Closing of the Faulkner Mills

The Faulkner Mills, the second of the two woolen mills at the North Billerica dam, run since 1915 by the North Billerica Company, stopped production in 1987, more than twenty years after its neighbor (see Closing of the Talbot Mills), ending 176 years of woolen manufacture at the falls of the Concord River. Both mill buildings stand, filled with other businesses, at the centre of the Billerica Mills Historic District.

The Faulkner mill had left the Faulkner family in 1914, when the Faulkner Manufacturing Company sold it to Daniel W. Farnsworth of Montclair, New Jersey, whose North Billerica Company made woolens there from 1915. The company was reorganized in 1954 and 1955 under John A. Morrill of Lowell, with Faulkner Textile Associates, Inc. as its principal shareholder and selling agent, and it advertised its mill salesroom in the town's yearbooks through the 1960s. In 1974 it asked the town's Industrial Development Financing Authority for revenue-bond financing, its request and Corenco's together coming to $1,650,000, and signed an agreement with the town to share the cost of the enlarged sewage treatment plant, and the town's sewer accounts carried its payments into the 1980s. The North Billerica Company took the name Faulkner Mills in 1985; in October 1986 it was merged into Faulkner Textile Associates and at once into the Cascade Acquisition Company, and production stopped in 1987. The Historical Commission wrote in its report for 1988 that "our year began with notice that the Faulkner Mills, second oldest woolen weaving mill in North America, were for sale." A developer proposed apartments in 1989; instead the mill passed to Faulkner Realty, Inc. in 1992 and to Faulkner Mills Acquisition Corp. in 1995, and it now houses small businesses and the Middlesex Canal Museum.

By then the mills and their village had been recognized as history. The Billerica Mills Historic District, about 75 acres with the two mill complexes, the mill housing, the Talbot Oval and the remains of the Middlesex Canal, was entered in the National Register of Historic Places on November 10, 1983. In 1970 the town's new Ilford pumping station took in "the old North Billerica Sewer System (built by Talbot Mills in 1902)," and in 2014 the Talbot mill's old brick storehouse at 2 Old Elm Street was given to the Middlesex Canal Association.

References

1. Billerica Annual Reports from 1969: 1970 Ilford pumping station joins the North Billerica sewer built by Talbot Mills in 1902; 1972 historical note: Faulkner Mills still running, Talbot Mills not.
2. Billerica Annual Report 1974: Industrial Development Financing Authority requests from Corenco and The North Billerica Company (Faulkner Mills); sewer cost-sharing agreements.
3. Billerica Annual Report 1988, Historical Commission: notice at the start of the year that the Faulkner Mills were for sale; loss of 'Cork City' to fire.
4. Lowell NHP, finding aid for the Faulkner Mills, Inc. records: 1954-55 reorganization under John A. Morrill, 1985 name change, Oct. 1986 mergers, production ceased 1987, Faulkner Realty 1992.
5. Cornell University Library, North Billerica Company/Faulkner Mills Collection: 1914 sale to Daniel Farnsworth and reorganization as the North Billerica Co.; operation into the 1980s.
6. Wikipedia, 'Billerica Mills Historic District': listed on the National Register Nov. 10, 1983 (no. 83003996); Talbot and Faulkner mills; about a century of Talbot operation.