USA > New Hampshire > The Connecticut River Valley in southern Vermont and New Hampshire; historical sketches > Part 18
USA > Vermont > The Connecticut River Valley in southern Vermont and New Hampshire; historical sketches > Part 18
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WILLIAM A. RUSSELL WAS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE BUSINESS OF BELLOWS FALLS
Few of the present generation know the conditions surrounding the establishment here of the pulp and paper business, which in three decades grew from prac- tically nothing to a property valued at $4,500,000 when it was merged into the International Paper Company in 1898. This phenomenal success was due largely to the wisdom, sagacity, foresight and energy of Hon. William A. Russell of Lawrence, Mass., at one time Congress- man from his district, and later the first president of the International Paper Company.
Following the building of the railroads into Bellows Falls in 1849-1851, the canal, which had been built in 1792-1802 for navigation purposes, was discontinued for the passing of boats in 1857. It had been used for manufacturing purposes but little. Until 1869-1870 paper had never been successfully made from wood pulp. Mr. Russell was one of the pioneers in making extensive experiments which resulted in making it a success, and revolutionizing the paper industry.
In 1868 Mr. Russell had secured some comparative- ly small water powers in Lawrence and in Franklin, N. H., and had built small mills in both places. Paper had not then successfully been made from wood, but his faith in the possibilities was so great that he con- tinued branching out. His first visit to Bellows Falls was April 15, 1869, and on that date he closed a con- tract, the results of which were the great prosperity and growth of the village during the succeeding half
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century. He often told in after years of this first visit, and the peculiar action of the most eccentric character Bellows Falls had ever known, Jabez Hills, who made his coming here to locate his industries possible. Mr. Russell had never been away from the railroad station here, but in passing through the village he had seen the unused and dilapidated condition of the canal. Mr. Hills had been extremely miserly and had accumulated much real estate in different parts of the village. Part of this was the mill-site and rights of power of an old paper mill which had been burned in 1846 and had stood vacant and unproductive ever since. It was a tract of land between the present stone grist-mill and the river.
On the April day mentioned above Mr. Hills signed the only contract he ever made which went upon the town record. Although he died owning many pieces of real estate, all of which were accumulated by fore- closure instead of purchase, there is no record of his ever selling a piece of property in the forty years that he was a large factor in the business of the place. On that day he leased the land and power rights he owned under the hill to Mr. Russell, and that was the beginning of the interest of Mr. Russell in Bellows Falls.
Mr. Russell alighted from the noon train that April day and walked down around the canal and old founda- tion of the mill. He knew no person in Bellows Falls, and after a careful survey inquired who owned the property. He was informed it was Jabez Hills and that he would find him down at the eddy catching flood wood. He went there and found him and proposed a lease of the mill privilege. After Mr. Hills had asked
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him a few questions and looked him over carefully he replied that he would lease, and would meet him in an hour at the office of a lawyer, J. D. Bridgman, up town. When Mr. Russell told the lawyer what Mr. Hills had promised, the lawyer laughed very heartily, telling him of the peculiarities of Mr. Hills and that he never had been known to make a contract, and he never sold property, relating many idiosyncrasies of the man. But he kept his promise and the lease was made and de- livered within a few minutes. The town clerk's records show that it was filed at 2 P. M. and Mr. Russell went north the same afternoon, indicating the quick decision of Mr. Russell, as well as the unheard-of action of Mr. Hills.
The result was the building up of the business of the Fall Mountain Paper Company, and subsidiary cor- porations, to the extent that for a half century there- after Bellows Falls ranked as one of the larger paper producing villages in the country. The terms of the contract were very liberal to Mr. Russell, and upon the death of Jabez Hills in 1871 he purchased the property, together with its rights. He later secured control of the Bellows Falls Canal Co., which was materially im- proved during his ownership by enlarging and deepen- ing it. It has recently been still further improved by the expenditure of about $4,000,000 upon it, and the power house for electrically developing and transmit- ting the entire power of the river.
