Bethany in 1800
The year 1800 was a momentous one for Bethany as well as the other towns along the route of the newly completed Straits Turnpike Road. The old county road that passed through Bethany, a crude right-of-way chopped through the forests in the 17th century, was too rough for horse and wagon or stagecoach travel. The new turnpike road would be built and maintained by a private company at their own expense, with the right to charge tolls to cover their costs and provide a profit. The turnpike companies did a great service to the state, laying out a network of roads that became the basis for our state highways today.
The period after the Revolutionary War marked the beginning of a new era in U.S. history that saw a tremendous effort to establish industries and the infrastructure to support them, to the end of establishing our independence from British manufactured goods. These new roads facilitated not only commerce, but also the movement of people and ideas. Speed of travel became greatly improved, with regular stagecoach service that also brought mail and newspapers into virtually every community in the state.
Chartered by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1797, Straits Turnpike Road was to run from the State House in New Haven to the court house in Litchfield. The West Indian trade was the main driver of the economy in New Haven county. Supplying the needs of the British West Indian sugar plantations built much of the wealth of pre-Revolutionary Connecticut. The colonies provided food for the sugar planters and their enslaved workers; horses to turn the sugar mills; cattle, barreled pork, charcoal, lumber, barrel staves, and even whole houses, with mortises and tenons cut and ready to put together, along with the shingles to cover them with, and the nails to fasten them. Connecticut port cities like New Haven benefitted from this trade, and the inhabitants of the hinterlands, in towns such as Woodbridge, Waterbury, Watertown, and Litchfield, eager to earn scarce hard money with which to purchase imported luxuries, were spurred to produce a surplus from their farms and small businesses. The West Indies trade hit a peak around 1800, and brought a measure of prosperity to Bethany.
At the northern terminus of Straits Turnpike lay the town of Litchfield, one of the most prosperous and populous towns of that era. Litchfield was the county seat of Litchfield County, and had become an economic and cultural center, as well as a transportation hub, in northwest Connecticut. Its main roads were “two or three hundred feet wide, at least,” not for looks, but to accommodate the herds of cattle being driven to New Haven markets from as far away as Vermont. Litchfield became an inland center of commerce due to several factors: it had been settled first in that area, therefore the two main highways leading west ran through it, and there was a road to Hartford through Farmington early on; it was named the county seat, in 1751, and therefore the courthouse and the sheriff were located there; and Litchfield early on developed a “thriving retail trade and professional activity. During the Revolutionary War, Litchfield was a crossroads for the transportation of provisions for General Washington’s troops, and a market center augmenting those provisions with more produce from area farms and shops, and supplying all kinds of flour for making bread, such as wheat, rye, corn. Shops in and around Litchfield supplied hardware, as well as cannons from the foundry in Salisbury, near Ore Hill, and anchors of up to 2 ½ tons from a forge in Canaan. Litchfield was also an important stop on the road to Albany, especially in winter when the New York legislature was in session. Litchfield had a growing manufacturing sector, and its proximity to Salisbury with its blast furnace producing pig iron from local ore, encouraged the growth of ironworking and nail-making. Furniture makers, saddlers, and numerous other artisans made a variety of marketable products. As a result, there was a strong desire for a good road to New Haven.
The West Indies trade brought luxury goods to New Haven that were transported north to Litchfield and beyond the West Indies trade was responsible for large quantities of liquor being made available. Much of the molasses produced by the sugar plantations was distilled into rum, and every community had at least one distillery. In the early 19th century, the biggest industry in Connecticut was shipbuilding; the second biggest was distillation of rum, to the tune of $500,000.00 per year. As a result, alcoholism increased dramatically. The first temperance society in the world was formed in Litchfield, and many of the prominent men signed a pledge, dated May 5th 1789, condemning the evils of strong drink, and which included a pledge to carry on their businesses without supplying distilled spirits as refreshments, instead supplying their workmen with “simple drinks of our own production,” which meant cider, beer, and switchel.
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For further information, see:
Joseph Avitable. “The Atlantic World Economy and Colonial Connecticut,” PhD Diss. The University of Rochester, 2009. Accessed September 26, 2019, http://hdl.handle.net/1802/8785
Richard DeLuca. Post Roads and Iron Horses: Transportation in Connecticut from ColonialTimes to the Age of Steam. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2011.
Thomas Rutherford Trowbridge Jr. History of the Ancient Maritime Interests of New Haven. New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1882. Accessed December 6, 2019, https://archive.org/details/39002011213676.med.yale.edu/page/n5
Alain C. White. History of the Town of Litchfield Connecticut 1720-1920. Compiled for theLitchfield Historical Society. Litchfield: Litchfield CT Enquirer, 1920. Accessed December 16, 2019, https://archive.org/details/historyoftownofl1920whit/page/n9
Frederick James Wood. Turnpikes of New England. Boston: Marshall Jones Co. 1919. Accessed September 28, 2019. https://archive.org/details/cu31924004992313/page/n10