
But there's no mistaking its importance.
Some say Ware, Palmer and other surrounding towns just wouldn't be without it.
Over centuries, the ribbon of water has enabled sustenance, settlement,
industry and recreation.
In this series, we look at the long, varied course of the Ware River, and try
to determine where its currents will lead with the procession of the 21st
century.
By Taryn Plumb
Turley Publications Reporter
Let's look back.
More than 200 years have slipped away; you're in a bustling, river-side village
in the 1800s.
The streets are
different, undoubtedly, as are the houses, the dress of the locals. Yet, above
all, notice the industry, the mills that have cropped up like mushrooms after
rain.
Waterwheels
whir, quiet and majestic, almost elegant. Giant stacks of logs and rolls of
brushed cotton are their product.
The Ware River made it all possible.
ÒThe excellent water power in this town caused it to be settled earlier
perhaps, than the quality of the soil would have done," William Hyde
asserted in his chronicle of Ware.
This statement rings true in several of the early villages slung along the
waterway's banks.
The first recorded mill appeared, fittingly, in the river's namesake village in
1729 or 1730 -- depending on the account -- and was erected by Jabez Olmstead.
Downstream Palmer quickly followed suit: This riverside hamlet recorded its
first mill in 1736. A gristmill, it was destroyed within a couple of years, and
was supplemented by a corn mill
and a saw mill by its owner,
Steward Southgate, according to a town history penned by Josiah Howard Temple
in 1889.
Meanwhile, the development of water power in three rivers occurred in 1789,
with Gideon Graves' grist mill
and saw mill. Run by what
were known as "over-shot wheels," it could be cumbersome. In severe
winter weather ice gathered "in such quantities that it required some time
to chop out the wheels before the mill could be run," according to F.A.
Upham.
The decades that followed saw many more small mills -- the majority for
lumbering or grinding grain into flour -- grow wildly along the river's banks
and tributaries.
But the biggest, the industrial giants that ensured prosperity and progress,
were yet to come. These mills harnessed the river's endless churning by damming
up its inlets and tributaries (and in some cases creating holding ponds), then
installing water wheel systems.
One of the most notable of these, the Three Rivers Manufacturing Company, was
incorporated in 1826 by nine principals.
But failure was a hurdle to success.
Ambitious plans to excavate a canal failed. ÒTime did not wait; bills matured;
stockholders' purses grew lean, and their hearts discouraged," as explained
by Temple.
Following investors attempted to
salvage it, but with them, too, Òthe means were not forthcoming, the mortgages
foreclosed and the company failed," Temple noted.
Finally, five years later, in 1831, a trio of businessmen -- John Wright,
Thomas Lord and Luther Parks -- using the title of The Palmer Company, bought
the buildings, privileges and rights for $60,000, finished the canal, and began
processing cotton.
Joseph Brown took charge of the "revivified enterprise."
"Mr. Wright furnished the money, Mr. Brown furnished the brains,"
Temple asserted, "And both together brought into subjection the waters of
our three large streams, and made them tributary to our commercial and social
prosperity."
Their product: printing cloth 27 inches wide. "The goods were well-liked,
and the profits large," Temple explained.
Perhaps emboldened by this success, Wright turned around and paired up with
Luther Parks and Israel Thorndike in 1836 to incorporate the Thorndike Company.
Having purchased "privileges" along the water, they built a six-story
mill and began manufacturing plain white goods, shirtings (for men's shirts) and
sheets 36 and 40 inches wide.
By this time, Palmer was already "fast rising into importance as a
manufacturing town," John Warner Barber attested in "Historical
Collections."
Particularly between 1840 and 1855.
In the former year, the population was 2,150, and within Palmer's limits
churned three gristmills, three saw mills, two cotton factories (with 486
looms) and one woolen factory (with 32 looms), according to Temple.
But in the space of 15 years, inhabitants and industries nearly doubled -- population
grew to 4,015, the town's limits bursting with three gristmills, four sawmills,
four cotton mills, a scythe factory, two saddle and harness factories, a hat
manufacturer, a carriage shop, a tin-ware factory, and a soap and candle works
making 936 barrels of soap and 6,000 tallow candles annually, Temple reported.
Lumber prepared for market by sawmills comprised of 1.3 million feet.
Meanwhile, at the cotton mills, 3.4 million pounds of cotton were
"consumed," annually, creating 7.5 million yards of printing cloth,
duck cloth (or canvas), 34-inch Òshirtings," (for men's shirts), denims
and flannels. A total of 505 men and 541 women were employed within.
