Roots of Millers Falls Company

The lives of many inventors, industrialists and several manufacturing enterprises were shaped by events which begun in a small village of Burkeville, Massachusetts in 1840s.

In 1842 Alonzo Parker begun making carpenters' and joiners' tools here and his business prospered well.  In the "History of Conway, Massachusetts, 1767-1917" author describes:

"In 1842 Alonzo Parker began manufacture of carpenters' and joiners' tools in Burkeville, about forty rods above the woolen mill and shortly afterward, organizing as the Conway Tool Company, the business was expended until upward of eighty men were employed. 

The building was burned in 1851 and the company transferred its operations to Greenfield and there reorganized as the Greenfield Tool Company."

The Burkeville village was part of Conway township, located south-west of Greenfield, Massachusetts.

During next several years the business expended and soon Parker affiliated with Horace Hubbard and most likely (as the new company name suggests) with other parties. The business changed its name to Parker, Hubbard & Co.

On some known planes made at their shop the name appears as such - Parker, Hubbard & Co. 

However, in The New England Mercantile Union Business Directory for 1849, Vol. 2 p. 179. (New York: Pratt & Co.) the name is printed as Hubbard, Parker & Co.

Further business expansion and organizational changes resulted in business incorporation and name change.  On April 15, 1850 the business was incorporated under the name Conway Tool Company. At that time the business was employing over eighty workers.

An Act to Incorporate the Conway Tool Company

Be it enacted, &c., as follows:

SECTION 1

Alonzo Parker, Horace Hubbard, Daniel Rice, 2d, their associates and successors, are hereby made a corporation, by the name of the Conway Tool Company, for the purpose of manufacturing joiners' bench and moulding tools, and the running of a saw mill for the manufacture of lumber in the town of Conway, in the county of Franklin, with all the powers and all the privileges, and subject to all the duties, restrictions and liabilities, set forth in the thirty-eighth and forty-fourth chapters of the Revised Statutes.

SECTION 2

Said corporation may, for the purposes aforesaid, hold real estate not exceeding thirty thousand dollars, and the whole capital stock shall not exceed one hundred thousand dollars.

April 15, 1850