Last updated 1893 map of Fall River Mfg. Co.David Anthony, founder of the Fall River Manufactory
The Fall River Manufactory (later known as Fall River Manufacturing Company) was the first cotton mill to be constructed across the Quequechan River in Fall River, Massachusetts (then known as Troy), United States. It was also the first successful textile mill in the area. (Although an earlier mill had been established by Joseph Durfee in 1811 in nearby Tiverton, Rhode Island, it was never very successful.)
A cotton mill is a building housing spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system.
The Quequechan River is a river in Fall River, Massachusetts, that flows in a northwesterly direction from the northwest corner of the South Watuppa Pond through the heart of the city of Fall River and into the end of the Taunton River at Mount Hope Bay at Heritage State Park/Battleship Cove. The word Quequechan means "Falling River" or "Leaping/Falling Waters" in Wampanoag, hence the city's name.
Fall River is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. The City of Fall River is located approximately 53 miles (85 km) south of Boston, 17 miles (27 km) southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, 20 miles (32 km) south of Taunton, 12 miles (19 km) west of New Bedford, 20 miles (32 km) north of Newport, Rhode Island, and 200 miles (320 km) northeast of New York City. The City of Fall River's population was 87,103 at the 2010 census, making it the tenth-largest city in the state.
The company was established with $40,000 in capital in March 1813 by David Anthony, Dexter Wheeler, Abraham Bowen, and several associates. Much of the money was raised in nearby towns.[1] In the same month of March 1813, the Troy Cotton & Woolen Manufactory was also founded at the high end of the falls along the Quequechan, about 1/4 mile to the east. The Troy opened for business in March 1814. By the 1820s, the successful operation of these two pioneering cotton mills would lead to the establishment of several others along a short stretch of the Quequechan River. By 1850, Fall River would rank as one of the leading textile centers in the United States.
The Troy Cotton & Woolen Manufactory was a textile manufacturing company located Fall River, Massachusetts. Founded in 1813 by Oliver Chace, it was the second textile mill to be built over the Quequechan River, after the Fall River Manufactory. It was located at what is now Troy Street between Pleasant and Bedford Streets.
History
The impetus for establishing a new cotton mill on the Quequechan River at Troy was brought about largely by the ongoing War of 1812, which led to widespread shortages and increased prices of cotton goods in the United States. By this time, the textile industry was well established in nearby Rhode Island and in other parts of New England. David Anthony, a native of the nearby town of Somerset had gained experience in the cotton textile industry while working for Samuel Slater in Pawtucket. In April 1812, Anthony worked for a short time in the cotton mill of his cousin Dexter Wheeler, across the river in Rehoboth, Massachusetts (now part of Pawtucket). Dexter Wheeler was an experienced machine builder, who had established a small horse-powered yarn mill at Rehoboth in 1807.
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States, the United Kingdom, and their respective allies from June 1812 to February 1815. Historians in Britain often see it as a minor theater of the Napoleonic Wars; in the United States and Canada, it is seen as a war in its own right.
Rhode Island, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest state in area, the seventh least populous, and the second most densely populated, but it has the longest official name of any state. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound. It also shares a small maritime border with New York. Providence is the state capital and most populous city in Rhode Island.
New England is a geographical and cultural region composed of six states of the northeastern United States: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north, respectively. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the south. Boston is New England's largest city as well as the capital of Massachusetts. The largest metropolitan area is Greater Boston with nearly a third of the entire region's population, which also includes Worcester, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Providence, Rhode Island.
The Fall River Manufactory's mill was completed in October 1813. Built directly over Quequechan River at the third falls above tidewater, it measured just 60 feet long by 40 feet wide, with three stories. The lower story was constructed from field stone acquired from nearby, while the upper two stories were finished in wood. It became known as the "yellow mill", and had capacity for about 1,500 spindles. Dexter Wheeler built much of the machinery for the new mill, with some of it being transferred from his Rehoboth factory.[2][3] Dexter Wheeler served as the company's first president, from 1813 to 1824. David Anthony served as the first treasurer of the company.
The Fall River and Troy mills had barely begun operation when the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814, ending the War of 1812. During the period that followed, many of the recently established textile mills in New England struggled or failed due to a sharp drop in demand and prices for their goods, brought on by resumed shipments of cheaper products from Great Britain.
