NOTE (April 26, 2023; 2:52 pm): This story has been updated to reflect the proper name of the Fabric Fire Hose Company predecessor.

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“The ABCs of Newtown” is a series tying each letter of the alphabet to something in Newtown. This week we continue with a look at the town this newspaper and approximately 27,000 people call home.

On July 25, 1705, three men from Stratford — Justus Bush, Captain Samuel Hawley, and William Junos — met with three sachems, or chiefs, of the Pootatuck, Mauquash, Massampus and Nunnawaug tribes, at their village on the banks of the Housatonic River (in Southbury, opposite what is now the Shady Rest neighborhood in Sandy Hook).

The men purchased a 5- by 8-mile parcel of land that became Newtown. For that land they paid with “four guns, four broadcloth coats, four blankitts, four ruffelly coats, four collars, ten shirts, ten pair of stockings, forty pounds of lead, ten pounds of powder, and forty knives,” according to Ezra Johnson’s History of Newtown.

The town was originally known by the Native American name, Quanneapague.

Speaking with The Newtown Bee in 2004, then-Town Historian Dan Cruson said, “The Indians were probably in culture shock.

“They had no concept of ownership and control of land,” he said, adding they would not have understood the Englishmen’s absolute use of land, with fences to keep others out.

“The Indians thought they could pass and repass over the land,” Cruson said.

Bush, Hawley and Junos did not have permission to purchase the land from the indigenous people, however. The General Court in New Haven eventually heard about the transaction and voted, “whereas some persons, contrary to the laws of this colony, lately purchased of the Indians some thousand acres of land, this court doth recommend that the offenders be prosecuted for their illegal purchase.”

By May 1706, Junos offered to surrender his holdings and Bush and Hawley both made restitution. There was no further prosecution.

“They were slapped on the wrist,” Cruson said.

In 1708, upon the petition of 36 settlers, the General Court granted a charter, bestowing town rights upon the community. It was decreed that it “shall be one entire town, called by the name of Newtown.”

Bush, Hawley and Junos had to turn the deed over to a group of 37 men, called proprietors, who laid out and settled the town.

Newtown Village was laid out that year. In 1711, the General Assembly formally recognized Newtown as a town.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The first business meeting of Newtown’s town officers was held in the home of Peter Hubbell on September 24, 1711. Hubbell was voted Newtown’s first Town Clerk.

Abraham Kimberly was named constable; Ebenezer Prindle and Thomas Sharp, surveyors of highways, Joseph Gray and Daniel Foote as fence viewers, and Johnathan Booth as field driver or hayward.

Also during that first town meeting, a committee was appointed to allot land for highways. The Northerly Cross Highway, which was east-west, was what later became Church Hill Road, West Street and Castle Hill Road. The Southerly Cross Highway later became Glover Avenue and Sugar Street (Route 302).

On December 4, 1711, during a meeting at the home of Daniel Foote, Ebenezer Prindle was named the first selectman, and Samuel Sanford and John Platt named townsmen for the year. Prindle, Platt and Sanford were also elected as listers and collectors, and Abraham Kimberly as a “brander of horses.”

The town has continued to be governed by a town committee headed by a first selectman. Daniel Rosenthal is the current, and 116th, first selectman of Newtown. Zita B. McMahon, elected in 1991, was the first woman to be elected to the position.

POPULATIONS

By 1756 — half a century after its initial founding — the town’s population had grown to 1,253.

By 1790 that number had jumped to 2,903. The population continued growing steadily until 1880, when it reached 4,013 people.

For the next 50 years, however, the population began dropping, eventually reaching 2,635 residents by 1930.

Within the next decade the population increased by 52.7 percent, springboarding back to 4,023 people. The town has continued to grow, reaching 27,560 residents by the 2010 census.

It dipped slightly by 2010, however, with 27,173 people registered that year.

According to Connecticut-Demographics.com, ours is the 39th most populated municipality in the state, based on the 2021 American Community Survey, with 27,388 residents.

(Bridgeport was first, with a population of 148,529.)

The 2020 census said there were 9,934 households in town.

NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES

There are currently 14 locations in Newtown on the National Register of Historic Places.

The first place added to the Register was The Budd-Glover House, at 50 Main Street, added March 11, 1982.

