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From Sugar Houses to the Sugar Trust: Boston’s Candy-Colored History

Colonial Boston had a sweet tooth, and sugar played an important part of the local economy during that time. Dozens if not hundreds of Boston artisans worked as independent sugar refiners inside sugar houses. These entrepreneurs, called sugar bakers, supplied coffee houses and tea rooms. Over time, they made Boston the center of candy making. Later, larger refineries were built and belonged to a powerful cartel in the 1880s.

Sugars (clockwise from top-left): white refined, unrefined, brown, unprocessed cane sugar

Early Sugar Bakers

Before the era of industrial refining, sugar was processed by small businesses called sugar bakeries. Boston had many of them. The early method of processing sugar involved boiling it in large copper pots called “coppers.” Sometimes sugar bakers used four or five pots in different phases of production. It was a thriving business.

Merchants like John Hancock imported raw sugar from the West Indies, where slave plantations grew sugar cane. Boston had a robust trade with them–part of the “triangular trade.”

The transatlantic triangle trade began with Europeans trading manufactured goods for enslaved people in Africa. Those captives were shipped to work on West Indian sugar plantations. New England merchants then supplied the plantations with commodities like dried fish and lumber, returning to North America with molasses and raw sugar. Notably, French and Dutch Caribbean sugar (from islands like Martinique and Saint-Domingue) was cheaper than sugar from the British West Indies.

In 1764, the Crown levied a tax on the importation of sugar and molasses from the non-British sources in the West Indies. Hancock criticized the tax, and the next year he entered politics by winning election as a Boston selectman. The sugar bakers likely supported Hancock.

Boston Sugar Houses

Ezekiel Cheever (1720-1793), an early Boston sugar baker, had a role in the American Revolution. Born in Charlestown, a descendant of Ezekiel Cheever, the colonial schoolmaster, he was appointed to protect the Boston Tea Party participants in 1773. During the war he worked closely with Gen. Henry Knox as Commissary of Artillery Stores (ordnance equipment). He was buried in Granary Burial Ground in 1793. Ezekiel’s brief biography can be found at the Charlestown Preservation Society.

There must have been several Ezekiels in the sugar business during that time! “How Sweet it is! A History of Sugar and Sugar Refining in the U.S.” by Virginia Mescher, states that Boston tax rolls show an Ezechiel Cheever, sugar refinery, in Charlestown from 1721-1766.

The book “Crooked & Narrow Streets of Boston 1630-1822,” by Annie Haven Thwing, mentions several sugar businesses such as that of Thomas Child, distiller and sugar baker at the corner of Essex and Kingston Streets in the 1730’s. “Opposite Franklin Ave was the sugar house of James Smith & James Murray which was used for Barracks by the British during the Siege,” she wrote.

Sugar bakers used a multi-step process to produce refined white sugar. Raw sugar from the sugar cane was purchased from Cuba. First it had to be washed to remove the molasses (which was sold for the rum trade), then crystallized, dried and formed into cone shaped “loaves.”

A sugarloaf

Boston’s many sugar houses spawned new businesses. In 1764, Dr. James Baker and Irish chocolatier John Hannon started the first chocolate factory in America. Their water-powered gristmill on the Neponset River became the Baker’s Chocolate Company. The Schrafft Candy Co. in 1861 introduced jelly beans and urged customers to send them to Civil War soldiers. Later, the company made boxed chocolates and started a chain of restaurants.

Sugar Refineries

Although independent sugar bakers continued to exist for several decades, larger refineries began to appear in the 1830s. The Boston Sugar Refinery was established on Lewis Street between Webster and Sumner in East Boston in 1834. Powered by a steam engine, it employed 80 people. This boiling and drying process was on a much larger scale than in colonial days. Later, South Boston’s Charles Hersey patented a drying machine called a granulator in 1871. The invention led to Boston’s success as a candy maker. You may remember Necco (New England Candy Co) wafers, Mary Janes and Squirrel Nut Zippers–all made in the Boston area.

The East Boston directory of 1852 listed 41 sugar bakers, most of them on Sumner or Everett Street. Many of them also appear in the 1850 census of East Boston where 38 sugar bakers, all born in Germany, lived at the same address. These men probably worked in one of the larger refineries and lived in nearby factory housing.

The Sugar Trust

In 1887 the Boston Refinery belonged to the Sugar Trust, a monopoly that took advantage of protective tariffs to control the market. Henry O. Havemeyer, a third-generation sugar refiner, formed the trust. Comprised of 17 mostly East Coast sugar refineries, it included four in Boston. The Sugar Trust had a 98 percent monopoly and was highly controversial for its predatory pricing, political influence and fraud. It even won a Supreme Court case in 1895. The high court ruled that the Trust did not violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which prohibited monopolies in trade and commerce. Thus, this sugar monopoly survived because the court considered refining a local activity and not subject to interstate commerce regulations.