The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands. The treaty restored relations between the two nations to status quo ante bellum, restoring the borders of the two countries to the lines before the war started in June 1812. The treaty was approved by the UK parliament and signed into law by the Prince Regent on December 30, 1814. It took a month for news of the peace treaty to reach the United States, during which American forces under Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. The Treaty of Ghent was not fully in effect until it was ratified by the U.S. Senate unanimously on February 17, 1815. It began the more than two centuries of peaceful relations between the U.S. and Britain, although there were a few tense moments such as the Trent Affair in 1861.
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of 209,331 km2 (80,823 sq mi), it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island, and the ninth-largest island in the world. In 2011, Great Britain had a population of about 61 million people, making it the world's third-most populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan. The island of Ireland is situated to the west of Great Britain, and together these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands, form the British Isles archipelago.
Nevertheless, the industrious Yankee owners of the Fall River Manufactory persevered, and sought to improve their business with new technologies. In 1814, the mill acquired a Blair picking machine, which had just been introduced in the United States. This machine was used to clean and process the raw cotton prior to spinning, a process that until then had been done by hand at considerable time and expense. The new device resulted in greatly increased production and about a 75 percent drop in the cost in the picking process.[4]
The term "Yankee" and its contracted form "Yank" have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States; its various senses depend on the context. Outside the United States, "Yank" is used informally to refer to any American, including Southerners. Within Southern American areas, "Yankee" is a derisive term which refers to all Northerners, or specifically to those from the region of New England. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "a nickname for a native or inhabitant of New England, or, more widely, of the northern States generally"; during the American Civil War, it was "applied by the Confederates to the soldiers of the Federal army".
Initially, the company produced only cotton yarn, which was sent out to local farm women for weaving into cloth. However, in 1817, Wheeler built the first power loom to operate in Fall River. Although the first looms were rather clumsy and imperfect in their operation, they were gradually improved over time. By 1820, the mill contained 30 looms operated by 15 weavers.[5]
The Fall River Manufactory was incorporated in 1820 with $150,000. In 1827, the company built the Nankeen Mill, which was leased to Azariah and Jarvis Shove for the manufacture of nankeen cloth.
In 1839, both the original 1813 "Yellow Mill" and the 1827 Nankeen Mill were demolished for the construction of a new, larger factory, which became known as the "White Mill". By 1850, the Fall River Manufactory contained 9,240 spindles and 209 looms, employing about 143 people. It consumed about 828 bales of cotton per year, to produce 1,742,400 yards of print cloth.[6]
The second mill burned on May 14, 1868, and was replaced by a third mill, 275 feet long by 74 feet wide with 5 stories. The 1869 mill contained 640 looms and 27,080 spindles.[7] This mill was powered by two turbines of 140 horsepower each. Supplemental power was also provide by a 300-horsepower Corliss engine, fed by steam from two upright boilers. This mill was later extended in 1891, to increase spinning capacity to 41,000 spindles. By 1893, the company had acquired the adjacent Quequechan Mills (originally built as Robeson Print Works).[8]
The Fall River Manufacturing Company property was acquired in 1905 by the Pocasset Manufacturing Company, and became known as that company's Mill No. 5. The Quequechan Mills property was acquired by William J. Dunn and leased to several small businesses.[9] After the closing and subsequent 1928 fire of the Pocasset Mills, the property of the Fall River Manufacturing Company was occupied by various small businesses until the early 1960s, when the property was taken by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for construction of Interstate 195. The 1869 mill was scheduled to be demolished with it was destroyed by fire on August 15, 1961.[10] The location now contains part of the interchange between I-195 and the Route 79 viaduct.
Textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution in Britain was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines. In Germany it was concentrated in the Wupper Valley, Ruhr Region and Upper Silesia, in Spain it was concentrated in Catalonia while in the United States it was in New England. The four key drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power and cheap labour.
The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated the first factory in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership a group of investors known as The Boston Associates, for the manufacture of cotton textiles. It built the first integrated spinning and weaving factory in the world at Waltham, Massachusetts, using water power. They used plans for a power loom that he smuggled out of England as well as trade secrets from the earlier horse-powered Beverly Cotton Manufactory, of Beverly, Massachusetts, of 1788. This was the largest factory in the U.S., with a workforce of about 300. It was a very efficient, highly profitable mill that, with the aid of the Tariff of 1816, competed effectively with British textiles at a time when many smaller operations were being forced out of business. While the Rhode Island System that followed was famously employed by Samuel Slater, the Boston Associates improved upon it with the "Waltham System". The idea was successfully copied at Lowell, Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England. Many rural towns now had their own textile mills.
