“From the beginnings of European settlement in North America
until the growth of modern industry in the nineteenth century, wood was the raw
material most frequently used for fuel, construction, furniture, and countless
other articles.” Charles van Ravenswaay, American Antiquarian Society, 1971
I have written numerous columns on wood usage from
lumbering, log drives and sawmills as well as houses, barns and furniture made
from that lumber have appeared in this space. Those articles can be found on my
blog at larrycoffin.blogspot.com. This article deals with the production of
small wooden items produced before and after the Industrial Revolution. These
woodenwares were a major part of shops and factories located within the
two-state area.
A deeply forested wilderness challenged early European
settlers. Species of trees included maple, pine, birch, ash, oak, beech, cedar,
and poplar. Before farming could commence those trees had to be removed. That
harvesting provided the raw material for the manufacture of woodenware. Early
residents quickly learned which wood was best-suited for a particular item and
which time of year was best to harvest the ideal trees.
Handmade wooden utensils often “cut, whittled or scooped
out” by the homeowner, could be found in all homes. Those included baskets,
tankards, wooden plates called trenchers, rolling pins, butter churns and
molds, cheese drainers and presses as well as mortars and pestles, dippers,
small boxes for sugar, spices and medicine, brooms and scoops. While these
wooden items were found everywhere, metal or glass items were more likely found
in the homes of the “better classes.” In the yards and barns were wooden
troughs, buckets, kegs, barrels, storage boxes, and wooden plows.
A skilled cooper was a valued craftsman in an early
community. Operating part-time as a cottage industry while also farming, they
worked to meet the great demand for barrels, tubs and pails. Before the 20th
century most items were stored and shipped in wooden barrels. Of different
standard sizes, wet barrels of oak were used for liquids such as molasses,
cider, liquor or paint. Dry barrels, often made of maple, were used to protect
contents from moisture. That ranged from hardware to flour and gun powder.
Before metal hoops were used, wooden one, often made of elders, held barrels together.
John Mann, an early settler in Orford, is an example of a
farmer/cooper. In 1767, he made pails and tubs to exchange for corn in Newbury.
The factory system that developed in the early 1800s changed
the manufacture of these items. Locally, there were small woodenware factories
in most towns.
Akin to barrels were tubs and boxes for the storage of
butter and cheese. In sizes from 20 to 60 pounds, they were made of wood that
would not impart either odor or flavor.
Prior to 1876, Henry Brown & Company produced butter boxes in a
factory near the Waits River falls. In 1879, Leavitt & Gage Company of
Bradford advertised their square butter boxes as superior to the old-style
round ones.
Until the introduction of galvanized tin around 1900,
buckets were manufactured from wood. This included sap buckets for the growing maple sugar industry. Around 1878, one
plant in Lyndonville created up to 15,000 cedar sap buckets annually. Wooden sugar boxes were also in demand.
There was also the manufacture of barrel kits. These were
loose barrel staves bundled together and shipped for later assembly. In 1851, Ransom Aldrich of Newbury moved to
Bradford to open a mackerel kit factory to meet the needs of the New England
fishing industry. Described as a “decided genius in the manufacture of articles
of wood,” he shipped his kits to Boston.
He later expanded his enterprise to include other wooden items, created
on machines “he made with his own hand.” In the early 1900s, Proctor Bros of
Nashua, NH operated a stave factory north of Bradford village. Their wooden staves
varied in length and were used in the making of pails, ice cream freezers and
barrels.
One of the largest
woodwork factories was located in Merrimack, NH. In the 1870s, it annually
produced 240,000 fish kits and 2,500,000 barrel staves, almost all of which
were made from local pine. At that same time there was a factory in Piermont
that prepared alders to be used for barrel hoops.
Wooden tub and box manufactures were also found throughout
the area. Page’s Box Shop of East Corinth began in 1875 as a blacksmith
shop. In the 1890s, in response to the
needs of nearby creameries, they began to manufacture boxes for butter and
cheese. Local farmers could rely on them for wooden stanchions, troughs and
water tubs. They also manufactured sugar boxes by the thousands and, later egg
crates, soft drink containers and even hot tubs. The last operator was
third-generation Maurice Page. The operation closed in 1990 after a disastrous
fire.
Tubs were also manufactured by Henry Hood of Topsham. In the 1880s, the shop manufactured 3,000
tubs annually. About the same time, Rodimon’s Butter Tub factory was operating
in Piermont.
Other box shops operated, including one in Walcott, Vt. The
local newspaper reported “there are few manufacturers of turned wood boxes in
the world that make as many as are made here.” Piermont’s Clayburn Brothers
Butter Box operation was in business from 1920 until 1945. Stone & Wood
Company operated a box mill in Woodsville after 1910. The Woodsville Box Shop
manufactured ammunition boxes during World War II and later, wooden beverage
boxes.
Factories manufacturing wooden bobbins also provided
employment in the two-state area. In the early 19th century new machinery
revolutionized the textile industry. Those machines required millions of wooden
bobbins and spools for the woven woolen and cotton threads they produced. As different machines and stages in the
process required different bobbins there were many varied shapes and sizes.
Ash, birch, and maple were among the hardwoods used. In 1888, the St. Johnsbury
newspaper reported it took one cord of wood to produce 5,000 bobbins.
