Hopedale History
June 2025
No. 440
Hopedale Manufacturing Company
Hopedale in June
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Twenty-five years ago – June 2000 – June 17 – A centennial earthquake (6.5 on the Richter scale) hits Iceland on its national day.
A preliminary draft of genomes, as part of the Human Genome Project, is finished. It is announced at the White House by President Clinton.
Fifty years ago – June 1975 – The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day War.
After a referendum and seven years of military rule, modern-day Greece is established as the Hellenic Republic.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declares a state of emergency in India, suspending civil liberties and elections.
Mozambique gains independence from Portugal.
One-hundred years ago – June 1925 – The Chrysler Corporation is founded as an automobile manufacturer by Walter Percy Chrysler.
American engineer Charles Francis Jenkins achieves the first synchronized transmission of pictures and sound, using 48 lines and a mechanical system in “the first public demonstration of radiovision”.
News items above are from Wikipedia. Hopedale news from 25, 50 and 100 years ago can be seen below this textbox.
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The Hopedale Manufacturing Company
First Complete Loom Catalogue
Issued by
Hopedale Manufacturing Company
In 1907, Eben Sumner Draper and George Albert Draper removed their brother, Gen. William F. Draper from his position as president of the Draper Company. That set off a family feud that went on for the next two decades. The general died in 1910. In 1912, his sons, George Otis Draper and Clare Hill Draper, along with Jonas Northrop, Charles Roper, Frank Norcross and several others established a loom building company they named the Hopedale Manufacturing Company to compete with the Draper Company. Among them, they had the patents, money and connections that made it possible. The following was written by George Otis Draper in the first catalogue of the company.
The Hopedale Manufacturing Company started in Hopedale and still maintains a shop there, used for wooden loom parts, brass-foundry and the pump department of the old C.F. Roper Company. (That building was on Northrop Street, adjacent to the town park.) The main office and main plant, however, are in Milford, Mass., the adjoining town, where we have a shop six hundred and thirty feet long, with buildings adjoining, on a branch line of the New Haven R.R. The foundry and power plant are across the track on the shore of the Charles River.
Draw a straight line from Boston to New York and you can check off Milford some 26 miles southwest from the Hub. As they made the main railroad line crooked to take in Providence, they shunted us off on a branch.
Milford is a town of some thirteen thousand people. Hopedale, a town of about three thousand used to be joined to it, but was set aside in a bitter fight in which the Germans could have learned a lot. We have found our town facilities ample and have thus escaped all investment for extra real estate, tenements, boarding houses, schools, parks, cemeteries, sewer systems, fire departments, trolley lines, et. al.
Connections are made from Boston through Framingham on B. & A. system; through trolley from Worcester or North Grafton on the B. & A. line; by trolley from Uxbridge on the Providence & Worcester branch; by train from Fall River and New Bedford through Mansfield and Framingham; by trolley from Providence and Woonsocket and Franklin. Trolley runs from Framingham as well as steam cars. Automobile roads from Boston via Natick and Framingham, or Wellesley, Sherborn and Holliston to Milford. From Providence through Wrentham and Franklin for best road. From Worcester, from Grafton and Upton.
Milford was a part of the original town of Mendon, famous in history for starting the King Philip War, (No) and as the home of Joseph Dorr, who wrote a Declaration of Independence adopted by Mendon citizens in solemn assemblage many months ahead of Mecklenburg and Philadelphia. The National Resolutions copy many of Dorr’s phrases word for word. In Civil War times Milford was the center of the boot industry. In every national emergency it has more than done its share in furnishing men and means alike. Remembering the story of the widow’s mite, where contributions are credited in proportion to means, we will modestly record that this concern of ours subscribed for various issues of Liberty bonds in amount equaling 50 percent of our capitalization and held them through and long after the war.
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Hopedale News – June 2025
Hopedale News – June 1975
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The Phillips brothers’ photo was included in a special section of the Milford News published on June 3, 1975, with pictures of area people who had served in World War II, and a few from World War I. Years later, it was used on the plaque at Phillips Brothers Field in South Hopedale.
Hopedale News – June 1925
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