In my last post I wrote about the stock pile of material I was gifted by my neighbors Dan and his mother Velma.
I follow a wonderful blog by a woman named Deb. She is an amazing quilter and if you haven’t already, please stop by and visit her page at
https://abearsthimble2.wordpress.com
After reading my post Deb made a suggestion on dating fabrics, giving the dates associated with fabric widths in an attempt to help date some of the fabric I was given.
1915 under 24″, 1920 to 1930’s 30″ to 34″, 1940 to 1950’s 36″ to 39″, 1960 to today 45″ on
Well I began measuring and most of the fabric hoovers at the 1940’s to 1950’s with a width of 39″. Two of the prints measured in with 1920 – 1930’s width but something else jumped out at me with the fabrics. Two different fabrics were stamped with the maker of the fabric, Cranston Print Works, Company. You may recognize the striped brown as one I will be using with the log cabin quilt I plan to finish. 
But the Cranston Print Works is what caught my eye – tying in my love of quilting with genealogy I recognized the name Cranston as the town where some of my early Italian family members had settled. The Cranston Print Works – Cranston, Rhode Island? Was it the same? It sure was. A quick google search and there it was the tie in with my family history. I have added their history page of the Print Works to the bottom of this post. Many of my DeLellis Family settled in the Cranston/Johnston/Providence Rhode Island area. Many of them also working in the mills of this area. The history and workings of these mills is an amazing area of study. Family members were working as spinners and doffers (A doffer is someone who removes (“doffs”) bobbins, pirns or spindlesholding spun fiber such as cotton or wool from a spinning frame and replaces them with empty ones. Historically, spinners, doffers, and sweepers each had separate tasks that were required in the manufacture of spun textiles. Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org )
The post card below is one I collected dated 1909. By 1909 it was already being used as the State Armory. Notice the street name.
Our History
In many ways, the history of Cranston is the history of the American Industrial Revolution… Our roots go back to 1807 and to the establishment of a tiny cotton printing plant founded by a Rhode Island governor, William Sprague.
In order to understand how Sprague was able to build a textile empire in Rhode Island, we have to travel back to England in the late 1700’s…
Samuel Slater and the American Industrial Revolution In 1769, one year before the Boston Massacre, and six years before the colonies were to gain their independence from England, an English inventor, Richard Arkwright, patented a spinning frame that would revolutionize the production of cotton cloth. Two years later, in 1771, another invention, the spinning jenny, was introduced by Englishman James Hargreaves. In 1779, the spinning mule, a device for spinning muslin yarns, was invented by Samuel Crompton in England. The Textile Industrial Revolution in England was soon in full swing.
Even after the Revolutionary War in 1776, America was still viewed as an ideal market for the vast amounts of cloth, textiles and trims that England was producing. Industry secrets and technology were closely guarded. American mills offered “bounties” for English apprentices who could provide plans for Arkwright-Hargreaves mill works. It wasn’t until 1789, that the English methods of cloth production would be brought to America. Responding to the offer of a “bounty”, a young 21 year old Englishman, Samuel Slater, disguised himself as a common laborer and was granted access to emigrate to America. As we will see, his journey was to forever change the way in which American textile mills operated.
Samuel Slater had been a partner of Richard Arkwright, and smuggled in Arkwright’s industrial secrets in a most unusual way, he committed the workings of the mill to memory! Slater’s first American mill was constructed in what is now Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He later established mills in Oxford, Massachusetts, which is today known as Webster, MA. (One of those early Slater mills became part of Cranston Print Works Company in 1936.)
Governor William Sprague Samuel Slater’s journey and a number of other factors enabled William Sprague, a governor of Rhode Island, to take a small cotton printing plant and make it into one of the great textile empires of the day. The mill was called “Sprague Print Works” and located in Cranston, Rhode Island, the administrative home of Cranston Print Works Company today. Access to waterways, new technology and natural resources made Sprague Print Works a thriving business until after the Civil War, when an economic depression set in and ownership was passed to BB & R. Knight. The Knight corporation licensed and operated the mill under the “Fruit of the Loom” trademark. It is interesting to note that the original Sprague Mansion and other memorials can still be seen in Cranston today.
1920-1987 Expansion and Innovation In 1920, the William G. Rockefeller interests bought the Knight plant and reorganized it as Cranston Print Works Company.
Capacity increased greatly in 1936 with the purchase of the Slater East Village mill and print works in Webster, Massachusetts. As you remember, it was at this historic mill that Samual Slater developed the first American cotton-spinning machinery. In 1949, Cranston boosted capacity still further by opening a plant in Fletcher, North Carolina.
1987 Employee Ownership In August, 1987, Cranston became an employee-owned company whose fundamental and on-going mission is to continue to serve the needs of its customers, employees and the society in which we live. All of us at Cranston are proud of our rich heritage, and determined to continue our history of quality. As a new century approaches, we look forward to continuing our commitment to the environment, our local communities and to our customers. After all, “quality” is not just a byword at Cranston Print Works– it’s a centuries-old tradition!
Piecing Life Together One Stitch At A Time 
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