History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 33

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1576

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 33

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Along the old county highway which leads from Bolton to Boylston, where it winds about among the rocky hills east of the Nashua in Clinton, a few farms were tilled many years before the Revolution. Here lived Lieutenant Thomas Tucker; Thomas Wilder, the son of John, and his son Jonathan ; Simon But- ler, and the late John Pollard. Philip Larkin and his soldier sons had homes to the southeast from Clamshell Pond. Thomas Tucker acquired his lands through Capt. Thomas Wilder in 1716, and probably built his honse here about the date of his marriage, in 1719. He transferred his farm to his son William in 1757. In 1788 James Fuller bought the southerly portion of the tract, and in 1798 the homestead came into possession of Charles Chace, from Bellingham, whose descendants have prominent place in the annals of Clinton. The Tucker family had then wholly disappeared from Lancaster. Upon the other farms named, sous built near the fathers, and family

names clung to the estates far into the present cen- tury. Now, however, but one lineal descendant of any of these old families-the venerable Frederick Wilder-dwells in this section of the town.

CHAPTER VIII.

CLINTON-(Continued).

The Revolution-The "Six Nations"-Immigration-The Comb-makers- Poignand & Plant-Coming of the Bigelows-The Clinton Company -The Lancaster Quilt Company-The Bigelow Carpet Company-The Lancaster Mills-Clintonrilie, its Builders and its Enterprises.

WHEN the rallying cry, "taxation without repre- sentation is tyranny," rang through the land, and patriots began the organization of rebellion, John Prescott, fourth of the name, was chosen one of the town's Committee of Correspondence and Safety. Like his grandfather, he seems to have been a radical republican in politics, and was especially active in the prosecution of those who sold tea, and all sus- pected of a leaning towards Toryism.

When the Lexington alarm-courier summoned the yeomanry to arms on the morning of April 19, 1775, John Prescott, fifth of the name, led as captain one of the six companies from Lancaster which made a forced march to Cambridge. As his command of thirty-two men was mustered neither with Colonel Asa Whiteomb's regiment of militia nor Colonel John Whitcomb's regiment of minute-men, they were probably a mounted troop of volunteers. They served twelve days. Two of his sergeants, Elisha Allen and James Fuller, were residents within the bounds of Clinton ; Moses Sawyer was second-lientenant in Captain Joseph White's militia company ; Ebenezer Allen, Jr., and Jotham Wilder were in Captain An- drew Haskell's company, which fought in the battle of Bunker Hill; James Fuller and Jotham, Stephen, Titus and Renben Wilder served for short terms later in the contest, most of them being at Saratoga. Sev- eral of the Prescott family did patriotic service for national independence, but at that date the Prescotts mostly lived upon ancestral lands in Chocksett or elsewhere than in the south part of Lancaster.

The region round about the boundary stone where . the lines of Berlin, Boylston and Clinton meet, in- cluding sundry farms of each town, was, in the years following the Revolution, known as the "Six Nations," that name attaching to it because families represent- ing half a dozen or more different nationalities were therein resident. The Wilders, Carters and others were English by descent ; Andrew McWain, Scotch ; the sons and grandsons of Philip Larkin, Irish ; the families of Louis Conqueret and -- Hitty, French ; Daniel and Frederick Albert, Dutch; and John Canouse was a Hessian, a deserter from the captive army of Burgoyne. Other names and nationalities are sometimes added to the list.

CLINTON.

Beyond the mills to the southward, towards Sandy burnt many years ago, was west of Sandy Pond, a Pond, for a long distance all the lands desirable for tillage or timber had fallen, by original proprietary division of commons or by inheritance, to the Pres- cotts and their kinsfolk, the Sawyers. The third John Prescott, in 1748, the year before his death, " for love and good-will," gave his grandchildren, Aaron, Moses, Joseph, Sarah and Tabitha Sawyer, abont ninety-seven acres of land iying on both sides of a stated highway and of the brook "aboue the forge." These grantees were the children of John Prescott's only daughter Tabitha, wife of Joseph Sawyer. It has often been asserted that Aaron was the founder of Sawyer's mills in Boylston, but the credit of building the first saw and grist-mills in that locality probably belongs to his father, Joseph. Moses Sawyer was the first to reside upon the lands thus deeded to him and his brethren by their grandfather, and his son Moses was the second. Their houses yet remain upon what is now called Burditt Hill, and the latest has long ontlived its hundredth year.

