Industrialization of Mother Brook
Eventually, dams and mills were constructed at five locations called "privileges" in Dedham and in what is now the Readville section of Boston (originally part of Dedham). Mother Brook provided water power at various times for industrial mills of several types, for the manufacture of cotton, wool, paper, wire, and carpets. There were mills operating on Mother Brook until some time in the 20th century. At least one mill located on Mother Brook was converted from water power to steam as an energy source, but continued to use the Brook for cooling the steam machinery. None of the mills remains in operation today.
At least two of the former mill buildings remain intact and in use, one as a warehouse and one as part of a condominium development.
Read more about this topic: Mother Brook
Famous quotes containing the words mother and/or brook:
“The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty.... From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)