USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Holyoke > Complete program of Holyoke's seventy-fifth anniversary and home coming days > Part 4
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The names on the articles of incorporation of the company were those of Thomas H. Perkins, George W. Lyman and Edmund Dwight. After the resignation of Mr. Ewing a Mr. Charles P. Rising became the general superintendent of the construction with a Philander Anderson, who had attended West Point, as engineer. Johu C'hase also had an executive capacity.
Mneh surveying work was done in the summer of 1847, which gave the engineers an estimate of the potential of their project. The total watershed of the valley amounted to over eight thousand square miles. The minimum flowage
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ANNIVERSARY
SEVENTY - FIFTH
of the river past a given point was abont seven thousand cubic Feet per second. A thirty-foot dam was within the realm of possible construc- tion and such a dam would impound water to give enough industrial power for a city of two hundred thousand people.
A mill power by the established method of computation represented the passage of thirty cubic feet of water over a l'all of twenty-five l'et each second ; sixty or seventy horsepower. A thirty-foot dam across the river would supply cheap power for hundreds of mills.
The building of the dam began at onee and in a hurry. Laborers were offered work at the going price or a little less, and they came to the construction site by the hundred. They were not unacquainted with the valley and its environs as many of them had worked here be- fore, building the railroad. They turned to with willing hands and wealth of good spirit.
The strnetnre was over a thousand feet long, with stone abutments at the ends as anchor piers. It was framed of wooden timbers and covered with wooden planks, mostly hemlock and spruce floated down the river from the States to the north. Over two million board feet went into the work. The sides were made up of large timbers, some of them forty feet long. The face of the dam was straight up and down and the crest of it was armored with boil- er plate. In places the timbers were joined together with one-inch iron bolts. Across the full length ran a foot bridge three feet wide to be traversed for purposes of inspection. There was nothing new or unusual about the engineer- ing. It simply followed standard construction practice.
A strike occurred among the workmen soon after the Ewing resignation. It lasted for about ten days during which the company remained adamant. After that some twenty of the work- ers, driven back by family needs at home, couldn't hold ont any longer and tried to re- turn to work. The rest of the strikers, however, were determined that no one should return until the wages were restored to their former level. A general melee ensued in which the returning strikers, the engineer corps which was trying to protect them, and a number of bystanders were severely mauled. Anderson himself and a Mr. Farnham, a constable, were wounded. Only after some time were the wounded extricated and carried home.
That evening the military was called upon and twenty-five artillerymen came down from Northampton at midnight, equipped with arms and ammunition, and ready to fire if need be. Rioters were rounded up and arrested. This
skirmish was talked about for years and grad- ually gained descriptive ornamentation in the telling. Local writers of the later hall' of the century referred to it by the name of the "Battle of Day's Ilill."
After that time many other workmen were added to the already large force. The work was pressed forward and in due time, at ten minutes of ten, on the morning of November 16, 1848, the last plank was in place. The gates were opened to protect against too precipitous a rise. Workmen picked up their tools. All at once there was a heavy silence below the great structure and the mighty waters of the Con- neetient began to well up behind it. Years of planning and construction were now of the past. The crucial test was at hand.
THE BEST LAID PLANS
Now the water began to rise, rapidly at first as it filled the smaller basin, then more slowly as it spread ont over the wider areas. At 2 o'eloek word went around that the triumphal hour of overflow was approaching. Those who had remained at home began to move toward the scene. The Conneetient River Railroad brought up a trainload of eurious sight-seers from Springfield. The higher land above the dam was crowded with women and children. Men, most of whom had worked on the projeet. gathered in little groups, talking and joking among themselves, keeping always a watchful eve on the slowly rising lake whose dark waters crept up the slanting planks.
At 3 o'clock engineers Chase and Anderson began to breathe easier. The water was well up toward the crest and the structure was hold- ing like a stone wall. Well; why not! They had planned it carefully. True enough the thing was on a pretty big seale, but due allow- ance had been made. The dam was going to stand and that was what they had built it to do.
At 3.10 o'clock the unexpected happened. Water began to spout through the pier on the western end. It was a small spouting at first but rapidly gained force and shot out further and further with greater and greater distance. The pier was moving. The water was pushing it over. A group of workmen picked up a length of railroad iron and elanged it down on the stone. They brought another rail and another until the huge abntment was weighted down. That would hold it.
At 3.20 o'clock disaster came. Even the old timers who saw the thing couldn't quite explain how it happened. All at once with a loud erack- ling noise, as of timber splitting, the middle
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ANNIVERSARY
May Ludington,
ANNIVERSARY
SEVENTY - FIFTH
began to bulge forward. Ahnost instantly it parted and fokled over before a roaring rush of water. In a second the river was charging downstream in a raging, churning torrent, car- rying the loosened timbers and planking along like match sticks.
