New Marckres Photos Available
The Historical Society is pleased to announce the completion of the initial phase of the George Marckres glass plate negative duplication and preservation project. As of November, 108 additional Marckres glass plate images of historic Sharon have been printed, and interpositive, duplicate negative sets and archival reference prints have been made.
Although the Society has always recognized the Marckres Collection as one of its most valuable, it wasn’t until 1998 that a group of volunteers began to work to identify some 160 images of critical importance to the documentation of early Sharon life. The first batch of glass plates was sent to the Chicago Albumen Works in Housatonic, Massachusetts, for duplication in early 1999. These photographs formed the basis of the Society’s 1999 feature exhibit entitled, Candid Glances. The exhibit was so well received that the mounted photographs and text went on to be displayed at the Sharon Town Hall.
George Marckres, who came to Sharon as a young man, ran a small variety store right next to the Town Hall. He kept a tripod and bellows camera under the counter, ready to capture any unusual happenings around town. His photographs include people, houses, elections, parades and country vistas. The latest 108 photographs include images of the various incarnations of Sharon Center School, the Moravian monument, Main Street events, Sharon houses and vistas. The last portion of the project involves scanning the photographs and inputting them into a database so that they may be viewed and printed more easily. If you are interested in volunteering to work on the computerization of the Marckres photos, please give Liz a call at the Historical Society, or send her an e-mail at sharon.historical@snet.net. No experience is necessary, we can teach you everything you need to know!
The complete set of Marckres photos may be viewed during museum hours or by appointment. The images are also available for reprint, 5x7s and 8x10s (generally available "while you wait") are $5.00 and $10.00 respectively; 11x14s are also available for $15.00, but must be ordered in advance and take approximately two to three weeks.
Sedgwick’s History of Sharon Ready for the Holidays
What do Samuel Dunham, John Pardee and Caleb Jewitt have in common? How about Jehiel Abbott, C.W. Basset and Simeon Smith? If you have no idea, you’re probably not the only one around town! Don’t fret though, now is the perfect time to get "in the know" about Sharon’s early history by purchasing your copy of Charles F. Sedgwick’s General History of The Town of Sharon, Litchfield County, Conn. From Its First Settlement. Originally published in 1842, this year 2000 revised edition is the fourth available in print. Corrections to the original text and subsequent revisions have been painstakingly made by town historian, Jeanne Majdalany. An index to family names, meticulously begun by the late Sarah Luker, former director of the Historical Society, provides invaluable assistance to those involved in the ancestor hunt or simply researching the background of their historic home.
This fourth edition, published in an 8 1/2 x 11 format, features a four-color cover designed by Falls Village graphic designer Victor Valla. It is approximately 140 pages long, with fifteen appendices and eighteen photographs, including vintage pictures of the Sharon Inn, Weatherstone, the Sharon Town Hall and the Clock Tower. The book retails for $30 with an additional shipping and handling charge of $3.00. The History of Sharon will be available for purchase through the Historical Society and should be on our shelves by mid-December.
And because we hate to leave you with unanswered questions, Dunham, Pardee and Jewitt were among the first representatives from Sharon to the General Assembly; while Abbott, Basset and Smith were all physicians who practiced in Sharon. To learn more fun facts about our town, reserve your copy of Sedgwick’s History of Sharon now. Only a limited number of copies are available and you’re sure to want to be the first on your block to own a copy of this historic text!
A Coda for the Sharon Civil War Monument
by William Trowbridge
In the autumn issue of Sharon Archives was printed an exerpt from Ulysses Grant Warren’s Picturesque and Historic Sharon in which was described the events around the building of a Civil War monument designed by Miss Emily O. Wheeler. The monument was built at the northern end of the Sharon Green in front of the King House and consisted of two granite benches flanking a pedestal on which stood a cannon, also in granite.
In the mid-twentieth century this monument, according to Bill Kelsey, was the meeting place for the local troop of boy scouts who thought it great fun to hang from, sit upon and jump up and down upon the barrel of the cannon — with the result that, one evening, the barrel crashed down, knocking a large chip off the muzzle. The pieces of the barrel were taken to the town garage and a wooden barrel was put in its place on the monument.
In 1998, Barclay Collins, who lives in the King House, commissioned me to repair the barrel. Joined by sculptor Peter Bogardus, we put the barrel back together and set it back in its original position on the monument. (And in a nice piece of historical continuity, I am the great, great grand nephew of Emily O. Wheeler, the monument’s designer.)
Emily O. Wheeler was a contributor to other Sharon monuments. She and her sisters dedicated the Clock Tower to their mother in 1884. Her sister, Laura Wheeler, commissioned a carved marble watering trough to be placed on the west side of South Main Street for the refreshment of passing dogs and horses. This same marble trough now resides in the garden behind the Sharon Historical Society.
