Arranged in four auto tours and one walking
tour, Mary and Al have created a convenient book that enables the
reader to make five circuits of town which pass most of Newtown's
distinctive pre-1826 houses. The book contains a wealth of detail on
early American domestic architecture and on many of the people who
built and lived in the town's earliest homes. The text, composed by
Mary Mitchell, was scrupulously researched and contains details about
the early history of the town than can be found no where else. Al
Goodrich's maps show the hand of an engineer. They are accurate and
provide precise locations for some of Newtown's most stately and
humble homes. Printed in two colors, it will enable the reader to
easily find his way to the most important examples of early American
architecture and, more importantly, find his way back. The text and
beautifully printed photographs of all of the tour's houses are
supplemented by a facsimile copy of the 1854 School District map of
Newtown on the endpapers. Ý
This volume in the Arcadia Press' series,
Images of America, presents 288 Photographic images of Newtown showing
how it looked from 1870, just after the Civil War, up to the Second
World War, just before Newtown began to make its dramatic change to a
large suburban town. Its captions give a concise history of some of
Newtown's most important landmarks, both those that are still to be
seen and visited and many that are no longer in existence. The book
also contains a special section on the five railroads that ran through
Newtown at the turn of the century and the six depots that served
those lines. Another special section is devoted to the War Maneuvers
in 1912 during which 10,000 army and militia units descended on
Newtown as half of them tried to capture the reservoirs that were
vital to New York and the other half tried to stop them. The maneuvers
climaxed with pitched battles on Cole's Hill just west of the village
and Mount Pleasant. All of the latest technology was being displayed
from machine guns to spotting aircraft and Newtown experienced one of
the most exciting weeks of its history, and it has been reproduced
here for everyone to enjoy again. Ý
This volume in the
Arcadia Press' series, Images of America, presents more than 200
photographic images with captions telling the story of the
transformation of Newtown from an agricultural town with some light
industry to an integrated town with a highly mobile population.
Pictures and descriptions of Main Street including structures donated
by Mary Hawley are followed by images of Sandy Hook, the outlying
communities of Palestine, Taunton Lake, Botsford, Huntinton,
Hattertown, Gray’s Plain, Stevenson, Hawleyville and the summer
community of Riverside. The section on special events includes
celebrations for the 1905 Bicentennial, the 1919 Welcome Home and the
1932 Washington Bicentennial. The story of the 1912 War Maneuvers that
culminated in Newtown has been continued in this volume because
additional photographs showing troop movements in surrounding towns
and a photo album kept by a member of the New York National Guard have
come to light since the first Images of America: Newtown was
published. Ý
Originally created to
supply information on the glacial geology and early human inhabitants
of the county for his Local History Class at Joel Barlow High School,
Dan felt that the information that this text contained would be
enjoyed by a wider audience. As a result he revised and rewrote the
text to make it reflect the latest discoveries in Connecticut
archaeology. Along with his own graphics and photographs, this work
tells the story of Newtown from the break up of the supercontinent,
Pangaea, up to the coming of the town's first settlers, where all
other histories of the town begin.Ý
In this short monograph
Dan has summarized a year of research on Newtown slave and early free
black population. From scattered records he has found data on 71
Afro-Americans who were kept as slaves, their owners, and some of
their family history. From this database he has compiled a picture of
the life style of these forgotten members of early Newtown Society. To
tell this story more fully he has also enlarged his data base to
include the free black population of the town up to 1860 and this has
enabled him to trace what eventually happened to many of the slaves
after they were freed. There are no living descendants of Newtown's
slaves still living in this area and he attempts in his last chapter
to explain why this is so. He has also included an account of those
blacks who fought in the American Revolution to help their masters
gain freedom from the British crown and a special section on black
folklore which includes a consideration of the effect on the
Underground Railroad on Newtown and an account of what really happened
to Purdy of Purdy Station. Ý
The list of essay titles from A Mosaic of Newtown’s History describes the breadth of interesting information to be found in this hardbound volume, illustrated with historical photos and supplemented with a 12-page Index, which will undoubtedly become a valuable tool for countless readers and researchers well into the future.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. COLONIAL NEWTOWN
- A 14th Century Invasion of Newtown
- Money and Counterfeiting in colonial Newtown: Part I