Half an hour later, after the shock had some- what worn off, the Treasurer of the company sent by telegraph one of the most famous mes- sages ever to come ont of this loeality: "Dam gone to Hell by way of Willimansett."
The Springfield Republican described the dis- aster in the following words: "When the water broke through, the pond had filled to within several feet of the top, and the pent-up waters rushed forth with a mighty power and dashed and trembled over the rocky bed below, sweep- ing away with them the now broken and seat- tered, but still huge portions of the wreck. . The scene was both magnificent and frightful."
Five days later a meeting of the directors of the corporation was called in Boston to look into the canses and assess the damage of the faihre. Mr. Chase and Mr. Anderson attended the meet- ing with maps and diagrams and explained the "imperfections by which the destruction was occasioned."
The 1853 report of the Hadley Falls Company to its stockholders comments upon the dam fail- are as follows :
"It was at first contemplated to throw across the river a temporary dam, which, while it would serve as a protection to the ercetion of one more substantial below it, would answer the purposes of the company until such a permanent dam should be completed. The first dam was aeeordingly built with less regard to strength than the result proved would have been prudent. It was not able to resist the force of the river, and was carried away a few hours after the gates were closed. The shutting of the gates occurred earlier than had been designed, in con- sequence of a freshet in the river."
The total cost of the damage was estimated at $30,000. No lives were lost. Mr. Chase and Mr. Anderson were not relieved of their jobs but were anthorized to start immediately upon plans and construction of a stronger and better de- signed structure which they were sure would stand the test. The management was smart enough to profit by the experience of its work- ers even though that experience had been a fail- nro. Mr. Ewing saw in the destruction only the hand of the Divine Providence, in retribu- tion for Sunday work.
A later engineer of the Water Power Com- pany held the collapse of the dam to have been a fortunate thing. The cofferdam upstream
from the gate-house was rapidly weakening and the head gates were not in their grooves; uor was the upper level canal yet completed. Had this cofferdam given way the whole river would have been let loose over the site of the projected city and would have cansed incalenlable damage.
UNDISCOURAGED
The construction of the new dam got under way immediately. Mr. Chase stated : "My cal- enlations and my reasoning are based upon the supposition that the Directors may, as soon as the dam is completed, conmenee the constrne- tion of a stone dam." He believed still that a wooden dam eonld be made to hold and that it could be built in a year.
He also felt that the construction of such a dam would be justifiable inasmuch as such a dam would serve as a cofferdam for the later stone construction. He asserted that the cost of two dams constrneted in this way would not be much greater than the construction of a single dam in the conventional way.
The company managed to get along with this wooden dam for more than half a century. Nevertheless, when the stone dam was finally built the old dam served to hold the waters away from the construction.
The engineers were mindful of the responsibil- ity which the first failure had placed upon them to make their new work stand. Every possible means was taken to insure against a second dis- aster. The second dam, kuown today as the "Old Dam" was well built.
This dam was erected in sections 200 feet long. The solid rock of the bed of the stream was excavated to a depth of six feet. As timber went up the whole foundation, 90 feet thick was packed solidly with stone to a height of 10 perpendicular feet above the bed of the river.
The planking on the upper portion was over- lapped to a thickness of 18 inches of solid tim- ber, all tree-mailed and strongly spiked together. The graveling in the bed of the river was begn 70 feet above the dam and piled up over 30 feet on its sloping surface, an upstream ballast to keep it upright.
The construction of the second dam took only seven months. Begun in April of 1849, it was completed on October 22, of that same year. On the eve of the closing of the first dam a great ball had been held in the offices of the company. This time no premature celebrations were held. At 1 o'clock the last gate was dropped into place and the mighty Connecticut ceased to flow until its water, spreading ont over the valley, climbed to the dam's erest and slid over ; dropping down
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ANNIVERSARY
EARLY PICTURE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH-Erected 1834
in a broad smooth wall to the rocks below, where they crashed with a thunderous roar.
The shock of such a great weight of water pounding down on the river bed caused the buildings in the whole neighborhood to tremble as if from an earthquake, a foretaste of the tre- mendous disturbance later occasioned by the same cause after the construction of the present- day dam.
CASUALTY
Scarcely six months had passed before the dam claimed its first casualty. On the morning of May 4, 1850, John Teague was out on the water above the structure, catching driftwood. In making fast to a log, he unfortunately lost an oar, and immediately began to float toward the falls. Desperately he commenced rowing with one oar, but this only sent his boat round and round. A large erowd of people on the shore witnesesd his plight but were unable to help him. When about 20 feet from the crest he jumped into the water and attempted to swim, but it was too late. His body was seen once in the waters below for a brief moment then was gone.
