|
The town of Sharon was incorporated in 1739,
and its history goes back even earlier through the story of
the region's Native American population. If you are interested
in learning more about specific topics and themes in Sharon's
long history, begin with the mini-histories listed here.
Pre-Settlement
Inhabitants/Native American Presence
The first people to traverse the area
to become Sharon were the nomadic Paleo-Indians and the Archaic
Period Indians, who came into the area following the retreat
of the glaciers. Well before the arrival of Dutch or English
settlers, a substantial community of Native Americans occupied
portions of modern Sharon. Their principal village stood on
the eastern edge of Indian Pond, where they had cleared considerable
acreage. Others resided in the valley of Ten Mile River (Webatuck
Creek) and on a hillside overlooking Mudge Pond (now Silver
Lake Shores). An age-old Indian trail connected Wechquadnach
(Indian Pond) with Scaticook (Kent). Workmen constructing
the Hotchkiss Brothers factory in Sharon Valley in the mid-nineteenth
century uncovered an Indian burial site there.
Original
Home Lots - Early Settlement
The towns of Sharon and Salisbury were
the colony's last undeveloped area, referred to as the "far
northwestern highlands." In May, 1732 the General Court
of the colony sent a committee to inspect the land lying west
of the Housatonic River to lay out a northern town (Salisbury)
and to determine whether there was enough good land for a
southern town (Sharon). Their inspection, completed in October,
determined that sufficient good land existed for two towns,
and in May, 1738, the General Court ordered that the southern
portion of the Housatonic lands be auctioned at New Haven.
First
Congregational Church and Cotton Mather Smith
Sharon's first religious services were
held in the houses of Capt. Dunham and Mr. Pardee, as well
as in Pardee's barn. The first meetinghouse, a log structure
measuring 36' x 20' was erected in 1741, followed a few years
later by a larger structure, 45' x 35' with 20' posts. A third
meetinghouse was begun in the 1760s on the upper Green. At
Sharon's first town meeting, a committee was selected to choose
a minister for the community. Peter Pratt, a recent Yale graduate
was selected, and was ordained in April 1740. Five years later
townsmen dismissed him for intemperance. John Searle from
Simsbury next occupied the pulpit, but was dismissed in 1754
for feeble health. On August 23, 1755, Cotton Mather Smith
of Suffield was ordained pastor of the Sharon church. He was
a 1751 Yale graduate and a descendent of Cotton Mather, Massachusetts'
famed Puritan divine. Reverend Smith served as Sharon's pastor
until his death in 1806 and exerted considerable influence
over the town, especially during the Revolution.
Main
Street - Village Hub
As early as 1815 Sharon was termed "a
considerable village," "comprising 50-60 dwelling
houses, several of which are neat and handsome," along
with two churches, a post office, and several mercantile stores.
Maps from the 1850s identify the Congregational, Methodist,
and Episcopal churches, a blacksmith, wagon shop, three stores,
attorney and physicians offices, jewelry shop, harness shop,
school, and other services, mostly located in the one-mile
stretch along Sharon's Green.
In the 1870s George Gager spurred a plan
to plant four rows of elms on Gay Street and the Green, giving
it a park like appearance. Isaac Bartram erected a new town
hall in 1875, with a mansarded tower added in 1884. At the
south end of the Green the Wheeler sisters underwrote construction
of a prominent stone Clock Tower, while in 1893 a gift from
Maria Bissell Hotchkiss led to the building of the impressive
Hotchkiss Library.
