New York Mills: The Village the Looms Built

Just south of the Mohawk River in Oneida County, New York Mills grew up around a single textile mill established in eighteen oh eight. Benjamin Walcott founded the first mill, and the textile works gave the village its name, New York Mills. By the mid-eighteen hundreds the village ranked among the foremost producers of quality fabrics in the country.

A wave of Polish immigrants arrived in the late eighteen hundreds to work the looms, and in nineteen twelve and nineteen sixteen their union led strikes that were considered among the most successful in the nation at that time. The mills finally closed in the nineteen fifties, leaving behind a tightly knit community whose Polish heritage remains woven into its identity. The village incorporated in nineteen twenty-two.