Stop #12: Northampton Association Silk Mill
Site of the silk mill of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, formerly owned by Samuel Whitmarsh who brought silk manufacture to the region. During NAEI days both Sojourner Truth and David Ruggles lived here, also former slaves James Willson, George Washington Sullivan and Stephen Rush. In 1845 the mill was sold along with 100 acres to a group of industrialist abolitionists led by J. P. Williston of Northampton, and converted to cotton manufacture. These evangelical abolitionists would continue a policy of hiring fugitive slaves as operatives; several of them settled on Nonotuck Street. The building was demolished in the late 1960s.
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