Intern Update: Cornwall's Support of Boston Revolutionaries in 1774

By CHS intern Ryan Bachman.

 In the aftermath of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, this week’s blog entry relates to Cornwall’s Revolutionary War history. Following the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, the British Parliament passed a series of punitive measures directed against the Province of Massachusetts Bay, popularly known in the American Colonies as the “Intolerable Acts.” One of these measures, the Boston Port Act, effectively shut down all commerce in Boston Harbor until the destroyed tea was paid for. In response to this development, towns from throughout the thirteen colonies responded to Boston’s plight by sending money and provisions to the blockaded city.

At a special town meeting on August 22, 1774, Cornwall residents voted that it was their community’s duty to support Boston, which the selectmen claimed was “suffering in the common cause of liberty” (emphasis in original). A benevolent committee was established to collect donations and forward them to Massachusetts, and to show just how enthusiastic the selectmen were in their support of Boston, voters ordered that the meeting minutes be printed in the Connecticut Journal and thus made public throughout the state. Members of the Cornwall donations committee gathered supplies from their neighbors and subsequently met with other committees from nearby towns at a county convention where they commonly sent their donated items north to Massachusetts along with a letter of support.

In November 1774, Cornwall’s selectmen received a reply from the Boston Committee of Donations, pictured below. According to the committee chairperson, David Jefferies, Boston’s civic leaders were very impressed with the “liberal donations” sent to the city from Northwestern Connecticut, especially in regards to the 51 cattle that were driven from the Litchfield Hill towns overland to the Massachusetts capital. Although the contents of the letter that the county delegation forwarded to Boston is unknown, the language was evidently prophetically strong—Jefferies took the time to specifically thank the Litchfield County committee for pledging to assist Boston with their “lives and fortunes whenever there shall be occasion.” Five months after the Cornwall selectmen received the letter from Jefferies, the Revolutionary War began at Lexington and Concord and militiamen from throughout New England swarmed to the countryside outside Boston. Four of the five men appointed to Cornwall’s donations committee went on to fight in the Revolution, namely Thomas Porter, Edward Rogers, John Sedgwick, and Heman Swift.

Intern Update: Base Ball Score Book

By CHS Intern Ryan Bachman.

Baseball Score Book
(Collection of Cornwall Historical Society)

Among the shelves of scrapbooks, diaries, and account books in the Cornwall Historical Society vault sits a baseball score book from the late nineteenth century.  From 1869 through 1890, dozens of Cornwall baseball players jotted down their names and statistics, and their notes give insight into sports culture in rural Connecticut during the final decades of the 1800s. 

All of the ballplayers listed in the record book were men in their early- to mid-twenties. Games were played during the summer and fall, and it appears that the timing of games may have prevented many young professionals from taking part. Instead, the majority of people who took part were college students. In one typical 1878 game between the Blue Gulls Base Ball Club and the Black Legs Base Ball Club played near the village green, six of the athletes whose identities are known were college students at the time. 

Team names were occasionally chosen for the neighborhoods where their players lived, such as in a game between the Dudleytown Base Ball Club and the Dibble Hill Base Ball Club, but other team names were taken in a more light-hearted manner. For example, in 1870 the Pot Base Ball Club played the Kettle Base Ball Club in Cornwall Plains, and eight years later, the players of the Muffin Base Ball Club took on the Booze Base Ball Club near Ballyhack. Most of the team names found in the record book were of the lighthearted variety, and these teams typically only existed for one or two games, with the notable exception of the Drunkard Base Ball Club.

Intern Update: A Farmer's Diary

Ryan Bachman, a graduate student at James Madison University, is working as an intern at CHS this summer, creating a Finding Aid to our archives collection. He will be posting highlights from the archives throughout the summer. This is the first post in the series for this year.

