Cornwall Historical Society History

To some, the town of Cornwall, tucked away in the Litchfield Hills in the extreme northwestern corner of Connecticut, evokes the image of new England Sleepy Hollow, where, as Washington Irving wrote, "population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them." Three quarters of a century after the famous Connecticut minister Horace Bushnell declared that industrialization had brought an end to "The Age of Homespun," Cornwall farmers were still spinning wool from their own sheep into cloth by hand and grinding their grain at the town's water-driven gristmills.

But a deeper look at the history of this seemingly isolated town reveals its intimate and intricate interaction with the wider trends of the state, the nation, and indeed the world. Changes in beliefs, culture, technology, transportation, economics, education, and other spheres changed the life-- and the look--of the community. Both Cornwall's continuities and its transformations are well illustrated in this selection of photographs from the end of the Civil War to the start of World War II.

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The English settlers who came from Massachusetts to form the Connecticut colony in the 1630s were Puritans, and, while interested in making a living, they sought to establish a society that would embody the principles of Bible Christianity. They organized towns centered geographically, politically, and socially, as well as spiritually, around the church. Just over a century later, descendents of the New England Puritans began to settle Cornwall and its adjoining towns, then the colony's last frontier. But they were a people who had already made the transition historians have characterized as "from Puritan to Yankee." While they were still predominantly Calvinist and often very devout, the pursuit of worldly advancement had become a far greater force in shaping their lives. It was the desire for land, not for holiness, that motivated their journey into the wilderness.

In 1738, the Connecticut colony auctioned off undivided shares in what became Cornwall. Purchasers had to be British subjects and residents of Connecticut and they had to clear land and build houses within a specified period of time. Most of those who purchased the shares, however, brought on credit, and intended not to settle there themselves but to resell, at a profit, their shares and the land they had received. In short, Cornwall from the start was a creature of land speculation. After a time, some of the shares passed to people who actually wanted to live in Cornwall, or at least to hire settlers to clear land and build houses on their property.

In contrast to earlier Connecticut settlements, Cornwall's first settlers did not establish a town residential area centered around the church with farm holdings in outlying areas. Rather, they selected land scattered throughout the entire extent of the township. For, as a study of Litchfield County by the Connecticut Agricultural Extension Service puts it, "Like gold, farm land is where you find it in Litchfield County... farmers are widely dispersed to make the most of scattered productive soils or level stretches of land." These isolated holdings only gradually developed into villages--often referred to as the six (or seven or even eight) Cornwalls.