The Man Who Shaped Willimantic's Industrial History
Amongst those who have shaped Willimantic’s history, a history largely steeped in its reputation as a prominent textile hub, investor and mill-owner Austin Dunham stands out as an important figure. Dunham was born on November 10, 1805, in the town of Mansfield. His interest in industry started at a relatively early age. He was employed first in a local country store, and later found work in cotton production in nearby Coventry, where his interest in pursuing an industrial career began no later than the brink of adolescence. But it was not until the mid 1830’s that Dunham’s aspirations came to life, when following his 1834 move to Hartford he established his company: A. Dunham and Sons.
Prior to his ventures in Hartford, Dunham had experienced some significant changes in his life: marriage to Martha Root, and birth of six children, Sarah, Mary, George, Charles, Edward, and Austin Cornelius Dunham, who not only continued his father’s legacy, but found his own individual success as a pioneer of electricity. Austin Dunham had been involved in many business affairs during his forty-three-year stay in Hartford, for example in the firm Crosby, White & Dunham, which specialized in general merchandising, as well as in the Windsor and Windsor Locks mill industries, and in the Florence Mills in Rockville.
During this period Austin Dunham also solidified relationships with wool manufacturer E. N. Kellogg and Company, and a prominent Bridgeport sewing-machine company, Wheeler & Wilson. In addition, Dunham was vice-president of insurance company, Aetna, while serving as director of Phoenix National Bank and the United States Trust Company, which the 1877 Hartford Courant praised as an astounding accomplishment and proof of his versatility and dedication to maintaining leadership roles in both local and major corporations within the state and even on national levels.
Austin Dunham arrived in Willimantic in 1845, where he put his savvy business knowledge to the test in partnership with fellow Hartford investor Lawson Ives, and other innovative leaders William L. Jillson and John H. Capen, who together formed the Welles Manufacturing Company. Built on the site of the old Willimantic Richmond mill, Welles was responsible for the production of cotton within the city. This property was later bought out by Dunham by himself and revamped into yet another enterprise, the Dunham Manufacturing Company. While the 1858 acquisition of this company marked a prosperous time in Dunham’s public life, on a personal level, it was also the most tragic, as he lost another one of his beloved sons, George E. Dunham, in a fatal crew incident aboard Yale University’s boat, the “Volante” in late July of this very same year.