The vault at the Cornwall Historical Society is full of diaries and journals written by Cornwall residents over the past two centuries. In 1859, East Cornwall farmer Seelye Hart purchased his first diary from Pratt and Foster’s general store. For the next several decades, Hart kept a daily record of life on his College Street farm. His notes reveal not only the everyday details of operating a nineteenth-century farm, but also a wealth of information on social life in the community. In all, there are six volumes of Hart’s diaries in the historical society vault, and this week’s installment to the historical society blog comes from his first volume.

Page from Seelye Hart's Diary
(Collection of Cornwall Historical Society)

In 1859, twenty-eight year old Seelye Hart and his twenty-six year old wife Jeanette lived on College Street with Jeanette’s widowed mother Marie, their two young sons, Reuben and Elias, and their dog Rover. Every night after work, Seelye sat with his diary and recorded the events that occurred during the day. Topics in Seelye’s entries range from everyday struggles on a New England farm, such as digging large stones out of his fields, to worries that his baby son Elias’ cough may have been indicative of the croup, to musings about Rover chasing woodchucks around the family garden. Entries from the last week of February are especially useful in showing the contrast of hard work and leisure time that Cornwall farmers experienced in the mid-nineteenth century.

February 1859 was unusually warm for northwestern Connecticut. After a long day of work on his farm, Seelye excitedly recorded the happiness he felt working to the tune of “blue birds singing.” In the midst of the unseasonable warm spell, the Hart farm welcomed the birth of three healthy calves. In addition to the newcomers, the Harts already owned twelve milk cows, and after making a delivery to Pratt and Foster’s general store in West Cornwall, Seelye noted matter-of-factly that his farm had sold 3,778 pounds of cheese in the past year—Pratt and Foster used their store’s location along the railroad tracks to ship massive amounts of dairy products to urban locations like New York City. However, the Harts’ lives did not revolve solely around work, as Seelye’s late-February recollections reveal.

On February 24, Seelye and Jeanette left their two sons in the care of their grandmother, and went to a cotillion in Litchfield with their friend Eve. Cotillions in rural New England resembled square dances, and according to Seelye, couples danced to the accompaniment of fiddles, mandolins, and bass viols. The cotillion was held at the home of wealthy farmer, Daniel Dickinson, and lasted late into the night; Seelye and Jeanette didn’t arrive back at their farm until 4:30 AM. In spite of their late night out, they woke up at their usual time later that morning, and Seelye spent the day helping his father build an earthen dam while Jeanette worked at preparing oysters for a family dinner that evening. The cotillion was one of many such events that Seelye and Jeanette spent their leisure time enjoying, and Seelye’s diary is an interesting window into the social lives of farmers in rural Cornwall during the 1850s.  

                       

Longing For Home

Speech given by Lisa Lansing Simont on Memorial Day, May 25, 2015.

Two thousand fifteen is a year for anniversaries: It’s the 70th of the end of WWII; the 60th of the end of the Korean Conflict; the 150th of the end of the Civil War; and the 40th of the end of the Vietnam Conflict.

It’s even the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, although it’s safe to say Cornwall, Connecticut, didn’t have a dog in that fight!

But we did in the other wars both far away and here at home. After the servicemen and women had gone away to take up their duties, the families they left behind lived their version of the war, out of harm’s way, but often lonely and worried. Every family has its stories and its memories. Here are some of mine.

Here in Cornwall during World War Two we were a community mostly made up of women. My mother and I moved in with my grandmother Martha Hubbard for the duration. Three of her five children were away in the war – Gordon and Tom in the Navy and Lydia in the International Red Cross. It was a quiet life. My mother and grandmother planted a large garden and kept chickens to supplement wartime rationing. Milk was delivered several times a week from the Calhoun barn.

We all waited for the mail, the telegrams and sometimes the telephone. I was three years old by the end of the war, but even as a toddler I could sense the tension in the waiting.

Once in a while my father came home on leave from his ship, tall and handsome in his uniform. I thought he was terrific! Once or twice my mother and I went down to New York on the train from West Cornwall, summoned by my father calling from a pay phone at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He had a few hours ashore and was dying to see us. It was very exciting but after my father returned to his ship -- and we were back home in Cornwall -- my mother cried and hugged me very hard. I remember that.