Additional locations, by order of inclusion, include:

New York Belting & Packing Company (Fabric Fire Hose Company), 45-71 and 79-89 Glen Road (July 2, 1982);

The Nathan B. Lattin Farm, 22 Walker Hill Road (June 24, 1990);

Hattertown Historic District, the area of Aunt Park Lane, Castle Meadow, Hattertown and Hi Barlow roads (1996);

Newtown Borough Historic District, generally the area of Main Street from Hawley Road to Academy Lane (1996), including the Main Street flagpole;

The Nichols Satinet Mill Site, within Orchard Hill Nature Center, Huntingtown Road (March 23, 1996);

C.H. Booth Library, Edmond Town Hall and Newtown Meeting House, all Main Street (2002);

Camps No 10 and 41 of Rochambeau’s Army, on the grounds of Hawley School (June 6, 2002); The John Glover House, 53 Echo Valley Road (September 17, 2002);

The Caleb Baldwin Tavern, 32 Main Street (September 23, 2002);

March Route of Rochambeau’s Army-Reservoir Road, marked at the junction of Reservoir Road and Mt Pleasant Road (February 8, 2003); and

The Sanford-Curtis-Thurber House, 71 Riverside Road (June 21, 2007).

NOTABLE RESIDENTS

Many residents have achieved fame beyond their hometown. The artist — and former resident — David Merrill celebrated dozens of them when he included their names on his murals within Edmond Town Hall. Completed in the mid-1980s, the murals celebrate “Notables of Newtown” residents. Among the dozens named are musician Roger Ball, artist Stella Bloch, former State Commissioner of Agriculture Shirley Ferris, professional dancers Virginia (Lee) and Mack Lathrop, actor Denis Leary, choreographer Marsha Ismailoff Mark, actress Shirley Jean Rickert Measures, boxing champion Floyd Patterson, painter Henry Schnakenberg, writer Ray Sipherd, illustrator Harrie Wood, and Governors Henry Dutton, Luzon B. Morris and Isaac Toucey.

Additionally — and certainly by no means a fully inclusive list — Chris Licht, who is approaching his first anniversary as president of CNN, grew up in town.

The multiple Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Amber Edwards, author Suzanne Collins, children’s book illustrator Bruce Degen, the actor Anthony Edwards, the author Justin Scott, and the actress and author Jenna Von Oy live or have lived among those who call Newtown home.

Former residents also include Caitlyn (nee Bruce) Jenner, the Olympic gold medalist and reality personality; the late film and theater director, producer, screenwriter and actor Elia Kazan; and the late Joanna Cole, author of The Magic School Bus series.

Charles Goodyear (1800-1860), inventor of the vulcanization process; and James T. Brunot (1902-1984), worked with the inventor of Criss-Cross Words and developed it into the international phenomenon Scrabble, both lived in town.

James Thurber had a Georgian style house on Riverside Road during the mid-20th Century that served as a weekend-summer home with his first wife Althea.

Robert Fulton Jr (1909-2004), an adventurer, sculptor and poet whose innovative thinking created air safety and rescue devices that saved countless lives between World War II and the Gulf War, spent the second half of his life living on 50 acres in town.

Burke Marshall (1922-2003), head of the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice during the Civil Rights Era, retired to town.

Dr Henry Rogers of Newtown developed an optics camera in 1947.

In 1931, Edward B. Allen of Newtown invented a work clamp for the Singer Sewing Machine.

While all of the above lived at least part of their lives in town, other notables spent some time here. Kevin Bacon and Brad Renfro were among the cast members to film scenes of Sleepers at Fairfield Hills; Kirsten Dunst and Ryan Gosling filmed scenes of All Good Things in a private home on Lake Lillinonah; and Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy filmed scenes for Adam’s Rib at Far Away Meadows.

At the time of that film’s production, Far Away Meadows was also the Sandy Hook home of married actors-turned-screenwriters Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, who also wrote the film with its co-stars in mind.

Far Away Meadows is also the former home of the international star of opera, movies, radio and stage Grace Moore, who was married to the Spanish actor Valentin Parera.

Additionally, scenes of Home Movie (2008), with Adrian Pasdar; and BlackMale (2000), with Bokeem Woodbine and Roger Rees, were filmed in town.

DID YOU KNOW...

*Bennetts Bridge Road led to one of the earliest bridges to cross the Housatonic, connecting Newtown with the Kettletown section of Southbury. The family name Bennett was common in the town’s early history.

*Sergeant John Botsford, for whom the Botsford section of Newtown is named, was one of the first settlers of Newtown.

*Newtown Boy Scout Troop 1 was born in 1910.

*In the 1800s, Newtown had more button shops than any other town in the state.

