A BETTER MOUSE TRAP from the January-February 2003 issue

The following quotation is fairly reliably attributed to Emerson: ”If a man can …make a better mouse trap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” If this be true, Howard Belden should have a deep trench beaten to his.
The following item appeared in The Newtown Bee on May 18, 1894:

A NEW INDUSTRY AT SANDY HOOK

Steps have been taken toward forming a company to manufacture a new rat trap invented by Howard Belden, which has lately been agitating the minds of several prominent men at the Hook. The plan now is to hire the Niantic Mills and manufacture the traps there. The trap is an ingenious affair, built something on the plan of the French trap, only greatly improved upon. The rat walks in, goes to the bait and in eating closes the door at the opening. Finding himself shut in, he rushes about to get out and finds an opening into which he plunges. The result is, he again re-sets the trap for rat number two, while he is safely housed in the farther end of the trap where escape is impossible. When rat number two comes along, he goes through the same performance, and so on until the stock of rats is exhausted or the trap is full.

Several alterations and improvements have been making (sic) which has delayed the work of beginning the manufacture of the traps. It is to be a local company altogether and if the dreams of some of the directors are realized, of trains leaving town stacked sky high with rat traps, it will give work to a large force of men. There is scarcely a doubt, but that the trap will prove a good thing, for all who have seen it that are competent to judge, pronounce it the best trap they have ever seen.

The business was established and produced traps for a few years on the ground floor of the old Niantic Mill building which stood on the west bank of the Pootatuck River, right at the Church Hill Road bridge in the center of Sandy Hook. It is uncertain how long the business lasted but it must have closed within a year or two since the Sandy Hook Woolen Company purchased the building in 1895 and began producing shoddy shortly after. (Shoddy is recycled wool which is considered inferior to new wool, hence the current meaning of the word shoddy, implying inferior workmanship.)

TROQUE RETURNS TO NEWTOWN from the March-April 2004 issue

About a month ago, Dan Cruson received an email message from Curtiss Clarke, editor of The Newtown Bee, alerting him to an offer on e-bay; a board game called Troque which was associated with Newtown. In an essay for The Rooster’s Crow (May-June-Summer 1999), Dan had profiled James Brunot, the developer of Scrabble. In addition to Scrabble, Brunot had also tried to develop another board game he called Troque (rhymes with broke). He introduced the game in 1956 with hopes that it would equal, or at least approach the popularity of Scrabble, but his hopes were never realized and the game disappeared from the market within a couple of years leaving only a brief article in The Newtown Bee attesting to its existence. Dan quickly put in a bid and won the game with no other bidders. It seems that the game is still lacking in popularity.

The game can be played with two or four players and is essentially a strategy game. Each player receives four, three part pieces. The parts are meant to resemble a castle tower, its walls, and its moat. These parts are to be advanced across the board to be reassembled into a complete castle on the other side of the board. The moves include a complicated series of captures, for which colored chips are awarded, and the game ends when one of the players gets all of his pieces onto the furthest rank on the board. The game is not won by achieving this, but rather by the number of chips that a player is able to amass.

A copy of this game is now back in Newtown, waiting to be played by two to four players. It is a crippled copy, however, in that it is missing two parts of two castles, so only two players can enjoy the game presently. We suspect there must be other copies of the game in some Newtown resident’s possession, possibly someone who knew James Brunot and bought it to see if it was as good as Scrabble before consigning it to the attic. If the reader recognizes this game from the accompanying photographs, even if it is a game with missing or broken pieces, please call Dan at 426-6021. He would greatly like to add the missing piece to his purchase, making at least one complete game in Newtown to be played by four people, maybe even to start the first Troque tournament in history.

A HAWLEYVILLE BURGLARY from the March-April 2003 issue

During a recent jaunt through The Newtown Bee, I was startled by the following headline: “Uncle Abraham Shook In His Boots,” which was followed by, “How an Honest Colored Man was an Unwilling Witness of the Burglary at Hawleyville.”

In the early morning of Saturday, August 29, 1896, night telegraph operator J.J. Sullivan was alone in the station building except for Abraham Baldwin who was described as an “aged Negro and respected citizen of that end of town.” Baldwin frequently stopped in to keep Sullivan company in the wee hours of the morning, something that Sullivan enjoyed and helped to pass the usually inactive early morning hours.

At 2:15 AM on the morning of the 29th, Baldwin was dozing on one of the benches when two burglars quietly entered the Hawleyville station. Sullivan was unaware of their presence until he was staring down the muzzle of two revolvers. He was ordered to hand over what money he had, but evasively replied that he had nothing. The intruders then ordered him to open the ticket case and money drawer, but Sullivan replied that he could not since he did not have the key. One of the men, described here as a hobo, stepped outside and returned with an iron bar with which he managed to spring open the box in less than a second.

