USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Andover > Andover: symbol of New England; the evolution of a town > Part 21
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
Land for tillage, scanty though it was in topsoil, came to the proprietors without effort. The fleet which arrived in Salem in 1629, headed by the ship Talbot, brought cattle, mares, and goats, which in due course furnished Andoverians with essential live- stock. Fortunately the Shawsheen River, which, leaving its source in Lincoln, wound its way through marsh and woodland to the Merrimack, was like some of the English streams with which they were familiar; and they noticed that it was not only teeming with fish but also offered water power which could be used to turn wheels. The early settlers providently brought with them the necessary machinery for a sawmill, and by 1635 the sawing and cleaving of timber had become a recognized industry in Salem. With the need for boards, beams, and shingles pressing them hard, the "first comers of inhabitants" wisely set up their
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mill at the same period that they were planning the meeting house and the minister's dwelling. This is mentioned in the Records for 1651 as having been a community project; and doubt- less this mill, sawing up the tall pines in the vicinity, supplied the lumber for the houses around the common.
As soon as crops could be harvested, a gristmill, at which corn could be ground, was completed and put into operation. In 1678, Joseph Parker bequeathed his "corne-mill on the Cochicha- wicke," valued at 20 pounds, to his son of the same name. The mistress of every household in those days had her spinning wheel and loom on which cloth was spun and woven; but the ladies soon required a fulling mill, where the fabrics could be scoured, cleaned, and thickened, as had been done in their homes in England. In 1682, the town fathers granted liberty to any ap- proved citizen to "sett up a saw-mill, fulling-mill, and grist-mill upon Shawshin River near Roger's brooke, to take up twenty acres of land adjoining to the said place, and to enjoy the same forever, with the privileges of a townsman." The men who en- joyed this substantial subsidy were Joseph and John Ballard, who thus brought a much-needed industry to the south end; and if their descendants could have retained the property to this day, they would have made a considerable profit. We know also that in 1718 Joseph Frye built on land belonging to his parents a combination saw-and-grist mill and that the locality was called Frye Village after him. Iron works also were in operation during the early eighteenth century, naturally along the Shawsheen, near the site of the Marland Mills.
With rather amazing enterprise, then, Andoverians developed their own self-supporting industries, and by the close of the sev- enteenth century formed a close-knit industrial community. All of the smaller mills have long since been abandoned, but those who like to walk can still find in remote places the signs of former activity. At one point on the little stream known as the Skug River the stone walls of a millrace still stand in fairly good con- dition. Nearby is a soapstone quarry, with the marks of tools on
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the surface of the rocks, like the footsteps of some prehistoric dinosaur. But when lumber and cloth and stoves could be pur- chased from dealers at a cost lower than that for which they were being manufactured locally, these small community activities proved to be uneconomical. Later the mail order catalogue was to make much household labor, even on the farm, a waste of val- uable time.
Some historian has written that in colonial New England the home was at first completely independent of any factory; next the factory was supplementary to the home; and finally the fac- tory was independent of the home. This is doubtless oversim- plification, but it describes rather accurately what happened in Andover.
Because of the town's geographical situation, the citizens did not, indeed could not, engage in fishing and maritime trade --- two occupations which were very lucrative in such Atlantic set- tlements as Gloucester, Salem, and Newburyport. Part of An- dover bordered on the Merrimack, it is true, but the only vessels built on that river were further downstream, at Salisbury and Newbury. The time arrived when Marblehead was to become New England's greatest fishing port; and Salem was, of course, outstanding in commerce. But while the Essex County coastal towns were creating an aristocracy based on wealth and their merchants were accumulating large estates, the citizens of An- dover lived simpler lives, content with what could be derived from the soil. Not until the Phillips family made their astute marriages could Andover match the stately mansions of New- buryport and Salem. Not until education, and later manufactur- ing, became its principal business did Andover attain a distinc- tion equal to that of the seaboard towns. The day was to come, as loyal Andoverians know, when it could boast of a national reputation, not for codfish, like Gloucester, or for pepper, like Salem, but for its schools and mills.
