Ballardvale, Massachusetts

Ballardvale is a village within Andover, Massachusetts, named for the Ballard family, who ran mills on the falls of the Shawsheen River in the seventeen hundreds. In eighteen thirty-six, John and William Marland built a woolen mill on the site and established the Ballardvale Manufacturing Company, which produced the first wool worsted fabric made in America and the first wool flannel.

For roughly one hundred years, from about eighteen thirty-five to nineteen thirty-five, Ballardvale was a self-contained planned mill community: workers' housing, churches, a school, and a railroad station all clustered around the factory. Its white flannels won prizes at the Columbian Exposition. It was once called the Capital of Andover, a village that outlasted the industry that built it.