Scooping out an undisclosed amount of cash, they then turned their attention to Uncle Abraham, who was now wide awake and badly frightened. He was ordered to give them whatever money he had, but began to protest until one of the men discharged his revolver into the floor right next to the black man’s feet. This powerful inducement caused him to “mournfully” deliver up $8.00 from his pocket. On receiving this the two men left.

Almost immediately, Sullivan ran out to notify the station agent, Jesse James, but once outside he felt the pressure of a revolver muzzle pressed against his head and heard the command to return to the telegraph office which he wisely did. After a short wait, he successfully ran to Agent James’ house a short distance away. James joined Sullivan back in the station where they telegraphed and telephoned the news of the robbery in all directions. Deputy Sheriff Drew “soon arrived on the scene,” and together with Agent James they went to New Milford in pursuit. As of a week later, no trace of the two men were found.

According to The Bee, Uncle Abraham felt his loss greatly. [At that time the average daily wage for an unskilled laborer was about $1.00.] He did return to the station the next night to keep Sullivan company, but he was armed with two razors and a club.

[Note: The name of Hawleyville’s station agent really was Jesse James. He was a highly respected citizen of Newtown and was president of the Men’s Literary and Social Club of Newtown Street in 1922.]

FINDING THE BENNETT CEMETERY from the November-December 2005 issue

The location of a lost burying ground is always an occasion of excitement. So it was when Scott Sharlow, the GIS coordinator for Newtown, approached me with a 1923 map that clearly showed a burying ground located between three parcels of land in the Riverside area. In April, Scott along with myself, the State Archaeologist, Nick Belllantoni, and the Historical Commission archaeologist, David Poirier gathered to begin a tour of the cemetery area.

With Scott as our guide we found the parcel of ground in the side yard of a house located at the end of Riverside road, just above the abutment of the now-gone Bennett’s bridge. The parcel of ground according to the map, was roughly square and about 40 feet on a side. There were no head or foot stones, but a long time neighbor said that he remembered when there were several. The neighbor to the south had actually found a foot stone on his property with the letters A B on it and had stood it up in the ground, but it was not in its original location.

During July, we had an opportunity to use a piece of high technology to get an idea of where the burials were located. The state archaeologist had made provision for the use of a Ground Penetrating Radar unit and a highly trained technician. GPR works on the same principle as regular radar except it shoots radar waves into the ground and measures the reflection from dense objects. It effectively tells us when there is a change in soil density. Graves, since they are less firmly packed than the surrounding soil will frequently show up as “anomalies” on the screen of the computer that is recording the mass of data that the radar receptor is receiving.

With fascination we watched as the technician and his assistant walked back and forth along regular grid lines pulling a small sled behind them . As they finished walking the gridded area, they stopped and, looking over the technician’s shoulder, we could see a multi-colored pattern of inverted Vs. These were roots and stones which were up to six feet beneath our feet. He would later combine all of the patterns for each pass to create a three dimensional cross section of the parcel of ground over which the grid had been placed. His report containing this information was sent to us about a month ago and in the southeast corner of the land we tested there appeared a square discoloration which is probably the northwest corner of the burial ground with several fuzzy areas that appeared to be burials.

Meanwhile historic research continued on the burial ground. It had been known in the 1930s and the WPA workers who inventoried all of the headstone inscriptions in the state, had recorded the eight head stones that were then standing in our little burial area. They were all members of the Bennett family and they dated between 1815 and 1864. The little foot stone was for either Abel Bennett or his wife Ann Bennett.

Since an account of our GPR testing had been carried by The Newtown Bee , word of our research had spread widely and I was contact by Bud Bennett of Southbury who was a direct descendant of the Bennett’s buried in what we were now calling the Bennett Cemetery. He identified the genealogical relationships that existed between the family members who were commemorated on the missing headstones. Of greatest interest was Abel Bennett, the patriarch of the Bennett family who led them to settle on this flood plain of the Housatonic. He with his son Isaac and brother Thomas had been the petitioners, who requested permission to replace the decrepit bridge that crossed the river from Newtown to Southbury, and to charge tolls to cover the expense. This bridge was to become known to Newtown residents as Bennett’s Bridge throughout the 19th and 20th centuries until it had to be taken down before being submerged under the waters of lake Zoar. (Headstones for Thomas and Isaac do not appear on the inventor of headstones for our cemetery. They may have been buried elsewhere.)

