Millers Falls Biographies

Included here are biographies of individuals associated with the Millers Falls Company, its earlier incarnations and its later acquisitions. The firms include the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company, the Goodell-Pratt Company, the Q.S. Backus Company and the various business enterprises of Charles H. Amidon. Some of the biographies are unique to this part of the web site; others consolidate information scattered throughout the various narratives. Virtually all of the entries contain at least some new information.

The biographical pages are a by-product of my research into the history of the company. At the outset, they were little more than the notes that I had compiled to assist in the project. As time passed and the notes became more fulsome, and I polished them up and created this section of the web site. To the notes, I've added links for digital versions of several biographical articles I've written.

I've made no effort to systematically document the Millers Falls Company leaders and have no plan to do so. The contents of this part of the site reflect my research interests and some of the snippets of information that have come my way. Relatively minor figures are included. I will be adding to the biographical information as I encounter new material.

If the information included in these pages had been systematically included in the site's narrative history of the company, the result would have become a cluttered, unwieldy mess.

Abercrombie, Daniel P.

Daniel P. Abercrombie succeeded Daniel H. Newton as Clerk of the Millers Falls Mfg. Company. He took the position in 1872 and continued through the 1873 reorganization that formed the Millers Falls Company. He held the position through mid-1876 when he was succeeded by George E. Rogers. The Clerk position eventually became that of Company Secretary.

Sources: "Millers Falls." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., January 8, 1872; February 3, 1873.
"Greenfield Items." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., July 3, 1876. 12, 1874.

Alexander, Levi A.

Amidon, Charles H.

Amidon, Solomon H.

Solomon Amidon, a contractor and younger brother of Charles H. Amidon, built 140 houses in the Millers Falls area. Born in Monroe, Franklin County, Massachusetts, on September 28, 1840, he was the sixth son of David Amidon, a shoemaker, and Bertha Dunbar. Amidon attended academy at North Adams and then moved to Greenfield where he spent three years in the employ of the Greenfield Tool Company. As did so many of his generation, Amidon elected to serve his county by enlisting in the Union Army to fight in the Civil War. A member of Company G of the Tenth Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers, he was promoted to corporal, served a three-year hitch, and on discharge, returned home to the Greenfield Tool Company and carpentry work.

Amidon relocated to Alton, Illinois, in 1865, did not find it to his liking, and several years later returned to Massachusetts, where he took up residence in the town springing up around the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company. There, he partnered for a time with Jesse Newton, building homes, churches and commercial structures. 'Sol and Jesse' built a two-story, forty-by-sixty-foot brick building on the Millers Falls Company's canal to serve as their headquarters and as manufactory for Amidon & Newton, producers of small hardware items. On March 26, 1872, Solomon Amidon was issued a United States Letters Patent No. 124,999 for a stay brace for trunk lids, and while it is not known if the design was ever produced, it is indicative of the sort of hardware manufactured by the partners.

The Amidon & Newton partnership was short-lived, as was Solomon's foray into manufacturing. Amidon elected to remain in the construction business. Certainly one of his more interesting undertakings was the building of a dam across the Millers River. Eighteen feet high and 200 feet long, the structure furnished power for an electric railroad that ran between Millers Falls and Greenfield.

Source: Biographical Review: Sketches of the Leading Citizens of Franklin County, Massachusetts. Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1895. p. 168-171.
"Millers Falls." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., October 17, 1870; January 2, 1871; January 30, 1871; February 27, 1871.

Anthoine, James W.

James W. Anthoine was issued a patent for the angular adjustable bit stock that was sold by the Millers Falls Company from the mid-1880s (if not earlier) to the latter 1890s. Anthoine's angular bit stock was covered by United States Letter Patent No. 171,255 issued December 21, 1875; his design was superseded by that of William H. McCoy. On March 26, 1878 Anthoine was issued Letters Patent No. 201,587 for a friction clutch for lathes. A resident of Millers Falls at the time of his patents, James Anthoine was likely born in Maine, to parents of French extraction.

Backus, Quimby S.

Barber, William H.

On May 24, 1864, William Henry Barber was issued United States Letters Patent No. 42,827 for a holder of bits and other small tools. The 'holder' described in the patent consisted of a rotatable shell that enclosed a pair of spring-loaded, adjustable jaws. Charles Amidon and Levi Gunn, partners who were to become principals in the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company, purchased Barber's patent in 1865 and began building a wrought iron brace that featured the new chuck. The reputation of the Barber brace spread quickly, tens of thousands were sold, and its profitability became the foundation on which the Millers Falls Company was built.