The movement which eventually transformed Andover from an agricultural community to one largely industrial began after
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the Revolution, as part of a widespread attempt to develop home manufactures. The New England colonies, no longer subservi- ent to the mother country, spontaneously took steps to become completely self-supporting. In 1787, for example, the Andover town meeting passed a vote expressing the resolve of the citizens to refrain from "the excessive use and consumption of articles of foreign manufacture," together with their patriotic pledge "to promote and encourage the manufactures of wool and flax and other raw materials into such articles as shall be useful in the community." The town fathers made a special appeal "to the good sense and virtuous dispositions of the female sex, to the younger as well as the elder, that they would, by their engaging example, economy, and simplicity in dress, giving preference to that clothing which is produced from our flocks and from our own fields, encourage home industries."
In this commendable aim, Andover, like other New England towns, was hampered by a lack of coal, iron, cotton, and wool. Machinery for the production of woolen and cotton cloth had long existed in the British Isles but was little known on this side of the Atlantic. Fortunately Americans did have ample water power and a rich supply of human resourcefulness. A combina- tion of British experience and Yankee enterprise eventually brought about an industrial revolution which in its effects has lasted down to our time. Through periods of depression as well as of prosperity the spirit of the original entrepreneurs has sel- dom flagged and has created several family fortunes.
Always crucial in the preliminary planning was the available water power. The farsighted settlers who pre-empted sites con- trolling streams reaped the richest financial harvest, as a logical and doubtless well-deserved reward for prescience. Ultimately the Merrimack, especially at such strategic spots as Pawtucket Falls, which had a drop of thirty feet, provided power for the largest mills in the region; but long before that, two brooks, the Shawsheen and the Cochichawicke, offered easy opportunities for development. Although neither stream was very broad, their
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water had an almost constant flow, and that was what was most required.
Experimentation in the textile field began in America short- ly after the Revolution. In 1788, the first woolen mill in this country was set up at Hartford, Connecticut; and at the inaugu- ration of President Washington, he, with the Vice-President and the Senators and Representatives from Connecticut, wore broad- cloth made by that factory, thus giving the promoters some ex- cellent publicity. In our day and generation such favoritism would probably lead to a Congressional investigation. Unhap- pily for its promoters, the venture was "a losing proposition from the start," and the plant shut down in 1794. It was impor- tant as being the earliest serious attempt in the United States to conduct under one roof all the different operations involved in making woolen cloth.
Another interesting and less remote project for Andoverians was the Newburyport Woolen Manufacturing Company, for which thirty citizens of that town raised 300,000 dollars-a large sum in those days. Clearly New England had accumulated the capital necessary for profitable industrial development. As Pro- fessor Morison has put it, the center of business interest in Mas- sachusetts was moving "from wharf to waterfall." Although the Newburyport venture went bankrupt, it was inevitable that other similar enterprises would succeed. Yankee resourceful- ness could not be subdued by an occasional failure.
The remarkable Scholfield brothers, Arthur, John, and James -all British-born-brought to this country in the late eighteenth century a knowledge of woolen manufacturing which enabled them not only to reproduce machinery from memory but also to improve it in the process. Of the trio, Arthur seems to have been the inventive genius, but James was the practical organizer. He it was who about 1802 set up one of his brother Arthur's "improved carding machines" in a wooden shack on the banks of the Cochichawicke River. Miss Bailey found evidence that he did a good business throughout the countryside, but because
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of insufficient capital for expansion he showed a deficit year after year and finally moved elsewhere. The Davis and Furber Com- pany still have in their possession the first carding machine ever put together and operated in America. This was said to have been smuggled out of England and remodeled in Newburyport, before being set up in North Andover.
