{"id":1016,"date":"2012-09-01T23:15:36","date_gmt":"2012-09-02T03:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2014-06-07T08:07:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-07T12:07:11","slug":"the-button-mill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/the-button-mill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Button Mill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
S. Williston, Williston & Knight, and Hayden buttons of Easthampton and Williamsburg manufacture. (Click images to enlarge.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fabric-covered buttons that made Samuel and Emily Williston\u2019s fortune began humbly enough.\u00a0 Most small-town and rural families, regardless of occupation, had a cash- or barter-producing sideline; Emily, a talented seamstress, made buttons to supplement her family\u2019s meager income.\u00a0 The date is uncertain, but sometime early in the 1820s, she had the opportunity to dismantle a fancy button of foreign manufacture and see how it was made.\u00a0 The several versions of the story are the stuff of legend (and a future blog post); what she and Samuel did with the information is a matter of history.<\/p>\n

They organized as many as 1,000 households throughout western Massachusetts \u2013 a gigantic cottage industry \u2013 in sewing buttons to Emily\u2019s design.\u00a0 Essentially, fabric was cleverly sewn around a wooden center.\u00a0 Emily provided patterns and instruction; Samuel, materials, cartage, warehousing, marketing.\u00a0 The buttons produced income beyond anything the Willistons might have dreamed.\u00a0 The demand for S. Williston buttons was so great that by 1827, Williston created a \u201cbudget\u201d line \u2013 fundamentally, discounted seconds \u2013 of buttons that sold under another name.\u00a0 He wanted the public to associate his brand only with the best-quality product.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The back of a machine-made button, showing the enameled tin ring to which the fabric was attached.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The problem was that wooden button centers, if cut across the grain or if there were flaws in the wood, were unreliable.\u00a0 In 1829 Samuel Williston went into partnership with brothers Joel and Josiah Hayden, manufacturers of metal and enameled buttons.\u00a0 They were based in what is now Haydenville, then part of Williamsburg, just north of Northampton.\u00a0 The Haydens mass-produced unbreakable metal button molds, while the Willistons handled sewing and sales.<\/p>\n

This raised the question of whether, or perhaps when, the entire process could be mechanized.\u00a0 By 1833 Samuel was aware of an English machine that apparently did the job, but the English, to no one\u2019s surprise, were protecting their patent.\u00a0 There followed many months of unsuccesful Williston-Hayden tinkering as they attempted to re-invent an American version of the process.\u00a0 Eventually Samuel secured the services of Francis Sidney, a Creole whose credentials, besides rum-running, included having worked in a Birmingham, England button mill.\u00a0 Sidney was only too happy to share his knowledge for an appropriate price.\u00a0 On July 4, 1834, the Hayden mill struck the first completely machine-made American cloth-covered buttons.<\/p>\n

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The Williston & Knight factory on Union Street.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This heralded the phasing out of the hand-sewn button industry.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Samuel Williston, in his forties already one of the wealthiest businessmen and philanthropists in the state, was considering the industrial transformation of his home town.\u00a0 In 1847 he dammed Broad Brook, creating Nashawannuck Pond and a millrace that could provide power to a group of factories.\u00a0 The first of these was the Williston & Knight Button Company, a three-story brick mill at the foot of Union Street that started production in 1848.\u00a0 Decades later, Samuel Williston\u2019s grandson recalled a building full of “ingenious machines which struck out and covered a button at a single blow.” [1]<\/em><\/p>\n

Other factories, comprising the present-day One Cottage Street complex, followed, as did the brick house at the intersection of Union Street and Payson Avenue, which was Samuel Williston\u2019s business office.\u00a0 Meanwhile the Williston-Hayden partnership was dissolved, Williston to control every aspect of the fabric button business, the Haydens to concentrate on their metal and lacquered merchandise. [2]<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Samuel Williston’s button and textile mills, viewed across Nashawannuck Pond. The original button factory is at left; the spillway to the millrace is visible right of center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
The old button mill today.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The original button factory — Easthampton’s oldest — still stands, although the cupola and dormer windows have vanished in favor of a simple flat roof.\u00a0 It is has long been the home of the Landry Furniture Company.\u00a0 We hope that the recent announcement that Landry is going out of business does not put the building in danger of being razed.\u00a0 Surely it is a landmark worth preserving.<\/p>\n

(For Emily Williston’s views on buttons, please see the post Emily Speaks<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/p>\n

[1] Samuel Williston, Life and Law: An Autobiography<\/em> (Boston: Little, Brown, 1940), 33.<\/p>\n

[2] Much of the narrative is derived from Frank P. Conant, God’s Stewards: Samuel and Emily Williston<\/em> (Easthampton: The Williston Northampton School, 1991).<\/p>\n

Your comments and questions are encouraged!\u00a0 Please use the space below.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fabric-covered buttons that made Samuel and Emily Williston\u2019s fortune began humbly enough.\u00a0 Most small-town and rural families, regardless of occupation, had a cash- or barter-producing sideline; Emily, a talented seamstress, made buttons to supplement her family\u2019s meager income.\u00a0 The date is uncertain, but sometime early in the 1820s, she had the opportunity to dismantle … Continue reading The Button Mill<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[125,138],"tags":[127,126,50,131,130,134,128,5,135,129],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easthampton-history-2","category-founders","tag-button-factory","tag-buttons","tag-emily-williston","tag-haydenville","tag-joel-hayden","tag-josiah-hayden","tag-landry-furniture","tag-samuel-williston","tag-williamsburg","tag-williston-knight-co"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":61,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2654,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions\/2654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}