I Got Recognized on Mineral Spring Ave (And It Made My Day)

Before the Mills Made Cloth, They Made Chocolate: The Story of Chocolateville

By Filmmaker Dave

I talk about the Blackstone Valley constantly. Like, probably too much. The mills, the river, the history nobody else is covering — it's my whole thing. But I'll be real with you, I just fell down this rabbit hole and it stopped me in my tracks.

Central Falls had a chocolate mill.

Not a gift shop. Not a candy store. An actual water-powered chocolate mill running along the Blackstone River. And for more than a quarter century, the scent of roasting cocoa beans filled the air along that stretch of the river. The area was known by a few different names — "Chocolate Mills," "Chocolateville," the "Chocolate Mills Settlement" — and it showed up on local maps under those names until at least 1828.

Here's how it actually started. The land around what is now Central Falls had been in the hands of a prominent family named Jenckes — later spelled Jenks — since at least the mid-1600s. By the 1760s, there was already a trip hammer and blacksmith shop operating on the west bank of the Blackstone near this spot. In 1777, William Jenks of Wrentham, Massachusetts sold ten acres along the river to a man named Benjamin Cozzens, who then sold a parcel of it to Charles Keene in 1780.

Keene's first move was to hire a skilled local artisan named Sylvanus Brown to build a stone and earthen dam across the Blackstone, just upstream from what is now the Roosevelt Avenue Bridge. According to the historical markers still standing at the site today, that dam was the first instance of systematic hydro-engineering in the entire region. It created the conditions for everything that came after — not just the chocolate mill, but the industrialization of the whole Blackstone Valley.

Keene used the waterpower from that dam to run a mill building where he manufactured scythes and tools. Then he rented part of the structure to a confectioner named Wheat — a Boston guy who had already been making chocolate in Providence back in the 1770s. Wheat came in, installed the machinery, and brought the knowledge to run a chocolate operation. The mill was completed by 1782. Built by enslaved laborers.

So what were they actually making in there? During the Colonial and Federal eras, a chocolate mill processed cacao "nuts" — beans that New England merchants imported from the Caribbean, where they had been grown, fermented, and dried. The operation meant roasting the beans, winnowing them, and grinding the raw cacao into a chocolate paste. That paste, mixed with sugar and sometimes spices like nutmeg or cinnamon, got shaped into blocks or "cakes" — about the size of a bar of soap — and sold in shops. People would shave off what they needed with a knife or grater for cocoa, baking, or confections.

And there was a market for it. Chocolate wasn't just a luxury item. It was used medicinally throughout early America. Hot cocoa was administered to the sick and the injured. It was issued as a ration to soldiers and sailors — valued for its recuperative properties, given as a reward after especially hard duties. The chocolate made in Central Falls was being sold to outfitters supplying provisions for warships. This was an industry.

Meanwhile, Black workers at the mill ground cacao beans that had been harvested by enslaved people in the Caribbean. Other mills in Central Falls and in Providence hired workers to make chocolate they never got to taste.

By 1784, Keene sold part of his land to a man named Levi Hall, who converted a section of the building into tanning and leather goods. The chocolate production kept going for a while, but the story of ownership gets complicated fast. In 1796, the Jenks family — the same family that had owned the land for generations — bought the remainder of the Keene property from Charles Keene's widow. They bought Levi Hall's portion from his widow in 1806. By that same year, the Smithfield Manufacturing Company took over the water rights and outfitted the old chocolate mill building with machinery to manufacture cotton goods. Chocolate production apparently stopped at that location after that.

That's the Blackstone Valley. That's what I keep coming back here to document.

This is exactly the kind of story I started FilmmakerDave to tell. The history that doesn't make it onto the plaques. Well — in this case, it actually does make it onto a plaque, at the Chocolateville Overlook in Central Falls. Go find it. It's worth the trip.

More on this soon.

— Dave

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