Norwood’s Living History-Manufacturing Begins

In 1849, the sound of pick and shovel on the Norfolk County Railroad re-awakened agricultural South Dedham to its industrial possibilities, and the town began to become a manufacturing center.

The Everett furniture factory was built, patenting and producing the extension table. Besides the established industries such as the tanneries, local “cottage industries” also benefited from Ute improved transportation offered by the railroads.

Women sewed straw into hats and bonnets in their homes, then brought them to a small factory on Cottage Street to be shipped to Boston, Hartford, and Providence. South Dedham’s second entry into the fashion world was a hoop-skirt and crinoline factory, but these industries died out with the changing fashion vogue.

The railroad, however, remained a dominant and pervading influence in village life. Strangely, one of those most affected by the railroad building was a hermit; Jabez Sumner.

He was born in “Pigeon Swamp” near East Walpole in 1818, and he grew up In the tense atmosphere of the divided town.

As a young man, he saw the old Providence Railroad built from Boston to Canton and later extended to Providence. He loved everything about the railroads, watching the construction of any new road from the beginning to end, and sometimes working on the crews. When an electric railway was planned from Foxboro to Wrentham in the 1890s, Sumner, then in his seventies, walked all eight miles of the projected roadbed. He declared that he liked steam better.

With the railroads came the first of a new wave of immigrants. They were mostly Irish, laborers on the railroad, and there was small welcome shown them by the established residents who tended to resent anything or anyone that intruded upon their serenity. So strong was the feeling against these newcomers that they forced to take the only lodging available to them, the old steam mill. As many as ten families lived there at one time. Gradually these settlers found work in the tannery and later in the Monrill Ink Mill, the Plimpton foundry, and in the cabinet-making industry. They prospered and were accepted in the community, and thus they set a precedent for the thousands of immigrants who followed, including the modern immigrants, the ex-urbanites.

The Civil War interrupted the tranquil life in the booming village of South Dedham. In the summer of 1861, many of the townsmen had already volunteered and were in the 18th Regiment at the Army training camp at Readville.

Just before the regiment marched away to war, it was invited to come to South Dedham to parade and say goodbye. To welcome the troops, the villagers planned to fire their muzzle-loading cannon as the troop-train arrived. Elijah Jones, a cabinet maker, was one of the gun crew. The crew was inexperienced in rapid-firing. As Jones was ramming home the charge one last time, the cannon exploded prematurely, blowing off Jones’ fingers and part of his arm.

Jones died, the first of many tragedies brought to South Dedham by the Civil War.

By Marguerite Krupp, Originally published in the 1972 Centennial Magazine