The Laconia Company, founded by Samuel Batchelder in 1841, was the first mill in Biddeford, and cloth production began there in 1845. Some twelve million bricks were used in its construction. A large machine shop and foundry were built to produce machinery for the mills. The building of dams and the digging of power canals through solid rock provided hundreds of jobs and brought tremendous growth. Cotton mill employees were mostly local farm girls who lived in the company's boardinghouses, and four rows of such housing were built for the Laconia. Cloth was inspected in the cloth halls.