Museum L-A’s May Object of the Month is the York Manufacturing Company’s Valuation of Machinery booklet from 1853 to 1892.

Built on Saco Island in 1831, the York Manufacturing company milled cotton goods, operating with 1,000 workers by 1839. It’s predecessor was the Saco Manufacturing Company (the mill built in 1826 burned down in 1830). Throughout the century the expansion of the mills encouraged rapid development in the region. By the turn of the century, York Manufacturing Co. ran eight mills.

These records show the different types of machinery that Mills 3, 4, and 6 held in 1892. Documenting this was Stephen Greene of Lockwood, Greene & Co., continuing a legacy of consulting to budding mills in New England.

Today, the Biddeford-Saco Mills Historic District holds the remaining buildings of 4 manufacturing companies, including Laconia and Pepperell Mills. 

Information taken from Maine Preservation, the City of Saco, and John Blicksilver’s article in the 1961 edition of the Cambridge Business History Review.