Nonotuck Silk Company was a business producing

silk Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the coc ...

thread at a mill in

Haydenville, Massachusetts Williamsburg is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 2,504 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. History The area was first settled in 1735 an ...

. It was established as the North Hampton Silk Company and operated by members of a

utopian A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island society ...

society active in

abolitionism Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The Britis ...

. The company acquired the Corticelli Silk Mills in Leeds, Massachusetts and became the Corticelli Silk Company. Advertisements included trading cards and a

billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

ad campaign on Broadway in New York City.

History

In 1832, Samuel Whitmarsh planted of

mulberry ''Morus'', a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae, consists of diverse species of deciduous trees commonly known as mulberries, growing wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions. Generally, the genus has 64 identif ...

trees in

Florence, Massachusetts Florence is a village in the northwestern portion of the city of Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. During the 19th century, Florence was a thriving manufacturing village shaped by progressive ideas on religion, abolitionism, and educa ...

in order to raise

silkworm The domestic silk moth (''Bombyx mori''), is an insect from the moth family Bombycidae. It is the closest relative of ''Bombyx mandarina'', the wild silk moth. The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of a silk moth. It is an economically imp ...

s. Whitmarsh opened a silk mill in nearby Leeds, Massachusetts and it was briefly run as a communal project by the

Northampton Association of Education and Industry Ross Farm is a historic farmhouse at 123 Meadow Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. Its importance rests in its significance as the site of a utopian community that operated there from 1841 to 1845, and for its use as a site on the Underground ...

, a

community of abolitionists who believed that the rights of all should be "equal without distinction of sex, color or condition, sect or religion".

Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...

, a former slave who became a nationally known advocate for equality and justice, was a member of this community (she had moved to Florence in 1843). After the community dissolved in 1846, she bought a house on Park Street, where she lived until 1857. A memorial statue was erected in her honor in Florence in 2002. The business was Northampton's largest employer for decades. 1881 Nonotuck MCMA exhibit Boston

In 1855, Samuel L. Hill, the spiritual leader of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, invented a machine that could spin silk smooth enough to be used in

sewing machine A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies. Since the inv ...

s. After the commune dissolved, Hill took over the factory and ran it as the Nonotuck Silk Company. Hill's home at 31-35 Maple Street in Florence served as a stop for the Underground Railway. The company changed its name again and as the Corticelli Silk Company grew to be one of the world's largest producers of silk thread. The thread was made with raw silk imported from

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. In

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, the Corticelli logo—a kitten playing with a spool of thread—loomed over Broadway from a huge electrical sign at 42nd Street between 1910 and 1913. In 1922, the Nonotuck Silk Company and the Brainerd and Armstrong Company merged and ten years later the Corticelli Silk Company merged with the Belding-Hemingway Company. The company went out of business in 1930. Grove Hill Mansion was built in 1880 for one of the company's directors. The

Smithsonian Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

has a collection of their trade catalogs.

Gallery

File:Nonotuck silk mill (NYPL b11707493-G90F216 028F).tiff,

Stereoscopic image Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...

from a flipbook of the mill, dam.and ruins after an 1876 flood of the Mills River File:Corticelli. "How Corticelli silk is made." An illustration of the mode of producing silk - Berghaus. LCCN2017646674.tif, Nonotuck Silk Company advertisement for Corticelli silk showing the stages of silk production File:Florence home needle-work (1895) (14746215016).jpg, Print of the Nonotuck Silk Company Mills

History

Gallery

References

Further reading