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The peacefulness of
Canaan, the second smallest town in Connecticut, belies a history that
is anything but quiet. For it was here, beginning in the early 18th
century, peaking in the 19th and ending in the early 20th,
that stone blast furnaces poured forth red-hot, high quality Salisbury
iron. Mountains and valleys were stripped bare of trees to make
charcoal to feed the hungry furnaces. A huge factory once stood at the
Great Falls and employed hundreds of men to manufacture cannons, war
materiel and huge railroad tires from the famed Salisbury iron. One
hundred years ago the center of town, now so quiet, was a beehive of
commercial activity, a boomtown, and early entrepreneurs dreamed of
channeling the power of the falls to fuel an industrial empire.
Thankfully, the iron
industry moved to the easily accessible surface iron mines of the
Midwest, the plans for empire collapsed, the ravaged mountains and
valleys reclaimed their natural splendor, and the peaceful life of a
small town returned. Today, the stunning and unspoiled natural beauty
of Falls Village remains its most prized and closely guarded asset, and
its rich New England heritage remains firmly in place and guides its
future.
The
Earliest Inhabitants--Native American Indians
The Institute of American Indian Studies,
headquartered in Washington, CT, has conducted a number of
archaeological surveys in Falls Village and North Canaan, including
sites along the Housatonic River and around Robbins Swamp in Falls
Village. The latter revealed sites dating back thousands of years,
indicating that Falls Village was settled very early by Native American
societies, probably in early post-Pleistocene times soon after
deglaciation.
When people of European
stock arrived in the Falls Village area in the early 1700’s, much if not
all appears to have been Weantinock tribal territory. A well-worn
Indian trail along the banks of the Housatonic connected the
Schaghticoke tribe in Kent with the Stockbridge Indian community in
western Massachusetts to the north and with the Weantinock, Pootatuck
and Paugussett tribal communities to the south as far as Stratford on
Long Island Sound. It was known as the Berkshire Path.
The Indians on the whole
were friendly to the newcomers, although some bitter arguments broke out
over land sales and rights to natural resources, such as tree bark for
wood splint basket making and rights to frequent Indian fishing and
planting grounds. Most Indians thought of land rights as that of
occupancy only, not of outright ownership. Representatives of
Connecticut’s General Court were called in to settle disputes, which the
Indians usually lost.
Connecticut Assembly
records report that about 1,000 Indians were left in the state by 1756,
most considered friendly. Eventually the Indians in the northwest
corner were pushed out, except for the Schaghticokes in Kent, whose
village became a major Indian refuge for members of other tribal groups
attempting to continue their traditional way of life.
Early White
Settlement
For almost a century,
white people, mostly of European stock, especially English, had
gradually claimed or bought and settled much of the rugged territory in
the colony of Connecticut. Nearly twice as many towns were settled in
the 30 years after 1690 as in the 30 years before. The estimated
population of the Colony of Connecticut in 1730 was 60,000 and growing
rapidly. But there was one last section of the Colony, the northwest
corner or the so-called Western Lands, that was still mostly virgin
wilderness.
In the early 1700’s high-grade iron ore
had been discovered in Salisbury. White men, many of Dutch descent
migrating from the Hudson River area, began buying up land and water
rights from the Indians and a few received grants from the Connecticut
General Assembly. By 1735, Thomas Lamb was smelting iron in Lime Rock.
The General Assembly considered it illegal for anyone to buy property in
the Western Lands without its express approval and consent. The
“persons who have encroached and unjustly entered” the territory caused
great concern.
The Western Lands, with their beautiful
vistas, rich soils, abundant waterpower, exceptional iron ore, limestone
and vast stands of virgin timber were ripe for settlement. Pressure was
put on the Assembly to open up the Western Lands to development.
In 1731 the General Assembly accepted the
report of three men who had been sent to the northwest corner to survey
the land and lay out the townships. Word spread about the potential and
beauty of the rugged territory. Disagreement about the method of
selling the land broke out and complicated the process. The Assembly
finally decided to auction off the land to the highest bidders. The
money from the sales was to be used for the support of schools in the
settled towns in Connecticut. Those who had “encroached and unjustly
entered” the Western Lands were told to leave. In 1738 and in
subsequent years land in Canaan, Kent, Cornwall, Sharon, Salisbury,
Goshen and other towns, in what would become Litchfield County in 1751,
was sold, organized, and settled.