Weatherstone
One of the region's most impressive Georgian
homes stands on the South Green in Sharon, begun in 1765 by
Dr. Simeon Smith (1735-1804). A native of Suffield, Connecticut,
Smith studied in Edinburgh, migrated to Sharon in 1759, and
operated a prosperous drugstore which dispensed medicines
imported from London and Amsterdam. During the Revolutionary
War, Simeon Smith was captain of a company of Sharon men who
fought in the Long Island campaign, while his brother, the
Reverend Cotton Mather Smith (1731-1806), Congregational minister
of Sharon for more than fifty years, served as chaplain at
Ticonderoga. Simeon Smith's house was on the route followed
through Sharon when Burgoyne's army, as prisoners of war,
was marched into Connecticut. On that occasion, while the
army was encamped for the night in the meadow across the street,
the American officers dined at Weatherstone. In peacetime
(1779 and 1780) a group of physicians from Massachusetts,
New York and Connecticut met at the house as the "First
Medical Society" in the new United States. John Cotton
Smith, governor of Connecticut during the War of 1812, lived
here when he led, and lost, the post-war fight against the
adoption of the constitution of 1818 that brought about the
belated separation of church and state in Connecticut. The
house, which became known as "Weatherstone" after
1938, is a monumental three-story five-bay granite Georgian
manor house, (National Register) incorporating a double hipped
roof, dormers, Chinese Chippendale balustrade, Palladian window
in the west elevation, broken pediment over a former entry,
and peaked gable with wheel window above the entry. The house
was devastated by fire on January 22, 1999 and has been subsequently
restored to its former grandeur.
Sharon
Valley & Industry
Between 1780 and 1890, Sharon Valley supported
a wide range of industrial activity. In 1829, Asahel Hotchkiss
began production of home, farm, and utilitarian items from
local iron - rakes, ox bow pins, harness buckles and snaps,
mowing machine fingers, monkey wrenches, wagon shaft couplings,
and currycombs. By 1850 the Hotchkiss factory employed nine
hands and produced $25,000 of saleable goods. In addition
to the Sharon Valley Furnace and the Hotchkiss factory, Sharon
Valley was also home to the Jewett Manufacturing Company,
which had been formed initially to produce the mousetrap invented
in the early nineteenth century by Joseph Boswick. Sharon
Valley soon earned the nickname "Mousetrap Capital of
the World." The Jewett firm was succeeded on the same
site by the Noyes Malleable Ironworks. Several other small
machine and fabrication shops specializing in small metal
goods operated here as well.
Calkinstown
The Calkinstown road runs in an easterly
direction from Gay Street (Route 41) to the junction of White
Hollow Road (the Lime Rock Road.) The earliest reference to
the road now named Calkinstown Road appears in the town record
of land transfers in 1780 when Stephen Calkin, Sr., the original
owner of home lots #31 (and #35) when Sharon was founded in
1739, granted "forty acres including the house and barn
where I now live" to Amos Calkin. In the description
he refers to a "boundary line running west by the highway
that goes by my house."
The term Calkinstown describes the area
of about a mile along that highway where Lt. Stephen Calkin's
home was built, and about 1/5 of a mile around the bend of
the road toward West Cornwall where Amos Calkin built what
seems to be the last of the Calkins' houses in 1808.
Hitchcock
Corners (Amenia Union)
Another important manufacturing hub developed
in the southwestern portion of Sharon along Mill Brook and
Little Falls known as Hitchcock Corners (later Amenia Union).
Straddling the Connecticut-New York line, Hitchcock Corners
supported the activities of many firms at 15 industrial sites,
powered by the rushing Webatuck Creek (Ten Mile River). These
included two foundries; manufacturers of the Buckley plow,
milking stools and pails; John Burnham's cigar factory; blacksmith
shops, a wagon shop, grist and saw mills, and others. There
was also a satinet factory on Beebe Brook, a tributary of
Mill Brook, which produced cotton material from which stockings
and other items were made. Hitchcock Corners/Amenia Union
buzzed with activity in the mid-nineteenth century, especially
following the arrival of the Harlem Railroad in neighboring
Dover Plains and Amenia.
