The Somersville Manufacturing Company, manufacturer of fine heavy woolen cloth, was established in 1879 in Somersville, a village in the town of Somers, Connecticut, by Rockwell Keeney. Rockwell Keeney can trace his ancestry in the United States back to 1648 when his ancestors settled in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Prior to founding the Somersville Manufacturing Company, Rockwell Keeney had textile mills in Meriden, Connecticut, and Palmer, Massachusetts. Rockwell Keeney (1822-1901) was the company’s founder and first president; his descendants continued to run the company until it folded in 1969. Company presidents include George E. Keeney (1849-1923, son of Rockwell, president from 1901 to 1923), Lafayette Keeney (1857-1927, also son of Rockwell, president from 1923 to 1927, when he died in a freak industrial accident), Ralph Denison Keeney (1882-1960, son of Lafayette, president from 1927 to 1960), and Robert Leland Keeney, Jr. (1916-1985, grandson of Lafayette; served as the last president of the company, from 1960 to 1969). Robert Leland Keeney, Sr., known as Leland, (1883-1960, son of Lafayette, brother of Ralph), served as Vice-President and Treasurer of the company from 1926 to 1960. The company employed about 200 workers in the late 1800s and provided benefits to its workers similar to those at Cheney Brothers in Manchester, Connecticut (although not at the same scale), including workers houses built on company land, sports teams, a recreation hall, and skating on the mill pond. During World War I and World War II the company supplied woolens for coats for the military. At its height in the 1950s the company likely employed no more than 400 people. Other products manufactured were satinet (a coarse wool with a cotton warp), cashmere, angora, camel’s hair and chinchilla. The company purchased its raw materials from outside of the United States, including China, Australia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. Marketing for the company in the mid-1900s was done by J. J. O’Donnell & Co., based in New York City. For the last ten years of its existence the company consistently lost money and by the late 1960s, presented with environmental regulations involving the Clean Water Act to clean up lead paint and dyes in the Scantic River, and rising labor costs, the company closed. The company was purchased by a competitor, Wyandot Industries of Waterville, Maine, in 1969 and the looms and machinery were removed from the factory almost immediately. From 1969 to the early 1970s the building remained vacant but was used over time for the manufacture of motorcycle parts, for a waterbed company, and as an antiques store. The mill was purchased in the 1980s with the intention to convert it to condominiums but this never came to pass. By 2006, when taxes went unpaid, the town discovered there was another owner. After several subsequent tax sales, the most recent owner was “a Manhattan outfit” who purchased it two weeks prior to a major fire of the property. On June 2, 2012, there was a fire at the mill set accidentally by three young adults. What stands as of August 2013 is the wreckage from the fire and there is no definite decision on what will happen to the property. The industrial village of Somersville, located along the Scantic River, which powers the textile mill, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. The Keeney family was very involved in politics in the state for many years. Either R. Leland (Sr.) or Robert Leland (Jr.) chaired the Somers, Connecticut, Republican town committee for all the years between 1920 and 1980.
