Production began at home in towns

I have been reading the first draft of a soon-to-be-published new “History of the town of Bennington.” While unique, as every town is, the history points out a number of similarities among all frontier towns, and 300 years ago, we were the “frontier.” Bennington is known now, as it has been for 200 years, for the manufacture of fine papers. Monadnock Paper Mills is considered the oldest continuous manufacturer of paper in the state, if not the region. But in the 1800s, a mill in Bennington was the only one in southern New Hampshire that produced gunpowder, and the Goodell Co. (which later moved to Antrim) made some of the finest knives and cutlery in the country.