In 1830 Samuel Bachelder came to Biddeford from Massachusetts and stood on a bluff overlooking the Saco River and its hurling falls. Bachelder envisioned a textile mill complex and by 1837 he had obtained a charter from the town and established the Saco Water Power Company to harness the energy from the Saco falls to power the mills. He named the mills Pepperell Manufacturing Company after an earlier entrepreneur Sir William Pepperell who had a sawmill in the 1790’s in the same area as Bachelder’s mills.
When Bachelder first arrived in Biddeford it was a small rural town. Pepperell Manufacturing Company would change all that. It would become the center of commerce along the Saco River and its falls. It would stimulate the population and the economy.
Before the mills were established, many textiles were made at home. After Americans separated from England, they had to become more self-sufficient. It prompted a need for more efficient production of cloth rather than the long tedious process of harvesting cotton or animal fibers such as wool, cleaning, carding, spinning and weaving or knitting to produce garments for daily life.
The concept of a textile mill in such a small village was foreign to Biddeford residents who were still harvesting fields and raising livestock. Bachelder’s vision, his entrepreneurial spirit and keen business drive would change landscape and life in Biddeford over the next century.
Under the influence of Boston developers like Bachelder, new projects began quickly. Between 1831 and 1850 the construction of factory buildings, tenements, offices and boarding houses continued unabated. Factory and construction work brought thousands of workers to Biddeford and Saco, transforming the twin cities into Maine’s premier
manufacturing center. The village that had been based on lumbering, farming, and fishing had been remade into a city of brick, machines and cotton cloth.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Biddeford was Maine’s fourth largest city and was considered the urban hub of York County. Electric railways provided transportation around town, electric lights illuminated the city streets and water and sewer systems were improved. Biddeford stayed connected to other cities like Portland and Boston with train service arriving through the downtown.
Its diverse ethnic groups spoke a variety of languages such as French, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Yiddish. Living alongside the millworkers were professionals : doctors, lawyers, judges, mill superintendents, artisans and crafters. Kerry O’Brien in her thesis Consuming Interests: Class,Ethnicity, and Consumption in Biddeford, Maine, 1890-1915 observed that “the city was a complex mosaic of ethnic and religious interests, a working class.”
Population increases led to a demand in commerce in Biddeford and Saco. Newspapers advertisements featured shops that offered the latest “New York Styles” and fancy goods such as watches and silverware.
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Youland's was a department store on Main Street in Biddeford. This ad is from 1909 in the Weekly Record. It catered mostly to women's fashions.
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