Duck Mill

Duck Mill is located on a 2.5 acre irregularly shaped parcel on the northeast side of Duck Mill Road in South Fitchburg, approximately 1.5 miles from the city's commercial business district. The property is boundedby Duck Mill Road on the southwest, Bemis Road on the east, and recent commercial buildings on the north and west. River flows approximately 500 feet to the north; the millrace that provided power to the mill was filled in in recent years. Numerous small storehouses and sheds were once scattered around the site, particularly to the north and west of the main complex. None of these now remain, and the land on which they stood (lots 20A, 6A, 6B, 6C, and 6D on the Engineers Map) is now under separate ownership.

The prehistoric archeological potential of the Duck Mill site is limited. There are no recorded prehistoric sites in the area. While there may have been prehistoric activity in the vicinity, the site has probably been regraded and otherwise disturbed to an extent that precludes prehistoric survivals. The Duck Mill site has more potential for historic archeological remains. Potential resources would include refuse scatter, the remains of an earlier mill, the remains of small ancillary structures which may have existed, and the remains of technological structures such as power systems. The mill complex consists of ten attached structures and additions. The main mill building (A), built in 1844, exhibits the features typical of New England textile factories erected between 1820 and 1850.

Measuring 46 X 100 feet, it stands three stories on a granite block foundation and is surmounted by a gable slate roof. gabled stairtower bisects the facade. The hexagonal wooden bell cupola was removed in the mid 20th century, althoughthe square base remains.

(in one paragraph) Duck Mill possesses integrity of location, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. The building is associated historically with cotton manufacturing, the primary nineteenth-century industry in Fitchburg, and with George Blackburn, a leading local industrialist of the period. The earliest part of Duck Mill is a well-preserved example of the type of factory building erected in Massachusetts between 1820 and 1850. Numerous additions made to the mill throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century demonstrate a well-documented evolution of a mill building over time.

As one of the earliest surviving textile mills in Fitchburg, and as a fine example of mill architecture, Duck Mill meets Criteria A and C of the National Register of Historic Places on the local level. Textile manufacturing was first introduced to Fitchburg in 1807, when the state's second cotton factory, the Fitchburg Cotton Manufacturing Co., was erected on the banks of the Nashua River. The river, which falls 250 feet as it flows through the community, quickly became the site of additional textile mills; by 1832, seven cotton and woolen factories were in operation. machinery was the leading industry in Fitchburg throughout most of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

enturyn Frecehbryg nent Chnrergnh The manufacture of textiles and textile Fitchburg went through a period of major growth and prosperity in the 1840s and 1850s, and soon ranked third in Massachusetts cotton manufacturing, behind only Lowell and Taunton. Around 1832, George Blackburn erected the first mill in South Fitchburg, a hamlet of only a few houses on the main road from Boston to Keene, New Hampshire. Blackburn's mill was a cotton factory, manufacturing the type of cloth known as "shoddy". This mill burned to the ground ca. 1843.