On January 3, 1738, at 1:00 o’clock in
the afternoon, Town “C” was sold at auction in New London in 53 rights,
or shares. The first fifty shares were sold outright with the remaining
three shares set apart: one for the benefit of the first “gospel
minister settled”, one to be sequestered for the use of the ministry
forever, and one for the use of a school in such town. Since Town “C”
at that time enclosed about fifty square miles, each share covered a
large piece of land. The purchasers, known as proprietors, agreed to
settle their land within two years, build a house of at least 18 feet
square and seven feet stud, and subdue and fence at least six acres of
land and pay their taxes and financial obligations. The occupants had
to remain on the land for another successive three years. If these
conditions were not met, the property would be forfeited. Proprietors
asked the Assembly committee supervising the undertaking to be
particularly watchful to see that non-resident proprietors did not send
any settlers who would likely become a burden on the town. Strong backs
and willing hands were required.
Town “C” was formally
named Canaan by the Assembly in May 1738. It is interesting to note
that the land in Canaan and Goshen was considered the most attractive,
and bids started at 60 pounds for each share. So rapid was the influx
of population that the Assembly incorporated Canaan in 1739. Perhaps
the biblical name of Canaan attracted the attention of these staunch,
church-going Christians. Some towns in the northwest corner would take
years to be incorporated.
The names of some of the early
settlers—Lawrence (Tavern/homestead), Beebe (Hill road and school),
Belden (Street), Hollenbeck (River), Holcomb (farm), Hogoboom (farm) and
Dutcher (bridge) are still familiar in the area more than two and a half
centuries later.
Taming the Wilderness
After many days of
difficult travel through wilderness to reach the Western Lands, the
early settlers set about providing for the basic necessities.
Protection from the elements and wild animals was secured, cropland
cleared and planted, and a place of worship and town government
established. It was important to these settlers that the earliest roads
would take them to their place of worship, the tax-supported
Congregational Church, the official religion of the Colony.
The winter of 1740-41
was especially severe, and many settlers suffered from the extreme cold,
deep snow and “extra-ordinary sickness.” Many farm animals froze to
death. The sturdy pioneers petitioned the General Assembly for
financial relief.
Bears, wolves and
rattlesnakes were plentiful in the northwest corner. In their earliest
action, Canaan selectmen offered bounties for the tails of dead
rattlesnakes. Blackbirds, jays and squirrels were on their hit list
too. Old records tell of hunting parties organized in the area. Five
bears were reported killed on the same day in one hunt, and five wolves
met the same fate in another hunt in 1765. Connecticut offered a bounty
of 40 shillings for “cattamounts or panthers.”
Slaves
From early town and other written records
we know that slaves once lived in the town of Canaan. Owning slaves at
that time was not uncommon. Slavery as it developed in Connecticut was
an outcome of the heritage, customs and religion of the people of the
colony. A census in 1774 tallied 5,101 slaves in the colony; by 1790
the United States census recorded 2,759 slaves and 2,801 free Negroes.
Emancipation in Connecticut came slowly in measured legal steps until
the stain of slavery ended in 1848, except for those slaves aged 64 or
older.
Certainly the slaves who
came with the earliest settlers must have participated in the
backbreaking and dangerous work of taming the wilderness. On small
farms in New England slaves usually worked side by side with their
masters. Their forced participation in the settling of Canaan and her
sister towns has not been adequately disclosed in historical records,
diaries or journals. There are a few recorded histories of slaves who
lived in the northwest corner, and most of those African-Americans lie
in unmarked graves, their personal histories unknown. Their silent,
important contributions should be respected and gratefully acknowledged.
Ye Grate Fall
From the time
of the first white settlers to the present, the water power of the
Housatonic River and the Great Falls has played an important role in the
economy of Falls Village.
