Draper Corporation

The Draper Corporation was once the largest maker of power looms for the textile industry in the United States. It operated in Hopedale, Massachusetts for more than 130 years.

In the early 19th century, Ira Draper was a prosperous farmer from Weston, Massachusetts, with an ability for tinkering and improving machinery, such as a threshing machine that was a great improvement on any previous one made at the time. His great-great grandfather, James Draper had landed in Boston from England in 1650, and was "one of the first men in the American colonies to engage in the business of weaving and selling cloth".

In 1816, shortly after the first successful power loom in the United States was developed up by Paul Moody at Waltham, Massachusetts, Ira was granted a patent on an improved flyshuttle hand loom and the first self-acting temple. The improvement allowed a weaver to run two power looms instead of one. Its labor-saving feature appealed to Ira, and he decided to push its sale to weavers in the area. In 1829 he took out a patent for an improvement on his original invention. In 1830 he sold his patents and the business to his eldest son, James of Wayland, Massachusetts.

Ebenezer, a younger brother, bought the business in 1837, and later moved it from Wayland to Uxbridge, Massachusetts, the center of the growing textile mill area of the Blackstone Valley. In 1841, Ebenezer moved the company to nearby Hopedale, Massachusetts, where a new Christian settlement had been formed by Adin Ballou in 1841. Known as “Fraternal Community No. 1” it was a communal association determined to create an ideal society. Hopedale was one of the most successful communal experiments of the era, but failed after fifteen years.

Another brother George came to Hopedale in 1853 to join his brother in the firm of E.D. & George Draper. A year later he bought an interest in the new Dutcher temple, then made in North Bennington, Vermont. The Dutcher temple was an improvement on previous models. Two years later, the two companies would combine forces at Hopedale and become known as W. W. Dutcher & Company. This would be the first of several industries to be located in Hopedale within the next dozen years, for all of which E.D. & George Draper became managers and agents. Among the others were the Hopedale Machine Company and Hopedale Furnace Company.

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