Lost Mill Towns of Exeter, Rhode Island (Part II)

[This post originally appeared in the April 2021 edition of The Hinterlander, the monthly newsletter of the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society]

This is the next in a series of articles for The Hinterlander written in connection with the “Lost Mill Towns” project, to identify the so-called “mill towns” that once dotted the western Rhode Island countryside. Not to be confused with Rhode Island’s thirty-nine local municipal governments incorporated by the RI General Assembly also known as towns – eight of which have re-incorporated as cities operating under a charter – this is a study of the rural hamlets, villages colloquially referred to as “mill towns” by Rhode Islanders. The prototypical mill town started off in the 1700s as a lone grist, lumber or sawmill wherever a fast moving stream could be easily dammed to harness the resulting water power, with only the miller living in the vicinity. It is in the nineteenth century that many of these mill seats were converted to the manufacture of cotton and woolen textiles that we see the emergence of actual mill towns, communities with factories, housing constructed specifically to rent to mill workers, general stores and other services such as blacksmith shops. Some textile mills continued to operate their original grist and sawmills alongside the textile endeavors. Many of these mill towns have entirely vanished from the landscape, while others exist today only as a dam and perhaps a cluster of mill houses; places whose mills are in ruins or have been repurposed from manufacturing into residential or commercial spaces. It is the history of those once common communities that this project seeks to identify and make known again.

Last month the focus was on the mill towns along the Fisherville and Sodom Brooks and in Exeter Hollow in the section of Exeter east of the New London Turnpike. This highway roughly bisected Exeter down the middle when it was constructed in 1815. This month, the focus is on Exeter’s mill towns west of the New London Turnpike.

This region saw little significant white settlement before the early 1700s, as the area of Kingstown that would become Exeter was part of a parcel known as the “Vacant Lands” -- land once belonging to the Narragansetts claimed by both Rhode Island and Connecticut. According to the chapter on Exeter in J.R. Cole’s History of Washington and Kent Counties “it was not until a long time after the great swamp fight that the town could boast of a settler” (Cole, 665). After Connecticut nominally renounced its claims in 1703, the Rhode Island General Assembly ordered a survey of the Vacant Lands between 1707 and 1709. It was only after this that white settlers could obtain legal titles to purchase land there. In 1723 Kingstown was divided into North and South Kingstown, and in 1742 the western section of North Kingstown petitioned the General Assembly to become the town of Exeter.   

Exeter never spawned a “central business district” with multistory commercial and residential buildings as did Wickford or Wakefield, nor any settlements as large or densely settled as Carolina or Alton. However, like the rest of rural Rhode Island, wherever there was sufficient water power in Exeter, mills were established and small communities often arose in their vicinity. According to the Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission’s (RIHPHC) 1976 study, Exeter’s “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century development as a remote community [was] economically dependent on family farms and small manufacturing enterprises that dotted the town’s numerous streams...(Exeter, 6). But unlike several mill seats in the eastern section of Exeter, the only study of western Exeter in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) are of two sawmills along Parris Brook, submitted in 1980. The other mill seats are described only briefly or not at all in the RIHPHC study of Exeter. Hence most of the mills in this part of Exeter are only known from details on found in nineteenth-century maps and atlases, and from actually visiting as many of these sites as possible to corroborate the map evidence.  

Along the lower Woody Hill Brook in southwestern Exeter, the Bliven family operated a sawmill and a cider mill beginning in 1790. According to the Parris Brook NRHC report*, the site includes a dam, mill foundations, tailrace, and a possible earlier dam and mill at the confluence of Parris Brook and Woody Hill Brook. The site is notable for the level of complexity of the races feeding waterpower to the mill. The NRHC report notes that while documentary references to the mill ends in the 1830s, the Blivens appear to have operated their sawmill into the later nineteenth century, as traces of repair materials from that period are extant at the site. The Gardiner sawmill was built nearby on the Parris Brook in 1871, perhaps because the Bliven mill may have no longer been in operation by then. Gardiner’s sawmill only operated until 1879, and the NRHP report states this was the end of the sawmill business on this section of Parris Brook. Here the maps corroborate the information in the report. Beers 1870 map does not note either the Bliven or Gardiner sawmills on Parris Brook, and by the timeline posited by the report, Blivens mill had closed by then and Gardiner’s sawmill had yet to open. Both Beers map and Everts and Richards 1895 Atlas of Southern Rhode Island locates a sawmill further upstream on the Woody Hill Brook, in nearly the same location. Though this sawmill was geographically outside the scope of the NRHP report it would have been servicing the same general area. 

