It was at the time of the first potato famine in 1835 that the Herdman brothers, James, John and George came from Belfast, where they ran the Wine Tavern Street flax-spinning Mill, to the district of Seein (or Sion). They were Liberals with a social conscience and wanted to start a major flax-spinning Mill and village in an area of high unemployment and high water power in the west of the province of Ulster. The Herdmans were an esteemed and important family in Belfast in the 19^th century, as, indeed, they became in the north-west of Ireland also.   As the business there flourished, the Herdmans’ reputation as fair, conscientious landlords and employers spread, attracting people to the area in search of work and a new life. 

The Northern Whig article of 1923 ends with the following:

".........So it would be worth the while of anybody interested in self-contained industrial communities to pay a visit to Sion Mills. They will find a village whose inhabitants, though varying in creeds, live side by side, are taught as children in the same school, and work together daily in the Mill in peace and harmony. It has always been the policy of this firm to deal with all parties and creeds with absolute impartiality, and it is pleasing to record that this policy has been rewarded, and that through all the recent troublous time there has been not the faintest sign of unrest in the village of Sion Mills.”

“From the day the first stone of the Sion mills was laid, me nor mine never knew hunger ………My children are employed and happy, and each has something to give, instead of taking all –  not that we ever grudged it, but that we hadn’t had it. If the Lord took me tomorrow   ….my last prayer will be for the prosperity of the Sion mills”.

A HEALTHY POPULATION: We visited several of the factory dwellings, and found that, in many instances, they combined the small comforts of town rooms with the peculiar advantages of country cottages.   We never saw a more healthy population, and the watchful care of the proprietors has effectually prevented the growth of immorality supposed to be inseparable from the “factory system”.  The factory in the wilds of Tyrone was so perfectly what we had often desired to see established and prospering in Ireland, that we have dwelt on it longer than may be interesting to all our readers, though the safe working of such a system carries so much moral influence with it - induces such genuine prosperity - that we have been more than commonly anxious to satisfy our English readers of the proof of being in existence and that, in a particularly wild district in the North of Ireland, capital may be safely and advantageously invested to any amount, and peasantry found, not only to work, but to understand the respect due to property, and the advantage it gives where it is diffused." 

In New Lanark, Scotland, at the end of the 18^th century, Robert Owen was a pioneer in the education of the workforce of his cotton mill. About forty years later, the Herdmans began their own version of his social experiment by building the village of Sion Mills and establishing a model community of workers for the Mill. They also believed in education for both children and adults – non-sectarian education – but, unlike Owen, they were religious and built the churches, although until the Presbyterian Church was built in 1866, everyone attended church together in an adapted building in the village, and  James Herdman himself summoned all the children to Sunday school by beating a drum!

The devotion of the Herdman family to their workers and the villagers until the village houses were sold off to their occupants in the 1960s, for between £60 and £180 each, is well-known. In the early years the Herdman Company farmed 100 acres around the village to supply the Mill Shop and help feed the community, managing against all odds to keep their people alive during the Great Famine in 1847.  At that time James Herdman wrote to his brother John in Belfast, " You cannot imagine the misery I endure, being here at present.   Constantly surrounded with a parcel of clamorous starving wretches, naked and cold, and these too, observe, our own workers, and in employment.   I am sick at heart of wretched Ireland.   In the meantime, I send the most hungry to the house where we make broth every day.   I am cleaning out a boiler here that Robert had set to boil yarn & have sent in to Strabane to buy heads & houghs & will make a large supply of broth on the premises.    I will buy a large quantity of Indian Corn in Derry & sell it to them in the shop at cost price.   If we are able to keep the mill going, I hope to keep death by starvation away from our own people.   My opinion however is, that in districts where there is no steady employment, a very large percentage of the population will perish. You can have no idea how one’s heart is rent living in the midst of the poor.   I cannot refrain from an almost constant shedding of tears."

In 1839 they built a gasworks for lighting the Mill and in 1842 every house in the village had a gas light, the shop had four and there were streetlights.  This was replaced by electricity generated by the Mill from around 1900.  Sport was fostered and encouraged with cricket and football grounds from the mid 19th century. A bowling green and tennis courts were opened to mark the Centenary.  There was a Boat Club and badminton, handball, hockey and even polo were played.  Scouting was introduced at the earliest opportunity.  Angling is another passion in the village with the River Mourne one of the best salmon rivers in Europe, and cricket and football are synonymous with Sion Mills!

From the outset, the Herdmans made it a policy not to discriminate between the denominations in any way, and provided work, housing and schooling for all. In 1876, there were 136 householders in the village – 68 Catholic; 68 Protestant, and in 1888 Emerson Herdman told James Christie from America, “I find it wise to give neither religion a preponderance, and to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and efficiency.” In fact, how strongly the Herdmans cared about non-sectarianism is shown by the following advertisement.