The Scholfield plant, after passing through the hands of sev- eral successive and unsuccessful managers, was purchased in 1826 by William Sutton, of Danvers, who was able to install power looms and other up-to-date machinery. One of the origi- nal buildings, said to have been the "weave-shed," is still stand- ing in one corner of the mill yard. Mr. Sutton shortly replaced the first mill by a larger wooden structure, used today partly for storage and partly for the blending of stocks. His two sons, Wil- liam and Eben, took over at his death in 1832, increased the production, and made Sutton's Mills one of the most reliable manufacturers of flannel in the world. When the second son, William, who had become a member of the General Court and a major-general in the militia, retired in 1865, his son, Eben, also a general, became the sole proprietor, the enlarger as well as the inheritor of a comfortable fortune. The story of this fine family illustrates how rapidly foresight and initiative, combined with some good luck, can in a democracy create an industrial aristocracy. This was not the tragedy of shirtsleeves to shirt- sleeves, but the advance from corduroy to ermine.
Because the wool of New England sheep was coarse in quality, the pioneer manufacturers in that area had difficulty in compet- ing with the best foreign fabrics. Early in the nineteenth century, however, when merino sheep were imported from Spain, a fresh impetus and larger hopes were brought to the industry. By the close of the War of 1812, ninety-four mills making woolen goods had been opened in the United States, most of them in New Eng- land. With the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, the New England mills, compelled to meet vigorous British competition, began their unending battle for higher and higher tariff duties,
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commonly known as "protective." Daniel Webster, in such mat- ters a political opportunist, had originally opposed such duties; but he saw what was coming, and in 1828, when a revised tariff bill was introduced in Congress granting protection to manufac- turers, he responded to pressure from wealthy constituents and gave it his powerful support. Thus, at the price of consistency, he cemented his relationship to the rising generation of "ty- coons" in the Commonwealth and established his position as a "safe" man.
What happened is illustrated more specifically in the saga of the Stevenses. The story of Nathaniel Stevens (1786-1865) and of the dynasty which he founded has been well told in a family history published by Horace N. Stevens in 1946. Nathaniel was educated in the local grammar schools and later at Franklin Academy and Phillips Academy, the two private schools within the borders of the township. In 1802, conforming to the custom of those days, his father bound him out for four years to a neigh- boring farmer, at the end of which period he started to work in a livery stable in Danvers. At twenty-one, free to do what he pleased, he shipped before the mast as a common sailor and fol- lowed the sea for two years. On his return from a long, wearisome voyage, he took a job in the general store then located in the North Parish, near the site of the present Unitarian Church. With his prospective mind, however, he was not destined to be any man's subordinate. At a moment when New England, dur- ing the War of 1812, was unable to import any cloth from Old England, Stevens recognized the potentialities in scientific wool- en manufacturing; and in 1812 he persuaded Dr. Joseph Kit- tredge, the latest in a long line of physicians, to join him as a partner in business.
The two imaginative young men were able to acquire an old gristmill, originally built by Simon Bradstreet on the first, or upper, fall of Cochichawicke Brook, and to secure the services of the same James Scholfield who had recently sold out his mill on the lower fall of the same stream. Taking over on October 13,
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1813, Stevens and Kittredge remodeled the ancient structure to make it suitable for heavy machinery and soon were able to pro- duce broadcloth from wool brought to them by farmers in the district. Within a few months, according to the record, "Na- thaniel mastered all the details of the business and dispensed with the overseer."
Although the new firm was both capable and ambitious, it faced plenty of difficulties, especially after the war, when it had to meet vigorous competition from England. In 1820, Abbot Lawrence, a successful Boston importer, said to Stevens, "Young man, if you have any money, go home and shut down your mill and save what you have, for we can bring goods in here and sell them for less than it costs you to manufacture them." According to the legend, the stubborn Stevens replied, "As long as I can get water to turn my wheel, I shall continue to run my mill." As a matter of fact, he was already making a satisfactory profit. Law- rence himself later changed his policy and became one of the pioneers in building up the great dam which was to provide water power for the city which now bears his family name.
