First Successful Silk Venture

First Successful Silk Venture

Lilly, Conant, Fisk, Atwood, and Storrs take over the failed Holland and Gilbert Mill at Gurleyville. Using machinery designed by Samuel Slater, the company begins the first successful silk venture in America, the Mansfield Silk Company, which operates for eleven years.

Thomas R. Beardsley, Willimantic Industry and Community: The Rise and Decline of a Connecticut Textile City (Willimantic, CT: Windham Textile & History Community, 1993), 63.

1828/1839

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