Cromwell: A History
By Rafaele Fierro
Cromwell’s town leaders dedicated the new school on January 6, 1902 not only at the start of a new year and century, but a new era. The Nathaniel White Pubic School replaced the Academy and the district school system because the old buildings had become outdated, dilapidated, and overcrowded. The new building would now educate the town’s children—those of immigrants included--in the first eight grades. It was one of 10,000 public schools built across the nation by 1910; Progressives, as they called themselves, believed that with education America would be transformed. As the small Connecticut town entered the twentieth century, it had already existed for 250 years. And despite the modernizing features it exhibited—including the new public school—it remained a town very much aware of its history. Indeed, Nathaniel White “in all areas—government, church, defense, and education—assumed a leading role” in Cromwell’s first several decades and the school took his name as a reflection of that awareness. Between 1650 and 1750, Puritans settled the land, farmed, and worshipped God in the area known as the Upper Houses of Middletown. By 1750, it entered into a period of maritime activity and prosperity as the town’s central location shifted from the land to the Connecticut River. The third period, a time of heightened business and industry, began around 1850 when Cromwell became its official name and lasted another 100 years. The fourth phase, when the town became a suburban community, began in the middle of the twentieth century and remained into the twentieth century.
The Farming Years, 1650-1750
About 50 percent of Connecticut towns owe their formation to factors occurring in preexisting towns. In Hartford and Wethersfield, the Pequot Wars of the 1630s drove some British settlers southward to the colony’s center. Middletown was thus named and began receiving settlers by the middle of the seventeenth century as a result. The newcomers settled on the higher level area called Upper Houses by 1680, separated from the low-lying land by the Sebethe River (known also as the Little River). To their east, the mighty Connecticut River flowed.
Settlers marveled at how well the Squaw Indians tilled the land. Because the Connecticut Valley had a relatively short growing season of six months, survival depended on knowing how to farm. When the first British settlers entered Middletown in 1650 because of the Pequot Wars to the north, they learned quickly from the natives. Their survival in the first years depended largely on instinct and trade with the Squaw, and then shortly thereafter they began planting crops of their own such as corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and tobacco. By 1654, 31 taxable individuals lived in the new settlement.
Still, few expectations existed of getting rich quickly. Upper Houses founders including Joseph Smith, Robert Graves, Samuel Stocking, and Nathaniel White built straw huts, farmed, and traded along the Connecticut River. Religion kept the settlement intact. As one historian has noted, the settlers of this portion of Middletown “were rich in faith, but poor in material things.” The first services took place under a large elm tree in the center of town, but by the end of the century a Congregational Church would be built. They formed a central village whose center was Pleasant Street (running parallel to Main Street on its west and River Road on its east) connecting Middletown to Hartford.
What settlers such as White and Stocking lacked in profit, they made up for in land. Tracts existed acres at a time and when sons grew up they needed farms of their own, something the older generation readily supplied. Resident Daniel Wilcox and his wife, for instance, had 13 children and each received a lot from their parents.
The town’s elite also became known outside the settlement as Indian Wars impacted their lives. Nathaniel White served as a guard for vessels sailing between Middletown and Hartford during King Phillip’s War of 1675-1676; Samuel Stocking served as sergeant in the militia during the same conflict. This began Cromwell’s long tradition of men serving in combat.
A clear demarcation exists between the first 50 years of settlement and the next half century. Expansion of land and an increase in the number of people who owned land meant more farms. A trading economy came into existence in which the town’s elite exchanged their surpluses for items they needed. Some of the town’s elite made an abundant profit and income taxes were collected, something that Nathaniel White used for educating children. In this sense, Upper Houses was ahead of its time as statewide public education (Massachusetts led the way) did not begin in earnest until after the American Revolution.
The presence of African American slaves represented yet another sign of Upper houses’ growing prosperity for whites who tended to use slaves as household workers and not plantation field hands mostly known to the South. Several residents held slaves including Captain Joseph Smith whose coachman was named Admah, the first slave baptized in the Congregational Church (1735). Slaves gained full membership in the church, were oftentimes baptized. They sat in the gallery separated from whites. Slaves are buried in a segregated portion of the existing cemetery outside the church. Sea Captain Daniel Ranney owned five slaves when he died in 1755. The Revolution, of course, would make it harder to justify the enslavement of blacks as the Census of 1790 listed 62 free blacks living in Middletown generally.
“The Age of the Mariner, 1750-1850
After 1750, Upper Houses transformed itself from a social village to a commercial center in what town historian Robert Owen Decker calls the “Age of the Mariner.” Natives no longer constituted a threat, New Englanders, including Upper Houses residents, had ceased being Puritans and now were Yankees, and a merchant class emerged whose reliance on the Connecticut River could not be exaggerated. Merchants ran stores, warehouses, wharfs, industries, and ships, and in the process became the dominant group in town. The merchants expanded River Road, running parallel to the river, as they built large homes in the surrounding community.
