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All collections/Vernon and Rockville: working lives beyond the mill walls

Tolland COUNTY · Industry & working life

Vernon and Rockville: working lives beyond the mill walls

Lewis Hine’s farm workers and Sheldon Dick’s Schneider farm photographs add people, homes and agricultural labor to the history of an industrial community.

Historical focus · 1808–1965

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Group of shed workers at Wetstone farm, 14 of them were 12 to 14 yrs. old. Location: Vernon, Connecticut
Group of shed workers at Wetstone farm, 14 of them were 12 to 14 yrs. old. Location: Vernon, Connecticut · August 2, 1917

THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTOGRAPHS

People, places, and change.

An industrial town with a rural landscape

Vernon’s history includes both the factories of Rockville and the agricultural places around them. The Hockanum River’s fall through Rockville supplied waterpower for a concentration of textile mills, with other enterprises also using the river. The town had been incorporated from Bolton in 1808; Rockville became an incorporated city in 1889, and the two governments consolidated in 1965. These changing municipal labels matter when reading older captions. The photographs in this collection shift attention from mill buildings to farm labor and domestic interiors within the wider Vernon and Tolland County setting. [1] [2]

Lewis Hine records young workers

On August 2, 1917, Lewis Wickes Hine photographed a group of shed workers at Wetstone farm in Vernon. His caption states that fourteen of the workers were twelve to fourteen years old. The image survives in the National Child Labor Committee collection at the Library of Congress. That combination of a group portrait and a detailed caption is essential: the record names a workplace, gives a date and reports ages that cannot responsibly be guessed from appearance alone. It also broadens the local history of work beyond the factory floor, reminding readers to include agricultural workplaces when researching children’s labor. [3]

The Schneider farm in a federal photographic record

Sheldon Dick’s photographs bring the viewer into the Schneider household. A dining room, kitchen and bedroom appear alongside a view of Mr. Schneider filling a silo. The dining-room caption identifies John Schneider as a Farm Security Administration client and places the farm at Rockville in Tolland County. The related captions use the broader county location. These views preserve different aspects of a working household: storage and food preparation, furnished rooms and labor outside the house. They should be read as a small, attributed sequence, not as proof that every local farm had the same resources or circumstances. [4] [5] [6] [7]

Keeping the record’s uncertainties visible

The Schneider photographs are cataloged to 1938, some with a question mark. The dining-room record specifically says August, while its caption refers to hurricane damage; that month and caption chronology remain unresolved here. The archive therefore preserves a qualified date instead of silently inventing a corrected one. The original captions also vary the spelling of Schneider’s name, so the transcription remains available beside the readable title. Looking closely at these records lets the photographs contribute concrete evidence about work and home while making clear which facts come from the catalog and which questions still require further research. [4] [5] [6] [7]

Sources & further reading (8)
  1. Vernon Historical Society: A Field Guide to the Rockville Mills
  2. Connecticut Secretary of the State: Town of Vernon
  3. Library of Congress: Group of shed workers at Wetstone farm, 14 of them were 12 to 14 yrs. old. Location: Vernon, Connecticut
  4. Library of Congress: Rockville, Tolland County, Connecticut. The dining room in the house on the farm of John Schneider. Mr. Schnieder suffered from the hurricane, and is a FSA (Farm Security Administration) client
  5. Library of Congress: Tolland County, Connecticut. The kitchen on the Schneider farm
  6. Library of Congress: Tolland County, Connecticut. Mr. and Mrs. Schneider's bedroom
  7. Library of Congress: Tolland County, Connecticut. Mr. Schneider filling a silo on his farm
  8. Connecticut State Library: CT Towns & Counties

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Building dates and photograph dates are recorded separately. Later photographs are identified in their captions; unknown exposure dates remain unknown. Follow each image’s credit and reuse terms.