Steam Power Comes to Industrial Amesbury

Jonathan Webster’s 1836 steam-powered factory (arrow) near Back River as it looked in 1880. By this time, the factory was no longer Webster’s and had become part of the Seth Clark, Jr., Carriage Manufactory. (From map of Amesbury and Salisbury Mills by E. H. Bigelow, 1880.) Click to enlarge.

The falling water of the Powow River attracted early industrialists who built many types of mills along the falls in Amesbury: grist mills, sawmills, oil mills, iron mills and textile mills. Over time, as the water power available became spoken for, alternative sources for power were needed. Engines powered by steam offered a solution for entrepreneurs who needed power but didn’t have access to the Powow River water. These engines were a new and unproven technology in those days, but some risk-takers like Jonathan Webster (1799-1870) were willing to try them.

1836 was probably the first year steam power was used for manufacturing in Amesbury (actually Salisbury at the time, as the Powow River was the Amesbury-Salisbury border until 1887). That year, Jonathan Webster installed a seven-horsepower steam engine in his machinery factory on the banks of Back River, in the vicinity of today’s Drew’s Tire & Auto Center on Elm Street. Webster’s factory made machinery for the growing textile factories crowding the banks of the Powow River. The factory’s fascinating new steam engine, with its hissing, puffing and smoking mechanism, must have been a local curiosity at that time. Webster was an innovator and a trailblazer. Steam-powered railroad locomotives would not arrive in Amesbury until 12 years later, and other Amesbury manufacturers would not start using steam engines in their factories for another 14 years.

Details about Point-Shore-born Jonathan Webster and his steam-powered factory have been carefully researched and documented in a recent report by Mike Harrold, a member of the ACM Industrial Survey Team. But Webster and the steam engine make up only a fraction of the report, “Jonathan Webster’s Steam Machinery Factory.” Webster’s family genealogy and his community and business connections lead the reader down many winding and branching paths connecting Amesbury industrialist family names of Hilton, Osgood, Huntington, Bailey, Pettingell and others. The report is densely packed with information, so be prepared to read it slowly – or more than once.

Click here to read “Jonathan Webster’s Steam Machinery Factory.”