THE COLLINS COMPANY and HYDROELECTRIC POWER
EXCERPTS FROM SAMUEL WATKINSON COLLINS MEMORANDUMS
FROM 1826 - 1867:
1826 - Copartnership formed between S.W. Collins, D.C. Collins and William Wells of Hartford, under the firm name of Collins & Company, for making axes and other edge tools. They purchase a saw-mill and grist-mill and water privilege and a few acres of land on the East bank of the Farmington River in the Town of Canton.
1827 - Commenced quarrying stone for a two-story stone building and for a heavy stone wall West of said building to prevent the river from running through that channel. There was a log dam where the wall stands and a saw-mill where the upper stone building stands.
1828 - Built the first trip-hammer shop with an undershot float wheel to each hammer. A high flood carried away the flume, flooding the stone building and carrying away a large quantity of timber collected to buld a dam.
1836 - Built a large grinding shop on West side of upper race with three breast water wheels running 24 grind stones.
1837 - Suspended work for 5 months and built a log dam across the river, filled with stone and planked over, and a heavy stone breast work parallel with it crossing the canal to protect the Works from floods. The bulkheads at the gates on the canal were put in of heavy timber and planked (stone was substituted in 1849). The dam and the stone breast work was all put down onto the rock all the way, the logs being bolted to the rock. By building the dam we got 16 feet head and fall on our water wheels. The former owners never got more than 12 feet for their sawmill and gristmill. Heretofore we had in summer turned the water into our canal by a ridge of loose stone between the upper islands at the head of our fall, which of course did not stop all the water, and were moved out of place by the ice in winter when the anchor ice would fill our canal and the water would flow the main channel of the river.
1838 - We found the dam built the previous year a great improvement to our water power, obviating all necessity for any more night-work.
1839 - Great flood in January. Large cakes of ice came over the flume into long grinding shop. To prevent a recurrence, we built a heavy stone wall on the river side of the shop, 231 feet long, costing $1,000.
1846 - The drought last summer (1845) was such that we could not run the works more than half the time, but as this occurs only occasionally, we decided to build a canal to give room for more shops and we built in connection with it a three-story stone building and two large breast wheels, that we might put in operation Mr. Root's machinery for punching heads of axes, shaving them and tempering them in ovens without disturbing or interfering with the present manufacturing business, the demand both last year and this year being larger than we could supply. The river was very low in October for not having had the usual September rains. They took up the flume of the upper stone building to stop leaks, and built on the West side of the building an additional stone wall to support the previous wall, and grouted it with water lime (200 barrels) to stop leaks.
1847 - A high dam built this year on the river at New Hartford by The Greenwoods Company giving them a large pond which aids them materially in dry weather and is also a help to us.
1849 - This year we raised our dam two feet, paying the owner of land above for the right to flood their land to that extent, (amounting to about $3,000). We also took out the gates and timber bulkhead put in when the dam was built in 1837, and substituted stone placed on logs at the bottom which are close together running up and down stream and bolted to the rocks and covered with 3" plank.
1852 - Great demand this year from California for axes and especially for pick-axes. To increase our trip-hammer facilities, put up a long shop next West of railroad bridge (240 feet long) fourteeen trip-hammers driven by cast-iron breast wheels 22 feet in diameter, 8 foot buckets.
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