Within a week from the signing of the Jabez Hills contract Mr. Russell had the foundations for his first pulp grinding mill started, the actual production of pulp being in October of the same year. This first pulp
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mill was built under the name of the "New England Pulp Co.," and located just east of the present grist mill. His experiments resulted in the successful making of paper from wood and a number of pulp and paper mills were erected here. For many years news print paper was the principal production, and contracts were made to furnish many of the leading newspapers of this country, and some abroad, with their paper. The production reached in 1907 one hundred tons daily, sent to such papers as the New York Times, San Fran- cisco Chronicle, Pittsburgh Gazette, New Orleans Picayune, Boston Herald, Baltimore American and many others, a number of them contracting locally for their entire stock used. Mr. Russell's accidental coming to Bellows Falls in 1869, and Jabez Hills' taking a different action from any ever taken by him in a long life, made results of great importance to Bellows Falls.
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BELLOWS FALLS ONCE BRED SILK WORMS AND PRODUCED REAL SILK
For some years between 1835 and 1845 Bellows Falls produced a quantity of silk, made from the co- coons of silk worm. At that time, as in various other decades, there was a wave of excitement in many places in the United States over the idea that fortunes could be made in this industry here as well as in other coun- tries, but it has almost uniformly proved disastrous in this country.
The largest venture in this vicinity was made about 1838, when a number of citizens of Bellows Falls at- tempted it and continued the business four or five years. The two leading spirits in the enterprise were Dr. Artemus Robbins, a local physician who had accumu- lated considerable property, and Rufus Guild, a local merchant. The propagation of the silk worm at Bellows Falls was by methods identical with those still in vogue in China and British India, the great silk-producing countries of the world. The company set out very thick- ly all over the land now known as the "New Terrace," a variety of mulberry trees, the leaves of which are the principal food of the silk worm. The trees varied in height from 2 to 20 feet, looking at a distance something like an orchard of apple trees of various sizes. When left to ripen, the fruit looked similar to the blackberry, only longer and without the objectional seeds.
Within a few years, a medium-sized mulberry tree of this variety was still growing and bearing fruit at
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Alstead, N. H., and there was a splendid specimen of rather large size growing on the Saxtons River road. The leaves were plucked at particular times and fed to the worms. A large building with the siding boards on hinges, resembling a tobacco barn, stood near the brow of the present New Terrace at a point near the street leading from School Street. Here were the tables and shelves upon which the leaves were spread, and on which the worms were placed to feed. In about 31 days from the hatching of the worms, during which time they fed upon the mulberry leaves, they formed the cocoon, which took but three days. A day or two later they were carefully picked and the worms killed by boiling or steaming. The cocoons were then unwound and the threads prepared for use. In this locality the winding and spinning was largely done by the small old-fashioned flax wheel then in so common use, and there are still in town a number of articles made wholly from silk produced here.
At one time the enterprise looked so favorable that the company was offered $20,000 for its mulberry trees, upon the successful culture of which all depended, but the owners were so enthusiastic that they refused, and a year or two later a large proportion of the trees were killed by severe weather, the parties lost the amounts they had invested, and silk culture was never attempted here again. At about that time mulberry trees were set out upon a smaller scale in various parts of the town, there being a grove of them upon the land between Green and Cherry Streets. Another grove was located on the Olcott corner lot at Rockingham village near the
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old Alexander Campbell mansion. It is not known that there was more than one place where the worms were actually reared and silk made in this town, that being on the New Terrace as stated. The town of Mansfield, Conn., at one time produced a number of hundred pounds of raw silk annually.
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THE VILLAGE OF ROCKINGHAM AND ITS
EARLY INDUSTRIES-THE OLD MEETING HOUSE
The village of Rockingham, situated near the geo- graphical center of this town, five miles northwest of Bellows Falls, has a wealth of historical lore of which many villages would be proud.