William H. Barber, the son of John Barber, was born and raised in Franklin County, Massachusetts. He married Caroline Hayward, the daughter of Hampshire County resident Stephen Hayward. The couple settled in Ashfield, a town not far from William's birthplace, and there, their children were born. The couple parented three sons and a daughter: Henry H., Ernest, James T., and Fidelia. At some point, William Barber picked up the trade of machinist, and the family relocated to Windsor, Vermont, where William worked at the local armory building muskets for Union troops fighting the Civil War. During his employment there, he invented his now-famous chuck. Barber returned to Franklin County about 1865, settled in the Greenfield area, and died sometime around 1870. On February 6, 1872, the patent for William Barber's chuck was assigned through mesne to the Millers Falls Mfg. Company (Reissue no. 4,736).

Source: the biography of his son, James Tilly Barber in The History of Eau Claire County, Wisconsin, Past & Present: Including an Account of the Cities, Towns and Villages of the County. Chicago: C.F. Cooper, 1914. p. 643-645.

Brown, Otis

Otis Brown served as the seventh president of the Millers Falls Company. Formerly Vice-President of Personnel for Pendleton Tool, an Ingersoll-Rand subsidiary, Brown arrived in Greenfield in December 1965 to serve as Chief Executive Officer. He became company president three months later when John Owen left the position to become a fund-raiser for Deerfield Academy. Otis Brown headed the company during some of its darkest hours. The operation, plagued by declining sales, an aged physical plant, and a parent company tone deaf to the demands of the consumer hand tool market, was suffering substantial losses. He left the company in 1968 and relocated to Arizona. A native of Fort Thompson, Oklahoma, Brown was the holder of an an industrial administration degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He served in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1946.

Source: "Brown succeeded Owen as Head of Millers Falls Company." A Century of experience: Millers Falls Company. Greenfield, Mass. : Greenfield Record, Gazette and Courier, August 13, 1968. unpaged.

Dunbar, Henry M.

Henry M. Dunbar (Henry Miles Dunbar) was an employee of the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company at the time that it was located in Greenfield. He lost four hundred dollars in tools and stock in the December 1868 fire that destroyed the operation's factory. In 1871, Dunbar became an investor in the Amidon Manufacturing Company, the baby coach manufacturer established by Charles H. Amidon after he left the Millers Falls Mfg. Company.

Henry Dunbar was the son of Charles Dunbar, one of the Connecticut Dunbars who migrated to the Monroe area of Franklin County in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The Dunbar and Amidon families were close. Charles Amidon's mother, Bertha, was a Connecticut Dunbar; he and Henry M. Dunbar were likely cousins. According to the 1850 federal census, the parents of the two men shared a household in 1850.

Sources: "A Destructive Fire in Greenfield." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., January 4, 1869.
"Millers Falls." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., Dec. 18, 1871.

Fisk, Charles E.

A carriage maker by trade, Charles E. Fisk was one of the principals in Amidon " Fisk, the baby coach manufacturer established by Charles H. Amidon in 1870 after leaving the Millers Falls Mfg. Company. Sadly, a fire in January 1876 destroyed the firm's baby carriage factory, bringing an end to the production of the devices. Seven months after the fire, a notice that Charles E. Fisk had opened a carriage-making shop in Greenfield appeared in the Gazette and Courier.

The federal census taken in summer 1870 indicates that Fisk, aged forty-four, was a carriage maker living in Greenfield with his wife and family. Interestingly, Charles Amidon and his wife Harriet are listed as sharing a household with the Fisks.

Sources: "Millers Falls."  Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., October 17, 1870; January 30, 1871; February 27, 1871. "Greenfield Items." October 2, 1876.

Gunn, Levi J.

Holland, Ashley

Ashley Holland, built the dam for Gunn & Amidon's factory on Cherry Rum Brook in 1862. A machinist by trade, Holland was twice widowed and married to his third wife, the former Lucinda Woods, at the time that he was involved with the construction. At one point, the editor of the Gazette and Courier refers to the fledgling enterprise as Gunn, Amidon & Holland. The usage may have been informal—it is not known if Holland was ever a partner in the operation. Ashley Holland was born in Belchertown, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, in 1808; he died in 1881.

