The Lower Carroll mill in New Marlborough. Mill River’s three paper manufacturers in 1865 consumed 1,022 tons of raw materials to generate 325 tons of printing paper worth $115,083, 210 tons of wrapping paper worth $73,500, and 35,000 reams of writing paper worth $116,667. These factories employed 60 men and 55 women.

John Carroll (1800-1876) built an upstream mill in 1837.  “Mr. Carroll found his straw print paper business very profitable,” the Berkshire Gleaner said in 1909, “the process being entirely successful, and taking James Goodwin into partnership built another mill just below his first one. They made three tons of paper a day. Mr. Carroll became very wealthy and built a fine villa and laid out an estate much after the manner of the Lenox estates at a cost of $75,000.”

George Sheldon made manila paper at a site below Carroll’s mill until the Sheldon site was destroyed by fire. Carroll & Co. bought his lower water privilege in 1872.  Carroll was an innovator as well as an entrepreneur. He built a new lower mill and equipped it with a patented Risdon Impact Water Wheel that produced 200 horsepower.  He also installed a wood grinder so the mill could make pulpwood paper.

Earlier newsprint was made from straw, but the method had difficulties: the need to keep an adequate supply on hand and to keep it clean and dry. Carroll purchased rye straw from farmers. But wood pulp had better possibilities.

When Carroll retired, his partner Goodwin and his son, Theron G. Carroll continued to wagon the wood pulp slurry produced at the lower site to the upper mill for manufacture into paper.
They struggled. The loss of the elder Carroll’s experienced hand, a severe regional economic fluctuation, labor issues, Goodwin’s lack of sufficient capital and the absence of close railroad facilities combined to send the company to a financial edge in 1876.

The business made straw paper again in 1878 and installed a boiler house so the machinery could run by steam power. The owners bought Fourdrinier papermaking machinery, which by this time was the industry standard.  The lower mill was converted one more time to produce book paper in December 1883, but the business closed at the end of the next year.

The dam has breached, but we found the head race that brought water to the mill’s enormous 40-foot by 45-foot wheelpit.  The waterwheel (and later the steam engine) powered a chopper. There would have been several vats in which to soak the raw material, a bleaching tub to whiten the cellulose and a steamer to further the pulp process.

One-third of the mill foundation is the wheel pit, near the river. Another third is divided into 10 walled chambers, no doors or windows.  These chambers may have been for raw materials storage. They may have provided support for depressed vats. They may simply have supported the floor.  The last third has within it two enormous 12-foot by 27-foot stone pillars built in later years to support the heavy Fourdrinier machinery. Perched on top are the remains of the last two galvanized soaker vats.

At the front of the mill are two 3-foot by 8-foot stone posts, about 25 feet apart. The posts supported the mill’s original second floor, which was used for drying sheet paper.  Bernie Drew- Berkshire Eagle.

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