At, or near, the location of the village, the first three white settlers in the town, Moses Wright, Joel Bigelow and Simeon Knight, made their rude homes early in 1753. The charter of the town had been granted them by King George II of England the previous December. The exact location of these log cabins cannot now be pointed out, but the natural surroundings of the village of Rockingham are such as to lead students of history to believe it was there.
Certain it is, that when the settlers were numerous enough to organize the town government in 1761. the most populous place and the seat of government was located there. Until well into the 19th century, Rock- ingham was the principal village of the town; the first store, the first post-office, and the town meeting house were located there, the old building being erected by direct taxation upon all residents of the town. Town meetings were held there until 1869, when Bellows Falls having become the larger village, was decided upon by the voters for the holding of meetings, after two or three of the most stormy meetings ever held in town had dis- cussed the question. The offices of both the clerk and treasurer were always kept in or near Rockingham village until during the '40s. They had been away from
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there several years when the town meetings were changed to Bellows Falls. All church services of the town were held at Rockingham until 1809, when the "Old South Meeting House" was erected in Saxtons River village, but not until 1817 was a church built in Bellows Falls, the Episcopal church removing from Rockingham dur- ing that year. They had held services in the old meeting house until then.
In 1835, there were three taverns, two stores, two blacksmith shops, and an extensive tannery being op- erated in the village of Rockingham. The business there gradually decreased as Bellows Falls and Saxtons River villages grew, until at the present time one blacksmith's shop, a farmers' grange building, the old meeting house and seven or eight dwellings are all that remain of a once populous and lively village. A most disastrous fire occurred there April 14, 1908, wiping out the most of the business section, together with several dwellings, and none have been replaced.
The center of attraction to the locality at the present time is the old meeting house on a hill in the center of what was once the village. To this old edifice, during the last twenty years, more than ten thousand persons have made visitations, according to a register kept there by the town. It was built in 1787 by direct taxation, replacing a smaller one erected in 1773. After the town changed its town meetings to Bellows Falls the old building was allowed to become somewhat dilapidated, but was restored to its original condition by the town, and public subscriptions, in 1907. It is said by those who make early meeting house architecture a specialty to be the best illustration of the buildings of that
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day remaining in New England as regards both exterior and interior. Gatherings in the nature of annual "pil- grimages" draw audiences once each year of from a thousand to fifteen hundred people, largely from a distance, to hear some of the ablest speakers of the day. These are held the first Sunday in August of each year.
The old burying-ground in the rear of the meeting- house dates from 1782, and it has been used ever since that year. For nearly a full century it was the princi- pal burying-ground of the town. The first burying- ground in the town was located on high ground at the intersection of the Williams and Connecticut rivers.
About 1835, an extensive factory was projected on Williams river, near the present railroad station of Rockingham. A dam was erected about twenty feet below the present location of the highway bridge, form- ing a large pond, covering several acres. The company failed to build the mill, and, after expending much capi- tal, the enterprise was abandoned. While the pond was there pleasure boats were used upon it, and it was made in many ways attractive for visitors. Not a trace of the dam, or of the projected manufacturing plant, is to be seen in that vicinity today. The entire locality in the vicinity of what was once this populous village, is one of extreme beauty of location, situated as it is near the mouth of Williams river, flowing into the Connecticut, giving vistas of hill, mountain and valley which would be hard to equal anywhere.
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TWO MINERAL WATER BOOMS IN BELLOWS FALLS
Bellows Falls has had two distinct booms in its history, based upon the production of mineral spring water. One did not last long and had a laughable end- ing, while the other covered several years, and both were noted incidents of this locality. When "Robert- son's Tavern" was built in 1817 upon the present site of hotel Windham, the supply of water was secured from a well behind the house, between where the rail- road now is and the canal. This water was good for cooking purposes but so hard that the different proprietors of the hotel had to use a "wash house" on the banks of the canal, using river water for their laundry work.
