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Save the Date!To commemorate the 375th birthday of Old Saybrook, the Old Saybrook Historical Society, through the generosity of Herb and Sherry Clark, will host a “Step Back in Time”, on Sunday, August 15, 2010. This event will be held at the Bushnell Farm on the Boston Post Road in Old Saybrook. Stay tuned for more information, you won’t want to miss this town wide celebration!!!!

Ways and Means Committee

An out-of-town inquiry for the name of the boarding school in Old Saybrook with a large number of students from Latin America in the 1900 Census led to this information involving the meritorious Seabury Institute.

Miss Hetty Wood and her sister, Nancy, established their girls boarding and day school in the General William Hart house c. 1850. Rev. Peter L. Shepard, formerly rector at Grace Episcopal Church, was an instructor. The sisters ran the school until 1890 and sold the school (not the Hart house) to Shepard. However, Rev. Shepard had already moved to his own home in town and started a military boarding school for boys called Seabury Institute (S.I.).

Shepard had his Seabury Institute in the house and property he purchased from William and Emiline Kirtland in 1867, which is at 341 Main Street. A large addition was added to the house for the school and there were several barns, etc. The catalogues list the campus as having 12 acres. The specially designed gymnasium first shows up in the 1877-78 catalogue.

Rev. Peter Shepard had been conducting Seabury Institute since its start c 1865 for 21 years as its owner and Principal until he leased the facilities to a Warwick P. Jackson for 5 years thru September 1891, permitting Shepard to step down. After the lease ended, Shepard endeavored to sell the property but encountered difficulties. The world was changing with the 10 month Spanish-American war in 1898 and the “Gay Nineties” affecting social mores. We do not know how this affected enrollment at Seabury Institute; however, its reputation must have been excellent. On April 23, 1900, Shepard sold the school and property to Caroline Selden, an old Connecticut Valley family name and, per the 1900 Census, the majority of students are from Cuba and the Head Master is Henry M. Selden.

The Cuban students were from wealthy parents who wanted their children’s education to continue in spite of the upheavals of the war and Seabury Institute and Old Saybrook offered that.

Vignettes from the Archives

Seabury Institute

Civil War EncampmentMark your calendar for July 17th to visit the

Hart house lawn where members of the Four-teenth Regiment of the Connecticut Volunteer Infantry will portray the lives of ordinary CT citizens who participated in Company G of the Union army.

The Fourteenth Regiment will set up a typical campsite and demonstrate the skills needed by soldiers at that time.

Historical documents reveal 8 brave lads from Saybrook joined Company G in 1862.

Please contact Linda Kinsella 860-399-6263 if you are interested in helping with this event.

Garden ReportJubilation - Spring is here at last! The Hart

House gardeners have returned to carefully uncover the perennial plants sprouting from the earth. We meet every Tuesday 9AM to noon, weather permit-ting. New volunteer gardeners are always welcome. Just bring your trowel and show up.

A variety of perennial plants from the garden will be available for purchase soon. Watch for the “plant sale” sign in front of the Hart House to know some-one is in the garden to help you.

If anyone has old bricks they wish to donate please contact Linda (860-399-6263). We need to replace some of the garden edging.

Remember to save unwanted treasures and house-hold items for the June 12th tag sale.

Linda Kinsella, Keeper

Living History Event

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C O N N E C T I N G T H E P A S T T O T H E F U T U R ENon-Profit Org.

U.S. PostagePAID

Old Saybrook, CTPermit No. 52

The Old Saybrook Historical SocietyPost Office Box 4

Old Saybrook, CT 06475860.388.2622

www.saybrookhistory.org

This newsletter is generously sponsored by

Calendar of Events

JUNE 11 Summer exhibit reception

JUNE 12 Gardeners tag sale @ grounds of Hart House

JULY 17 Civil War Encampment, Grounds of the Hart House

JULY 22 Lecture

AUGUST 15 Saybrook Colony 375th celebration @ Bushnell House, Old Saybrook

SEPTEMBER 12 Ice cream social @ Hart House

Happy 375th Anniversary Old Saybrook!

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Historical SocietyThe Old SaybrookApri l /May 2010

President’s Message

Tag Sale - Tag Sale - Tag SaleSAVE YOUR UNWANTED HOUSEHOLD ITEMS FOR OUR JUNE TAG SALE

Please contact Linda Kinsella (860-399-6263) if you are unable to store items until June. We will find a place for them. No clothing, no large appliances. Thanks.

