Book Proposal - Young Adult:
Paper Mill Village, NH, 1835 ...

Attached is a photocopy of a ream label depicting the hand paper mill at Paper Mill Village, NH.     

Children represented fully 25% of the work force in most 19th Century paper mills. One of the towns of New Hamphshire grew up around the local paper mill, and this locale would appear ready-made for an action/adventure story about children's life in a New England paper town.

Inspiration for this project comes from no less an author than Hermann Melliville, who wrote a fictional tale about visiting with an early paper mill. A ready-made cast of characters exist within the annuals of the paper industry, and there are numerious accounts of children and their contributions to the industry.

Our fictional story will center around the introduction of the paper machine into a small New England village. Greed drives a neighboring mill owner to use children to steal the secrets of the machine.  . . .

-a

The Demise of Handmade Paper, 1832-1842

     Historians give only vague ideas of how and why the handmade paper industry in the U.S. ended as it did.  Remarkably, the topic of an 1840 letter sent to a papermaker in South Lee Mass. regarding the closing of a hand mill is viewed a stunning event. Only from previous letters does the researcher find that certain improvements to the paper machine at the owner's second paper mill led to the decision to close the older mill. Similar events were also happening to the industry at large.
     The dryer part of the paper machine is the focus of attention. The dryer is simply the equipment that takes the wet paper from the paper machine and drys it out. A typical dryer part of 1830 (above) consisted of a large steam-filled cylinder resting on two smaller satellites. This was a slow device, and made only semi-smooth paper that was normally only used for wrapping, book, or common news paper. Then around 1836 an improved dryer arrived from England, and with it the paper machine produced a stock with a smooth finish suitable for the finest of writing papers. This was the occassion of the loss of so many American hand mills over the next decade.

New blog under construction

Hi all. Have been logging on the web under ajvalente.com for several years, and have lots to upload here. Will be updating on a regular basis, please stay tuned.