HILLTOWN HISTORY Dr. Lucas had many important discoveries in Chester including finding and identifying its many minerals.  Over the years Chester had been the mecca of processing Emery, quartz, corrundum and Mica mined in town. Factories dominated the Factory Village at Walker Brook, near the Huntington line on the Westfield River, on Emery Street and Middlefield Road.  Emery, most importantly because it was first found in this country in Chester!

Excerpts from the Springfield Papers read;  “The Mica and Porcelain Company have quite extensive works, the mica deposit being sufficient to do a good business in furnishing the “isinglass” plates for stoves, while the quartz of the region, ground coarsely for making sandpaper and to a flour for crockery manufacturers, is abundant. The doctor has found, also, in larger or smaller quantities, some 20 other different minerals in the town, one of the most curious being “meerschaum,” or at least a formation that every one who has examined it declares to be the genuine article. He was much interested in the rocks of Chester, and in 1866 he discovered what he supposed to be a vast deposit of iron ore in town. Hundreds of tons of it were mined and sent to furnaces in West Stockbridge, Hudson, Lenox Furnace and elsewhere, but it was found to be “something different from the comnion ore of the Berkshire hills.” It did not produce the iron desired, and operations at the mine ceased. In 1864 Dr. Lucas examined the stuff with more care, and was gratified to find that, while the ore was rich in magnetite, it was richer in emery, a mineral at that time wholly supplied to this country from Turkey. The Chester Emery mines soon became famous and the modest village doctor,  had the pleasure of offering to the United States government, then troubled to get an emery supply for its arsenals and gun manufactories, (owing to difficulties in which Turkey was involved) a genuine American emery as good, if not better, than any other country produced. It was a perfect godsend at the time, and the government was delighted with this discovery.” Photos courtesy of Chester Historical Society

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