USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Sketches about Salem people > Part 26
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The fact that the new enterprises were prosperous led some adventurous souls in Salem to believe that a cotton mill might be successfully operated in their own town. To be sure, there was no water-power, and there wasn't the natural humidity necessary for the proper manipulation of the cotton fibre and known to be a concomitant to every water-course; but against these facts it was argued that with the improved steam-engine and the ease with which the new fuel, coal, could be brought by water directly to the mill, steam power could be produced with sufficient economy to compete with the water-wheel. While, as for humidity, that would be adequately supplied by the rise and fall of the tide, provided the mill was built along the water front, and to this end, and quite naturally, a site was selected at Stage Point, directly opposite the historic Derby Wharf, as filling all the requirements of an ideal location, since there was sufficient area of land, a bold shore line affording a depth of water ample for vessels bringing cotton and coal, and last, but not least,
c. 1925
Central Wharf
South
BRIDGE
PICKERING
Salem Electric Light Con
River
Derby
PEABODY
COTTON STORAGEMIT.
WARD ST.
SPINNING MILL
Wharf
HARBOR ST.
CLOTH
LYNCH SJ.
BOARD.
PERKINS 3T.
PINGACE ST.
WEAVE SHED
PALMER
STREET
Stage Point
Salem Harbor
--
-LEAVITI
PLAN IV-The new Naumkeag Mills, 1925, showing the almost complete obliteration of the old Point.
STRELIT
11
BY J. FOSTER SMITH
the flooding and ebbing tides close at hand for humidi- fying the atmosphere .*
The important detail of raising the required capital for the new enterprise, and this was estimated at a half million dollars, was largely accomplished by Nathaniel Griffin, a retired shipmaster, who later, in 1846, became the first Treasurer of the Company. . (It is interesting to note that fifty years later, in 1896, his grandson, Nathaniel Griffin Simonds, became Treasurer, and held that position until 1926, when he retired, after a total service with the company of sixty-four years.) The Company was incorporated in 1839, but the money must have come in slowly, since building operations did not start until several years later, this in spite of the fact that the list of original stockholders includes the names of most of the prominent merchants, ship-owners and shipmasters of the old town, and representative names from every town and village in Essex County.
The new venture was incorporated under the name of "Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company"-"Naumkeag" for the ancient Indian name of the locality, and "Steam" to differentiate the Mill from other factories in New Eng- land which were universally operated by water-power. This name is now somewhat of a misnomer, as the power is entirely electric, steam being used only for heating in cold weather and for certain minor operations.
Production was in full swing in 1847, and excerpts from the final report of the engineer in charge are inter- esting. The engineer was Col. Charles T. James, evi- dently a man of more than ordinary ability, since the mill was undoubtedly much in advance of any hitherto built
* The need for a very moist atmosphere in cotton-spinning is to keep down the static electricity, to which the cotton fibre is very susceptible, and which, if active, causes the individual fibres to repel each other, thus defeating the process of twist- ing and spinning. In modern days this moisture is provided by artificial humidification, but in early days manufacturers relied largely on natural conditions, as along water-courses or in localities naturally humid. Lancashire, England, became the greatest cotton-spinning district in the world on account of the favorable conditions induced by the consistent and well- nigh perpetual precipitation there.
12
STAGE POINT AND THEREABOUTS
in this country, and up to the time of its destruction in 1914, compared most favorably with mills designed and built a half century later, particularly in such matters as width in relation to height, lighting, sanitation and other details not particularly stressed in early mill con- struction.
Colonel James writes :-
The work on the Naumkeag Mill has continued to pro- gress, and has finally reached its completion; and you will permit me to tender my congratulations to the Board on the pleasing fact that the mill is now in full and successful operation in all its departments. Notwithstanding much of the machinery is of a novel character, and of a heavy descrip- tion, yet the operation of the entire mass is such as to give perfect satisfaction ; and its performance is quite equal to the anticipations of all concerned. Your Engineer may be permitted to say, he is perfectly willing the Naumkeag Mill, as to its appearance, arrangement and operation and the quality of its work, should be tested by the closest scrutiny and the most thorough examination, by men of the best practical operative skill in this country, or any other.
