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Newtown Remembered- Sarah Mannix: Nuturing Is Her Nature

(with photos)

BY ANDREA ZIMMERMANN

Sarah Mannix's forefathers toiled to create a life from the land by farming,

so it is not surprising to learn she has spent the past eight decades working

to make both children and plants blossom.

Sarah has lived all her life in Newtown on the same property where her father

was born (what is now the corner of Route 25 and Greenbriar Lane). On a recent

rainy day, she sat in her cozy living room where African violets bloom year

'round and shared some thoughts about the town she loves.

Her grandparents, Sarah and Edward Murray, immigrated to the United States

from Ireland when they were 15 and 18, respectively. Although they were not

acquainted, both came through Ellis Island, where they were offered jobs in

the same Long Island household.

"Farmers, even from Brookfield and Newtown, went to Ellis Island and made

arrangements to take [workers] home and give them jobs," said Sarah,

recounting stories she had heard as a child. "My grandfather went to work for

a man who had an estate with a greenhouse in Long Island. My grandmother was

taken by the lady of the house to be a seamstress. All she did was mend things

or sew clothes for the children. [My grandparents] married while still in Long

Island."

Later, the couple moved to Brookfield where Mr Murray had secured a job with a

farmer and worked until he was able to buy his own farm in Newtown. The family

then moved to Currituck Road.

Catherine Murray married James Farrell and the couple lived in the Farrell

family home in Newtown. When they decided to build a new house further back

from the road, Sarah's mother requested it have no fireplaces. "The old house

had probably three or four fireplaces upstairs and I suppose one in every room

downstairs - one with a little room you could walk into, where they smoked

meat - and you had to carry all the wood upstairs. That was the way they

heated the house then," said Sarah.

Her father was a dairy farmer, who also raised chickens and grew vegetables

for the family. Although the milk was picked up and transported to Bridgeport,

Mr Farrell carried any excess sweet corn, squash, or turnips to market in the

city in his horse-drawn wagon. "My father's first car was an Oakland. It was a

long touring car with a top that would go down - and that was wonderful!"

Her mother raised turkeys - "her forte" - for many years, so the family was

too busy on Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the holiday. But on Christmas,

"everything stopped" and the family relaxed and shared a large turkey feast

with relatives.

The main street in front of Sarah's house was a dirt road until around the

1930s when "they put in a two-lane concrete road from Bridgeport to Danbury,"

which took a couple of years to build, according to Sarah. "They poured it in

sections. It took a lot of time to get to Bridgeport. There was a flagman [at

each end of the construction]; one would give the last car in line a flag to

take to the other flagman so he could let traffic through coming the other

way." When Sarah went with her friends to movies in Bridgeport, they often

by-passed the construction by going through Bethel and Redding. In later

years, the road was widened and an asphalt coat applied.

When Sarah was growing up, kids had fun and pursued their interests, but not

in the structured way that exists today. During the winter, sledding and

skating were popular activities. Those, like Sarah, who had horses would ride

by themselves or get together on the weekends to ride the back roads. Her

favorite routes were up Brushy Hill and around Taunton Lake.

Swimming in the lake was considered too dangerous when Sarah was growing up.

Boys only were able to cool off in the swimming hole located on what is now

Taunton Press property. But when somebody drowned there, it became off-limits

to all Newtown youth, she said.

"You walked to where you wanted to go," she recalled. "I used to walk from

here to the library - it was in the fieldstone building [at the head of Main

Street] then."

Families, churches, and other organizations in town had picnics and social

events. Softball games were spontaneously organized. "We had a basketball hoop

in the barn and the two boys [nearby] came over to play and we played all

summer long one year," said Sarah. "Kids had cats and dogs - there never

seemed to be a lack for anything to do. Every holiday and weekend was spent

with family...We used every bit of summer because winters were pretty long."

Sarah attended South Center School, once located on the island where Elm Drive

meets Route 25 and now on private property in Sandy Hook near St John's

Church. She began eighth grade in Sandy Hook, but completed the year in the

new Hawley School that opened in the spring of 1922. "The elementary school

was on the bottom; we were upstairs. The noticeable thing in the growth of the

school was there were a lot more in elementary grades. In eighth grade there

were at least 18 of us but by the time we were seniors there were only 12,"

said Sarah. "The boys mostly left school and went to work in garages and some,

on the farms - there were a lot of farms in Newtown then. Some of the girls

[left school] to work in the Tea Factory in Hawleyville...others had jobs

taking care of youngsters. And some went to Booth and Bayless Business School

in Bridgeport and commuted there on the train."

During the school year, each class had a play; admission was charged and

usually all the parents attended. School dances were anticipated by students,

who hired "good bands out of Bridgeport," because everyone had gone to

Saturday dancing school held in the old town hall.

Sarah graduated from Hawley, then attended Connecticut Froebel Normal School,

a private school in Bridgeport which trained women to be teachers for

kindergarten and primary grades. She was able to take a bus to school in the

city. "A lot of girls taught in those days. Or they did office work, but if

they did that, they would have to go to Bridgeport or Danbury for jobs," she

explained.

For one year, Sarah worked as a substitute teacher in Newtown at the one-room

Hattertown and Palestine schools. Then she started a private kindergarten,

known to townspeople as "Miss Farrell's Kindergarten," in the Brick Building

on Main Street.

