"The Castle: A Cornwall Love Story"

The Cornwall Historical Society is pleased to announce the publication of “The Castle: A Cornwall Love Story” by Jeffrey Jacobson. The book is an adaptation of the lecture presented by Jacobson in 2010 and includes 21 historic and contemporary images of Cornwall’s “Castle” and its first residents.

The Castle is a unique Cornwall landmark, built during the 1920s by NYC socialite Charlotte Bronson Hunnewell Martin. Shortly after purchasing Turtle Bay Gardens, a complex of brownstone townhouses in New York City, Martin began building a unique country retreat for herself and her husband, Dr. Walton Martin, in Cornwall. Dubbed “The Castle” by locals, the 8,412 square foot mansion was completed in 1924 and was used as a summer retreat. Charlotte added a pottery to the estate in 1927, hiring Vincenzo Rondinone to be her resident artist. Rondinone's Narrow Valley Pottery, and the Castle itself, became integral parts of Cornwall's history.

Over the course of the past 50 years, following the death of Charlotte Martin in 1961, the Castle has been a private country retreat for a number of owners, one of whom added a helipad to the property. The Castle's most recent owner, hedge fund manager Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher, purchased the Castle for $5.9 million in 2000.

Jacobson will discuss his research on the Castle at a special talk and book signing on April 11, 2015. The program will be held at the Cornwall Town Hall, 26 Pine Street, beginning at 4 p.m. Copies of “The Castle: A Cornwall Love Story” will be available for purchase for $15 each. Cash or check only, no credit cards.

"The Castle: A Cornwall Love Story" may also be purchased online through Lulu.com and Amazon.com.

William and Newton Cogswell

William H. Cogswell (1837-1864) was a member of the Schaghticoke tribe and was Connecticut’s first Native American to enlist during the war. He originally attempted to enlist at Winsted when the first companies were being formed. After Cogswell enlisted and was sworn into service, his fellow soldiers demanded that he be kicked out, on the grounds that he was not white. Cogswell’s enlistment was canceled and his name was erased from the muster rolls.

William Cogswell (from T.S. Gold's History of Cornwall)

On June 22, 1861, Cogswell once more tried to enlist, this time at Cornwall. Cogswell grew up in Cornwall, where he was well-known as the town’s fastest runner, easily winning any race held at local fairs. He had no difficulty joining a regiment at his hometown, enlisting as a Sergeant with Company I of the 5th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. During a skirmish at Harrisburg on May 3, 1862, Cogswell was taken prisoner by the Confederates. He was paroled and discharged on May 21, 1862, returning home for two months.

Sheet music sent by William Cogswell in 1862 to his friend, Miner Rogers, in Cornwall.

On July 21, 1862, Cogswell enlisted with Company B of the 19th Infantry (later the 2nd Heavy Artillery). His younger brother, Newton W. Cogswell (1835-1876), joined him in Company B, enlisting on November 21, 1863. The brothers served side-by-side. When Newton was wounded in the arm at the Battle of Cold Harbor on June 1, 1864, William was there to comfort him.

William Cogswell was admired by his fellow soldiers and commanding officers for his endurance and his optimism, despite the racism he encountered when he first attempted to enlist at Winsted. He was promoted to Second Lieutenant on March 5, 1864.

On September 19, 1864, Cogswell was wounded in the leg at the Battle of Winchester. His leg was amputated, and he died from related complications on October 7, 1864. He was given a hero’s burial in the North Cornwall Cemetery.

Cogswell obelisk, North Cornwall Cemetery.

William’s brother Newton survived the war physically, but appears to have suffered from PTSD. After his service ended, Newton returned to Cornwall and to his former life as a day laborer. He married Pauline M. Hoffman in 1867, and for a brief period things went well for him. But in 1875, Cogswell’s wife left him and applied for a divorce.

On December 30, 1875, Newton Cogswell snapped. He went to the Davidson home on Cream Hill, where his wife was staying, and shot at her five times, hitting her twice in the head. Cogswell fled the scene, and was found dead in a barn about a mile from his home in March, having killed himself with poison. His wife eventually recovered from her wounds. Newton was buried next to his brother William in the North Cornwall Cemetery.

Intern Update: James Douglas

Our intern, Ryan Bachman, has been spending the summer transferring our historic documents to archival folders and boxes, improving their storage and making them more accessible for research. This is the first in a series of blog posts he'll be writing about some of the interesting or surprising documents he finds in our vault.

The archives at the Cornwall Historical Society are full of obscure, interesting, and sometimes downright strange stories from the town’s past that are oftentimes forgotten or unknown. One of those tales that was recently discovered was a short biography written about one of the town’s earliest settlers, James Douglas. From Cornwall historians, such as Rev. Edward C. Starr, several facts about Douglas are known. Douglas and his family were some of the first settlers to live on Cream Hill, and he and his wife worked as schoolteachers in the community—one of Douglas’ students was a young Ethan Allen, who allegedly played an elaborate prank on his teacher that involved hoisting him into the rafters of a building as he slept. The biography found in the archives gives new details into Douglas’ early days in Cornwall, and into the history of the town’s settlement in general.

Unfortunately, the biography of James Douglas is undated and unsigned. However, due to references made by the author, it is possible to date the document to the first two decades of the 1800s. According to Douglas’ anonymous biographer, he and his young family arrived at Cream Hill during the early summer of 1739. The Douglas clan moved to Cornwall from Plainfield, but James had lived in that community only for a brief time after originally emigrating from Scotland. Once on their newly purchased home lot, James and his sons began to build a log house and clear farmland with a horse and team of oxen that they had brought along with them.

Douglas had originally planned to return his livestock to Plainfield in the fall, due to the fact that he had no hay stockpiled to feed the animals through the winter. However, Douglas soon found out that winters in Connecticut’s Northwest Corner are rarely predictable. An early snowfall dropped so much snow on the community that he was unable to safely drive any of his livestock through the narrow pathways that served as roads in Cornwall at that time. When the weather failed to warm back up, Douglas was faced with the harsh reality that his farm animals were snowed-in on Cream Hill for the winter with no food. Douglas contemplated his predicament and remembered that he had noticed a large amount of moss growing on the trees on the north side of Cream Hill. He took his farm tools and set about scraping and collecting the thick moss. To his relief, he found that the oxen loved eating the moss, but he was disappointed to find that his horse would have none of it.

Douglas had been hunting the plentiful deer in the area for months, and desperate to find something his horse would eat, he concocted another plan. As his biographer told it decades later, “he then manufactured a soup from the venison, this the horse took well.” While Douglas was excited that his horse ate the venison soup, he was still worried that it had no solid food to eat, so again in the words of his biographer, Douglas also fed his horse, “the hair taken from the hides of the deer.” As strange as it sounds that James Douglas fed his livestock a diet of moss, venison, and fur for an entire winter, all three of the animals survived the season in good health, “and it is said that Mr. Douglas was often heard to remark in after years that he never wintered stock that passed through in better conditions.”

Next week: James Douglas’ fort on Cream Hill