Millers Falls Mfg. Company: 1868 to 1873
A new business
When the waterpower shortage at Gunn, Amidon & Company precluded
an expansion of the factory, it became apparent that an
infusion of capital was in order. The company's situation came to the
attention of Henry L. Pratt, a prosperous lumber dealer and occasional
speculator in waterpower rights who had returned to the area after operating
a business in Detroit.(1) Pratt recommended that
the firm relocate to Grouts Corner, a nearby village and a stop at the junction
of the Vermont & Massachusetts and the New London Northern railroads.
Consisting of little more than an inn and a few houses, Grouts Corner was
located on the Millers River at a spot where the stream dropped seventy
feet over a short series of rapids. Gunn and Amidon, impressed with the
potential of the site, joined Henry L. Pratt and James Moore in organizing
the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company, an enterprise established "for
the purpose of manufacturing hardware and lumber at Millers Falls." On
September 21, 1868, notice of the incorporation appeared in the Greenfield
Gazette and Courier. The newspaper also reported that $100,000 in
stock had been issued, that waterpower rights had been secured and that
200 acres of land had been purchased.
James Moore had become involved with the company by virtue of his ownership
of the tract where the new factory was to be built. While Gunn, Pratt,
and Amidon served as company directors, he did not. (Moore was to die tragically
the following June, entangled in the reins of a team of runaway horses.)
Henry Pratt became the firm's first president.(2)
From the outset, the directors understood that they were not only building
a mill and hardware manufactory but were developing an industrial site
with a surplus of highly prized waterpower. The organizers estimated that
Millers Falls Manufacturing would need one-fourth of the output of the
dam and expected that other businesses—each with a millrace connected
to their canal—would purchase the rest. Then too, the company would be
in the residential real estate business; the directors had purchased enough
land to start a housing development.
Within weeks of the incorporation, Henry Pratt moved to New York to
establish a national sales office. Levi Gunn remained in Greenfield to
serve as treasurer and general manager. The New York office, located in
the hardware district at 87 Beekman Street, opened in November 1868 and
was a modest affair. The company shared the office with the firm of E. M.
Boynton, the manufacturer of the Lightning Cross Cut Saw—a tool advertised
as enabling two men to cut off a twelve-inch sycamore log in eight seconds.
Pratt hired Edward Payson Stoughton to manage the office. Edward P. Stoughton proved
an excellent choice and soon became the firm's primary sales representative.
His interest in overseas markets enabled the company to export tools in
substantial numbers surprisingly early in its history. Within a decade,
the firm would boast of having penetrated one of the toughest markets of
all—it was exporting large numbers of tools to Sheffield, England, the
edge tool capital of the world.
A Disastrous fire
On December 31, 1868, disaster struck. The project for the factory at
Grouts Corner was still in its infancy when a fire gutted the North Parish
plant. Only the office area was spared. All of the operation's manufacturing
equipment was destroyed, and a number of workmen took substantial losses
on their tools. The editor of the Greenfield Courier
& Gazette suspected arson:
The place where the fire was discovered was separated
from the boiler room by a stone wall or partition, where it would not have
been likely to have caught from any accident. The place, too, was the best
that could have been selected by a villain for his foul purpose, as the
fire could communicate with each story of the building by means of a slide-way,
where chips and waste lumber were dropped into the wood-room below.(3)
Although insurance covered only half of the $40,000 loss, work to secure
temporary quarters began immediately. Within two weeks, the firm was installing
equipment in rooms rented from the Greenfield Tool Company. As the new
quarters were too small, work on a temporary building at the Greenfield
Tool site began without delay. Construction of the forty-foot-long wooden
structure started on January 25th, a Monday morning. By Wednesday evening,
the building was up, the siding in place, the windows set and the power
shafting installed. On that Saturday—six days after the building was started
and just four weeks after the fire—a full work force was in place, building
braces. The disaster at the North Parish plant marked the end of the company's
involvement in the wringer repair business. Chamberlain & Whitmore,
a local firm, bought the remnants of the operation.