The work having now been completed and the bills all gathered in, I am able to make a definite statement of the entire cost. After having collected and summed up the vari- ous items of expenditure involved in the prosecution of the work, as well as the purchase of real estate, etc., the full amount is found to be six hundred and twenty-one thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ten cents; which makes the cost per spindle twenty dollars and ninety-one cents; or about twelve per cent higher than the former estimate. The footing exhibits, it is true, a heavy aggregate, but it will be remembered too, that the Naumkeag Mill is of much larger dimensions, and contains much more ma- chinery, than any other Cotton Manufactory in the Union. Besides, there is included in this amount, the cost of real estate, etc., of no practical use to the mill, valued at more than fifty thousand dollars, besides the boarding houses, which cost more than thirty-five thousand. The Mill has earned something over fifteen thousand dollars in six months, under very unfavorable circumstances, such as delay in starting machinery, loss from decline in the price of cotton, etc. This is believed to be very fair, all things considered, but it is not by any means to be taken as a true indication of what
13
BY J. FOSTER SMITH
the mill is capable of doing. As regards the quality of the goods manufactured, as a test of the qualities of the Naum- keag Mill, it is only necessary for me to say, specimens of them took the premium at the late Annual Exhibition of the Mechanics' Charitable Association at Boston, and at that of the American Institute at New York, as being superior in quality to any other article of the kind offered at either place.
The Engineer, who was certainly a credit to his honor- able profession, closes his report as follows :-
Gentlemen,-But one thing more remains for me to do. I cannot permit myself to close this report without one feeble effort to impress it strongly and forcibly on your judg- ment that, in order to ensure that degree of success which your noble enterprise so richly merits, the management of the establishment must be of the best description. Your mill is the largest in the United States, and of novel construction. Its character is such that, with the aid of sound judgment, scientific knowledge, and great practical skill, its success can hardly fail to equal your reasonable wishes. On the other hand, if these, or any of these, should unhappily be wanting in the management, the result will of necessity be disastrous. Accept then, Gentlemen, as the friendly admonition of one deeply solicitous for the interest of the Corporation, the hope that you will, by all means, ensure to the Naumkeag Mill the very best management which our country can furnish.
It is interesting to supplement Colonel James' report with contemporary accounts of these beginnings of the Naumkeag, and this I am able to do from conversations with a man who, when a boy of ten, lived on the Point and day by day witnessed the marvelous change of a district of waving hay-fields to a bustling factory site with hundreds of operatives actively employed,-the sibi- lant swish of the scythe in the lush grass supplanted by the whirr of spindles and the throb of looms, and the evening quiet of its pastoral precincts broken by the Mill bell telling the time hour by hour throughout the night. In the morning there would be a rude alarm at five o'clock, and in the evening a peaceful curfew at nine.
14
STAGE POINT AND THEREABOUTS
REMINISCENCES OF A FORMER RESIDENT OF THE POINT.
Mr. Francis A. Moreland, of Everett, now in his ninety- fourth year, lived on the Point as a child, and distinctly remembers the excitement when, as an observant lad, he followed the building operations,-noting the army of men leveling the site, digging the foundation and raising the walls of what, to youthful eyes, seemed to be the most wonderful and biggest building in the world! There were ships at the sea-wall, unloading all sorts of material, slow-plodding oxen dragging huge stones for the under- pinning, and enormous timbers for floors and roof, and later heavy teams bringing strange and fascinating ma- chines to fill the great rooms.
It was David Merritt who trucked the original ma- chinery and the first cotton, and it is interesting to record that in the more than fourscore years up to the present time, David Merritt, his son and his successors, always under the same name, have trucked all the machinery and cotton to the Mill and also the finished product to the railroad.
