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    Naugatuck Valley Textile Industry
    Naugatuck Valley Textile Industry
    Naugatuck Valley Textile Industry
    Ebook170 pages1 hour

    Naugatuck Valley Textile Industry

    By Mary Ruth Shields

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    T he textile industry found its roots in Connecticut along the banks of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Rivers between Waterbury and Bridgeport. From the early 1800s, when David Humphries, former aide-de-camp to Gen. George Washington, brought the woolen industry to America, to the 1950s, when the vast Sidney Blumenthal Mills moved to the South, the textile industry shaped life in the Naugatuck Valley. The industry witnessed labor actions, inspired cultural expression, and experienced the growth of shipping by road, water, and rail. Workers produced felted wool, cotton, and silk fabrics, velvet, fake fur, wool hosiery, buttons, ribbons, and various other goods, laying the foundation for the prosperity enjoyed by the valley today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJan 10, 2011
    ISBN9781439638897
    Naugatuck Valley Textile Industry
    Author

    Mary Ruth Shields

    Author Mary Ruth Shields has previously written Industry Clothing Construction Methods and numerous articles related to the textiles industry. The historical societies and citizens of the valley towns of Ansonia, Beacon Falls, Derby, Naugatuck, Oxford, Seymour, and Shelton also contributed generously to this book.

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      Book preview

      Naugatuck Valley Textile Industry - Mary Ruth Shields

      Library.

      INTRODUCTION

      The story of the textile industry in the Lower Naugatuck Valley is a story of Yankee ingenuity at its finest. The creative spark that inventors and investors share formed the foundation upon which factories flourished and railroads were built. This inspiration drew immigrants to work in the mills and bring their arts and culture to the cities they populated.

      The Lower Naugatuck Valley is the term generally used to define the area immediately south of Waterbury and north of Stratford and Bridgeport within the state of Connecticut. The towns congregate in the valleys along the Naugatuck and Housatonic Rivers. Both rivers also have numerous tributaries, large and small. The towns also included in the area are, from north to south, Beacon Falls, Naugatuck, Oxford, Seymour, Ansonia, Derby, and Shelton. The towns were remarkably situated in an area that was rural but close enough to the population center of New York City to attract attention from investors and industrialists.

      In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Lower Naugatuck Valley was primarily an agricultural area populated by small farmers or, as some have called them, the true Yankees. The mills brought in immigrants from Western Europe including Germans, Poles, English, Irish, Russians, Hungarians, Austrians, and Lithuanians, as well as Canadian farming folk and a few foreigners from China hoping to find better paying work. This book contains many portraits of these immigrants, appearing stiff and posed. It should be remembered that these were real people with families who labored, worshipped, and enjoyed the fruits of their labors on the same streets, in some of the same houses, the same churches and temples, and in the same parks we use today. They were buried in the same cemeteries where many former valley residents are buried. Many of the mill workers profiled in this book are the ancestors of current valley residents.

      There are many industries in the valley that existed concurrently with the textile industry. These include metalwork in iron and copper, the production of pianos, publishing, and even candy making. The textile industry inhabits a unique place because it sprung up to varying degrees in all the major towns of the valley. Beginning with the simple process of fulling home-woven wool fabrics, extending to the design and manufacturing of sophisticated synthetic fabrics, the textile industry here was a microcosm of what went on in many communities that fostered the foundation and growth of industry in the United States. Entrepreneurs and investors recognized needs such as the farmers’ need to soften their handwoven fabrics, or a woman’s need for corsets to be fashionable, and then set out to design the machinery and build the mills to make those goods or perform those services. If fate smiled upon the product and those who produce it, and if the mill was able to manufacture new commodities, then the business could grow as a major manufacturer and have a tremendous, long-lasting effect on the surrounding communities. According to the Evening Sentinel newspaper of April 18, 1967, over the proceeding 50 years, almost 90 factories grew up in Shelton alone. Inventions that valley residents created include straight pins, safety pins, Naugahyde, the vulcanization of rubber, and the concept of the mill village.

      Valley industrialists took advantage of the power of streams and rivers, the open space within city limits to build factories, a ready workforce in farming families, and the ports of New Haven and Bridgeport. The transportation infrastructure of ships and barges on the river, along with the railways, was extremely important for the transportation of raw materials, workers, customers, and finished products in and out of the area. The close proximity to corporate buying offices and large groups of immigrants in New York City was also considered a huge plus.

      There are many companies that were not included in this book, either because they sprang up then disappeared very quickly or there was simply not enough information, written or photographic. Many of these companies began and closed in buildings that, at some point, had been or eventually became other businesses, using the same machinery left over from textile manufacturing to produce unrelated products. The businesses that will not be mentioned further in the book were, in no particular order, the Unity Shirt and Blouse Company; the Union Fabric Company; Specialty Weaving Company; Still Water Worsted Company; the Home Woolen Mill, the United Shirt Company; the Derby Sportswear Company; the American Fabric Company; the Brown and Hubble Corset Company; the Coe Tannery, Bronson’s Button Shop; and the Home Woolen Mill in Beacon Falls, which manufactured garments, including shawls, for Union soldiers until the 1880s.

      One of the other companies not included is the Ansonia Dress Company. No photographs could be found of this business, but it deserves to be acknowledged since occurrences at the factory were representative of labor and workers’ rights issues that pervaded the textile industry in the valley and New England during that time. The company was located above a theater at the corner of Main and Tremont Streets in downtown Ansonia. In later accounts of the story, it was described as a sweatshop. On December 15, 1932, the company unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy and the owner declared that the business was closing. Later that month, the largely female workforce of the factory held a meeting and protest. The employees were not receiving pay, and the owner could not be found. By March 1933, another dress company had moved into the old Ansonia Dress Company’s space. Other labor actions involving the Paugasset Mill and the Sidney Blumenthal Company are described in the captions further along in this book.

      Unfortunately the story of the fashion designer

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