- Money and Counterfeiting in colonial Newtown: Part II
- The Old Meeting House
- The Pamphlet Wars: John Beach vs. David Judson
- Ezra Bryan: Colonial Furniture Maker
II. THE REVOLUTION
- The 1775 Raid on Newtown
- Newtown Almost Had a Revolutionary Winter Encampment
- Betsey Foot: War Bride of the Revolution
- The Hanging of Robert Thompson
- The Day French Soldiers Invaded Newtown: Part I
- The Day French Soldiers Invaded Newtown: Part II
III. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
- Turnpikes In Newtown
- Crossing the Housatonic
- The Button and Comb Makers of Newtown
- Hatting in Newtown
- Labor in Newtown at the Turn Of the Century
- Newtown’s Debt to the Rubber Industry
IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- Purdy Station: Dealing With Local Folklore
- The Newtown Bee’s Rival
- The Old Middle Gate One Room Schoolhouse
- The Gray’s Plain School War
- Dying As a Way of Life in 19th Century Newtown
- The Newtown Flagpole
- The Newtown Agricultural Fair
- The Curtis Plain Fishing Place
- Newtown’s Castle
- John Costello and His Opera House
- Katie Camp and the Shoshoni Indians
- Newtown Notables: Henry Cook, Newtown’s First
Photographer and Our Window Into the Mid- 19th Century
- Newtown Notables: Griffin P. Lillis Who Served as a
Union and Confederate Soldier
- Newtown Notables: William Conrad Wile: Sandy Hook’s
Physician of International Fame
V. THE SOFT UNDERBELLY OF VICTORIAN NEWTOWN
- The Old Poor House
- A Victorian Burglary Ring Foiled in Newtown
- The Cobblershop Murder Case
- Shoot Out in Sandy Hook
- Newtown’s Red Light District Revisited
- The Caroline Booth Shooting: A Mystery Partially Solved
- The Washington Temperance Society of Sandy Hook
-Newtown Notables: Alfred Jefferson Brisco; A Grandson of Slaves
VI. EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
- Feldspar Quarries and the Mining History of Newtown
- The Battle of Newtown: 1912
- Newtown’s Libraries and Reading Institutions
- Getting Groceries: It Was Not Always This Easy
- Movies In Newtown
- The Automobile in Newtown
- Utilities: The Making of Modern Newtown
- The Newtown Tea House/ Tea Room Phenomenon
- The Boy Scout Troop 70: A Newtown Youth Tradition
- The Ram Pasture and Mary Hawley
-The Silver City Saga
- Christmas Past in Newtown
- Place Names, Road names, and Other Forgotten Names
- Newtown Notables: William Abel Upham and the Invention of the
Tea Bag
- Newtown Notables: Al Bevans, Dodgingtown’s Man of
Entertainment
- Newtown Notables: James T. Brunot and the Development of
Scrabble
CORRECTIONS TO A MOSAIC OF NEWTOWN’S HISTORY
by Daniel Cruson
Preface
One of Newtown’s Tercentennial projects was to gather about sixty essays that first appeared in The Rooster’s Crow and publish them all under one cover with an index. This compilation, A Mosaic of Newtown’s History has been on sale since the fall of 2005. Unfortunately, once in this form, the history recounted in these essays is fixed and permanent. Local history, however, is dynamic and changing. As new documents come to light, new information becomes available that can alter the sequence of events and their interpretation. Thus, the essays rewritten, corrected, and published in 2005 are already dated, and further corrections need to be made as research continues. These corrections will appear as a column in the Newtown Historical Society’s newsletters, The Rooster’s Crow and on this web page. In this manner, the book plus these additions become a living source of Newtown history, continuously corrected and refreshed.
There is More Than One Glover’s Hall
(In The Rooster’s Crow September-October 2006)
In the essay “The Newtown Bee’s Rival”, the short life of The Newtown Chronicle was described in some detail. While conducting research on that newspaper, I found several references to its being published in Glover’s Hall. That hall was a popular venue for many social activities in Sandy Hook and for a while even housed the Sandy Hook library. It was built in the early 19th century by the members of the William Glover family who had built and run the “Red Brick” store until the middle of the 20th century. The Hall was located on the east side of Glen Road near the intersection with Riverside Road. Being located in the heart of Sandy Hook, I naturally assumed that the Chronicle was a Sandy Hook paper. Since the paper was heavily Irish in sympathy and news, and since Sandy Hook was the center of the Irish population in the 1880s when the paper began, my assumption was reinforced.
While doing research on some of Newtown’s earliest retail stores, however, I discovered a two story building that was constructed around 1824 located just north of the Edmond Town Hall. Immediately after the Civil War, the building, which housed a store on the first floor, was purchased by Norman B. Glover. He continued to lease the store to various merchants until the late 1870s. The upper floor was leased to the town in 1874 to be used for a tax collector’s office and a place for town meetings. The town continued to use this hall until 1883 when the Catholic Church moved to its present location on Church Hill Road and sold their old building to the town. (This old town hall was taken down in 1930 to accommodate the present town hall.) It was at this time in the early 1880s that the building began to be known as Glover’s Hall Building.
