USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume I > Part 21
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5. Joshua Gee : "The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain." Quoted by S. E. Forman in "Sidelights on Our Social and Economic History," p. 113.
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pipe and barrel staves, and fish to Spain, Portugal, and the streights. They send pitch, tar, and turpentine to England with some skins; but all those commodities fall very short of purchasing their cloathing in England and, therefore, what other necessaries they want they are forced to manufacture for themselves.
Woolen clothing was naturally the colonists' first interest, and the methods of its early manufacture are well described by W. T. Davis in "The New England States," beginning at page 190:6
"It was natural, in view of the climate, that wool should be the chief of the textile fibers in the colonial economy of New England. We read comparatively little about cotton, or flax, and nothing at all about silk. Cotton was hardly known in the colonies. Flax was more abundant, and much of the household weaving was done on linen warps; but in those early days wool was the practically universal clothing; and the problem of how to obtain it, in quantities to meet the require- ments of the Puritan fathers and mothers, was one which much perplexed their souls. There do not appear to have been but 3,000 sheep in Massachusetts in 1640, but the number increased rapidly; there were constant importations from England, the greatest care was taken in breeding and keeping them; orders were passed by the General Court forbidding their exportation 'to any foreign place or port'; the killing of sheep by dogs was restrained under the severest penalties, the herding of sheep on commons was permitted, and this became a very general practice, the sheep being watched and guarded. Despite every effort of State and individual, there never came a time during the colonial period when wool was not a relatively scarce commodity, and the supply behind the demand. .
"At the beginning, every New Englander was literally his own weaver, and the wool manufacture was for many years unknown outside the household. The first variation in this household manufacture came with the introduction of the out-
6. "New England States: Their Constitutional, Judicial, Educational, Commer- cial, and Professional History," by W. T. Davis, Boston, 1897, pp. 190ff.
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side fulling mill, for the preparation of cloth after it had been woven. This phase of the manufacture was naturally the first to gravitate outside the household, for it required appliances not convenient to have or easy to handle at home. I have indeed seen somewhere an interesting description of a method of home fulling which prevailed to a considerable extent in the New England towns in the 17th or 18th Centuries, just as corn- husking bees and barn-raising gatherings still prevail in many localities. When the cloth of the season was woven, the young people were invited to the house, the kitchen floor was cleared for action, and in the middle were placed stout splint-bottomed chairs in a circle connected by a cord to prevent recoil. On these the young men sat with shoes and stockings off and trousers rolled to the knee. In the centre were placed the cloths, wetted with warm soap suds, and then the kicking commenced by measured steps, driving the bundle of goods round and round the circle until they were shrunk to the desired size. Then the girls, bare to the elbows, rinsed and wrung out the flannels and blankets and hung them on the fence to dry. It is probable, however, that most of the early fulling was done in the obvious way by simply beating the cloths with sticks.
"Apparently the first fulling mill in the colonies was erected as early as 1643 in the village of Rowley. Here had settled in 1638 a colony of twenty or more non-conformists from Yorkshire, England, under the spiritual and business charge of Reverend Ezekiel Rogers. They had been trained to the cloth manufacture at home, and they appear to have been the very first in New England to undertake the making of cloths for general sale outside their own individual wants. They brought with them from England the gearing for a full- ing mill which was erected in 1643 by John Pearson at the head of tidewater on Mill River, and was still running in 1809 when one of the cedar tenter-posts remained in use still per- fectly sound. . . . (Other mills were built) at Andover, in 1673, and, also, through the Ballards, in 1689; at Ipswich in 1675; at Salem in 1675 . ... (in 1687) Peter Cheney built a fulling mill at Parker's Falls in Byfield, to full 'Ye towne's clothe at ye same terms that Mr. John Pearson doeth full
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clothe.' This opposition mill was subsequently purchased by Pearson, whose family continued for several generations to full the cloth of local household manufacture.
"Thus, as time passed, the fulling mill became frequent, located always on some stream, and generally operated in con- nection with a grist-mill or a saw-mill. At a still later period these fulling mills were a part of the industrial paraphernalia of every village. Gradually they became carding mills as well as fulling mills, where the wool of the farmer was carded into rolls, convenient for the spinner, taken home to be spun and woven, and then brought back to the mill to be fulled by the clothier, as he was called."
