Former H. J. Mills Paper Box Company

September 23, 2026

Undated photograph of the H. J. Mills Box Factory in Bristol, Connecticut

The Box Man's Legacy: How H. J. Mills Went from Match Boxes to a Parking Lot

There is a community parking lot in downtown Bristol, Connecticut, that does not look like much. Cars pull in, cars pull out. The lot sits in the middle of the business district, unremarkable by any measure, crossed underneath by a culverted stream called Ivy Brook that runs east to west beneath the pavement. For twenty-three years before the asphalt went down, this ground held a burned ruin, then a vacant lot, then weeds so thick and deep that homeless people took shelter in them. Before any of that, for 120 years, it held a factory.

The man who built that factory also ran a newspaper, served in the state legislature, belonged to the Masons, the Knights of Pythias, the Bristol Lodge of Elks, and the Hartford Gun Club, and died in 1933, leaving behind a house that still stands on Summer Street. His name was Herbert J. Mills. His company made cardboard boxes. And almost nothing of his working life survived him except the house.

The story starts not with Mills but with his uncle, Elder Benajah Hitchcock, who began making match boxes by hand in the east part of Bristol sometime in the mid-1800s. It was a primitive operation at first, boxes shaped manually, one at a time. A neighbor named Don E. Peck, from the nearby village of Whigville, suggested Hitchcock invest in a scoring machine and expand into general box making. Hitchcock took the advice. The first boxes produced under the new arrangement went to Peck himself. After that, other area businesses began placing orders, and what had started as a hand operation became something larger.

The early Mills Box Shop, date unknown — Undated H. J. Mills Box Shop

Herbert J. Mills came into the business in 1867, the year he entered his uncle's employ. He was the nephew who stayed. In 1887, Mills and his cousin David Mix leased the operation from Hitchcock together. Four years later, in 1891, Mills bought out his uncle outright, then bought out Mix's share of the partnership, and renamed the business the Mills Box Shop. The company he had inherited as an apprentice was now entirely his.

Under Mills, the factory grew into a significant regional supplier. Located on what would become its long-term site in downtown Bristol, the H. J. Mills company manufactured paper and cardboard boxes for the manufacturers that drove Connecticut's industrial economy. New Departure, the Bristol-based company that became one of the country's leading producers of bicycle coaster brakes and later ball bearings, was among the customers whose products shipped in Mills boxes. The factory ran for 120 years, from approximately 1865 through 1985, making it one of the longest-lived industrial operations in the city's history.

Mills himself did not limit his civic presence to the factory floor. He served as Bristol's representative in the state legislature in 1899, the same year his home at 78 Summer Street was built. He was a long-time member of the Democratic town committee. He held memberships in the Franklin Lodge of Masons, the Ethan Lodge, the Knights of Pythias, the Bristol Club, the Bristol Lodge of Elks, and the Hartford Gun Club. He was also, at some point in his career, the Chief Editor and Proprietor of the Bristol Gazette newspaper at 46 St. Nicholas Street, adding publisher to a list of titles that already included manufacturer, legislator, and civic joiner. He died on March 13, 1933.

The H. J. Mills paper box factory on the 1895 and 1921 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps — H. J. Mills paper box factory on the 1895 and 1921 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

The company he built outlasted him by more than fifty years, but only barely. H. J. Mills went bankrupt in 1985 and abandoned the site. The factory stood vacant for thirteen years. In December 1998, a fire destroyed what remained of the facility. The city moved in immediately after, demolishing and hauling away the debris at a cost of roughly $100,000, covered entirely by a state grant.

What was left was a lot. Ivy Brook ran underneath it, culverted and invisible. Weeds and brush grew up through the disturbed soil and eventually grew so thick that homeless people found cover in them. The property sat in tax arrears of $250,000, owed by a corporation with no living owner to collect from or negotiate with. In July 1999, the city of Bristol acquired the property through foreclosure.