Between these rare leaves my parents wrote hundreds of letters to each other, letters full of affection and funny stories which masked the loneliness my mother felt and the danger my father was often near. Letters found their way from Cornwall to the South Atlantic traveling finally to my father over a rope line between ships, the mailbag bouncing up and down, skimming the water. Letters went back over the same route to Cornwall where they were read and reread again and again. These letters -- hundreds of them tied up in bundles and sorted by date -- fill two large cartons at our house. I haven’t the heart to throw them away.

By this time 70 years ago service personnel were coming home and picking up where their lives had stopped. This was what they had longed for – to get back on the tractor, bring in the hay and have supper with the family. Just the ordinary events of living, precious to them because they could have lost it all far away in some place whose name you couldn’t pronounce. Still, being home took getting used to, especially with a family that had learned to get along by itself during the long years of deployment. Everyone had to adjust to peacetime life.

Who were they? Their names are on the memorial stones behind me. Some of these men didn’t make it home and those are the ones we honor today. The lucky ones came home to the place where they longed to be and helped build this community into the Cornwall we love. Many of them are gone now too, some are buried in the North Cornwall Cemetery where Virginia Gold told some of their stories this morning.

We all have our stories. Remember them. Tell them. Keep on telling them to the children and the grandchildren so they can carry these memories into the future.

Thank you!

Hardscrabble Road

Photo essay by CHS Executive Director/Curator Raechel Guest.

Unlike many other Connecticut towns, Cornwall never saw a construction boom during the 20th century. In fact, as Cornwall's population diminished from a peak of 2,041 in 1850 to a low of 834 in 1920, entire areas of Cornwall were abandoned and allowed to return to woodland. As such, Cornwall is almost like a giant playground for archaeologists, with ruins glimpsed under layers of leaves in numerous locations throughout town.

The Hardscrabble Road area of East Cornwall is one of those abandoned areas. During the 1700s and 1800s, Hardscrabble Road ran from Flat Rocks Road all the way to Woodbury. In 1854, Hardscrabble Road had a saw mill, a grist mill, a clothing factory, and two houses. There was a high road and a low road: the high road ran along the top of a hill, while the low road ran along the West Branch of the Shepaug River. The mills and factory were built along the low road, while the houses were located up the hill, where it was warmer and drier.

The road closest to the West Branch of the Shepaug, looking back toward Flat Rocks Road. Hawkins Pond is in the distance to the left.

The entrance to the upper Hardscrabble Road, as seen from Flat Rocks Road.

Hardscrabble Road has been used in recent decades, as the wheel ruts testify.

There were two houses on the Hardscrabble high road. The first, which was long gone by 1973, was the home of J. Avery in 1854 and Buel Avery in 1860.

The second house collapsed relatively recently. A portion of one wall remained standing when I visited in 2012.

The ruins of the last house on Hardscrabble Road.

Residents of the house:

1854  E. Barber
1874  D. Parmalee
1900  Charles Jacus
1906  Mrs. Earle Phelps
          Benjamin D. Bailey (tenant house)
          Henry R. Ashton

The high road is clearly visible to the right. Less visible is the low road to the left, which runs along the side of the West Branch of the Shepaug River.

The lower road can be difficult to see at times, but the stone wall is a good guide.

Ruins of one of the mills or the factory.

Ruins of one of the mills or the factory.

Ruins of one of the mills or the factory.

Ruins of one of the mills or the factory.

West Branch of the Shepaug River which once fueled a small industrial hub.

Remnants of a dam?

I would love to consult with an archaeologist on this formation. In this view, it looks like it could be a well, but as you'll see in the next two photos, it's more of an oblong, definitely not a circle.

Another view of the mysterious structure.

And a third view, from the far end. The stones line the sides of a depression.

The ruins of a retaining wall or building foundation overlooking the water.

Another view of the wall or foundation.

The Hardscrabble Road section of Cornwall is now part of Wyantenock State Forest. There are no officially marked trails to follow, only the remnants of roads used in centuries past.