Last updated: October 3, 2024
Place
Chocolateville Mill
Quick Facts
Amenities
4 listed
Bicycle - Repair, Cellular Signal, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Parking - Auto
From the 1780s to at least the 1820s, this site has been known as "Chocolate Mills," "Chocolateville," and the "Chocolate Mills Settlement." For more than a quarter century, the scent of roasting cocoa beans filled the air along this stretch of the Blackstone River.
Built by enslaved laborers, this water-powered mill was financed by Charles Keene and was completed by 1782. Keene rented part of the structure of a man named "Wheat," a confectioner from Boston, MA, who had manufactured chocolate in Providence, RI in the 1770s. Wheat installed the machinery and provided the skills necessary to produce chocolate.
Keene's mill buildling, which stood on a bend of the Blackstone near the intersection of Charles Street and Mill Street (now Roosevelt Avenue), thus became know as "the chocolate mill," and was referred to as such on local maps until at least 1828. A dam and millpond built in 1780 by Sylvanus Brown (who later helped construct Slater Mill) provided power to the mill machinery. In 1784, Charles Keene sold part of his land parcel to Levi Hall who converted a section of the chocolate factory building to tanning and the manufacture of leather goods.
Black workers at the mill ground cacao beans harvested by enslaved people in the Caribbean. Other mills in Central Falls and in Providence, RI, hired workers to make chocolate they never got to taste.
Built by enslaved laborers, this water-powered mill was financed by Charles Keene and was completed by 1782. Keene rented part of the structure of a man named "Wheat," a confectioner from Boston, MA, who had manufactured chocolate in Providence, RI in the 1770s. Wheat installed the machinery and provided the skills necessary to produce chocolate.
Keene's mill buildling, which stood on a bend of the Blackstone near the intersection of Charles Street and Mill Street (now Roosevelt Avenue), thus became know as "the chocolate mill," and was referred to as such on local maps until at least 1828. A dam and millpond built in 1780 by Sylvanus Brown (who later helped construct Slater Mill) provided power to the mill machinery. In 1784, Charles Keene sold part of his land parcel to Levi Hall who converted a section of the chocolate factory building to tanning and the manufacture of leather goods.
Black workers at the mill ground cacao beans harvested by enslaved people in the Caribbean. Other mills in Central Falls and in Providence, RI, hired workers to make chocolate they never got to taste.