Draper Menu

   The Draper Family 

Draper Family Ancestry    (from General Draper’s autobiography)

Ebenezer Draper
  

George Draper   

   **********   

General William F. Draper   (Two biographies and several newspaper clippings.)

General Draper: Boyhood in the Hopedale Community   

Learning a Trade
(William Draper’s life from 1858 to 1861)

Going to War (Draper in the fall of 1861)  

Letters, 1861 – 1862 (Letters by William Draper written during his first year in the army.)

The Wedding of William Draper and Lilla Joy   

Wounded
(William Draper’s account of being shot during the Battle of the Wilderness)

Letters from later years
   (One letter from the general and several written to him)

Waiting for William (A few days from Lilla Draper’s 1873 diary.)

The Wedding of William Draper and Susan Preston  

Susan Preston Draper
  (General Draper’s second wife.)

George Draper Bust Stolen
– 1975

Kentucky Spouses (Seven Draper men married women from Kentucky, and two Draper women married men from Kentucky.)

The General Draper Statue   

The Missing Statue  

General Draper’s Swords  

Arthur Joy Draper   

Clare Hill Draper   

George Otis Draper   

Edith Draper Blair
  Daughter of General William and Lilla Draper; married Montgomery Blair, Jr.-  family of the original owners of Blair House in Washington, D.C. The link goes to a condensed version of Edith’s diary written when she was a student at Miss Porter’s School. At one time the entire diary was online, but that’s no longer available.

Margaret Draper   (Princess Boncompagni, aka Madame Boncompagni)  Pictures  baby —  adult  

Margaret Draper’s Wedding
 and articles about her in the news through 1925.

William F. Draper
(William the artist, not William, the general.)

Draper obituaries – (Sophie Whitin Draper, Lilla Scharnberg,  Grace McMullen, Clare H. Draper III, Joy Roberts.)

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Gov. Eben S. Draper      The Ledges (Home of Gov. and Mrs. Draper)   Boston Home Burned   

Eben S. Draper, Jr.    Ruth Draper, stowaway   

Bristow and Queena Draper
and their children

Helene Draper (Articles on debutante balls, parties and wedding.)

The Gannett family   

Photos of the Gov. Draper family taken in 1911.

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George Albert Draper   

Wickliffe Draper   

Helen Draper Taft Ayer   

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Hannah Thwing (Draper) Osgood   

Dana Osgood   

Fanny Osgood   

George Draper Osgood   

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Frances Eudora (Draper) Colburn

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Draper homes in Boston  

Draper Family Feud
(William F., Eben S. and George A. Draper)

Draper Family Feud (An account of it by Gov. Eben S. Draper.)

The Princess Ends the Feud (Or was it Dorothy Draper Gannett …. or someone else???  You decide.)

Rich and Famous – (Drapers in the news)

Draper family reunion in Hopedale, c. 1999  

Draper tombs at Hopedale Villiage Cemetery   


Draper murder-suicide  
 

                                             The Draper Companies

Four Early Shops  

The Draper business, 1856-1878   

Draper shops, 1885 – 1890   

Draper shops in 1902   

Pre-1910 photos of the Draper shops   

Draper and Dutcher temples       

The Dutcher Family and Business        The Frank Dutcher home     

The Dutcher Family and Business by Peter Hackett               

The History of Spindles
(By William F. Draper, on the Harvard U. Library site.)

Draper Plant Expansion, 1856 – 1886 (From Model Company Town.)

The Development of the Northrop Loom, Iincluding the bobbin battery  .)

James Northrop   

Charles Roper (Draper inventor)

Draper Products   (Although best known for their automatic loom, the company also manufactured many other products. This article tells what they were doing in 1896.   

Inventors of Hopedale  Part 1         Part 2   

Looms at Work   (Pictures of two mills with large numbers of Draper looms at work.)

Now and Then at the Main Office   


The Draper plant, 1890 – 1913
  See how it grew and changed.

