How old is your town?

Since I've only lived in my town 4 years I've been doing some research to find out the history in the area.

I live in a Township that is made up of unicorporated villages. The township was established in 1842 but one of the villages used to be it's own township which was established in 1688.

So how old is your town?

The Town of Southold was established in 1640. We have quite a few of the original homesteads and many people related to the original settlers.

Interesting thread! Doing a bit of research to post an answer here, I was surprised to discover that Shelton, the town I live in, was only incorporated as a city in 1915!! Considering the white settlers came in the 1750's (more or less), that surprised me! But it was incorporated as a town in 1789, which seems more reasonable to me.

I live in the historically rural section of town, as opposed to the historically industrial section. So, not as much cool architecture or history in this end of town, but many farmhouses, and sadly, many farms selling off land for too-big houses on too-small lots. Downtown is being revitalized, with some cool old factories being renovated into condos.

For those that are interested:

http://sheltonct.newenglandsite.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelton,_Connecticut

Being more of a city girl, I'm much more interested in the history of my hometown, Bridgeport (whose mayor at one time was P.T. Barnum) and another town I once lived in, Derby, which I do believe was the most beautiful city in the country 100 years ago, judging from the architecture which is sadly being torn down at an alarming rate.

Sorry to ramble. Huge history buff here, so I tend to run with these things!

Edited to add that the town of Derby was settled in 1653/54, which makes it much more interesting than my sleepy farm area!

This message was edited Jan 27, 2009 7:15 PM

The town I live in was part of Taunton Ma and was called North Taunton along with several other towns in the area in 1637 when Taunton was settled by the Plymouth Colony. My town separated and was incorporated as a separate town in 1711. All my relatives on my Mom's side of the family all came from here. The other side of her family is from Vermont, mostly around Springfield. They didn't move very far. LOL

Dee, you can ramble all you want. I find it all very interesting that's why I started the thread.

I ,too, wish they could find ways to save the old houses and building instead of tearing them down.

ngam, how far back does your family go in Taunton? Are they original settlers?

Earliest actual record is a Hathaway was married in Taunton and the marriage was recorded in 1649. He was born in England in 1629. The earliest ancestor I know of was from England and was born in or around 1595.

Wow! That is incredibly cool! Not only am I a history buff, but I love genealogy too! Gee, 1595! I can't even find a birth certificate for my grandfather who was born in PA in 1905. To know of an ancestor from 1595 is just amazing!

Dee I know both of the family trees of my maternal grandfather and grandmother all the way back to England in the late 1500s and early 1600s. As I said they all pretty much hung around New England and one side of the family had annual reunions, actually they still may have them, in Vermont. My Mom remembers going to them when she was a kid. They all kept good records and I think even published a book for the local library there in Springfield,Vt. with all the family history. They also started out in Massachusetts and moved to Vermont in the mid 1800s. My Grandfather moved back to this area, married and that is where I started this whole story. My fathers family is being researched by one of my cousins so I am hoping to get some info on that branch of the family someday.
There is a funny story in the family that a stranger is buried in the same plot as my great grandfather and great grandmother here in town. Evidently a man new in town took ill and died suddenly and since he had the same last name the gravediggers assumed he should go in with everyone else. When the mistake was reveled they said he should be able to stay. So when you go to the grave site you always say hey to the stranger too.

Wow. Did I say that already, lol? That is so very incredible. On my mom's side, my grandmother was a walking, talking dictionary of family history, but only pretty much back to one set of her grandparents, and since my grandmother was born in 1920, that doesn't go back too far.

My dad's side - no one knows nuthin! Gee, didn't these people ask any questions? Like, "When is my birthday?" "Where was I born?" "Who is my father?" I've come to the conclusion that my father's family did not die, were not born, did not ever marry or have kids, never bought property or paid taxes, did not have street addresses, and either swam to this country, or, more likely, were dropped by aliens into the coal mines of PA.

Oh well, didn't mean to hijack your thread, Flowerjen. It's just that when I can come to a gardening forum and discuss my other passion (history, genealogy) well, I have trouble controlling myself, lol! Especially when someone can trace their family back to the 1500's. How exciting!

I live in Milton which was incorporated in the 1640. I can't believe they got all the way up here (and Boston) in 20 years.

