Florence, Massachusetts - People and Highlights in The History of Florence

People and Highlights in The History of Florence

In 1832, Samuel Whitmarsh planted 25 acres (10 ha) of mulberry trees in Florence in order to raise silkworms. Later, Whitmarsh's silk mill (in nearby Leeds, Massachusetts) was briefly run as a communal project by the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian 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, 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.

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 machines. 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.

Later, 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, made with raw silk imported from Japan. In New York City, 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 . The company went out of business in 1930.

David Ruggles was an "African-American printer in New York City during the 1830s", who "was the prototype for black activist journalists of his time". He had edited a New York paper called The Mirror. In 1841, his father died, and as he was himself ailing and almost blind, friends arranged for him to join a commune in Northampton, Massachusetts. Applying home treatment upon hydropathic principles, he regained his health to some degree, but not his eyesight. He began practicing hydropathy, and by 1845, had established a water cure hospital in the area now known as Florence. This was one of the earliest in the United States, although others, notably Joel Shew, and Russell Thatcher Trall (R.T. Trall), had preceded him.

Charles Munde emigrated from Germany. He became familiar with the water cure methods of Vincent Priessnitz around 1836, and treated scarlet fever cases in Dresden during the winter of 1845-46. From childhood recollections of one of his sons, Paul F. Munde, the family went to the area now (but not then, per Sheffeld) called Florence "in the early fifties", after his father had struggled "for nearly a year in New York in search of a practice". After the death of David Ruggles in 1849, Charles Munde learned "of the opportunity to take up his favorite method", which led him to pick up where Ruggles left off, thence to the naming of Florence, and accordingly, the name of the Florence Water Cure, also called the Munde Water Cure.