*Cockshure Island (later Hubbell Island) is a former island that was located one-third of a mile north of the Sandy Hook Bridge and was submerged after the construction of Stevenson Dam. Cockshure was a Pootatuck Indian who owned the island until 1733.

*According to the WPA, the Dodgingtown section of Newtown was “a crossroads hamlet named for the many drovers, horse-traders and peddlers ‘on the dodge’ who congregated at the crossroad taverns.”

*Newtown’s first Girl Scout Troop listed eight girls on its official roster when it was formally registered on April 1, 1930.

Agnes Cullens, wife of the then new minister of the Congregational Church, Paul A. Cullens, had organized the town’s first Girl Scout troop in 1929, but without official status, the group followed the Girl Scout program for about a year before registering with the Bridgeport Council and receiving the designation of Troop 37. In those early years, it operated as a “lone troop” since it was somewhat isolated from council headquarters.

*Edmond Town Hall began screening movies in 1930, the year the building at 45 Main Street opened. Tickets were 40 cents each for adults, 25 cents for children.

*Halfway River forms the boundary between the towns of Newtown and Monroe for almost all of its course.

*The Hattertown area of Newtown was the site of several hat factories during the 19th Century.

*Glover Hawley was Newtown’s first postmaster.

*The Hawley School, dedicated in 1922, was the first public building in Newtown to have central heating (with coal), indoor plumbing, a gymnasium, and an auditorium.

Construction of the school was financed by Mary Hawley and named in honor of her parents.

*Lake George Road never ran along the bank of a body of water. It was named for two local property owners, Thomas Lake and George Bank.

*The Main Street flagpole — originally called the Liberty Pole — stood 70 feet tall, looked like a ship’s mast, and first appeared in 1876 to coincide with the country’s centennial.

The pole has been replaced three times: twice by wooden poles (1892 and 1914) and then by the current spun steel pole in 1950. The two most recent poles have been 100 feet high.

*The Middle Gate School district was so named because the land held the middle of three tollgates on the Newtown-Bridgeport Turnpike. The area was originally referred to as Bear Hill.

*The Newtown Bee was not the first newspaper based in town.

The Newtown Chronicle was first published by J. E. Madigan with an issue date of April 8, 1880. The newspaper was an “openly political weekly newspaper,” according to Town Historian Dan Cruson’s A Mosaic of Newtown History. The Chronicle was published for the final time on April 8, 1882 with an editorial reading, “having other business opportunities which to us is more profitable, we relinquish the business for that reason. Editor Smith of The Bee has with much forensic business ability, bought us out.”

*The town’s oldest community of faith is Newtown Congregational Church.

Worship services and other events were conducted in private homes following the formation of the Ecclesiastical Society of Newtown (later Newtown Congregational Church) in 1711. The Reverend Thomas Tousey accepted the call and began his ministry in Newtown in May 1714.

*The Newtown General Store on Main Street first opened during the Civil War.

*The town’s oldest fire company, Newtown Hook & Ladder Fire Company No 1 has been serving residents since 1883, when a sum of $600 was appropriated for the purchase of a hand-drawn truck. A State Charter was granted to Newtown Hook & Ladder Company in September of that year.

The fire company had its beginnings in 1803, however, after the Town reportedly refused to grant a request for $100 for a fire engine. Volunteers for the next four score years were duty bound to provide their own buckets and ladders.

*Newtown Police Department was founded in 1971.

*The first burying ground established for the community of Newtown was voted into place on March 24, 1711. One and a half acres in a lower part of the community was set aside; this section remains part of Newtown Village Cemetery on Elm Drive.

*The first public swimming facility in the town was a large swimming pool dug at Dickinson Park in 1956. Dickinson was the town’s first park, established one year earlier.

The pond-pool at Dickinson was closed and then filled in with dirt in 2006.

*The oldest of the three such events in town, the Ram Pasture Tree Lighting was first celebrated December 6, 1985.

*The Sandy Hook School District was first organized in 1779, and was first called Poodertook Brook District.

*Shepard Hill Road, formerly Hawley Folly Road, was named for John Shepard, who moved to Newtown in 1737.

*Tory Lane refers to the days of the Revolutionary War when Newtown was initially a pro-English stronghold. In 1774-75, the town government and Newtown’s two members of the state’s general assembly were still loyal to the king; the assembly ousted one, the other resigned.

*Wendover Road acquired its picturesque name in the 1940s, when residents voted by an 8-7 margin to replace “Carcass Lane.” A slaughterhouse had once been located at the end of the passageway.

*Women first voted in elections held in Newtown in October 1920.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.