Welcome to Thursday Doors! This is a weekly challenge for people who love doors and architecture to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos, drawings, or other images or stories from around the world. If you’d like to join us, simply create your own Thursday Doors post each (or any) week and then share a link to your post in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). If you like, you can add our badge to your post.
I have a lot of ground to cover today. I have the group of doors I promised over a month ago, and the research I promised to work through has revealed some interesting results. Speaking of results, we have a new badge.
Before we move to the new badge, I want to thank Teagan R. Geneviene for providing the badge we proudly displayed during 2022. Standing next to Teagan’s badge is the entry from Teresa from her “My Camera & I” blog. The contest was a tight race, and I want to thank all the contestants for their effort. Please join me in congratulating Teresa, and thanking Teagan. If you open the gallery, you will be able to right-click on the image and save it to your computer. This will be displayed on the Sunday recap as well.
For almost 40 years, I have periodically driven by what I assumed is an old mill building. I’ve often wondered what the story was, but I was never able to find much information about the building. That’s because I was looking in the wrong town.
Note: Connecticut is the third smallest state in the U.S., but it is one of the oldest. Connecticut was the 5th state. In the late 18th century, cities and towns were often defined by how far you could travel. As a result, despite our small size, Connecticut has 169 towns. The mill I’ve long admired is on a road that runs from the town I live in, through a town called East Granby. However, the mill is in Tariffville, CT. According to NoFacilities’ research department, a.k.a. Wikipedia, “Tariffville is a neighborhood and census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Simsbury in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States.”
Once I looked in Simsbury, I discovered the Tariffville Historic District listed in our National Registry of Historic Places. The information below about the mill building, as well as some of the photos in the gallery, are from this resource. I hope to explore this district further, so there may be other posts from here in the future.
Tariffville owed its inception to the availability of waterpower in the Farmington River gorge on its eastern boundary. The waterpower had long been used for gristmills, sawmills, and fulling mills whose purpose was to service the agricultural economy, but it was the United States Tariff Act of 1824 which stimulated the founding of a truly industrial enterprise, appropriately named the Tariff Manufacturing Company. A multistory stone mill was constructed in 1825 for the manufacture of woolen cloth and carpets, using immigrant labor for the skilled jobs. Scottish weavers, for example, were important to the operation, bringing with them the establishment of a Scottish Presbyterian Church.
National Registry of Historic Buildings
By 1840 the population of Tariffville had grown to 200 residents. In that year, Orrin Thompson, who soon after 1825 had established a carpet mill nearby in the Thompsonville section of Enfield, came into control of the Tariffville operation as well. Rapid growth ensued. By 1852 the population was 2,000. The community became a center for trade as well as a mill village. The street pattern took form and, in 1850, the Canal Line Railroad came to the village.
Then, in 1852, a calamity occurred. Orrin Thompson went bankrupt, partly because of over-expansion at Tariffville. The population plummeted to 600, the Scottish Presbyterian Church closed its doors, and hard times were rife. Thompson reopened the manufacturing plant in 1859, on a smaller scale, but it continued only to 1867 when fire destroyed the mill.
Land records in connection with the changes in ownerships, e.g., bankruptcies, in these times are highly informative, giving a complete inventory of the machinery and other contents of the mill, and indicating the out-of-town owners’ identities. For example, George Beach of Hartford was president of Tariff Manufacturing Company when it conveyed its property to Brown Brothers & Company of New York City in 1856, as recorded in Simsbury Land Records, volume 39, page 61, to satisfy a debt of $375,000.
Connecticut Screw Company, which bought the property in 1867, constructed the replacement mill now standing. The enterprise and others that followed were never a great success. The mill passed from owner to owner. Hartford Silk Company, Hartford Carpet Company, and Hartford Cutlery Company were among the succession of textile and hardware firms that owned the mill.
I don’t want to burden my followers with a second post , but I do want to join in Linda G. Hill’s JusJoJan challenge. Today, Lauren, of “Welcome To LSS Attitude of Gratitude” gives us the prompt word, ‘Cancer.” I struggle with this word. I thought about working cancer in as a metaphor for how fire destroyed the original mill and ruined the lives and dreams of so many people. But more than that, I simply want to wish Lauren all the best as she battles cancer. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.
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All five of my current books are now available in audio book form thanks to Amazon KDP’s Virtual Voice process. The voice is AI generated, but I can honestly say, it’s pretty darn good. The audio books are reasonably priced (all below $7 US) and, if you already own the Kindle version and want to add an audio version, you can do that for $1.99. There is a five-minute sample on the book page for each book. If you’re interested, click on any of the Dreamer’s Alliance book links below the image or on the link below for my latest book.
No Facilities 
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