Person:James Phelps (24)

Biography

The house now [1878] owned and occupied by Mrs. Mindwell H. Phelps was built by Sumner Bastow, Esq., in 1817; John Hathaway and Darius Sibley worked on the house; they slept in it before the plastering was dry, and having a charcoal fire, Hathaway was suffocated by the gas. Sibley but just escaped...

He [Sumner Bastow] sold the place to James Phelps in 1827. Mr. Phelps enlarged the house very much and built the beautiful barn in 1839: the carpenter work was done under the direction of Jabez Ellis. He built the mills now owned by S.J. Shaw in 1830: the mill work being done by Ezra Davis and others. This saw and grist-mill with 30 acres of land, including the orchard now owned by Stockwell, was sold to Lewis Stockwell in 1841; he bought also the Hutchinson house. Stockwell sold the mill to Oliver Bullard... He built a shop for making washers, just above the saw mill owned by Henry, in 1847. It has since been moved, and stands where Amos Waters' hoe shop used to stand. It belongs to the heirs of V.C. Hooker. He built Henry's saw mill and sawed the first log there Dec. 18, 1856. He bought the upper reservoir and built the dam in 1858. He built the new grist-mill in 1858. After his death the mills were sold to Henry Batcheller and by him to Sumner Kenney, by him to Henry Phelps. He built the blacksmith and wheelwright shop where Hooker's shop now stands, in 1861. It was burned in 1866. He was a millwright by trade, and [while] doing the mill work where they were putting in a new machine for making paper, he conceived the idea of making those machines; so he employed a draughtsman, took dimensions and drawings of all parts of the machine, and he and Gen. Spofford commenced manufacturing the famous Fourdrinier paper machines in 182l. They made their first pattern in the machine shop at Manchaug.

The business was continued on under the name and firm of Phelps and Spofford until 1841. Their machine shop was located in Spoffordsville in the town of Windham, Ct. They sold the machines for about $3,000 apiece, and when the purchasers were not able to pay for them, they took mortgages for their security; nevertheless, this precaution proved their ruin, for they soon had more paper mills on their hands than they knew what to do with. So, to bolster up their broken customers, they stocked several of these mills and ran them with bad partners, until they were obliged to fail in 1841. After going through bankruptcy, Mr. Phelps invented and had patented in 1843, what is known as "Phelps' Patent Rag Washer." He sold of these washers one hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth; a little more than one half of the amount being profit.

Mr. Phelps was son of Henry Phelps; his mother was daughter of Edward Putnam, who originally bought five hundred acres of land on Putnam Hill, for five hundred dollars. James Phelps was a fine looking man, weighing over two hundred pounds. His twin brother, Sim., looked much like him, but was not quite as fleshy. James, for several years before he died, was troubled with the gout, and almost lost the use of his lower limbs. Yet he had wheels on his chair and trundled himself about the house, would crawl into his wagon and ride to his shop and about his farm, directing all his men, and actually doing more business than any other man in West Sutton, although a cripple, and frequently exercised with the most excruciating pain.

Of his family only his wife and two children survive. Mrs. Phelps is now in her eightieth year. The children are Henry, who married Julia Waters, and Sarah, the widow of Horace DeWitt. She has one son, Alexander, a promising young man, now engaged in the hardware business in Worcester.

Judge Barton wrote the following obituary, which was published in the Worcester Aegis, in June, 1863:

"The death of James Phelps, Esq., of Sutton, noticed in the last Aegis and Transcript, will attract wide attention among the elder members of the business community. He was formerly a large manufacturer of paper machinery. The disastrous period for all manufacturers, previous to the passage of the bankrupt law of 1841, compelled Mr. Phelps to take the benefit of that act, and at the age of fifty years he was left entirely destitute of property. With most men at that age and under such circumstances, further enterprise would have been wholly paralyzed. But possessing great hopefulness and mechanical talent, he put forth new efforts to retrieve his fortunes; invented what is well known as "Phelps' Patent Rag Washer" and by the manufacture of that useful machine, he supported himself under great bodily infirmities, gave remunerative employment to many laborers, paid debts from which he had been legally discharged, and saved a moderate competency for his family. Few men have left a purer name for integrity and enterprise, and his loss will be deeply felt by his family and by the community where he has so long resided."

His funeral was largely attended by his friends and neighbors, at the Baptist church in West Sutton on the third inst. The services were appropriately performed by Rev. Mr. Lyman of Sutton Centre, assisted by the Rev. Messrs. Avery and Becker, the Baptist clergymen of West Sutton.

1. ↑ Births, in Sutton, Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Vital Records of Sutton, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849. (Worcester, Massachusetts: Franklin P. Rice, 1907)
   p. 128.

   PHELPS, Jem, twin s. Henry Jr. and Lucy, [born] Sept. 11, 1791.

2. ↑ Benedict, William Addison, and Hiram A Tracy. History of the town of Sutton, Massachusetts, from 1704 to 1876: including Grafton until 1735; Millbury until 1813; and parts of Northbridge, Upton, and Auburn. (Worcester, Mass: Sanford & Company, 1878)
   Vol. 1 pp. 186 - 189.

   See Biography