The waters imponnded by the dam are grad- nally released into an elaborate canal system through which they are carried to the mills whose water wheels they turn. A huge water gate, substantially built and eontrolled in sec- tions, permits the regulation of flow from the upper river into this canal system. The first great channel into which the flood pours is about 1000 feet long and 140 feet wide. It flows directly into a long, goemetrieally straight eanal
known as the upper level canal. A mile and a quarter in length, this canal narrows as it re- leases water into the mill gates along the way and is only 80 feet wide at the end.
Parallel to this upper level canal, 400 feet to the east of it and 20 feet below it is a second level canal. At each mill situated between these two streams the water is passed from the higher level, through the water wheels of the mill and drained off at the lower level. Thus the differ- ential in water level between the two canals is taken advantage of, not by one mill alone but by dozens of mills side by side. The 400 feet of land between the canals gives ample room for the location of substantial industrial build- ings.
The tail waters of these higher level mills travel along the second level canal to the north or to the third level canal to the sonth, where they follow the bank of the river at a distance of 400 feet, constituting another two-mile strip of parallel mill sites. The tail waters of the second and lower canals empty directly into the river.
The upper and second level canals are erossed by bridges spaced approximately a thousand feet apart. The streets which pass over these bridges have become the main east-west arteries of traf- fic of the community.
MIGTITY PLANS
The plan of development of the new city was indeed comprehensive, involving as it did the ultimate construetion of facilities for a sizeable center of habitation as well as for industrial production. It was conceived and projected as
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ANNIVERSARY
THE DAM
a whole, and the map of the "New Town of Holyoke," published by the Hampden Freeman in the year 1850, delineates in recognizable form the ontlines of the City of Holyoke as it is known today.
The construction comprised, not only the dam, gatehouse and appartenances thereto, the canals and locks for rafts and river boats, but the cot- ton factories, machine shops, tenements, water supply system, gas plant, sewers, fire depart- ment, and schools. It was a gigantic undertak- ing for those days when most of the digging had to be done with pick and shovel and most of the hanling with teams of horses and dumpearts.
In the course of a few brief years more than two miles of canals were built, a considerable part of the total canal system that we know in Holyoke today. Even with the modern steam shovel and bulldozer such an undertaking would seem monumental now. In those days the effort was Herculean and attracted nation-wide com- ment. Not only was an enormous amount of excavating to be done, but in addition, stone for over five miles of canal wall had to be quar- ried up river, brought down stream to the project, and carefully laid in place. These canal walls were in some places 30 feet high.
Cotton eloth to make dresses for the women of America was the final purpose of this elab- orate man-made creation. The proprietors knew the ways of the cotton industry from the begin- ning to the end, in fact, they held a virtual monopoly in it. They had organization, whole- sale, and even retail outlets in larger cities all over the country. They felt, and rightly so at. least for a time, that for this particular product there was destined to be a rapidly expanding market. What they wanted was prodnetion and that immediately.
ACHIEVEMENT
In 1850, the first cotton mill was completed, powered by a new kind of cast-iron or brass
turbine which was at this time rapidly displac- ing the old overshot wooden wheel of the trib- utary streams. The advantage of this turbine was that it could work under greater head and greater pressure, and so develop the greater power conducive to concentration of mannfac- turing. MeCormick, who was later to be con- nected with the Jolly Foundry and the Holyoke Machine Company did much inventive work in the line of perfecting the waterflow coutonr of the blades of this turbine. At the turn of the century every text book on "Natural Philos- ophy" including the famous "Steel's Physics" had a picture of the "Jolly" or "Holyoke" water wheel. Sometimes the picture was that of the old iron overshot wheel.
In 1850, a second cotton mill was completed and shortly afterward put into operation. These two cotton mills were indeed imposing struc- tures being 268 feet long, 68 feet wide and five stories high. The first mill had 18,000 spindles for number 14 yarn and the second had 30,000 spindles for number 80 yarn. Later these mills came to be known as the Lyman Mills.
The company having diffienlty in obtaining enough women to operate such an enormous plant in New England, in 1853, sent its agent to Glasgow to arrange for the immigration of power loom weavers to America and Holyoke. Hours of work were long, at least 12 hours a day for a six-day week.
The machine shop of the new industrial cluster was an enormous affair, the central building alone being 98 feet long, 40 feet wide and four stories high. Wings on each side were 200 feet long and 60 feet wide. An additional extension was 200 feet long by 60 feet wide and two stories high. Adjacent to these was a great foundry with two cupola furnaces, a forge with seven trip hammers, fourteen forge fires and two fur- naces. A pattern house of huge dimensions was furnished with the most modern woodworking equipment of the day.
