Within a decade, Fletcher’s loyalties, and many elements in his life, would be totally different. Fewer than 500 souls lived alongside Fletcher in this community.

The place he called home was marked as Uxbridge on the maps of the time. Against the rush of the falls, Fletcher had his days punctuated not by a clock, but the rhythm of hammering life into raw iron. In the early 1770s, James Fletcher set to making tools in a small forge along the Mumford River. Their company would last through the nation’s two hundredth birthday, when the doors closed and foundry fires were extinguished one final time.

In throwing off the bonds of one empire, some in this community sought to firm up their own form of rule, in a village that would create a puzzling combination of democratic rule and feudal ownership. Revolutions were brewing, at first elsewhere, and then at the front doors of these colonists’ small settlements. The small community that labored there, colonists who had wrested the land from local Indigenous peoples for a too-small price, mostly farmed the land and made small implements to eke out a living. The history of this family-run company, which was shuttered in the same year as the nation’s bicentennial, also prompts important questions about work, freedom, and the legacies of the revolution.īefore there was a place called Whitinsville, and long before it was possible to see a rush of hundreds of workers traveling home for lunch during the mid-day hour, there was just the rush of a small waterfall. Tracing this business’s origins back to the American Revolution, we can see how a company forged during the late 18th century became a supplier of textiles machinery throughout the world. Starting with basic tools, heirs to this business made an industrial powerhouse. From a small forge in a rural area, the Fletcher and Whitin families created a veritable dynasty along the Mumford River. The Whitin Machine Works, based out of Whitinsville, Massachusetts, is a prime case study in the rise and fall of the age of American manufacturing. Memorial Day in Whitinsville, 1898 A lot can happen to a family business in 200 years.

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