Date: Fri 19-Dec-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DOTTIE

Quick Words:

history-Newtown-Cruson

Full Text:

Rural Newtown Remembered In Photographic Anthology

(with cuts, book pages)

BY DOROTHY EVANS

Old wood to burn,

Old wine to drink,

Old books to read,

Old friends to keep.

-- Ancient Cornish prayer

And, we might add, old photographs to study.

Actually, some of the best fireside reading this holiday might not be the new

P.D. James mystery or the latest Elizabeth George thriller -- though we hope

you'll find those under your tree as well.

This year, wish for history not mystery and maybe Santa will give you a copy

of Town Historian Dan Cruson's new book, titled Newtown, Images of America .

Published by Arcadia of Dover, N.H., in early December, the 128-page anthology

was compiled by Mr Cruson to provide as complete a photographic record as

possible of Newtown during the historical period between the Civil War and

World War II.

"There are a few benchmark photos that most everyone has seen... and some new

ones that they haven't. It's all here in one place organized so you can thumb

through it," Mr Cruson said with obvious satisfaction.

The 30-year town resident and past Historical Society president said that

after spending so many years researching and writing about Newtown's past and

poring over old photographs with magnifying glass at hand, he was especially

pleased to finally see those images from the past gathered together in book

form.

"Believe it or not, we've actually got a picture record of all four

flagpoles," he said, and one rare photograph taken in 1870 of two Trinity

churches standing side by side -- the 1792 white clapboard version and its

stone successor that was erected nearly a century later.

The more than 200 black-and-white photographs were taken from several sources,

Mr Cruson said, including the files of the Newtown Historical Society, the

group that commissioned him to undertake the project last summer.

The photographs are arranged and explained in a narrative sequence that serves

Mr Cruson's purpose well of portraying the gradual process of growth and

change as it affected residents of Newtown, Sandy Hook and other outlying

communities like Botsford and Hawleyville.

"When I look at some of the old dirt roads and views of the open countryside,

I get a real feeling of another time and another way of life," Mr Cruson said.

Scenes which he found particularly intriguing were the summer cottage

communities of Riverside, harvesting ice on Foundry Pond, the 1912 war

maneuvers and the 1928 equivalent of highway snow removal showing a work crew

with shovels clearing Sugar Street by hand.

Copies of Newtown, Images of America , may be purchased for $16.99 each at The

Book Review in Sand Hill Plaza, at Barnes & Noble on Backus Avenue in Danbury,

and by calling the Newtown Historical Society at 426-5937.