A few years after the well was dug a peculiar taste became apparent in the water. At about that time a great interest, which in some places amounted to excite- ment, had been engendered by the discovery of im- portant and valuable medicinal springs in different parts of the country. The most important of these at Saratoga were being developed, and the medicinal qualities of the Abenauqui springs, located two miles south of Bellows Falls in the town of Walpole, which became so popular a few years later, were being dis- cussed. The curious taste and smell of the water which came from the Roberston Tavern well were at once attributed to the same popular cause, and Mr. Robert- son became convinced that he had a second Saratoga, with an equal bonanza for his pocket book. The fame grew for many weeks, the qualities of the well water
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becoming more and more pronounced. People came from long distances with jugs and all kinds of receptacles to get the water, for which a fee was at last charged. It was soon reported to have made some marvelous cures of many kinds of diseases. A new and showy house was erected over the well and many people came to the tavern to board and get the advantage of continuous use of the water.
On day it occurred to Mr. Robertson that it would be a good thing to clean out the well and still further improve it. When those who were at work emptying the well came to the bottom they were chagrined to find the decayed bodies of two large house cats which had in some manner fallen into the well. Their presence had caused the offensive taste and odor to which the valuable qualities had been attributed. After the cleaning was completed there was no further indication of "medici- nal" qualities, but the water was of an unusually pure and sweet taste. Mr. Robertson was ever after sensitive at being rallied upon his "medicinal" water, but he always claimed that he "had the advantage of having enjoyed fame, even if it was of short duration."
A few years later as a part of the tourist business, and to increase the popularity of the Island House, then a noted hotel, arrangement were made for the devel- opment of a real mineral spring two miles from the hotel a half mile below the mouth of Cold river, known as the Abenauqui Mineral Spring, which attained much popularity. It can still be found east of the Wells farmhouse, just south of the meadow in which stood the cabin of John Kilburn, the first white settler of Walpole.
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In 1851 large sums of money were spent in develop- ing it, including a large reservoir with a dancing pavilion over it, and pipes leading from it to a large granite fountain for drinking, from which the bottled waters were sold for a number of years. Bath houses and shower baths were expensively fitted up, public teams were run once in two hours between the Island House, this spring, and less frequently to the Mountain House, then located on Table Rock on Mount Kilburn, from which such a beautiful view can still be had of a large stretch of the Connecticut valley. Portions of the large granite storage tank, and other relics of the hey- day of its popularity, can still be seen strewn around in the vicinity.
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LINSEED OIL MANUFACTURED IN BELLOWS FALLS A CENTURY AGO
Among the mills using water from the Bellows Falls canal previous to a century ago was one for the manu- facture of a product, the process of manufacture of which few New England people of today know the primitive method. This is the manufacture of linseed oil and its by-product of oil meal, extensively used early in the last century for feeding cattle.
Among the very first mills to be erected at Bellows Falls, previous to 1824, was an oil mill, for the making of pure linseed oil from flax seed. It stood nearly where the former machine room of the Babbit-Kelley Company, Inc., stood, just south of the buildings of the new hydro- electric power development that is to use practically all the power of the Connecticut river.
The flax seed was poured upon a large stone floor, on which two immense stones like gristmill stones set on edge, were made to revolve around an upright shaft, like wagon wheels turning in a circle, thus crushing the seed. It then was shoveled into a large barrel of iron, about six feet long, made to revolve over a wood fire in a fireplace or arch, which used wood as long as the barrel was. After it was thoroughly cooked it was transferred into smaller very strong iron barrels, which had one movable head, and these were in turn put into a large log hollowed out with solid ends. Two of these strong barrels were used at a time, one placed at each end of the hollowed-out log. A press was set in motion, with cog wheels and screw, forcing the movable heads of each barrel inward and the oil flowed out of
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the hollow log into receptacles to be shipped to the market. The cakes of oil meal resulting from the great pressure given them were then ground up and sold for cattle feed, while the oil was used in painting, as it is today. Its manufacture now is brought about by much more modern machinery than that of a century ago. A very few of the older inhabitants of this section of New England remember similar mills in different localities, but they all disappeared more than a half century ago.
