It was attention-grabbing studying Kelly Sullivan’s Nov. 30 piece in The Solar commemorating the Zerbarinis’ lovely granite carvings so admired in Westerly’s River Bend cemetery and elsewhere within the northeastern United States. All with roots in Westerly are conscious of and happy with the harvest from our native granite ledges and the contributions made by those that quarried and carved these architectural and delightful commemorative stones. It’s unlucky that Westerly’s exported granite is unbranded and solely traced to Westerly by aficionados and historians.
As one who first got here to Westerly greater than 60 years in the past to work on the Harris-Cottrell printing press facility I wish to level out the particular place of printing presses within the Westerly financial system and historical past from the mid-Nineteenth century till late within the twentieth century. Throughout these years the corporate, based in 1855 by C.B. Cottrell on Mechanic Avenue in Pawcatuck, shipped hundreds of printing presses all through North America and world wide, every one bearing the title of Westerly, Rhode Island. Lots of these presses are nonetheless in manufacturing and a few of us are nonetheless right here to recollect what the Cottrell group did for our households and our city. By means of a lot of that point the Cottrell firm (later named Harris) was the biggest native employer.
And but, not one of many hundreds of Cottrell-Harris presses was in-built Rhode Island. Again within the day Westerly was thought-about to incorporate the village on the Pawcatuck River’s proper financial institution, tightly related to Rhode Island’s Westerly by the Broad Avenue and Stillmanville bridges.
It appears honest to state that no Westerly export has achieved extra to unfold the Westerly title than these Mechanic Avenue printing presses, until maybe it was Seidner’s Mayonnaise jars.
Dick Holliday
Westerly