Ellsworth
and the Ellsworth Society
Very early in the history of Sharon the
area known as Ellsworth developed an identity separate from
that of the larger town, culminating in the establishment
of a second ecclesiastical society in 1800. Ellsworth also
supported Reverend Daniel Parker's large boarding school (1805)
where within three years 200 young men came to study from
as far away as Ohio, Maine and Virginia. Construction of the
Sharon-Goshen Turnpike (1803) increased traffic through the
settlement, which by mid-century supported two churches, two
district schools, two sawmills, gristmill, blacksmith shop,
cemetery, doctor's office, and two stores. The Methodist Church
building, an excellent example of Greek Revival architecture,
was erected shortly after 1839 when worshippers acquired land
from Erastus Lord and Lewis Peck. In the late nineteenth century
(1894) the Morey brothers acquired the property and operated
a store here for a time. In 1928 the Taghhannuck Grange #100
purchased the property and retains ownership to this day.
In the 1880s French immigrants coming
to work as colliers in the iron industry, often took up farming
in Ellsworth-Sharon Mountain area. Later Ellsworth became
home to Sharon's newest group of Jewish immigrant farmers
who began arriving after 1905.
Sharon
Along the Housatonic
Sharon's Main Street lies in the southwest
portion of town, and that geographically speaking, the greatest
portion of Sharon lies to the east of Main Street and runs
to the town line - in the middle of the Housatonic River!
All the bridges, current and former, are half in Sharon, half
in Cornwall; while a fact not often thought about is that
the villages of West Cornwall and Cornwall are actually located
in both towns (although the Post Office for each is in Cornwall.)
Housatonic Meadows State Park is located in Sharon, and across
Route 7 from the park campgrounds was once the CCC camp.
Sharon's
Northeast corner and the Clay Beds
The northeast corner of Sharon was the
site of four important activities: charcoal making for fuel
for the local blast furnaces, including the Lime Rock Iron
Co., Barnum and Richardson, Weeds Furnace and the Sharon Valley
Iron Co.; farming; the quarrying of quartzite for the production
of hearthstone for blast furnaces; and the mining of kaolin
(clay produced by the weathering of quartzite.) Kaolin from
the "Clay Beds" was used primarily to make porcelain
("China"), pottery and paper. Large portions of
Mine Mountain and Mount Easter became part of the Housatonic
State Forest following the cessation of local iron production
in 1925.
Turnpikes
& Transportation
Sharon, like all wilderness communities,
required the creation of a basic infrastructure of roads and
bridges. Early roads, no more than rough trails and paths,
often followed older Indian routes. As surveyors mapped new
towns, they made allowance for roads between proprietary allotments,
often in a rectilinear grid pattern (inevitably disrupted
by geographic realities.) The town highway committee established
in 1739 proposed that in addition to Sharon's principal north-south
road (Amenia Union Road-Gay Street), side roads about one-half
mile apart and running in an east-west direction be laid out.
Additional north-south highways, also one-half mile apart,
would complete a grid system. A small number of through routes
included roads from Litchfield to Poughkeepsie and Hartford
to Albany; the latter passed across the upper end of Sharon
Green, while the road to Poughkeepsie crossed Sharon Mountain.
Present-day Route 41 also existed in vestigial form.
Religious
Life
With an unbroken Puritan-Congregational
heritage stretching back to origins of the colony, religious
beliefs, activities, and institutions played a central role
in the lives of early Sharon residents. No new town could
obtain independent legal status without establishing a church.
Inhabitants were required to set aside land for support of
a church and minister, pay taxes for their annual upkeep,
attend weekly meetings, and submit to church discipline.
Sharon's
Iron Heritage
In 1740 Joseph Skinner began producing
iron at a newly completed forge located near a dam standing
just south of Mudge Pond (later the site of Benedict's Mill).
Three years later he sold the forge, tools, and stock or ore
to Jonathan and Samuel Dunham of Sharon, Thomas North of Wethersfield,
and Jonathan Fairbanks of Middletown. Jonathan Pratt was also
an early partner. Two decades later the Hutchinson brothers
constructed a forge on the east slope of Sharon Mountain,
near present Smith Hill Road. Samuel Hutchinson was from Lebanon
and served as a magistrate in Sharon. John Gray from Scotland,
Connecticut, operated yet another forge off Tanner Road. Ore
was mined on Silver Mountain and Buck Mountain in Ellsworth
and Skiff Mountain on the Sharon/Kent border.
