Upriver History: Somersville, the woolen mill that built a village

Somersville, the mill village on the Scantic River in Somers, started out as a crossroads around a saw- and gristmill, according to its 1995 National Register of Historic Places nomination. Woolen weaving arrived in 1835, but the early mill companies struggled, and one shut down entirely a few years after the Civil War.

The turnaround came in 1879, when Rockwell Keeney bought the mill and its water rights and founded the Somersville Manufacturing Company. Four generations of Keeneys ran it. By 1886 the company had 200 workers and a new three-story brick mill, and by the 1950s it employed 400, the nomination says.

The mill made heavy woolen cloth, supplied the military during both world wars and later added expensive coatings and suitings, such as cashmere. Its wool came from as far away as Australia and New Zealand, and camel's hair came from China and Arabia, the nomination says.

To attract workers, the company built scores of houses on its land. Of the workers' houses and boarding houses it put up between about 1885 and 1934, 29 still stood when the district was nominated. Many workers were immigrants, first from French-speaking Canada and the Maritime Provinces and later from Eastern Europe and Italy.

Rising labor costs and new environmental rules closed the mill for good in 1969, the nomination says. A Keeney descendant donated the company's records to UConn's Archives and Special Collections, which has a finding aid for researchers.