At this location Jonas Spaulding and his brother Waldo started a mill in 1873 that made leatherboard (composed of leather scraps and wood pulp).
[1] Jonas Spaulding expanded further into leatherboard manufacturing, founding a second mill at Milton, New Hampshire, around 1893.
The senior Spaulding started construction of a third leatherboard mill at North Rochester, New Hampshire.
Operation of the leatherboard mill at Townsend Harbor ceased in 1957, after the last two surviving siblings, Huntley Spaulding and his married sister Marion S. Potter, died.
The two siblings had previously created a charitable trust that took over the Spaulding Fibre Company after their deaths and sold off all assets within 15 years.