The production of cotton goods was a later development. There were various obstacles which had to be overcome before it could be successfully undertaken. What these were are well presented by Mr. M. T. Copeland," and what he says for the country as a whole was equally true in Essex County.
"Raw cotton was imported into New England from the West Indies before the middle of the Seventeenth Century, and small importations continued during the following 150 years. This material was spun into yarn and also used for other purposes. But it was not till the last decade of the 18th century that the manufacture of cotton was begun on a consid- erable scale in the United States.
"The progress of the industry prior to 1790 had been handicapped by the dearth of labor and capital. It may have been checked somewhat by the colonial policy of the British Government. The jealousy with which England guarded the new inventions of cotton manufacturing machinery retarded their introduction into America. Finally the Revolutionary War and the subsequent period of industrial instability also hindered the expansion of the industry. But these last three factors were obstacles of a secondary order in comparison with the fundamental economic conditions in regard to labor and capital.
7. M. T. Copeland : "The Cotton Manufacturing Industry of the United States," p. 2.
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"During the next fifteen years (after 1790) the progress was slow. Several mills were established, but the conditions were not favorable to rapid development. In the first place the competition of the experienced British manufacture was encountered. Furthermore the inhabitants of the sparsely populated country were engaged in other occupations, chiefly agriculture and foreign trade. Consequently the supply of labor was inadequate. Moreover the capital was invested in shipping and foreign commerce. Another handicap was the difficulty of obtaining the raw material, since it was not until 1793 that the invention of the cotton gin made possible the utilization of the upland cotton of the South.
"The period of the second contest with England, however, witnessed a rapid expansion of the cotton manufacturing industry in America. With the Embargo of 1807, the Non- intercourse Act, and the War of 1812, the supply of cotton goods from Great Britain was almost entirely cut off and the Americans were thrown upon their own resources. The high prices of cotton cloth attracted investors to this form of indus- trial enterprise, and at the same time, the restrictions on for- eign trade encouraged the withdrawal of capital from the sea.
"The statistics for this early period are not very reliable, and the estimates of various persons differ. Yet they all agree in showing that the number of spindles increased rapidly after 1807. The period following that year was the time when cotton spinning was firmly established as a factory industry in the United States."
The erection at Rowley of the first fulling mill in the colonies in 1643 has been mentioned. Newbury claims the first incorporated woolen company in the State located at Dummer's Falls, planned by John and Arthur Schofield, two brothers, from Yorkshire, and backed by such prominent men as the Reverend Jedediah Morse and William Bartlett. The Schofields had, in 1793, constructed at Newburyport the first carding machine made in this country, and their efforts prov- ing satisfactory, they moved to Byfield in 1795-to superintend the Newbury mill. In 1804 the mill was converted into a cotton factory and for a time was successful.
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In Ipswich, where in 1641 children and servants were taught the manufacture of cloth from wild hemp, with which the country abounded, and where in 1656 one person was required by law to spin three pounds of linen, cotton, or wool monthly, for thirty weeks each year, or forfeit twelve pence per month for each pound short, the first fulling mill in the town seems to have been built about 1675. In 1692 it was voted that Joseph Caleffe might erect another "where it will not prejudice others" if he will full for the town's people "for their pay sooner than for other towns' men for money."
At Bradford, in 1760, Thomas Carleton had a fulling mill on Johnson's Creek, and Aaron Parker had a mill there for dressing cloth. Amesbury began the manufacture of woolen and cotton goods in 1812, and in the same year a cotton factory was built by Stephen Minot at Methuen.
LACE-Ipswich indulged in what seems like a unique industry for Essex County, the manufacture of lace. This product was made by families, and it is recorded that at one time "almost every family was engaged in it," and as a matter of fact it was particularly suited for the employment of women and children. Black and white lace, in silk and thread, and of all widths and qualities, was made and exported to a large extent in 1797. In 1790 nearly forty-two thou- sand yards were made and the business was then increasing. It con- tinued until 1821 or 1822, when a Boston lace company removed to Ipswich and set up its machinery under the name of The Boston and Ipswich Lace Company. A split resulted in the formation of a com- petitor, the New England Lace Company, in 1827, but the business soon became unprofitable because of prohibitive tariffs from England. and by 1833 both companies had ceased to exist.
