Newtown History Unveils Its Charm With A Tour And An Open House

By Eliza Hallabeck

Houses moved, changed color and peeled back years from their history as almost 20 people followed Town Historian Dan Cruson up and down Main Street this past Saturday.

In observance of Connecticut’s Open House Day, the tour of the historic section of town started at the Matthew Curtiss House. The house was opened to the public and the collections owned by the Newtown Historical Society were put on view. Docents were available to give a walking tour of the house, and most of them were dressed in historic costumes for the occasion.

A newly discovered umbrella in the society’s collection stuck out of the ground in front of the Matthew Curtiss House as Mr Cruson discussed the difficulty of traveling down Main Street in 1709. He said the road was 132 feet wide originally, because there was a danger of mud filling up the middle of the dirt road whenever it would rain.

The umbrella read “R.H. Beers & Co., ” and dates back to the time when Robert H. Beers was a merchant in town during the first quarter of the 20th Century. He worked in the building where the Flag Pole Realty group is today.

“The old merchants who were here made great amounts of money,” said Mr Cruson, “and that is reflected in the architecture.”

As the group moved down the street from the Matthew Curtiss House toward the flagpole, Mr Cruson explained the history of the families that built and lived in the houses on Main Street. Last names like Northrop, Sherman, Curtiss, and Hawley were frequent, but not all of the homes they built stand as they did at the time of their construction.

“They moved things all the time on Main Street,” said Mr Cruson.

Sides of houses were moved to be used for other buildings and in some cases entire buildings were moved. The Newtown Meeting House was one of these cases.

In 1720, according to Mr Cruson, the Newtown Meeting House, as it is called today, stood where the flagpole now is. It remained there for 72 years until the Episcopal Church wished to build on the southeast corner of the intersection, he said.

“All of the newspapers in the state followed this,” Mr Cruson said. The Newtown Meeting House was lifted, placed on logs and rolled to its current location. He said a large crowd came to witness the event, and one reporter traveled from New Haven to witness it.

Another building that was moved was the old cobbler shop, which stood about where the driveway for The Newtown Bee is today. In 1914, according to Mr Cruson, the building was also the scene of a grisly murder.

Mr Cruson explained that the body of the cobbler, William Gore, had been discovered by a man named Charles Cavanaugh. Mr Cavanaugh had stopped to pick up a pair of shoes, but he found Mr Gore, who was at that time known in town as Mr Green, chopped and murdered with an ax.

“Somebody had murdered him,” said Mr Cruson, “and to this day we still don’t know who murdered him.”

The building is still in existence, according to Mr Cruson, but it was moved from its location. It is currently in another part of town. The basement for the cobbler shop is now under the paved driveway for The Bee.

“I promised you a scandal and some ghost stories,” he said. The basement was where the next owner of the cobbler shop thought he could hear weird noises. He explained this to Allison Smith, the editor of The Bee at the time, but he did not stay much longer to find out what the noises were.

Mr Cruson said he has heard about students who still stand around to try and hear noises in the driveway where the basement is just feet below the dirt and pavement.

One building that was not moved is now The Inn at Newtown, which was the Hawley generational home. Mary Hawley lived there before she died, but she also built over the existing structure of her ancestors’ home.

Mr Cruson said he was at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library, just up the street, when a friend ran in and told him to come look at the building where work was being done.

“The original siding was still there, the windows were still there,” said Mr Cruson about the original home of the Hawleys. Mary Hawley had built over the building. “It was just amazing for a local historian to witness.”

Before the tour ended at the Matthew Curtiss House, where the people who participated in the tour were served lemonade, Mr Cruson pointed out part of the sidewalk on Main Street, which is just north of the Cyrenius H. Booth Library. The sidewalk pavement seems broken up and uneven, but Mr Cruson said there is more to these stones than just an uneven walking space. He said they are the original stones from Main Street. They were placed more than 300 years ago.

Mr Cruson said he was unaware of the walkway being that old until a subscription paper was found that contained an obscure reference to stones from Main Street being moved. Luckily, he said, the reference did mention the dimensions and it was a perfect match for the sidewalk. The stones were later moved from their position to where they remain today.

“My mission in life is to preserve this piece of paving,” said Mr Cruson. “It has been this way since 1823.”