As for ancestors, a few of them came on the Mayflower, but when you compare that to the dozens who came by other means - I consider myself a mongrel. My mother has some genealogy books and knows which parts of England and Wales some of our ancestors came from, but there's always the "m. Alice __" parts. So in other words, the male line, the name, you know who the first names were but the women were anybody's guess!

My father's mother used to have this bureau in the living room and every once in a while she would pull out this scroll - I remember it as a scroll, but I was little - and at the top it said Charlemagne and at the bottom it said her father's name - that was her claim to fame. Of course there was a lot of "illegitimate son of" and "mistress to" and "allegedly" but still, it looked impressive. Especially 10 years later when I found out who Charlemagne was! So now I have 57 million new cousins.

I'm 100% Russian both sets of grandparents were born in Russia and I feel the same way about not knowing all the history...of course any records that were left in Russia were destroyed during the revolution in 1917.

Guilford was "settled" in 1639 when 40 people signed a charter. They vowed to be there for each other. Pretty cool. Great idea for a thread. Imagine how different this would be out West.

Does that make my town the oldest so far?

Don't forget, most our towns were settled long, long before the dates we are citing. These are settlements of Europeans.

Should I put links on all the other geographical(is that the right word) forums?
Dave, yep so far yours is the oldest.

Pennsville, NJ located across the Delaware River from New Castle, De. was settled c 1638 by Swedes and Finns. It has undergone several name changes and was incorporated in 1798 then by a vote in 1965 became the Township of Pennsville.
When the early colonists arrived there were 3 tribes of Lenni-Lenape Indians living along the river. Shad fishing and farming were chief occupations in early years. Later years saw more industrial development with Du Pont being the largest employer.
It is the home of Ft. Mott (State Park) and Finn's Point Lighthouse and cemetery next to it. During the Civil War - Fort Delaware in the middle of the river was a prison and the dead soldiers were buried at Finn's Point.
This is interesting!!!

D'oh! She beat me by 1 year!

Interesting facts Jan.

Maybe not, the info said c 1638 so it could be a little later. :)

Denville is a township in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the township population was 15,824. Denville is known as the "Hub of Morris County" for its location along major transportation routes at the center of the county. In 1988, as part of the town's 75th anniversary celebration, a time capsule was buried that contained "artifacts" from that era.

Denville was formed as a township by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on April 14, 1913, from portions of Rockaway Township.

Jan the Lenape were here too

Native Lenape Native Americans were known to travel the Minisink Trail for centuries before Europeans arrived in New Jersey. Part of that trail cut across what is now southern Denville, roughly following the course of Route 10 and Mount Pleasant Turnpike. Some research has indicated that there was a Lenape campsite along the trail in Denville, on or near the Ayres / Knuth Farm Historic Site along Route 10.

When Dutch and English settlers began to arrive in the new world in the early 17th century, the Minisink Trail was the likely route they traveled to explore the interior. Daniel Denton, one of the purchasers of what is known as the Elizabethtown Tract in 1664, led an expedition into the interior of northern New Jersey. In 1670, he wrote the first English language description of the area. Some researchers would later conclude that it was Denton who lent his name to the naming of Denville.

Some researchers have suggested that European settlers began to come to the Denville area as early as 1690. These early settlers were primarily Dutch and English from Long Island, Quakers from Philadelphia, and Germans. William Penn and several other proprietors began to survey and stake out lands in the Denville area around 1715. These surveys are the first documentation of Denville. Between 1730 and 1760, several forges and mills were erected in Denville along the Rockaway River and the Denbrook. A number of communities associated with the forges and mills began to emerge. Ninkey and Franklin in southern Denville developed around the forges there of the same names. Denville village developed around the Job Allen Iron Works. Early developers of Denville, such as the Hussa family and A.B Crane & Co., were intrinsic in shaping the residential and lake communities.