Political cartoon showing an old woman labeled “Monopoly Tariff” sitting next to an old shoe labeled “Special Privilege”, around which a number of children are playing; they all represent a “Trust” and include the Sugar Trust.

Boston’s Edwin F. Atkins (1850-1926) was involved in the Sugar Trust and served as vice president and president after Havemeyer’s death in 1907. Atkins, a Boston businessman, managed Cuban sugar purchases for his family business, and he also managed the Bay State Sugar Refining Company. A 2023 Boston Globe article called him “The Sugar Baron of Boston”.

Another Bostonian, John Perrin Spaulding (1832 -1896), also had a role in the Sugar Trust. He had established the Revere Sugar Refinery in 1871 in Charlestown. Spaulding was also a philanthropist, an early benefactor of Helen Keller, and was known throughout Boston as the Sugar King. His Revere Refinery initially remained independent of the Sugar Trust, but Boston-based United Fruit (now Chiquita Brands International) absorbed and finally acquired the business.

The Revere Sugar Refinery.

Enter Domino

The Sugar Trust evolved into the American Sugar Refining Company. It then dominated the United States sugar industry for much of the 20^th century, and Domino became one of its brands.

By 1960 American Sugar Refining Company built a new plant in Charlestown to replace the one in South Boston. According to the Boston Globe in April 1961, “Commencing today, the American Sugar Refining Company rededicates itself to a brand-new era of service to Domino’s friends throughout Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all of New England.”

The Domino brand has since gone through many ownership changes, but you can still find that familiar yellow-and-white bag of sugar on grocery shelves.

Images: Sugarloaf By Petr Adam Dohnálek – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14669401. Kinds of sugar, By Romain Behar – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1219848. Boston Gazette ad By Boston Gazette – Boston Gazette, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12128308. And Puck cartoon Pughe, J. S. , Artist. Special privilege / J.S. Pughe. , 1908. N.Y.: J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2011647293/. Featured image illustration by Chat GPT>

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Seven Fun Facts About Connecticut Copper

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Connecticut copper played a pivotal role in the state’s industrial expansion. The state’s dominant industry began as buttons and trinkets for peddlers to sell. Then, factories in Waterbury, Ansonia and the Naugatuck Valley sprang up, transforming imported copper into brass goods. By the early 1800s, the state led the nation in brass production.

Beyond brass, copper was crucial for shipbuilding, with coastal towns like Mystic and New London using copper sheathing to shield wooden hulls. Later, its excellent conductivity made it indispensable for electrical wiring and early electronics, driving industrial growth in Bridgeport and Plainville.

Connecticut’s brass industry boomed during World War II but began to wane in the 1950s. Today, institutions like Waterbury’s Mattatuck Museum and Bristol’s American Clock & Watch Museum keep Connecticut’s industrial legacy alive.

Here are seven fun facts about Connecticut copper.

1. An East Granby, Connecticut, copper mine became a notorious prison.

They named it “Newgate” after England’s infamous penitentiary.

The old copper mine started out as a prison in 1773 as punishment for burglars, robbers and counterfeiters. The Connecticut General Court persuaded the owner, a tavernkeeper, to change careers and serve as the prison warden. Drains were closed, the main shaft was capped and a guardhouse built over it. Prisoners had to climb down a 40-foot ladder into a dark, cold cavern. Fleas, lice, and bedbugs covered every inch of the floor which in turn was covered in five inches of slippery, stinking filth.

Old Newgate Prison, 1910 postcard

Many of the prisoners escaped with help from outside accomplices.

Then during the American Revolution, George Washington ordered the old Connecticut copper mine to take in Loyalists who refused to swear a loyalty oath. As many as 40 Loyalists at a time crowded into the fetid prison with another 50 or 60 criminals. Guards shackled the prisoners and forced them to make nails by hand. Prisoners had a strong incentive to escape the prison they called “hell,” and as many as half managed to break out.

After the war, Old Newgate continued to operate as a prison. Inmates made products to sell commercially in order to pay for prison operations. They produced barrels, plows, shoes, machines and baskets.

Connecticut closed the prison in 1827. Today the state runs it as a museum.

2. Higley copper coins were Connecticut’s first DIY currency

Samuel Higley, a Yale-educated doctor, blacksmith and metallurgist, allegedly minted the colony’s first copper coins in the 1730s—partly to pay his bar tab. The story goes that Higley, who owned the copper mine in East Granby, struck his own three-penny coins because of the colony’s shortage of small coins. On one version of the coin, he inscribed “VALUE ME AS YOU PLEASE.”

