Guilford Preservation Alliance

Witness to History Slavery in Guilford

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Archives for December 2010

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Welcome to Sustainable Guilford

On our website we intend to feature rotating columns by local preservation experts who will be addressing some of the more urgent, current issues involving development in our town–encouraging economic development that both supports the town’s existing businesses and is consistent with the long-term interests of the community. The GPA advocates development opportunities that provide the greatest economic benefits for Guilford with the least overall costs and impacts on the character of the community.

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Welcome

Welcome to the Guilford Preservation Alliance’s new and improved website! We hope you like the crisp, up-to-date look that designer Cathi Bosco has created for us. We invite you to visit us online regularly and explore the site’s many new features. In addition to columns focusing on local history and issues related to planning and development, you’ll find information about the GPA’s public programs and other activities, news about current preservation issues, and links to other websites that we think will interest you.

Although “preservation” is the GPA’s middle name, we take equal pride in our “alliance” moniker. Since 1980, the GPA has been partnering with town officials and other community organizations to build bridges between Guilford’s past and future as the town continues to grow. You can be an important part of that effort by joining our team of hard-working volunteers. Our new website is intended to encourage communication and dialogue, and help identify areas in which we can work together to enhance Guilford’s unique character and way of life.

Unlike Guilford’s five outstanding historic-house museums, the GPA has no physical property to maintain. Nor is our agenda limited to historic preservation, environmental stewardship, open-space protection, or any other specific issue. Instead, the GPA was founded with a broad mission to “preserve and protect the built and natural heritage of the town” and to promote “joint public action to mobilize the community” in pursuit of those goals. Over the years, our initiatives have ranged from popular educational programs like “Early Guilford Days” to the planting of street trees and the protection of scenic viewsheds and corridors, such as those along Routes 77 and 146. You can read about some of our major accomplishments by clicking on the menu under GPA Projects.

In collaboration with the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, GPA volunteers recently completed a field survey of Guilford’s historic barns and other outbuildings. The statewide survey, including photos and descriptions of many Guilford barns, can be viewed online at www.connecticutbarns.org. The more comprehensive local survey can be consulted in print form in the Historic Room of the Guilford Free Library and will soon be available online at this address. We are also working on plans to expand and improve the GPA’s valuable online survey of historic buildings in Guilford.

In celebration of our thirtieth anniversary, the GPA will mount an exhibition of Ellen Ebert’s beautiful color photographs of scenic and historic sites around town–this display will appear in the Town Hall sometime in the first half of 2011. A selection of Ellen’s images adorns our new homepage.

For those of you who are not already GPA members, membership is only a click away (see Membership page on our heading above). In filling out our membership form you may also choose to contribute to the Hugh McKay Jones Trust Fund for Historic Preservation. Established in 1985 in honor of Hugh Jones, a noted architect and community benefactor, this revolving fund enables the GPA to provide loans and grants to worthy preservation projects around town. In 2010, for example, we made grants to the Guilford Keeping Society, to help with the upkeep of the Griswold House Museum, and to the Dudley Farm in North Guilford for renovation of a porch roof.

Whatever your particular interest or expertise, the GPA values your input and participation. Remember: your energy, enthusiasm, and ideas are our most important renewable resource!

Best wishes,

Harry Haskell
President

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Dispatches from Dennis

A column about local history by Dennis Culliton, Guilford’s popular middle school teacher.


Guilford as History: A Rich Collection of Mysteries Waiting to Be Answered.

As a child, I walked in the woods and forests of my native Massachusetts and wondered at the stone walls, pens, and foundations of a past civilization that occupied and farmed almost every acre of land east of the Hudson River.  I wondered how the early settlers, the Nipmuck Indians, and the later immigrants made a living in such a rocky habitat.

Twenty years ago, when I first lived in Guilford, and twelve years ago, when my family and I finally settled in Guilford and made it our home, the need to try to understand early settlers and how they made a living again formed inside me.  Why did the Menunkatuck Indians settle here?  Why did the salt box make sense for early residents?  Where did the homeowners who owned such big houses around the Green make such a surplus of income to build such substantial houses?  Who were the indentured servants, slaves, and immigrants who cleaned the stables, made the meals, and emptied the bedpans in those houses?

And Guilford also has signs of a past civilization of farmers, stone cutters, and foundry workers who made the town what it is and were absorbed into the population or relocated to new areas with new opportunities.  In Guilford, we have many areas where the evidence exists to explore the contributions of those who sweated and toiled and drifted away.

Even our Green holds stories yet to be told (or forgotten and yet to be told again.)  How many of the grave stones that were moved from the Green to the West End and Alderbrook were moved without the bodies?  Why is the Civil War monument so prominent in a town that has been sending soldiers to war since the French and Indian War?  Why does it appear that almost ten percent of the names on that same monument are from soldiers who fought and died in African American units in a town that has not had a substantial African American population in its history?

The Civil War monument holds many clues to the stories of the sixty-one men who died to preserve the Union.  These clues can be followed to the Guilford Free Library where letters and diaries from Bentons, Parmelees, and Dudleys sit in cabinets waiting to tell the tales of a soldier’s life and battles from Antietam to Five Forks.  These stories sit beside family records, historic photographs, ancient maps, and the diaries of men and women who thought enough about their lives in Guilford that some amateur historian might someday enjoy reading about how they lived.

There are even more mysteries to explore!  Just Google Fitz-Greene Halleck (the subject of one of the largest statues in Central Park, New York, and of the largest monument in Alderbrook Cemetery) and try to explain why the most popular American poet from the 19th Century is virtually unknown in America (and Guilford) today.

I hope that in future columns I will be able to explain a few of these mysteries; but more importantly, I hope to whet your appetite for all of the interesting morsels of history that are waiting to be uncovered in this special place we call home.  I also hope to introduce you to some of the historic resources and some of the great men and women who keep the stories of Guilford alive for this generation and for generations to come.

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Finding Preservation Links

Links to websites of local, regional and national preservation websites, and pertinent government entities, can be found in the sidebar of all subsequent pages beyond the homepage.