Sources: "Greenfield Items." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., July 28, 1862.
History of Greenfield: a Shire Town of Franklin County, Massachusetts. Greenfield, Mass. : T. Morey & Son, 1904. p. 189.

Huxtable, L. Garth

Lash, John S.

John S. Lash, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, invented a wringing and washing machine that was marketed by the firm of Gunn & Amidon. The version of the machine sold by the partnership did not include the wringer developed by Lash but featured, instead, the wringer patented by Charles H. Amidon on October 28, 1862 (United States Letters Patent 36,761).

Source: "The Washing-ton Machine." [advertisement] Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., December 19, 1864.

Moore, James

Although never an officer in the organization, James Moore was one of the major investors involved in founding the Millers Falls Mfg. Company. Moore became involved in the venture by virtue of his ownership of the one-hundred-acre tract that became home to the company's factory, but he was to die tragically less than a year after the firm was organized. A bolt on one pole of his horse-drawn carriage came loose, causing his spirited team to bolt. Entangled in the reins of his runaway team, Moore was dragged about an eighth of a mile and sustained severe head injuries. Thirty-six employees of the Millers Falls Mfg. Company attended the funeral. Moore was born in 1821 in the state of Connecticut; his wife, Priscilla, was born in New Hampshire.

Sources: "Fatal accident." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., June 14, 1869.
"Millers Falls." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., November 4, 1872.

Moretti, Whitfield

Newton, Daniel H.

Daniel H. Newton served as Secretary of the Millers Falls Mfg. Company in 1870 and as Clerk in 1871. He was succeeded by Daniel P. Abercrombie.
Sources: "Millers Falls." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., January 24, 1870; January 2, 1871.

Newton, Moses

Moses Newton served as Treasurer of the Backus Vise Company from 1870 to 1873 and as a director of the Millers Falls Company after the two companies merged. Newton moved to the village of Millers Falls in 1870 when Backus Vise relocated there from Windsor, Vermont. During his time with the Vise Company, he also conducted a small lumbering operation using a portable saw mill. In September 1873, Newton put an ad in the Gazette and Courier offering to sell "at a bargain" his house, building lots, logging equipment and sixty shares of stock in the Millers Falls Company. Newton's affiliation with the company ended with the sale of his stock, and after several more years in the lumber business, he went into partnership with James Ramage to manufacture building paper. In 1877, Newton and Ramage joined with George A. Clark to found the Newton Paper Company of Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Sources: "Biographical Sketches: Moses Newton." History of the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. Philadelphia : L.H. Everts, Press of J.B. Lippincott & Company, 1879. vol. 2.
"Millers Falls." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., September 15, 1873.

Owen, John J. (Jack)

John J. Owen, the sixth president of the Millers Falls Company, was born on February 16, 1916. He is the son of Leartus Gerauld Owen, an army surgeon, and Ethel Christine Rogers, the daughter of George E. Rogers, the longtime company secretary who went on to become treasurer, vice-president and general manager of the Millers Falls Company. Usually referred to as "Jack," John Owen earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Virginia and started working for Millers Falls after a short stint at Westinghouse Electric. He enlisted in the United states Army in the weeks following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was discharged in 1946 with the rank of major. Two years later, he returned to the Millers Falls Company to work as a mechanical engineer. He soon became head of the Mechanical Engineering Department but returned to active duty in 1950 to serve in the Korean War effort.

His war service at an end, Owen joined the Institute of Textile Technology, but he returned to the Millers Falls Company, in 1952, as assistant plant superintendent. Prior to his elevation to company president in 1962, he held positions as advertising manager, assistant to the executive vice-president, executive vice-president, and as member of the board of directors. Jack Owen engineered the sale of the company to Ingersoll-Rand in 1962—retaining the presidency until March 1966 when he went on to become a fund-raiser for the Deerfield Academy. In 1968, Owen accepted another fund-raising position—as director of corporate relations—at Yale University. In 1976, after eight years at Yale, he went on to become vice-president for development at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, where he remained until his retirement a decade later.

Sources: "Jack Owen—relaxed, alert." Greenfield Recorder Gazette. Dec. 19, 1962.
"Former president turned to field of education." In: A Century of Experience: Millers Falls Company. Greenfield, Mass. : Greenfield Record, Gazette and Courier, August 13, 1968.
Telephone interviews with John J. Owen, January 5, 2005, and March 5, 2005.