Shuttle workers, 1903   

The Hopedale Machine Company
 

Draper Strike of  1913        Strike articles from Milford Gazette    

Draper response   

Strike of 1913 – The Unmaking of an Industrial Utopia        

Teaching unit on the strike   

Striking Women: Massachusetts Mill Workers in the Wake of Bread and Roses, 1912-1913.

Drapers Will Hire Women   

Eben Draper Bancroft
Vice president and director of Draper Corp at the time of his death in 1925.

Draperville
(Grantham Historical Society slide show of the Draper bobbin plants in North Newport and North Grantham, NH in the early  twentieth century.)

Beebe River -(Draper bobbin plant in New Hampshire.) More on bobbins – Cotton Cjats, June 1952  Also Cotton Chats, February 1940.      Beebe River 40th anniversary booklet   Tupper Lake, New York  (Another Draper bobbin plant)

Alterations to the plant (Brick facade on Hopedale and Freedom streets, and much more. 1934.)

The Draper apprentice school (1940 into the 1960s)

Draper Manufactures Howitzers (World War II)  

Aerial views of the plant – 1947 – 1951   


Draper 40-year banquet photo – 1948   

Workers at machines in the shop   

Draper shop organization chart, c. 1950
(Lots of familiar names for those of you who remember the company at that time.)

Main Office workers, 1950s   

The Draper foundry in 1950
  (a Cotton Chats article)

More on the foundry, c. 1950


Harry Pickard retirement party, 1950 (Many photos of Draper management at that time.)

Draper open house, 1951   

Workers at their machines and benches   

The Shop Bell   

Claude Snider   

Cotton Chats
  (Several early issues of the Draper monthly on the website, Digital Treasures.)

Cotton Chats: The Voice of the Draper Company, by Anita Cardillo Danker   

Cotton Chats – 1940     1946     1948     1952     1953     1954    

Miscellaneous Draper photos from the 1940s and 1950s   

Draper phone directory from the 1950s
(Over 20 pages of names from that era.)

Cartoons of Draper employees in the 1950s.by Arthur “Red” Pennington.

East Spartanburg plant open house – 1953   

Foundry operations – Spartanburg, 1953   

Foundry workers strike at Draper Corp., 1953   

The 1955 Flood        More Draper flood photos (inside the plant    And more (outside)

Draper’s first computer – The UNIVAC
, c. 1950s

Roy Rehbein – Working at Draper

The Draper apprentice school

Photos of Draper employees in 1961 report  

Aerial Views, 1964  

Draper shuttleless loom, 1964   


Draper plant photos that appear to be from the 1960s. Saved by Bob Anderson of Upton when Rockwell people were discarding them.  Page 1 (machinery and workers – some from the West Foundry) Page 2 (machinery and workers)     Page 3 (machinery and workers)     Page 4 (machinery and workers)     Page 5 (office workers, executives and meetings)     Page 6 (loom assembly)     Page 7 (people)  Page 8 (shuttle department)     Page 9 (salesmen’s book – captioned photos)     Page 10 (the rest of the salesmen’s book)   Page 11  (more pictures from
inside the shop)   Page 12 (building the West Foundry)     

A View from the South  

A View from the  Southeast  

The West Foundry, 1966   

Last Years Before Rockwell   

Rockwell Buyout – NYT 1967  

Draper Foundries in the Rockwell Era   

The 150,000-gallon oil tank (John Cembruch)
  

Strike, 1976  

Rockwell sale of property, 1976   

Mike Cyr
  (Working in textile mills, including one that used Draper looms.)

George Bushnell
(Draper and Country Club memories)

Draper work diary by John Callery
(A view of the last years, month by month.)

Rockwell letter to employees, 1978

The End Is Near Newspaper articles (1978) about the impending closing of the Draper plant in Hopedale.

Draper – Now just a memory (Milford Daily News, March 31, 1980)

It’s All Over
(A Milford News article from 1980 about the closing of the Draper plant.)

Water leak
– ((Ends manufacturing in rented space at Draper shop in 1988.)

Draper plant in January 2006      More pictures of the same area taken a few months later – July 2006.  Five from August 2006.   October 15, 2006.    October 30, 2006.   More taken in  February 2007  

The Draper plant in 2001         and in 2007   

Now and Then – The Draper yard from the 1890s to 2013.   

