Thompsonville Book One 1763-1900

Move aside, Bedford Falls, New York; you've been replaced by a snowy winter's day in sleepy Thompsonville, Connecticut, a small town steeped in history.

A village built around the successes of businessman Orin Thompson, who drew skilled weavers from Scotland to work at his 'White Mill', and later attracted immigrant workers from France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Poland, England, and Canada, looking forward to the promise of a better life at the larger, more expansive mill downstream.

These immigrants not only brought their families and their friends, but their customs, beliefs, prejudices, desires, vices, culture, and cuisine.

Thompsonville was the Cuisinart of ethnicities, where people who shared common backgrounds worked at the same factory, shopped at the same markets, went to the same bars, sent their kids to neighborhood public or parochial schools, and attended the same churches.

These were good people, people built for a black-and-white world. People who cared for each other, celebrated and grieved together, watched each other's backs, and collectively raised each other's children.

This is the story of the village's birth and its eventual demise.