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POTASH MANUFACTURE WAS AN EARLY LEAD. ING INDUSTRY IN BELLOWS FALLS
During the years when the Connecticut river furn- ished the main artery of transportation to the markets of Hartford and New York, among the varied products of this section of New England which furnished one of the principal loadings of the flat boats was potash and pearlash. Today's inhabitants of this locality know but little of this important article manufactured in large quantities in this vicinity, or of the methods used to produce it.
For a number of years during the early part of the last century, the manufacture of potash and pearlash was an important industry. Pearlash was used as a substitute for baking soda, it being of a similar nature. Potash works were located in different parts of this town, as well as all over New England. The location of one place where it was made is still pointed out between Saxtons River and Cambridgeport. One of the largest works in this vicinity was located across the Connecticut river from Bellows Falls, a few rods south of the old toll bridge, on the east side of the highway, on the first hill the traveler descends in going towards Walpole. From these extensive works the hill mentioned has, until very recent years, been known as "Potash Hill." This industry was the first manufacturing of any kind at North Walpole except the two saw mills on Governor's brook, which flows through the village.
Potash and pearlash were made wholly from wood ashes. When the first settlers came to this vicinity, it was necessary to dispose in some way of the immense
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quantities of trees that then cumbered the ground. For this reason large patches of forest were felled, the logs were thrown up in piles, and when sufficiently dry were burned. The ashes were then placed in leaches and water was poured upon them. The water, trickling through the ashes formed lye, which was boiled in a large iron kettle.
In a majority of the settlements large public potash works soon came into existence, like those mentioned above, and to these many of the settlers carried their ashes instead of making their potash at home. These were rude wooden structures, some of them being called potash, and others pearlash works.
At the potash works might be seen the huge leaches and the cauldron kettles employed in the making of potash, while at the pearlash works were immense ovens in which potash was baked. When it was of the right consistency it was stirred, and thus broken into lumps ; it was then of a pearly white color-hence the name, "pearl-ash." These products were used by the women of that day in making soap, and they formed a staple article of merchandise for shipment to the large cities. From this town they were shipped down the river by boat in large quantities.
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DISTILLERIES NEAR BELLOWS FALLS WERE PLENTY IN EARLY TIMES
A century ago one of the most common varieties of business in this section of the Connecticut River valley was that of the distilleries which were scattered here and there in this vicinity. They all did a thriving business, distilling cider, perry (the juice of pears), wheat, corn, barley and oats into the various kinds of spirits then in common use.
There was a distillery in this town located near the school house in the little hamlet known as Lawrence's Mills, one in Saxtons River village, one just north of the village of Westminster known as the "Allbe Distillery," and one of the largest was in the little village of South Charlestown on the east side of the highway about ten rods north of the brook, near what only a few years ago was known as the "Hooper place." This was widely known as the "Ingersoll Distillery.“
Richardson Robertson, who died in 1905 at the age of 96 years, used to tell of his life as a boy in the old Stage House, the first hotel built in 1817 where Hotel Windham now stands. Among his reminiscences he told of a part of his duties for his father, John Robertson, who was the owner, as being each week to go to either one of these distilleries and get the week's supply of yeast for the hotel bread. Sometimes he went to one and sometimes to another. He told the writer among other things, "We kept 'Ingersoll gin' in our bar, thinking it was much better than that made by Mr. Wells." Inger- soll was the South Charlestown owner, and Wells was the Westminster distiller. Mr. Robertson said further
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regarding qualities : "Nathaniel Tucker, who then owned the toll bridge, was a Dutchman and had a brother who operated a distillery in Holland. Mr. Tucker urged father to try his brother's gin, and after a while we got a 'pipe,' 128 gallons. This cask was too large to get into the cellar, so it was put in the shed and we drew from it to fill the jugs in the bar. Father had never liked domestic gin to drink himself, but he liked this Holland gin very much."
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