From the death of the fourth John Prescott, in 1791, began a subdivision of his landed estate into many lots, and its rapid alienation from the family. He had five sous and four daughters. To the two youngest, Joseph and Jabez, he deeded in 1786 the two mills, upon condition that each should deliver to him or his wife, annually so long as either should live, "five bushels of Indian corn, three of rye, three of wheat, and one thousand feet of boards." Within two years after the death of their father, the sons, with the exception of John, had parted with their patrimony and removed from Lancaster. Captain John, the fifth and last of his name in the town, clung to thirty or forty acres of land and the old homestead, where he died, childless, August 18, 1811, aged sixty-two, his wife, Mary (Ballard), surviving him.

In the closing years of the eighteenth century the people were weighed down by debt and taxation- legacies of the long years of the war for independ- ence. Shays' Insurrection had been summarily quelled, for New England common sense recognized the fact that anarchy could afford no relief from the general distress. The yeomanry, however full their barns, held mortgaged lands and empty purses. Everywhere the sheriff was busy with executions, foreclosures and forced sales. The merchants and lawyers mercilessly devoured the debtors; large es- tates were broken up and homes changed owners on every hand. Thus Prescott's Mills and some of the lands around them in 1793 fell into the possession of John Sprague, the Lancaster lawyer and sheriff, and until his death, in 1800, they are sometimes mentioned in records as Sprague's Mills. Several heads of families during this decade fixed their habitations upon land in the vicinity bought for prices that now seem ludicrously small. They were: Jacob Stone, a noted framer of bridges and buildings, whose house,

mile from any other dwelling, save one at a saw-mill on Mine Swamp Brook, owned by Jonathan Sampson, of Boylston; Joseph Rice, a basket-maker from Boylston, who married a daughter of Moses Sawyer and lived near him; Nathaniel Lowe, Jr., from Leo- minster, who in 1795 bought of Moses Sawyer a farm lying between the mills and the river, which North High Street now bisects; Lieut. Amos Allen, who bought lands of Jonathan Prescott in 1792 and built the first house on the west side of the highway be- tween the mills and Ebenezer Allen's; Benjamin Gould, father of the poetess, Hannah Flagg Gould and the scholar, Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who began a dwelling probably about the same date, which he never found means to finish, on the spot where Deputy Sheriff Enoch K. Gibbs lives ; Coffin Chapin, Richard Sargent and his sons, and John Hunt, who lived at the summit of the hill on Water Street, about half-way between the mills and the bridge over the Nashua; John Goss, who bought a farm upon the east of the river, near the Bolton and Berlin corner ; Elias Sawyer, who built on the river bank near his dam already mentioned. James Elder lived just outside Clinton bounds.

During the first ten years of this century accessions became more numerous, and among them were some whose descendants have been honorably identified with every phase of Clinton's material progress. Ezekiel Rice purchased the house and farm of Moses Sawyer, Jr., in 1802. John Lowe, a comb-maker of Leominster, in 1800 bought of John Fry fifty acres of land, and in 1804 another lot adjoining, which in- cluded the cellar of Benjamin Gould's house and a shop of Asahel Tower's on the brook. Here he built a few years later, and deeded a moiety of land and house to his father, Nathaniel. Nathan Burditt came from Leominster in 1808 and succeeded Mr. Rice in possession of the house built by Moses Sawyer, Jr. John Severy, a Revolutionary pensioner, came to re- side on Mine Swamp Brook the same year, buying of Sampson his house, brick-yard and saw-mill. John Goldthwaite, the splint-broom maker, occupied a dilapidated building, the only one on the Righy Road. Daniel Harris, a Revolutionary pensioner from Boyls- ton, in 1804 and 1805 bought of John Hunt's unmer- ous creditors his substantial house and large farm, which he in later times shared with his sons-Emory, Asahel and Sidney-who, by their industry, thrift and business ability, became leading men in the com- munity.

Next to the saw and grist-mills, the first manufac- turing industry to employ any considerable number of workmen was the making of horn-combs, intro- duced about the beginning of the present century from Leominster, where it had been a profitable em- ployment from the days of the Revolution. John Lowe and Nathan Burditt were the earliest to ply this trade in the town, but they soon taught it to many

HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

others, who gradually brought improved tools and machinery into service to increase the quantity and improve the quality of their products.

