Date: Sat 28-Feb-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

history-Cruson-Big-Y-grocery

Full Text:

Big Y Is Just The Latest In A Long Line Of Newtown Grocery Stores

(with photos)

Big Y opened its "World Class Market" in Newtown this week, giving residents a

choice of three major local supermarkets for their weekly shopping. But

getting groceries in Newtown wasn't always this easy.

In an article which Daniel Cruson wrote for the Newtown Historical Society's

Rooster's Crow newsletter several years ago, the town historian pointed out

that Newtown's original settlers produced almost everything they needed on

their own small farms and bartered for other goods and services. Even when

they dealt with traders, their purchases usually were made with one of their

farm products, not with money.

Local traders gave the goods to regional traders in places like Danbury or

Bridgeport (which was then called Newfield Harbor) in exchange for goods that

Newtowners wanted but were produced elsewhere, such as paper, books, sugar and

spices, tea, and metal tools.

The Industrial Revolution changed all of that, Mr Cruson said.

The increased productivity of machine technology created surpluses of farm

products which were now distributed to markets in other areas rather than

being consumed locally. At the same time, small shops opened and produced more

hats, buttons and other items than residents needed. By the mid-1850s, the

rubber industry set up a large factory in the Glen area of Sandy Hook and the

nearby population of workers increased noticeably. Many residents now were

being paid in cash, creating a money, as opposed to a barter, economy.

Stores began to spring up to get the flood of new, cheaply produced goods into

the hands of consumers. In his sleuthing, Mr Cruson learned that the first

merchant in town probably was David Curtis, who operated a store around 1800

at the corner Main and West Streets, where Flagpole Realty is located now.

After Curtis, the Nichols family operated a store there, eventually selling it

to the partnership of Baldwin and Beers.

A Wide Range Of Goods

At this time, the store was a 1«-story building. In 1825, Baldwin and Beers

built a two-story addition on the north side of the building to be used as a

town hall. After Mr Baldwin died, Henry Sanford bought the building. In 1872

he cut off the store section and moved it to the rear of the property where it

still exists and is presently occupied by Flowers on the Green. Mr Sanford

expanded the remaining two-story building, creating the building as it is

still seen today.

By this time the general store carried a wide range of goods from cloth to

ready made clothes, hats, buttons and bows, in addition to dry goods,

hardware, and a range of goods that had been previously carried by the town's

traders.

After Mr Sanford's death in 1882, there was a brief succession of partnerships

which ran the store at the flagpole. One of these partners was Sanford's

son-in-law, Robert H. Beers. R.H. Beers was the leading merchant in Newtown

Village until he died of a heart attack in his store in 1922, Mr Cruson said.

His death didn't stop the tradition of retail trading at this location,

however, for two years later the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, operating

as the A&P, opened a store here.

Over the years, general stores also opened in other locations on Main Street

and in other sections of town. The most famous of these is the General Store

which is still in operation just south of the town hall. The General Store was

built in the 1850s by David H. Johnson.

In 1914 Rodney P. Shepard took over the General Store and soon began a

partnership with Levi C. Morris. Mr Morris had been operating his own store

just behind his own house at 14 Main Street until a disastrous fire destroyed

his business. Shepard and Morris joined forces and operated the General Store

until both partners died within a few months of each other in 1941 and 1942.

In Sandy Hook, William B. Glover began selling goods out of a small store on

the corner of Glen and Church Hill Roads in 1831. In 1857 he moved the small

wooden store building across the street and constructed what became known as

the Red Brick Store.

In the southern part of town, a store was operated by Austin Blakeman in the

mid-1890s on Botsford Hill Road in a building that today houses a printing

operation. There also were stores on Hattertown and Huntingtown roads,

including one at the corner of Hattertown and Boggs Hill Road (Morgan Four

Corners) that was begun by Ezra Morgan in the 1830s. Besides being a

shopkeeper, Mr Morgan was a prosperous farmer, president of the Hatter's Bank

of Bethel and a politician, serving three terms as a representative to the

General Assembly.

Still other mercantile establishments were operating in Hawleyville by the

later years of the 19th century as well as in Dodgingtown and in the Berkshire

district of town.

The Birth of Grocery Stores

By the beginning of this century, some dramatic economic changes were taking

place that would change general stores into grocery stores and change the

pattern of marketing in Newtown forever, Mr Cruson said. During the Industrial

Revolution farmers began to concentrate on producing one or two cash crops

instead of everything needed to feed their families. Poor soil, combined with

the small size of most farms, made the farms inefficient, prompting many

farmers to sell their farms or abandon food crops and turn to dairy farming.

"The only crops being planted in Newtown by the early 20th century were feed

grains for cows," Mr Cruson said.

Stores which once sold mostly dry goods and luxuries now increasingly sold

food. Food had to be transported to stores, and for this, it had to be

packaged. This led to the development of cardboard packaging and the tin can.

It had a major impact on companies like Samuel Curtis' button factory in

Berkshire, which abandoned button making in favor of cardboard packaging,

becoming the Curtis Packaging Company of today.

Chain grocery stores could order goods in bulk through a central warehouse

operation at a substantial savings in price. This procedural change led to the

birth of the "super" market and the eventual demise of the general store.

After the A&P store came to Newtown in 1924, the First National Stores opened

a store in Sandy Hook, at 4 Washington Avenue (where the Sandy Hook Post

Office later operated until 1994).

Independent local merchants tried to fight the advantages of the major chains

by combining their purchasing. In 1928, William Honan in Hawleyville and

Hobart Warner at the Red Brick Store in Sandy Hook combined their purchasing

power with a group of 12 retail food merchants in Danbury.

"Their efforts were fairly successful in that they remained in business,

whereas many of Newtown's small outlying stores closed during the Depression,"

Mr Cruson said.

In April 1962, after operating for 40 years in the Chase block, the A&P closed

its operations there and moved to a new and much larger store in the Queen

Street Shopping Center, across the street from the Grand Union that had opened

in 1957. The First National store in Sandy Hook closed in 1962 when the larger

First National Supermarket was built in the Berkshire Shopping Center in

Danbury.

For the next 20 years, the status of shopping remained fairly stable. Then, in

the late 1980s, Stop & Shop announced that it would build a super store in

what would become Sand Hill Plaza. Not only would this cavernous store have

every type of processed and unprocessed food imaginable, it would return to

the concept of a general store, offering everything from books to

pharmaceuticals to underwear to seasonal goods like snow shovels and grills.

The construction of Super Stop & Shop, and the renovation and expansion of the

Grand Union, had a large impact on shopping in Newtown. The A&P closed almost

immediately. Newtown Fruit & Flounder closed, the Red Brick Store closed and

other neighborhood grocery stores closed or scaled back their operations,

becoming convenience stores.

"Newtown is fortunate that it has been able to save several of its early store

buildings, but the businesses that they contain are a far cry from the

thriving food trade of a century ago," Mr Cruson said. "They are now quaint

convenience stores in which one can visit a reflection of the past, while

waiting to pay for coffee and paper at 6:30 am."