Mr. Stevens was usually called "Captain Nat," because of his election in 1816 as an officer in the militia. Prudent, reliable, re- sourceful, and farsighted, he was quick to take advantage of new methods and expanding markets. He was a man of rugged, deep- lined features, firm lips, and masterful bearing, who was a hap- py combination of persuasive salesman and efficient adminis- trator. The building of railroads, started in the 1830's, helped immensely in the transporting and marketing of the Stevens products. "Captain Nat" had five sturdy sons, of whom three- Moses, George, and Horace-were eventually associated with him as partners. With characteristic family initiative, George hastened with the early pioneers to California to visit sheep ranches and buy wool, profiting more than he would have done had he prospected for gold. The Stevens Company not only weathered the depressions of 1817, 1837, 1847, and 1857, but also survived the Civil War, the Panic of 1873, and numerous
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An Andover Reading Circle in the mid-nineteenth century
Abbot Academy, founded in 1829
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economic catastrophes since the turn of the century. In 1852 a book entitled The Rich Men of Massachusetts stated that Nathan- iel Stevens was worth 100,000 dollars and added the enlighten- ing complimentary comment:
Started poor. A remarkable specimen of an energetic character. His perseverance yields to no obstacles. Knows how to be a friend in need.
The dynamic "Captain," at his death in 1865, was succeeded as president of Nathaniel Stevens and Sons by Moses T. Stevens, his son; and when the latter was elected to Congress in 1890, his two sons, Nathaniel and Samuel, took over the management of the factories. In 1906, this Nathaniel, known affectionately to my generation as "Uncle Nat," became president, holding that office until 1948, the year of his death. Long before that North Andover as a township had been legally separated from An- dover, but "Uncle Nat" was president of the Andover National Bank as well as a graduate and benefactor of Phillips Academy, and everybody in Andover honored him as a leading citizen. His nephew, Abbot Stevens, although he retired from active busi- ness connection with the Stevens mills in 1954, maintained the Stevens tradition in Andover, particularly in his intimate rela- tionship to the bank and the Academy and in the administra- tion of the Stevens Foundation established by his uncle. The Stevenses, like the Osgoods, have always resided in North An- dover, but the South Parish, and later the modern town of Andover, have always rather proudly claimed them in part as their own.
The South Parish, however, did have its own manufacturing ventures, beginning with those of Abraham Marland, a "Lanca- shire lad" who emigrated to America from England in 1801 and, after a few years spent at Beverly, Massachusetts, reached An- dover in 1807. He had learned something of textile machinery in his uncle's mills in Leeds and brought to this country both knowledge and technical experience. He started making cotton
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yarns at Andover in a little building two stories high, forty by fifteen feet in floor dimensions, but turned in 1810 to the manu- facture of woolen goods, including blankets for the army. Grad- ually he extended his activities and in the 1820's, with powerful financial backing of Peter Chardon Brooks, reputed the wealth- iest man in New England, was able to erect his own brick-walled mill. In 1834, he incorporated the Marland Manufacturing Com- pany, with a capital of 60,000 dollars, making various kinds of fabrics, "whatever the changing fashion required." Of this he was president until his death in 1849, by which date the com- munity built up around the mill had become known locally as Marland Village. The company continued to do well for some years; but in 1879, following a financial crisis, the property had to be put up for sale and was purchased for 35,000 dollars by Moses T. Stevens, who modernized it and, with the arrival of better times, restored its earning power and good reputation.
In the late eighteenth century Timothy Ballard owned a mill privilege on the Shawsheen River, at the point where a hamlet had grown up called Ballardvale. This well-located property was purchased in 1836 by a group who incorporated themselves as the Ballardvale Manufacturing Company, with John Marland as treasurer and agent. Mr. Marland seems to have had a genius for invention and experimentation. At one period he intro- duced the planting of mulberry trees, and several families, un- der direction, undertook the raising of silkworms. As might have been predicted, this unique enterprise did not thrive in our New England climate. Later, after machinery for "double spinning" had been perfected, Marland made in his mills the first piece of white flannel ever produced in this country. In 1866, the corporation, as such, ceased to exist, but the Ballard- vale Mills were operated for many years after by private owners, who came and went. In the days when college students-indeed well-garbed men everywhere-had to have white flannel trousers at commencements and other festival occasions, the company did a flourishing business. But, as in many such industries, pros-
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perity depended on current fashions as well as on efficient man- agement. When flannel clothing lost its popularity, the mills had to shut down.