At first the comb-makers exercised their handicraft in diminutive shops or rooms in their own dwellings, and the women and children helped in the lighter parts of the work. The horns were sawn into proper lengths by hand, split, soaked, heated over charcoal, dipped into hot grease, pressed into required form between iron clamps by driven wedges, stiffened by cold water, marked by a pattern for the teeth, which were sawn one by one. The combs were then smoothed, polished and tied in packages for sale. The earliest makers carried their own goods to market, and it is told of John Lowe that he often journeyed as far as Albany on horseback, with his whole stock in trade in his saddle-bags.

The use of water-power in the manufacture was not adopted until 1823. Through Lowe's land ran a little brook, which was finally utilized for comb- making by his son Henry, with whom was associated his cousin, Thomas Lowe. The stream had been dammed at least twenty years earlier, and a small shop thereon had been occupied by Asahel Tower for nail-cutting, and Arnold Rugg for wire-drawing. The Lowes were succeeded several years later by Henry Lewis, and he, in 1836, by Haskell McCollum, who built a second shop and greatly increased the business, having as a partner his brother-in-law, Anson Lowe. E. K. Gibbs built a third shop about 1840.

The age was one when a man was fortunate whose personal peculiarity of form, feature, dress or habit, were not salient enough whereupon to hang some nickname - when many a worthy citizen walked among his fellow-men almost unknown by his baptis- mal name. The same fashion obtained respecting neighborhoods, every little section of the town gaining some quaint designation fancied to be descriptive of the district or its people. The region about these comb-shops on Rigby Brook became in popular par- lance, Scrabble Hollow.

The water privilege on South Meadow Brook in the possession of George Howard was soon turned to use in the horn industry ; at first by lessees Lewis Pollard and Joel Sawtell, later by the owner, who was enter- prising and prosperous. But the most extensive makers of horn goods were the sons of Daniel Harris, who learned the trade of Nathan Burditt. Asahel Harris at first conducted the business at his house east of the river, still standing. This dwelling he had bought from Samuel Dorrison, who built it upon a Jot severed from the Pollard farm. Mr. Harris built later the brick house upon the height of the hill west of the Nashua, where he introduced horse-power and improved machinery in his work-shop. In 1831 Asahel and Sidney Harris built a dam and shop upon the river just above the bridge, securing a fall of about six feet. Sidney Harris, in 1835, bought his brother's interest in the water-power and the house above, and

here began a career of great prosperity. Upon the sale of the Pitts mills, in 1843, the grist-mill machinery was brought thither.

In 1805 Samuel John Sprague sold the Prescott saw and grist-mill, with a house and land, to Benaiah Brigham, of Boston, Thomas W. Lyon soon after bought them of Brigham and acquired other estate in the neighborhood. In August, 1809, Lancaster was stirred with the news that two wealthy foreigners, residents of Boston, had bought the Prescott Mills and were about to erect a factory for the weaving of cotton cloth by power looms. Soon workmen began laying the foundation of the new structure, and the enterprising owners for twenty-five years thereafter were notable citizens of the town. The elder of the two, the capitalist of the firm and president of the corporation afterwards organized, was David Poig- nand, a dapper, urbane gentleman of French Hugue- not descent, born in the island of Jersey. He wore a queue, and carried a gold-headed cane, was both a jeweller and a cabinet-maker by trade, and an excep- tionally good workman. He also had made and lost a fortune in the hardware trade in Tremont Street Boston. His partner was his son-in-law, Samuel Plant, an Englishman who had been in America about twenty years as factor for a great cloth manu- facturer of Leeds. Mr. Plant had made himself thor- oughly acquainted with the manufacture of cotton in England, and secretly brought thence drawings of the machinery necessary for a mill, and perhaps some of the more important parts of certain machines. From these, with the aid of the ingenious machinist, Capt. Thomas W. Lyon, he was able to completely equip the factory and put it into runuing order. Under the methodical management of Mr. Plant, aided by the skill of the machinist, the difficulties which always attend a novel undertaking of such magnitude were soon overcome, and the success of the enterprise was assured. This factory was one of the earliest of its kind successfully run in America. The town granted the firm partial exemption from taxation temporarily. The embargo and war with England served all the purposes of a high protective tariff for the infant industry. Common cotton cloth which at the build- ing of the factory cost about thirty cents a yard, before the close of hostilities commanded double that price.