Wealth was built upon wealth. With farming surpluses arrived more expansive trade. Quite a few Upper Houses merchants became wealthy by 1776 as a result of a lucrative trade along the Connecticut River, the east coast, and with the West Indies.
The presence of upscale colonial homes reflected Upper Houses’ growing prosperity too. Virtually all were built in the center of town during the colonial era. Captain Abijah Savage built his house during this time, as did Samuel Sage. Many others would follow suit in the fist half of the nineteenth century when they inherited their parents’ wealth. In the first few decades of the eighteenth century, the town’s elite established themselves as the most powerful members of their community, and their adherence to the status quo might have remained but for the interruption caused by the American Revolution.
Several merchants participated in the War of Independence, though the exact number is impossible to determine because Upper Houses remained part of Middletown proper. Many villagers became Minutemen including Jonathan Kirby. Other Upper Houses residents went to Boston to fight in the Continental Army among them William Sage, Jonathan Stow, Samuel Stow, and William Stow, the latter three dying in the war effort. Seth Belden died in the Battle of Long Island (1776). Gideon Savage served at Valley Forge with George Washington. A number of Upper Houses men who served in the war became prisoners of the British Navy on its ship Jersey. Despite the horrors of war, merchant success would continue well after the fog of war had lifted.
Their prosperity, however, could not be sustained permanently. In the 1830s, larger neighboring ports especially New York City made Upper Houses merchant success precarious. Industry by this time also began to supplant maritime business. Workshops and factories began to appear in the village in the 1850s and that is when merchants entered the manufacturing arena, making the Connecticut River less important to their financial success. Like so many other parts of the nation, merchants of yesterday became the industrial capitalists of a new era. Three streams became the center of industrial output in Upper Houses—Cold Spring Brook, Stony Brook, and Chestnut Brook. Textiles dominated industry in the first half of the century. Frank Franklin, a Brit living in Middletown, established a cotton factory just north of Nooks Hill Road in the northeast part of town. Calvin Kelsey added a sawmill and blacksmith shop to a gristmill his father had built on Stony Brook in 1749.
Prosperity did not occur without consequences. Population growth became one of the hallmarks of the fist half of the nineteenth century. By 1850, the Congregational Church lost its monopoly on religion as Baptist, Methodist, and later Catholic churches would be built. The influx of German, Irish, and Swedish immigrants, moreover, changed the village’s ethnic homogeneity. These immigrants trickled into the poorer section of Upper Houses along lower Main Street.
The Rise of Business, 1850-1950
Wall Street’s rise to fame occurred incrementally in the United States. In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, it began to dominate America’s political and financial culture during the nation’s Gilded Age. Similar things happened in Upper houses, which would soon be incorporated as the new town of Cromwell. Its own Wall Street experienced great financial success and in an east-west direction ran perpendicular to Main Street, the center of retail, commerce, and business activity.
Town leaders recognized early in this era that the town commanded a good amount of financial respectability. That is why they convinced the Connecticut General Assembly to make Cromwell the state’s 149th town in 1851 at the start of the new era. Then the town included 8,455 acres and a population of 1,275.
Despite the town’s turn to business activity, the second half of the nineteenth century saw little change. No trolleys, for instance, existed in town as they did elsewhere in Connecticut. Kerosene lamps lit the night’s sky, but only horses, buggies, wagons, and people could be seen on Cromwell’s streets.
Yet, a significant change occurred with the rise of the foreign-born population. The Irish began settling in Cromwell in the 1860s with many of them employed at the town’s quarry. Others were fishermen and laborers hired for cheap in the town’s small industries. Not coincidentally, those of British descent, who had dominated the town for two centuries, formed a temperance organization known as the Cromwell “Maine Laws” Society.
Germans settled in Cromwell by the late 1850s; in 1859, a mere five German families lived in town, but by 1860 Germans made up 7 percent of its entire population. Reflecting patterns across the country, Cromwell’s Germans assimilated more quickly than the Irish. Philip Baker arrived from Germany in the 1850s and eventually created enough capital to purchase a 22-acre farm on Washington Road. Others such as Joseph Zeiser and Everett Ralph experienced the same kind of financial success.
Swedish immigration was also a product of the late nineteenth century. One man in particular, Joseph Pierson, was responsible for the influx as he encouraged Swedes to come to Cromwell to work in his business. Until 1915, the Swedish Christian Orphanage on the corner of West Street and Olson Avenue would house dozens of children between the ages of three and 12. The A.F. Oberg family arrived in Cromwell from Sweden in 1889 and established a well known shoe shop in town.
In the 1880s, Italians appeared in Cromwell. Most settled on lower Main Street, the poorer section of town. They worked on railroads, the J & E Stevens Company (believed to be the nation’s first manufacturer of cast-iron toys), Pierson’s, the quarries, and on farms. In the 1890s the R.O. Clark Brickyard began recruiting Italians who were known stereotypically for their clannishness. Many came from Mellili, Sicily in the form of chain migration. Along with the Irish, Germans, and Swedes, Italians changed the complexion of Cromwell and at a very rapid pace.