$50M Proposal for the Draper plant
– 2018  

Drone view of the Draper plant before demolition.   

Draper demolition – Hopedale Street, south end

The Decline of a Technological Leader: Capability, Strategy, and Shuttleless Weaving, 1945 – 1974.
   (In this paper, William Mass, writing at the University of Lowell, with funding from the University of Connecticut, takes a close look at decisions made during the final years of Drapers.)

Developing and Utilizing Technological Leadership, Industrial Research, Vertical Integration, and Business Strategy at the Draper Company, 1816 – 1930
(Another paper by  William Mass,)

Draper plant demolition, 2020-2021 Hopedale Street side, south end     Hopedale Street side, Social to Freedom     Freedom Street side, western parts     Freedom Street side, eastern half     Post-demolition site cleanup  (2021 – 2022)  


                                Other Draper-Related Pages

Hopedale, 1881   

Blackstone Valley Baseball League
  Draper teams,  1935    1948   1951   

Mill Village or Shop Town?  

Field Days      Draper Field Days slide show on YouTube.   

Summary of Edward Spann’s Hopedale: Commune to Company Town

Short Biographies of Prominent Hopedale People   

The “other Drapers”
  A little about some of the many Drapers in Hopedale who were not related to the “corporation Drapers.”

From Christian Utopia to Company Town: Communal Life and Corporate Paternalism in 19th and 20th Century Hopedale, Massachusetts.

Hopedale and the Drapers, 1888
(The Springfield Daily Union.)

Hopedale and the Drapers   (A summary of Hopedale history written in 1909.)

Hopedale and the Drapers, 1910
(The Boston American)

The Duplexes      Bancroft Park photos
,( c 1900)

Milford Hospital   

Draper fire stations   

Draper gas station   

Garages
  (Car garages for people living in Draper houses.)

The Regulation of Automobiles
Gov. Eben S. Draper

Pres. Taft visits Hopedale, Mendon and Uxbridge with Gov. Draper   

Hopedale Manufacturing Company   

Donation of land for General Draper High School

The General Draper Library
  (Milford News article on the dedication of the library at Hopedale High School in 1929.)

The Larches   

White City   (Memories of that Draper neighborhood by John Chute.)

White City
  ( Memories of Hermina Cichanwicz Marcus.)

Draper Field   

The publication of Five Generations of Loom Builders, 1950

Hopedale Airport   

The Textileers   

Site Protection
(Preserving the appearance of the town.)

Frederick FitzGerald Killed in Plane Crash
– 1960  

The Final Chapter by Peter Hackett   

Proposal for 1200 condo units at former Draper site.   

A Draper loom in the 21st century
– Pete and Laurie Eaton’s amazing restoration of a Draper loom.

And another Draper loom restoration story. Michael Masterson and the X-3.

Draper looms weaving denim in North Carolina in 2012


Women’s Committee for Hoover   

Shuttles and the Swannanoa Museum   

Shuttle lamp plans   

Little Red Shop Menu   

The Little Red Shop in the Draper Era   

Joseph Bancroft
(Lilla Bancroft Bracken Pratt’s story of her father’s life. The Bancrofts have been included here because, in addition to Joseph’s position with the Draper Company, the Drapers and the Bancrofts were related. Sylvia’s sister Anna was married to Ebenezer Draper, and her sister Hannah was married to George Draper. Also, Joseph was an executive with the various Draper companies nearly all of his working life, and president of Draper Company for the last couple of years of his life.

Sylvia Bancroft
(An account of her life written by her daughter, Lilla Bancroft Bracken Pratt.)

Almon Thwing
(Included here because of Thwing’s relationship to the Draper family and company through three of his sisters.)

The Uxbridge Connection  

Draper plant demolition, 2020-2021 Hopedale Street side, south end     Hopedale Street side, Social to Freedom   Freedom Street side, western parts     Freedom Street side, eastern half     Post-demolition site cleanup  (2021 – 2022)

There are also many more Draper family and Draper Corporation articles on the Ezine Menu.   

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