Currently redevelopment of the large mill is being conducted by The O'Neill Group in conjunction with OneKey LLC.

The original workers were predominantly Irish immigrants, and they were hard hit by the depression of the 1870s that began with the Panic of 1873.

Unemployment rose and wages dropped appreciably from 1873 to 1875, causing bitter relations between workers and management in many places.

Workers were told half of the pay cut would be restored to anyone who had not participated in trying to form a union at the company.

Another ballplayer was the Quebec-born right fielder, Augustine "Lefty" Dugas, whose family settled in Taftville.

In the academic arena Saunders Mac Lane was the son of the Minister of the Taftville Congregational Church and a mathematician of world note, who spent his career at the University of Chicago, Yale and Harvard.