Mr. Moreland particularly recalls the operation of hoisting the machinery into the Mill and gives a graphic account of it. The Mill was over 400 feet long, of four stories and an attic, and had two square towers on the southern side, with a wide door opening at each story. It was to these doors that the heavy machinery was hoisted by a gang of lusty workmen, most of whom had been sailors at some time or other. These men were in charge of a retired mariner named Ralph Butterfield, who seems to have been eminently fitted for his job of yard- master, and especially qualified at this time of installing the equipment. He is described as brawny, thickset, his face deep-tanned, almost hidden by a grizzled beard, and his ears adorned with little gold rings, and above all endowed by nature with a voice of tremendous power, and by vocation with a vocabulary extensive, picturesque and convincing. The falls, with their huge blocks, were hooked to the outrigger at the top of the tower, and while most of the machinery was hoisted hand over hand, or
15
BY J. FOSTER SMITH
by the crew walking away man-o'-war fashion, some of the heaviest pieces required the use of a windlass. When they were hoisting by hand, Mr. Moreland recalls the yardmaster standing in the tower doorway, far aloft, lustily yo-ho'ing to give the time to the men as they swayed away on the rope, while, if the windlass was used, some ancient sailorman was sure to strike into an old sea chanty, and the great piece of machinery would go into place to the tune of "Away Rio," "Sally Brown," "Good-bye, Fare Ye Well," or some other familiar cap- stan chanty.
Particularly interesting are Mr. Moreland's reminis- cences of the Point,-the beach where the boys went in swimming, the big trees under which they lay in the hot summer days, the games they played, his schoolmates, the Brown School and its famous master, Mr. John B. Fairfield, with his strenuous but effective methods to inculcate habits of punctuality, industry and concentra- tion. This, however, is not the place for what would be a most fascinating chapter in a story of Salem life in the first half of the last century.
Soon after the Mill was built, a street, afterwards called Union Street, was laid out, and a bridge built across the river for the particular accommodation of the mill oper- atives living down town. This bridge was for a long time called the New Bridge, and Mr. Moreland recalls that on a memorable occasion the draw-tender was obliged to raise the bridge to separate the Pointers from the Downtowners, when the boys of the two factions were engaged in one of their really sanguinary sectional fights.
Accompanying a chart showing the corporation grounds and other interesting places in the neighborhood, Mr. Moreland writes: "I have drawn it as it was at the time I lived there and until about 1853, when they began to cut up the rear land, then mowing fields, into house lots, and make new streets. I visited the place some years before the great fire, and all the territory from the old Briggs estate to the water had been so thickly covered with dwellings, I could only with difficulty locate the old fields where we, carefree boys, romped in the grass, waded
16
STAGE POINT AND THEREABOUTS
in 'Browning's Pond,' and had our clambakes on Stage Point, now entirely washed away. It is a crude chart, but absolutely correct so far as relative positions are con- cerned, for I have a most retentive memory, especially for matters of long ago, and every bit of beach, wharfage, old street, dock and lumber yard and green mowing field is indelibly fixed in my memory as clear as yesterday. On that visit I passed down the entire length of the street between the old mill and the boarding-houses. The mill was humming away as of old, and I could hardly resist the impulse to stop at No. 6 first block, go in and find father, mother, Aunt Sarah, sister Augusta, brother John ! Alas, what a gulf of years lay between me and that vision !"
PROGRESS OF THE NAUMKEAG STEAM COTTON COMPANY.
With the passing years, other mills were erected, until the space between the original building and the South River was closely covered, and the land to the south had been gradually acquired for storehouses, coal piles, and the other appurtenances of a thriving and growing con- cern. This expansion had absorbed the Seccomb Oil Works, the Joshua Brown Boatyard, and to the extreme south the old Sterry Smith Iron Foundry, while every- where the new streets mentioned by Mr. Moreland were closely built up with modern dwellings of the three and four-decker type, mostly of wood and of notably flimsy construction.
But the way to old Stage Point was still open and all who cared had free access thereto.
June 25, 1914, was a hot, dry day. At noon, a fire started in a small manufacturing establishment on Boston Street, a mile and a half away, and after a course changed several times by a veering wind, reached the mill district late in the afternoon. In a few hours, the proud plant, built up through seventy years of careful planning, was reduced to stark brick walls and tangled masses of junk! Wooden copings and sash, hard pine timbers, oil-soaked floors, and tinder-like cotton, helped to make the job complete; at the same time, lack of water rendered the
17
BY J. FOSTER SMITH
sprinkler equipment inoperative, and the efforts of the city and mill fire departments were futile against the fierce heat from hundreds of burning dwellings closely surrounding the plant.
