Lonsdale Company

The Lonsdale Water Power Company, an unchartered corporation founded by the firm of Brown & Ives with Edward Carrington and others, was organized in 1825. The company proceeded to buy up estates and water rights along the Blackstone River in the towns of Smithfield and Cumberland, Rhode Island. In 1831, the company began construction of a mill - later called Lonsdale Mill No. 1- and organized around that mill the village they named Lonsdale in Smithfield. As well with mill villages that came later, Lonsdale included houses, tenements, a school, a church, a store, and an increasing number of services.

In the following year, Mill No. 1 began spinning and weaving cotton while construction was started on Mill No. 2. Later records refer to an "Upper Mill" which pre-existed both of these but which for some reason did not fall into the orderly number succession. Perhaps it fell in a remodeling and renovation project.

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