The town’s elite reacted to the newcomers with trepidation. Immigrants tended to be in the main disproportionately poor and thus were relegated to the Henry Schulz farm on Willow Brook Road in the far western corner of town. Town leaders also built a jail contemporaneously with the influx of newcomers.
The path to modernization occurred not only in the form of immigration, but also industrial innovation. Railroads passed through town connecting it with major cities. The town had three phones installed as early as 1883. The Cromwell Electric Light Company brought electricity to the town in 1899, the Cromwell Water Company brought service to the town by the end of the century, and the Hartford Electric Light Company ‘s line reached Cromwell by 1914. The Cromwell Fire District was approved by the 1920s as a means of combating the all too numerous fires that burned through many towns in the early twentieth century. And in part as a means of educating the children of immigrants a modern school system was built beginning with the Nathaniel White Public School in 1902.
Unfortunately, the modern era was ushered in by warfare. About 114 Cromwell men served in World War One, eight of whom died in combat. Those who served represented both the old-line Yankees so much a part of Cromwell’s history and newcomers who had just joined its ranks. The names of those who served, now inscribed on the monument in the Town Memorial Green (dedicated in 1925) were of English, Swedish, German, Italian, and Irish descent. Cromwell was equal to the task in World War Two as dozens served in that war with 12 killed.
By 1950, the handful of important industries such as the J&E Stevens Company and the Warner and Noble Hammer House closed shop. Employment opportunities dwindled, but the town’s residents found jobs in nearby cities such as Hartford, Middletown, or New Haven. Thanks to the automobile, Cromwell’s population increased dramatically, and as it did the world of suburbia came into clear sight.
The Recent Past, 1950 to the Present
When Insterstate-91 was built in the early 1960s, Connecticut changed forever. And as the state changed, so too did the many towns that existed within its borders. Cromwell for decades had been a largely contained, self-sufficient community, but with the rise of cars and highways it was instantly “brought within the orbit of large urban centers, particularly Hartford.” The town, known for its large farms and rural communities, now attracted a large number of people, a good portion of them foreign-born, who would fill that space.
Between 1951 and 1961, the town underwent rapid development primarily in the form of residential housing and business development, which at once was a cause and effect of population growth. In 1950, the number of people living in town reached 4,286, a 25 percent increase from a decade earlier. The population continued increasing as the twentieth century unfolded. Residential dwelling units likewise increased from 840 in 1940 to 2,238 by 1970, and many were multi-family buildings and condominiums. In fact, Cromwell had become by the 1980s the fastest growing community in Middlesex County.
Much of the population growth had an ethnic complexion to it. Italians, Germans, and even Icelanders moved to town by the second half of the twentieth century. But if the town had become ethnically diverse, it remained racially homogenous as 91.3 percent of Cromwell residents were white as of 2008.
With such dramatic increases in population, a proliferation of town services occurred. This, of course, meant tax increases, which created tension within Cromwell especially at town meetings. Professionals such as building inspectors and engineers had to be hired, sometimes from the outside, creating an impersonal tone to Cromwell’s politics, though the selectman form of government remained. In this context the Planning and Zoning Commission became one of the most powerful entities in town.
One of the chief issues facing Cromwell by the latter stages of the twentieth century was crime. Town leaders increased the number of police officers steadily to combat the increase. Perhaps the strangest case would occur in 1984 when Dr. Alan Berkman, a member of the May 19 Movement, an offshoot of the Weathermen, robbed a Stop and Shop Supermarket after having been involved in the death of two police officers.
When the nation celebrated its bicentennial in 1976, many Cromwell organizations participated including the First Congregational Church, the American Legion, the Women’s Republican Club, and the Grange. The commitment to the event served as a reminder that such patriotic occasions typically occur when the past gives way to the present. And when J&E Stevens closed down in 1974 it reminded townspeople that Cromwell was now fully ensconced in a new era.
By the twenty first century, Cromwell had a population of more than 13,000. The rural community that once flourished had virtually disappeared due to the forces of change especially a highway system that divided the town into three distinct parts: one along route 372 to Berlin complete with shopping centers and condominiums, a second along Coles and Evergreen Roads where the last farms still stand, and a third along Main Street where suburban single-family homes dominated the landscape.
When settlers first moved to the area that would one day be known as Cromwell, nature’s work, the Connecticut River, was responsible for creating the separate parts of the town and determining its character and culture. In the modern era, roads built by humans would be the chief force responsible for making Cromwell a microcosm of the national trend toward suburbia.
Suggestions for Further Reading:
Charles Collard Adams, Middletown Upper Houses (Canaan, New Hampshire: Phoenix Publishing, 1983)
Robert Owen Decker, Cromwell, Connecticut 1650-1990: the history of a river port town (West Kennebunkport, Maine: Phoenix Publishing, 1991)
Judith E. Johnson and William H. Tabor, The History and Architecture of Cromwell (Middletown, CT: Greater Middletown Preservation Trust, 1987)