Higley or workers he hired hacked out chunks of copper by hand and hammered out the coins, usually the size of a half-dollar. Though illegal, Higley’s coppers (mostly dated 1737) circulated widely, backed by his local reputation. Some bore a deer and the numeral “3,” while others featured axes or wheels with cryptic mottos like “I CUT MY WAY THROUGH.”

Higley died at sea in 1737, on his way to England with a load of copper. His family may have continued production. The mines are gone now, but a few coins survive, selling for more than $600 apiece.

3. Connecticut for decades ranked No. 1 in brass production.

Connecticut’s metalworking entrepreneurs began fusing copper with zinc to make brass buttons. They then started making small household items for Yankee peddlers to sell. The peddlers packed kettles, lamps and buttons into their packs and headed south.

The market for brass just kept growing. By 1840 Connecticut brass manufacturers sold brass products from the Naugatuck Valley to markets around the world.

The regions of the Naugatuck River Valley. Green is the Valley, yellow is the Greater Waterbury area, and blue is the Litchfield Hills region.

By 1884 the Naugatuck Valley produced 85 percent of the rolled brass in the United States. And by 1900, Connecticut produced 75 percent of the brass rolling, 33 percent of brass castings and half of the brassware in the United States.

As brass manufacturing expanded it also consolidated. The largest brass manufacturers, known as the Big Three, were Scovill Manufacturing, Waterbury’s largest employer, American Brass and the Chase Brass & Copper Company. Such industrial concentration usually led to price fixing, and in the case of the Big Three it did.

World War II brought more orders from the government, but the Brass Valley felt the hit from a policy of spreading government brass contracts around the country. By the 1950s, plastic replaced brass as the material of choice and the Big Three shut down.

4. A Wall Street tycoon exposed his own corrupt scheme to buy a copper mining company.

Thomas Lawson, William Rockefeller and Henry Rogers teamed up to execute a Wall Street heist. They formed a shell company called Amalgamated Copper. It had no assets, but it did have an option to buy Anaconda Copper for $37 million. No one on Wall Street trusted Rogers or Rockefeller, but they trusted Lawson. He urged people to buy shares in Amalgamated Copper because, he claimed Amalgamated had already bought Anaconda.

Thomas Lawson

Lawson whipped people into a frenzy and shares of Amalgamated soared to $175. Then either Rogers or Rockefeller leaked the word that their company hadn’t actually bought Anaconda. They would just keep all the money they raised. Shares fell to $30, ruining some of Lawson’s friends and associates and reportedly driving some to suicide.

Wall Street ostracized Thomas Lawson, but he didn’t care. His share of the heist drove his fortune over the $50 million mark. As an act of contrition, he wrote a book, “Frenzied Finance,” exposing the fraud.

Anaconda later bought American Brass.

5. Connecticut copper household goods belong to museum collections.

Founded in Meriden, in 1849, Manning, Bowman & Co. became known for its high-quality plated and non-plated metalware. The company specialized in crafting elegant coffee and tea pots and cutlery. Later it expanded into electrical household goods.

Renowned for its stylish and inventive designs, Manning, Bowman & Co. showcased its products at major international exhibitions, including the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris and the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition.

Today, dozens of Manning, Bowman designs belong to the collections of such museums as the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Yale University Art Gallery.

6. It all began with the Waterbury Button Company.

Founded during the War of 1812, the Waterbury Button Company not only reigned as the largest producer of stamped metal buttons in the U.S., it also laid the foundation for the Naugatuck Valley’s brass industry.

It started in 1790 when the Grilley brothers crafted pewter buttons in Waterbury. By 1802, Abel Porter & Company pioneered brass button production by fusing local copper with imported zinc.

Then along came Aaron Benedict, who made bone and ivory buttons for military uniforms during the War of 1812. He began to make brass buttons, and his partnerships evolved into the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company in 1843. In 1849, its button division spun off as the Waterbury Button Company.

The Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury has a collection of Waterbury Buttons. Here are a few.

Benedict had the now-outdated idea that skilled workers could help him succeed, and he brought them from England. He also bought new water-powered machinery, which the Naugatuck River ran. Eventually the Naugatuck Railroad allowed the Waterbury Button Company to reach national markets.

The company grew by selling uniform buttons for everyone from Civil War soldiers to the Titanic crew. The company innovated with materials like Bakelite in 1925 and diversified into toys, airplane parts and WWII bomb fuses

After acquisitions and relocations, the revived Waterbury Button Company continues in Cheshire, crafting buttons for military and fashion. The Mattatuck Museum today showcases its buttons.