Building the factory
In April 1869, Millers Falls Manufacturing made the plans and specifications
for its Grouts Corner factory available to bidders. The planners estimated
that a quarter of a million bricks would be needed to complete the main
building. The proposed structure, 300 feet long and fifty feet wide, was
considered fireproof by the standards of the day. For additional safety,
the plant's boilers, used to produce steam for heating the building, were
to be housed in a wing projecting at a right angle from the main building;
running water was to be available throughout the structure. Work on the
factory began immediately after the bidding. Local residents, skeptical
that the enterprise would succeed, at first refused to fund a bridge to
the site. A traditional covered span was erected only after Millers Falls
Manufacturing agreed to put up one-half of the cost.
Located on a horseshoe bend of the river, the heavily wooded, one hundred-acre
location was ideally suited to its purpose. Lumber for construction was
sawn from the timber on-site, and the extreme curvature of the river made
it a relatively simple task to dig a mill canal across the upper neck of
what was almost a peninsula. A dam, twelve feet tall and 165 feet long,
was built on one of the series of falls and created a pond substantial
enough to deliver 800 horsepower to its downwater users. (The company had
originally hoped for 1500.) Millers Falls Manufacturing required less than
half of the output. There was little worry that the upper limit of the
dam's capacity might be reached—the company owned the rights to the two
remaining falls in the series. In lieu of a traditional mill wheel, a modern
water turbine, manufactured in the nearby town of Orange by Hunt, Waite
& Flint, was installed to power the new factory.
The move to the plant took place in the winter of 1869 and 1870. In
January, fifty workers took up positions in the new factory. Although some
chose to commute from Greenfield, the majority relocated, and the housing
situation in Grout's Corner grew desperate. Millers Falls Manufacturing
leased the hotel owned by the Vermont & Massachusetts Railroad Company
and refurbished it to domicile some of the workers. As other buildings
became available, the company rented them and converted them to tenements.
In spring, the hilltop east of the plant became a prime target for development
and was soon home to an Amidon, a Gunn, and a Pratt Street. The manufacturer
made its presence known in other ways—a petition to rename the place Millers
Falls was circulated, and by spring, the post office had been renamed.
It took several years for the local railways to adopt the new moniker.
The Rose brace
Although
its Barber braces were tremendously successful, Millers Falls moved to
acquire the rights to a brace developed by Clemens B. Rose, the proprietor
of a small factory in Sunderland. Rose, active in bit stock design since
1864, patented a brace with ring-type chuck and metallic head on April
16, 1867. His invention looked promising, but the issue of the patent found
him with little cause to celebrate. Six days prior to the award, fire destroyed
the Rose Bit Brace Company. The loss was estimated at 6,000 dollars. Rose
persisted with his design work, and eighteen months later was issued yet
another patent, this time for a sweep handle. Soon afterward, the Bit Stock
Company, a Greenfield firm of undetermined ownership, began to manufacture
a brace featuring both patents.(4) By spring
of 1869, the patents were firmly in the hands of the partnership of W.
