Talk:Orange, Massachusetts

Notable things to add to Article

This article is very much lacking at this point and needs to be fleshed out extensively. 1) Orange Airport - one of the oldest Airports in the US for jumping - all of the Police Cars in Orange have a parachute emblem on their sides to go with a current nickname of "Jumptown".

2) The Peace Statue - Peace Statue is a nationally known statue in Orange Memorial Park on South Main Street. It depicts a veteran soldier from World War I explaining to a child the futility of war. The 12-foot statue, sculted by Joseph Pollia of New York, was unveiled in 1934. It is dedicated to the residents of Orange who served in the war. A bronze plaque at the base reads: "It Shall Not Be Again." Quite a distinct statue as it is the rare one that does NOT depict war as glorious. The above text was lifted directly from their current town website: http://www.townoforange.org/about.html

3) Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District - http://www.rcmahar.org/

4) Local Industry - From 1780 to 1840, Orange was primarily a farming town. Many of the farms were large and well managed. However, various industries eventually sprouted along the banks of the Millers River, including the New Home Sewing Machine Company, which in 1892 produced 1,200,000 sewing machines. Minute Tapioca Company also operated through there once it was acquired by John Whitman: read about it in the General_Foods article. The entire Downtown is filled with old mills and factories and is built around the Miller's River running through the center.

5) Automobile Industry - By 1879, the town had a population of about 2,000 people, many employed in industry. Orange was also the site of the first automobile factory in the United States, at the current home of Pete's Tire Barn on East Main Street, built in 1900.

Quite a few more things to work into the article to get it up to where it should be, but all of these are starting points. Groat (talk) 16:19, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I understand that the mentioned automobile manufacturer, the Grout Brothers Automobile Co. (Grout Motor Co. fromm 1909 until1912) frequently claimed in their brochures to have built the first automobile factory in the U.S. in 1896. This is simply untrue as their building was erected, as mentioned above, in 1900. I don't know who, in fact, was first but several manufacturers were earlier than 1900 with such a plant, for example Oldsmobile in Lansing (1897) or Stanley (1898) Kimes, Beverly Rae (editor) and Clark, Henry Austin, jr., The Standard Catalogue of American Cars 1805-1942 , 2nd edition, Krause Publications (1989), ISBN 0-87341-111-0 --Chief tin cloud (talk) 13:31, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Now I found out: The first automobile factory in the USA was built by the Duryea brothers in 1897 in Springfield, Massachusetts, following the book "American Auto Factory (Automotive History and Personalities) - Hardcover (Nov. 14, 2002) by Barney Olsen and Joseph Cabadas". Probably, the error occurs because Grout mentioned having built the first automobile factory in their brochures - which is "blatantly untrue" following the "Catalogue of American Cars 1805-1942", 2nd edition, by authorities Beverly Rae Kimes (editor) and Henry Austin Clark, jr. (Krause Publications (1989), ISBN 0-87341-111-0).--Chief tin cloud (talk) 09:29, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

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