Waterford Had a Fulling Mill -- But What Was Fulling?

Here's a long and thorough description of "fulling" from the website of an English woolen blanket manufacturer, Witney Blankets, and written by Clare Sumner:

After the cloth was woven it was fulled or milled. This process removed grease and shrank the material down to a smaller size, while matting up the fibres into a thicker and softer felt-like fabric. First it was steeped in a soap bath to clean and soften the wool. It was then placed into the trough of the fulling stocks - a machine with large wooden hammers that pounded, dragged and rolled the fabric, making it shrink and driving out the dirt from it.

An alternative to the fulling stocks was the milling machine, which did the same job using rollers. The stockful of blankets was fed into the machine, then the ends of the piece were sewn together to form a continuous belt which was run around between the rollers until it had become shrunk down enough. The first milling machine was patented in 1833 and was quicker than the fulling stocks, but stocks continued to be used either instead of, or alongside them in many mills in Britain for about a century afterwards.

After fulling the blankets were washed in water to remove the soap suds left from the fulling process and then they were spun dry in a machine. Mangles were sometimes used to extract excess water. At this stage they were still in one long piece.

This picture of a rotary fulling machine is from an 1891 issue of Popular Science. 

 
Fulling was not an unusual process in the early 1800s in Vermont -- many towns in our region had fulling mills. A few examples include one in East Village (East St. Johnsbury), one in Concord (as of 1847, according to McCullock's Universal Gazetteer), one in West Barnet, one next to what is now Ben Thresher's Mill in Barnet, one in South Peacham (in the basement of the Brown/Evans mill), and the fulling and woolen mill conducted by Benjamin Greenbanks in Harvey's Hollow (now part of Danville).

The Waterford Historical Society hopes that some readers will have more details and will share them with us. Let us know what you find out!

Looking for the Old Mills of Waterford, Vermont

A grist mill equipped for custom grinding; four customers could have their grain ground at once here.

Waterford's once-famous song said:

-- "A very fine place
Adorned with majesty and grace
Situated under Rabbit Hill
With a tavern, store and a clover mill."

Thanks to the 1875 Beers Map of Waterford, we know many of the locations of the mills that operated on water power at that time. But we're looking for photos if available, as well as business records.

Waterford's share of mills in the 19th century might surprise today's visitor. In Zadock Thompson's 1820 Gazetter, there are four mills mentioned: two oil mills and two clover mills.

"Oil mills" pressed linseed oil from flax seeds -- and linseed oil was an essential of house and barn paints. According to Hayes's 1907 history of Rockingham, Vermont, that described the oil mill at Bellows Falls, here is how it worked: "The flax seed was poured upon a large stone floor, on which two immense stones, like grist-mill stones, set on edge, were made to revolve around an upright shaft, like wagon wheels turning in a circle, thus crushing the seed. It was then shovelled into a large iron barrel about six feet long made to revolve in a fire-place over a wood fire until the crushed seed was thoroughly cooked. It then went into smaller strong iron barrels which had one movable head, and these in turn were put into a large log hollowed out with solid ends. A press set in motion, with cog wheels and screw, forced the movable heads of each barrel inward and the oil flowed out into the log trough, and from that into receptacles to be shipped to the market. The cakes of oil meal remaining were ground up and used for feed. In the old mill an arch for boiling the oil was used."

Clover mills hulled the seeds of red clover, a planting method brought by English settlers to made fields more fertile. New England's chilly, stony soil wasn't kind to the seeds, so the hulls had to be removed to make sure they would germinate.

Just 4 years later, in 1824, there were 13 mills noted in Waterford: six sawmills, one gristmill, two fulling mills (part of the wool fabric process), two clover mills, and two "other" that were probably the oil mills.  A later historical note says that one clover mill was changed to a [potato] starch mill.

And in 1840, the town included eight sawmills, according to Defebaugh's 1907 History of The Lumber Industry of America.