A letter from early Denville settler John Hinchman in the year 1800, recounts some of the oral history of Denville from 50 years earlier, as stated to him by some of the elders of the time. Hinchman explains in his letter that the naming of Denville can be traced to a "den" of wild animals located in the swampy regions along the Denbrook and Rockaway River. The animals would bask on a knoll that juts out into the meadows where they were hunted by the native Lenape. This "den", Hinchman states, was the basis for the name of Denville and the Denbrook.

oh and I forgot add... it STILL freaks me out when my neighbor Barbara reminds me when she bought this house there was NO ROUTE 80 HERE.... I can't fathom the idea since I have to use it every single day

Flowerjen, the records of my grandparents and all earlier generations were also destroyed in the 1917 revolution. The records of my parents were destroyed in the Chinese revolution, and my own records (at least my birth and childhood records) were destroyed in the Korean War. My son, who was born in America, is the only family member with a birth certificate.

My town is not very old. It dates back to sometime in the 1850s. There's some confusion because there were four different towns in California named Sebastopol then. The other three were renamed later. It's a very small town, with a population of only 7500, but it has had some famous residents, most notably Luther Burbank, Charles Schulz, and Jerry Garcia. It's currently the home of Mickey Hart, Tom Waits, and Peter Krause.

My hometown, Seoul, was first mentioned in history in 18 BC.

Hello Zuzu! I hope all is well.
You really have had an interesting life. I was too young to remember much in 18 BC. Did people think it was weird that the years were going backwards?
Dave

Hi, Dave. All is quite well. Downright super, in fact. I'll start collecting social security in February. I wish it were BC now and the years would start going backwards. So much to do, so little time.

My life has been interesting, but I think there's an old Chinese curse that says something like: "May you live in interesting times."

I think Zuzu has us all beat with the oldest town. LOL

Greenwich, NJ about 20 miles from here where Fairweather Gardens Nursery is located has some interesting history. It is also very 'old', but had an event there much like the Boston Tea Party, but it never made the history books.

Originally part of Old Saybrook, CT (settled in 1635) the western part split off as the community of Pochaug about 1648 (supposedly because it was too hard to get to church in OS in the winter) and changed its name to Westbrook in 1744.

A Westbrook resident, David Bushnell, built the first military submarine, and until his death a few years ago, Art Carney was our local celebrity. Every summer WB is the host of the annual Westbrook Muster, where fife and drum corps come from around the country for a weekend of tootling and taradiddling.

I grew up in South Floriday where everything is new. Looks like my home town was incorporated in 1908!

Now living in New England, it fascinates me that towns are so old. (I think my current town is from the 1700's...can't find the date easily) It is also fascinating because I'm 2nd and 3rd generation with no real connections to the homelands. Roots?? What's that???

And wow, zuzu, I bet you have some incredible stories.

Such fun!!! I guess Zuzu's got us all beat as far as oldest towns, lol. Gee, my sleepy little town doesn't have much of interest - yes, we've got some manufacturing history, lots of rural farm history and Indian history, but nothing that would make a non-history buff take notice.... did I mention that P.T. Barnum was once mayor of my hometown? Okay, I'll stop grasping for the limelight!

Onewish, along the same lines, at the end of my road, named for a local farming family who is still big in these parts, is a state road. Right where my road meets the state road is the farm I work at, and the farmer also remembers when the state road wasn't there. This road is such a well-traveled road, and so basic to the needs of the community, I can't imagine it not being there!

Jen, my father's family is Russian also. Maybe I can blame the lack of genealogical records on that, lol. Although, there is no birth certificate for my grandfather and he was born in Pennsylvania, lol. Oh well...

This is such a fun thread. I have dates and names and places but I would like to know more about the day to day lives of all these people. What they did for a living o for entertainment, etc. I know one of my great grandfathers was a blacksmith in East Taunton and my great great grandfather was part owner of an import business and his daughter, my great grandmother, was in the first class of Wheaton Seminary, now Wheaton College, but that's as far back as I know. The newest claim to fame for my town is the Labor Day weekend PGA tournament they have here put on by Deutsche Bank. Oh yes Tiger Woods attends if you are a golf nut. Most people avoid that side of town that weekend. The only historical landmark is "King Philips" cave, he was a Wampanoag Indian sachem,which is on the other side of town where he was supposed to have hold up during the Indian wars. Oh and a really big deal around here is our very first traffic light that arrived in 1997. Most people think the rotary was faster and easier to deal with though.
I think a lot of early official records, if they ever existed, were lost in fires or floods and many were never replaced because if you know everyone in town then why do you need a birth certificate. Many families kept their own records in the family Bible and the trail gets lost when people started moving around. I think my family is full of compulsive obsessives, but in the case of family history, it is a good thing and I am thankful for it.

