Looking down on the Bradley axe works: long shingled shops, a tall chimney and stone walls beside the river.

The Axe Works

What did thirty men make by the river?

On the Saugatuck, four miles north of Westport, the Bradleys forged axes, machetes and cane knives with water power for more than sixty years.

1891 · Read the plan

G. W. Bradley's Sons, Axe & Edged Tool Works

Fire-insurance surveyors drew the works in 1891 “at Weston, 4 miles N. of Westport”, between the Saugatuck and the Westport & Danbury Road. Their notes read like a time sheet:

“30 hands. Work 10 hours. No watchman. Fire pails all buildings. 4 turbine wheels.”

30: hands
10: hours a day
14: forges
4: turbine wheels
0: watchmen

The 1891 fire-insurance plan of the axe works: buildings outlined and labelled between the Saugatuck River and the road, with the dam, races and a compass rose. — Fire-insurance plan, 1891 (copy). Select it to open full size. Weston History & Culture Center.

What's on the plan

Forging: 14 forges and 8 power hammers
Tempering: heat-treating the steel edges
Wheel house: the turbines, fed by a race from the dam
Grinding & Finishing: two storeys
Turning
Charcoal house and coal shed: fuel for the forges
Lumber house, storage sheds and an office

A dam held back the river. A supply race carried water to the wheel house, a tail race took it back, and a footbridge crossed the river “for workers”. The 1867 atlas of Weston shows the same place as the “Edge Tool Factory”, on its pond beside G. W. Bradley's house.

From above

The works from above

A high view of the axe works: long shingled shops with rows of windows, a tall chimney, stone walls and the river among trees. — The works from above, on a large mounted print from the Northern Survey Co. of Albany. Weston History & Culture Center.

A hand-drawn pencil key to the photograph, labelling the steam engine stack, the forge shop, the polishing and grinding shop and the heat-treating shop. — Someone later drew a key to the photograph: the Steam Engine house and its stack; the Forge Shop, “10 trip hammers”; Polishing, Grinding, Finishing & Shipping; and Heat Treating & Tempering.

About thirty men and boys in work aprons posed in rows against a board shop, some holding axes and hammers. — The Bradley crew, about 1902–03. Weston History & Culture Center (from a slide).

About 1902–03

Fifty-six years at the forge

About thirty men and boys in aprons, some holding axes and hammers: the “30 hands” of the plan. A framed copy of this photograph, in another collection, names the oldest employee: Samuel H., who started at the works at the age of 14, in 1846 or 1847, and worked there for 56 years.

That puts the works in business by the 1840s, and the photograph at about 1902 or 1903. His surname is hard to read. Do you know who he was?

Water, then steam

What turned the hammers

The river drove everything through four turbines and long line shafts. Then the Bradleys added steam: the key marks a Steam Engine house, and someone photographed its boiler on the road.

A stepped stone dam with water pouring over it and two men standing on the apron below. — “Dam at Bradley Ax Factory – early 1900's”, as written on the back.

A team of six to eight horses hauling a large steam boiler on a wagon along a dirt road past a barn, with men walking beside it. — “Boiler on way to Axe Factory – Bradley's, Weston”: six to eight horses for one boiler.

The factory row in snow beside the river, with a plank footbridge at the dam. — “Bradley Axe Factory and foot bridge across river for workers”, about 1900.

A hand-coloured salesman's sheet of edge tools: rows of machetes of graded lengths above axes, adzes, bill hooks and cane knives, around a round label reading C. W. Bradley's Superior Edge Tools, Westport, Conn. — “C. W. Bradley's Superior Edge Tools, Westport, Conn., U.S.A.”: a framed salesman's sheet. Select it to open full size. Weston History & Culture Center.

The catalogue

Machetes from Weston

The salesman's sheet shows what the works sold: machetes in a row of sizes from 21 to 30½ inches, axes, adzes, bill hooks, ring bush hooks, and brush and cane knives.

Machetes and cane knives were not for New England farms. Tools like these cleared brush and cut sugar cane, which suggests buyers far from Weston.

The sheet says C. W. Bradley, of Westport, the nearest shipping town; the 1891 plan says G. W. Bradley's Sons. The works also went by Bradley's Axe Works and the Bradley Edge Tool Company. Which was which is still being worked out.

1 May 1911

“Factory not rebuilt”

On 1 May 1911 the axe works burned. A photograph of the ruins shows a lone chimney, rubble, a boiler and a stack of grindstones. On its back someone wrote: “Axe factory after fire. Factory not rebuilt.”

Slide between the works in their working years and the morning after.