View along East Main Street, across the Clarendon Mill pond, towards the Clarendon Mill complex. The mill pond was built by Major Ezra Beaman in 1794 by diverting the waters of the Nashua River through a half-mile canal to provide water power to his mills. The mill pond was doubled in size in 1847. The earliest mill on the site was agrist mill operated by Ezra Beaman. In 1819 the mill was converted to a cotton mill and operated as the Beaman Manufacturing Company with machinery installed by special arrangement with Samuel Slater of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Clarendon Mills was one of six mills in West Boylston to manufacture cotton. In 1895 the mill was equipped with 10,950 spindles and employed 195 operatives. There is an unknown man next to a bicycle standing in front of the mill pond fence.
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Notes:
Is part of the Sargent collection of photographs and hand-drawn maps detailing the buildings surrounding the center of West Boylston during the period of 1895-1905. Presented to the Beaman Memorial Library, West Boylston, Mass. http://www.beamanlibrary.org/ on August27, 1963 by Miss Martha A. Sargent.