It seems reasonable to
assume that the driving water force of the Great Falls and the Little
Falls (located at that time a short distance above the main falls)
attracted early settlers. The hardy pioneers were wholly dependent upon
the land to provide their vital needs. In 1738 the proprietors voted
that Humphrey Avery, chief surveyor of the town, should have choice land
adjoining “Ye Grate Falls” provided he would build a sawmill by the end
of that year. A bridge over the river was reportedly built in 1744 and
businesses were established near the falls on both sides. In those
founding years, the harnessed water powered grist, bolting, fulling and
paper mills, ironworks, and a blacksmith shop.
In 1833 the Ames Iron
Works opened on the Salisbury side of the falls in what is now known as
Amesville. Mr. Ames hired hundreds of employees who worked in multiple
shifts in the huge factory that manufactured wheels and axles for
locomotives, steamboat shafts, anchors, and cannons and cannon balls for
the Civil War. Stores, inns, taverns, banks and other businesses
flourished on both sides of the river. The center of town was a beehive
of activity.
The settlement around
the falls was known as “Canaan Falls” until the Housatonic railroad was
built along the east side of the river. The first train came steaming
into town in 1841, greeted by a festive crowd. The new station was
called “Falls Village,” and the name stuck. The first stationmaster was
listed as D. M. Hunt, strongly suggesting the David M. Hunt for whom the
town library is named.
In 1845 a plan to build
a manufacturing empire rivaling Pittsburgh or Holyoke was launched by
iron masters Messrs. Robbins and Canfield. They launched “The Water
Power Company” and envisioned a three-level mile-long canal below the
Great Falls impounding water to turn the wheels of various industries.
The canal’s stonewalls, 20 feet high in some places and 10 feet wide at
the base were built without cement. Town lore has it that at the grand
opening, when the gates opened, water squirted from leaks all along the
canal and sank the enterprise.
Part of the sturdy, dry
walls of the canal still stand today as a monument to a failed dream of
empire. In 1914 a hydro-electric power plant, still in use today, was
built by The Connecticut Power Company. The company lined about 1,900
feet of the original canal with cement and used it to guide water to a
gatehouse, where it falls 90 feet, spins the turbines and flows back
into the Housatonic River.
The French and Indian War (1756-1763)
During the 1750’s, the North American
colonies of England were engaged in a struggle, called the French and
Indian War (in Europe it was known as The Seven Years War) against the
North American colonies of France and their Indian allies. Conflicting
territorial claims, long-standing national animosities, and
Catholic/Protestant prejudices fueled the hostilities. Of most concern
to the residents of Connecticut were the series of battles that took
place in the Lake George-Lake Champlain region. In the days when
overland travel was difficult, the French had forts guarding these major
waterways to Canada, including Crown Point on Lake Champlain, and to its
south, Fort Ticonderoga.
Several thousand Connecticut men,
including many from Canaan and her sister towns, took part in several
campaigns to dislodge the French from the forts in the lakes area
mentioned above. In 1760 Canaan men participated in a successful siege
against Montreal. After two more years of war, the French surrendered
by treaty in 1763 and lost most of her possessions in North America.
(In an ironic twist—after helping the British take Fort Ticonderoga,
Montreal and Quebec from the French, Canaan men would fight to take the
same forts and cities away from the British in the Revolutionary War.)
Four veterans of the French and Indian
War are buried in Falls Village in the Haskins (Undermountain) Cemetery.
Liberty and Property – The American
Revolution
The
Connecticut Courant reported in its issue of July 12, 1774:
We hear from Canaan,
that on the 21st of June last, a large Number of the most
respectable Inhabitants of that and neighboring Towns, assembled
together, at the Sign of the Brazen Ball and raised a Standard for
Liberty, 78 Feet high, and fixed a Scarlet Flag on the Top, 15 Feet in
Length, with the Words LIBERTY and PROPERTY inscribed on it in
large Capitals. After which they retired to Capt. Lawrence’s Tavern,
where a Number of loyal and constitutional toasts were
drank….
On that memorable day in
June when a group of local patriots raised the LIBERTY AND PROPERTY
flag, they were, like many other patriots in Connecticut, reacting to
the rising tensions between England and her American colonies. News of
the extreme measures the mother country was taking to punish the Colony
of Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party had spread throughout the
colonies. Enraged patriots were uniting in organized protest. Nine
months after the flag raising in Canaan, the first shots of the
Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord.
