This brief summary is taken, in part, from Holyoke MA town site, history section. and Ripley and Dana (1875). Holyoke is located where the Connecticut River winds between Mt. Holyoke and Mt. Tom. Before the English came the Indians gathered here in great numbers to pursue their fisheries at the great falls of the "Quonektacut." The early English settlers located their towns elsewhere and the site was a quiet farming area. In the mid-1800s it experienced rapid growth when the falls were used to power manufacturing through a series of public works.
It was part of West Springfield when that town was first incorporated in 1786. Holyoke was incorporated as a separate Town on March 14, 1850 (3,245 pop.) and as a City, April 7, 1873 (10,733 pop. – 5,490 were foreign born) when Sarah Ives was a resident. Given this separation from West Springfield it is unclear if the Ives moved from West Springfield, where they settled in the late 1700s, to Holyoke or just had their neighborhood change towns. Unlike its neighbors, Holyoke was largely a planned community. The assessed value of the property in 1873 was $8,578,192. There 31 public schools with an average attendance of 1,221 students and 44 teachers.
The great change from farms to mills and city happen in a quarter of a century, occurring as a result of the construction of a series of canals and a dam allowing for cheap water power. The planning for this large project began in 1847 when the potential from the river was measured and found to be six thousand cubic feet per second, the equivalent of thirty thousand horse-powers, or four hundred and fifty mill-powers. One of mill-power is equivalent in round numbers, to sixty-five horse-powers. In 1848 Thomas H. Perkins, George W. Lyman and Edmund Dwight incorporated by an act of legislature as the Hadley Falls Company, "for the purpose of constructing and maintaining a dam across Connecticut River, and one or more locks and canals, and of creating a water-power, to be used, etc., with a capital stock of $4,000,000.
To carry out the extensive plans, eleven hundred acres of land were purchased. The first dam was completed October 22, 1849. The Hadley Falls Company was renamed the Holyoke Water Power Compnay. A new portion providing additional support was completed in 1870. The cost of the water power was less than elsewhere because of the volume and significantly cheaper than steam power fueled by coal. The average cost of steam-power for manufacturing purposes in the United States, is at least seven times the cost of water-power at Holyoke. Many mills opened up including the Holyoke Paper Company where Sarah’s cousins Caleb and Thomas Humiston worked (see Humiston family). There were 16 paper mill sin 1875. The products from the mills included cotton, woolen and worsted fabrics, silk, paper, tools and machinery in great variety, iron and steel wire, lumber, sash and blinds, wood-pulp, files, cutlery, wood screws, etc., all these being manufactured in extensive concerns, some of them the largest of their kind in the country at the time.
Comments