Benjamin Cutter, William R. Cutter, History of the town of Arlington, Massachusetts, ormerly the second precinct in Cambridge, or District of Menotomy, afterward the town of West Cambridge. 1635-1879 with a genealogical register of the inhabitants of the precinct.

1 In 1806 Abner Stearns of Billerica bought a lot of land of Ephraim Cook, which in 1808 he sold to John Tufts, with a woolen factory and machinery thereon. Mr. Stearns then bought another lot, about one-third of a mile above his original purchase, and by digging a canal half a mile long, created a good water power, and established a thrifty business in carding wool. He soon added a grist mill, afterward altered into one for grinding and bolting yellow ochre for paints, and a machine for chipping dye woods. In 1811 he erected a large building in the rear of his dwelling-house, and directly over the brook, where he had a machine shop, and made several hundred machines for splitting leather, believed to be the first ever used for this purpose; also agricultural implements. He had previously invented a machine for dyeing silk, since in general use for that purpose. In the same building he had a fulling mill, and a spinning jenny of seventy-two spindles. The yarn spun was taken elsewhere, and made into broadcloth. The peace of 1815, however, broke up this business, owing to excessive importation of British cloths. In 1816 Mr. Stearns removed from West Cambridge to his old homestead in Billerica, where he died in 1838. He was an ingenious mechanic, and an upright, excellent, enterprising citizen. In 1832 he sold to James Schouler, of Lynn, Mass., a calico printer, his place in West Cambridge, with the dwelling-house, factory, mill privilege, &c. They were destroyed by fire in 1873 or ‘74.—J. B. R.