Draper Menu

Short Biographies of Prominent Hopedale People  

Draper Family Ancestry
   (from General Draper's autobiography)

Ebenezer Draper  

George Draper  

General William F. Draper   (A five page biography of Draper)

General Draper: Boyhood in the Hopedale Community  

Learning a Trade (William Draper's life from 1858 to 1861)

The Wedding of William Draper and Lilla Joy
 

Wounded (William Draper's account of being shot during the Battle of the Wilderness)

Letters, 1861 - 1862 (Letters by William Draper written during his first year in the army.)

Letters from later years
   (One letter from the general and several written to him)

The General Draper Statue  

The Missing Statue
  

George Otis Draper  

Edith Draper Blair   (Daughter of General William and Lilla Draper; married Montgomery Blair, Jr.-  family of the original owners of Blair House in Washington, D.C. The link goes to Edith's diary written when she was a student at Miss Porter's School.)

Margaret Draper
  (Princess Boncompagni)  Pictures  baby --  adult  

The General Draper Library
  (Milford News article on the dedication of the library at Hopedale High School in 1929.)

William F. Draper    (William, the artist, not to be confused with his grandfather, William, the general. Extensive interview done by the Smithsonian in 1977)

Gov. Eben S. Draper
  

Eben S. Draper, Jr.  

George Albert Draper  

Draper Family Feud
(William F., Eben S. and George A. Draper)

The Princess Ends the Feud
(Or was it Dorothy Draper Gannett .... or someone else???  You decide.)

Bristow and Queenie Draper
(A newspaper article from 1909 about B and Q)

Rich and Famous - (Drapers in the news)

Kentucky Women (Six Draper men married women from Kentucky.)

Wickliffe Draper  

Fanny Osgood ( A granddaughter of George and Hannah Draper, Fanny found fame as a golfer.)

Sylvia Bancroft
(An account of her life written by her daughter, Lilla Bancroft Bracken Pratt.)

Joseph Bancroft
(Lilla Bancroft Bracken Pratt's story of her father's life. The Bancrofts have been included here because, in addition to Joseph's position with the Draper Company, the Drapers and the Bancrofts were related. Sylvia's sister Anna was married to Ebenezer Draper, and her sister Hannah was married to George Draper.)

Almon Thwing (Included here because of Thwing's relationship to the Draper family and company through three of his sisters.)

The Dutcher Family and Business  

Four Early Shops  

Draper Products   (Although best known for their automatic loom, the company also manufactured many other products. This article tells what they were doing in 1896.)

The Development of the Northrop Loom
  

Looms at Work   (Pictures of two mills with large numbers of Draper looms at work.)

The Main Office  

Inventors of Hopedale  

The History of Spindles (By William F. Draper, on the Harvard U. Library site.)

Hopedale and the Drapers   (A summary of Hopedale history written in 1909.)

Charles Roper (Draper inventor)

The Duplexes  

White City   (Memories of that Draper neighborhood by John Chute.)

Workingman's Paradise?  

Site Protection (Preserving the appearance of the town.)

Drapers Will Hire Women  

Draper Strike of  1913  

The Draper foundry in 1950   (a Cotton Chats article)

More on the foundry, c. 1950  

Claude Snider  

The 1955 Flood   (Twelve photos of Drapers during the flood.)

Roy Rehbein - Working at Draper  

Strike, 1976  

The End Is Near (Two Milford News articles on the announcement of the closing of Drapers.)

It's All Over (A Milford News article from 1980 about the closing of the Draper plant.)

The Decline of a Technological Leader: Capability, Strategy, and Shuttleless Weaving, 1945 - 1974.
  (An often-told story is that Rockwell acquired Drapers with the intent of closing it, because there was a tax advantage to doing so.  In this paper, William Mass, writing at the University of Lowell, with funding from the University of Connecticul, takes a close look at decisions made during the final years of Drapers.)

Developing and Utilizing Technological Leadership, Industrial Research, Vertical Integration, and Business Strategy at the Draper Company, 1816 - 1930
(Another paper by  William Mass,)

The Hopedale Machine Company
  

Cotton Chats   (Several early issues of the Draper monthly on the website, Digital Treasures.)

Field Days  

Draper Field  

Mill Village or Shop Town?
  

Mike Cyr   (Working in textile mills, including one that used Draper looms.)

Sophie Carter Whitin Draper   (2006 obituary)

The Uxbridge Connection  

A View from the South
  

A View from the  Southeast
  

Aerial Views, 1964
  

George Draper Bust Stolen - 1975  

Recent Pictures Menu (Photos of the Draper plant now)

Little Red Shop Menu
  

Little Red Shop Interior Menu  

Little Red Shop Renovation Project, 2007  

                                                               
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