Cloth Seal, American, Canton, Mass, Image & Found by Stephanie Inskeep.
Found in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A., 26mm.
No / 899 / 26 1/2 / YDS // CANTON curved down MASS. curved up
The rivet disc markings are fairly standard showing the order number and length of the cloth in yards.
The inscription on the rove disc appears to indicate Canton, Massachusetts, which would make this the first lead cloth seal of American origin that I know of.
Although industrial cloth weaving began in 1790 in America with Samuel Slater's cotton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and soon proliferated across New England to places like North Uxbridge, Massachusetts in the 19th century*, no cloth seals seem to have come to light (please let me know if you know of any!).
Philip Lanez suggests it might be from Neponset Cotton Factory.
See A Postcard from Canton (Canton Historical Society), "Emberglo was a trademark of the Neponset Woolen Mills, located on Walpole Street. The label had the word Neponset neatly stitched. Hank Williams’ coat started in the hands of factory workers from Canton. The coat tells a rich story that reaches beyond Hank Williams and into American history and the age of our industrial revolution.
The mill on Walpole Street is gone, but only recently. One of the most important mills in America, this site was first developed in 1801. When you stand here, you are on the original site of the second cotton factory in the colonies, the first being the 1799 Samuel Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. ...
Beaumont visited Canton, where he was so pleased with the mill-privilege that he agreed to furnish the machinery; his partners, Lemuel Bailey and Abel Fisher, would erect a substantial dam and a building for a factory. The construction of the dam and factory progressed during the year of 1801, and the machines were running by 1802. The first work of the factory was the manufacture of wickyarn for candle-makers. Soon thereafter, the mill began to make yarn for warp and filling for domestic fabrics. The first piece of cloth made was for sheeting. Beaumont said of it: “This, in 1802, was the first piece of cotton cloth ever made in America from mule-yarn, either all or in part produced.” Beaumont was mistaken: Cotton cloth had been made in 1794 in a factory in New York, but Beaumont’s mill was nonetheless producing fine cloth that sold for 50 cents a yard. ...
On February 18, 1823, the factory on Walpole Street was sold to Joseph W. Revere for $3,500. Within a year, Revere sold the mill to Darius Blake Holbrook, Charles Parker, and Dexter and William Hill, of Boston, for $120,000. These gentlemen, along with others, organized the Boston & Canton Manufacturing Company. The area quickly built up around the massive stone factory and included boarding houses, a school and even medical facilities. In three years the area prospered, and great growth led to the construction of a dirt road across the Fowl Meadows to support shipments to Boston. Quite literally, Canton burst forward under the growth of the mills along this section of town. Unfortunately, the business failed in 1827 and the mill would be vacant for four years.
On April 22, 1831, the Boston & Canton Manufacturing Company conveyed the mill to the Neponset Company. The new officers were well-known philanthropists and politicians from Boston. The certificate of which was recorded July 22, 1832, showing that the capital stock was $200,000, and that the officers were Harrison Gray Otis, president, Caleb Loring, Samuel Fales, and Robert G. Shaw, directors, and John S. Wright, clerk and treasurer.
Worth noting is the fact that this was the same Harrison Gray Otis, the prominent Boston businessman, lawyer and politician and arguably the most important member of the Federalist Party. Otis’ venture also failed, and by 1837 the site was again abandoned. Over the next 66 years many factories operated on this site, including a bleachery in the early 1880s, and by 1903 it was again making cotton and wool products for caskets and other uses under the name Neponset Woolen Mills.
The Neponset Woolen Mills survived into the mid 1950s,"
