Transcribed by Jacques Tucker  03/2001
regarding the Town of Glocester, Providence County, Rhode Island
from which Burrillville, [North Glocester] was separated and incorporated in 1806

Title Page

THE WAY UP COUNTRY

 A History, Guide and Directory

Chapter 5

EARTH INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE

Out of the earth comes life, but to survive and prosper took particular determination.  Colonial perseverance and ingenuity bore industries and commerce.  Grist mills, necessary to the very life of the inhabitants, were installed at water privileges throughout the town.  John Smith, the Miller, is said to have begun the first mill at a point near Tarkiln (now southeast Burrillville).  The Indians deemed a grist mill and its operator satisfactory recompense for land.  A hand-drawn map (1806) reveals that twelve grist mills were operating in Glocester, (including Wallum Lake, Pascoag, Harrisville, Mapleville, Tarkiln, west of Cherry Valley, east of the Douglas Hook and at least two at Chepachet).  In an interview several years ago, Nelson Plante stated that grist mill operators held such an influential position that they were not allowed to hold public office.

Gardens and orchards were as immediate a concern as livestock and the building of homes.  Barter and trade were more frequent than money transactions.  Trade between Charlestown, South Carolina and Glocester was lively.  Orchard and garden products from Ebe Phetteplace’s and Mark Steere’s farms were shipped there.  Farming began to decline in the 1800's due to industrialization.  The Wilmarth's kept silkworms to spin silk thread, which Mrs. Wilmarth wove into cloth.  Mr. Wilmarth once appeared in a full suit of “Glocester-grown silk”.

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Sawmills were set up at water privileges, often very near the grist mills.  Twenty-one sawmills were operating about 1806 in Glocester.  Chestnut, cherry, cedar, oak, ash, beech and hickory were in great abundance and were used freely for building and manufacture of implements.  Bicknell's “History of Rhode Island” recalls “Seth Mowry who, with William Irons engaged in the manufacture of lumber in 1857, claimed there were at least fifteen sawmills with wooden waterwheels and up-and-down saws in the Town of Glocester, where edged pine lumber of good quality sold for $12.50 per thousand board feet.”  Lumber, shingles, and barrel staves were produced in this town by the thousands and upwards of two million by 1850.  Caskets and chairs were manufactured in Chepachet, and cloth boards in West Glocester.  With the advent of the gasoline engine came the movable sawmill that could be set up in a day far from water in the heart of upland forests.  Workers' families frequently lived in the temporary sawmill “villages”.

Coaliers operated as many as a dozen pits in Glocester which produced nearly a quarter of a million bushels of charcoal a year.  Nearly thirty factories manufactured potash for soap-making.  Another by-product of the forest industry, tannin was produced at the Acid Works in Harmony for hide-curing and dye-setting.  John Waterman owned a paper mill on Brandy Brook in the 1790's.

Forges were vitally important.  Iron ore found in Chepachet River banks was made into farm tools, nails and horse and oxen shoes.  Daniel Owen exported tools and horse shoes to England in the mid-1700’.  In the early 1800’s, Oliver Owen made edged tools with the triphammer established at his nail factory on Chepachet River. Blacksmiths were found at many crossroads and, in the larger communities, as the need arose, wheelright, carriage and harness shops were added; often in the same building.  Two such were Slavin’s and W. Hawkin’s. Before 1800 Solomon Owen had established a tannery at Chepachet village, for which Tanyard Lane is named.

Timothy Wilmarth and the widow Amey Gadcomb ran fulling mills in Chepachet to shrink and thicken wool.  The Owen family manufactured cottonseed oil in a tiny factory on Chepachet River at the end of Oil Mill Lane.  The export of garden products to South Carolina may have resulted in trade for cotton and seed.  In 1790 the textile industry started in Pawtucket and by 1808 a carding mill was built by George Harris in Chepachet.  In 1814 Lawton Owen built the three-story Stone Mill at Chepachet Bridge.  Within the mill,

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picture: Smith Mowry's cloth mill at Spring Grove

cotton yarn was spun.  Satinet, cashmeres, and, more recently, tweeds and worsteds have been manufactured here.  The Stone Mill continued to operate until 1969.  In 1838, Smith Mowry started cloth manufacture at Spring Grove.  Thirty years later, it operated as a shoddy mill.

Few records are available on the enterprise of the three and four-story mill complex owned by Henry Clay White.  It is presumed that the fire of 1897 destroyed the files.  One small piece was found in “Wade’s Fibre and Fabric” (newspaper) dated December 1886.  “The new addition to Mr. H. C. White’s mills, at Chepachet, is almost completed and will be ready for the machinery in a few days; part of it is now here, and more will arrive soon.  The new part is about one hundred by fifty feet, and is to used mostly for carding and spinning.  Mr. White is now running at these mills, eighty broad Crompton looms on fancy worsteds and suitings . . .”

picture: White’s Mill before 1889, looking northwest.
(Taken from upper floor or tower of Point Mill which burned in 1889.)

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Glocester continued to use water power into the twentieth century at Hawkins’ electric plant (1921-1936) in West Glocester and Steere’s electric plant (1922-1931) in Chepachet.  Steere’s supplied nearly one hundred customers in Glocester and some in Burrillville.

Diverse industries such as cigar making, granite and marble quarrying, distilling, box making, hat making and tin smithing have been conducted in Glocester.

In 1831 there were thirteen dry goods and grocery stores at Chepachet alone.  People came to trade from as far away as Killingly and Woodstock.  The largest of these was the Job Armstrong Store, which employed five clerks.  Early prohibition and the effects of the Dorr Rebellion led to a gradual decline of the trade here.

picture:  Built by T. Wilmarth, 1799, Benjamin Cozzins originally sold hats within. 
Operated as a general store since 1809.

Hamlets developed near mills and general stores were often established; such as Wilder’s, southeast Glocester; Hawkin’s, and Keech’s, West Glocester; and Burlingames’s, Harmony.

Two banks were chartered at Chepachet.  The first, Farmer’s Exchange, occupied the first floor of the Masonic Hall.  Mishandling of funds caused its closing in 1809.  President John Harris was suspended as Chief Justice of Common Pleas due to his part in the scandalous swindle.  In 1818. the Franklin Bank was established at the corner of Oil Mill Lane, with initial capital of $50,000.  Jesse Tourtellot served as its president.  It operated successfully until 1865 when the national banking system as introduced.  The stockholders then voted to cease operation.

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That's Chapter 5 in its entirety. 
If you would like me to look for other info
regarding Glocester in this book, please drop me an email.