Barefoot Boys

Howes Brothers photo, courtesy of the Colrain Historical Society.

In this 1894 Howes Brothers photo, men, women and girls worked in the Griswold cotton mills in what became Griswoldville beginning in the 1830s, and in Lyonsville later as well. 

The mills, founded by the remarkable Joseph Griswold and his wife Louisa, were for more than 100 years the town’s largest employer, and its tax base. As demand for its cotton products ramped up during the Civil War, Griswold recruited entire families from Quebec to man the water-powered mills, and built a large brick tenement to house them, later adding many of the houses we see in Griswoldville today. ​

In 1932, the Griswold Mfg. Co. was sold to the Kendall Company, at its peak employing some 500 men and women. Mostly Colrain residents and neighbors, generations spent their whole working lives together in the mills. The company changed hands again in 1986 to a succession of companies, and in 2023, Barnhardt Manufacturing, with 31 employees, closed what was left of the mills.

[Source :  Belden Mirims and the April 2025 issue of the Colrain Clarion.]

June 16, 1932 article in the Greenfield Daily Recorder about the sale of the Griswoldville Manufacturing Company to the Kendall Company.

The Griswold Legacy

Prentice Crosier presents a look at the Griswolds, Colrainers who had vision and energy, and left a legacy we still benefit from today. Wednesday, March 19th at 6:00 p.m. at the Griswold Memorial Library.