Pocasset Manufacturing Company was a cotton textile mill located in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was located just west of Main Street across the second falls of the Quequechan River. It was organized on August 15, 1821, with $100,000 in capital. The mill began operation in 1822, with Samuel Rodman of New Bedford as the principal owner. Oliver Chace, served as the mill's agent until 1837. Nathaniel Briggs Borden was named clerk and treasurer.
Oliver Chace was an American 18th & 19th century entrepreneur. He was the founder of several New England textile manufacturing companies in the early 19th century, including the Valley Falls Company, the original antecedent of Berkshire Hathaway, which as of today is one of the largest and most valuable companies in the world.
For much of its history, the city of Fall River, Massachusetts has been defined by the rise and fall of its cotton textile industry. From its beginnings as a rural outpost of the Plymouth Colony, the city grew to become the largest textile producing center in the United States during the 19th century, with over one hundred mills in operation by 1920. Even with the demise of local textile productions during the 20th century, there remains a lasting legacy of its impact on the city.
The American Printing Company, located in Fall River, Massachusetts grew to become the largest producer of printed cotton cloth in the United States by the early 20th Century. The company grew as an offshoot of the Fall River Iron Works, established in 1821 by Colonel Richard Borden and Major Bradford Durfee. The American Print Works was established in 1835 by Holder Borden. It employed several thousand workers at its peak during World War I.
The Metacomet Mill, built in 1847 by Colonel Richard Borden for the manufacture of cotton textiles, is the oldest remaining textile mill in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Colonel Richard Borden (1795–1874) was an American businessman and civic leader from Fall River, Massachusetts. He co-founded the Fall River Iron Works in 1821, and later built several early cotton mills, as well as the Fall River Line, Fall River Gas Works Company, the Fall River Railroad, banks and other businesses. The Borden family would dominate the economic and civic life of Fall River into the early 20th century.
Chace Mills is a historic textile mill complex on Lewiston and Salem Streets in Fall River, Massachusetts. Built in 1872, it is one of the city's most visible historic mills, with a particularly fine Italianate stair tower. The complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Durfee Mills is an historic textile mill complex located at 359-479 Pleasant Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Developed between 1866 and 1904, it was during its period of development the city's largest and architecturally finest mill complex. Along with the adjacent Union Mills, it is occupied by numerous retail businesses and a restaurant, and is known as the Durfee-Union Mills. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Barnard Mills is an historic mill at 641-657 Quarry Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Developed beginning in 1874, it was the first mill to use ring spinners instead of mule spinners, and was a major local employer until its closure in 1939. The complex has been redeveloped as a commercial retail space called Tower Mill. The mill was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Flint Mills is an historic textile mill complex located on Alden Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, near the banks of the Quequechan River. The company was founded in 1872 and named in honor of John D. Flint, who served as its first president. The original 1872 mill burned in 1882, and was rebuilt in 1883. The complex was later expanded with a second mill and large addition in 1909. The site also contains a detached granite mill office building. The section of Fall River surrounding the mill became known as "Flint Village". The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Wampanoag Mills is an historic textile mill complex located at 420 Quequechan Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Built beginning in 1871, it is a large and well-preserved example of granite textile mill construction. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Granite Mills are two historic cotton textile mills located on Bedford Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, consisting of Granite Mill No. 2 and Granite Mill No. 3. The site was determined elible for the National Historic Register in 1983, but omitted due to owner's objection.
Beverly Cotton Manufactory was the first cotton mill built in America, and the largest cotton mill to be built during its era. It was built hoping for economic success, but reached a downturn due to technical limitations of the then early production process and limitations of the machines being used. Being the birthplace and testing grounds of the cotton milling industry at the time, it has been called the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.
Davol Mills is a historic textile mill complex located at the corner of Plymouth Avenue and Rodman Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was built in 1867 and expanded in 1871. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 as part of the Corky Row Historic District The red brick mills are unique in the city, built in the Second Empire style.
Tecumseh Mill No. 1 is a historic cotton mill located at 164 Hartwell Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was built in 1866, and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 as part of the Corky Row Historic District. Tecumseh Mills No. 2 and No. 3 were located nearby on Plymouth Avenue, but have since been demolished.
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