Flea Market Find Recovers Long Lost Journal

By Jan Howard

During his weekly visit to the Elephant Trunk flea market in New Milford one weekend last fall, John Renjilian of Newtown made a discovery of a document the Newtown Historical Society had been seeking for more than a decade.

In a box with other Newtown-related items was a journal written by Jennet Curtiss, the daughter of Matthew Curtiss, Jr, and Ann (Judson) Curtiss, for whom the society’s house-museum on Main Street is named. The papers appear to have belonged to the Johnson family of Newtown. Among them was a diary referenced by the town’s first historian, Ezra Levan Johnson, in an article he wrote for The Bee in 1904.

“It was fortunate the house cleaner recognized they stayed together,” Mr Renjilian said.

Mr Renjilian, a former elementary school librarian in Ridgefield, has been involved in buying and selling antiquarian books for 40 years.

“I go every week, looking for books and papers,” Mr Renjilian said. “The box was full of papers in general. The seller had cleaned out two houses.”

When Mr Renjilian looked through the items in the box, he realized some of the papers were Newtown related. He paid $100 for the total, and brought the papers back to Newtown.

At the time, however, Mr Renjilian said, he had no idea of the importance of his find.

“When I started to transcribe it, I began to realize what it was,” he said.

He emailed a copy of the diary to Town Historian Dan Cruson who wrote back, “You found it.”

The historical society had published an excerpt from the journal in a 1994 issue of the Rooster’s Crow, its newsletter. The excerpt, from the journal of Jennet Curtis, described the festivities that occurred at the end of the War of 1812 and was copied from an article written by Ezra Johnson and published in The Newtown Bee in 1904.

Mr Johnson, Mr Renjilian said, rewrote the excerpt when he published it in 1904, correcting spelling errors and references for better understanding by the readers. “Jennet was pretty well educated, but I’m not sure there was any established spelling at that time,” he noted.

Webster’s first dictionary appeared in 1806, but the first unabridged dictionary did not appear until 1828, he explained.

 “Her spelling is not the best,” Mr Renjilian said, “but her penmanship was very nice.” This made his transcription of the diary very easy, he noted.

Mr Renjilian, upon realizing the importance of the diary, not only transcribed it but added genealogical and historical information before donating it to the Newtown Historical Society in January.

Transcription and the genealogical research took about two months, he said. For help with genealogy, he sought the assistance of Harlan Jessup, a local genealogist who donates his expertise in the library’s genealogy room.

While part of the diary had been published before, Mr Renjilian was most impressed with the genealogical material in it. “Going through the genealogy, I realized it was not what the published genealogy says.”

The journal had not been found in any of the Johnson papers that the society had been given and there was no indication that it had belonged to someone else who loaned it to Mr Johnson for his article.

The Rooster’s Crow article had ended with the plea, “If anyone knows of the existence of this historic document, please contact the Historical Society. The diary in its entirety is a potentially valuable source for a period in Newtown’s history that is extremely difficult to document.”

Ten years later the diary, which consists of 20 pages, has come home to Newtown, along with other interesting items related to Newtown.

The diary was sewn into a piece of newspaper, dated 1814, which served as a cover. The actual diary covered the period from January 1, 1815, including the news of the end of the war on February 12 and the celebration that followed.

The excerpt reads, as written by Jennet: “Sunday the 12 I went to church it was communion day in the afternoon the text was this Believe ye the gospel Just before sunset there was a hand bill sent here with the news of peace there was great rejoicing at this news. The bells rang and they fired 18 guns that night the next morning the bells rang very early and the store were open free for all who wished to drink upon the occasion. The 14 day of this Month Peace was Sealed. The news got here on Monday the 20 Glad tiding to the people.”

The book also became a personal notebook containing poems the young woman liked, accounts of her spinning for Zalmon Sanford in mid-1815 and personal purchases, and genealogical information about the Curtiss family.

Jennet was born in 1793 and grew up in the house on Main Street. Later in life she lived behind Trinity Church where the rear parking lot now exists. She died at age 34 in 1827, apparently unmarried.

One of the other items in the box of items Mr Renjilian purchased was a penmanship practice book believed to be Ezra Johnson’s, which was wrapped in an 1840 issue of the Log Cabin newspaper. Mr Johnson would have been 8 or 9 in 1840, but there are no names in the book.

Since Johnson family members were Whigs, Mr Renjilian said they would have received the newspaper, which was a William Henry Harrison campaign vehicle.

The first line of the practice book is written by the teacher, which the student copied as closely as he/she could. Comparison of the penmanship with a similar workbook owned by the C.H. Booth Library, also wrapped in an unidentified Whig newspaper, was inconclusive, Mr Renjilian said. The difference in penmanship may be simply a change in teachers and a different handwriting model.

One item that Mr Renjilian recognized at once was some strands of flax that were wrapped in cardboard. “The flax I knew was from the Johnson farm. It came with letters that identified it,” he said.

The man who cleaned out the house where the items were found was also impressed with the flax, Mr Renjilian said.

Harvested in 1859, it was given to Ezra Levan Johnson in 1882. Letters to Mr Johnson in 1882 from his mother, Julia Merritt Johnson, documented the history of the flax (see letter).