Sawmills of southwestern Exeter. SM is an abbreviation for sawmill. Beers 1870.

This region of Exeter was forest and farmland and no textile manufacturers took advantage of the water power there to build factories and mill towns. The only raison d'être for all these sawmills was to service nearby farmers. Without corroborating evidence, it is impossible to state why the sawmills on this section of Parris Brook went out of business, but their remote location far from decent roads or rail transportation suggests that they would not have been able to sell their products beyond the immediate locale. Nor was there any new development in this area of Exeter, as there had been when Bliven’s cider mill and sawmill first opened in 1790. No manufacturing came into the area to attract more residents and construction, and while some farms do appear to have more buildings, no new farms appear on the maps between 1870 and 1895. There was also the other sawmill upstream on the Woody Hill Brook that would have been competing for the same business. Finally, the economic conditions of the 1870s caused by the Panic of 1873 and resulting depression (referred to as the “Great Depression” until the economic collapse of the 1930s took over that dubious distinction) may have been another factor.    

Upstream from Blivens sawmill were several other water-powered mills on Parris Brook, by the intersection of Ten Rod Road (aka Route 165) and Escoheag Road. The house on the west corner of this intersection was also a store serving the other residents of the small village (D. Congdon’s Store according to the 1870 Beers Atlas, which had changed hands to one S. Barber by 1895). A few dozen yards behind the store on Parris Brook was Hazard’s (or Pratt’s) gristmill – so-called in the RIHPHC survey of Exeter though none of the maps note who operated the gristmill or when. The foundation of this mill is still in good condition, and it can be observed when traveling south on the western side of Escoheag Road, a few yards before Parris Brook crosses underneath it. 

Then on the eastern corner of Escoheag Road and Ten Rod Road on Parris Brook was a shingle mill and a sawmill. Traces of the sawmill’s foundation can still be seen on both sides of Parris Brook in the vicinity of where Beers 1870 map located it. Since neither appears in Everts and Richards 1895 atlas, and the aforementioned Woody Hill sawmill is labeled as such on their map, it is likely both shingle and saw mill were out of business by the 1890s.   

Remains of the sawmill on Parris Brook, Escoheag. Photo by author.

Further east on Ten Rod Road was, according to the RIHPHC survey, one of the largest mill towns of western Exeter. Millville, whose mill wrights dammed Roaring Brook to create Boon Lake (also spelled Boone Lake in 2021 real estate listings), storing enough water power behind the dam to operate several mills. Today, cars and trucks roar through Millville without their occupants even realizing it, as nothing remains of this manufacturing settlement. Millville once lay in the general vicinity of East Shore Road, a right turn that comes up quick just after driving under the RT 95 overpass when traveling west on RT 165 towards Connecticut. At present this side street leads to a thriving community of summer cottages on the eastern and western shores of Boon Lake, but neither the cottages nor the pond are visible from the main road.    

According to the RIHPHC survey, “along Ten Rod Road [Millville] was a "small manufacturing village" [that consisted of] a few houses, two factories, a blacksmith and carriage shop and a grocery store. There were two mills at two different sites; the lower mill built in 1832, the upper one, a cotton mill, erected in 1840” (Exeter, 16). The lower mill was specifically built to “manufacture cheap Negro cloth” (Exeter, 5), as many other Rhode Island textile manufacturers did during the antebellum period. Negro cloth was “a rough, coarse, unfinished low cost textile for slave clothing…used to make jackets and breeches for field slaves [across the South]. Generally, the outer and under garments…produced from rough fabrics caused skin irritation since fibers were mixed or combined to create durable textiles…rather than comfortable fabrics.” (Saunders, 1-2). Rhode Islanders still profited from slavery and indirectly supported its continuation long after gradual emancipation laws were passed by the General Assembly in the 1780s and Congress banned the slave trade itself in 1808, mass producing coarse, uncomfortable cloth to sell to southern plantation owners seeking to dress their slaves as cheaply as possible.     

