District I – Center
In the Center School district the largest
concentration of buildings was around the Willington
green, most of which are still standing. Unlike the
other districts there was little industry in this
section. The early settlers chose the geographical
center of town to erect their meeting house which served
as both a church on Sundays and a place to carry on the
town’s business whenever the need arose. Thus
it was the political center and social center of town
affairs as well.
District II – Daleville
District
This region was initially called the Topliff district
after the first settler, Clement Topliff. His son,
Cyrus, built a saw, grist and cider mill and a brandy
still north of where the school was located. In
1825 a fulling machine and carder was established at the
same site as the saw and grist mill.
In 1840, Thomas Dale founded the Willington Silk Mill
here and from then on the area was called
Daleville. Many women earned money by raising and
selling silk worms, a process that required painstaking
care. When a blight struck the mulberry trees, on
which the worms fed, the silk industry came to a
halt.
In 1870, James Regan took over the Daleville mill and
manufactured Petersbaum overcoating there as well as
other woolen materials. Three years later James
Hoyle, a native of England, bought the business which
continued for over twenty years when it was sold to
Dennison Walker in 1900.
John Divorsky bought the property in 1907 and produced
buttons there for a short time. It continued under
the management of several different owners but finally
closed in 1942 because of shortages of materials during
World War II.
The old mill suffered an ignominious end when it was
used as a chicken coop and was later destroyed by
fire. There are a few remaining houses, all that is
left of a once thriving village.
District III – East
Willington or Willington Hollow
Once called “the city” this was one of the
most industrialized sections of town. Near a grist
and saw mill on the water privilege was a long one-story
shop, owned by John Heath, in which horn combs were
manufactured.
A buzz saw, invented by Daniel Hartshorn of Mansfield,
Connecticut in 1776, was first used for cutting the teeth
of these combs. Seven or eight workers were
employed to boil the hoofs and horns in oil and press
them into the required shape for combs.
Across the Fenton River from the saw and grist mill
was the farm of Hosea Vinton, and his blacksmith shop,
where he made a large part of the farming tools used in
that section.
By far the most important industry in this area was
the tanning and shoe business operated by Amos Preston
and his sons. The shoe business consisted largely
of producing cowhide brogans (untanned leather shoes) for
the southern slaves, which proved profitable until the
Civil War.
C. S. Amidon established a machine shop about 1918
which produced portable sawmills, claimed by some to be
the best in the country. Amidon also had a lumber
business which experienced its best years between 1910
and 1920. The principal consumers were the
railroads who bought switch timber and car timber, and
the box companies who purchased square-edged pine used in
making boxes. Other buyers were chair
manufacturers and the building trades.
A general store was established here as early as 1825
by Orrin Holt and John Heath to accommodate this
flourishing section of town.
District IV - Moose Meadow or
Rider District
One of the largest centers of commercial activity in
northeastern Connecticut during the middle of the 19th
century was a placed owned by Origin Dimock in the Rider
district. There was a large building where palm
leaf hats were braided by hand and pressed by
machine. A team from the store traversed the
country and the peddler with “Yankee Notions”
was a familiar sight. Furniture and matches were
made here and a wood yard employing water power supplied
stove wood to families living in the Glass Factory and
East Willington areas.
The intense industrialization of one section of this
district led to its designation as Tinkerville (or
Forestville). One of the state’s first woolen
mills was established in this section in the early part
of the century. The mill was destroyed by fire in
1847 and a silk business was established on the old mill
site. The numerous streams in the district were
also used to power a saw mill that produced plow beams
and a spool thread factory that employed twenty men and
women.
In addition, there was a small mine where iron ore was
obtained and made into pig iron and finally, a general
store, which in addition to the goods produced by the
local industries, purchased supplies for resale from
Hartford and Norwich. These supplies were brought
in by ox teams which performed a freight service both
ways, similar to that carried on by our contemporary
trucking lines. Liquor was one of the most
profitable items handled by the store.
The demise of the Forest Mill in Tinkerville in 1887
marked the end of industrial activity in the Rider
district.
District V – Potter School
District
The Potter School district was the only section of
Willington that did not provide employment in
manufacturing. There was a saw mill in the
southeast corner of the district which utilized water
power on the Fenton River but that apparently was the
only one in this section. The families who settled
here owned large farms which were not divided up until
recently thus limiting the development in this part of
town.
