Hughesdale's industrial past

History Notes is a biweekly entry in the Sun Rise that features a passage from the Johnston Historical Society. This week’s story comes from May 1986.

During April and May of this year, Johnston Historical Society members Cathy Lobello, Smokey Ullucci, Bob Burford, John Nanni, Pat Macari and Louis McGowan made several trips to the three dam sites in Hughesdale along Central Avenue.

Loaded down with cameras, clipboards and a lot of enthusiasm, the members trekked through the woods and across Dry Brook and its channels to visit these important manufacturing sites that date to at least 1835.

In 1835, it appears from land records that Zenas Bliss and Thomas J. Abbott were already manufacturing cloth in a mill, probably at the middle dam site. In 1838, their New England Cambric Works (cambric being a glazed cotton cloth resembling linen) was being sold at auction for non-payment of mortgage.

James F. Simmons and his sons, Warren Seabury and Walter C. Simmons, were involved in bleaching and printing cloth throughout the 1840s at the New England Print Works (which would appear to be the same mill as the New England Cambric Works; it is sometimes referred to as the New England Print & Cambric Works).

Zachariah French also owned mill property here but it is not clear whether he was manufacturing or was just backing Abbott and Bliss financially. By the late 1840s, Simmons had sold out to Thomas Henry Hughes and James Walch. Hughes soon after became the sole owner of the property containing the mills and in 1850 began the manufacture of dyes and chemicals for textile purposes with the establishment of two companies, the Hughesdale Dye and Chemical Woks and the Glendale Chemical Company.

Hughes’ chemical works were located at the lower dam but textile activity in the village continued at the middle and upper dams until the 1868 flood. Hughes owned the cotton mill at the middle dam that was destroyed in the flood but was leasing it to Thomas Prey at the time. This mill was probably one of the two mills (The Glenville Print Works and the New England Print & Cambric Works) that Hughes purchased from Earl P. Mason, a Providence financier, in 1857.

All three dams were swept away in the flood and textile activity in the village appears to have ceased at that time. Hughes rebuilt the upper and lower dams (early 1870s?), but the middle dam, an earthen structure and probably the earliest in Hughesdale, was never rebuilt.

In 1871, Hughes’ business was organized as a stock company, the Hughesdale Manufacturing Company, with Hughes and his two sons, Theodore S. and William H. Hughes, as officers. The firm did about $100,000 in business annually with about 60 workers.

Hughes ran the business until his death in 1884, when his son Theodore succeeded him. In 1892, the Hughesdale Manufacturing Company merged with the Bradford Soap Works (not the Original Bradford Soap Works) making soaps for textile use under the latter company’s name.

Manufacturing ended in the village on the morning of Oct. 13, 1914, when the chemical plant burned to the ground. Ice-making did continue, however, at both the upper and lower reservoirs.

No manufacturing has taken place in Hughesdale for over 70 years, but a person with sharp eyes can see the evidence of activity that once took place here. There are two major dams in place with reservoirs behind them. These dams possible date to the early 1870s when Thomas Hughes might have constructed them to replace ones washed out by the 1868 flood.

Both dams are constructed with earthen interiors and lined front and back with large stones. There have been minor changes to the dams in this century, but the major portions of both are intact.

At the north end of the upper dam is evidence of a raceway running parallel to the main stream. This raceway predates the existing dam and provides water for one of the early mills. Three hand-worked limestone blocks (one measuring 6-feet-by-3-feet-by-2-feet with anchor bolts in it) stand at the east end of the raceway, indicating some relationship, it seems, to a mill that was once there.

It is unusual that the blocks are made of limestone because the nearest limestone quarry was in Manton and the reason for halting limestone here is unknown. Also present at the upper dam is the concrete outline of a late 19th century or early 20th century icehouse that stood just north of the dam.

Below the lower dam are seven hand-worked stone vats, which were used by Hughes in his chemical plant. The vats vary in length from about 6 feet to 9 feet and in width from about 2 feet to 4 feet. They are hollowed out, somewhat resembling a modern bathtub. Four of them are on fieldstone platforms and one has a stone and dirt ramp leading up to it. The vats were probably used for the mixing of chemicals.

In between the two existing dams in a third dam site. It appears to have been an eastern dam of a very early date, possibly the 1830s. Destroyed in the 1868 flood, it was never rebuilt. Portions of the main barrier are still intact, indicating a height of at least 15 to 20 feet at its center.

A raceway around this main barrier can clearly be seen. It looks like a pretty country lane but ends in a manmade, stone spillway. Portions of the building foundations stand between the main dam and the spillway. The placement of these ruins in back of the stone houses on Central Avenue indicates a common date of construction.

We are lucky to have these remains of Hughesdale’s chemical, textile and ice-making industries. They should not be seen as merely mounds of earth or piles of stone. They all have stories to tell.

The buildings directly used in manufacturing having been destroyed by fire or flood, but we still have the vats, the dams and the building foundations. They, along with existing buildings (such as the school, the store and worker houses), photographs and the early records are helping us to reconstruct the village’s past. By all means these sites should be preserved.