7. Today, thousands of square feet of former Connecticut copper and brass factories molder into the soil of the Brass Valley.

Devotees of abandonment porn can have a field day exploring the old copper and brass factories—if they can get past the chain link fences.

In Ansonia, rusting machinery, a collection of forgotten tools and crumbling buildings once comprised the Ansonia Copper & Brass Company and the Farrell Foundry & Machine Co. They once reigned as key players in the brass industry.

Waterbury ironically chose as its motto, Quid Aere Perennius? It means “What Is More Lasting Than Brass?”

Not any more

The American Brass Company is now a labyrinth of underground tunnels in Waterbury. The Scovill Manufacturing Company abandoned its machinery, and the Chase Brass & Copper Co., left its huge factory floor empty. Benedict & Burnham is another poster child of Waterbury’s industrial decay. The Waterbury Brass Co., a cornerstone of the valley’s industry, is now an abandoned maze of rooms and corridors; the Anaconda American Brass Co., a sprawling complex, now an abandoned ruin.

The Plume & Atwood Manufacturing Co., which once made high-quality brass, now pretty much grows weeds, in Thomaston. The Torrington Commons Shopping Center occupies much of the Coe Brass Manufacturing Company’s old brass mill in Torrington.

***

Coming soon from the New England Historical Society! A collection of stories about the people who immigrated from France and French Canada. It will be available in paperback as well. Click here to pre-order your copy today!

Images: Button collection By Jllm06 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47490506. Former Waterbury Companies building By Farragutful – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79626386.

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Hopedale Community: Utopia Commune Becomes Capitalistic Enterprise

The Hopedale Community (1841-1856) in Massachusetts attempted to integrate Christian Socialism with private enterprise in its attempt to live in a utopian society. Its failure occurred when utopian ideals fell victim to the power of two brothers.

The Hopedale Community Gets its Start

The Hopedale Community began in Milford, Mass., in a rural setting about 25 miles southeast of Boston. Adin Ballou (1803-1890). a clergyman born in Cumberland, R.I., led the community. Two years of planning for a utopian society, from 1839 to 1841, by Ballou and his followers led to the creation of “Fraternal Community No. 1,” subsequently designated “Hope Dale.”

Adin Ballou

After buying 258 acres of the former Jones farm along the Mill River on June 30, 1841, settlement began by October. By April 1842, 28 people had joined the community. They mainly consisted of farmers, carpenters, craftsmen, and small manufacturers who supported agricultural activity- along with their spouses and children. They had experienced the Panic (economic depression) of 1837, with its devastation on their livelihoods and a belief that capitalism was the source of economic and social inequality.

Before Jones farm was bought, the members had agreed on a constitution. The articles included : adherence to Christian principles; a socialist republic based on private property and equal wages for all; non-discrimination regarding age, color of skin, sex, or social class; sharing goods; education; choosing a vocation; owning property and other assets; marriage; free speech; and payment of taxes.

Just as important, it denounced bad behavior toward others; gambling; drunkenness; profanity; slavery; violence against individuals, groups, or governments; waging war ; poverty and governmental interference in its internal affairs.

Practical Christianity

The “Practical Christian” Community -– an effort to apply Christian principles to daily life — began as a joint stock company (i.e., members purchased shares). Profit from their economic activities would sustain them. Although early members lived in a single house, overcrowding led to the construction of private homes. Soon after settlement, they also began building a dam, various shops, a printing facility and a church for worship and education. By 1854 its 235 members lived in 41 houses and ran 16 businesses.

The Little Red Shop, Hopedale

Nevertheless, disagreements arose over time regarding rewards for individual initiative, compliance with moral norms, and a willingness to sacrifice for the welfare of the group. For example, the community had to deal with arguments over equal wages regardless of occupation, a “free love” scandal in 1852, and cooperatives that placed individual interests over those of the group. Despite these internal debates, the community endured until two brothers decided to withdraw their support.

The End to the Hopedale Community

Although founded as a joint stock company, Ebenezer and George Draper owned three-quarters of the investment. They grew upset in 1855 when a report of the treasurer showed industrial output had unexpectedly fallen. Additionally, building and machinery had depreciated and the 4 percent joint stock dividend would not be paid. They then threatened to withdraw their support, which would have resulted in bankruptcy. Consequently, the Drapers reached a settlement with the community in 1856. Under the agreement, they gained control of the industrial property and assumed the debts of the community. Thus, the industrial property became part of a privately-owned company controlled by the Drapers. In turn, the utopian community with its beliefs and practices came to an end.