A Drinking Chocolate House (the first on this continent) was founded in Milton in 1765. They were all the rage - the 18th century Starbucks.

Zuzu you def have us all beat. How long did you live in Seoul?

oooo, a drinking chocolate house??? Sounds like my kind of place.

Our local historian works at the library and has a link to our town website with all his research, I haven't had time to go thru it all it's very interesting.
http://www.glover320.blogspot.com/
One of the interesting facts for me and my hubby is we used to have a speedway...too bad it's still not there..that would have been really cool
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N_-W1PmSNqg/Rpwt7K_xZ0I/AAAAAAAABys/gQFPF2jtGgE/s1600-h/1914+JOHN+JENTER+NEAR+DEATH+FROM+ACCIDENT.jpg

That Glover link is great! What a great bunch of old photos and info! One of the big names in the old farming community here is Glover.

Yum, chocolate houses! I swore, though, that I remember reading that in the early days chocolate was not sweetened before drinking, which actually is pretty nasty. But now of course, I can't find anything about that. Here's some interesting tidbits, though.

http://www.essortment.com/all/historychocolat_rywi.htm

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/coff/hd_coff.htm

ngam, count your blessings that your ancestors were compulsive obsessive, lol! Gee, in my family no one seemed to care where they were born or who their parents were. It's amazing they knew their own names, lol.

The city of Bridgeport where I grew up, had a huge industrial history. I lived near an area of Victorian mansions (which trust me, had seen better days when I was growing up in the 70's) and grew to love that architecture and that time period. I did most of my growing up in a brick rowhouse. The rowhouses had originally been built for Russian immigrant workers who came to work for Remington Arms, and those buildings were later sold to General Electric. Funny thing - even though I am part Russian, the Russian side was in Pennsylvania. It was the Irish & German side of the family which lived in Bridgeport and in the houses built for Russian workers, lol. Besides, these houses were built in the early years of the 20th centtury. We moved there in the 60's!

Remington Arms/ GE building - I grew up in one of the rowhouses to the right of the factory in this photo - impressive factory building, no?
http://homepage.mac.com/urbanradio/TV/JPEGs/GE_1931.jpg

rowhouse in the old neighborhood
http://www.atfs.com/reoweb/73350/73350_568_77_2004-4-6.jpg

Poor Bridgeport. For years it has been the butt of jokes and has been referred to as the "armpit of New England". It has been going through rough times for the last thirty or so years, due to industry leaving. It has always had a huge immigrant population due to it's factory jobs (that's why my family ended up there!) but many see this as a disadvantage, when it's diversity is one of its strengths. Many residents are poor, the education system is struggling, and there are not many jobs.

But to hear my grandparents talk, it was the greatest place on earth! I guess many of these industrial cities have a glittering past, and a not-so-glittering present. I can only hope that these cities will be revived and return to their past status. Despite the fact that I'm afraid to go into my old neighborhood at noon, I'm very proud to say I came from Bridgeport.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeport,_Connecticut

http://www.bridgeporthistory.org/

Wow, I was doing some googling for images of Bpt, and found this youtube link, and spent over an hour looking through some of these video clips. Sad, because lots of them show not only the former beauty of the city, but the current grittiness. If you are interested, take a look through some of them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6drNZN23aLU&NR=1

Oh, forgot to add that Bpt was the home of the Frisbie Pie company, which of course was responsible for frisbees!

(edited for typo!)

This message was edited Jan 28, 2009 2:06 PM

Relax, ladies and gentlemen, my tell-all DG article on Hot Chocolate is scheduled for Monday February 9. You'll learn more than you ever wanted to know on that topic - which is how I knew that factoid about the first Drinking Chocolate house in the New World.

The Frisbie Pie Co. was responsible for Frisbees? What's a Frisbie Pie?

That was a very cool you tube video.

