5-Industry Arrives

Hannah and Eli Robbins

The Robbins Family launched many of the new businesses that turned East Lexington into an industrial center.

By the early nineteenth century East Lexington or East Village became prosperous as the center of industry in Lexington. The railroad stopped in East Lexington, where bustling enterprises included blacksmiths, harness and carriage shops, grocery stores, a post office, a barbershop, schools, peat sellers, fur dressing factories, tanneries, a spice importing business, rubber coat manufacturing, grist mills and sawmills, taverns, and hotels. A number of factories brought workers to live along Main Street east of Maple Street.[1]

[1] https://www.lexingtonma.gov/historical-commission/comprehensive-cultural-resources-survey/pages/early-industrial-period-1830