The Draper brothers were determined to run the textile company in a paternalistic way. This meant providing the workers in the company town with housing and other amenities. Meanwhile, Adin Ballou remained in the area as a minister, an author of Christian books and local historian, until he died on Aug. 5, 1890, at the age of 87. In 1886 the Town of Hopedale was incorporated after separating from Milford.

From 1730 to 1860 eight other utopian communities were established in Massachusetts. With the exception of four Shaker communes, the Hopewell Community outlasted the Shaker Savoy settlement (1817-1825), Brook Farm (1841-1847), the Northampton Association (1842-1846) and Fruitlands (1843-1848).

Accomplishments

Over the 15 years of the Hopedale Community, it had many achievements. Despite internal squabbles, the willingness to compromise extended its lifespan. Pursuing their ideals, the members sheltered slaves, raised funds for the abolitionist movement and cared for those in need. The group also experimented with spiritualism, hydrotherapy, homeopathic cures and vegetarian diets. Finally, most of the women led traditional home-centered lives but enjoyed some rights generally not granted to those living outside the community. These included: owning property, voting, holding community offices, being compensated for nursing infants, being granted a divorce in limited cases and having opportunities for intellectual development.

Map of Hopedale, 1888

By the 1890s, the Draper enterprise had become the largest user of technology for making cloth in the U.S. In 1967, Rockwell International bought the company, which then neared bankruptcy. Thereafter, a combination of international competition, government regulation and rising energy costs led to its foundry closing in 1975. The Draper facility officially closed on Aug. 29, 1980.

Abandoned Draper factory in Hopedale.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.

Images: Hopedale map courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center Collection. Draper looms By Jack E. Boucher, HAER photographer, courtesy Library of Congress. Bible By NYC Wanderer (Kevin Eng) – originally posted to Flickr as Gutenberg Bible, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9914015.

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7 Fun Facts About Crane Paper

Crane & Co., for many years made money making money in western Massachusetts. U.S. currency was made from Crane paper. So was fine stationery used by U.S. presidents and the crowned heads of Europe.

The papermaking enterprise started when Zenas Crane headed west from Boston looking for water in 1801. He found it along the Housatonic River in Berkshire County, Mass., and began making paper. He and his partners were the first to make paper west of the Connecticut River.

Zenas started making notes for local, then regional banks, and finally for the U.S. government. By 1842 he had full control of a paper mill in Dalton, Mass. Two years later, his sons established Crane & Co. By then, the company had developed a way to embed silk threads in banknote paper to deter counterfeiting.

Crane Paper Rises and Falls

Crane & Co. thrived into the early 1900s, then joined the decline of western Massachusetts’ papermaking industry. The company did prosper during the last recession because the Federal Reserve issued a lot of currency. People also used a lot more cash. But people also spent less on luxury items like fine engraved letterpress cotton stationery,. Email, too, was taking the place of written correspondence.

The hand-engraved stationery business diverged from the currency business, which involved very technical applications of films, fibers threads and watermarks. Writing paper fell as a percentage of Crane’s revenue. In 2015, Crane & Co. spun off the stationery division, located in North Adams, Mass. Mohawk Fine Paper then bought it and closed the North Adams plant. Mohawk now makes paper under the Crane stationery trademark in Cohoes, N.Y.

Crane & Co.’s currency division became Crane Currency and spun off a technology company called Crane Payment Innovations. In 2023 the two companies formed Crane NXT.

Here are some fun facts about Crane & Co.

1. Crane has made all U.S. paper currency since 1879.

That’s because Winthrop Murray Crane, the founder’s grandson, won election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. As a senator, he negotiated a contract with the U.S. Treasury to buy paper from his family’s company. For decades, Massachusetts’ politicians made sure that contract stays with the Crane company.

In the 1990s, U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy shepherded the Crane contract renewal through the Senate. He then telephoned a surprised reporter in Boston to say he’d just saved 400 jobs in Dalton, Mass. The word “monopoly” did not come up in the conversation.

Crane also won a contract to supply wrapping paper for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. A shrewd businessperson, he took over the family finances and increased its wealth by investing in American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Boston Albany Railroads, Otis Elevator Company and Western Union.

As a politician, Winthrop Crane hated making speeches. He won six elections in Massachusetts – as lieutenant governor, governor and senator – without ever making a speech. Chauncey Depew, U.S. senator from New York, noted that he “never made a speech. I do not remember that he made a motion. Yet he was the most influential member of that body.”

His second wife, Josephine Boardman, started the prestigious Dalton School in New York City, named after Dalton, Mass.

He also mentored a rising young politician named Calvin Coolidge.

