Whitin Machine Works

This collection contains employee publications, documents and photographs. Publications are available for viewing below. If you would like to find a specific name, please use the name index page.

• View all issues of Spindle (August 1919 – July 1926, February 1948 – September 1963)
• View all issues of News From Home (November 1942 – December 1945)
• View all issues of Whitin Profile (October 1963 – December 1965)

At the center of the village of Whitinsville, the Whitin Machine Works was established in 1831, when John C. Whitin, the son of the mill’s founder Col. Paul Whitin, was granted a patent for a new type of picking machine, spurring the rapid growth of the modest mill into one of the largest textile machinery works in the world. Less than 60 years after the founding of the “Shop”, the first Armenians arrived to work in its foundry and factory. The village of Whitinsville was transformed as the Whitin family-built housing for their workers, many of them Armenians. Entire neighborhoods sprung up as these families settled and grew. Through the pages of its employee news magazines over five decades and other photographs, documents and memory objects, the impact of the Armenians on Whitinsville’s most notable business is recorded.

A special thanks goes out to Ken Trajanowski for all his work over the years of collecting and digitizing these publications.