Date: Fri 13-Feb-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Cruson-history-Booth

Full Text:

Shake Off Winter's Chill With Newtown As A Summer Resort

(with cuts)

Think "summer" and warm up at the Booth Library when Town Historian Daniel

Cruson presents an illustrated lecture, Newtown at the Turn of the Century: A

Thriving Resort Town. The presentation, followed by coffee and dessert, will

be held Monday, February 23, at 7:30 pm in the new meeting room.

Although Newtown had taverns and inns which accommodated overnight guests

since its earliest colonial days, it was not until after the Civil War that

Newtown began to develop facilities for those who wished to spend several days

or even weeks in town. This development coincided with the later portion of

the Industrial Revolution when Urban Industrial centers were growing rapidly.

Those who were living in these urban centers, with its hectic pace, dirt,

pollution and crime, started to yearn to return to a simpler rural past, or at

least visit a place that was still bucolic and which reminded them of the Good

Old Days. Newtown was then seen as just such a place, and in the waning years

of the 19th century, it became a summer resort town.

Another social phenomenon that developed just after the turn of the 20th

century was the postcard. In resort towns like Newtown, picture post cards

were sold in the thousands so that vacationers could send mementos to those

family and friends back home to show them how much fun they were having. These

postcards are a photographic archive of the rise and fall of the resort hotels

of Newtown, allowing us to actually see what so attracted urban workers to our

town.

Using slides made from these postcards, Mr Cruson will show what the resort

facilities in Newtown were like. In addition, he will show the vistas and

rural scenes that so delighted our late Victorian forebears and drew them to

Newtown year after year. He will also show the changes in resort Newtown as

the automobile replaced the railroad in the 1920s as the favorite means of

getting here. He will also deal with the development of the summer colonies on

Lake Zoar which arose at about this same period, first as a result of the

creation of the lake in 1918, and then as a result of the increasing mobility

created by the spread of automobile ownership into America's middle class.

Mr Cruson is on the faculty of Joel Barlow High School were he teaches courses

in anthropology and local history. His abiding interest in these fields has

led him to do extensive research and writing on the history of the towns of

central Fairfield County including Easton, Redding, and Newtown as well as

conducting several archeological investigations in these towns in an attempt

to learn more about the lifestyles of their past citizens, both historic and

prehistoric.

Mr Cruson's attempts to acquire more information about the early history and

culture of this area has also led him to investigate deeply the subjects of

rural slavery, vintage photography, early Connecticut architecture, colonial

and post-colonial road building, and early cemeteries and their grave markers.

Mr Cruson is active in a number of organizations dedicated to the research and

preservation of local history. He has been a member of the Newtown Historical

Society for 15 years, having served as its president for five years in the

early 1990s. He was also a charter member of the Easton Historical Society and

served a number of years on its board of trustees and as vice president. In

addition Mr Cruson is active with the The Heritage Preservation Trust of

Newtown, Society of American Archeology, and The Archeological Society of

Connecticut. He is currently the Town Historian for Newtown.

In a continuing attempt to disseminate information on the early history and

culture of central Fairfield County, Mr Cruson has lectured, conducted adult

seminars, in addition to conducting his courses in local history for the high

school students of Easton and Redding. He has published several books

including The Prehistory of Fairfield County, and Newtown's Slaves: A Case

Study in Early Connecticut Rural Black History. After his lecture, Mr Cruson

will be available to sign copies of his most recent book, Newtown in the

Images of America series.

There is no registration for this free event; simply show up and enjoy.