2. Crane made U.S. currency from Levi’s denim.

Up until about 2007, scrap cotton used to make Levi’s blue jeans went into every single U.S. banknote. Then someone had the bright idea of putting spandex in denim. Crane’s machines wouldn’t work with the stuff.

Cellulose fiber is separated out from the cotton, beaten to a pulp and suspended in water. Then it’s screened and dried.

You can make paper out of anything made of cellulose. You can make a wedding invitation from your mother’s wedding dress. Or you can use your father’s Army coat to make paper for his wartime memoirs.

3. Berkshire County once had 65 paper mills.

Beginning in the 1820s, the county led the United States in papermaking. Berkshire County papermakers followed Zenas Crane, Jr.,’s example of adopting new technology. They starting using cylindrical papermaking machines in the 1820s and 1830s. Then in the 1840s they replaced them with Fourdrinier machines.

Invented in Europe, the Fourdrinier machines used a fabric mesh conveyor belt. Then the machine drains a slurry of fiber, or pulp, on the conveyor belt to make a continuous web of paper.

Model of a Fourdrinier continuous paper making machine at Frogmore Paper Mill

Paper mills seemed to spring up like mushrooms up and down the rivers in western Massachusetts. Paper companies included the Smith Paper Co. in Lee, Eaton, Crane & Pike in Pittsfield and the Weston Paper Co., in Dalton (Julia Child was the granddaughter of Weston’s founder).

Berkshire County’s ample water supply explains part of why papermakers came to the area. The Housatonic, Hoosic, Westfield, Deerfield and Farmington rivers all flow through it.

Papermaking created a lot of water pollution, though. As recently as August 2024, the Berkshire Eagle reported “Elevated levels’ of solvent chemicals found in soil at Rising Paper Mill site in Great Barrington.”

4. Crane was and is an arbiter of etiquette.

In 1989, before the internet sent written correspondence the way of the dodo, Crane published Crane’s Blue Book of Stationery. The book offered guidance on communicating with confidence in personal and professional correspondence.

Now you can look online for Crane’s guide to stationery etiquette, or “How to be wonderfully gracious on paper.”Take thank you notes, for example. Crane advises:

Thank you notes should be sent out as soon as possible after you receive the gift.
Make sure to address your Thank You Note to the person or persons who gave you the gift.
Include a sentence or two about how/when/where you might use the gift and how excited you are to do so.

5. Paul Revere used Crane paper.

Not for writing thank-you notes, but for making colonial paper money. Revere used paper made by the first Crane, Stephen, who had bought a paper mill in Boston in 1770. Stephen Crane called it the Liberty Mill. His son Zenas ended up in the Berkshires because he had several older brothers, and he wasn’t going to inherit any paper mills.

Continental currency

6. Anyone who was anyone used Crane paper for correspondence.

Some of the uses to which Crane’s stationery has been put include invitations to the Queen Mother’s 100^th birthday party, invitations to a dinner honoring Winston Churchill and a Christmas card sent by President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor.

First Lady Jackie Kennedy wrote sympathy notes on Crane stationery. President William Taft invited people to White House receptions on it. Crane also supplied invitations to the inaugurations of the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge.

7. Crane’s Old Stone Mill Rag Room is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The company built a stone mill in 1844 with a rag room used to process rags. It used the stone building for many of its papermaking operations until it burned in 1869. The company rebuilt it into an even bigger mill. Then in 1890 Crane & Co. demolished most of it, leaving the Rag Room.

Rags were processed in this room to make Crane paper.

The company in 1930 turned it into the Crane Museum of Papermaking, with exhibits and artifacts about the company history. They included Zenas Crane’s tools and a model of the early equipment used to make paper.

The National Register of Historic Places listed it in 1983. The Rag Room also belongs to the Cranesville Historic District in Dalton. The museum is now closed.

Images: Taft invitation: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14752205. Rag room: By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10638498, Fourdrinier machine By Chris55 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108551909. Levi’s By Michael Carian – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44401675.

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The Waterbury Button Company , Military Fastener Maker Since 1812

The Waterbury Button Company, located in Cheshire, Conn., began operations during the War of 1812. It is the oldest and largest producer of stamped metal buttons in the United States.

The button industry in Waterbury began in 1790 when the Grilley Brothers – Henry, Silas and Samuel –made tin and pewter buttons. Two years later they made buttons from sheet brass imported from England.

By 1802 Silas Grilley had teamed up with Abel Porter, Levi Porter, and Daniel Clark to form Abel Porter & Company. They made brass buttons by melting copper and fusing it with zinc. The copper came from local scrap metal, but the zinc came from England. This may have been the first successful use of this process in the United States.

