10/02/2024
The first cotton mills in Fall River and their locations.
Fall River Manufactory
The real beginning of the textile industry in Fall River was in 1813 when two companies were formed for the manufacture of cotton cloth, the Fall River Manufactory and the Troy Manufacturing Company, later renamed the Troy Cotton and Woolen Manufactory. Because of commercial restrictions, which resulted from the country’s complicated foreign relations between 1808 and 1812, the prices of textile goods had been substantially raised. “It was to take advantage of this condition that the above enterprises were projected.” The Fall River Manufactory was organized on February 17, 1813, and the Troy Manufacturing Company on March 8, 1813. These were the first mills for textile manufacturing on the Quequechan River.
David Anthony and Dexter Wheeler, both with previous textile experience, joined with the property owners on the stream to organize the Fall River Manufactory with an initial capital of $30,000 in sixty shares of $500. Of the original shares, Wheeler had fifteen, Anthony, six, and twenty-three shares were divided among four men who owned the land and water privilege at the third fall above the bay. Colonel Thomas Borden conveyed the land on the south side of the stream, and Colonel Richard Borden and his brothers-in-law, Nathan and Abraham Bowen, conveyed land on the north side of the stream. It totaled four and one-quarter acres. Eleven other individuals held one or two shares each, including Major Bradford Durfee with one share.
The company, a partnership until incorporated in 1820, contracted with Joseph Warren, a village carpenter, “to erect a factory building 72-by-54 feet, the lower story of stone, the others of wood” and later contracted with Israel Pearse, a Swansea carpenter, “to build them a dwelling house, 37-by-57, of the same size and style as he built for the Swansey Manufacturing Company.” The new structure at the south-east corner of Main and Central Streets would also serve for the company offices and the company store, and later for the offices of the Fall River Bank. According to legend, Abraham Bowen kept the money raised for the Fall River Manufactory in his clock because there was no bank in the town. After the Fall River Bank was incorporated in 1825 with David Anthony as president, its board of directors voted to lease rooms in the “corner house” erected by Pearse. Matthew Durfee, the cashier of the bank, supposedly slept in a back bedroom and kept the bank’s money in an iron chest under his bed.
The original mill building, popularly known as the “Yellow Mill,” as completed was only 60-by-40 feet. The plan had been for a mill of 2,000 spindles, but later it was reduced to fifteen hundred spindles. The mill building was completed in October of 1813, and operations began the same month with 528 spindles “running or nearly ready to run.” According to the first report of the agent to the directors, March 1, 1814, the company had erected a factory, two dwelling houses, a dam, a waterwheel and aqueduct, and had overspent its capital by $1,604. The records of the company indicate that on September 9, 1813, one bale of Sea Island cotton and two bales of Georgia cotton were delivered to Seth Hortch of Dighton, and one bale of Sea Island cotton and one bale of Georgia cotton were delivered to Eliakim Briggs of Troy to be “picked.” The first yarn to be woven by a hand loom was sent to Ruth Lake of Tiverton on November 22, 1813. She brought the cloth to the factory on December 25, 1813. The yarn had been dyed at the “Rehoboth Dye House Company.”
In 1827, the company increased its property by the addition of a small brick building, three stories high, just north of the original mill. It was run by Azariah and Jarvis Shove making nankeen cloth and known as the “Nankeen Mill.” Both the “Yellow Mill” and the “Nankeen Mill” were removed in 1839 to make room for the “White Mill.” This mill was destroyed by fire in 1868 and replaced by a five-story granite structure, 275-by-74 feet, which was extended by fifty-seven feet in 1891.
It has been suggested that manufacture started at the Yellow Mill as soon as it did because some of the machinery came from Dexter Wheeler’s small spinning mill in Rehoboth. “Mr. Wheeler was principal in the oversight in building the mill and dam. He also built all the machinery for spinning and operated the mill. He was one of those rare geniuses who could build a mill and the machinery to manufacture cotton cloth, and operate it.” The machinery was forged in a shop on Main Road (near where the Granite Block was later built). Wheeler was the first president of the company (1813-24) and David Anthony was the first treasurer (1813-36).
In 1814, the Fall River Manufactory was the first mill with a picking machine, “just introduced in the country,” although David Anthony later conceded in a 1859 manuscript: “The improvement encountered a violent opposition in the ignorant prejudice of consumers both of yarn and cloth, who believed its operation was detrimental to the staple and consequently to the cloth itself.” But new machinery also reduced cost, as Anthony reported to the United States Secretary of the Treasury Louis McLane in 1832:
"In those years, and time previous, the cotton was put out to persons in the neighborhood to be picked, and 4 to 6 cents was paid for picking which is now done by machines at the establishment for half of a cent per pound; and yarn was also put out to weave, at about 10 cents the yard, for said sheeting, which is now done by power in the establishment for 1-½ cents."
