Micro-History Shines A Light

Into A Corner Of Easton

By Nancy K. Crevier

Almost as much as he loves history, Dan Cruson loves a challenge, and his newest book, released in early December, allowed him the pleasure of both.

Stratford West Woods & Everett Road: The History of an Easton Community started out as a favor to his friend Jean Everett of Easton, and was intended to be “a little 20 page pamphlet for interested neighbors and relatives,” said Mr Cruson. “Jean invited me to lunch and was wondering if it was possible to do a history of Everett Road, named after her husband. I thought, ‘How hard can it be?’” said Mr Cruson.

Once he got underway with research, however, he learned just how hard it could be. He realized that no one had studied the community in the northeast corner of Easton. The area lies east of Park Avenue in Easton and was originally part of Stratford, with Everett Road laid out through the center of it. “Stratford and Fairfield both ignored it because it was originally considered ‘the frontier,’ and Fairfield considered it to be a part of Stratford,” Mr Cruson said. Research was further complicated by the fact that the area had been part of three different towns throughout its history, Stratford, Weston, and finally Easton. Researching the community meant dashing between the three town hall offices, and was further hampered by improperly indexed records. Nonetheless, he soon realized that a micro-history of the area was feasible. “It had its own identity, which was developed in the 18th century and which, to some extent, remains to this day,” explained Mr Cruson.

His saving grace was the Stratford Historical Society, where Mr Cruson found all of the land records abstracted, copied, and indexed, thanks to the efforts of a local lawyer who some years earlier had utilized his own office staff to do that work.

Nearly two years after the “little” project began, Stratford West Woods & Everett Road has pulled together an interesting look at the forgotten section of Easton.

“It was an interacting entity and self-sufficient. They had a school, a grocery store, and a parish, and saw themselves as separate from Easton, Weston, or Stratford, an identity that was forged during the Revolution,” Mr Cruson said.

Strongly Anglican during the late 1700s, the modest landowners in that area were mainly sympathetic to the English. This led to conflict, with the State of Connecticut disbanding the militia in the community, and more than one family having its estate confiscated for Tory sympathies, further alienating the residents from other nearby (and more Patriotic) towns.

The important discovery, Mr Cruson said, was that by the mid-1800s, this section of Easton had established itself in the shoemaking industry. Census records from 1850 and 1860, Mr Cruson noted in the book, list at least six residents of the community as boot or shoemakers. Easton, as a whole, ranked tenth in the production of boots and shoes in Fairfield County. It is here that the community later reflects, on a much smaller scale, the industrial revolution taking place nationwide, he said. “Small shops died out as larger factories began to dominate the scenery, much to what happened in the hat industry, and other industries around the country.” By 1870, most of the shoemakers in the Stratford West Woods area named in the earlier censuses were now listed as farmers.

The Second Great Awakening, as the Baptist movement swept New England in the early 19th century, is also reflected in the Stratford West Woods and Everett Road community. “So you see national trends occurring here in miniature,” Mr Cruson said, “and that’s the reason for turning it into a book. It’s a microcosm of US history.”

Stratford West Woods & Everett Road is not just a cut and dried history tome, though. Tracing the lives of the generations of those who have populated the one-mile by three-mile swath of land creates connections to the present and reminds the reader that behind the names existed true personalities.

The formation of the Easton Reservoir in 1927 cut off easy contact with Tashua, the community’s seat of religion, and in the 20th century, the isolated identity of the community began to merge more with the surrounding towns, although still remaining “up there” to local Easton residents. Social activities, business, and religious connections today remain more with Stepney and Monroe than with Easton, “and they don’t intermix with other Eastoners in the same way,” Mr Cruson. And within the Stratford West Woods and Everett Road community, a community within the community has sprung up as developers suburbanize sections of Stratford West Woods. Whether it hails the demise of the once independent community remains to be seen.

A limited run of just 100 copies, Stratford West Woods & Everett Road: The History of an Easton Community, is available at the C.H. Booth Library for $20, or by calling Mr Cruson at 203-426-6021.