Finally Spring has sprung! I’m sure all of you gardeners at heart are itching to get into your gardens and start your spring clean up. Speaking of spring cleaning if you find yourself pulling “stuff” out of the basement or garage please consider making a donation of it to the H.H. Gardeners. They are planning a June tag sale on the grounds to raise funds for the restoration of the old fashioned rose garden including a new arbor.

This summer in celebration of our 375th anniversary we have several events planned. Our summer fund raiser is “A Step Back in Time” at the historic Bushnell Farm in Old Saybrook. This will be a special day for families to tour this private museum which is not generally open to the public. Visitors will be able to see what life was like in the early 17th century. There will be children’s games, demonstrations by artisans in period costumes, tours of the buildings and information about antique farm equipment and how it was used. The OSHS thanks Herb and Sherry Clark for their generous offer to let us all visit this special historical site again. There are additional details in this issue about the day and the evening fund raising event as well. This event has been generously sponsored by Reid Amusements, Thompson and Peck Insurance Agency, the Chase Foundation, OS Economic Development, Guilford Savings Bank, Matthew and Haddas Rubin and Roberts Physical Therapy. Thanks to all these sponsors we are able to continue to bring history to the community in a fun and interactive way. Please be

sure and acknowledge their support of our society if the opportunity arises.

Another event we have in the works is the Civil War Encampment which is free to the public and a great way to introduce children to living history rather than solely through a book. More details are in this issue.

Linda Kinsella has been very busy with all of these things, gardens, event planning and lectures but somehow still finds time to research and arrange for the creation of sewing costumes for our volunteers. She’s amazing, thanks Linda.

It’s such a pleasure to be surrounded by so many hard working people; each one makes my job easier. There are times when I think we can’t possibly get it all done and then someone steps up and gets it done. Thank you all for your time and talents. We appreciate your contributions in every way.

If you haven’t already done it check us out on the web site for additional info. Thanks to Jim Rothgeb and Diane Hoyt it is user-friendly and full of info. You can reach us there if you have questions.

Randi

Seven Old Saybrook women are meeting Thursday mornings, 9AM, at the Hart House Exhibit Gallery to design and sew period costumes. The costumes will be worn for special events like the Memorial Day parade and the Bushnell Farm Day. If you can sew a straight seam and would like to help please contact Diane Hoyt (860 395 1635).

Pictured are Sherry Eldridge, Archangela Claffey, Nina Garrett, Sylvia Lundun

Period Costumes for Saybrook’s 375th Birthday

June Tag Sale

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OfficersRandi Bradbury, PresidentLinda Kinsella, Vice PresidentWalter Osborne, Past PresidentRobert Pedemonti, TreasurerDiane Hoyt, Corresponding Secretary Recording Secretary

TrusteesBob DuncanIrmy HermansonLisa LeMonteMarie McFarlinSuzanna OttoArlene SakatosViola Tagliatela

ChairpersonsArchivistPolly Timken

Archives Building ManagementElaine Staplins

BuildingsStephen Gernhardt

Docents/Guides

EducationMike Rafferty

Exhibits

FinanceBob Pedemonti

GardensAudrey GoodhueLinda Kinsella

GrantsBill Childress

HospitalityIrmy HermansonRonnie Pedemonti

InsuranceWalter Osborne

LecturesLinda Kinsella

LibraryDorothy Swan

MembershipLisa LeMonteDiane Hoyt

MuseumDonna DiBellaMarie McFarlin

NewsletterRandi Bradbury

Publicity & PhotosLamar LeMonte

RegistrarDorothy Swan

Volunteers

Ways & MeansRonnie Pedemonti

WebmasterJim Rothgeb

The Adventures of (Looking for) Tom Sawyer

continued on next page

By Tedd Levy

There’s a persisting local story here that Mark Twain began writing his famous account of Tom Sawyer while staying in Fenwick Hall, the majestic resort and hotel in the summer of 1872 in New Saybrook.

For the past few months former long-time First Selectman Barbara Maynard and I have been burrowing our way through the Old Saybrook Historical Society’s Stevenson Archives exploring and enjoying the many gems of Old Saybrook’s past. We had heard about this possible connection between Old Saybrook and Mark Twain and his story of Tom Sawyer but as exciting as the possibility might be, it seemed to be one of those legends that many small communities enjoy repeating.

So, while it would not be unusual for Hartford-based Twain and his family to join their friends at New Saybrook—now known as Fenwick—but we needed to find evidence that he started work on Tom Sawyer while here.

