As spindle manufacturers the firm of A. A. Westcott & Sons is the largest in the world,and the product of their factory may be found in use wherever wool or cotton mills are in operation in the United States, and through the American machine builders they are exported to foreign countries. Mr. A.A. Westcott commenced business at North Scituate,R.I., in 1869. In 1873 he secured the mill and water privilege where they are now located.It is one mile south from the village of Hopedale, and here they have combined water and steam of 125 horse power. The main factory building is 30 feet wide and 150 feet long,with auxiliary buildings 34 by 40 for blacksmith shop, 35 by 45 for boiler and engine room, and 16 by 40 for office. The factory is supplied with specially constructed machinery for making steel spindles and fittings, and the output is regarded as mechanically perfect. They employ a large force of skilled machinists and can turn out over 3000 spindles per day. Mr. Westcott, while now an elderly man, is still active about the works, and is ably assisted by his sons, who having been raised in the business, are thoroughly familiar with every branch of the industry. Source unknown, undated.
An early Hopedale map. You can see the entire map on the wall in the reference room at the Bancroft Memorial Library. The Westcott Mill was at the site of Gaskill grist and saw mills in the lower right corner.
Evidently those plans never worked out. I presume the land was where the golf course is now.
Best New England Traditions
Live in Factory at Spindleville
Spindleville – The name sounds as though it might have been originated by a movie playwright. And to the average resident of this section, the name probably means nothing except an odd title for an unheard of place, but there are many cities, Woonsocket among them, which depend on Spindleville, Mass. for their industrial prosperity.
There is probably not a textile city in the nation that does not at some time or other have direct contact with Spindleville and its products – spindles.
There, midway between Milford and Mendon, at a road junction, is the small settlement with the shop that gave it its name. And from that shop come the spindles that go to mills making woolens, cottons and even silk.
Methods Unchanged
Despite the modern importance of its product, it is one of the few remaining shops that is conducted much as it was three quarters of a century ago, and despite the passage of time, the product is little changed and the methods of production still call for the inherent skill that made the New England Yankee famous.
The workmen themselves are craftsmen of the old school and their contentment andpride in their work is probably unequaled in any other plant in New England. Here men have worked since they were mere youngsters and today sons carry on jobs started bytheir fathers.
Three such workers are George Grayson, Samuel S. Olivant and Arthur O. Sweet. Thistrio of “youngsters” has compiled 162 years in the firm, which is officially known as Asa A, Westcott and Sons. (The present plant manager, Asa A. Westcott, is the grandson of the founder.
Oldsters Top Mechanics
These three whose ages total well over 210 years, are active; each carries on at hisskilled trade, and should anyone suggest retirement he would probably be chased from the shop by one or all of the three. Moreover, the younger men of the shop admit that they cannot compete in skill or production with any one of the three.
Grayson is the dean of the crew in point of service.
“I graduated in June 1889 from high school, says George, “and the next day I started work here. That was 58 years ago. I have tried other places for short times, but have spent most of that 58 years right here at the same trade that I learned in school -straightening spindles.” Grayson is the father of seven children, has 16 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He said that his children want him to retire but that he prefers to work.
Sam Olivant, 79, came to work Columbus Day 1892 and has been at his forge for 55years, but the years have left little trace on Sam who maintains that he will still “dance a jig with any of ’em.”
Expert in Forging
Olivant was born in England and entered his apprenticeship in forging and blacksmithing at the age of 13. After 8 years as an apprentice, he came to this country and his first and only job here has been at the Spindleville plant.
Sam is head of the forging department, where steel rods are heated, then beaten with a trip hammer until they are drawn to the shape called for. It is a highly skilled trade, and while the younger men are working at top speed, Sam sits on his chair, feeding the triphammer at an even pace, and when quitting time comes, he is generally far ahead in production. The younger forgers are quick to admit that Sam is the best man in the room. When one of the “boys” said he was going to claim the title “best forger,” Sam agreed, but added, “There are two kinds of forgers and I am the best forger of metals.” Sam also insists that although he came here on Columbus Day, the “boys” are lying when they say he came over with Christopher. “I paid my passage,” Sam adds.
Youngster of Trio
Sweet is the youngster of the trio. He has been in the shop a mere 49 years, but tomake up for his lack of service points out that his son, Reginald, has been there 20years and another son, Arthur L., has already worked there 17 years, making 86 years for the family. Sweet polishes, rounds and hardens the spindles.
Grayson also has had sons working at the plant, but today his family is scattered.
Asa Westcott, or “Mr. Asa” as he is called, is plant manager, but the only way to find it out is to ask. Clad in working clothes, he is on the shop floor daily, taking an active partin the work. Only 70, the old timers refer to him as a “young squirt” and Grayson and Olivant often remind him that when he was a youngster and annoyed the workers, they would pull his ears and “tan his britches” to keep him in place.
The shop, according to Westcott, was originally a cider and grist mill, but was converted to a spindle shop about 76 years ago by Asa A., grandfather of the manager. His sons Augustus, Wilmer and David, carried on for some years, and today Asa and his brother Roy, sons of Augustus, are the proprietors.
Probably the most unusual thing about the shop is the spirit of the workers. There isnone of the bickering or griping often found among skilled mechanics but the friendly rivalries go on continually. Even Westcott is not immune to “abuse” from his men, but production never slows.
Radios in the shop bring music and baseball games, and a softball field in the rear ofthe shop is well used.
The spindles from Spindleville go to nearly every city or town where textiles are made,and many foreign countries know the Westcott product.
