Parsons Paper Company was founded
in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1853
by Joseph Clark Parsons.

Parsons Paper Mill #2
from 1920s Paper Sample Book

J.C Parsons was born in Northampton Massachusetts on February 6, 1814 and was educated at Northampton Academy. He began his business career at the age of fourteen working in the pharmaceuticals trade. At the age of twenty-five he and a partner attempted to farm mulberry trees in Agawam. After the failed attempt at tree farming he spent the next fifteen years learning the paper business and worked his way up to General Manager of the Ames Mills in Northampton and South Hadley Massachusetts and Suffield Connecticut. He married Lucretia S. Colton in 1836 and had one son and four daughters.

Portrait of Joseph C. Parson
by Sante Grazziani circa 1950

In 1850 a group of “Boston capitalists” arrived in Holyoke with plans to tap the power of the Connecticut River and create a three level canal system and Holyoke was on its way to becoming the first planned industrial city in the United States.

1855 Map of Holyoke

By 1852, J.C. Parsons was ready to start his own paper making company and attempted to purchase land along the canal. However, Hadley Falls Company officials rejected Parsons’ bid. It was their opinion that textiles would be more profitable than paper and they were skeptical of Parsons’ plan to build a factory made of brick. But Parsons prevailed and in 1853 he opened his first plant, “The Parsons Paper Company,” at the site of an old gristmill.

Within a decade Parsons had turned his company into the largest writing and envelope paper firm in the country.