Profile
Washington Mills Turns 150 by Anne Williams, CEO, Washington Mills
that made iron tools, all of which required grinding and polishing. Ames was founded in 1774 and still exists as Ames True Temper, making it the oldest corporation in the U.S. The Ames Co. took off when gold was discovered in California in 1848, which created an enormous demand for Ames shovels. The company’s shovels also dug the Erie Canal and the bed for the Transcontinental Railroad. Ames depended entirely on an
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English firm called Wellington Mills for its supply of emery abrasives. Wanting the security of having a U.S. source for its abrasive needs, Ames invested in a company called Alden Abrasives in 1868 that was making industrial abrasives from natural emery ore imported from Turkey. They named the new company Washington Mills. According to legend, the English
emery supplier was named after the Duke of Wellington, whose defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 put him in the top rank of Britain’s military heroes. In choosing a name for their new company, the founders decided to name it after a man they considered an
22 ❘ November 2018 ®
ashington Mills was founded in 1868 by the Ames Co., a Boston-based company
even greater general than Wellington— none other than George Washington, who led the Continental Army to victory over the British in the Revolutionary War. No doubt they selected the name to emphasize that the new company was a domestic U.S. producer, but one cannot help but wonder if there was a bit of one- upmanship in the choice, as well. Washington Mills was originally
located on the Sudbury River in Ashland, Mass. However, the company was forced to abandon its mill when the city of Boston took it by eminent domain as part of a movement to secure and conserve the city’s drinking water supply. The company subsequently moved its operations to Grafton, Mass., to a site located on the Quinsigamond River that had been constructed in 1830; the water was used to supply power to the mill. The mill had served as a grist mill since 1720, and parts of the original foundation are still in use today. Washington Mills moved its crushing and grading equipment from Ashland to Grafton, and continued to operate the mill to crush Turkish emery ore.
Major Milestones One of the major turning points in Washington Mills’ history was the
decision to diversify its product portfolio and move away from being a single- product seller. In 1930, the company broadened its scope by investing in the equipment necessary to crush the artificial abrasive aluminum oxide. While keeping its emery product line, Washington Mills added aluminum oxide and silicon carbide to its portfolio. Synthetic or fused aluminum oxide,
as well as the process for melting bauxite in electric arc furnaces, was first invented in 1890 by the General Electro-Chemical Co. of Ampere, N.J. Washington Mills’ business model had been to purchase the fused aluminum oxide ore from different suppliers and crush it into finished grain sizes. Another major milestone happened in 1979, when the company built its own furnace plant in Niagara Falls, Ontario,
AFFILIATE MEMBER
www.washingtonmills.com
Manufactures of fused aluminum oxide, fused mullite, and silicon carbide grains and powders for shell building materials, crucibles, ladles and abrasive applications; also a manufacturer of ceramic tumbling media used for mass finishing.
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