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Images of Davisville
What we now
know as Davisville, is really two separate villages. The earlier, Davis Mills,
existed as early as the first quarter of the 1700’s and, at its inception, was
centered around the grist and saw mills of Joshua Davis on the banks of the
Hunts River. Later, sons Joshua Jr. and Ezra Davis expanded to include a wool
carding and fulling mill on the site. Eventually, in 1811, the Davis family
operated a water-powered woolen loom here, one of the earliest in the region.
That early mill burned in 1847 and was immediately replaced with a larger
two-story wooden mill which operated until 1924. The second village, known as
Davisville began around 1870 at the intersections of Davisville and Old Baptist
Roads. Its heart and soul was busy train depot, and later in 1889 the Reynolds
Manufacturing Company’s steam-powered textile mill. Both the Davis Mills and
the Davisville textile mills have been demolished; the latter having been
severely damaged by fire. These combined villages boasted numerous stores and
shops and had their own schoolhouse and post office to complement the many homes
constructed to house the countless mill workers that labored here over the
decades.
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