The article below is one of a very few that can be found in the popular press of the 19th and 20th Centuries attempting to present Millers Falls Co. to a larger audience. However, the informational value of this article is tinted with glaring “sales pitch” approach taken by the magazine’s editors. Hence, facts presented here need some scrutiny.

At least one instance, the story on a Star Hack Saw presented here is blatantly skewed and untruthful. I included a brief explanation on this matter at the end of the article.

Despite some inaccuracies, the article still has a good value – it is the only source of pictures of the top management of the company from the most interesting time period in its existence. Unfortunately, there is no picture of Charles Amidon, one of the founders of the company. WK

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In a bowl in the hills of the Connecticut River valley in Massachusetts lie the works of the Millers Falls Co. Nature has graced the spot with rugged and wooded hills, steep valleys and the swift flowing Millers River. One might select it as the country home of poets instead of the seat of a bustling and thriving manufacturing plant.

The rural setting makes all the more conspicuous the appearance of the Millers Falls Co.’s plant in its midst. There is trimness about the buildings and ground enclosed, park-like, with high iron fence and substantial stone posts that be speaks a well ordered establishment.

The Millers Falls Co. is the product of New England pluck and the ability to seize an opportunity. In the early sixties, Levi J. Gunn and Charles Amidon, fellow - workmen in the employ of the Greenfield Tool Co., at Greenfield, Mass, decided to venture alone, and erected a small manufacturing plant at North Parish, so called, in Greenfield.

They had courage and little money. Funds were borrowed to pay maturing loans, first here, then there. Peter was robbed to pay Paul. It was such a hard struggle to keep the insignificant enterprise afloat that the partners contrived in every way possible to avoid expense.

Mr. Amidon made an old-fashioned overshot wheel and used a rope, instead of a belt, for transmission, and when water power failed in midsummer, the shop was practically closed.

At first, they made clothes wringers, but so limited were their resources that $300 was the high-water mark of this stock.

In 1865, Wm. Barber of Windsor, Vt., brought to the partners a sample of a new kind of bit brace. This was the bit brace known to the present day as the Barber brace. The name has stuck not only to the product of the Millers Falls Co., but has come to be applied to this type of bit brace even though later made by other manufacturers.

Mechanics were, however, wedded to their old-fashioned wooden bit braces and it was only by means of canvassers that the new bit braces found a foothold.
As at first made, they were entirely from malleable iron with a bulge in the sweep as a handle. Eighteen braces were considered a day’s work, but in a few years the business was fairly established, and the product multiplied many times.

Mr. Pratt Arrives

Meanwhile, the $300 stock of wringers was stored in Mr. Gunn’s barn. A fire wiped this out without insurance. Then the plant at North Parish was destroyed in the same way, but the partners, undismayed, resumed business almost at once under the roof of the Greenfield Tool Co. Here again, a fire occurred and destroyed the new beginnings.

Previous to this time, Henry L. Pratt, a man of some means, had become interested in the enterprise and had aided the increasing business by adding small tool holders and other devices of an amateur nature.

For years he had been in the lumber business, and in traveling up and down the country had become familiar with various mill sites. He had often remarked that someday the water power of the Millers River would be very valuable, and counselled that Gunn & Amidon move to Grout’s Corner, now known as Millers Falls, on this river.

Although in the wilderness, the spot was on the turnpike from Troy, N. Y., to Boston and boasted a noted hostelry. Herders en route to Boston made a point of reaching Grout's Corner for a night’s stop, and the wild and roistering bands that gathered there made the place historic in the neighborhood. Little old men from their farms away back in the hills jogged down occasionally to imbibe excitement in this spirited company.

No one, however, became so hilarious or visionary as to imagine that, in the next half century, this aboriginal spot would be transformed by the ever-increasing plant and business of the Millers Falls Co. Into such surroundings came Mr. Pratt and his associates; sober, canny men, with eyes keen to opportunities and no dreams, but practical ideas of founding an enduring and successful manufacturing business.

The spot selected for their operations was overgrown with a dense forest and it was necessary to clear off the property. A one-story brick factory two hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide was erected. This still remains, with another story added, in the midst of many greater and more modern buildings - a steady, silent growth, and still expanding. So incredulous were the natives that the town, now subsisting on the enterprise of the Millers Falls Co., then refused to build a short bridge over the Millers River and finally the company had to stand half of the expense of an old-fashioned covered wooden structure that was built.

The start at Grout’s Corner was made in 1868. The company was then incorporated under the name of Millers Falls Manufacturing Company. The business was successful from the start and continued under the above name until 1872, when it was merged with the Backus Vise Co., of Windsor, VT., under the name of Millers Falls Company.