LIBERTY AND PROPERTY
were understood to be fundamental rights, and the patriots of Canaan
intended to guard fiercely these two pillars of English law. “LIBERTY
AND PROPERTY” would become a popular, bonding cry shared by New
England patriots. Canaan men, as well as men from sister towns,
enlisted of their own free will and served with bravery and distinction
as volunteers in Continental Line regiments or in their local militia.
Canaan men were involved
in the Revolutionary War on many fronts, including: the capture of Fort
Ticonderoga, the ill-fated trek to capture Montreal and Quebec, Valley
Forge (two died there), the battles at Stony Point, Long Island,
Monmouth, Saratoga, Trenton, Princeton and Yorktown. Some served under
Generals Washington, Clinton, Putnam and Benedict Arnold. Two Canaan
men signed up as Minutemen, and a town official served as an express
rider carrying messages between commanders and government officials. A
Canaan fifer and a drummer volunteered for duty.
In addition, all through
the Revolution Canaan provided many necessities such as made-for-war
iron goods, guns and their accoutrements, blankets, clothing, shoes,
meat, flour and hundreds of bushels of grains and charcoal. Heavy
taxation provided money for the cause.
On the home front, a
Committee of Safety took care of the families of absent soldiers and
made sure they had the necessities of life. Women wove cloth and sewed
clothing for the soldiers and with their older children, kept the farms
going.
Connecticut would become
known as The Arsenal of the Revolution, and Canaan earned its share of
that proud title. The town honorably defended the fledgling idea of
democracy and freedom for the common man and helped launch a new nation
based on those principles.
Seventeen veterans of the Revolutionary War are buried in Canaan, many
of them officers.
The Town of Canaan Splits in
Two
When the town of Canaan
was first settled in 1738 it comprised about 52 square miles. The
mountains that formed a natural barrier between the northern and the
southern parts of the town caused communication problems right from the
start.
The Congregational
Church was the state-sponsored religion in Connecticut and by law was
supported through local taxation until 1818. Church attendance was
mandatory, and the difficulty of getting to church services over long
distances, rough roads and in inclement weather caused the first split
in the town. In 1769 the Ecclesiastical Society that had encompassed
the whole town split, and two Congregational churches, north and south,
accommodated the faithful. It is reasonable to assume that the two
congregations slowly developed their own distinct identities.
For the next 89 years
the subject of splitting Canaan in two came up again and again in
official meetings. A petition to the State to divide the town would be
voted, and then another vote would recall the petition. This on-again,
off-again dance ended in 1858, when the Legislature of the State passed
in their May session official authorization to divide the town into
North Canaan and Canaan.
At the time of the
division two committee reports perhaps best spell out the frustrations
that led to the split. “It is believed that there are few Towns in our
State that nature has done so much to divide as it has to this Town,” a
committee report stated. Another committee reported “…the Town is
naturally divided from the east line nearly to the west line by an
impassable mountain thus making two distinct communities with little
intercourse and but few interests in common that we have no common
center for the transaction of Town business and cannot have except at
such a distance from the actual centre as to make the distance to be
traveled so great as to prevent many of the Inhabitants from attending
Town Meeting, thus leaving the whole business to be done by a few and
the majority remaining ignorant of the condition of the affairs of the
Town that the wants and conditions of neither division of the Town are
properly understood or appreciated by the other.”
Dividing the town was
not an easy task. Who would own the town records up to 1858? Who would
take care of paupers? How should the town funds be divided? Where
exactly is the division line? These questions and many, many more were
figured out and the separation was completed in a friendly manner.
Questions about the boundary line, however, were not permanently settled
until 1879. The final act of separation came in 1890 when the David M.
Hunt Library was being built in Falls Village. Falls Village’s support
of the Douglas Library in North Canaan, which both towns had equally
supported since the split, officially ended.
The Civil War
(1861-1865)
The Civil War affected every hamlet, town
and city in this country. Before it ended, 600,000 men from both sides
would die defending their deeply held beliefs. When war commenced, the
men from Canaan immediately answered Abraham Lincoln’s call to defend
the Union. Many were members of The Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery
Company. At the beginning of the war the Second Connecticut defended
Washington, D.C., but later the Company was transferred to the infantry
when Ulysses S. Grant became the General-In-Chief of the Union Army.