I know more history about my old hometown...which was Sayreville, NJ incorporated in 1876 named for one of the owners of Sayre and Fisher brick company the largest brick mfg in the world, their bricks were used in the base of the empire state bldg, rockefeller center and the statue of Liberty. So in the late 1800's basically the whole town was centered around the manufacturing of bricks. Many of the old bldgs that are still there housed the workers.
The first recorded evidence of Native Americans in the area was in 1656. We had the first rail line in the state and the 2nd major one in the US(camden & amboy)

I lived on a lake there that was created when they were digging out clay for the bricks and they hit a spring, filled up so fast that they couldn't get all the equipment out in time. Our friend who was a former navy seal was over one day and we were swimming..he took a dive down the one end of the lake were we had heard there were the tracks for the carts to haul out the clay...after what seemed like forever he finally came up for air...he's like "hey it's pretty cool down there" sure enough there were the remains of the clay hauling equipment.
But like so many of the blue collar towns it started to go downhill that's why we moved out 4 years ago(lived in the house I grew up in which my parents bought for $9,000 in 1957)

CLAREMONT (Settled 1762; 1990 population: 13905). Named by Gov Benning Wentworth to honor his cousin, Lord Clare, whose English estate in Surrey was named Claremont Castle. Sullivan County's only city, Claremont was first settled by Moses Spafford and David Lynde, two Connecticut grantees. The oldest areas are west of downtown Claremont whose early development was tied to the water power potential of the Sugar River and along which textile, paper and machinery mills were built, many of which remain today. The river--its total fall through the town is 250 feet--flows from Lake Sunapee emptying into the Connecticut at West Claremont. Although Claremont is best known for its industrial heritage, in the mid-1800s it enjoyed the reputation of being the best farming town in New Hampshire.”

editied - I found the quick history

This message was edited Jan 28, 2009 5:19 PM

loved that utube DD

Ooh, Carrie, can't wait for your article! There's no such thing as too much of anything when it concerns chocolate!

Sorry, I forget that not everyone knows the local history that we take for granted. The Frisbie Pie company was located in Bridgeport, and was very popular. If I remember the story correctly, it was students at Yale that took to throwing the tin pie plates around the campus, and soon some enterprising toy company made the jump from Frisbie pie plates into Frisbees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisbie_Pie_Company

Hmm, speaking of toys, I don't know how I could have forgotten this tidbit. The town I live in now is home to the Wiffle Ball company. Wow, I can't believe I couldn't find a photo of the company. You wouldn't believe it if you saw it - kind of a small, run-down building that you wouldn't suspect of making a product known the world wide!

Jen, amazing story about the lake. That must be so cool. Aren't you interested in going down there to see for yourself? Also, isn't Sayreville the hometown of Jon Bon Jovi?

Schickenlady, is your town still agricultural? It would be a shame if there weren't still farms going strong there.

Oops, we posted at the same time onewish. Thanks. I enjoyed that youtube also, but was even more amazed at the number of videos on there related to the city. Many are posted by kids, it seems, and can be pretty profane, but still are interesting. It's kind of nice to see that they have a pride in their city, even it that pride comes from living in a tough area.

Of course, I can be accused of the same thing - I love to see the reaction of people, even today, when they found which high school I graduated from so long ago. As it did then, it still has a reputation for being a tough school, and therefore anyone who graduated from there is considered pretty tough too, lol.

This is great stuff!

Digger reminded me about CT's weapons manufacturing history. Colt in Hartford, Winchester and Olin Matheson in New Haven, Ct made the guns that "tamed the west" .Remington in Bridgeport. nowadays it's more nuclear submarines and helicopters

Hi Don!
Madison was once East Guilford until they split. Probably for the same reason.

LOL one,
I was born and raised in Trenton, NJ which was founded long ago (1679} named Trenton {1719} after William Trent.and there wasn't any rte 80 back then either. nor exits 13w or 7a on the NJ Turnpike. Oh, and no Verrazano bridge till I was about 12 or 13. There were still traffic circles on Rte one all up and down NJ.
Now I live in Saugus, MA, founded 350 + years ago as an iron works on the Saugus River. The village associated with the works was called Hammersmith.
Martha

Flowerjen, I was seven when the war broke out and we had to move to Japan, and subsequently to the United States. If it hadn't been for the war, I might still be living in Seoul. It had a fairly large Russian community.