[This post originally appeared in the March 2021 edition of The Hinterlander, the monthly newsletter of the Western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society]
This is the first in a series of articles for The
Hinterlander I am writing in connection with the “Lost Mill Towns” project.
This study seeks to identify and describe the so-called “mill towns” that once
dotted the western Rhode Island landscape – hamlets and central places with one
or more mill seats that typically produced flour, lumber or snuff in the 1700s
and various textiles in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of
these communities have either vanished or only exist today as a cluster of mill
houses. The mills themselves have either been reduced to ruins or repurposed into
residences or commercial space, with very few still operating as manufactories.
This month the focus is on Exeter
-- specifically the area of Exeter
east of the New London Turnpike, which roughly bisected the town when it was
constructed in 1815.
 |
Exeter and surrounding towns, from James Stevens, “A topographical map
of the state of Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations,” 1831 |
Exeter saw little significant
settlement before the early 1700s, as the area that would become Exeter was both still part the town of Kingstown and also in a parcel known as
the “Vacant Lands.” According to 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.” This was because the land that would become
Exeter traditionally had been recognized as belonging to the Narragansetts, and was
also claimed by the colonial charters of both Connecticut
(1662) and Rhode Island
(1663). After Connecticut nominally recognized Rhode Island’s claim in 1703, Rhode Island surveyed the Vacant Lands
between 1707 and 1709. It was only in 1709 that the Narragansett’s claims were extinguished by agreement with the tribe and the General Assembly, and 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” like Wickford, Wakefield,
or Westerly, or even anything like a Carolina or an Alton.
However, like the rest of rural Rhode
Island, wherever there was water power, mills were
established by the early nineteenth century and small communities arose in
their vicinity. According to the Rhode Island Historical Preservation &
Heritage Commission’s 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...”
In eastern Exeter, the main sources of water power were the Queen and the
Chipuxet Rivers and the Woody Hill, Sodom, and Fisherville Brooks.
Besides the RIHPHC study and National Register of Historic
Places Nomination Forms, another excellent source of information for “lost mill
towns” are nineteenth century maps, which identify mill seats, farms, houses
and other buildings that have long since departed the landscape. James Stevens
1831 map of Rhode Island lists numerous mills
and factories in the eastern section of Exeter,
some of which are described below, based on the aforementioned studies by the
RIHPHC and NRHP, but for others there is no other information than their names
appearing on the 1831 map.
In the Mail Road District, along Mill Road was the site of a 19th-century gristmill, known as Wilcox’s Gristmill by 1855. Along Slocum Road, Dorset Mills were first built on Yorker Mill Pond in 1846. By 1870 they were operated by one E. F. H. Babcock. [This mill complex is still extent; more on this in later post]
Four small mills were built along a one-mile stretch of the Sodom and Fisherville
Brooks. At Fisherville, a
gristmill was in operation before 1795, and between 1826 and 1836, a textile
mill was erected on the site that “manufactured jeans and check flannel as well
as warp, yarn, and twine.” Schuyler Fisher owned the Fishervllle Factory, the
Sodom Factory (located a mile to the west on Sodom Brook), and the Lawton mill (see below),
about one mile to the north of the Sodom Factory on the Fisherville Brook. In
1857, Fisher sold his mill interests to the Hall family. The complex at
Fisherville consisted of “the factory, several houses, a store, and a boarding
house. The mill was destroyed by fire in 1873, and was never rebuilt. By 1895
only two dwellings remained.”
At Hallville, the first of two textile mills “was erected
between 1814 and 1825 by Beriah Brown and produced wool yarn.” In 1825 the site
consisted of the mill, the mill waterways, “a dwelling house and several other
buildings.” By 1827, tax records listed the property as a cotton factory.
Ownership passed into the hands of the Hall family in 1835. It was during their
tenure that the mill complex was expanded and the area became known as
Hallville, consisting of the mill, a store, a post office and four dwellings.
The mill burned down in 1872 and was never rebuilt.
The Dawley Mill was originally built “as a gristmill between
1846 and 1854 by John C. Dawley,” who resided nearby. His house survives as the
only standing structure in Hallville. In 1854, John Dawley sold his operation
to the Halls, who converted the factory to the manufacture of jeans. It too was
destroyed by fire in the early 1870s.
Probably the most iconic mill building still standing in Exeter is Lawton’s
Mill, located on Route 102. A “dwelling, a sawmill, and a grist mill had been
erected on the property by 1768.” Another dwelling and a blacksmith shop had
been added when Samuel Bissell of North Kingstown
purchased the property in 1799. Bissell built a snuff mill there, which was
converted into a cotton mill by G. Palmer, Jr. and Allen Bissell in 1825. The
property also contained a fulling mill when Thomas Albro purchased it from
Caleb Bissell in 1831. Albro's grandson Thomas A. Lawton acquired the mill
property a year later and held it until his death in 1870. Though Lawton referred to this as his “Albrow Mill estate,” maps call
the site “Lawton's
Mill” or “Lawtonville.” Various specialized cotton-manufacturing operations
such as “fulling, finishing, warp-yarn spinning,” were carried on there until
at least 1849. By 1870 the mill had been converted to a sash and blind factory
and a shingle and planing mill, which operated until it was sold to Russell
Grinnell in 1912. Grinnell turned the entire property into a “gentleman’s farm”
and manufacturing at the mill ceased for good at that time.
At Exeter Hollow, “William Green built a sawmill, a nail
factory and a triphammer,” utilizing the water power provided by the Queen’s
River. In 1846, a cotton mill was constructed by C. Green near Edwards Pond. By
1850, Exeter Hollow had a school, a store and post office and eight to ten
houses; a tannery stood just north of the village. The mill burned in 1874 and
was not replaced; “the only above-ground remains today are a series of exposed
foundations.”
It would appear that most of Exeter’s small mill-owners in
the eastern section of the town, which by the 1870s consisted primarily of the
Hall family of Hallville and the Greens of Exeter Hollow, did not have the
financial resources to recover from the fires that struck their operations in
the 1870s, and textile manufacturing never returned to this section of Exeter.
The RIHPHC study of Exeter notes that the timing of this demise is reflected in the types of domestic architecture found in the town, “That certain sorts of properties
are not found in the inventory is, of course, also a reflection of this rural
community’s heritage -- the lack of major Victorian structures, for example, is
an indication of the lack of economic activity in Exeter during the late
nineteenth century.” By the time Victorian structures were in vogue, Exeter’s manufacturing
and building boom was over.
[Note: the images below did not appear in the original version of this article]
Compare the map from 1830 above with the map from 1895 below (the available scan for 1870 unfortunately is too difficult to read at higher magnification).
By 1895, nearly all of the mills operating in 1830 in eastern Exeter were gone nearly twenty-five years
___________________________________________________
Bibliography
Atlas of Southern Rhode Island
1895. Everts & Richards, Philadelphia,
1895.
Exeter, Rhode Island Historical Preservation &
Heritage Commission (1976)
J. R. Cole, History of Washington
and Kent Counties (1889)
National Register of Historic Places Nomination Forms for
Fisherville (1980), Hallville (1980), Lawton
Mill (1980), Sodom
Mill (1980)
James Stevens, “A topographical map of the state of
Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations,” 1831 https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:ht250326t
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