The Benjamin Shepard Mill site

is a 7.2 acre parcel which was gifted to the NRTP by Bill and Lucy Goddard in 1986. Due to the unstability of the mill ruins, it is generally off limits to the public, but tours can be arranged.

The Shepard mill, located off Rt. 152, was constructed by Benjamin Shepard in 1791, and for one hundred years thereafter was engaged in the manufacture of textiles. Benjamin's wife Suzannah operated a shoddy mill on the site, thus becoming one of the first, if not the first woman industrialist in this country. The mill was the second-oldest, continuously operated, water-powered cotton mill in the United States, established one year after Slater Mill in Rhode Island.

view of mill ruins

HISTORY OF SHEPARD’S MILL IN PLAINVILLE, MA
            by Esther L.  Friend
            Historical Researcher
            January 31, 1987

According to John Daggett, Esq., “of Attleborough” who claimed direct descent from John Shepard (1703/4 - 1809) and whose article was published by the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, April, 1852 (page 128) the first man by the name of Shepard to live in these parts was one Jacob Shepard, “who removed from Mystic (where he had resided for a short time) subsequent to 1700, and July 11th, 1704, purchased a farm of about 500 acres with buildings on it for £270, ‘in the wilderness between Dedham and Seakonck’, then known as Wading River Farm, near which was a large natural reservoir of great depth since called Shepard’s Pond.  This was on the “Ould Bay Road”.

“Shepard’s Pond” has become known as Mirimichi.  The “Ould Bay Road” came down from Dedham through what is now Foxboro until it came to the place where Wading River crosses what is now Rt.  106, followed (now Rt.  106 across the plain, then angled up the hill to the westward and descended to Woodcock’s Garrison at the Ten Mile River.  “Wading River Farm” was a good place to raise cattle to be sold in Boston although one previous owner, a Vintner, had experimented with raising grapes there.  (See deeds at Suffolk Registry: Book 9; page 412 (1676) and Book 21; page 619 (1704).)  According to tradition, says John Daggett, there had been 13 tenants of the farm previous to its acquisition by Jacob Shepard.

Jacob’s house must have been strongly built for, during King Philip’s War, it served as a garrison.  Four men are listed in “Soldiers in King Philip’s War” (NEGH Register, July 1889, page 270) as having been paid for manning that garrison -- September 14, 1675.  Jacob’s second son, John “The Ancient”, who was born there in 1704 and lived there all his life, created a family joke, out of having “lived in two counties and four towns and done it without having moved out of his house”.

Benjamin, the fifth and youngest son of Jacob Shepard was also born in that house (“in Dorchester”) Dec.  24, 1710.  Not so lucky as his elder brother, Benjamin died of the smallpox in Wrentham on May 20, 1777.  He had established his own farm on the west side of Shepard’s Pond where the “Way from Wrentham to Attleboro and Norton” had already been followed for many years -- probably an Indian path.  On the map of Dorchester New Grant (surveyed for Stoughton between 1714 and 1718) the Shepard lands do not extend westward as far as that road. He probably purchased his lands about 1730 and research in the Suffolk County Registry of Deeds will probably establish the exact date and bounds.  Examination of his will in the Suffolk Probate Records should also establish the existence or non-existence of a mill on his property.

Shepard family gravestone in Shepardville Cemetary

As of January 31, 1987, the Plainville Historical Commission is on record as believing that it was Benjamin Shepard Junior (1746-1839) who built (adapted?)  The first cotton mill on the site.  In Hurd’s “The New England States: their Constitutional, Judicial, Educational, Commercial, Professional and Industrial History”, (Wm.  T.  Davis, Editor: published @ 1895), Mr. Hurd quotes one Mr. Bagnall (whose expertise on mills is acknowledged but not titled) as saying: “The mill at Wrentham, built by Benjamin Shepard in 1791 or 1792, has the distinction of being the only factory in the United States built for the purpose, which has been engaged continuously for one hundred years in the manufacture of textiles.  It was a small mill, but it is believed to have had from the first the advantage of improved machinery.  Mr. Shepard was assisted by the Legislature of Massachusetts, which made to him a loan of £300.  He had two spinning jennies, and could spin one hundred and twenty pounds of coarse and seventy-two pounds of fine yarn a week.  Mr. Shepard and his sons continued in the management of the mill until the financial crisis of 1837.  Since then, under various owners it has been engaged in the manufacture of woollens, carpets, and woollen yarns.”