LINEN --- Lynn was occupied with the manufacture of linen at an early date, the first mention being an award of £13 15s. to Nathaniel Potter for making three pieces of linen. It is known that flax was raised in considerable quantities in the neighborhood, and Flax Pond received its name from the fact that much of the flax was rotted there. Potter's linen was probably what was known as "towcloth," a fabric durable enough and fairly white, but not so smooth and soft as this day would desire for an under garment.
SILK-The production of silk seems a rather exotic industry for Essex County, yet there are records of at least three attempts being
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made. At Lynn in the 1830's several people procured collections of worms and planted great numbers of white mulberry trees for their food, but their success was limited, and their efforts were discontinued in a few years. At about the same time Captain Thomas Bailey, of Amesbury, planted a large number of Chinese mulberry trees and succeeded in raising more than one hundred thousand worms. Things went along with every prospect of success until the worms were within ten days of maturity, when someone broke into the premises and destroyed nearly all of them. This was fatal to the silk culture in Amesbury. Mr. John Marland also made a brief attempt at silk- culture in Ballardvale, but nothing came of it.
HATS-The hat industry, though not so widely followed as shoe- making and cloth manufacture, was characteristic of Essex County in the early days. Methuen made hats at an early date, the pioneer hatter being Moses How, son of an early hatter in Haverhill. This good man eventually became a clergyman and is said to have preached 8,000 sermons, attended 2,265 funerals, and married 1,904 couples between the time he left the business and his death. The first hatter at Amesbury was Deacon Moses Chase. It is not known just when he began the business, but in 1767 he petitioned the town for a small piece of land on Ferry Road on which to build a hat shop. He received a lot thirty feet square. Salisbury granted Jacob Brown liberty to set up a hat shop "on the highway near David Currier's barn" in 1780, and Bradford began the making of straw bonnets in 1800.
Haverhill was for many years the most important hat center in the State. The first hatter appears to have been Jonathan Webster, who was engaged in the business as early as 1747. Mr. Ladd and Daniel Appleton were, also, two early hatters in business near the site of the present City Hall in 1800, and in 1815 Nathan Webster was one of the largest hat manufacturers in New England. Hats were made of wool, of raccoon and muskrat fur, and those of the best quality of beaver fur. The best fur hats would cost about seven dollars. A man bought one when he married and expected it to last him the rest of his life. Hats of a cheaper variety were made of cotton-plush with pasteboard bodies. When a stock was completed it was carried for sale to Boston or Salem packed on horses or slung in boxes below the axle of a pair of wheels to which shafts were attached. The rapid
Courtesy of The Essex Institute
From a lithograph
HAVERHILL-EARLY IN THE LAST CENTURY
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VAI
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growth of the hat business at Haverhill is shown by the estimate that in 1830-3 I hats to the value of $100,000 were manufactured annually. In 1888 the value of the annual production was stated at from $850,- 000 to $1,000,000.
IRON-After shoes and clothing had been procured, the next essential for colonists in a pioneer district like Essex County was iron from which to make their tools. And again the colonists, who had been fortunate in having an aptitude for making shoes, a knowledge brought from England of spinning, weaving and fulling, and ships to carry their excess products to distant lands, were happy in finding a form of iron ore at their very doorsteps.
As early as 1614 Captain John Smith, whose wisdom had per- ceived the future value of the fisheries to New England, saw in what he took to be iron deposits a further basis of prosperity. He declared, speaking of Essex County shores, that "who will undertake the recti- fying of an Iron Forge, in my opinion cannot lose." What he saw may have been only the black, massive hornblende of Nahant, which is of little iron content, but in 1642 Thomas Dexter, perhaps while drying alewives at his weir, discovered good bog-ore8 in the meadows by the Saugus River. This was not the first discovery of iron, for in 1637 the General Court granted Abraham Shaw one-half of the bene- fit of any "coles or yron stone wch shal be found in any comon ground wch is in the countryes disposeing," and bog-iron had been found in the small ponds on the western bank of the Saugus River soon after 1629. But Thomas Dexter's discovery led to an industry of immense value to Essex County and the whole Colony, and it was forerunner, though not the direct ancestor, of the great iron and steel business in the United States today.
