The Dover Union Ironworks

A Failure of the Early Industrial Revolution

The woods and streams of New England are filled with history if we are perceptive enough to recognize the signs and curious enough to seek out the rest of the story.  When we make a conscious effort to look at the landscape we become attuned to both the natural environment and its man-altered counterpart, even when those alterations have largely returned to a natural state.  The contrast is most easily seen in overgrown cart paths, stone walls, and dams built by early settlers intent upon shaping the land for their own purposes.

Reconstructed Dam at the Dover Union Iron Works Site

The early 19^th Century was a period of tremendous industrial expansion in America, some of it transformative and some less so.  Virtually every town in New England with access to moving water had one or more mills producing everything from iron to textiles.  Some, like Lawrence and Lowell, evolved into major industrial centers, while others prospered only briefly, if at all.  My hometown of Dover, Massachusetts had two iron mills, the Boston Iron & Nail Factory founded in 1795 by Jonathan Ellis on the Charles River, and the much less successful Dover Union Iron Works on Noanet Brook, founded in 1810 by Frederick Barden.

Barden’s origins are somewhat obscure, but he probably came from southeastern Massachusetts and had been involved with one of the ironworks in Plymouth or Bristol County.  He must have been reasonably successful as he arrived with sufficient capital to start acquiring property along the valley of Noanet Brook. It took him five years to assemble both a mill site and the necessary financial backing.  The location wasn’t chosen at random – the mill was constructed at a spot where the topography of the land sloped relatively steeply, resulting in what would have been “falls” in Noanet Brook prior to the creation of the mill pond.  Barden’s intent was to maximize the force of the water both through gravity and the impounding of the brook in a total of four manmade ponds situated upstream.  These were created to hold additional water so the mill could function even in times when the brook itself was low.  Noanet Brook is shown in the following maps, both as it is today and as it was in 1831. Reserve Pond, once the largest of the ponds, is now a swamp.

The Valley of Noanet Brook Today and in 1831

On 17 July 1815 Barden sold the assembled site to the newly formed Dover Union Iron Company of which he functioned as superintendent while retaining a 3/32^nd ownership interest.  The other investors were primarily local landowners and businessmen.  The Fisher brothers, George and Samuel, were the sons of Captain Samuel Fisher, owner of Powissett Farm and Dover’s largest landowner.  Nathaniel Chickering and his son Daniel were Fisher cousins living at what is now 85 Walpole Street.  They held a patent for improvements to a nail-cutting machine invented by Reverend Jonathan Newell of Stow, Massachusetts that was said to be capable of cutting between 65 and 80 nails per minute.

The largest ownership interest was held by Joseph Clark of Medfield, whose nail factory on Mill Brook was the recipient of the iron plates produced at the Dover mill.  It was here that the Chickering’s nail-making machine was used.

Ruins of Clark’s Nail Factory on Mill Brook at Route 109 in Medfield

The purpose of the Dover mill was to take iron bar stock, heat it, and run it through rollers flattening it into plates about six inches wide, ten feet long, and 1/8^th inch thick.  These plates were then either slit into barrel hoops or taken to Clark’s Nail Factory to be cut and headed in the manner shown below:

Cutting Nails from Plate Iron (Illustration by Dick Vara)

The late Dick Vara, who wrote the definitive history of the Dover Union Iron Works, stated that the iron used was imported from Norway¹ and the charcoal used to heat the furnace was probably made locally.  Stephen Gay, a Revolutionary War veteran living about half a mile east of the ironworks, is known to have been a charcoal burner and, at certain times of the year, the circles left by his smoldering wood piles can still be seen.

Dick Vara’s Sketch of the Mill Foundation

The iron mill operated for about a decade, although the level of activity in its last years is unclear.  Its ultimate failure can be attributed to two related factors, one being the sheer size of the waterwheel which had a diameter of 36 feet, and the other the irregular flow of Noanet Brook.  Even with the mile-long chain of ponds impounding the brook, there simply wasn’t enough water power to turn the wheel and provide adequate power to the rolling and slitting train.  In 1828 the Dover Union Iron Company sold much of its land, by then known as New Mill Farm, to various local landowners.  Over the following 12 years, the rest of the company’s assets were either sold off or taken by the town for unpaid real estate taxes. Vara speculated that the dam washed out during a flood in 1876².

Ruins of the Mill Circa 1900

In 1925 Mill Farm was purchased by Amelia Peabody, a wealthy artist and philanthropist, who took a great interest in both the land and the ruined mill.  While at a presentation given by Roland Wells Robbins, the archaeologist who had recently excavated the Saugus Iron Works, Miss Peabody mentioned the ruins of the iron works on her own property.  A discussion ensued and Robbins was hired shortly thereafter to excavate and ultimately rebuilt the dam and stonework at the Dover Union Iron Works site.

The Iron Mill Site in 1954 and Today

Thanks to Amelia Peabody’s foresight and generosity, the reconstructed iron works site survives today within the 595-acre Noanet Woodlands owned by the Trustees of Reservations.  Easily accessible to hikers, the curious visitor can still walk the length of Noanet Brook and imagine the rather complicated water regulation system when it was in use.  Imagine, too, what this much-loved conservation land and the town as a whole might have become had the ironworks actually prospered.

1. Richard Hart Vara, The Dover Union Iron Mill (Dover, Massachusetts, Privately Printed, 2003), 46.

2. Vara, The Dover Union Iron Mill, 8.