Newton Nims and Pratt, when, for reasons unknown, Clemens Rose filed a
lawsuit against them. Edward Lester, a Nims & Pratt employee, acquired
the Rose patents in June of that year and sold them to Millers Falls Manufacturing
several weeks later. Production of the Rose brace continued at the Nims
& Pratt factory until the new Millers Falls plant came online.(5)
Charles Amidon departs
Charles H. Amidon, Gunn's longtime partner, left the firm in 1870. Edward Lester,
the Nims & Pratt employee who once held the patents for the Rose bit brace, replaced him as plant superintendent. Amidon
purchased a waterpower right from Millers Falls Manufacturing Company that January and several months later began construction of
a small, two-story brick factory along the canal. To help capitalize the new enterprise, he took on a partner, and before long,
the firm of Amidon & Fisk was engaged in the business of manufacturing baby carriages. The following year, Amidon had an
unfortunate falling out with Millers Falls Manufacturing when the firm sued him for $1,000 to cover the non-payment of goods
received. Although he maintained that the goods were due him as salary for work done when superintendent, there must have been
some merit in the Millers Falls complaint; Amidon paid $750 to settle the suit. By 1873, Charles Amidon had formed the Amidon
Manufacturing Company. (Its relationship to Amidon & Fisk is unclear.) Located in Erving, Amidon Manufacturing was involved
in the production of bit braces until its bankruptcy in 1877. When the business failed, he relocated to Buffalo and became
involved in a series of partnerships concerned with the production of bit braces. These included: Saxton & Amidon (1877-1883),
Amidon & White (1883-1887), and Amidon & Bastedo (1887-1892). A better inventor than businessman, Charles Amidon
held over a dozen patents for bit braces but never experienced the financial success enjoyed by his former partners,
Gunn and Pratt.(6)
Goodell, Sawyer, Dolan
Amidon's departure did
little to impede product development at Millers Falls Manufacturing. In 1870, the company purchased the small factory operated by
Albert D. and Henry E. Goodell. The men, brothers, had started the operation in 1866 at Buckland, a small village on the banks of
the Clesson River. At the time, Albert, the older brother, was twenty-one years old; Henry was just eighteen. Their enterprise,
located in the Perry & Demming building, first made pieces for wooden chairs, but switched to hardware items in 1868—the year
that Albert was issued a patent for a brace with a ring-type chuck and pivoting jaws. The
two men became employees of Millers Falls Manufacturing at the time of the sale, and their new employer took over the production of
the Goodell brace. Albert Goodell would eventually rise to the position of plant superintendent and embark on a distinguished career
in tool design and manufacture—developing a number of highly successful tools for the Millers Falls Company before leaving, in 1888,
to found Goodell Brothers with his brother Henry.(7)
Samuel Sawyer, the millwright who supervised the construction of the plant and dam
for Millers Falls Manufacturing, elected to remain in the area after the project was completed. A onetime employee of the
turbine-manufacturer Hunt, Waite & Flint, Sawyer decided to lease the sawmill owned by Millers Falls Manufacturing and installed
one of his former employer's turbines to power it. The operation engaged in custom sawing and millwork fabrication. In 1871, Sawyer
developed a new method for attaching the revolving heads of carpenter's braces and assigned the rights to Millers Falls Manufacturing.
The patent was issued on the same day as that of William H. McCoy, a Millers Falls employee who invented a non-splitting sweep handle
that featured metallic inserts. The company would use Sawyer's design to attach heads to its better braces until the development of
ball bearing heads rendered it obsolete; McCoy's sweep handle would remain viable into the twentieth century. Samuel Sawyer eventually
accepted a job as a wood turner at the Millers Falls plant, and William McCoy went on to develop a drill chuck, a set of spring-type
brace jaws and an adjustable angular bit stock for the company.(8)
On January 17, 1871, William P. Dolan (also spelled Dolin) of Charlottesville, Virginia, patented a ratcheting brace that allowed
a user to bore a hole without completing a full rotation of the handle. Although Dolan's was not the first ratchet brace, his use of
two opposing, spring-loaded pawls to control the direction of a brace's rotation was a breakthrough. Millers Falls Manufacturing
acquired the rights to his invention and made substantial changes to it—substituting one ratchet wheel for Dolan's two and adding
a ring shifter to engage and disengage the pawls. The Millers Falls adaptation of Dolan's idea, with its two-pin ring shifter, may
well have been the most significant development in the history of the American ratchet brace. The centrality of his contribution to
the arrangement is evidenced by the firm's stamping the date of Dolan's patent on its earliest ring-shift, pawl-type braces, and the
design, which leaves the front part of the ratchet wheel exposed, came to be used on more braces than any other. (It remains in
production today.) Four months after the Dolan patent was issued, John T. Lynam of Jeffersonville, Indiana, patented a single
ratchet wheel brace that used opposing leaf-type springs as pawls. Although Millers Falls Manufacturing thought enough of Lynam's
design to manufacture and market it, the brace never caught on.(9)
Those who had early on invested in the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company were well rewarded for their risk. Despite the costs
associated with developing the site and building a factory, a ten-percent shareholder dividend was declared for calendar years 1870
and 1871. The new plant was operating day and night, employing some sixty hands and turning out between 10,000 and 15,000 braces per
month. The need for additional space soon became evident, and in 1872, the company completed construction of a brick addition with a
slate roof. The new wing was parallel to the main building, 100 feet long and forty-five feet wide. By the end of that year,
employment had grown to 100 hands, and development along the company's canal was proceeding apace with a building contractor, a
vise company and a plane iron manufacturer joining Amidon's baby coach factory.(10)
Backus Vise Company
The Backus Vise Company, an entity that held the rights to several
bench vises developed by Vermont-born inventor Quimby S. Backus, began renting space and waterpower
at the Grouts Corner plant in 1870. Originally located in Windsor, Vermont, the Vise Company's move to the Millers Falls canal owed much to the fact
that Henry L. Pratt and Levi J. Gunn had become major investors and served as the organization's President and Secretary respectively. Quimby Backus and Moses Newton, Backus Vise Company's new treasurer, moved to Grouts Corner along with the operation. The relocated company took up space in the Millers Falls boiler
room, and shortly after the move, began construction on an adjacent wooden building to house its forging, polishing and packing
operations.