A little above the factory, upon the same stream, stood a saw-mill built, probably before 1800, by Moses Sawyer, or his son Peter, but at that time owned by Joseph Rice. It commanded a fall of ten to twelve feet, but had a very limited reservoir. This mill was often, and necessarily, a grave source of inconveni- ence to Poignand & Plant by causing an intermit- tent flow of water to their wheel. Mr. Rice's land and water-rights were purchased in 1814, his log dam was replaced by one of stone somewhat higher, and a second factory was built a little below the saw-mill site, to which the looms were moved from the old mill.

CLINTON.

The business had grown until it called for more capital than the firm possessed. February 12, 1821, David Poignand, Samuel Plant, Benjamin Rich, Isaac Bangs and Sethi Knowles were incorporated with the title of the Lancaster Cotton Company, representing a capital of $100,000. Benjamin Pickman, Benjamin T. Pickman and Lewis Tappan also became stock- holders in the company, and the two last named were in succession made treasurers. The old Prescott dam having been broken through by a freshet in 1826, was rebuilt and made one or two feet higher, giving a fall of twenty-nine feet. The square, brick mansion near the lower mill upon Main Street was also built by the company as a residence for the superintendent, Mr. Plant, twenty-five hundred dollars being appropriated for the purpose.

The treasurer was accustomed to drive up from Boston in his own chaise once a month to attend to his special duties, and it was usual for a four-horse team to be sent to the city once a fortnight with the sheetings manufactured. The wagon for its return trip was loaded with cotton bales and goods for the store which Mr. Plant established a short distance from the factory. For several years most of the teaming for the company was done by Nathan Bur- ditt, Sr. In case of any repairs which required a new casting to be obtained, there was no foundry suitably equipped to furnish it nearer than South Boston.

Angust 28, 1830, while casually at the house of his friend, John G. Thurston, in South Lancaster, David Poignand died suddenly. In 1835 the company, find- ing their business unprofitable because of changes in the tariff and the superannuated machinery, advertised their property for sale, described as fol- lows: "one hundred and seventy-seven acres of land, one brick factory with nine hundred spindles, one wooden factory with thirty-two looms and other machinery; blacksmith shop, machine shop, eleven dwelling houses and other buildings." The mills with anch land and structures as were essential to their

operation were finally sold at auction July 26, 1836, aud bought by Nathaniel Rand, Samuel C. Damon, John Hews and Edward A. Raymond, for $13,974. Their successors in 1837 leased the mills to the brothers Horatio N. and Erastus B. Bigelow, who came from Shirley, where the elder had been manager of a cotton-mill. Mr. Plant removed to Northhampton, and there died in 1847.

The Bigelows had selected this location preparatory to the organization of capital for the developing of some inventions of the younger brother. H. N. Bige- low occupied the Plant mansion, and from this time became a resident of the village and an indefatigable and wise promoter of its best interests, moral, social and material. March 8, 1838, the Clinton Company was duly incorporated with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, and the right to hold real estate to the amount of thirty thousand dollars. The incorpo-

rators whose names appeared in the legislative act were: John Wright, H. N. Bigelow and Israel Long- ley. The most notable inventions of Erastus B. Bige- low, at that date perfected, were two power looms: one for weaving figured quilts, the other for the weav- ing of coach-lace. The upper, then styled the yellow factory, was leased by the Clinton Company for the latter manufacture, and the brick factory was devoted to the making of quilts.

Before this time coach-lace had always been woven by hand looms, and any attempt to supplant human fingers in the complicated manipulation required was scouted at by the weavers as presumptuous. But the lace made by the ingenions mechanism invented by Mr. Bigelow in 1836 and patented in 1837 proved of a very superior quality, while the cost of weaving was reduced from twenty-two to three cents a yard. The manufacturers were rewarded with immediate and ample financial success, which continued for about ten years, when stage-coaches began everywhere to be superseded by the railway train, and coach-lace found no place in the new fashion of vehicles.

The company was fortunate in the time of entering upon its work as well as in the genius of its inventor and the ability of its management. The period was one of great and general prosperity. August 17, 1842, the real estate, hitherto leased, was bought of Samuel Damon, and extensive improvements were begun. In 1845 the capital of the company was increased to three hundred thousand, and in 1848 to half a million dol- lars. Meanwhile the working plant was re-enforced by the purchase of Sawyer's Mills, in Boylston, where the water-power was utilized for the making of yarn. Additions were annually made to the original build- ings, and new ones were erected. When the demand for their special product began rapidly to decrease, machinery for the making of pantaloon checks, tweeds and cassimeres was gradually introduced.