Ingots were then cast from the brass and rolled into sheets, from which stamped buttons were made. Thus, button makers initiated the brass industry in the Naugatuck Valley.

Waterbury Button Company Gets its Start

The War of 1812 gave Aaron Benedict (1785-1873) — to whom the Waterbury Button Company is traceable — the opportunity to make bone and ivory buttons for soldiers’ and sailors’ uniforms. In 1823 he formed his first partnership named “A. Benedict” in Waterbury, which made brass buttons brushed with gilt (a mixture of gold and mercury). By then specialized machinery powered by water was in use. He also hired skilled workers from England.

The old Waterbury Companies building on the Mad River

Following other partnerships in 1829 (Benedict & Coe) and 1834 (Benedict & Burnham), the partners established the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company in 1843. It was the first joint stock company (i.e., owned by its stockholders) in Waterbury.

In 1847 the Benedict & Burnham Manufacturing Company spun off its button division, which became the Waterbury Button Company (incorporated in 1849). The company continued to make brass buttons, but also produced cloth covered, glass, vegetable ivory, plastic and celluloid buttons during the nineteenth century. In 1925 it molded Bakelite, a new plastic, into buttons. Over time its various buttons have been decorated with images of well-known politicians, fictional characters and other adornments.

A New Market for the Waterbury Button Company

After the Naugatuck Railroad began operating in 1849, the market for buttons made by the Waterbury Button Company and its competitors greatly expanded. They no longer had to rely upon local venues, trips to port cities, or peddlers for sales. Moreover, domestic supplies of copper and zinc became readily available after the Civil War.

Since the War of 1812, military buttons have continued to be an important product in peacetime and wartime for the Waterbury Button Company. It made buttons for both the Union and Confederate armies. It also made buttons for the U.S. armed forces in World War I, World War II and succeeding conflicts. Beyond military uniforms, buttons adorned crew members of the Titanic in 1912 and people from various occupations, such as police officers and firefighters.

Both generals wore Waterbury buttons; so did their troops.

As the number and variety of buttons grew rapidly over time, the company’s production facilities greatly expanded. Since the early nineteenth century, the company had also begun selling pins, lamp fixtures, plastic checkers and dominoes, insulated electric wire and hardware. By 1895 the company had occupied several buildings in Waterbury with an estimated 300 to 400 employees, including many women. In the 1890s it introduced a popular metal toy, the “Climbing Monkey,” and built an experimental airplane, the “Multiplane,” in 1929.

During World War II, the company produced plastic lenses for gas masks and bomb fuses. Given its many product lines, the company changed its name — after almost 100 years — to Waterbury Companies, Inc. in 1945. After the war, it further diversified its business into vinyl records, air filtration systems, bread boxes, cleaning products, and other goods.

The Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury has a collection of Waterbury Buttons. Here are a few.

In 2000, OGS Technologies, Inc., acquired the button business of the Waterbury Companies. Once again it renamed the business the Waterbury Button Company. In 2002 the firm relocated to Cheshire, where its buttons continue to be made for military and commercial purposes.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena University near Albany, N.Y.

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7 Fun Facts About the Ten-Footer

The ten-footer, once as ubiquitous in Massachusetts as a garage or an Amish shed, has pretty much disappeared from the landscape.

They measured 10 feet by 10 feet – hence the name – and stood about six-and-a-half feet high. Families used them as backyard shoe shops in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Massachusetts dominated the shoe business then, and shoemaking was a lucrative side hustle for a lot of people who also farmed and fished.

At first, people came to a nearby ten-footer to order a pair of shoes or boots. The master cordwainer or journeyman measured their feet. They then found a last that corresponded to the measurements and cut leather pieces accordingly. Their wives and daughters stitched the uppers inside the house. Back in the ten-footer, the men tacked the uppers and soles to lasts and then sewed the uppers and soles together. Children and apprentices ran errands, lit the fire, waxed thread and did other mundane chores.

After 1820, the industry got centralized. Shoe shops sent cut leather to the ten-footers, which returned the finished shoes to the central shops. The shops then shipped them in barrels to Boston. From there, Massachusetts shoes and boots went to shod the feet of Europeans, Australians, West Indians and westward-migrating Americans.

Here, then, are some more fun facts about the ten-footer.

1, The ten-footer didn’t always measure 10 by 10.

Sometimes they measured 12 by 12, or even a palatial 14 by 14. They had no attic, but an open garret or “cock loft” reachable by a perpendicular ladder. A shoemaker typically believed everything comes in use once every seven years, and he filled the cock loft with all sorts of odds and ends: 50-year old lasts, candle rigging, old umbrellas, broken chairs, old hats, the bottoms of boots used as wax receptacles. “A mitigated museum,” noted one student of the ten-footer.