The Backus operation was never large. Employment varied between sixteen and twenty-five, and under the
supervision of Frederick Hubbard, the small, but productive work force manufactured a line of products that ranged from diminutive
hand-held vises, to jeweler's vises, to 168-pound blacksmith models. The depth of its product line was due, in part, to the acquisition of patents once held by the Union Vise Company, a Boston-based maker of over forty styles and sizes that was destroyed by fire in 1871. As Backus Vise had no foundry, rough castings for its products
were purchased from the Clark & Chapman Machine Company in nearby Turners Falls and finished locally. The vise company also served as a sales agent for Stratton Brothers, a high-end manufacturer of brass-bound wooden levels located in Greenfield. When Backus was absorbed by the Millers Falls Company in 1873, the agency was transferred to the Millers Falls Company.
The Backus Vise Company was plagued
by misfortune. In December 1871, production was halted when a fire burned out the part of the operation housed in the Millers Falls
boiler room. A year later, the vise company's new wooden building burned to the ground. As demand for the vises exceeded production
capacity, Millers Falls Manufacturing overlooked the problems of its tenant and installed a yet another Hunt, Waite & Flint
turbine to power the Backus Company's growing operation. Despite near constant woe, Backus Vise managed to reward its investors with ten-percent
dividends. In January 1873, the vise company was merged with the larger firm to form the new Millers Falls Company. Quimby S.
Backus had already moved on. He'd left the area months earlier to begin manufacturing a series of tools that he'd designed and
patented the previous year. The merger of Millers Falls Manufacturing and Backus Vise was made in the interest of reducing
the expenses inherent in running separate operations, and while Frederick Hubbard, the vise company's superintendent, became a
director of the new company, Quimby Backus did not.(11)
As separate entities, neither the Millers Falls Mfg. Company, nor the Backus Vise Company, found it feasible to a conduct a
foundry operation. The situation changed with the merger, and in May 1873, the company began work on the construction of a
foundry unit. The Backus vises represented an excellent addition to the Millers Falls product line—far more in keeping with
the company's basic business than the quilting frames, toy cannons, bowling pins, kites, and fifes that the firm would add to the catalog. With its line of braces, vises, tool holders, family tool chests and, in 1873, bracket saws, the company was well on
its way to becoming a diversified manufacturer of hand tools. By 1873, the newly named Millers Falls Company had moved its New York sales office
to a location several doors away from its first one—to 78 1/2 Beekman Street. It would soon would occupy enough of the building to
drop the 'half' from its address. In spring of 1876, the office would be relocated yet again—to 74 Chambers Street.
Illustrations:
Pratt & Stoughton portraits: Hardware Dealers Magazine, v. 43, no. 253, January 1915.
Rose & Goodell braces: author's photos.
Plant 1873: Catalogue no. 35. Millers Falls, Mass. : Millers Falls Co., 1915.
Map: Beers, F.W. and Sanford, G.P. Atlas of Franklin Co., Massachusetts : from Actual Surveys. New York : F.W.
Beers & Co., 1871.
Linked ring-type chuck: author's photo.
