Students Tour Historic Tariffville Village

Submitted Release

On April 11, after regular school hours, eleven members of Mrs. Henault’s fifth grade History Club at Tariffville Elementary School and four adult volunteers joined Joan Nagy and Frank Haviland of the Tariffville Village Association for a guided walk in the part of the Village along Tariffville Gorge.

Steven Stang, owner of The Mill at Tariffville, welcomed the students and gave an informative and entertaining tour of the historic building, including areas not open to the public, such as the large wooden wheel in the attic used as a hoist during reconstruction in the 1870’s.  He also showed them the room where water from the Farmington River once entered the basement to power the looms and other machinery, and the Tail Race where the water left the building and returned to the river.  The building is in superb condition, remarkable after losing all but two external walls in the fire of 1867 and narrowly avoiding structural damage during the massive 1955 flood which washed away other buildings on the site.

Leaving the Mill and walking along Tunxis Road and onto Tunxis Place, the group passed between houses built in the 1840’s for mill workers on the right and fancy Georgian homes for managers on the left. Terry Salls owns one of the worker’s home and invited the students to see the insides, largely unchanged, with fireplaces on both floors and wainscoted ceilings.  She also showed the students her large collection of antique furniture, and domestic tools, including a hand cranked washing machine with manual wringer and a hand cranked Victrola record player.

The History Club is working on a long range project to learn about the history of Tariffville and prepare an exhibit to be mounted on a wall of the school.  The Tariffville Village Association is supporting the project, but the students are doing all the work and making all the decisions.