The Stevens map drawn in 1831 marks the location of several buildings in the vicinity of Millville, which bears the name “Reynold.” The Beers Atlas of 1870 shows three streams emitting from Boon Lake (today there is only one). Between the east and the central streams, Beers lists the upper factory simply as “Cotton Mill,” and the two factories directly downstream are labeled “I. L. Aldrich & Co.” On the western spur of the Roaring Brook were the F.P. Phillips Cotton Mill and a store. All three streams were rejoined on the other side of Ten Rod Road – which would have necessitated the construction of three bridges here. In Everts and Richards 1895 Atlas of Southern Rhode Island, Millville is finally labeled as such, and the Roaring Brook only appears as the central stream (today it is the western stream that is actively carrying water). The Aldrich factories were by this time labeled “Arcadia MFG Co.,” and while the upper “Cotton Mill” was still in operation, the western branch buildings are labeled E.R. Phillips, so the perhaps the Phillips cotton mills were still operating by 1895. Without further research into Exeter’s tax or land records, it is impossible to say when Millville’s cotton factories went out of business, though it is fairly safe to guess that these establishments had stopped operating before World War II, and probably much earlier.     

Further downstream, before Roaring Brook flows in and around the village of Arcadia, a series of dams were constructed created Browning’s Pond and another, smaller, retaining pond to the east. Though the RIHPHC survey makes no mention of them, several factories operated just to the north of the Exeter-Richmond border, in the vicinity of the present-day headquarters of the Arcadia Management Area. According to map evidence, the Brownings were this area’s first textile manufacturers, while one T.T. Hoxie opened his manufactories somewhat later, and both were in operation through the end of the nineteenth century. On Stevens’ 1831 map, on the eastern side of Arcadia Road are Brownings Mills and directly across the road, the Browning Factory. On Beers 1870 map, the buildings on the eastern side of the road are labeled J.B. Browning, while across the street are T.T. Hoxie & Co. and an adjacent building labeled Cotton Mill. The foundation walls of one of these factories are still extant next to the parking lot by Roaring Brook. Just to the north of this mill complex on the eastern side of Arcadia Road is another building on Beers Atlas, also labeled T.T. Hoxie & Co. The ruins of this factory’s foundations are still visible along the eastern side of Arcadia Road, exactly where Beers map locates it. All of these buildings are also drawn on Everts & Richards 1895 map, though the scale is such that the entire area is described only as T. T. Hoxie and Reynolds, to the north and south respectively.   

Meanwhile on the western side of Browning’s Pond were another series of dams and by 1831 least one small textile mill. Stevens only writes the word “Factory” in this area on his map; by 1870 there are a number of buildings with specific names and one “D.L. Aldrich & Co.” By 1895 there are several buildings labeled “Arcadia Co.” on both sides of Summit Road on the western side of Browning’s Pond. Though many of the workers for these mills lived on the Richmond side of Arcadia, clearly part of the mill village and its factories were on the Exeter side of the village. Should the RIHPHC ever update their report on Exeter, they should include these places in their inventory.    

Next month, this set of articles on the “Lost Mill Towns of Exeter” will conclude with a review of the manufacturers adjacent to and nearby the New London Turnpike, an inventory of sawmills in eastern Exeter, as well as a look at the woolen mill on Yorker Pond in Slocum near Exeter’s border with North and South Kingstown.

* I was going to add a link to the Parris Brook NRHC report, but the link to the .pdf seems to have vanished. If I have time some time I'll try to get my copy up and online so people can access it. But this is why when you find a significant source of information on the interwebs, you DOWNLOAD IT people!  Online information like government pdfs and other research is not reliable in that it's here today and gone tomorrow.

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Bibliography

Atlas of Southern Rhode Island 1895. Everts & Richards, Philadelphia, 1895.

Atlas of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. D. G. Beers & Co., Philadelphia,

1870.

Cole, J. R., History of Washington and Kent Counties, W. W. Preston & Company, New York,

1889.

Exeter, Preliminary Survey Report. Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage

Commission, Providence, 1976.

National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, Parris Brook, 1980.

Sanders, Eulanda A., "The Politics of Textiles Used in African American Slave Clothing" (2012).

Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 740.

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/740

Stevens, James, “A topographical map of the state of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations,”

1831.