There are many larger shops in the area, but nowhere will a visitor find a pleasanter atmosphere or more careful workmanship than in the spindle shop that is Spindleville.Woonsocket Call, September 13, 1947.
75-Year-Old Westcott
Mill Will Be Closed
HOPEDALE – A 75-year-old manufacturing business will cease operations tomorrow. The A.A. Westcott & Son firm on Mill Street, damaged by flood waters last August, will close according to Roy E. Westcott, president-treasurer of the corporation. Loss sustained in the flood, amounting to at least $5000, is a contributory factor in the closing at this time.
Mr. Westcott said there are no prospective occupants at this time, but he is hopeful that some other kind of industry might be induced to take over the building.
The firm was founded in 1872 by Asa A. Westcott, who began his business career in this town after leasing the water privilege and building known as Gaskill’s mill. Later he purchased the mill, enlarged it and made it the largest spindle manufactory in the country. The factory was supplied with specially constructed machinery for making steel spindles and fittings and a large force of skilled machinists employed. The output was over 5000 spindles per day.
For many years they manufactured spindles for the Draper Company, now the Draper Corporation, and the product for the factory was found in use wherever woolen or cotton mills were in operation in this country and much of their product was exported to foreign countries.
Asa A. Westcott, founder of the company, was a native of Scituate, R.I., where he worked on his father’s farm until he was 19, when he was apprenticed to the firm of Augustus Hopkins and Co., in Pascoag, where after learning his trade he was made a member of the firm.
For six years he superintended the manufacture of spindles. A pioneer in the trade much of the product was transported by horse and wagon to Providence to be shipped to points all over the world.
Three of his sons, Augustus, Wilmarth and David A., were taken into the firm after serving their apprenticeship. Augustus carried on the business with his two sons, Asa A. and Roy, the later taking over the operation last year after his brother’s death. The original mill was burned in 1901 and later rebult on a smaller scale. Part of this building was carried away in the flood of last August.
The site of the mill, one of the most historic in this area, was originally known as Gaskill’s mill. It is referred to in Rev. Adin Ballou’s history, as a center of activity, when farmers brought corn to be ground into meal and householders came to purchase their needed rations.
The scene is picturesque today, with the waterfall and meadow land stretching into the valley, though some of the landscape’s beauty was destroyed by the flood waters in August. Milford Daily News, February 28, 1956.
HOPEDALE – Spindleville doesn’t appear in the town’s official history. And to many residents, it’s just the name of a pond and the section of town where you find the Hopedale Country Club golf course.
Passersby on the way to their golf games notice the small low-profile electronic hardware and precision parts factory, called M.C. Machine Co., Inc., without knowing that the building has a manufacturing history that predates the birth of their great-grandparents.
But many longtime residents remember what it meant to live in Spindleville, and remember the mill, A.A. Westcott and Sons, that gave Spindleville its name.
One of those people is Frances Rae of 120 Mill Street.
“Spindleville was sort of considered the other side of the tracks,” said Rae, 74. “The families who worked at the mill lived here.” The home of Asa Augustus Westcott, Rae’s grandfather, still stands. It’s a well-preserved, solidly built, wood frame house. Although her grandfather ran the mill that supplied the spindles used in Draper Company looms,[That must be a mistake. Spindles were used in spinning machines, not in looms.] his home does not compare with the almost monstrous brick estates on Dutcher and Adin streets that housed the top Draper executives.
Asa Augustus Westcott came to Hopedale from Scituate, R.I., in 1826. Besides becoming a deacon at the Congregational Church in Milford, he bought land in the southwestern part of Hopedale and the mill, which had been used to make cider and grind grain.
On the hill that is now covered with the 224 home Laurelwood development, he started a farm with chickens, corn, melons and livestock.
He converted the mill, which still hovers over the Mill River, to a steel spindle-making operation. The spindles would be forged in the basement, shaped, hammered,straightened and smoothed – all by hand.
“I would go into the straightening shops,” Rae said. “I wouldn’t stay much. It was so noisy! You can imagine – particularly the big hammers on the steel.”
A large wooden paddlewheel in the Mill River generated the electricity that ran the factory. [Reggie Sweet, who worked at the mill for decades, recalled that in his early days there (the 1950s, I think), the waterwheel was being used to operate the triphammers that were used in shaping and straightening the spindles. He didn’t mention anything about generating electricity there.]
Today, all you hear in the M.C. Machine Co. is the shearing down of finely fitted machine parts and screws. The company gets its juice from power lines. And the riverbanks serve as a nice spot for company employees to sit down and eat their lunch. That new business moved in soon after the need for steel spindles died in the mid-1950s
Laurelwood resident Joanne Dutra, who works in Boston, considers herself a Hopedale -not a Spindleville – resident. “Spindleville is just the name of a pond,” she said.
But in a subtle way, the legacy of the Westcott family, and the mill, have remained partof Hopedale. Rae’s father, also named Asa Augustus, served as a Hopedale selectman for 33 years, until retiring in 1953.
Rae herself has three children, six grandchildren, and taught generations of Hopedale’s kindergarteners and first-graders. Michael and Paul Cogliandro, M.C. Machine Co.’s president and vice president, were not familiar with the history of Spindleville but they still treasure the old yellowed photo of the spindle makers standing in the snow, in front of the former spindle making shop. (See top of page.)
“The factory helped a lot of people and helped the community,” Selectman Jaime Wagman said. The Middlesex News, August 21, 1989.
The bridge and dam at Spindleville in October 2007, shortly before the project to replace the bridge and dam began.
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The 1927 and 1938 floods in Spindleville Flood, 1955
VFW Home The shop is now the home of M. C. Machine Co.