From Humble Beginnings

For someone unfamiliar with the city of Willimantic, rounding the eastern corner of lower Main Street could take one’s breath away. Within an instant, one is transported back in time, to the early days of unbridled manufacture and magnates of American industry. Standing strong and proud, gripping the banks of the mighty Willimantic River, are three imposing granite mills, and one concrete warehouse, all remnants of one of Willimantic’s most iconic, and successful, manufacturers of spool thread. The parcel stands as a silent witness, the site of centuries of individual stories, both great and crushing. From humble beginnings as a small series of wooden and granite buildings, originally known as Jillson’s Cotton Mill, to one of the largest international producers of cotton thread America has ever seen, The Willimantic Linen Company revolutionized Connecticut’s textile industry.

The Willimantic Linen Company did not rise on its own merit - that is to say, the company built upon the success, and infrastructure, of multiple smaller, older ventures. In fact, it was the coming together of Willimantic’s oldest cotton industries, combined with the knowledge and success of a Willington firm, that led to its meteoric rise.

Lawson Ives and Austin Dunham were Connecticut natives born in the early years of the nineteenth century. The two became involved in Willimantic’s growing textile industry in 1845, when they partnered with established textile manufacturers William L. Jillson, and John H. Capen. The four constructed the Welles Manufacturing Company, an attractive three-story cotton mill complete with accompanying row houses, situated where Recreation Park is today.

Finding great success in this new venture, Ives and Dunham agreed to enter a new industry in Willimantic – the manufacture of linen goods – textiles made from flax. The two founded the Willimantic Linen Company on February 18th of 1854, with a healthy investment of seventy-five thousand dollars. This new enterprise, located on the corner of Main and Jackson Streets, occupied three mills formerly belonging to Asa and Seth Jillson, early pioneers of the Willimantic cotton industry. Two of the buildings were rented for the manufacture of cotton, and the third was outfitted by Ives and Dunham for the manufacture of linen toweling, yarn, cloth, shoe thread, twine and fishing line. By August of 1855, the linen company produced between four and five hundred dollars of product per day on forty thousand dollars of new spinning, weaving, bleaching and finishing machinery - largely imported from England.