Members of the Carpenter family entered various straw manufacturing ventures, building the Great Bonnet Shop at 18-22 Wall Street in 1843 and the Hamlet House at 12-16 Wall St. in 1845. Erastus P. Carpenter then proposed combining many small local operations into one large company, and in 1853 Union Straw Works was erected on this site. It became the world's largest straw manufacturing operation, employing more than 6,000 men and women in factories and in a vast cottage industry of sewing and braiding straw at home. Ownership later passed to Wm. T. Cook & Co. and the Bemis Hat Co., and the complex was destroyed by fire on May 28, 1900, and never rebuilt. The beginning of the straw hat industry in America is traced to Betsey Metcalf of Providence, R.I., who in 1798 copied an imported straw bonnet she saw in a store window. While attending Day's Academy in Wrentham, she shared her skills with friends, including many from Foxborough. Mary Clark and Ann Leonard were the first in the town to learn braiding, and they taught Eunice Everett, Sally Mann, Patty Carpenter, and her cousin Polly. Eunice was the first person in Foxborough to make a straw bonnet. The success of these young women in making straw products encouraged entrepreneurs to begin manufacturing, creating an industry that brought unprecedented prosperity and gave the community an identity as the straw hat capital of the world.