Frye Village Stories: John Smith's travel journal (part 3)
A Shawsheen Village 100 Story by Angela McBrien
Before Shawsheen Village Frye Village Stories: John Smith’s travel journal
This is our final post based on the diary kept by John Smith on his visit to Brechin, Scotland in 1826 and 1827.
Leaving Brechin, John traveled with his mother to Glasgow staying with his brother James.
There, he spent time with friends and relations, while he visited many of the textile works in the city.
At the time this diary is written in 1826, John and his partners Joseph Faulkner and Warren Richardson were operating a machine shop in Frye Village providing machinery for the cotton industry. John's trip to Glasgow would impact his future business ventures.
ACHC #1992.659.50, John Smith
At age 17, John had been apprenticed as a mill-wright in Brechin, Scotland, and worked in Glasgow as a machinist before leaving for America in 1816. He arrived first in Halifax, but decided it was not for him. So he traveled to Boston and headed to Waltham in search of work.
Later in his life, at a celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of his arrival in America, John gave an address. He recalled in his remarks that as he set out to seek work, “I had in my pocket a character that I was a good workman and a sober man," written by his former employer.
ACHC #2018.043.1
In his remarks at his 50th anniversary, John described a visit to a cotton mill in Waltham. When asked how he liked the looms in the weaving room, John replied:
“I told him that they went too slow. Said he how fast do you drive them? Those in the Waltham factory were running at 70 picks per minute. I told him I had started looms that went one hundred and twenty picks per minute. He seemed not to believe it. It was impossible to run the looms in that mill faster on account of their construction”.
The millowner was impressed with John’s response and offered young John work in his Waltham factory.
It was in the Waltham factory that John met Joseph Faulkner, a native of Andover and Warren Richardson. They “thought we could make machinery on our own account." The three men open a machine shop, first in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and then finally they moved to Andover in 1824 where they had purchased a mill privilege in Frye Village.
During John's stay in Glasgow in 1827, recommendations from various relatives and acquaintances helped gain him access to some of the mills there.
John wrote in his diary that he found in the Glasgow mills “nothing as yet of much consequence to me." Yet seven pages of the diary are taken up with descriptions of spinning machinery, noting differences between the Scottish machines and those they are producing in Andover.
John’s engineering mind is on display in the comments he made, comparing machines, looking constantly for improvements and inspiration to take back to his partners in Andover.
ACHC #2018.043.11, Textile machinery diagram, donated with John Smith's diary
John was impressed with a visit to a "Turkey Red" printing factory:
“I have seen nothing since I left America equal to this. It is a most extensive establishment. There is in one room sixteen of these hydrostatic presses in one range. Sixteen handkerchiefs are printed in each press at one time and in the space of ten minutes they finish two hundred and forty-four handkerchiefs by four men."
The '"Turkey red" dyeing process had been brought to Scotland in 1785. It was a complex process using such ingredients as sheep’s dung, bullock’s blood and urine. It did however produce a highly valued color which would not fade or run when washed.
ACHC #1911.0549.1
Learn more about 'Turkey red' fabric here.
John description of the machinery went on:
“...there is also cylinder printing and hand and plate printing. What I mean by the latter, there is a flat plate as large as the handkerchief, and it is worked something like block printing. But nothing gave me more satisfaction than the shop that the patterns are made in. There are about twelve men making patterns constantly for the various kinds of machines, and blocks, such as are used by hand."
The largest mill he visited had 300 looms, throstles, frames and speeders, “the machinery all made by Girdwood." (You can read more about throstles and the textile-making process here.)
John later visited Girdwood’s machine shop
“Some parts of the work I liked very much, the cast iron roller beams polished up bright, the make of the stands and the rollers very nice, as the fluting engine leaves them without filing or polishing, the flutes being fluted perfectly smooth and bright in the hollow."
Witness to history: The Power Loom Riots of 1826
As John was leaving Scotland to return to American, he traveled from Glasgow to Liverpool. On a leg of the journey, the stagecoach passed the town of Preston where he
“saw one cotton mill which was set on fire by the mob some time since. Men were at work putting on a new roof, the machinery being all burnt."
It's likely that this mill had been destroyed during the power loom riots of April 1826 in the cotton manufacturing towns of Lancashire, England.
Mobs of up to 10,000 rioters were reported in newspaper articles, protesting against the economic hardship suffered by the handloom weavers due to the introduction of the power loom.
The mills of Preston itself do not suffer much damage. It could be that John saw the town of Chorley, which is just 12 miles south, where all of the power looms were destroyed.
Did John pause to think of the progress of the industrial revolution and its effect on the handweavers? Unfortunately, his diary records no reactions.
Returning to Andover, John continued in the manufacture of cotton machinery operating the business alone after the death of both his partners in 1829. In 1835 he founded the flax manufacturing firm of Smith, Dove, & Company with partners Peter Smith and John Dove.
Smith, Dove & Company was the center of work and life in Frye Village throughout the 19th century. In 1894, the company shifted all operations to the Abbot Village location (Dundee Park). Many Smith family members had also relocated to homes closer to the center of Andover. The Smith & Dove factory buildings in Frye Village have been home to many businesses since 1894. Smith & Dove continued in Dundee Park until 1928.
Many thanks to ACHC Collections Manager Angela McBrien for researching, compiling, and writing this series on John Smith's travel diary. You can learn more about Frye and Shawsheen Villages on our website.