Chicopee Manufacturing Company

Chicopee Manufacturing Company

Before there were cotton mills and factory girls in Chicopee, the potential for water power created by the unique location of the Chicopee River and the Chicopee Falls attracted wealthy investors from Boston to the agricultural village community of Chicopee. In 1822, the Belcher Iron Works, a small iron manufacturing venture located at the Falls sold a large portion of its land and water rights to The Springfield-Boston Manufacturing Company, the first industrial cotton mill established in Chicopee. The Springfield-Boston Manufacturing Company, soon to be known as the Chicopee Manufacturing Company, incorporated the next year and immediately began building the cotton mill, a dam, a canal, a machine shop, and tenement housing for the hundreds of mill operatives soon to be employed at the mill.

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Chicopee, Massachusetts