Adequate insurance, together with an optimistic and progressive board of management, made it possible to begin a rebuilding program at once. The improved and modern layout of the plant occupied not only all the terri- tory of the old mill but extended much farther to the south, so that with new sea-walls and more filling, all traces of the oil works, the marine railway, Brown's boat- yard and Miller's shipyard, were quite obliterated; but to the extreme south there remained a remnant of Stage Point, just a suggestion of it, and this the neighborhood was still at liberty to use as of old, and this privilege now was mostly used by the older men who, on fine days in spring and through the summer, would congregate there and talk of old days, calling to mind the building of ships there, the tragedy of the Prairie Flower and the launching of the Taria Topan. As they talked and smoked in the detached way so much affected by old men, they would look across the narrow strip of water to Derby Wharf and sigh, perhaps, at sight of the old Mindoro lying alongside, with yards cock-billed, awaiting her last journey.
In 1924, an expansion of the Mill plant called for further progress to the south, and this time the necessary grading leveled all that remained of the slight eminence of the Point, and the extended sea-wall cut its submerged end from the landward portion. This completed the oblit- eration of Stage Point, and after nearly three hundred years of use, the place became only a name,-one more tradition in the annals of Salem. The Big Rock, settled deep in the shifting gravel, is incorporated in the structure of the sea-wall, its smoke-blackened side tilted out of sight forever !
Perhaps next June I may go down to Stage Point to view the pageant of the second coming of the Charter ship, and standing on the sea-wall there, I shall scan the harbor-Naugus Head, the Neck, the beautiful Beverly
18
STAGE POINT AND THEREABOUTS
shore, the treeless islands, the sparkling bay-to catch a first glimpse of the coming ship, and as her ancient out- line meets the view, it well may be that at my feet the "Rock" will then tune in to some responsive cell of my sub-conscious self, and in those static waves I'll read a message such as this :-
I have served long-age-long my bulk has been the beacon to this safe harbor, my shade has been for aye the trysting place of youth, and in the warmth of my reflected heat, old age has basked. My sheltered niche has been the feasting place of men since time began,-red men and white,-aye white men this thousand years, for know, in that far-distant age, fair travel-worn adventurers have sought me out, and here found comfort after long voyaging from their northern home,-and from my topmost footing the good Arbella was descried as she made harbor, and round about this place was gathered the eager concourse to welcome her and the precious document she safely brought. Since then, my friendly bulk has served its turn for three full centuries, and now that same great bulk holds back the encroaching sea. I still serve!
The story of Stage Point is ended.
19
BY J. FOSTER SMITH
August 14, 1929.
Mr. J. Foster Smith :
Dear Sir: I take pleasure in submitting for your inspec- tion a plan of the grounds and buildings of the Naumkeag Corporation and other places of interest in that region, as I remember them to have been in the year 1847 and a few years later, when I was a schoolboy.
The plan is not drawn to any scale, but I am certain it is very correct as to the relative positions, for I have a very retentive memory, especially for matters of long ago.
I must admit that much of it is out of proportion, in my effort to squeeze so much territory into so small a place.
I remember our front door, the sixth tenement in No. 3 on the plan, was nearly' opposite the first tower where they hoisted in most of the new machinery, and I was interested , to sit on our front steps and watch the work and listen to the "Yo-hoing" of Mr. Butterfield. So I have used those places as objective points (See small X on No. 3 and on first factory tower). I've squeezed the streets together and then the mowing fields are all out of proportion to the other parts, but the plan shows their position.
Stage Point should have a more extensive sweep, but the plan will in a way show how it was in that far-off time. A very narrow path led to a small grass patch there.
I have shown a line for Derby Wharf, but really it should be so far away that its outer end would bear about 45 degrees from Stage Point.
I submit a numbered list, so one can identify the various points of interest as they were at the time I lived there, but changes since the great fire have entirely obliterated all the old landmarks.
A typewritten copy would be more readable, for at almost ninety-four my hand has become quite unsteady.
Hoping the plan will, in a way, help to give an idea of the region in 1847, I am,
Yours very truly, FRANCIS A. MORELAND.
20
STAGE POINT AND THEREABOUTS
KEY TO PLAN.
No. 1 Factory-400 ft. long.
2 Cloth Room.
3 First Block-7 tenements.
4 Second Block-6 tenements.
5-5 Back yards to Blocks.
66 6-6 Browning House and Cow barn.
Briggs' House.
66
8 Briggs' Greenhouses.
66 9 Comstock Cottage.
