Worcester County, Massachusetts - Chapter 33, 1889

Manufactures. - In the last century every housewife was skilled, like Solomon's virtuous woman, in seeking wool and fiax, and deftly handled the spindle and distafi'. The whirr of the spinning-wheel and jar of the loom made the home music. On early records the potash of Dr. Green and Recompense Cary is named as the starting-point of a new road. An official document in 1794 mentions two grist-mills, four saw-mills and one fulling-mill. A wind-mill, too, caught the breezes upon Prospect Hill. Charles Richardson's mill utilized the water privilege, now called Pondville, known as Rice's mills fifty years ago. From Mr. Rice the property passed through several owners to Otis Pond, who changed the business from a saw and grist-mill to the making of yarn. Then, with his brother as partner, it became a satinet-mill. At this time, 1862, Mr. B. F. Lamed took an interest in the business, which, at first with others, and then alone, he sustained till 1883. The Auburn Mill was widely known for its woolen goods, sold through Boston and New York commission houses. By a freshet causing the reservoir to give way, the mill was damaged in 1873. Mr. A. Henry Alden was drowned in the fiume by the bursting in of the bulkhead gates June 18,1879. A six-families tenement-house, ofiice and store-house were built, and a set of cards put in, making five sets in the mill, in the spring and summer of 1880. Three times has the plant been wholly burned, - in 1805 ; August 25, 1870 ; and August 21, 1880. Each rebuilding was a marked improvement. A very pleasant festival and charitable gathering of towns-folk and friends from abroad, with a bright speech by Hon. John D. Washburn and a poem by Rev. E. Davis, celebrated the completion of the new mill in the month of February, 1881. Mr. Lamed sold the property in 1883 to L. J. Knowles & Brother. The mill is now managed under the firm of Kirk, Hutching & Stoddard as the Auburn Woolen Mill.

The Drury family, for three generations, owned a grist and .saw-mill at the outlet of the pond near the Southhridge and Stoneville roads. Colonel Alvah Drury built the house now Mr. Hilton's residence, and prospered in his business. The site afterward became known as Dunn's Mill. Albert Curtis and B. F. Larned bought the water privilege, and Dunn's shoddy mill, owned by B. F. Larned, was burned, with a loss of over four thousand dollars. May 2, 1877. Mr. James Hilton carried on the same business, and liis premises were burned in 1887, but immediately rebuilt and enlarged.

Plows, scythes, wooden-ware for farmers' tools and shoes were made here from 1820 to '40. Ichabod Washburn, the wealthy and liberal wire-maker of Worcester, served his apprenticeship with Nathan Muzzy, whose blacksmith-shop stood behind the church. He received his freedom suit of clothes, made by Mrs. Muzzy, at the expiration of his service.

In 1837 Auburn could show one woolen mill, a paper mill, a card factory, three shingle mills, a lath mill and a sash and blind factory. Daniel Haywood's paper mill, a four-story structure on the stream above Stoneville, was swept away by a flood in 1856. John Warren & Sons carry on the tannery in West Auburn. This industry has been successfully prosecuted on the same spot, and kept in the family since Jonah Goulding started that business nearly a century ago.

In 1834 Jeremy Stone began to improve the waterpower on Young's Brook by erecting a brick m'll and houses for the operatives. He died at the South before his plans were completed, but the village at Stoneville marks his business foresight. Edward Denny, of Barre, next owned the property. About 1850 Mr. A. L. Ackley bought him out, changing the woolen to a cotton mill. John Smith, of Barre, took it in 1858, whose sons, C. W. and J. E. Smith, coined money by .shrewd business operations in the war-period, from 1861 to '65. At C. W. Smith's death, a few years since, the mill lay idle awhile. Mr. George H. Ladd acted as superintendent till the last sale of the property and his removal to Clinton, Mr. Hogg, the carpet manufacturer at South Worcester, is present owner, the business-name being the Stoneville Worsted Company, making yarn for the Worcester Carpet Mill.

When the Lynde Brook reservoir broke loose, the damage at the Stoneville dam and bridge cost the town alone three thousand dollars. The dwellings of the operatives under the maple's shade, the neatlykept pine grove on the near hillside, its height crowned by the Catholic Church and the public school, form as attractive a New England laciory village as you may find.

The Darling Bros. (Messrs. D. W. & J. T.), contractors, reside on the Rochdale road in Auburn. Specimens of their skill, fidelity and success as l)uilders are seen at the Polytechnic, Worcester, and public edifices at Ware and Springfield. Through the influence of James Alger, a veteran engineer on the Boston and Albany Railroad, some twenty of our young men are firemen and engineers on several railroads.

Agriculture. - Rev. Peter Whitney writes of this town in 1793 : " The soil in general is fertile, rich and strong, suitable for orcharding and all kinds of fruit; well adapted to pasturage and mowing, and produces large crops of rye, oats, wheat, barley, Indian corn and flax. It is not very rocky, but affords stone sufficient for fencing in the farms.'" And Major (rookin, a century before, noted the famous crops of Indian corn at Pakachoag, the Indian civil plantation, and translated the significance of the aboriginal word, the village named from " a delicate .spring of water there."

I suppose wool-raising in the olden time was profitably pursued. Different ear-marks of the stockowners are recorded by the town clerk. The minister's glebe counted its acres by the scores, and the good parson, like his congregation, was expert in using the plough, scythe and sickle. There must have been ilouble the amount of woodland. In recent times the supply of railroad ties, and hundreds of trees cut down for fuel, explains the lesser area of the fore«t. For a mile one rode along a shaded avenue a few years since on the Southbridge road ; alas ! that the fact should be but a pleasant memory now. Some farms -till belong to descendants of their first owners. Our yeomen quite generally are busied in supplying milk 10 the neighboring city. Mr. A. S. Wolf conducts a ivell-managed market produce farm, and finds a ready disposal for all he raises. He employs, winter and summer, a number of men, and his fruitful acres remind one of the Arlington and Belmont market- ^.^ardens. Other persons cultivate the small fruits and realize, we hope, the pecuniary profits a well-known novelist gave as his experience on the banks of the Hudson. The yearly harvest exhibition shows an attractive display of flowers, vegetables and fruit.

The Auburn Grange, No. 60, P. of H., was organized July 2, 1874, with twenty-three charter members. It now numbers over one hundred, and is in a flourishing condition. A few years since the grange spent a bright May-day, before Arbor Day was recognized, in the adornment of the public green by setting out thrifty young maples to grow beside the half a dozen lofty elms, the bequest to us of our thoughtful predecessors a century ago.

A sentence from the town's instructions to its rej) resentative, in 1787, might serve well as a grange motto: "The industrious husbandman, on wliom this cominonvvealth will prolialily ever depend for its greatest strength.'' True of the United States to-day, though not as applicable to Massachusetts as when originally penned.