Seth Bemis

When the elder Bemis died in 1790, his estate - including snuff and gristmills in Watertown, as well as a paper mill on the Newton side of the river - was divided among his three sons.

For the next few years he experimented with the production of chocolate (which manufacture eventually went to the Walter Baker & Company of Dorchester), and the grinding of grain, dye goods, and medicinal roots.

His textile fabrics, particularly his popular "Bemis warp", were consigned for some years to Isaac Bowers' dry goods store in Boston.

On February 28, 1806, Bemis petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for tax relief as follows: "The subscriber has at a very considerable expense lately erected a cotton mill in Watertown and wishes for some encouragement in his undertaking that may in part counterbalance the many inconveniences and losses which so frequently accompany enterprises which are but experiments.

For a time, the cotton duck business was so profitable that Bemis not only enlarged his mills at Watertown but contracted for the labor of convicts in the Charlestown State Prison, where he set up a large number of looms.

Soon after the dam was installed, his upstream neighbor, the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, complained that the river was backing up to its waterwheels and impeding their operation.