Valley Maid

For almost one hundred years Rhode Island was the center of American Lace Manufacturing. Dozens of mills both small and large lined the Pawtuxet River valley.
I owned this mill back in the eighties when we were the last game in town but it too fell to the inexorable march of the Industrial Evolutionary Cycle. The machines that once hummed inside this building are now churning out lace in China and Mexico and it is only a matter of time before they move on to India and Africa.

New industries are beginning to populate these old mills and with good fortune (and a saleable product) will bring life back to these wonderful old buildings.

The mill which is the subject of the blip was built by a man who emigrated from England almost 100 years ago from a town 20 miles from where I came to America from 70 years later and I bought his mill - how's that for coincidence ?


LARGE