Specimens of Thomas Dexter's ore were taken to England by Robert Bridges and with the aid of John Winthrop, Jr., "The Com- pany of Undertakers for the Iron Works" was formed consisting of eleven English gentlemen who advanced £1,000 to establish the works. Workmen were imported from England in 1643, and a foundry erected on the western bank of the Saugus River, the first
8. Bog-ore is a variety of iron ore which collects in low places, being washed down in a soluble form in the waters which flow over rocks or sands containing oxide of iron, and is precipitated in a solid form as the waters evaporate. It is deposited in the bottoms of ponds as well as swamps. Containing many impurities it is extremely brittle, but possesses great fluidity and is still in great demand for fine castings.
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iron works in America, the claims of Braintree for priority apparently being invalid.
For a few years the iron works, aided by many special privileges granted by the General Court, were successfully operated. Smelting, forging, and casting were carried on as well as other branches of metal work. The first casting is still preserved in the Lynn Public Library, a very small iron dinner pot, stout and thick, with a heavy bail and three short legs. It holds about a quart, is smooth and well made, and proves that the first workmen were no bunglers.
In 1645 the General Court declared that "ye iron works is very successful (both in ye richness of ye ore and ye goodness of ye iron) ." In 1648 Governor Winthrop wrote that "the iron work goeth on with more hope. It yields now about seven tons per week," and two months later, "The furnace runs eight tons per week, and their bar iron is as good as Spanish." But the career of the iron works was a checkered one. Capital was hard to come by, and there was little ready money in the Colony with which to buy iron products, cheap as they may have been. As the General Court curtly told the com- pany, an axe at twelve pence was not cheap to one who had no twelve pence to buy. Vexatious law suits developed through difficulties about flowage, contracts for wood, and so on until, as Hubbard says, "Instead of drawing out bars of iron for the country's use, there were hammered out nothing but contentions and law suits." The iron works also aroused grave fears in the Colony that they would con- sume so much wood that fuel would become scarce. Lingering on for a number of years, affected by increasing legal difficulties, debts, and no doubt a diminishing supply of ore, the company finally extinguished its fires about 1688. As the iron works' memorial there are still two or three grass-grown hillocks of scoria, locally called the "cinder- banks," in which the curious may occasionally still find a bit of char- coal or a piece of iron casting.
But it is scarcely fair to say that two or three slag heaps are the only records left by the famous old iron works of Lynn.º The memory of the men who worked there are a fitter memorial : the skilled work- . man who left for other parts and with their children and grand- children carried on the craft they had practiced in Lynn-Richard Leader, the first general agent of the company and a man of superior
9. It is recognized that the site of these iron works now lies within the boundaries of the town of Saugus.
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ability; Henry and James Leonard, who with their descendants car- ried on the iron industry in many parts of the country ; and above all, Joseph Jenks.
Joseph Jenks was the first man of real mechanical genius in Essex County and perhaps in the Colony. He invented the modern scythe, or "engine to cut grass," as the court called it, replacing with his long, slender, sweeping blade familiar today the old short broad, heavy blade which had previously been the only scythe known. For a water wheel of his invention he received the first patent granted on this con- tinent, dated May 10, 1646. In 1652 Jenks made in Lynn the dies for the famous Pine Tree shillings, and in 1654, when the authorities in Boston desired "an Ingine to carry water in case of fire," they turned to Joseph Jenks. If Jenks actually made a fire engine, it was the first on this continent and one of the first in the world. He made the first patterns and models, cast the first iron and brass, and con- ducted the first machine shop in America-truly a remarkable man and a good illustration of the inventive genius which seemed to prevail in Essex County.
Lynn first in so many enterprises, did not always long hold a monopoly of them, and the iron industry, like tanning, spread to other parts of the county. At Boxford a forge for smelting iron was estab- lished about 1670 by Henry and James Leonard, who had done so much to make the Lynn iron works a going concern. It prospered for ten years, languished, was revived in 1780, and flourished until 1800. Perhaps the oldest mechanical industry at Danvers was iron working, and we are told that Governor Endicott himself speaks of his iron works there. Bog-iron was dug by the early settlers at Tops- field to a considerable extent, and on June 17, 168 1, we find in the town records an order "that there shall bee noe boge mine doge in ye Towne but by some townes men : and hee that dos dige et shall Carey et with his one teme or hieree a townes man to Carey et alwayes provieded hee that diges it a grees with the selectmen of the Towne to pay fouer pence a ton for the Townes Vse either in Silver or Iron and this order stands in force" only one year.
