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Winter 1996 A
Special Corner of Weston Ed. note: The following article, written by Mrs. Jeanne Howes of Weston, appeared in The Weston Forum December, 1987. Part I will be featured in this issue of the Chronicle with Part 11 in the next issue. (The Howes Family Association Web site.) Mrs. Howes was born in Massachusetts and is a graduate of Mt. Holyoke with a Master’s Degree. In 1942 she married Charles Howes, a native of Connecticut, and they moved to Weston in 1951. Jeanne has written a book on the circus, The Howes Circus Story, detailing the circus 75 years before Barnum bought it. She started the organization "Star" in 1952 and served on its board for 10 years, its President for two, as well as being a senior writer for Save the Children. Mrs. Howes served as the Democratic registrar in Weston for 10 years and is a member of the Melville Society, having written much about Herman Melville. Mrs. Howes enjoys Scrabble and her husband Charles who has been involved with meteorology for 60 years and writes a column about our local weather for The Weston Forum. We thank Mrs. Howes for her interest and hard work putting together this interesting history of our northern corner. This is a fascinating but neglected chapter of Weston history - the story of our northwest corner which some people still call "Georgetown," and its Swedish settlers. Actually, this part of Weston is but a small part of the Georgetown area which also embraces for the most part adjacent corners of Redding, Wilton, and Ridgefield. Because of its close connection to the busy village at our border, some people have been confused into thinking that this place lies outside of Weston. Not so. Our special corner has always been contained within the bounds of Weston. Unlike the commercial and industrial parts of Georgetown, it remains residential. Residents here have always paid Weston taxes, and some have served our town devotedly in various capacities and over many long years. However, close proximity to the border towns influenced this tip of Weston to develop in a separate way from the rest of Weston. Also, it should be noted, there have been exciting moments here when legislative efforts at times, sought to tear off this part altogether from its proper Weston roots. These attempts failed. But the ambivalent struggle adds more color to our story of the corner of Weston that almost got away. Beginnings In the earliest days, life in this section, then called "Osborn Town" must have been similar to that of the rest of Weston. In the Osborn graveyard still standing on Old Farm Road, the oldest stones are crumbling, but one which is still barely visible reads as follows: "In memory of Next to it, a broken stone marks the grave of William Osborn who died in February 1795. Also, in that time and place, a general store operated by Burr Gilbert and Isaac Bennett sold provisions for the farmers. Sales of knives, molasses, lumber, rum and salt, saddles and oxen were duly recorded in pounds, shillings and pence. The store is long forgotten, but those family names have left a permanent mark here. Another reminder of that period was found in the attic of the old Betts house where Mary Fox resides. It's an antique clay bottle glazed in brown and stamped with the name ORRIN H. OSBORN. Once a container of milk or cider, today a mute witness to the life that was here. The Betts house, the Osborn houses and cemetery are clearly shown in the top square of the Weston map of 1867. This area was still sparsely settled, but within the next fifty years there came such an influx of Swedish settlers that Osborn Town came to be known as "Swede Town." These Swedish people were the only immigrants to settle as a group in our town - another distinctive feature of our Weston history. Jelliff's Wire Mill Several small industries had ready sprung up in other parts of town, and in this corner, as the old 1867 map shows, Aaron Jelliff had established a wire factory. This fact is important to Our Story, as it was the wire industry which attracted the Swedes, many of whom were skilled machinists to come here to find work in America. Jelliff’s wire mill produced riddles and sieves. Riddles (not the guessing kind) were large coarse sieves or ash-sifters for saving reusable coal when shafting out the ashes. Products also included coal screens against which shovelfuls of hard coal were thrown to get rid of the coal dust. From notes preserved by the late Rudolph Jacobson, a long time resident of our area, the quaint and primitive method of operation at the Jelliff Mill is described: "The motive power used in this shop was a one man power tread mill. The treadmill was on the outside of the shop, south side. It was about twelve feet in diameter and six feet wide. It was built with treads to step on. The weight of the person inside the wheel stepping on the treads turned it and furnished the power to run a saw and several small machines. "The wheel was operated by Abraham Dreamer, a veteran of the Mexican war. It was a great treat to the boys of fifty or more years ago to see Uncle Abe walking in the wheel, never reaching the top." (From The Wilton Bulletin, August 24-25, 1983.) Not surprisingly, considering that peculiar treadmill, Jelliff’s wire mill went out of business. But an earlier established wire mill, where Aaron Jelliff had learned his trade, now flourished and continued to expand. This was the Gilbert and Bennett wire factory just over the line in Redding, which continues to operate today. As the Gilbert and Bennett manufacturing company evolved from a Weston enterprise, and played the dominant role in changing the development of Weston's "Georgetown" corner, a brief account of its origins and early growth is essential. Horsehair Sieves Benjamin Gilbert who was born in Weston in 1789 tried a number of jobs working with a shoemaker, also in a tannery currying the hides to make them supple. One day in 1818 as he looked at a pile of discarded horsehair, he had a bright idea. This wasted material could be woven into a fabric and made into sieves. His wife thought that was a capital idea. She wove some strands on her handloom and Gilbert