Author: Michelle Shen

In the late 19^th century the nation was in the throes of a dizzying era of invention, technology and wealth. Robber baron industrialists made fortunes on new technologies from the telephone to electricity to even bigger manufacturing concerns. For the first time, women could work out of the home without social reprobation, usually in factory settings and often alongside children. Here in Westport, the manufactories that dotted the Saugatuck River expanded, including the Embalming Supply Company and Baynham Coffin Tack factory—capitalizing on new advancements that even affected the way people presented and mourned the dead. Many of these factories employed women, children and immigrants who did not have the social clout to advocate for themselves with respect to fair labor practices, a scenario played out nationwide that eventually led to the rise of labor unions and social reform.  

In addition to social activism a renewed interest in the arts and history grew during this era and literary and art salons as well as common interested society’s grew. In 1886 the Westport Reading Room & Lending Library was formed to bring the gift of literature to all Westporters and in 1889, The Saugatuck Historical Society (later renamed the Westport Historical Society) was formed by members of the town’s founding families.  

Even the dawn of a powerfully mechanized age could not stop mother nature and in 1888 an historic blizzard hit the East Coast and Connecticut particularly hard, wreaking havoc throughout the state and derailing railway cars. The New Haven line train was halted in Greens Farms where snow piles blocked the tracks. 

Dive in and learn more about the history of Westport, the quintessential New England town

Following the Civil War, in the era later called the Gilded Age and corresponding to the later Victorian period in England, America saw rapid economic and industrial growth and towns like Westport, ideally situated coastlines and serviced by new railway systems, found themselves in the midst of growing prosperity. In Westport, men like Horace Staples, who was destined to become the wealthiest man in town, used their means for public as well as private improvement projects, such as the building of the first public high school in town, which carries his name to this day. 

The town’s landscape was rapidly changing as modern factories cropped up from Saugatuck to what is now the Richmondville area of the town. These included two tanneries and multiple cotton mills. A new iron bridge using the most up-to-date swing technology replaced the wooden drawbridge over the Saugatuck River, just near where it emptied into the Long Island Sound. Today called the William F. Cribari bridge, it remains the oldest surviving moveable bridge in the state. By 1878, the town was densely populated with the downtown area closely resembling what we recognize today. 

Even Westport’s dead benefited from the town’s growing prosperity when, in 1877, plans to expand and further develop Willowbrook Cemetery into a pastoral final resting place for the town’s society families, finally took off. Westporter Ambrose L. Hurlbutt, had first conceived of  Willowbrook Cemetery on Main Street was a 1847 to model of the fashionable and bucolic Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn. Plans foundered by 1849 but in 1876 work on the cemetery began anew with prominent landscape designer Frederick Law Olmstead at the helm of the project. Olmstead had famously designed New York’s Central Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and, more locally, Beardsley Park in Bridgeport. Together, with his partner, Calvert Vaux, the team behind New York’s Central Park and other visionary public space projects of the age, Olmstead designed Willowbrook cemetery as a gilded age ideal of a park like setting for visitors and “residents”. 

Dive in and learn more about the history of Westport, the quintessential New England town

With the arrival of the railroad to Westport in 1843, commerce and industry grew in Westport and factories popped up along the Saugatuck River. Just as the development of the railroad brought Irish immigrant workers and its expansion in the 1860s brought Italian Americans to Saugatuck factories like the Saugatuck Manufacturing Company brought others including Germans and Austro-Hungarians. In this era before workers’ rights laws factory laborers included men, women and, sadly, children.  

Westport’s and Connecticut’s factories supplied clothing, hats, buttons, and more to southern slave plantations but in 1861 the Civil War began and towns like Westport offered a bounty of $25 to encourage able bodied young men to enlist.  One of these soldiers was Benjamin Toquet. Learn more about his service in our main exhibit Remembered: The History of African Americans in Westport.   

Westport farmers also did their part for the war effort growing onions for rations to Union Soldiers. It was believed that onions, which have mild antimicrobial properties, could prevent infection in open wounds such as those from gunshots. In fact, General U.S. Grant wrote to the US War Department in Washington DC saying that he would not move his troops without a steady supply of onions at his disposal. 

 After the war’s end, Westport also became more appealing to captains of industry and finance. Many wealthy New York families built estates on the shorefront. Among these were the Laurence family, whose lavish home and grounds would one day become Longshore Club Park. 

Dive in and learn more about the history of Westport, the quintessential New England town

In the years immediately after the incorporation of Westport in 1835, progress of various kinds came to the town in rapid pace. The construction of the New York and New Haven Railroad in 1840 dramatically changed both the landscape and the face of the town. Many of the original railroad construction workers were Irish immigrants who settled in the Saugatuck area. Some twenty years later, Italian immigrants worked on the expansion of the system. From its completion, the railroad rapidly replaced the waterways as the primary method of shipping goods and services up and down the coast and out to the larger nation. As a result, the vibrant port on the Saugatuck River in what we know today as the downtown Westport lost its standing as a commercial hub. Progress took political and social form in this era as well and in 1848, abolition was finalized in Connecticut.  

Here in Westport, Lucy and Charles Rowe of Hyde Lane, finally achieved their freedom from enslavement. Mr. Rowe went on to be the sexton at Greens Farms’ Church and Mrs. Rowe is buried in the upper church cemetery. However, while slavery was now illegal in the state, Connecticut firms from clothing and grain mills, iron works and other companies continued to do brisk business with the slave-holding south. Even the insurance industry for which Connecticut became known benefited from Southern slavery in the form of insurance policies on human chattel. 

Dive in and learn more about the history of Westport, the quintessential New England town

In the last decade before the railroad arrived in Westport, the town was evolving in many ways. The first college preparatory academy in Westport–the Greens Farms Academy–was founded by Ebenezer Banks Adams. So called because it was originally managed by Greens Farms Church, the Academy is not related to the current school of the same name. The school provided advanced education for students hoping to go on to advanced learning institutions. In the first session of the school, it is interesting to note that 9 of 30 students were young ladies. Many graduates of the school went on to Yale, Ebenezer’s alma mater. Today, Westport Historical Society gives 1st grade tours of the antique school house, now colloquially called “Adams Academy” and owned by the Town of Westport. While students studied diligently at Greens Farms Academy a romantic trio of Westport brothers sailed the high seas in search of wealth and adventure. The Sherwood triplets, Frederick, Franklin, and Francis born in 1810, all became ship captains and enjoyed some fame in their time as a result of their unique status. 

Dive in and learn more about the history of Westport, the quintessential New England town