Union Pond, Manchester, Connecticut
As the sun sinks low on the horizon during a balmy October evening, Union Pond grows hushed and geese drift about upon scintillant reflections.
In his 1830 book, Connecticut Historical Collections, author J. W. Barber said of Manchester that the “first cotton mill … successfully put in operation in Connecticut, was erected within the present limits of this town in 1794, and owned by Messrs. Samuel Pitkin & Co.” By the 1860s, the millworks had been renamed the Union Manufacturing Company and the operation of its machinery demanded an ever greater volume of waterpower. That meant damming the Hockanum River in 1866, creating a millpond that we know today as Union Pond, after the company it once served.
The mill was shuttered by the turn of the century and Union Pond was repurposed in 1901 to feed a hydropower plant nearby. In time, though, even that endeavor grew obsolete with the rise of the modern power grid. What we’re left with today is a Union Pond which has been appointed to a more relaxed post: serving as the centerpiece of a scenic park in what has now become the Union Village Historic District.
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