Many Canaan men participated in some of the major, bloodiest battles of
the war: Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, The Wilderness, Cold Harbor,
Fisher’s Hill, Cedar Creek, Newport News, Antietam, Fredicksburg, Bull
Run, and the siege of Petersburg. Some Canaan men who fell in battle
were buried where they fell in the South.
Fifty-one veterans of the Civil War are
buried in Falls Village. Ten of them gave their lives for their
country.
The Iron Industry
For the next hundred
years after the Revolutionary War, the iron industry in the northwest
corner was in its heyday. Iron furnaces were built in both the northern
part of Canaan and in the Falls Village section. High-grade Salisbury
iron ore was transported to the brightly burning furnaces, and the
processed pig iron was used to manufacture everything from common pots
to huge anchors. Hundreds of acres of timber were clear-cut to make
charcoal to feed the iron furnaces, and the night skies in the northwest
area were lit up from the red hot fires of numerous iron furnaces
running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Smoke and soot were
regarded as acceptable signs of economic progress, and the destruction
of the local forests to make charcoal did not seem to raise many
concerns, if the lack of protests reported in the local newspaper is any
measure.
Iron fueled a robust
economy in Falls Village for decades. Across the Housatonic River, at
the site of the old Ames Iron Works (which closed after the Civil War),
a mighty trip hammer, named for Thor, the God of Thunder, pounded away
at the Housatonic Railroad shops. Hundreds of workers toiled to
refurbish, repair and make parts for locomotives and railroad cars. The
town’s population grew and the center of town bustled with activity.
The Housatonic Railroad shops were closed down shortly after that
company merged with the N.Y.N.H & H.R.R. in 1898 and many businesses in
the Falls Village center collapsed and many families moved out of town.
Several factors doomed
the local iron industry: Among them, the Bessemer steel process,
invented in 1855 in England, made it possible to manufacture steel
economically from molten iron ore, but it required a continuous,
enormous amount of water for the process that was not locally
available. Also, as the country moved west, the discovery of large
iron deposits and the availability of open-pit mining in the Lake
Superior area contributed to the collapse of the local iron industry. In
1923, in East Canaan, the last working iron furnace shut down.
The impact on the
environment of the charcoal industry is still with us. Many hillside
forests lack a variety of ancient hardwood trees and instead are dotted
with uniform-sized trees that grew after clear-cutting.
A Return to a Peaceful
Village
Today, contrary to its
industrial past, the Town of Canaan is a quiet, peaceful town. There is
some noise, however, that Villagers still love to hear--the thunder of
the Great Falls in the spring, when the rushing waters of the Housatonic
River, the second largest river in the State, swollen with spring rains
and melting snow and ice, spill over the dam. Huge plumes of mist float
in the air as the water tumbles sixty feet over rocks and ledge. It is
a beautiful, awe-inspiring sight that draws visitors from distant
miles.
The quiet and beauty of
Falls Village makes it a place where people come to enjoy life in a New
England country setting, neighbor still helps neighbor, the virtues of
small-town life exist, and the town’s long, colorful history is
cherished and preserved.
Author’s Notes:
I would like to acknowledge the historians whose excellent works were a
great help to me in writing this history: The writings of Faith
Campbell, George Farnsworth, Winton B. Rodgers, Allyn Fuller, Edward
Kirby, Harold W. Felton, Marie Collins Graham, Nellie M. Rodgers and
Lucianne Lavin, Director of Research at The Institute of American Indian
Studies,
Information was also
culled from the Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut and
the Public Records of the State of Connecticut, The Connecticut
Western News, Town of Canaan records, the First Census of the
United States (1790), the files in the Connecticut Room at the David
M. Hunt Library and The Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society, The
Historical Statistical and Industrial Review, State of Connecticut
(1884) The Civil War Archives of the State of Connecticut,
publications by the Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut
(1933), Complicity-How Connecticut Chained itself to Slavery (The
Hartford Courant 2002) The Lure of the Litchfield Hill, The
Lakeville Journal and several websites.
I would like to thank
Jack Mahoney, Ellery and Mary Lu Sinclair, Faye Lawson and Judy Jacobs,
Town of Canaan Historian, for their valuable suggestions, encouragement
and help in writing this history.
Researched and written
by Betty Tyburski.
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