A large machine shop was connected with the works which, under charge of Joseph B. Parker, turned out nearly all the machinery required in the factory. Horatio N. Bigelow was general manager from the outset, being, however, relieved for three years, 1849 to 1851, by C. W. Blanchard. About four hundred hands were engaged when all the looms were running ; twelve hundred yards of coach-lace and four thousand yards of pantaloon stuffs were finished per day.

Although the brick factory was bought in 1838 for the introduction of the Bigelow quilt looms, owing to financial difficulties the weaving of counterpanes did not begin until 1841. The successive transfers of the property are of interest, as giving the names of those who began the quilt manufacture and as showing the sudden rise in real estate valnes at that date. Rand & Damon, by purchase of their associates' sharcs, became sole owners of the cotton-mills in 1837, and in 1838, Rand, having acquired his partner's rights in the brick factory, sold it to E. G. Roberts, who the same day transferred it to W. R. Kelley for six thou-

HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

sand dollars consideration. In September, 1839, it was deeded to Thomas Kendall, the price named being twenty-five thousand dollars .. The property, with, of course, additions and improvements, next passed into possession of Hugh R. Kendall in 1842, the alleged consideration being thirty thousand dol- lars, and in 1845 it was sold to John Lamson for forty thousand dollars. October 1, 1851, Lamson disposed of the property to the Lancaster Quilt Company for one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

The quilts that came from the new looms were from ten to thirteen quarters in width and of a high grade in quality, equal to those of foreign make for which the importers demanded six to ten dollars each. The Bigelow quilts were soon in the market at less than half those prices. In the quilt loom, as in all his inventions and improvements in weaving machinery, the design and mechanical construction of each ma- chine were carefully perfected under Mr. Bigelow's own oversight, and not more with a view to the saving in cost of production than to attaining the highest stand- ard of excellence in the fabric produced.

February 11, 1848, John Lamson, William P. Barn- ard, George Seaver and associates were incorporated by the name of the Lancaster Quilt Company, for the purpose of manufacturing petticoat robes, toilet cov- ers, and the various descriptions of counterpanes, quilts and bed-covers, with an authorized capital of two hundred thousand dollars. Thirty-six looms and about one hundred hands were employed and the annual output was over seventy-five thousand quilts. Charles W. Worcester was the managing agent of the works.

The devices harmoniously combined in the coach- lace loom were seen by the inventor to be equally applicable to the weaving of any pile fabric. With suitable enlargement and modification of parts the product would become Brussels carpet, or, by the addition of a cutting edge to the end of the pile wire, be given a velvet pile. The adaptation to the carpet loom of the chief novel feature of the lace loom-the automatic attachments to draw out, carry forward and re insert the wires- was an easy problem for one who " thought in wheels and pinions." The carpet loom, as a conception in the inventor's brain, was soon com- plete in all its details. The machinists under Mr. Bigelow's eye shaped the conception in wood and metal, and at Lowell in 1845 Jacquard Brussels car- peting was woven upon the power loom. The inven- tion was patented in England March 11, 1846, and in the great London Industrial Exhibition of 1851 speci- mens of Bigelow's carpeting were exhibited which won from a jury of experts the highest encomium. It was declared in their official report that the Bigelow fabrics were " better and more perfectly woven than any hand-woven goods that have come under notice of the jury."

The Bigelow brothers, the success of the new carpet loom thus made certain, bought a building at the south end of High Street, in which Gilman B. Par-

ker's foundry and other mechanical industries had been carried on, raised it and built a brick basement beneath, thereby obtaining a room two hundred feet long by forty-two in width. In this they set up twenty-eight looms run by a thirty horse-power steam- engine, and in the autumn of 1849 began the making of Brussels carpet by power. The requisite spinning was done at other mills. About one hundred hands were employed and five hundred yards of carpeting made daily. The day's labor of a skilled weaver on the hand loom rarely brought five yards, while the power lonm, managed by a girl, readily produced four or five times as much and ensured superior finish. The works were under the management of H. N. Bigelow. H. P. Fairbanks became a partner with the Bigelow Brothers in 1850, and with added capital, larger and more substantial buildings, year by year crowded the little valley site.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 33

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1576

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1576