In winter the ten-footer often stank from a medley of tobacco smoke, burning leather, shoemaker’s wax and wood smoke.

2. The ten-footer started in Lynn.

In 1750, a Welsh shoemaker named John Adam Dagyr came to Lynn. Back then, people cobbled homemade shoes by the kitchen fire. Dagyr changed all that. Into a ten-footer he put four men – the shop “crew” — each at a bench, or “berth.” He then taught them how to divide up the work of making fashionable ladies’ shoes. His technique caught on. People called Dagyr “the celebrated shoemaker of Essex.” But he had trouble with booze, and he died broke. His legacy lived on: By 1795 Lynn had 200 master workmen and 600 journeymen who produced 300,000 pairs of shoes annually. By 1850, Lynn produced 4.5 million shoes a year.

A kid fox button ladies’ shoe

3. Every shoe town had a different specialty.

Towns in southern and western Massachusetts produced men’s shoes, brogans and high boots.

In Reading, just west of Lynn, nearly every family made shoes. They specialized in dancing pumps in the 1830s, then made infant and children’s shoes, some with fancy hand stitching.

Men’s work shoes, called brogans

Women’s pegged and common sewed shoes were made in Abington, Stoughton, Weymouth and Randolph, which also made heavy boots sold as far away as Australia. North Bridgewater had a reputation for making shoemaking tools.

Brockton led Massachusetts in men’s shoes. Many men in Brockton learned the craft in British prisons during the American Revolution.

4. The ten-footer hosted a school and a debating society.

The work of shoemaking didn’t require much mental effort, and so the men sitting in close quarters all day found a lot to talk about. Delivery men brought newspapers from Boston. Fishermen stopped by on stormy days with tales of the Grand Banks. Peddlers, preachers and politicians often swung by to contribute to the day’s agenda of discussion topics.

David Johnson, in his 1880 book, Sketches of Lynn, attributed the success of many shoemakers to their love of debate. “It has been remarked that more men have risen to eminence from the seat of the shoemaker than from the ranks of any other class of mechanics, except that of printers,” he wrote.

Henry Wilson, the “Natick Cobbler”

5. The 18^th vice president of the United States started out in a ten-footer.

Henry Wilson started out as Jeremiah Jones Colbath, a poor farmer’s son born in Farmington, N.H. His father indentured him as a farm laborer when he turned 10. For a decade the boy toiled on a farm, apparently hating it. At the end of his indenture he received a yoke of oxen and six sheep, which he sold. He then went to look for a job. He couldn’t find one, so he walked 100 miles to Natick, Mass. He met a shoemaker willing to train him. By then he had changed his name to Henry Wilson. Some say he did it because he hated his nicknames, “Jed” and “Jerry.”

Henry Wilson’s ten-footer. Image courtesy Library of Congress

The name change brought him luck. In Natick, he found a shoemaker willing to train him. He hired himself out to learn to make brogans, bought out his contract and opened his own shop. In a ten-footer, of course.

Wilson started a shoe manufacturing company and eventually had more than 100 workers.

He then got into politics. He won election to the Massachusetts Senate and then the U.S. Senate as a radical Republican. “Radical” because he wanted to end slavery and empower workers.

He then served as Ulysses S. Grant’s vice president from 1873 until his death in 1875. All that debating in his ten-footer paid off.

6. The Civil War killed the ten-footer.

So many sons of St. Crispin went to fight (and die) in the war that a shoe shortage resulted. A South Attleboro man, Lyman Blake, invented a machine that sewed uppers to soles, speeding production so the Union Army could have enough shoes. Soon, automation took over the other stages of shoemaking. Enormous shoe factories then sprang up, and the ten-footer faded into obsolescence. They got moved, repurposed or torn down.

The Smith Shoe Shop in Reading, Mass.

7. A few remain.

The ten-footer behind the Stoneham Historical Society has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1984. Henry Wilson’s, at the Natick Historical Society, since 2000. Daniel Hunkins Shoe Shop stands behind the Haverhill (Mass.) Historical Society. The campus of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem has one. And, happily, there’s one at the Lynn Museum in Lynn.

With thanks to D.N. Johnson (1880),. Sketches of Lynn, Or, The Changes of Fifty Years. United States: T.P. Nichols, Printer, and P.G. Faler (1981) Mechanics and manufacturers in the early industrial revolution : Lynn, Massachusetts, 1760-1860. United States: State University of New York Press.

Images: Stoneham Ten Footer (featured image): By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30063541. Smith Shoe Shop By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31199558. Hobnailed boots By Anthony Appleyard at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2560338.

This story was updated in 2026.

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