Got its Name


Have you ever wondered how Washington Mills got its name?



The story goes back to 1855 when Charles Alden of Ashland, Massachusetts formed a company to make industrial abrasives from natural emery ore imported from Turkey. Alden Emery, as he called his firm, prospered during the Civil War as his abrasives were in great demand for grinding and polishing the rifles, swords and other military hardware used by the Union army. After the War ended in 1864, a recession hit the country and Alden’s business floundered. He needed two things for recovery: new capital and a lead customer.



Alden’s salvation came in the guise of Oliver Ames Sons, a Boston company that made shovels, hoes, pickaxes, plows, and other iron tools, all of which needed grinding and polishing. The Ames Company had been founded in 1774 and still exists as Ames True Temper, thus making it the oldest corporation in the United States. The Ames Company had taken off when gold was discovered in California in 1848, which created an enormous demand for Ames shovels. Ames shovels dug the Erie Canal and the bed for the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in 1869.



In 1868 the Ames Company depended entirely on an English firm known as Wellington Mills for its supply of emery abrasives. You can imagine the logistical nightmare that must have been involved in supplying Ames’ needs: the chunks of emery were transported by camels over land in Turkey, then loaded on a ship for crushing and grading in England, then by ship to America, and finally by rail to Ames’ plant in North Easton, Massachusetts. The Ames Company needed the security of having an American source for its abrasives needs, and in 1868 it invested in Alden Abrasives and named the new company Washington Mills.



Legend has it that the English emery supplier was named after the Duke of Wellington whose defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 puts him in the top rank of Britain's military heroes. In choosing a name for their new company, the founders decided to name it after a man they considered an even greater general than Wellington – none other than George Washington who led the colonial army to victory over the British in the Revolutionary War. No doubt they selected the name to emphasize that the new company was a domestic American producer, but you cannot help but wonder if there was a bit of one-upmanship in the choice.

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