Tag: Industrial Revolution

Factory Village

April 17th, 2023

Judging from the smoke trails, one can see three active factories, viewed from the bridge over the river in the center of town. Goodell Cutlery is on the right side, just downstream of the Monadnock Dam.

Before the Town of Bennington existed, it was part of the Town of Hancock. Hancock had some running water to power some small factories, but nothing like the huge store of potential energy along the Contoocook River in Bennington. Bennington was originally planned as a site for mills.

The saw mills and flour mills of the late 1700s soon gave way to fulling mills [to turn woolen fibers into felt for hats], paper mills, and knife factories in the 1820s. Because of this, Bennington was once called ‘Hancock’s Factory Village.’ On the 1859 map, not made in any great detail, a Powder Mill [gunpowder], a Paper Mill, and a Knife Factory are shown. In the 1887 map, the Goodell Cutlery Company competed with the C.J. Kimball & Son Cutlery and Tool Company. Goodell Cutlery later moved to Antrim and most people forget that they started in Bennington. Also shown were the Monadnock Paper Mill and the W.C. & F.C. Starrett lumber mill. While the factories began by using the water as their sole source of power, the smoke in the postcard picture indicates that by the late 1800s, the machinery of the mills was powered by combustion, most likely coal.

The mills attracted workers, some of whom moved from neighboring towns, some were immigrants new to this country. Workers required housing. The three white-painted Cape-Style houses on Main Street were built by Joseph Putnam around 1800, perhaps to attract workers for his mills. On the strip of land across from the Paper Mill, between the River and the road, there used to be workers’ housing in the 1880s, since replaced by the garages of the Mill. Going up Starrett Road, one sees several identical houses on the right. When you see a row of such dwellings in a mill town, you know they were built for workers and rented to them by the factory owners.

Today, the only mill that is still operating is the Monadnock Paper Mill which has been using water power to make its products since 1819.

The next installment will be posted on May 8. If you click the Follow button, all future posts will be sent straight to your inbox every month.

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Great Falls of the Contoocook

March 6th, 2023

A view from a 1905 postcard showing one of the dams on the Great Falls of Bennington. In the foreground, is Pierce Dam, the 3rd of the falls. Just under the iron bridge in the center, you can see water splashing over Monadnock Dam, the 2nd of the falls.

Over a distance of 1.2 miles, in the center of Bennington, New Hampshire, the water level of the Contoocook River drops seventy feet. The glacier that retreated around 10000 years ago formed the terraced landscape over which the river flows. That source of power at the “Great Falls of the Contoocook” is what induced Joseph Putnam in 1782 to purchase land on the east side of the river for the construction of a grist mill [a mill for grinding grain into flour]. At that time, there was no town called Bennington in the state — the land was in the town of Hancock. In the 1700s, the energy of falling water was the principle source of power for machinery. Settlers in the Americas were always looking to live where there was water tumbling down the smallest incline. At the Great Falls, there was not a single ‘falls’ like Niagara, but a series of four locations where the water went down hill, falling 10-12 feet at each site. This series of rapids falls over the remains a glacial moraine, which was breached by a tremendous flow of water at the end of the last Ice Age.

To harness the power, dams had to be built. For the purpose of discussion, I have numbered the dams 1 through 4, to show their position on the river, not the order in which they were built. Dam 1, the Powder Mill Dam, is the farthest South, which is upstream of the town. In 1823, the Dam was built at the North end of Powder Mill Pond, creating that large body of water. Dam 3, called the Pierce Dam, is the oldest, built by Putnam. Joseph Putnam’s dam was downtown, across the road from his house. [on the Google Map that is shown in the link, the dam is just above the words ‘common place’] Just upstream from that is Dam 2, known as Monadnock Dam. High Gate Dam, #4, is down-stream, across from Alberto’s Restaurant, near the Monadnock Paper Mill. None of these spillways looks terribly dramatic, but together they store a lot of potential energy which powered many big and little mills around the town in the 1800s and early 1900s. Since 1932, there has been a hydroelectric plant at Pierce Dam. Falling water is still a source of energy.

The next post will be on March 27, 2023.

Tag: Industrial Revolution

Factory Village

Great Falls of the Contoocook