Our search led to the Mark Twain Project Online which has more than twenty-three hundred letters written by Twain between 1853 and 1880 <http://www.marktwainproject.org> There is no doubt that he came to New Saybrook in July, 1872 and remained for the rest of the summer.

In August, he explained: “Our Susie is doing famously here, but the case was different in Hartford, the moment the warm weather set in. We had to pack our trunks mighty suddenly, the 5th of July & rush down here—& none too soon, for the succeeding week wilted Hartford children away like a simoom. This place is on the Sound, 2 hours from Hartford, & is delightfully cool & comfortable—never an hour of heat, day or night.”

After they settled in at Fenwick Hall, Twain’s wife Olivia wrote:

“We are very comfortably fixed here, much more so than I thought we should be from Mr Clemens discription—The air is delightful, the coolness is a pleasant coolness not chilliness. The only disagreableness is that there are so many Hartford people here, but then I stay closely in the room.”

Her husband had a different experience. According to the Hartford Courant, he sat on the veranda watching the sails move slowly over the broad expanse of water, “when he is not playing billiards or setting up ten-pins.” They reported that he is “a great favorite with the ladies, and really the lion of the house.”

Although regularly drawn to billiards, bowling and the ladies he was also productive. He completed work on a self pasting scrapbook, which turned out to be one of his few successful inventions.

And later that summer he wrote to a friend in Elmira, N.Y. saying:

“I have [been] writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on an average, for some time, now, on a book, (a story) & consequently have been so wrapped up in it & so dead to everything else, that I have fallen mighty short in letter-writing. But night before last I discovered that that day’s chapter was a failure, in conception, [moral] truth to [nature &] execution—enough [blemishes] to impair the [excellence] of almost any chapter—[& so,] I must burn up the day’s

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work [& do] it all over again. It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself dry. So I knocked off, [&] went to playing billiards for a change.”

The details of his life made interestng reading but did not provide confirmation that he began writing Tom Sawyer while summering at Fenwick Hall. Then we found a tantalizing comment.

Isabel V. Lyon, his secretary from 1902 to 1909, recalled his response to a question about when and where he began to write “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:”

He spoke with tenderness of the boy and the playmates and the pranks which inspired Tom Sawyer, she said. She reported that he said that during all the years between boyhood and a summer spent in Saybrook, Connecticut—“about 1872”—when he definitely began to write a book about those boys, he had “never lost sight of the magic and freedom and careless young life on the river.” (1)

Excited by this possibility that the local story was true, we also realized that Twain’s secretary was recalling events that occurred nearly 40 years earlier.

It turns out that there is some uncertainty and disagreement among scholars in determining when Twain began writing “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” The executor of Twains literary works, Albert Bigelow Paine wrote that “Mark began writing [Tom Sawyer] as we now know it in either 1873 or 1874 (on the whole, the later seems the likelier year), and on July 5, 1875 told [William Dean] Howells that he had finished it.”

However, Bernard DeVoto who succeeded Paine as the executor of Twains literary work, and who did not have high regard for Paine, thought that Twain began when he was in London sometime between August and November 1872.

More recent researchers at the University of California have stated that he wrote Tom Sawyer at three different times: the winter

of 1872-1873, the spring and summer of 1874, and the spring and summer of 1875.

They suggest that he might have begun in November 1872 after returning from England when he and his family were living in a rented house in the Nook Farm suburb of Hartford.

Other scholars note the lack of hard evidence. The issue has been fairly summarized by Mark Woodhouse, the Archivist at the Center for Mark Twain Studies, at Elmira College: He believes that Twain began Tom Sawyer before the winter of 1873 while living in Nook Farm. But, he says, there is the quote from his secretary Isabel Lyon that indicates that he talked of having begun the book in Saybrook in the summer of 1872. And, he concludes, that he has nothing that would confirm or refute the exact date or location.

Given the limited evidence and uncertain and conflicting conclusions, it is obviously difficult to determine when and where Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer. Since there is no clear-cut finding, it is possible that Mark Twain did begin writing Tom Sawyer while staying at Fenwick Hall in New Saybrook during the summer of 1872. Whether he did or not , the adventure of looking was almost as exciting as reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

----------------------- (1) Isabel V. Lyon to W. T. H. Howe, 28 Nov

1934, Mark Twain Papers, California Digital Library, UC Press, Copyright © 2007– The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Special thanks to Brent M. Colley, Redding Town Historian and Twain enthusiast, who provided valuable information and leads in pursuit of this adventure. Brent is currently promoting the yearlong, statewide celebration marking the centennial of Twain’s death in 1910.