tacked the fabric to a hoop shaved from a sawed strip of wood. Now they had a marketable product. Gilbert's sieve business began in Weston as a cottage industry with housewives weaving the long strands and husbands making and mounting the hoops. Next, thrifty Mr. Gilbert invented a "picking machine" to untangle the short matted hairs so they also could be put to productive use, and his business grew. The Old Red Shop Then in 1830 he set up a small factory on Weston's doorstep, using water power drawn from a small Weston pond above the mill. Where Sasqua Trail is now located next to that pond, there were vats for cleaning and sorting hog, horse and cattle hair. Water from the pond flowed down a wooden flume to turn a great water wheel which powered saws, looms, and the new picking machines. The original building, called "The Old Red Shop," had two floors. Downstairs long strands of hair were woven into sieves which were peddled to housewives and farmers for sifting flour. meal and grain. Upstairs, picking machines separated the short hairs which were then steamed, curled, wound into hanks and sold for stuffing mattresses, carriage seats, and Victorian horsehair furniture. Sturges Bennett married Ben Gilbert's daughter and became a partner in the enterprise. Not long afterward, fine wire became available, and these astute businessmen improved their sieves by making them out of wire instead of horsehair. They turned out the first wire sieves on a carpet loom in 1834. Thus was born the woven wire business in America. Now the factory could produce many new products - wire screening for windows, poultry netting, ox muzzles, pie and cheese safes, and the aforementioned riddles which Aaron Jelliff copied for his Weston factory that failed. Long before the Old Red Shop was torn down in 1869, the industry had spread out into several new buildings along the Norwalk River on Weston's Wilton and Redding borders. At the very time that Weston's small industries began to go out of business and most of Weston returned to a rural agrarian way of life, this top corner of Weston was pulled by the magnetic force of the Gilbert and Bennett wire factory into the industrial age. When the Danbury and Norwalk rail line came by in the 1860's the factory owners built a Georgetown rail depot. The railroad made it very convenient to bring in needed supplies and to transport their ever growing lines of wire products to new markets. It also brought in new workers. Swedish Immigrants. Exactly when the first Swedish families came to Weston is uncertain, but at least one family was here by 1865. Within the next twenty years enthusiastic reports to relatives in their homeland encouraged many to follow. Swedish sailors found it easy to "jump ship" in New York and make their way here. One young seaman was so excited he got off in Virginia to the wrong Georgetown before he found his way north. As many of the Swedes were skilled and committed to a strong work ethic, the mill owners were glad to employ them. Factory representatives went down to the docks to recruit these and other Scandinavian immigrants. The Andersons, Berglunds, Borgesons, Carlsons, Dahlbergs, Ekstroms, Forsbergs, Gustafsons, Hansens, Jacobsons, Jaderlunds, Johnsons, Nelsons, Olsons, Petersons, Quists, Samuelsons, Vidmarks, and Wahlquists all found a secure place to work and many continued at the wire mill all of their lives, some attaining positions of high responsibility. Many of their third and fourth generations are still living in Weston. Five or six years ago, when the contents of the Quist house (once the Old Lockwood home) on Georgetown Road was sold, I was pleased to purchase an old framed portrait of a typical old Swedish couple sitting outside of their Weston home. This large, hand-tinted photograph in a curved frame covered by convex glass shows a man and wife seated on wooden kitchen chairs placed near the wellhouse. It is not a stiff formal portrait, but a relaxed domestic scene, natural and unposed. The woman in her house apron concentrates on her knitting. The old gent, wearing his Sunday hat, white shirt and suspendered trousers peers through his glasses at the newspaper he holds. When I showed it to Gertrude Walker, our former town clerk, she said, "Those are my grandparents, in about 1915. 1 must tell you their love story. Years ago in Sweden young Anders Gustafson fell in love with cute and lively Augusta B. Borg. But one day they had a frightful quarrel, and she said she never wanted to see him again. Heartbroken, Anders decided to come to America and he left. "Not long after, Augusta repented. She blamed herself for the trouble. Now she made up her mind to come to America to find Anders, although she had no idea where he was. She wrote to a friend who lived in Brooklyn asking her to meet her when she would arrive. "By a stroke of luck, this good friend happened to see young Gustafson on the street and told him the news. So, it was Anders, not the girl friend, who came to meet Augusta. They were married soon after and decided to come to Georgetown." The old families, the Osborns, Albins, and Betts, who were already employed in the wire mill, no longer needed large acreage for farming. Newcomers were happy to buy off the extra land for a cheap price. Those who had worked as ship carpenters now helped the others to build their houses, working late after long hours at the factory. As relatives and friends arrived from the old country, extra rooms were added and land further divided to accommodate them. No longer a farming community, this part of Weston formed part of a little rural village encircling the factory. While the men toiled at the looms, the women kept house, raised the children and tended a vegetable garden and chickens, sometimes a pig or cow.
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Any New Englander who has ever tried to dig a garden or plant a tree can attest
to our most prolific crop -- the rock. Rocks seem to be everywhere and in all sizes and shapes. However, Yankee
ingenuity, as usual, found a way to use these rocks for all types of building from homes, fireplaces, and the wonderful
stone wall.
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