10-10 Joe Rose's House & Garden (Calker & Graver).
11 Salem Marine Railway.
12-12 Smith's Sperm Oil Mill.
-
13-13 Smith's Wharf.
14-14 Sterry Smith's Iron Foundry.
15 "Browning's Pond," salt water, fed from sluice-way. under sea wall.
16 Kimball's Grocery Store.
66
17 Rubber Mill (burnt later) .
18 Methodist Church.
CC 19 New Bridge, so called, to Union Street.
"
20 Old Draw Bridge on Lafayette Street.
CC 21 "Stage Point" as it was in 1847.
22 Mr. Caleb A. Smith's House. He owned the wharf, oil mill, railway.
The X shows the pump where all got their water, as there was no aqueduct in South Salem in 1847.
The O's mean two immense Elm Trees in which we used to rig swings.
The plan is not drawn to any scale, only just as I remember the region in 1847.
RALPH C. BROWNE: AN APPRECIATION.
BY REAR ADMIRAL REGINALD R. BELKNAP, U. S. N.
Some years ago, as a lieutenant was leaving a ship to go on the staff of an admiral, his captain said: "Now remember; when things go right, the credit will go to the admiral, and if they go wrong, it will be blamed on the staff." That is one way of saying, what experience shows, that it is often difficult to place credit where it belongs in many doings, especially so in the operations of war. In one of Mahan's books, he says: "Why was it the forces in some great victories met where they did ? When and by whom was the decision made to send them there ? Harking back to 1812, how came the frigate Con- stitution to be in fit condition to win over the Guerriere, the most far-reaching victory in our sea history? In the Civil War, how was it that such a vessel as the Monitor could arrive at a decisive point so opportunely ? None of these instances were mere happenings; where belongs the credit ?"
What I am going to tell begins at the starting point of an operation of the recent war. Had the decision then been otherwise, there would have been failure, or at least a very minor success. This decision of a lay mind made possible a great success in an unprecedented operation of great magnitude; one which will stand out for years, if not forever, as a remarkable feat in naval history and in the history of the art of war itself. That operation was the North Sea Mine Barrage, which was set in motion by the device of a Salem inventor.
It will be remembered that the immediate occasion of the United States entering into the war was the resump- tion of ruthless submarine warfare by the Central Powers. Hardly was war declared before the Navy Department was flooded with inventions of all sorts to end the sub- marine menace, and with it the war, in short order. It was necessary to appoint several boards of experienced officers to consider these inventions, some of which were put to actual experiment. Some even were put to trial
(1)
2
RALPH C. BROWNE: AN APPRECIATION
which, from a practical point of view under service con- ditions, had no promise at all, yet were so strongly urged that a test had to be made.
One proposal was a safety lane across the Atlantic, . 3,000 miles of a double line of nets in sections consecu- tively numbered. The nets were made sensitive, so that when penetrated by a submarine an automatic radio trans- mitter would broadcast the section number. Just what decisive result would follow was not made clear; but several days of practical demonstration in Long Island Sound was necessary to prove that the invention was not practical outside of a still pool.
Common to a number of these inventions was the idea to defeat the submarines by blocking them in their bases and keeping those that were out from getting back. A plan so simple and logical would naturally have occurred to the Allies in the three years of war before we came in. They had rejected it as impractical under the circum- stances.
A glance at the map shows that the German bases on the home coast could not be shut in by blocking the North Sea unless the barrier extended from Scotland across to Norway and Dover Strait also were barred. For the Kiel Canal connected the North Sea bases with those in the Baltic, making it easy to pass from Wilhelmshaven, on the North Sea, through the canal into the Baltic and out through the Skagerrack into the North Sea again, well to the northward. Down in the southeastern part of the North Sea the British had sown mine fields, making a large area of foul ground, which forced all vessels com- ing out of Wilhelmshaven to skirt the Danish coast until clear of the mined area. But then they were free, to steer for the open ocean, either south or north of the Shetland Islands, at will.
To put a barrier across from Scotland to Norway was on its face a stupendous problem. The distance is about two hundred and fifty miles, somewhat greater than that from Boston to New York. The only possible means was a mine field of a size never dreamed of. Incident- ally, one other means suggested to our Navy Department
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