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ANNIVERSARY
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LYMAN MILLS' TENEMENTS
MODEL MACHINE SHOP
The machine shop of this industrial village was truly a thing to be marvelled at. It was equipped to build any machinery that could be built in that day and age. It could turn out the co.ton spinning mules or even looms if neces- sary, although loom building was a specialized manufacture. It could also build heavy ma- chinery such as water wheels and eases. Its lathes could turn a cylinder eight feet in diam- eter and up to 20 feet long.
The Hampden Freeman of April 16, 1853, writing about this shop made the following com- ment: "We understand it to be one of the very largest in New England-somewhat larger than that of the Locks and Canal Company at Lowell. One cannot fail to be strnek with wonder when he contemplates the extent of the entire estab- lishment from the rooms of the draftsmen, and patternmakers, through those of the foundry, the blacksmith shop, the turning, the planing, and finishing rooms, till the machinery is finally stored in the warerooms or transported to its final destination."
The Industrial Revolution had come to Ire- land. The same paper reported : "By the aid of labor-saving machinery the manufacture of innumerable varieties of goods, necessary for the comforts and luxuries of man, is now carried on with but little manual labor-the whole process being redneed to the mere attending of machines, which in very many cases can as well be done by women and children as by men."
The shop had patterns for the entire maehin- ory of a cotton mill, from the turbine water wheel to the spindles and looms. Business was booming in the early 50's. In January of 1854. it was compelled to extend its western wing 200 feet. These buildings are still standing to- day and are presently known as the Hadley Mills buildings of the Gas and Electric Department.
DEMAND FOR LABOR
With so much construction going on the de- mand for labor was heavy. The work was of a rugged nature, somewhat dangerons. Some- times men got killed shifting the Inge blocks of granite from palce to place. Even the pick and shovel work was grueling and tedious. On February 4, 1848, two workers were killed, one by a slide of earth, the other by falling into a rock cup on the railroad. On July 27, the little daughter of John Gerry, waiting for her father 500 feet from the quarry, was killed by the stone from a blast.
Work was here to be had, however, and up the valley from New York, and along the rail- road from Boston, eager job seekers eame by the hundreds. Others had come before them as members of the construction gangs building the railroad. Many had remained.
EARLY IRISH STOCK
These laborers were Irish, for the most part newly arrived immigrants. They were the first
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SEVENTY - FIFTH
contingent of that great wave of Irish innni- gration which came to American shores during the decades of the 40's ant 50's. Possessed of little of this world's goods, uneducated, stran- gers in a strange land, they were compelled to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. They accepted with courage the chal- lenge which America offered and entered into the spirit of achieving with cheerfulness and faith in the future. They had come to this new world prepared to accept the bitter with the sweet.
A long poignant story was in their coming. They, too, were seeking religious freedom just as earlier comers to American shores had songht religious freedom. They were escaping from the exploitation of English rule and the instru- mentality of absentee land ownership. They were running away from the enforced payment of the tithe to a church in whose doctrine they did not believe. They were escaping from tax collectors who plied their trade in the same manner as had the much despised publicans in the far flung provinces of imperial Rome. They were fleeing from an over-present danger of eviction with no alternative but the open road.
They came from Connaught, from Comity Mayo and from County Clare, and even from Dublin, Cork and Kerry. The fearful potato famine of 1846 in Ireland was not the sole rea- son of their leaving their native land. The famine served to accentuate the deeper wrongs which they had been forced to endure, and showed the futility of further durance under English rule, and in this respect was the de- terminer in a great mass movement.
These people built their first homes on the high ground overlooking the dam in the region now known as Prospect Park, rude pioneer affairs. Four boards wore driven into the ground for corner posts and to these others were mailed to form the sides. The top was then covered with a roof of overlapping boards. Openings were made for a door and two or three little windows were cut. The turf was banked up to the caves to protect against the cold of winter. A workman would come into town in the morning. buy a thousand feet of bemlock boards and have his lodging up by night, and the next day be ready to go to work on the dam.
On the inside the earth was smoothed, scant- ling nailed and a floor of wide boards laid down. Sometimes a little hole was dng for a cellar and a trap door cut through the board for entrance and exit. An opening was then sawed in the roof with a bit of tin tacked about it and a stove pipe run through into the open air. Un-
der the V in the roof was a loft. Sometimes a partition of boards divided the lower room in two.
In the summer of 1849, when the construc- tion of the dam was bringing newcomers to the locality by the hundred and living conditions were crowded to the utmost, cholera broke out in the "Patch." The weather was hot and dry. Sanitation provided in those days in a mush- room settlement was next to nothing; in fact. nowhere in America was sanitation practiced then as we know it today. Refrigeration was unknown and in summer-time much of the meat consumed was dried or corned or salted, giving rise to excessive thirst .. The only water avail- able was that from the river and this at mid- summer level was stagnant.
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