Picking five or six pounds “was considered a fair day’s work” and was done by housewives and children. Farm help at the time, by comparison, was making fifty cents to one dollar per day, “all good weather,” and first-rate hands “some times” were paid $1.25 for mowing. Twelve hours was the “usual day’s work” in the mill.
Frederick M. Peck and Henry H. Earl observed in their 1877 history:
"From 1815 to 1820, a second revolution in the business, hardly less important in its results than the introduction of the water spinning-frames had been, was to be experienced in the addition of the power-loom to the series of mill processes. Previously to this application of power, the work of manufacture in the factory had been limited to the carding, drawing, and spinning stages."
Yet no Fall River mill and possibly no Rhode Island mill ever used a Waltham loom. “The principal great impulse given to power-loom weaving,” according to a memorandum prepared for the 1877 history by Rhode Island industrialist Zachariah Allen, “was accomplished by William Gilmore who came from Scotland with the latest improved Scotch loom, warper, and dresser, in 1815.” The Cotton Centennial, 1790-1890 (Pawtucket) provides a succinct history of the loom that would be used in Fall River:
"Although the Waltham loom was a success it was not equal to the improved loom in use in England and Scotland. A Scotch mechanic named William Gilmour, who was familiar with the loom as originally constructed by Cartwright and with all the subsequent inventions and improvements, came to America in 1814. He had in his possession patterns of the perfected loom and dresser as used in Scotland. John Slater invited Gilmour to Slatersville, and wished to engage him to build the machines, but the other partners, owing to the depression in business then existing, were opposed to the experiment. Judge Daniel Lyman, who had borne a conspicuous part in the Revolutionary War, started a small factory early in the century on the Woonasquatucket River in North Providence. He had been experimenting for several years with power looms without obtaining satisfactory results. He heard of Gilmour and, in company with other manufactures, engaged him to build looms and dressers. Twelve looms were constructed under Mr. Gilmour’s instructions and in accordance with his patterns, the work being accomplished in about sixty days, at a cost per loom of $70. They were put in operation in the factory at Lymansville in 1817. Mr. Gilmour was paid $1,500 for his services and the use of his patterns, and David Wilkinson at his machine shop began the manufacture of the machines, and supplied the factories in Rhode Island and adjoining regions. The Scotch loom, as this machine was commonly called, was much superior to the Waltham machine, but not until ten years after it had been introduced into Rhode Island was it adopted at Waltham or Lowell. The common cotton loom in use to-day is this machine developed and improved, with some minor additions, but in principle essentially the same. Gilmour’s loom completed the manufacturing system in Rhode Island as the hand-mule was already in use. In this respect the Rhode Island manufacturers were a decade ahead of their contemporaries."
The Gilmour loom was immediately introduced into the mills of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, and “in all probability had more to do with establishing the American system of complete manufacture under one roof than even the Waltham experiment.” It offered the advantage of greater simplicity in design and superior operation at a much lower cost; since no patent was taken out, it was freely available to mill owners and machinists. The Gilmour machine was also considered to be better constructed by design than the Waltham loom, its frame made of iron, not wood, and it was more compact.
Power weaving was introduced in the Fall River Manufactory in 1817 and most likely in the Troy Mill in 1820, “doubtless on the model” of the Scotch loom introduced by Gilmour. Dexter Wheeler probably supervised the construction of the Fall River Manufactory looms and is given credit for their “invention” although, according to David Anthony, “built” by John Orswell and Wheaton Bailey. The records of the Troy Company include a memorandum of a meeting on June 5, 1820: “Voted that the agent build and put in operation ten pair of water-looms, with preparations, besides the present ten now building, if he shall deem it expedient.” At this time, Gilmour looms were being built throughout southern New England.
The Fall River Manufactory last appeared in the 1905 edition of the Fall River Directory. It had only 40,992 spindles and 978 looms; only the Conanicut Mills on Bay Street was smaller. At this time, the property was acquired by the Pocasset Manufacturing Company. The White Mill was demolished for the construction of Interstate 195 in 1961.
From American Textile Colossus: The Story of Fall River, Massachusetts, its Cotton Manufacturing Industry, and its People. By Jay J. Lambert. Fall River Historical Society Press, 2020.
https://fallriverhistorical.org/product/book-frhs-press-american-textile-colossus-softcover/
