Use string as name of list

I want to use a string as the name of a list. I'm reading in text file names from a directory. Each of those text files has a 1-dim list of things. I'd like to create a list from the file name which will hold those things.

I'm parsing the file name to get the part after the path and before the .txt. So, for example, path\utilities.txt becomes "utilities".

I tried using List @@ "utilities". That clearly doesn't work. I want a list named utilities that holds the things in that text file. Is there a way to do that? So that utilities={"gas","electric","cable"}, as an example.