Parsons, Charles W.

The son of William J. Parsons, the Chief Engineer for the Millers Falls Company, Charles W. Parsons worked at the company for fifty-two years. He signed on with the company in 1910 and spent his first two decades laboring in the Payroll and Cost Study Department. Early in his career, he introduced the company's first cost accounting system. Prior to Parsons' time, there were two predominant ways for determining the cost of a product. One was by weight; the other involved foremen setting a piece price for each of different operations on the parts of a tool.

Between 1931 and 1963, Charles Parsons served as the company's purchasing agent, the person responsible for acquiring all of the goods and supplies needed for production. Parsons was dedicated to his job—arriving early, eating at his desk and eschewing coffee breaks. The twenty to forty salesmen per day who stopped at his office were greeted by a sign that read: "State your business as briefly as possible as my time is valuable." An article in the company employee's magazine, Dyno-mite, noted:

A familiar site was Charlie interviewing a salesman (with the telephone interrupting several times), issuing orders at the same time to the girls in the outer office who kept darting in and out in answer to his knee-operated call bell. In the meantime he was doing clerical work with his free hand (to hold down the overhead) ... You had to do four things at once to keep up with him.

The retirement of old-time purchasing agents like Parsons represented the end of an era as office automation and new methods of procurement made fundamental changes to the nature of the work. Parsons' son, William C. (also known as 'Bud'), was working for the Millers Falls Company as Assistant Sales Promotion Manager at the time of his father's retirement. Bud Parsons was the third generation of his family to be involved with the business.

Sources: "A Period of Service." Dyno-mite (December 1960) p. 12-13.
"An Old-time P.A." Dyno-mite (December 1962) p. 12-13.

Pratt, Henry L.

Pratt, Leonard C.

Pratt, William M.

Proven, John A.

John A. Proven became the Millers Falls Company's executive vice-president for sales on March 1, 1956. Proven, formerly a vice-president and director of the Porter-Cable Machine Company of Syracuse, New York, took the controversial step of bypassing the hardware wholesaler network to sell directly to dealers. The move would complicate the distribution of the company's products for the next quarter century.

Sources: "Millers Falls Company appoints high officer." New York Times. Feb. 11, 1956. p. 35.
Telephone interview with John J. Owen, former company president, March 5, 2005.

Rogers, Philip

Rose, Clemens B.

Sawyer, Samuel

On August 15, 1871, Samuel Sawyer of Erving, Massachusetts was issued United State Letters Patent No. 118,058 for a method of securely fastening rotating heads to the frames of bit braces. Sawyer's method of attachment resulted in a head less likely to separate from the quill when under pressure and, as no large screws were involved, less likely to split.

Sawyer was born on May 3, 1836, in Richmond, New Hampshire where his father, John M. Sawyer, farmed and operated a saw mill. In 1848, the elder Sawyer moved with his wife and four sons to Winchester, New Hampshire, where, after completing his education, Samuel worked in a sawmill. In 1856, Samuel Sawyer married Sarah H. Starkey, of Keene, New Hampshire. She died in the tenth year of their marriage, and Samuel chose as his second wife, Sarah S. Pratt, the sister of Henry L. Pratt, long-time president of the Millers Falls Company.

Sawyer's tenure at the sawmill in Winchester was not a long one. He soon moved to Orange, Massachusetts, where he worked in a foundry until the operation was destroyed by fire. After the fire, he found work as a millwright for the turbine manufacturer Hunt, Wait & Flint, the predecessor to the present-day Rodney Hunt Company, a firm still located in the town of Orange. Sawyer left the enterprise in 1869 to supervise the building of the dam and factory for the Millers Falls Mfg. Company. On completing the project, he leased the saw mill on the Millers Falls property and conducted a custom sawing operation for several years. During this time, he developed his patented method for attaching heads to braces. Restless, he then left the area to work in the construction business in New York and Michigan but returned in 1877 to long-term employment as a wood turner with the Millers Falls Company.

Source: Biographical Review: Sketches of the Leading Citizens of Franklin County, Massachusetts. Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1895. p. 86-87.

Stoughton, Edward P.

This educational, non-profit site is not affiliated with the Millers Falls Company. All logos, names and trademarks are property of the owner. Copyright ©1996-2008 by Randy Roeder. All rights reserved.