In a story which may by mythological, the widow of Benjamin Hotchkiss once announced to the town that she would like to give to Sharon either a boys’ boarding school or a library. Emily Butler Ogden Wheeler, Laura’s mother, who had a fair amount of influence in Sharon at that time, not wanting a bunch of noisy little boys running around town, chose the library which is why Sharon has the Hotchkiss Library and the boarding school is a few miles down the road.
On the Civil War monument are the names of boys who didn’t return from that war. Were these boys who used to mow Miss Wheeler’s lawn whom she came to know by giving them lemonade on hot summer afternoons or were they sons of her friends whom she watched during their growing years?
And was it a cold, rainy afternoon in March of 1885 when Miss Wheeler sat down to sketch designs for a monument which would express her sorrow for boys lost and a town’s wish to have them remembered always?
Upcoming Programs and Exhibits
Sharon Voices Can Still be Heard
This year’s museum exhibit, Sharon Voices 2000, an historical record of our town told through the words and personal stories of its people, will continue on display through May, 2001.
Museum hours are Friday through Sunday, noon-5 p.m. through October 8th. Please note that museum hours will change as of Monday, October 9th when winter hours take effect. Hours as of the ninth will be Tuesdays, 2-5 p.m. and Wednesday-Friday, 9 a.m. to noon. Special tours of the museum and exhibit may be arranged by calling Liz at (860) 364-5688.
The Great Attic Ground-Break Scheduled for Summer, 2001
In keeping with our themed, summer fund raising events, the Great Attic Ground-Break will take place on Friday, June 29, from 5-8 p.m. This summer event will celebrate the architectural renovations to the Gay-Hoyt House which will occur beginning in late July, 2001. Further details will follow, but SAVE the DATE!
Membership Renewal
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO JOIN THE SHARON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
FOR THE YEAR 2000
SEND YOUR CHECK TO THE SHARON HISTORICAL SOCIETY P.O. BOX 511, SHARON, CT 06069 YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS HELP US MAKE HISTORY
by Melvin Elliott
What began as Mel Elliott’s research on his Ellsworth house, evolved into what more appropriately could be called the biography of a community. The following essay presents a wonderful example of material culture research — the best combination of basic historical research melded with the social history of a family and its greater relationship to a community. Taken together, Mr. Elliott’s research provides a model for those interested in exploring the history of their own homes in greater depth. What’s more, however, this research sheds light on a little known aspect of Sharon’s twentieth century history — Sharon’s Jewish agricultural community.
If my house were new, it would only have few and recent memories. But my house is old: it has known joys and sorrows — the complete panoply of human experience that mark the passage of time but are not revealed in legal land records. My house began its life in Ellsworth, on the outskirts of Sharon, as a traditional New England salt box, probably built around 1750. But any attempt to trace it back that far calls for a good deal of educated guessing. Colonial place names were different from later terms, and acreage sizes often varied as well. Where, for instance, was "Firewood Swamp?" And who were Stephen Sears, Dudley Hamilton, William Spencer, Joel and Joseph Canfield, all prominent names active in some of Sharon’s earliest real estate records? If it could talk, perhaps my house would tell.
Local personages often had their names memorialized in roads, districts or in the names of their houses, such as "Dunbar House" or "Ellsworth House." Today in Ellsworth, we may travel on Loper, Dunbar, Northrup, Morey and Herb Roads, all named after former dwellers of the area. The name "Ellsworth" itself was an offshoot of the Ellsworth Society founded in 1800, as a separate entity from the neighboring town of Sharon. Ellsworth once boasted its own elementary school system, seven post offices, and as many churches. Attribution of the name cannot be made.
Going back to 1764, we find two eighteenth century small acre transactions in Ellsworth that may have included my house. During the nineteenth century ownership changed hands only about once every twenty years. Amongst its buyers and sellers were Charles W. Monroe, William Spencer, Elmore Chapman, Hiram and Philip Waldron, Theron and Joseph Kent. Monroe and Waldron are names still found in the current Sharon telephone directory. In 1889, Charles W. Monroe bought these 23 acres and house from William Spencer of Kent. We first encountered the Spencer name in records from 1865, but the two Spencers are probably different people. Monroe died in 1906 and in February 1907, the executors of Monroe’s estate sold the house and acreage to William H. Davidson who in turn sold the property to Nathan Osofsky in April 1910. To recap the six twentieth century owners, the house and acreage passed from the Charles W. Monroe estate to William H. Davidson in 1907, to Nathan Osofsky in 1910, to Hyman Paley in 1918, to Elia Dragun in 1943 and to me in 1958.