In 1710 Colonel John March, John Barnard, Joseph Brown, and Jarvis Ring petitioned the towns of Amesbury and Salisbury for leave to set up iron works at the falls of Powow River. Permission was readily granted, tax free. The ore was not abundant nor easily obtained, being mostly taken from the ponds in Newton and King-
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ston, while some was dug from the swamp. Moreover, it must have been of bad quality, for one who had worked it describes it thus: "It was very poor, difficult to weld, and when hot would smoke and give out a bad smell. It could not be drawn into nails, and if bent short would break, unless very hot." Nevertheless, this homemade iron was fashioned into anchors, sawmill cranks, spindles for turning the stones in gristmills, cart tires, cranes, fire-dogs, and other plain, heavy articles.
Records are found of early iron works at Georgetown in 1739, at Salisbury even earlier, and at Methuen.
NAILS-"The manufacture of nails was one of the house- hold industries in New England during the 18th Century. In a speech in Congress in 1789 Fisher Ames said 'It has become common for the country people of Massachusetts to erect small forges in their chimney corners; and in winter, and in evenings, when little other work can be done, great quantities of nails are made, even by children. These people take the rod iron of the merchant and return him the nails, and in con- sequence of this easy mode of barter the manufacture is pro- digiously great.'
"The manufacture of hand-made tacks was also a New England household industry during the last century, and down to about fifty years ago. A writer thus describes this long- extinct industry : 'In the queer-shaped, homely farm-houses or the little contracted shops of certain New England villages, the industrious and frugal descendants of the Pilgrims toiled providently through the long winter months at beating into shape the little nails which play so useful a part in modern industry. A small anvil served to beat the wire or strip of iron into shape and pound it, a vice worked by the foot, clutched it between jaws furnished with a gauge to regulate the length, leaving a certain portion projecting which, when beaten flat by a hammer, formed the head. By this process a man might make, toilsomely, perhaps, 2,000 tacks a day.'"10
An outgrowth of the iron business was the invention of a machine for manufacturing nails, which had previously been made at home
10. "The New England States," p. 374.
Essex-17
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or forged by blacksmiths, a slow and expensive process. Jacob Per- kins was the inventor of this mechanism, one of the most important of American inventions, and the first nail machine in the United States was set up at Newburyport in 1790. Its capacity was 200,000 nails a day, and its use enabled the producers of nails to market them, with profit, for twenty per cent. less than the imported English nails.11
Jacob Perkins was one of the greatest of the early Essex County inventors. He devised his nail machine when he was only twenty-four years old. In 1820 he was awarded medals by the London Society of Arts for his methods of heating and ventilating rooms and the holds of ships, for improvements in engine hose, for an improved ship's pump, and for a method of freeing water wheels of back water. In 1823 he astonished scientific and manufacturing men with an improved steam engine for which he received three patents. This engine was remarkable for its simplicity, economy, and power. Dr. Nathan Reed was another who devised a machine for making nails, and his invention originated the building of the Danvers Iron Works.
Dr. Nathan Reed, of Salem, deserves especial mention, because ne was the inventor of the first steamboat with paddle wheels in American waters. He was an unusual man even if his inventions are disregarded. Born in Warren, Massachusetts, in 1759, he was gradu- ated from Harvard in 1781, and became successively a student of medicine, an apothecary, an inventor, member of Congress, and finally Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas of Maine. While keep- ing store in Salem, in 1790, he presented a petition to Congress stat- ing, among other discoveries, that he had made one "of the applica- tion of steam to the purposes of navigation and land carriages." This petition was accompanied by a recommendation from a select commit- tee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The trial trip of Dr. Reed's newly invented steamboat was in the summer of 1789, eighteen years earlier than Robert Fulton's success on the Hudson. With him on this voyage from the iron works at Danversport to the Essex bridge at Beverly were such distinguished men as Governor Hancock, Honorable Nathan Dane, Dr. E. A. Holyoke, and the Rev- erned Dr. Prince.12
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