Connecticut Water Trails Program

History Of Connecticut's Water Trails

History of Mills In Connecticut

What Powered These Early Mills

Answer: The Water Wheel. The function of a water wheel is to power a machine to perform a task. Although we don’t think of it with today’s advanced computers and production systems, the water wheel was one of this country’s first labor-saving devices. The amount of power or energy generated by the wheel is measured and described in horsepower. A unit of horsepower is equivalent to 550 feet power per second. Water wheels of the 19th century could operate at ten to thirty horsepower but most functioned with between fifteen and twenty. Water wheels were made of wood. For best results they should be kept in constant use. If not, parts would dry and shrink, eventually becoming loose. Northern mill owners often would build wheels into mills—devising crude heating systems to keep it ice-free in winters. Buckets, into which the water was directed, would leak, diminishing the amount of power of the wheel. The wheel was certainly not indestructible under the best of conditions. Over a span of five to ten years, most parts of the wheel would need to be repaired or replaced.

The wheel was set in motion by water entering its buckets. The flow of water was the most crucial contribution of the entire process. To insure a constant flow, a dam was built as close to the mill site, and wheel, as possible. If the dam was any distance from the wheel, water had to be carried from the dam to the wheel via a canal or flume.

Efficiency of all wheels depended upon the head (the difference in level between water feeding the wheel and that leaving it.) A wheel performing at a site with a great head water would be quite large and use many buckets. For best results, water should leave the wheel quickly. Construction of tailraces were used for this purpose. Tailraces were made of oak, pine, or cypress as these woods would contribute most to a long existence.

Mills of the 19th century generally used three types of wheels. The overshot wheel was one that water entered from the top. Its diameter could be as great as sixty feet and its width could be three feet. Buckets were ten to fifteen inches in depth and the head for efficient operation was ten to forty fest. It operated at approximately 65% to 75% efficiency.

The breast wheel allowed water to enter at the side just above the shaft. It operated best with an eight to ten foot head and the efficiency level for the breast wheel was 50% to 60%. The undershot wheel was commonly found at medium-sized dams of five to eight feet. It functioned with a low head and the bottom of the wheel was always submerged in the stream. A gate was installed at the bottom of the dam to direct a constant flow at the wheel’s vanes. (The undershot had no buckets as there was no need to hold the water for any length of time). The vanes were placed eighteen to twenty-four inches apart. This wheel could operate when water in its reservoir was very low, but at best operated only at 40% efficiency.

Swift Waters: The Industrial Environment

Like the rest of New England, eastern Connecticut is a land of steep hills, abundant rainfall, and numerous rivers. It was from those rivers – the Willimantic River, Natchuag River, Quinebaug River, Fenton River, Little River, Moosup River, Hop River, French River, Yantic River, and Shetucket River – that the region drew the power that fueled its Industrial Revolution. Relatively small, but swift and powerful, foaming and swirling, the rivers tumble out of the flinty hills and join the larger Connecticut River and Thames River  on their journeys to the sea. In Windham, the Willimantic River drops more than 90 feet in less than a mile. The power was there for the taking.

Connecticut’s first, preindustrial mills appeared along these and other little rivers and millstreams. Small, family-run, and utilizing traditional technologies, preindustrial mills – also known as country mills – were relatively simple affairs. Constructed by colonial gristmillers, sawyers, tanners, and fullers, they met the needs of local, rural communities for flour, boards, leather, and fulled cloth. Their millhouses, constructed mostly of timber, were only one or two stories. Their simple stone-and-earth dams diverted water from rivers and millstreams into small, narrow, ditch-like raceways, which carried it to turn the creaking waterwheels that powered the mills. Their profits were modest. They created only a few jobs. And their impact on the environment was limited. Nevertheless, they featured most of the technologies – although in smaller form – that would later drive the big industrial mills.

In the nineteenth century, newer, larger, and more technologically sophisticated mills suddenly sprang up along the rivers. Beginning in the 1790s with Samuel Slater’s large, new textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the Industrial Revolution came to America. Soon, similar mills opened in eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, southwestern Maine, and eastern Connecticut. These new, industrial mills were much more massive than the old gristmills, sawmills, fulling mills, and tanneries of preindustrial times. They had broader, sturdier dams; wider stone-lined raceways that resembled wide canals more than narrow ditches; and gigantic, powerful, fast-moving waterwheels. Their buildings were usually made of stone or brick rather than wood, and rose as high as four or more stories. Rather than just one or two workers, each of the new mills employed dozens – often hundreds – of men, women, and children. By the end of the century, more than 100 textile mills operated in eastern Connecticut, churning out vast quantities of cotton, wool, linen, and silk thread each year. Connecticut – and America – had entered a new era: the Industrial Age!

The mills were located in New England because the waterpower and ready capital were in New England. The cotton, of course, was grown in the South and shipped north by ship and -- later -- railroad

The new mills required faster, more efficient means of transportation. At first, old-fashioned sailing ships brought in raw cotton from the South to seaports like Norwich in Connecticut, and Providence in Rhode Island. Horse-drawn wagons carried it inland to the mills. But transportation by road was expensive, so in the 1840s, the railroad came to Connecticut, and industrialization took off. Coal-fueled steam trains now chugged across the countryside, bringing in raw cotton and wood and carting out finished thread and cloth.

Cities grew up around the mills. In eastern Connecticut the new textile mill cities included Willimantic, Manchester, Baltic, Danielson, Taftville, Jewett City, Putnam, Stafford Springs, South Coventry, Yantic, Moosup, Thompson, and Plainfield. The population surged. Disease, crowding, floods, fires, crime, and other urban problems increased. But at the same time urban services like schools, theaters, post offices, clubs, and newspapers became more widely available. Connecticut moved into the modern age.

By the 1880s, a new industrial ecosystem had emerged in eastern Connecticut. At its center were the rivers, dams, raceways, railroads, and mill buildings of the Industrial Revolution. The dams blocked fish from migrating upstream. The mills dumped industrial dyes directly into the rivers. When the rivers suffered from summertime droughts, the owners responded by erecting massive water-storage dams upstream, creating most of Connecticut’s lakes and ponds. When the mills grew too large and numerous to be powered by the rivers alone, the owners installed coal-fueled steam boilers that joined the railroads in filling the air with smoke. Railroads radiated out from the mills like spokes, linking to booming seaports like Norwich and Providence. As workers flocked to the new jobs, villages and cities sprang up around the mills. Nearby forests were converted to farmland, to feed the villagers and their draft horses, mules, and oxen. Wild plants and animals disappeared. People; crops, weeds, and other domestic plants; and pests and livestock became more numerous.

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