The environmental work followed in stages. In March 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded the city a Targeted Brownfields Assessment grant covering Phase I and Phase II environmental site assessments. That September, the city hired an environmental firm to locate and remove a heating oil underground storage tank buried on the property and formally close the site's contamination record. The assessments and the tank removal were the minimum required before the ground could be put to any new use.

The city determined that the most practical reuse for the site was a community parking lot. No developer was waiting with a proposal, no grant was large enough to underwrite a building, and no clear demand existed for commercial construction on a parcel that had been a brownfield for more than a decade. Parking was achievable. Parking was useful. Parking is what it became.

The Forgotten Ledger Series #3

Over the years, I have built a long list of locations I meant to visit. Some were already abandoned and waiting. Others were still hanging on by a thread. Many of them are gone now. Demolished. Redesigned. Paved over. Erased from the map but not quite erased from memory. “The Forgotten Ledger” is where I go back to those missed chances. Each entry in this series will be a brief look at one of these places. You might see old notes, rough research, scraps of history, half-finished maps, or a single blurry photo taken from the road. Sometimes all that remains is a story from a local or a line in a newspaper. Other times, there are records of who owned the land, what was made there, and when it shut down for good.

While I work in the background on the larger, in-depth histories many of you have come to expect here, this series will help keep the pace steady. It gives me room to share more of the process. The near misses. The “almost” visits. The buildings that were struck from the ledger of time before I could arrive. Urban exploring changes fast. One day, a structure is just sitting there, empty but intact. The next day, it is a pile of bricks and dust. I hope that “The Forgotten Ledger” keeps these places alive just a little longer, even if only through memory and documentation.

📋 Reader Records

📦 Did You Work at the H. J. Mills Box Factory — or Grow Up on This Block?

Whether you ran a folder on the production floor, remember loading boxes for New Departure, or simply grew up in Bristol watching that vacant lot collect weeds for two decades — those details outlast any parking lot. The 1998 fire took the building. The 1999 foreclosure erased the ownership. What's left is whatever the people who were there still carry: shift photographs, employment records, a story about Ivy Brook running under the floor, or a memory of what Church Street looked like when H. J. Mills was still a going concern. Reach out.

📩 Share Your Story or drop a comment below — every contributor gets full credit

⬇️ Keep Reading

📄 More Connecticut Paper, Mill, and Brownfield History

From paper factories and cardboard mills to abandoned downtown sites slowly finding their second act — Connecticut's industrial past, documented.

📦 H. J. Mills operated a paper and cardboard box facility in Bristol, CT from approximately 1865 through 1985. A 1998 fire destroyed the remaining structure. The city acquired the site through foreclosure in 1999 and converted it to a community parking lot following EPA brownfield assessment and remediation.

Source(s):

Southington police shut down party spot; Plainville tries to improve its water. (2008, July 20). Hartford Courant. https://www.courant.com/2008/07/20/southingon-police-shut-down-party-spot-plainville-tries-to-improve-its-water/
(1921) Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Bristol, Hartford County, Connecticut. Sanborn Map Company, Mar. [Map]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01104_008/
(1895) Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Bristol, Hartford County, Connecticut. Sanborn Map Company, Oct. [Map]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn01104_003/
City of Bristol. (n.d.). Community relations plan: Former H.J. Mills property, 149-151 Church Street, Map 30 Lot 49-50, Bristol, CT 06010 (EPA Grant No. 2B-96110601).
Hart, G. S. M. (1907). Bristol, Connecticut, in the olden time "New Cambridge," which includes Forestville. City Printing Co. https://archive.org/details/bristolconnectic00hart
Herbert J. Mills; Bristol (Conn.) manufacturer, had served in state legislature. (1933, March 14). The New York Times, p. 15. https://www.nytimes.com/1933/03/14/archives/herbert-j-mills-bristol-conn-manufacturer-had-served-in-state.html
Museum has plan to convert vacant downtown lot for parking. (2010, May 10). Hartford Courant. https://www.courant.com/2010/05/10/museum-has-plan-to-convert-vacant-downtown-lot-for-parking/

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