Two large bobbin mills were located in East Corinth. The
Jackman Company, initially located in Topsham, began manufacturing bobbins in
1872. When that mill was destroyed by fire in 1894, the operation was moved to
East Corinth. For a time the company also operated a small mill in Bradford.
The bobbins they produced “were specialized for wooden thread, and for many
years they made bobbins exclusively for the American Woolen Company.” During
World War I, the mill was busy providing bobbins for the manufacture of woolen
blankets for soldiers.
Katharine Blaisdell’s history of this mill mentioned that
“for every 100 pounds of wood they started with, only 3 ½ pounds of finished
bobbins could be produced, due to the drying and shaping of the wood. “ The
bobbins were made from rock maple. When plastics began to replace wooden
bobbins, business declined and the mill closed in 1969.
The second and larger mill was that of the Bowen-Hunter
Company. The company began in 1905 in Ernest Bowen’s small shop. When that shop
was destroyed by fire in 1921, Bowen went into partnership with Winthrop
Jackman for a short time and then with Harry Hunter. Their mill “became the
world’s foremost producer of bobbins for cotton mills.” They had auxiliary
mills in West Topsham, Warren and Westfield, VT with a total employment of up
to 185.
In every aspect of woodworking, destructive fires were
frequent. Major fires often signaled the end of an operation. That was the case
when, on Nov 21, 1967, the East Corinth mill was destroyed by fire.
Other local bobbin mills owners included F. D. McCrillis and
M. D. Coffrin in Groton, Sumner Clifford in Warren, H. S. Sleeper in North
Haverhill, Josh Nutter in Swiftwater, Pike and Lavoie in Pike, Warren and
Glencliff and R. Beal and Sons in Orfordville. In 1886, the latter produced
500,000 bobbins.
The clothespin is another of the wooden items that had
connections to the two states. Before the 19th century, laundry was hung on
bushes or lines with either handmade prongs or no pins at all. In 1853, David
Smith of Springfield, VT designed the first spring- clamped clothespin. A year later, John Smith of Sunapee, NH
patented a machine for the slitting of clothespins, the first of a series of
clothespin machines. He was also very
successful at producing the pins themselves. A different pin-making machine was
patented by two men from Hartland, VT in 1855.
At first, clothes pins were manufactured in small family-operated
factories. In the 1880s, the U.S. Clothespin Company and the National
Clothespin Company made Vermont’s Washington County the clothespin center of
the nation. In 1899, the St. Johnsbury Caledonian reported “the success of the
company could be documented in an order of one carload, or 6,000 gross of pin”
shipped to Europe soon. It was reported that during the height of production,
the yearly production of pins in central Vermont amounted to 72 million.
After World War I, the industry was challenged as cheap
imports from Europe flooded the market. In 1920, one gross of Vermont-made pins
sold for 58 cents, while a gross of imported Swedish pins sold for ten cents
less. Despite this competition, the two Vermont companies continued to operate.
When the National Clothespin Company closed in 2003, it was the last American
wooden clothespin operation
Wooden pegs and
dowels were used in construction of everything from structures to furniture and
boxes, especially before nails became readily available. After 1818, inventors, such as Thomas Rowell
of Hartford, developed machines for the manufacture of wooden pegs. There were
factories in Meredith, NH as well as Bellows Falls, St. Johnsbury, Barnet, and
Bethel in Vermont. In 1874, the latter
“turned out 100 bushels of pegs a day.”
In 1897, maple and white birch pegs sold for prices up to one dollar per
bushel. Before 1865, wooden pegs were also used in the manufacture of shoes but
later replaced by small nails or glue. Despite that, an ad in 1907 called them
the “best cure for squeaky shoes.”
There were dozens of other local woodworking shops. In the
1860s, Charles Smith of Woodsville manufactured shovel handles. Edward Cilley
of Piermont turned out hoe handles and ladders. Frank Bradford of Orford crafted
brooms. A number of craftsmen including George Eastman of North Haverhill built
coffins and caskets. In the 1890s, E.L. Chandler Co of Orleans, VT manufactured
wooden piano sounding boards. In Springfield, VT there were several factories
that manufactured wooden toys including wooden-headed dolls.
In 1879, H. D. Davis began to manufacture beehive parts in
Bradford. Photos of the period show numerous beehives on the hillside north of
the village. Apparently those bees were annoying
to the neighbors and, in 1892, the village trustees threatened to prosecute him
for keeping bees. Their threat made national news in numerous apiculture
magazines. “Beehive” Davis continued to keep bees and manufacture boxes.
Between 1870 and the 1890s, several individuals, including
W. H. Leavitt, manufactured window parts as well as door, boxes and tubs in a
factory near the fall in Bradford. There
were several shops, including that of Stephen Plant of Haverhill, that turned
out baskets. In 1947, the Haldane Company of Groton manufactured boxes for the
silverware industry.
All of these manufactured produces proved “the strength,
thickness, security and durability of wood.” Despite the constant threats from
fire, foreign competition and economic downturns, these shops provided
significant employment for both local men and women. They took trees from the
hillsides of Northern New England and turned them into products for homes and
businesses.
This is not the last of my columns on wood products. In the near future I will cover potash,
papermaking, bark mills and other local wood-based industries.