The vicissitudes of manufacturing in those pioneer days are strikingly illustrated in the careers of John Smith and his busi- ness associates. An immigrant to this country in 1816 from the Scotch village of Brechin, in Angus County on the River Esk, Smith obtained employment here at the age of fourteen as a journeyman machinist. He later made the acquaintance of two Andover men, Joseph Faulkner and Warren Richardson, and, with them as partners, undertook the manufacture of cotton machinery. After some not very encouraging experience in other communities, they bought in 1824 an unoccupied mill privilege on the Shawsheen River and there, on borrowed money, put up a building, seventy-two by fifty-seven feet in floor space, and soon were carrying on a good business. Richardson died in 1829, followed by Faulkner in 1831, and Smith bought their interests from their estates, but with their deaths he turned in a new di- rection, using the capital which he had accumulated.
Smith's younger brother, Peter, had arrived from Scotland in 1822, encouraged by John's success. According to a picturesque story, John Smith, on a visit to New York City met there another Brechin townsman, John Dove, who was in a discouraged mood, unable to find work. Smith took Dove with him back to Andover, where the latter was rejoiced to find Peter Smith, with whom he had labored side by side in a Scotch flax mill. The two younger men talked frequently of the processes of flax manufacture, with which they had some acquaintance, and ultimately John Smith sent Dove back to Scotland to get designs for the machinery used in the operation. Dove carried out his mission with attention to every detail, with the result that John Smith built in 1836 an entirely up-to-date mill, took Peter Smith and Dove as his part- ners, and began the first manufacture of flax in the United States. Dove had the mechanical genius for building and improving the necessary machinery, and the company for a time had a vir-
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tual monopoly in the trade. In 1843 they acquired additional water power and factory space at Abbot Village; and in 1864, for practical reasons, they formed a joint stock company, of which John Smith was president and Peter Smith treasurer. The. two Smiths and John Dove all married and had children who were later to be identified with the original company, and they and their descendants were liberal benefactors of both Brechin in Scotland and Andover. We shall have occasion later to com- ment on their careers. Their prosperity during the Civil War was understandably great because of war contracts. The time came, however, when for several reasons the company fell on evil days. The mills at Frye Village were torn down, and today not one direct descendant of the Smith or Dove families resides in the town of Andover. Even Brechin Hall, given to the Theo- logical Seminary in 1865 through a joint gift from the three partners, was demolished in the 1920's. Sic transit gloria industriae!
A fine industry still carried on successfully in North Andover started in 1828, when two machinists, Jonathan Sawyer and Rus- sell Phelps, began the manufacture of woolen mill machinery in the basement of Abraham Marland's mill in the South Parish. In 1832 they sold their expanding business to three of their em- ployees, Charles Barnes, George H. Gilbert, and Parker Rich- ardson, who moved the factory to North Andover, on the Co- chichawicke River. Their new shop, a two storeyed, pitched-roof building, was not very large but it offered employment to many and helped to stimulate a very real prosperity in the neighbor- hood. Some changes took place from time to time in the manage- ment, but in 1851 the control was purchased by George L. Davis and a younger partner, Charles Furber, who were incorporated in 1883 as the Davis and Furber Machine Company, with a capi- tal stock of 400,000 dollars. By 1908 its entire plant, including cottages, tenements, and storehouse, occupied about seventy acres, and it was selling more woolen cards and mules than any other concern in the world.
The energy which created these and other industries was in a
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sense infectious, producing a mood of optimism which supple- mented and complemented the educational and cultural renais- sance of the same period. It was a time when the citizens seemed bursting with vitality and confidence which seemed to fit well with the geographical expansion of the country. These entre- preneurs, like the original settlers of the seventeenth century, were willing to take chances, to stake their future on unusual projects. Security to them was subordinate to ambition.
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