District VI – Roaring
Brook District
The old Boston Turnpike passed the Roaring Brook
schoolhouse, and from there took a nearly direct route
northeast toward Boston. Four-horse stages were
used on this route, two passing every day. At a
tavern near the Methodist meeting house, intoxicating
liquors were sold; and during the Revolution counterfeit
money was said to have been made here.
This may have been the place where Edward Kendall, a
British traveler, stopped in the summer of 1807 where he
was waited upon by “Minerva.”
Commenting on where he described as “rustic
orthography,” he cited a bill he received from an
innkeeper charging him for “Medson for your hors.”
From this and a poorly spelled advertisement he saw in a
local newspaper, he concluded that education in
Willington must be “general and humble.”
The tavern Kendall visited no longer exists and the Moose
Meadow meeting house was torn down in the early 1900’s.
In the northern part of this district Burnham
Lillibridge had a saw and grist mill. He invited
the side scraper which was used in repairing roads.
John Merrick, in his newspaper columns, refers to it as a
“crude affair compared with those in use on the streets of
Minneapolis (where Merrick lived at the time he wrote),
but the principle of the scraper is the same that was
first used on the roads in Willington.”
District VII - Village Hill
District
Rich farm land in this section of town attracted the
early settlers who bought large acreages on which they
depended for their livelihood. The earliest
settlers were Johnsons, Beals, Mains, Jennings, Fisks and
Moultons.
The principal industry, aside from farming, was what
was then known as the Eldridge Mills. Three
Eldridge brothers, Capt Elijah, Hezekiah and Eri,
utilized the water power of this rapidly flowing stream
for the operation of a grist mill and one of the town’s
six saw mills in 1800. They later added a shop
which produced wood-toothed hay rakes which were
well-known for their workmanship.
In the southern part of the district, residents
manufactured scythes, hoes and pitchforks. Many of
the farm implements were constructed from bog iron found
in the local swamps. Later in the century, the
Parker brothers ran a thread mill and a spool shop on the
site of the old Eldridge mill.
The first Baptist church in Willington was established
by Rev. David Lillibridge in 1778 and existed for 50
years.
District VIII - Glass Factory
District
An important industry in the days before the Civil War
was the Willington Glass Company which gave the name to
this district. The company was first organized in
1815 by Frederick Rose of Coventry, Roderick Rose,
Stephen Brigham Jr., Elisha Brigham, Spafford Brigham,
John Turner and Ebenezer Root, all from Mansfield, and
Abiel Johnson, Jr., the only Willington resident at the
time. John Turner later moved to Willington.
At its height the company employed a dozen
glassblowers who produced whiskey flasks, demijohns,
cathedral pickle jars, telephone insulators, ink wells,
rolling pins and medicine bottles.
The only other industry in this district was a saw and
shingle shop and a grist mill owned by Captain Robert
Sharp. When business at the mill was slow,
Captain Sharp built coffins in the shop connected to his
house. Albert Sharp, son of Robert, continued the
saw mill business which was later given up in order to
concentrate on the grain business.
The first button shop in town was opened by William
Masinda which he operated as a combined grist and button
mill in 1903. When the building burned a smaller
building was erected and the button business continued
until 1938.
In the 1930’s another button shop was erected by
William Parizek, close to the site of the original glass
factory, which still stands including all the belt-driven
machinery.
District IX - Thread Factory or
South Willington District
South Willington was, without dispute, the major
industrial sector of Willington for over one hundred
years because of the Gardiner Hall Jr. Co. which
manufactured thread here. When Gardiner Hall Jr.
founded the company in 1860, he employed six workers and
did his own bleaching. Before his death in 1915,
the company employed more than 150 workers and produced
26 million spools of thread annually.
To accommodate the increasing number of employees who
came from neighboring towns, a boarding house was
constructed so that workers could stay overnight and get
their meals there as well. About four years later,
in 1876, tenement houses were constructed and rented to
employees and their families.
As the company grew and expanded the Hall’s
recognized the needs of the growing community and built a
general store which also housed a post office. A
few years later the Clara Hall Elliott Baptist Church was
erected and in 1924 a new, modern school was constructed
in memory of Holman Hall, with a gymnasium and
auditorium
Even after the district schools were consolidated –
many of the villages still retained their identity such
as: Center, Daleville, East Willington, Moose
Meadow, Glass Factory and South Willington.