"When Edmond Town Hall was built, the town clerk moved there and I rented

rooms in the old Brick Building," she said. "It was so cold there; the second

year I moved upstairs because it was warmer."

Around the third year, Sarah built a school behind her family house where she

held kindergarten during the school year, and pre-school playschool during the

summer. She started off with an enrollment of five or six, which grew to

between 12 and 18 depending on the time of year, she recalled.

Summer playschool, which was "very successful," was a place summer residents

could bring their children for fun and interaction with kids their own age,

she said. "Not all of them had neighbors with children," said Sarah. "And

there was no beach in town, no town parks."

Usually, children stayed in her school for two years - pre-kindergarten and

kindergarten. Some of the youngsters she taught during the nine years she had

the school were Robert Hall, Scudder Smith, David Egee, Elaine Egee Pratt, and

Danny Desmond, son of Dr Desmond. In addition to teaching the alphabet, Sarah

also kept her students busy by teaching the smaller classes to read and use

flashcards. "The kids loved it. And the parents got a kick out of it because

the kids began to read," said Sarah. "Some could skip a grade when they went

on to school."

The last five of those nine years, Sarah had a second job where she worked for

the town driving kids in Dodgingtown and on Riverside Road (two separate

routes) to a more central location for the school buses to pick them up. She

used her own car for these trips and was paid mileage only. At first, she

drove a two-door Ford which she bought second hand from one of the local

garages - "which is where you got a car in those days" - and then traded that

in for the first in a series of station wagons. "Then the town said, `What

about getting a school bus?'" recalled Sarah, and she did in the early 50s.

"I got married and that's when I stopped [Miss Farrell's School] and started

driving a bus," she said. She drove a school bus for 35 years.

"In the beginning years, buses were not as crowded and you picked everybody up

along the road - first grade through high school. All the neighborhood kids

were together. You knew all the kids and there wasn't the discipline problems

you have today so it was more of a pleasure. But I can't say I didn't enjoy it

all. It was very interesting to watch the kids grow up. They were as

changeable as the weather."

During the war years, Sarah worked in Mr Watkins machine shop in Sandy Hook

helping out in the office and working on the lathes. Sandy Hook had been a

really busy place, even during the war years, because Plastic Molding Company

and Fabric Fire Hose did "war work." The Sandy Hook area of town is coming

back, said Sarah.

Greenhouse Business

"I always was fond of flowers," said Sarah. "[In 1954,] I wrote for a

greenhouse catalog; I was just curious."

A salesman for the company came to visit and offered to sell her a small

greenhouse, which would be assembled, painted, and used for exhibition at the

New York City and Hartford flower shows that year. Sarah and her husband,

Bill, debated for months and then agreed they should get it.

"Of course, I was dying for it," recalled Sarah. "We put it up the following

year."

Sarah filled her little greenhouse with African violets, which "froze stiff"

when the hot-air oil furnace went out the next February. They cleared

everything out, and Sarah started petunias and other flowers from seed. "I

went by the directions, and transplanted every seedling. The place was filled

! I gave them away," she said. They installed a new heating system for the

greenhouse.

Two years after getting the first greenhouse, they bought a second-hand

greenhouse. Then a third was given to them. These glass buildings they used to

propagate seeds in the winter. In back of their barn, they built three plastic

greenhouses, 100-feet long each; near the house they put up three plastic ones

of various sizes. When the gas line came through town, they heated all of the

greenhouses with gas.

Sarah's father had sold more than half of the property in the late 30s or

early 40s, where Apple Blossom Lane and a section of Park Lane are situated;

the remaining parcel was further divided, which spawned a neighborhood on the

new Greenbriar Lane. The Mannix greenhouse business was contained on the six

remaining acres behind the house.

"My husband worked in the post office, in the basement of Edmond Town Hall. He

would get home at 4, this time of year. We worked at night in the greenhouses.

He loved it as much as I did," said Sarah. "We started growing geraniums - we

grew them from cuttings, not from seeds...That got to be the thing we were

specialists in."

Sarah, who married Bill in 1944, said her husband was originally from New

Haven and planned to stay in Newtown "very temporarily." But he enjoyed living

here so much that "you couldn't get him to go back to see relatives in New

Haven."

After Bill's death in 1969, Sarah spent more time developing her flower shop

business. On the property she planted gardens of asters and zinnias to use in

arrangements.

ETH Board of Managers

For decades, Sarah served on the Edmond Town Hall Board of Managers.

"It was a very, very rewarding time for me, a learning time. It showed me no

matter how old you are there is still something to learn about the town, the

people, and [benefactress] Miss Hawley," she said. What she enjoyed best was

serving the townspeople and solving the many problems that arose.

Issues relating to the town hall changed over the years because use of the

building increased. "Town hall was used for everything from basketball to

weddings, and town government enlarged so there was the need for more town

offices," she said. "As town hall became older, there were concerns about

trying to keep it in good condition."

A bowling alley, original to the building, was still in use when Sarah first

served on the board. "It was impossible to put in automatic pin-setters. And

boys were too busy to get them regularly to set up pins," she said. So the

alley was taken out and leagues had to find another place to play in.

In reviewing a life well spent, Sarah had only one thing to add.

"The best thing about Newtown is the people - the people you've known for

years, the way of life," said Sarah. "You have your share of things - good and

bad - that go with a town. But still, it's a pretty nice place to live."