Ware, too, thrived.
"This place...has attained to an astonishing growth within a short
time," Gideon Miner Davidson remarked in his "Traveler's Guide."
"There are few places in the country exhibiting so barren and rugged a
soil as the site and lands adjacent to this flourishing little city in
miniature. As you approach from the west or east, it bursts upon the view with
its long range of manufactories, its near white houses, and glittering spires,
producing the same sensation in the bosom, as the prospect of a beautiful
garden in the midst of a desert.Ó
The town's centerpiece was its namesake industry, the Ware Manufacturing
Company, incorporated in 1823 and comprising of a six-story, 250-foot long
mill. Work was toil. That year, employees put in 13 hours a day, six days a
week, according to F.A. Upham. A sampling of salaries: The overseer of carding was
paid $10.50 a week, the overseer of weaving $7 a week, and spinning room
employees $2.17 a week.
But it paid off -- at least for the industry men. By 1849, production was
744,465 yards of cotton, as Arthur Chase explained in his 1911 history of Ware.
In 1865, the company shifted gears, changing its product from woven to knit
goods, and a "colony of people" were brought over from Nottingham,
England to aid in the creation of stockings, shirts and drawers. (To aid such
immigrants, "Americanization" classes were typically held at
factories around the region, incorporating English lessons and instruction on
customs, as well as safety and the mills' inner workings.)
Around the same time, the George H. Gilbert Manufacturing Company came along.
This rival manufacturer crafted broadcloth and cloakings, then, later, fine
flannels. Theirs was of an award-winning variety, garnering a gold medal at the
great exhibition in Crystal Palace, London, in 1851.
The company even created a town to house its workers.
In 1860, it erected a five-story brick mill on the site of an old paper mill in
Hardwick to increase its flannel goods business. In the immediate vicinity were
tenements Ð thus forming Gilbertville.
ÒThe 200 houses...constitute the entire settlement of what is probably the
prettiest strictly manufacturing village in Massachusetts," Lucius
Robinson Paige asserted in his 1883 history of Hardwick. At that time, 1,000
"operatives" were employed, with 47 sets of machinery between the two
locations.
Hardwick, for its part, was well-known for its industrious paper mills, a
panoply of which focused on wrapping, printing and writing paper. The Ware
River Paper Co., for instance, incorporated in 1866, created white wall paper,
then book paper. Meanwhile, The Page Paper Co., established in 1880, created
No. 1 news paper and book papers of various kinds at 800 tons per year,
according to Paige.
Nearby Barre, for its part, had one cotton mill, as well as two mills for
woolen goods, and other companies dedicated to creating powder, carriages,
copper pumps, scythes, tin and axes.
But prosperous as they were, over the course of this century of industrial wax
and wane, mills were veritable revolving doors Ð burning down, going bankrupt,
changing hands, altering their products.
"The mill mix changes over time," explained Tom Kelleher, a curator
at Old Sturbridge Village. "There were a lot of sites that would run a
mill for a few years, a few decades, then they would be abandoned."
Economic downturn of any kind usually meant failure, Kelleher explained,
resulting in the sale and restructuring of the business. Fires were frequent Ð
the consequence of oil-burning candles, chain-smoking workers, the heated
friction of wooden machinery, and "everything being soaked in grease,"
Kelleher explained. "It was a continual threat."
(Indeed, at the Ware Manufacturing Company, about 3,000 gallons of whale oil
were used to light lamps between 1849 and 1850.)
Sometimes, mills would sit empty for years. Other times, they would pass
through several hands without any progress. Such was the case with Olmstead's
site in Ware -- in 1765, it became Magoon's mills. Fifty years later, it was
sold to Alpheus Demond and Thomas Denny, who ran it for a year or two; then,
after standing idle, "Boston capitalists" bought it with big plans,
William Hyde explained in a history of the town. But, as Hyde noted, "the
plans...proved ill-judged. It never made a dividend.Ó It was transferred to the
Hampshire Manufacturing Company, then passed into the hands of the Otis Company.
This last one stuck, with 600 looms "consuming" 1.6 million pounds of
cotton annually by mid-century. The company has Òshared fully in the success
that has attended manufacturers for the few past years," Hyde noted.
But such accomplishments weren't the Ware River's credit alone -- the railroads
blazed along its banks were also to be thanked.
NEXT WEEK: The rise and fall of the Ware River Railroad.