Immigration & the Mill: A Look at Swedetown
This lecture was recorded at The Granite Church in Georgetown on February 19, 2025.
If you missed this exciting presentation or if you would like to revisit the lecture, you now can view it at the link below.
The Gilbert & Bennett’s mill village, “Swedetown,” was an enclave of Scandinavian heritage in Weston. Listen to Samantha Kulish-Fargione discuss the community’s lasting ethnic impacts.
This lecture was co-sponsored by Weston History & Culture Center and presented by their executive director, Samantha Fargione. Around 1900, a large contingent of Scandinavian immigrants, nearly all of whom worked for the Gilbert & Bennett Wire Mill, established a community known as “Swedetown” in Weston. An enclave of Scandinavian ethnicity and heritage, the mill village was served by the Swedish Covenant Congregational Church, and two churches in Redding – a Swedish-Finnish Lutheran Church and the Gilbert & Bennett Memorial Church.