The final chapter in the odyssey of the Bennett Cemetery came a couple of weeks ago when I was contacted by the southern neighbor, the same one who had discovered the footstone. He had dug up a hydrangea bush and had discovered several slabs of marble. These turned out to be the bases of several headstones. The stones had been broken and the upper portions were missing. The bases which lack inscriptions had then been pushed over and burred, probably to allow unobstructed mowing. Just under the prostrate bases was a distinct solid discoloration which is characteristic of the top of a grave shaft. It appears that the hydrengea bush stood at the southwest corner of the old cemetery. The state archaeologist and I will be visiting the site in mid-November to confirm the discovery and come up with recommendations for preserving this historic burying ground, and how to deal with the northern neighbor who has erected a tall fence that appears to run over the center of the burial area.

Stay tuned for further developments.

THE SO-CALLED SOLDIERS AND SAILORS MONUMENT from the May-June-Summer 2004 issue

In a recent issue of The Newtown Bee, the Way We Were, featured an early 1930s photograph of the “Soldiers and Sailors Monument.” That is the name that everyone uses today in referring to the monument, but it is not its proper name. That is, it is not the name by which it was built and erected on the north end of Main Street.

The monument was the last of several benefactions that Mary Hawley made to the town of Newtown. It was not even known until her will was published on the first page of the Newtown Bee, that she had made provision for a new library to be named after her maternal grandfather, Cyrenius H. Booth and for a monument to commemorate Newtown’s war dead. This monument was to stand on a triangle of land on which the North Central District School once stood. That school house was purchased by Mary Hawley for $400.00 in 1923 after the district school system was abandoned. She moved the building up onto Mt.Pleasant road, just north of the present Ambulance Garage where it was turned in to a private residence. This left a vacant triangle of land for the monument.

The monument itself was designed by late in 1930 or early 1931 by Franklin L. Naylor of Arlington N.J. and was to be executed by the McGovern Granite Works of Hartford. The Blueprints of the monument survive and recently Naylor’s descendants contacted Dan Cruson and offered to send them back to Newtown. Several day later, one of Naylor’s original mailing tubes arrived with the design drawings. There was a clear heading explaining that this monument was to be erected in Newtown Conn, and that it was to commemorate, “the Town’s answer to the Challenge of Democracy in the Three Crucial Periods of her History: The Revolution, the Civil and World Wars.” What came as a complete surprise was the title; “Liberty and Peace Monument.”

The memorial was originally meant to be called the Liberty and Peace Monument which is much less militant than the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. The design also reflects its original appellation, for at its top there is an allegorical representation of Lady Peace with the liberty cap of Phrygia placed upon her head. Since this has become a place where our town’s war dead are remembered, the monument has popularly become known for our soldiers and sailors. But maybe, as this area is being spruced up for the town’s 300th anniversary, it is time to return to Mary Hawley’s original idea and formally adopt the design name. Surely this would honor our war dead in a much more fitting fashion since they fought to insure peace and liberty, not a continuous stream of soldiers and sailors.v

And while we are at it, Let us also go back to the proper name of Main Street, which is “Newtown Street.” Every town has a Main Street, but only Newtown has a Newtown Street!

THE DESTRUCTION OF A SOUTH MAIN STREET LANDMARK from the September-October 2003 issue

In the last issue of the Rooster’s Crow, “A Look Back” featured a c. 1920 photograph of the Ebenezer Prindle House, reputed to be one of the oldest houses in Newtown. At the end of the lengthy caption was the note that the house, “now stands vacant awaiting a new owner.” Ironically as this was being read by society members, the house acquired a new owner who systematically destroyed it.

It first became apparent that all was not going to be well with the old structure, when the contractor took off the roof and entire attic story. In so doing, the distinctive pattern of three small windows around one larger window in the gable ends of the building (visible in the photograph) was destroyed. This pattern is distinctive of one type of story-and-a-half colonial structures and was rare in this part of the state. The roof was replaced by one raised in the rear, with two standard windows in the gable which looks like nothing colonial, or any other period, for that matter.

The climax of this disaster came when the entire south wing was removed. Prindle was one of several families of cabinetmakers for which Newtown was known in the 18th century. The destroyed wing appears to have been his workshop, and thus one of the few examples of a commercial building to have survived from the 18th century. Its loss to the town is incalculable.

When the building was converted in to a commercial establishment from a private dwelling, there was extensive renovation done to the interior, but the exterior remained largely intact, except for the picture windows in front. In this condition, the house remained a potent reminder of the single story colonial domicile which was once common in rural Connecticut. Because these structures were small and characteristically built by members of the lower socio-economic classes, however, money was rarely available to renovate or maintain them. As a result they have become become extremely scarce. The loss of the Prindle house is an event to be truly mourned.