The Cheney Silk Mills: America's Silk Capital, Nine Miles Away

Nine miles east of downtown Hartford, in the town of Manchester, six brothers named Cheney built what became the largest and most profitable silk manufacturing operation in the United States. The Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company began in eighteen thirty-eight as the Mount Nebo Silk Company and grew, over the following eighty years, into an enterprise that employed more than four thousand five hundred workers at its peak, more than a quarter of Manchester's entire population. The company's rise came partly through invention.

Frank Cheney patented what became known as the Rixford Roller, a friction-powered drive that wound raw silk into harder, double-twisted threads. This innovation, combined with the Cheney brothers' willingness to control the entire process from raw fiber to finished fabric, gave them a competitive advantage that lasted decades. By the nineteen twenties, Cheney Brothers was the only factory in the world that carried silk all the way from its raw state to a finished product, in-house.

The collapse came quickly. The Depression, the removal of protective tariffs, shifting fashion trends, and the rise of synthetic fabrics, nylon, rayon, later polyester, hollowed out the silk market in the nineteen thirties. By nineteen fifty-four, the Cheney heirs accepted a buyout from J.

P. Stevens and Company, a synthetic textile firm. The mill district in Manchester was designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen seventy-eight.

The brick buildings still stand, many converted to housing and studios. They are a monument to an industry that once made this valley the silk capital of North America, and to how quickly the materials of an era can be replaced by something cheaper.