The Mill Museum is located in the old industrial east end of Willimantic, CT, a former borough in the even older colonial town of Windham. Both Willimantic and Windham are steeped in history.

For centuries, Algonquian-speaking peoples fished at the falls and rapids on the Willimantic, Shetucket, and Natchaug rivers. “Willimantic” derives from an Algonquian phrase meaning “swift waters,” “lookout,” or “cedar marsh.” “Shetucket” and Natchaug” translate as “uplands between the rivers.”

In the summer of 1689 the elderly Englishman Jonathan Cates and enslaved African Jo made their way through the thick woods of eastern Connecticut to what is now Windham. The expanse of forest was then called Joshua’s Tract, a sprawling territory named for the Mohegan sachem Attawanhood (Joshua in English) and from which would be carved the Puritan towns of Windham, Mansfield, Hampton, Chaplin, and Scotland. Cates was a mysterious figure – an Englishman with a secret past and a collection of gold and silver. He may have been a refugee from England’s religious wars, or he may have been a buccaneer. The other, Jo – later called Joe Ginne in local lore – was an African, enslaved by Cates. The two men squatted for two years. Jo built a shelter and kept them alive hunting and foraging.

Two years later, more English people arrived – Puritan families who had purchased farm lots from the wealthy “legatees,” well-connected Anglo-Connecticans who had swindled Attawanhood out of Joshua’s Tract, and who were now selling off pieces of it for profit. Cates dug into his treasure and bought a farm lot of his own. The newcomers mostly settled around him in what is now the village of Windham Center, then called “Hither Place.” The Mohegans, who had several settlements in the area, left. In 1691 the newcomers called a town meeting, and in 1692 the colonial assembly chartered Joshua’s Tract as the new Town of Windham, named for a parish in England.

Important changes came in quick succession over the next seventy-five years. Much of the forest was cleared for farmland – gardens, crop fields, and pasture. Marshes became haymows. The remaining woodland was thinned for firewood and building material. A road was laid out to Norwich. Other villages emerged as clusters around several fords, rapids, and grist- and sawmills: Ponde Place (Mansfield), Canada Parrish (Hampton), Scotland, the Crotch, and Willimantic Falls. Waterpower abounded, as the Natchaug and Willimantic Rivers met to form the Shetucket. Puritan fervor abated, and Puritanism metamorphosed into a quieter Congregationalism. Most of the inhabitants were of English descent, but there also continued to be enslaved African Americans. A solid agricultural economy emerged, based on maize, milch cows, neat cattle, sheep, flax, and vegetable gardens. The more distant villages hived off to form their own towns.

Windham became the county seat of Windham County, and Windham Center a prosperous village with taverns, shops, law offices, a courthouse, and a jail. Windham would be a center of revolutionary activity in the 1760s and 1770s, with patriots far outnumbering loyalists. Men protested on the village green, joined the Continental Army, and even sat in Congress. Women organized spinning bees and spun homespun thread and yarn.

Independence brought profound economic change to the area. The Market Revolution that followed the American Revolution transformed Windham Center from a crossroads hamlet into a thriving country town. Free of imperial restrictions, local farm produce – maize, beef, pork, raw wool, and textiles woven by women on preindustrial barn looms – were marketed downriver to Norwich and New London ports, and from there into a burgeoning global economy.

But even greater would be the changes sparked by the Industrial Revolution, which reached Windham in the 1820s. The falls on the Willimantic and Natchaug rivers had energy enough to turn large waterwheels and power modern factories. Especially along a mile of the Willimantic River, large stone textile mills sprang up, powered by water. New industrial villages coalesced around the mills. By 1840 these villages had merged to form a small city, Willimantic, in the northwest corner of Windham.