Among the sequence of leases was one to James E. Madigan in 1880 in which, “…one certain room in the building known as Glover’s Hall Building…the fourth part of the store as now partitioned off on the ground floor…”is leased “…for a printing office and newsroom and for no other purpose.” From this it is clear that the building was no longer being used as a general store, relinquishing its place in Newtown’s mercantile life to the General Store then being run by Levi B. Booth. (This general store is still in business just south of the town hall.) It is also apparent that I had completely misunderstood the location of the Irish partisan newspaper. It was actually being published on Main Street, or Newtown Street as it was known then, and not in the Irish stronghold of Sandy Hook. In most sources the Sandy Hook building is simply called Glover’s Hall, but when the Main Street building is being referred to in deeds and other legal documents it always appears as Glover’s Hall Building. This should set the record straight for the Newtown Chronicle and also create caution when dealing with references to Glover’s Hall in future research.
Ý
Much labor has been devoted to documenting
the Northern response to the South’s peculiar institution. While the
details of anti-slavery are well known, the other side of history is
neglected: the enslavement and subjugation of slaves who lived and
toiled in Northern states. In this groundbreaking book on the slaves
of Fairfield County, Dan Cruson presents a comprehensive picture of
rural slavery in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Connecticut.
From the framework of everyday life – including the slave-master
relationship, housing and dress – to the role of slaves and free
blacks in the Revolution that hastened the demise of slavery in
Connecticut, Cruson’s accessible and intriguing rendering of slave
life in central Fairfield County will fascinate and inform readers.
Utilizing local slave archaeology, Cruson presents exciting recent
discoveries that shed light on African American spiritual practices.
He goes on to tackle the complicated issue of anti-slavery activity,
discussing the problems with the abolition movement in Fairfield
County in the 1830s and 1840s and questioning prevalent local folklore
about the Underground Railroad.
This meticulously researched book uses a database of over seventy
slaves from Newtown, enhanced with information from the neighboring
towns of Redding.Ý
Eleanor Mayer had a career in banking and real estate but along with her brother, she continued to assist her aging father until she assumed the entire management of the farm. She tells of her grandfather’s settling in Newtown; the farming lifestyle; the hired hands who lived with her family; the one-room schoolhouse she attended in 1936; being in the first class to allow girls in the Vocational Agriculture program; working the land; the crops; the exhibits she made for the Danbury Fair; and the challenges of farm ownership in the 21st century. This hard covered, 87-page book includes 9 photographs and an index.Ý
This short biographical
pamphlet tells about solving the mystery that surrounded the life of
Newtown's beloved benefactress. It tells the story of a true Victorian
tragedy, a tragedy that Miss Hawley largely overcame only in the last
ten years of her life. In addition to telling the story of her life,
it gives a brief account of her ancestors after whom the buildings she
donated to the town were named. Also included are reproductions of
four of the five adult photographs known to exist of this town hero.Ý
This biographical
pamphlet tells the story of Newtown's most distinguished citizen, the
maternal grandfather of the town benefactress, and the man after whom
the town hall is named. He was a hero of the Battle of Ridgefield
during the American Revolution, being wounded and was left for dead
all night on the battlefield. He actually operated upon himself to
save his leg from amputation and went on to become a Representative
for Connecticut in the Congress of John Adams at the turn of the 18th
century. He also served as a judge of the Connecticut Supreme court
until the new state constitution to which he was opposed on principle,
was adopted in 1818 whereupon he retired to Newtown where he gave free
legal advice, composed poetry, and continued his study of philosophy,
theology, and several other scholarly subjects. A selection of his
recently rediscovered poetry has been included so the reader can judge
its merit. Ý
In Dan's latest
literary effort, he tells of a murder that occurred in the southwest
corner of town and that was discovered by one of his Local History
students 15 years ago. When she did the initial research, most of the
details of the case could not be found. Dan then recounts the 15 year
search to find the details of a case that turned out to have many
bizarre twists and turns. Andrew Peck who was characterized by the
Newtown Bee as "a moral outlaw," was murdered and Rudolf Stoffel, a
recent German immigrant and charcoal burner with a short, violent
temper, was the murderer, but it took two years before enough evidence
could be collected to convict him. An account of the process of
collecting this evidence, leads the reader past a cast of strange
characters who lived a life that could only have been lived in this
frontier area, farthest away from the moral authority of the three
towns whose boundaries come together there.Ý
This short pamphlet
which was put together by Cliff Green shortly before he died, tells
the story of Matthew Curtiss who was one of the most prominent men who
lived in the restored museum/house of the Newtown Historical Society
and after whom the house was named. In addition to the biographical
detail of its namesake, Cliff gives a detailed history of the house
and of the attempts to restore it thus saving one of the earliest
examples of domestic architecture on Newtown Street (now called Main
Street.) No tour of the Matthew Curtiss House is complete without a
copy of this modest pamphlet which will answer all of the questions
that you forgot to ask when you toured.Ý
A signed and numbered
14” by 18” print of Newtown artist David Merrill’s painting of Church
Hill Road looking toward the flag pole and The Meeting House. David
Merrill’s work can be seen in the halls and stairwells of Edmond Town
Hall where his murals feature people, places, and events associated
with Newtown.Ý
