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Farley, Mass., Rattlesnake Mt. in Distance

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Farley, Massachusetts, is a tiny village located on the Millers River between the villages of Millers Falls and Erving, half in the town of Erving, half in Wendell. In this photograph, the Fitchburg Railroad (later part of the Boston & Maine system) runs along the river. Across the river, the future State Route 2 runs along the banks of the river. Farley was a manufacturing village created around 1881 by D.E. and J.B. Farley to take advantage of a falls of the Millers River. They built elegant houses on either side of Maple Avenue. Their factory, the Farley Paper Company, is visible here as the long white building on the nearer shore of the river. It turned local spruce and poplar pulp into paper. In its basement was a knitting mill which produced around 10,000 pairs of mittens a year. Soon after it was built, the towns of Erving and Wendell joined to build the iron bridge spanning the Millers River. When the Farleys retired, their factory was taken over by Sawyer Slickers, which produced waterproof cloth there. The factory was destroyed by fire in 1950 and was not rebuilt.

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