PHOTO COURTESY AMERICAN TEXTILE HISTORY MUSEUM
603 NAVIGATOR / OUR TOWN
The view of Great Falls in this painting was from the perspective of the high school building, as noted in the seal below the image, dated 1856.
Milling Around Somersworth
Discover manufacturing history, authentic Indonesian food and local beer BY BARBARA RADCLIFFE ROGERS
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s a kid, I wore coats made from wool fabrics that my mother bought at the Baxter Woolen Mills in Somersworth. We used to ride the bus from neighboring Dover, and I would choose the color of next winter’s coat from the mill store. The mill store is long gone, and the mill is now turned into apartments, but like Dover’s, the mills were central to Somersworth’s story. Originally part of Dover, the settlement alongside the Salmon Falls River had become prosperous enough by 1729 to support its own meetinghouse and minister, forming the parish of Somersworth. The Great Falls, with its 100-foot drop, was the source of power for a grist mill and other small mills, and would become the basis for the town’s livelihood and growth. 18
nhmagazine.com | August 2021
The grist mill and land along the falls — including what is now Market, Main and High streets — was bought by Isaac Wendall, who was already manufacturing cotton fabrics at the Cocheco Falls in Dover; he opened Mill No. 1 of the Great Falls Manufacturing Company in 1823. The company would eventually grow to seven along the river, producing woolen fabrics; an eighth, The Bleachery, turned the natural wool into pure white so it could take dyes. The company donated the land for three Protestant churches and sold off the area of the city’s current downtown. They built tenements for worker housing, improved the streets, started a fire department, and built a city reservoir. Other industries opened and flourished: a shoe factory in 1880, the mak-
ers of the popular White Mountain Stoves, and Great Falls Woolen Company, farther down the river near The Bleachery. Over the decades, mills closed and new ones took their place. In 1941, Charles E. Baxter Sr. bought the empty 1865 fourstory brick building and several smaller ones owned by the Deering Milliken Company, which had closed during the Depression, and opened Baxter Woolen Mills. His son, Charles E. Baxter Jr., who later became its vice president of manufacturing, recalls the mill, where he began working summers when he was in high school: “It was a fully integrated mill that
