The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Manchester (Connecticut)

MANCHESTER, a town of Hartford co., Connecticut, on the Hartford, Providence, and Fishkill railroad, 5 m. E. of Hartford; pop. in 1870, 4,223. It contains extensive manufactories of book, government, and bank-note paper, of woollens and ginghams, print works, a silk factory, several carriage factories, &c. A weekly newspaper is published. The paper mills are at North Manchester, 3 m. from which is South Manchester, which has grown up around the Cheney silk works, the most extensive in America. Dress silks and sewing silks are manufactured in immense quantities, by ingenious machinery, much of which was invented solely for use here. The cocoons are imported, and all the work of spinning, weaving, and dyeing is done here. The village was laid out by a landscape gardener; there are no fences, and pigs and poultry are prohibited. It is lighted with gas. There is a handsome public hall, with a library and reading room, and a free school to which the operatives are required to send their children.