Miller Home Place Henniker NH c. 1900 Photo Stereoview for Sale

On eBay Now...

Miller Home Place Henniker NH c. 1900 Photo Stereoview For Sale

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Miller Home Place Henniker NH c. 1900 Photo Stereoview:
$24.90

Antique photo stereoview marked on the back: \"Residence of James S Brown Pawtucket RI.\"

The son of Sylvanus Brown, one of Pawtucket’s noted machinists, James Brown was himself a skilled metal-worker — he had worked in the shops of Pitcher and Gay in the early 1820s and succeeded to partnership in the firm (afterward known as Pitcher and Brown) in 1824.

In 1842 he obtained full control of the company and determined to move the shops from a site near the Blackstone River to Church Hill. He began construction there of the long, 2-story, red brick mill standing at the corner of Main and Pine Streets. The building, carried on under the direction of master mason Israel Lee, was not completed until 1848. A small remnant of Brown’s earlier building near the site is the tiny, 1-story brick building east of the large mill [now extant]. It was later sold to William H. Haskell and incorporated into the Haskell complex which was built around it. Probably dating from the mid-1840s, the building may have housed Brown’s forge.

Even before the construction of the 1848 factory, James Brown had a substantial and well-deserved reputation as a machinist and inventor. In 1831 he invented a machine for cutting bevel gearing; in 1838 he patented a machine for boring the tubes of speeder flyers from solid iron; and in 1842, he patented a lathe for creating irregular metal forms. In the new shop on Church Hill, Brown built a variety of textile machinery, including mules and speeders, and cordage machinery; by the mid-nineteenth century, the factory employed three hundred hands.

Here Brown continued the stream of innovations and inventions for machinery — in 1852, he patented a rolling frame; in 1874 he invented a machine for grinding spindles; he was granted his last patent in 1876, only three years before his son James, Jr., succeeded to the business.