A church that began in the Philippines bought an entire Connecticut village in July 2017. Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ) paid $1.85 million for the 62-acre village of Johnsonville in East Haddam, The Associated Press reported.
The village grew around the Neptune Mill, built in 1832 to make twine and yarn, according to Atlas Obscura. Emory Johnson built a homestead and then a second mill in 1846, and the surrounding town became known as Johnsonville.
In 1965, Raymond Schmitt bought the Neptune Mill and other buildings from the Johnson family, Atlas Obscura reported. He planned a tourist attraction. Schmitt, a millionaire in the aerospace business, added Victorian homes, a chapel, and a steamboat, and the village became a popular wedding site, Connecticut Public said.
Lightning burned down the Neptune Mill in 1972, per Atlas Obscura. In 1994, Schmitt shut the village after a zoning dispute with East Haddam officials. He died in 1998. “Johnsonville was his hobby,” East Haddam First Selectman Emmett Lyman told WTOP.
A hotel development company bought the property in 2001 and planned to reopen it as a residential community, Atlas Obscura reported. The plan fell through, and the village sat empty for about two decades after the 1994 closure. A $1.9 million auction bid in 2014 did not close, WTOP said.
The church said it plans to restore the chapel as a house of worship and keep four residential properties. It has also discussed opening a Johnsonville museum, The Associated Press reported. “We purchase a lot of abandoned worship buildings and restore them,” church official Joji Crisostomo told the news service.
Johnsonville is not the only small town to land new owners. In 2012, Buford, Wyoming, a town with one resident, sold for $900,000 to a Vietnamese coffee entrepreneur who renamed it PhinDeli Town Buford.