Recalling the years following 1910, the house would no doubt explain when and why the original salt box was so drastically altered in 1913 to include a sixty-foot addition consisting of four tiny (10’ x 10’) rooms off a twenty-foot communal dining area, plus a bedroom and a summer kitchen.
These additions coincided with the appearance in Sharon Land Records of an influx of Jewish surnames like Cohen, Schulman, Rothstein, Weinstein and Osofsky. Nathan Osofsky’s alterations created a house more than half the length of a football field! On foggy nights the house would loom out of the mists and my wife and I would joke about the "lost ship" on the side of the road as we drove to our nearby rented cottage. Elia Dragun had acquired the house in 1943, and in 1958 decided to sell his "lost ship." That’s when my late wife, Hanna, and I bought it. It came with nineteen acres, more or less, that bridge both sides of the road, and was within our means.
Little by little our neighbors helped unravel some threads of the past. The Palmers, natives of the area, and Helaine Eisner (later Rittenberg), a knowledgeable homeowner and summer resident from New York, all agreed that in the early 1900s there was a Jewish agricultural colony in Ellsworth. In fact, claimed Mrs. Eisner, the rabbi of the colony once lived in her house! At this late date, that cannot be confirmed. Perhaps like George Washington, he only slept there and was an itinerant clergyman serving a number of small communities.
The year 1910 was a crucual one. Nathan Osofsky, a Russian Jewish immigrant, was then living in New York City. Married in 1904, he emigrated from Russia in 1907 leaving his wife, Rebecca, and two small daughters behind with the promise of finding a job in the New World and then bringing the family back together.
The reunion took place in 1910 in this house on its 23 acres. The Osofsky family ultimately grew to a total of four daughters and four sons. One son, Philip, was born on these premises in 1911. With his older sister, Ida, they are the sole survivors of the original family. In August 2000, I was fortunate to have a long talk with Philip who recounted much of the family history.
But in 1910 Nathan could not afford to live full-time in Ellsworth. His lung problems could be helped by clean country air, but during the summer months he continued to work in New York City’s garment industry to support his family. He spent the winter months in Ellsworth with his family on the farm that his wife Rebecca ran. The farm was barely self-sufficient: its four cows only provided about twelve quarts of milk daily. After putting some aside for family use, Rebecca hauled the balance, not too often with eight children, down to the railroad station at Cornwall Bridge where it was sold and picked up. The farm also supplied a small amount of grain, ground into flour at Breen’s Cornwall Bridge store for pancakes, a family favorite. Eggs, chickens and garden vegetables rounded out the menu.
By 1913, Nathan Osofsky was able to rejoin his family year-round. Shortly thereafter the four small rooms and other additions were built plus several outlying cottages, which no longer exist. The four or five dollars per week brought in by each room and cottage was a much needed source of income for the family. It also enabled Nathan to engage in some profitable cattle dealing. But new family problems arose. When the eldest daughter, Frieda, finished elementary school in Ellsworth, she went to the nearest high school which was in Amenia, N.Y. There she boarded with the black family of a former slave, since no one else in town would board a Jewess. Nathan brought her home every Friday for the weekend and returned her to Amenia on Sunday with a week’s supply of kosher food! But with a continually growing family, the family was obliged to make a move. The Ellsworth property was sold in 1918 to Hyman J. Paley.
The house and land was actually owned by Max Paley, Hyman’s father. Max was a well-educated Russian, a lawyer by profession. But he could not speak nor write English so Hyman handled the transaction and ultimately inherited the property.
Once the Ellsworth property was sold, the Osofskys bought a large old house in the center of Amenia and converted it to The Grand House Hotel. And in the old tradition of the mother taking charge, the well-organized and dynamic Rebecca Osofsky began a new venture. With the superior cooking and dining facilities in her new domain, she prepared strictly kosher Sunday dinners for fifty or more patrons who came from as far away as Peekskill and Poughkeepsie. They dined well, gossiped, played cards and enjoyed each other’s company. Since Jews, like other immigrants, tended to associate with their "landsmen," the Osofskys never lacked boarders nor diners. Nathan died in 1935, age 63; Rebecca followed him eighteen years later, age 82. By now it should be no secret that the Osofskys were and are an industrious and hard-working lot. All four daughters became school teachers and Frieda trained at the Normal School in New Paltz, N.Y., 30 miles from Amenia. Nathan made the round trip weekly by horse and buggy to fetch his daughter for a weekend at home and then return her to school, again with a supply of kosher food for the week. The sisters all taught in local schools, including a one-room schoolhouse in Amenia.