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Seabrook and Saybrook: years of confusionFrom 1635 until approximately 1800,

map makers, writers, and numerous official record keepers had two different English names for our town: Seabrook and Saybrook. Why the confusion about the name of the town, and why for so many years?

Many historians credit the Dutch for naming the original settlement ZeeBroeck. This could have been as early as 1620, several years after Dutchman Adrian Block surveyed the Connecticut River for the Dutch West India Company. Zeebroeck in old fashioned Dutch means an inlet from the sea or a place where a small river (brook) flows into the sea. The English translation of Zeebroeck is Seabrook. The Dutch name existed at least 15 years before Plymouth Colony Governor John Winthrop reportedly named the settlement Saye-Brooke in honor of Viscount Saye & Sele and Lord Brook, two of the original English patentees. This account may or may not be true as there is no written record of this official 1635 designation. But apparently this is the beginning of the town having two different English names.

The late Harold Elrod, Old Saybrook resident, historian and past president of the Old Saybrook Historical Society correctly noted that Lion Gardiner, (the English engineer brought here by Governor Winthrop to build a fort) had lived in Holland, spoke Dutch and had a Dutch wife. He noted that Gardiner could not have failed to recognize the original Dutch name ZeeBroeck, and translated it correctly into English as SeaBrook. There are numerous 1635 written examples referring to the inhabitants of SeaBrooke, Fort SeaBrooke and the town of Seabrooke. But a letter written by Lion Gardner in 1635 mentions his fort at Saybrook. So did Gardiner and Winthrop both start correcting everyone by telling them the settlement name had just been officially changed from Seabrook to Saybrook?

If they did, they were initially unsuccessful. For the next 40 years, most written records refer to the settlement as Seabrook, not Saybrook: In 1635 Lion Gardiner was requested in writing, “to call to mind the passages of God’s providence at Seabrooke;” In 1644 the colony of Connecticut purchased from Colonel Fenwick, (the only one of the original patentees who ever visited the colony) the “jurisdiction right to the colony of Seabrooke;” The 1644 Articles of Agreement refer

numerous times to SeaBrooke Fort, ye Fort at Seabrooke and the town of Sea Brooke; In 1659 a large number of church goers petitioned the Court to allow them to follow their pastor to Norwich. The court lists the petition signers as “the inhabitants of Seabrook;” In 1662 the ferry between Saybrook and Lyme was established and the proceedings of the General Court for that year show, “This court grants Sea Brooke Inhabitants liberty to set up a ferry at Tilleys Point;” In 1675, the town was the scene of an attack by Governor Andross, of New York. His diary mentions his attempt to take possession of a fort and town “at a place called Seabrook.”

Historical maps also support at least 160 years of confusion about the town name. A map of the New England coast dated 1685 labels the settlement at the end of the Connecticut River as ZeeBroeck, (50 years after Governor

Winthrop officially renamed the town SayeBrooke). The earliest map showing the English name Seabrook is dated 1758. Subsequent maps dated 1776, 1780 and as late as 1794 also label the town Seabrook (159 years after Winthrop renamed the town). But another map as early as 1676 names the town Saybrook (41

years after Winthrop). More maps dated 1677, 1766, 1780, and 1792 also list

the town name as Saybrook. It wasn’t until the 1800’s that map makers stopped

showing Seabrook as the town name. Why did the name Saybrook prevail and not Seabrook? Perhaps too many Seabrooks already existed? Perhaps the handy coincidence of Viscount Saye and Lord Brook sounding a lot like Seabrook was just too good a story? Perhaps political historians decided to credit the English and not the Dutch?

Epilogue: Saybrook, Old Saybrook, New Saybrook:

Between 1852 and 1854 the original Saybrook Colony (once encompassing Lyme and Old Lyme) was further divided. Essex became its own town and Old Saybrook became the name of the current town. A map of Old Saybrook dated in the 1850’s calls Lynde’s Neck (later named Fenwick), New Saybrook. But this name did not survive, and Fenwick prevailed thereafter on most maps.

(Learn more about Old Saybrook history. Join the Old Saybrook Historical Society. Visit: www.SaybrookHistory.org)

1685 Zeebroeck map

1794 Seabrook map

New Saybrook map c1850

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