First turnpikes, then railroads, linked fast-growing Windham to Norwich, Providence, Hartford, and beyond. There were now two Windhams – the rural, agricultural portion surrounding Windham Center, and the noisy, busy, crowded factory city of Willimantic. In 1833, Willimantic became a separate borough, with its own government. In 1893 it became a city. Borough and city status permitted residents to tax themselves to address modern urban issues and problems, creating professional fire and police departments and public libraries. Meanwhile, Windham Center declined. The county seat was moved to Brooklyn. Shops and stores closed, often moving to the bustling borough of Willimantic, which acquired the new nickname of Thread City.

Willimantic’s thrumming thread mills created thousands of jobs. Migrants flocked to the Thread City, seeking opportunity, employment, good educations, religious pluralism, and democratic government. Old-time Yankees often viewed the newcomers warily. The spoke languages other than English, and sometimes even spelled words with different alphabets. They attended different churches. They had different customs. Some of the Yankees began darkly to refer to the east end of Willimantic where the Museum is now located as “Sodom.”

The “new immigrants” (as opposed to the earlier English and African arrivals) came from more than thirty countries, but most prominent among them were Ireland, Quebec, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and – after 1955 – Puerto Rico. Many of the newcomers were Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, or Jewish. They spoke French, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Arabic, German, Italian, and many other languages. In the late 1890s, Willimantic’s working class engineered a local political revolution, winning the mayorship and City Council, while government for the Town of Windham remained under the control of the older Yankees. The new city government expanded police and fire services and installed public water and sewers. The City of Willimantic boasted grand railroad hotels, an opera house, theaters, department stores, banks, a high school, and a small college that eventually became Eastern Connecticut State University. By the end of the 1890s, a fine combination town hall, city hall, and county courthouse graced main street. A few years later, at the beginning of the 20^th century, a modern post office opened across the street. While factory workers lived in crowded tenements near the mills, prosperous mill owners and managers built grand Victorian mansions on Prospect Hill.

But, alas, the new century – the 20^th century – brought gradual decline. Throughout Connecticut, agriculture declined after 1850, and making a living in the rural parts of Windham became harder and harder. Alarmed at the decline of Windham Center as a farm market center, residents replaced the departed economic central-place functions with social central-place functions, expanding the churches and converting a former bank into a public library.

In Willimantic, economic change was less apparent at first. No one noticed that when steam power replaced waterpower, and then electricity replaced steam, the American textile industry slowly began to pull up stakes and move to the Piedmont South, where labor was cheaper. Indeed, Willimantic had been a leader in these technological changes, boasting the first factory in the world to be lit with electric lights! But the middle decades of the 1900s saw many of the smaller factories close. And in 1985, Willimantic’s signature industry, the American Thread Company, closed. Thread was no longer made in Thread City. An era ended.

Since 1985, Windham has worked to recreate itself. No longer an industrial center, it has sought to forge a new identity as a postindustrial place with an economy centered on arts, culture, education, and tourism. Eastern Connecticut State University is now the Town’s largest employer. Willimantic has surrendered its former status as a city, and the local governments have consolidated. Windham enters the 21^st century as a college town, with an uncertain but hopeful future.    

But Windham and Willimantic’s rich history deserves to be celebrated. Every great town has a local history museum. Windham and Willimantic have six: the Mill Museum, the Jillson House Museum just up Main Street, the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum on Bridge Street, the Akus Art Gallery on the ECSU campus, the America Museum on Crescent Street, and Windham Preservation, Inc. in Windham Center. Windham Center and Prospect Hill are historic districts, the former noted for its colonial and federal era homes and the latter for its many ornate Victorian mansions and cottages. The links below will connect you to these and other historical and cultural attractions. Willimantic also boasts a large number of family-owned restaurants; ask our staff for recommendations! We are happy to direct you to Windham and Willimantic’s several private art galleries and other fine shops, stores, and parks.

• Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum
• Jillson House Museum
• Akus Art Gallery
• America Museum
• Windham Preservation, Inc.
• Prospect Hill: This House Can Talk
• Murals of a Mill Town
• Willimantic Whitewater Park