A search of Sharon Land Records from the first decade of the twentieth century turns up transactions of Rothsteins, Weinsteins, Cohens, Walenskys, Temkins, amongst others. What prompted so many real estate transactions by Jews? My conclusion, with which Philip Osofsky agrees, was the readily available mortgage monies provided by the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society of New York City. Although the average JAS loan was $500, that was a princely sum in those days. With that as collateral, the borrower in the Northwest Corner could go to a local bank, most often Canaan Savings Bank, and borrow what funds were needed to purchase the land he had in mind. Nathan Osofsky, for example, obtained a $300 JAS loan and a $500 mortgage from Canaan Savings Bank. With these funds, he purchased the Ellsworth property. His purchase included two additional parcels in Ellsworth: 25 acres known as "Buck Hill" and seven acres of woodland. In 1922, "Industrial Aid" was dropped from the JAS name.
The source of JAS money was the Baron De Hirsch fund. Baron De Hirsch was an enormously wealthy Belgian Jew of Bavarian origins (von Hirsch). Being fervently involved in helping his Jewish brethren escape from the oppressive anti-Semitic laws of Czarist Russia, he established the JAS fund, which aided Russian Jewish migrants in the U.S. and Argentina. Baron De Hirsch moved in the highest European circles, but his favorite residence was in London. There, he owned a large stable of thoroughbred horses whose prize money went to found hospitals for the poor in London.
The availability of JAS funds to farming in the Northwest corner was most important. Nathan Osofsky got started in farming and cattle dealing through a JAS mortgage when he acquired the Ellsworth property in 1910. And another JAS mortgage helped ease the purchase by Hyman Paley of the house and land in 1918. Although Paley never sold any produce from the farm, it launched the family into farming: first in Amenia after he sold the Ellsworth property, and later in Sharon where his son Morris farmed large tracts on both the Millerton and Amenia Roads. Morris retired from farming in the late 1960s but his son Charles runs the Paley Farm operation today on the Amenia Road on land once owned by his father.
When I told Philip Osofsky that I only knew of two Jewish-owned working farms in Ellsworth: his father’s and the Northrop Farm on Northrup Road that George D. Northrop sold to Morris Schulman in April 1909, Philip said there was one more. That was a very small farm at the foot of Northrup Road, still in Ellsworth, and owned by the Cohen family. 1 He also reported the existence of a few small Jewish-owned family farms that fattened beef cattle and calves. A local Jewish-owned slaughter house provided kosher beef prepared according to ritual law.
Outside of Ellsworth, but still within the borders of Sharon, is the 170-acre Gorkofsky Dairy Farm started in 1910 and still in operation. Does all this constitute a Jewish Agricultural Colony as I had first heard after buying this house? A colony is defined in Oxford English Dictionary as "a body of people of the same nationality or occupation, settled amongst others, or inhabiting a particular locality."
I do not know if three farms make a colony, give or take the slaughter houses and cattle farms, but it helps to explain the slow-moving cars that would pass the house on summer Sundays fifteen or twenty years ago. The occupants were most often an older woman and a younger man who drove. It soon became apparent that their objective was to inspect what years before had been their summer refuge during Nathan Osofsky’s time of summer rentals. I invited them to enter and as soon as they crossed the threshold they would fall into each other’s arms and burst into tears as old memories overtook them.
The soil of the Northwest corner may be thin and rocky, but it has been known to raise persistent and hearty legends. Is a Jewish Agricultural Colony in the same class as the reputed ghosts of Dudleytown in neighboring Cornwall? In any case, these events are a fascinating, little-known story from Sharon’s history.
This is the story of my house, but it is not unique. I am sure that many other old houses can tell a similar story of struggling immigrants from all over the world who toiled day in and out so that their children might reap the benefit of their sacrifices.
****
1 The spelling of Northrop or Northrup usually varies. I have followed the spelling as it appears in legal documents and current road signs.
By a fortuitous circumstance, my new neighbor on Northrup Road is Dana Simpson née Osofsky. Thanks to Dana I met and spoke with Philip Osofsky whose recollections made this story a living testimonial. Thanks also to Jacob Shoifet, a Sharon native. His was the first Jewish family to own property in the village of Sharon (1928). Jacob now lives in Millerton; a popular ex-mayor of the town. And many thanks to Morris Paley, a native Sharonite from a farming family whose help is found on almost all pages of this story. My gratitude also to the Sharon Land Records Office for their assistance in steering me through the critical but necessary legalistic mazes. And last, but by no means least, my thanks to Lorraine Eliot for urging me to write this story, and to Natasha Eilenberg for her editorial suggestions. Finally my gratitude to Norman Osofsky and his wife Carol for correcting family references.