Overview of Mills

Westport contains waterpower sources in virtually every section of town.  As a result, the historic period development of commercial and industrial sites is closely tied to Westport’s mills.  Mills operated throughout the entire historic period, and ranged from simple short-term wheels along seasonal streams to extensive complexes of multiple mill types along major streams and […]

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The Beginnings of the Westport Cotton Manufacturing Company

Bruce White Most accounts of cotton manufacturing in New England describe a progression from the small rural water-powered cotton-spinning operations, through the larger company town enterprises that extended the spinning of yarn to the manufacture of cloth, to the fully industrialized steam-powered factories of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Despite this trend, however, […]

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