Worcester Business Journal

8 Worcester Business Journal | January 11, 2021 | wbjournal.com By June, the sprawling building of the Draper company, which had virtually built Hopedale from the ground up, will be no more A 178-year-old legacy comes to a close O n Aug. 25, 1978, Rockwell Interna- tional sent a letter to employees at its Hopedale plant, noti- fying its 600 workers of the company's plan to consolidate its manufacturing operations elsewhere. Rockwell, which purchased control of Draper Corp. in 1967, cited several reasons for this closure, including what it called the energy crunch of 1973-74, increased foreign competition, and the expenses of maintaining the plant, which was over 60 years old at the time. "By this letter, we wish to assure you that the company's tentative decision to consolidate operations was reached only aer most careful study and consider- ation of every aspect of Rockwell-Drap- er's ability to continue a viable business," the letter, signed by General Plant Manager Alex Archer, said. en-chairman of Hopedale's board of selectmen, John Hayes, told report- ers during a press conference regarding the closure, according to Milford Daily News reports from the time, Occupa- tional Safety and Health Administration regulations, as well as state and federal noise pollution standards, had made Draper fly shuttles impossible to use, and therefore sell, to the customers that bought them. e town's defining business landmark would close, leaving the already sleepy, tree-lined mill town even sleepier. Two years later, a sep- arate Milford Daily News article commemorated the last two employees leaving the 1.8-million-square-foot building. And now, by the end of June 2021, four decades af- ter those employees locked up for the final time, that complex is slated to be wholly demol- ished, making way for a development whose details have yet to be finalized. Making a company town It is impossible to extricate the history of Hopedale, a town which is home to just shy of 6,000 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, from the Draper Corp., which most locals refer to as the "Draper mill," or, simply, "Drapers." e town's relationship with the Drap- er family goes back to Hopedale's found- ing, between 1841 and 1842, initially conceived as a Christian, semi-socialist commune, founded by writer and min- ister Adin Ballou, and established on a large parcel of land in what was still part of Milford. Its members were pacifist ab- olitionists who believed in temperance and women's rights. e settlement was referred to as the Community, and was one of several to pop up at that time. "We are a little wild here with num- berless projects of social reform," Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote of New England in 1940. "Not a reading man but has the dra of a new community in his waistcoat pocket." Ebenezer Draper, a manufacturer, and his wife, Anna wing Draper, were regular attendees at the First Church in Mendon, where Ballou was pastor prior to founding Hopedale. When Ballou announced his plans to start the Com- munity, according to Ballou's writings, Ebenezer and Anna joined him in 1842. Ebenezer, widely hailed as a deeply religious man, brought with him a patent for a loom temple, inherited from his father, which was then manufactured in Hopedale. He used its profits to support the Community. Effectively, this was the very first Draper mill in Hopedale, and Ebenezer later succeeded Ballou as presi- dent of the Community in the 1850s. In 1853, Ebenezer's brother, George, who had been working for manufacturer Otis Co. in Ware, joined his brother in the Community, and the two got into business. ree years later, the pair owned as much as three quarters of the Community's joint stock. But aer reporting the village was in dire financial straits, they assumed the Community's debts and effectively ended Ballou's experiment, as well as one of the region's longest-running socialist communes. Accounts differ on whether the Drap- er brothers, and particularly, George, folded the Community intentionally or not, in pursuit of business prosperity. Notably, George's wife, Hannah wing Draper, Anna's sister, refused to ever join it in any formal capacity because, according to her son William Draper's autobiography, "she did not believe all questions should be settled by a majority vote or that there should be no rewards for pre-eminent ability and services." In 1856, following the commune's end, the Draper brothers opened Hopedale Machine Co., improving their loom products and growing their operations. "ey kind of owned the little shops they had there at the time, and then they started building up there," said Hopedale resident and local historian Dan Malloy, who runs a digital archive of the town's history. Ebenezer ultimately retired in 1868, selling his in- terest to George, who in turn sold it to his son, William, according to a 2001 National Register nomination, Shortly thereaer, the Draper family led the push to officially separate Hopedale from Milford, which was finalized in 1886, through an act in the state legislature. "It was pretty clear that the Drapers, they were pushing to have their own town," Malloy said. Both Ebenezer and George died the following year. BY MONICA BUSCH Worcester Business Journal Staff Writer The Draper mill in 1951, before the company started pulling out all its stakes in Hopedale The Draper mill in Hopedale in 2018, before the initial demolition began PHOTO/MATT WRIGHT COURTESY/DAN MALLOY

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