Sharon
as a Travel Destination - Rise of the "Second Home"
Community
After the Civil War and through the 1930s,
recreational pursuits attained ever-greater importance, until
they ranked among the region's most significant characteristics.
Such activities included both amenities serving local residents
and those that attracted enormous crowds of visitors, summer
vacationers, and estate owners.
Sharon attracted a substantial vacation
community, and between 1880 and 1920 wealthy visitors refurbished
several older homes or erected a series of Colonial Revival-style
mansions on the South Green. New residents included diplomat
Paul Bonner, editor and architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler,
financier C. Stanley Mitchell, and Dr. Charles Tiffany, Episcopal
Archdeacon of New York, famed surgeon William Coley, and electrical
inventor Frank Sprague. At the same time Romulus Riggs Colgate
engaged architect J. William Cromwell to design "Filston,"
an enormous Italianate palazzo set on nearly 300 acres. Nearby
in New York State arose "Hiddenhurst," a great Georgian
mansion, with huge stables accommodating 35 horses.
The very factors inspiring affluent families
to create substantial vacation homes also underlay establishment
of a thriving resort hotel trade. The large frame Sharon Inn
stood at the south end of the town Green across from the clock
tower and did a brisk business. Visitors here included General
William T. Sherman, Jennie Jerome, and the Delmonicos of New
York City. In 1907 Thomas Edison and a party of 14 visited
here. It remained a popular train and auto destination through
the 1920s, but was demolished in 1954. On Upper Main Street
stood the Bartram Inn and Mrs. Wylie's Tea Room. In some cases
local residents built small cottages at the rear of their
village properties so that they could rent their homes to
summer visitors. Many local people worked as staff for the
vacationers.
Miles
Sanctuary
Miles' Sanctuary, on the Sharon/West Cornwall
Road, was formerly the estate of Emily Winthrop Miles. In
the latter nineteenth century the property was owned by Moses
Handlin, a collier, who operated three mills on Miles' Pond.
Upon the death of Mrs. Miles, the estate became the property
of the National Audubon Society that operates it as the Miles'
Sanctuary, a nature research center.
The
Civilian Conservation Corps
One of the most interesting New Deal programs,
the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), played a major role
in developing and improving Connecticut's parks and forests.
Between 1933 and 1942, more than 30,000 young men stationed
at 20 camps planted millions of new trees, constructed roads
and trails, carried out disease and insect control efforts,
and built dams to create swimming areas. In Sharon, the Corps
focused efforts on road construction and maintenance and forestry,
also constructing fire ponds throughout the wooded areas.
Their administration buildings in Sharon were located across
Route 7 from the Housatonic Meadows State Park campgrounds.
Architectural
Development
Sharon's earliest surviving framed habitations
fell into one of the three most common 18th century housing
styles, the Cape Cod, the Saltbox and the New England Farmhouse.
Sharon possesses a number of fine early Cape Cods, situated
in nearly all corners of the town. Examples of the Cape Cod
would include the circa 1754 Wood/White House at 121 White
Hollow Road (IF#155), and the circa 1760 Daniel St. John House
at 6 Old Sharon Road #1 (IF#116). Larger more elaborate examples
include the circa 1760 gambrel-roofed John/Jonathan Sprague
House at 257 Gay Street (IF#73).
Baseball in Sharon,
Connecticut
Semi-pro baseball in Sharon, Connecticut? Believe it or not,
from the 1930s to the late sixties/early seventies, Sharon
fielded a team in the semi-pro Interstate Baseball League.
Playing out of Adams Field (off Route 41 just north of town
behind the old chicken barn) the Sharon Baseball Team (known
occasionally as the Cardinals) played against teams from Amenia,
Millerton, Millbrook, Pine Plains, Lakeville, Salisbury, Canaan
and Winsted. After World War II, the team's home base moved
to the newly created and dedicated Veteran's Field in Sharon
Valley.
|
