Francis Faulkner

Francis Faulkner, founder of the woolen mills at North Billerica, was born in Acton on January 31, 1760, the son of Francis and Rebekah Faulkner. His father, Colonel Francis Faulkner, was a leading citizen of Acton and a good soldier in the Revolution, and the family descended from Edmund Faulkner, one of the first settlers of Andover. Acton tradition holds that the fifteen-year-old Francis Jr. helped carry meals to the militia on April 19, 1775. He married first Elizabeth Jones of Concord and later Ann Robbins of Watertown.

On April 10, 1811, Faulkner came from Acton to Billerica and began making woolen goods and carding, coloring and dressing cloth on the Concord River at North Billerica. Hazen called it the second enterprise of its kind in New England, after Abraham Marland's at Andover in 1810. Faulkner soon bought from the Middlesex Canal Company the secondary water privilege, which let him draw water until the river fell to "three-quarters of an inch below the top of the dam and flush-boards"; after that he had to close his gates, under a penalty of one dollar for every half-hour they stayed open. "By his thrift, skill, and enterprise," Hazen wrote, "Mr. Faulkner made his business very successful, and transmitted it to his sons."

He also took his place among the town's leading men. When the Billerica Academy was established in 1820 under Bernard and Bathsheba Whitman, Francis Faulkner, Esq., was one of its first trustees, with Josiah Crosby, Samuel Whiting, Zadok Howe and others.

Francis Faulkner died on February 12, 1843; his gravestone in the North Cemetery gives his age as 83. His children included Charles and Francis, who died before him; Ann, who married Calvin Rogers; James Robbins Faulkner, who carried on the mills and was long treasurer of the Howe School; William, Lois and Lydia; Luther Winthrop Faulkner, later proprietor of the Faulkner mills in Lowell; and George, a Harvard graduate of 1844 and a physician. In 1883 the business still ran under the name J. R. Faulkner & Co., with his grandson Richard Faulkner as agent, and had grown from a single set of cards to eight sets and seventy-two hands. The Faulkner Mills at North Billerica ran until about 1987, and the restored buildings now house small businesses and the Middlesex Canal Museum.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), Genealogical Register p. 52, FAULKNER 1
2. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), plate: portrait of Francis Faulkner (register p. 52)
3. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 280 (woolen manufacture begun 1811; canal water privilege)
4. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883), p. 257 (trustees of the Billerica Academy, 1820)
5. Vital Records of Billerica to 1850 (1908), deaths p. 360 (Francis Esq., Feb. 12, 1843, a. 83)
6. Vital Records of Acton to 1850 (1923), births (Francis, s. Francis and Rebekah, Jan. 31, 1760)
7. Iron Work Farm in Acton, The Faulkner Homestead
8. Buildings of New England, Faulkner Mill // 1880