For the first century of its history, Leicester was a land area recognized in name only on the records of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Within the area were a number of separate villages; the three largest were the mill villages of Rochdale, Cherry Valley and Leicester Center. It wasn’t until just before the Civil War that the first steps were taken toward moving the villages into a unified community.
If you ask folks today what they think was the driving force toward what is Leicester today, you’ll get as many answers as there are respondents.
For history buff Joe Lennerton, who makes a point of weaving local history into his classes as a history teacher at Leicester High School, the beginning of the unification came from space — or rather, the lack of it.
“In the early years, the mill villages were in different areas widely separated from one another by farmland,” he said. “As time went on and the villages grew, that farm land became more and more populated so the villages were actually growing together bit by bit.”
Others will tell you that the change was brought about by decline of the mills that provided employment for most of the village residents.
Most of the mills are now gone, but during the late 17th and most of the 18th centuries, Leicester was nationally recognized as a mill community.
“At one point in the 18th century, Leicester was the center of the card-making industry,” said Larry Todd, a member of the Leicester Historical Society (an organization separate from the Leicester Historical Commission with which Joe and Don Lennerton are affiliated). “Cards were the first step in the clothing industry. They were used to comb and straighten the cotton or wool fibers so they could be made into thread, which was then woven into cloth, which was then fashioned into clothing.”
Mr. Todd said hand cards were created first, which individuals worked with in their homes. Then cards were adapted for use in machines and carding mills were born. All this began in Leicester as early as 1780.
“The Leicester card makers must have been very creative, because they were able to transform their hand cards into machine cards early in the game,” Mr. Todd said. “According to reports, Samuel Slater couldn’t get his imported carding machine to work at his mill in Pawtucket, so he called on Leicester mill owner Pliny Earle for help. Earle figured out the problem and taught Slater how to fix it so Slater could open his mill, which many consider the start of the Industrial Revolution.”
At one point in their heyday, Carlton Woolen Mills had 300 employees and MKM (Massachusetts Knitting Mill) had 600. Both were in Rochdale Village, where many of the employees lived. Cherry Valley was also a thriving mill village and Leicester Center had a cluster of mills around what is now referred to as the Common, although its official designation is Town Park.
Another unifying element that helped bring the villages together was the town’s fire protection system, even though it may seem that the system is still largely village-oriented.
Originally there were separate fire stations in Leicester Center and Cherry Valley and two of them in Rochdale. Three of them are still in existence and each of them has its own contingent of firefighters, but they are all part of a single Fire Department with a single chief, who operates out of the Leicester Center station.
The secret, many of the firefighters believe, is that Leicester is a system of call firefighters who learned early on that if you’re a volunteer dedicated to giving service, you can’t limit your efforts to helping out only those in your immediate area. It’s also important to remember that since call firefighters only get paid for the fires they actually fight, most also have full-time jobs and aren’t always available when the alarm bell is sounded. The result is that Leicester’s call firefighters, no matter which village they call home, developed the habit of answering alarms sounded in any of the three stations if they happened to be available. It’s a custom that has continued to this day, involving not only fires within the boundaries of Leicester but those in surrounding communities as well.
Next week: The unification efforts that took the longest and created the most opposition from folks who were most tied to their villages.
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