D.T. Dudley & Son Company was a manufacturer of shuttles for power looms and was located in Wilkinsonville, a part of Sutton, MA. The company traces its origins to 1825 and a series of individuals and partnerships under a variety of names until D.T. Dudley and his son, Henry T. Dudley, gained exclusive control in 1867 and renamed the company. Some of these earlier names included Jefferson Bellows; Ruggles & Fowler; Fowler, Pratt, and King; Sumner Pratt & Co.; Wilkinsonville Shuttle Company; Chase & Dudley; Chase & Wilder; and Wilder & Co.

David Tyler Dudley was born in Sutton in 1817, the son of David Dudley, a scythe manufacturer and descendant of early settlers of Sutton. By 1842 D.T. Dudley had become a partner in the Wilkinsonville Shuttle Company with Charles King, Leonard Woodbury, A.D. Chase, and Warren Wilder, all of whom had been in the employ of Sumner. Pratt & Co. Dudley left the business in 1855, apparently for health reasons and was in charge of the Wilkinsonville railroad station for about ten years until he returned to the business in 1867. At this time his son, Henry T. Dudley, born in 1841, joined his father in the business. It appears that Warren Wilder had become sole owner of Wilder & Co. (as it was then called) in the meantime. Wilder sold the business to the Dudleys, in 1867, father and son, becoming sole owners of what was re-named, D.T. Dudley & Son Company.

The decade of the 1870s was one of expansion for the company. The Blackstone River Valley was, at this time, an area with many cotton and woolen mills, along with companies manufacturing textile machinery. The Dudleys were able to capitalize on this location and to add new machinery for making shuttle irons (iron parts for shuttles). By the end of the 1870s the company had a market throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Mexico, and South America. The company employed machinists and other skilled workers who designed and built both shuttles for power looms and the machinery needed to do so.

In 1885, the company's plant was almost totally destroyed by fire, with loss of most of its buildings and much of its stock and tools. The Dudleys were able to find the capital to rebuild and the process was completed rapidly. By 1893, D.T. Dudley was no longer able to be active in the company, and several investors from Providence, Rhode Island, including Fred A. Chase, Fred L. Chase, and M. Eugene Gleason, became involved in the firm. In 1894 the company obtained a charter from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with Charles H. Norcross and Louis E. Chase, local Sutton men, becoming majority stockholders. Members of the Chase family had long been involved with the company and were important to its success. Daniel M. Chase, a machinist, and his son, Louis E. Chase, were instrumental in building and adapting the company's highly specialized machinery in order to make the shuttle-manufacturing process more profitable. Louis E. Chase and Daniel M. Chase, a third-generation family member, were its presidents during much of the 20th century.

The period from 1895 to 1930 saw the company's greatest prosperity. By the 1930s there were fewer textile manufacturers in the northern states and the company's business eroded. By the late 1950s most of Dudley's shuttles were ordered by another maker, Watson-Williams Manufacturing Co. in Millbury, Massachusetts. At the death of Daniel M. Chase, company president, in 1961, the company was sold to Howard Pellatt who had worked for Watson-Williams for many years. Pellatt formed a new corporation, Dudley Shuttles, Inc., which existed, much reduced in size and manpower, until 1984.

Pellatt was born in 1911 in Minneapolis. He studied textile design at the Rhode Island School of Design and business administration at the University of Rhode Island. He spent most of his career in the shuttle business, starting in 1932 at the Litchfield Shuttle Company in Southbridge, Massachusetts, and continuing from 1934 to 1955 at the New Bedford Shuttle Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. From 1955 until 1962 he was Northern Sales Manager for Watson-Williams Mfg. Co.

A card issued at the time of its formation lists Dudley Shuttles as making dogwood, persimmon, fibre and Duhide clad shuttles and specializing in Crompton & Knowles, Draper, carpet-maker and paper-maker felt shuttles. Howard S. Pellatt is given as both President and Treasurer. At the time of purchase there were only two people on the payroll, but Pellatt indicated when he was seeking a loan for the company that there was machinery enough in the plant to employ 30 to 40 people. His hope to increase the workforce to twenty or more was never realized. The company received few bulk orders; it made mostly specialty shuttles for carpet or felt looms. In the decade before the company closed in 1984, there was often only one worker in addition to Pellatt himself.

The collection also contains various records of the Watson-Williams Mfg. Co., makers of shuttles, heddle frames, heddles, hand cards, and stripper cards. These records are here presumably because of Howard Pellatt’s employment at Watson-Williams before he purchased D.T. Dudley & Son. Watson-Williams traces its history from the L.S. Watson Manufacturing Company which was founded in 1842 in Leicester, Massachusetts by Lory S. Watson. Several generations of the Watson family were involved in the company which manufactured wire heddles, heddle frames, shuttles and other mill supplies. The J.H. Williams Co. of Utica, NY, a shuttle and heddle manufacturer since 1830, moved operations to Millbury, MA in 1909 and merged shortly thereafter with the H.W. Hakes Manufacturing Company of Millbury, makers of wire heddle frames. The Watsons appear to have been involved in the ownership and management of both Hakes and the J.H. Williams Co. In June 1930, L.S. Watson Mfg. Co. of Leicester and the J.H. Williams Co. of Millbury combined as the Watson-Williams Manufacturing Co. The company moved to Pinebluff, North Carolina in 1960.

This collection also contains administrative and research material that documents a collaborative project of the Museum of American Textile History (now the American Textile History Museum), the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management, and the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission. In 1988 the three parties signed a joint agreement to inventory historic artifacts at Dudley Shuttles, Inc.

In undertaking this collaborative project, the Museum agreed to provide project management and supervisory and technical services which included supplying measured drawings and photographs of the factory, machinery and artifacts; videotapes of site interiors and former or current workers; oral histories; and reports describing the machinery and the development of the company. The Department of Environmental Management agreed to move and store selected artifacts from the site and prepare them for exhibit at the Visitor Center of the Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. The shuttle machinery had been given to the Department in 1988 by Marjorie Pellatt, wife of Howard Pellatt, who had owned and operated the company from 1961 until his death in 1983. The Corridor Commission agreed to provide consultation and coordination, incorporate the report into the Commission’s Cultural Heritage and Land Management Plan, and publicize the findings of the report.

The work was done by various consultants and resulted in a report of three-volumes entitled Dudley Shuttle Company. Vol. I includes an introduction by Laurence F. Gross, a history of the company, D.T. Dudley & Son Company, 1825-1984, by Paul Hudon, “Making Shuttles by Machine at Wilkinsonville, 1825-1984,” by Carolyn C. Cooper, and transcripts of interviews with Harold Swenson, Feb. 1989, Paul Hudon. Vol. II (Pts. 1&2) contain reproductions of images (both historical and on site) including machinery and shuttles, etc. The project also produced an oral history on audiotape with Harold Swenson, a long-time Dudley employee; a videotape; and many images of the interior to provide an on-site inventory. The machinery was removed and stored in Whitinsville, Massachusetts in preparation for its use in the exhibit.