The story of how a village became a center for industry, shopping, and recreation while focusing on the people who lived the Watertown story. Readers will discover how riots broke out when politics took center stage just before the Civil War due to strong anti-Republican sentiments. The bond scandal only decades later is highlighted as the event that plunged Watertown into her darkest days.
The ever-changing face of Watertown is captured in this fascinating collection of postcard images dating from the early 1900s to the present. The postcards in this book come primarily from the extensive collection of W. F. Jannke III. He has presented an entertaining history of the city, from the changing face of its business district to the different forms of recreation once enjoyed by its inhabitants. Other images highlight scenes of calamitous events, most notably the 1914 cyclone. All will find this work to be a most engaging guide to the way life was lived in Watertown in "the good old days."
Established in 1630, Watertown was the first inland settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. With its central location and proximity to the Charles River, Watertown has always been a convenient meeting place and a starting point for travelers and traders headed to the West. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the town consisted of many country estates and farmlands. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw industrial growth and an influx of immigrants. Today, Watertown has become a thriving business community, retaining its small-town character, beautiful historic houses, and tree-lined streets. In Watertown, the long and colorful story of the town is told through vintage images as never before. Within these pages, see the Perkins School for the Blind, the Stanley steamer, the Arsenal, and an array of historic houses, churches, and public buildings. Learn how Paul Revere and his comrades held meetings in Watertown during the eighteenth century and how the first streetcar routes originated in Watertown in 1894.
Here, in stunning images and stirring narrative, is the history of Watertown, a community that lies near the center of western Connecticut. The town was once part of Mattatuck, a tract of land purchased from the Paugasett Indians in 1684. The fertile area first attracted Farmington residents, who settled down to farm the land. It was not until 1722, however, that the first sawmill was built. In time, new settlers joined the earlier families and, by 1739, they formed the parish of Westbury, which in turn was incorporated as Watertown in 1780. With more than two hundred unforgettable pictures, Watertown highlights the local men and women, buildings and churches, and neighborhoods and businesses that are the essential element of the town's lively history. It shows some of the nine one-room schoolhouses that children attended. It features the Taft School, a preparatory school for boys opened by Horace Taft in 1893; Mrs. Parke and her strange museum; and tavern keeper and farmer James Bishop. It proudly displays some of the firsts for Watertown: Merrit Heminway winding thread on spools, Wheeler-Wilson developing the lock-stitch sewing machine, and the Watertown Manufacturing Company designing and producing Lifetime Ware.
Watertown began as a small hamlet of three cabins located in a wilderness. In time it grew to become the county seat of Jefferson and, from the early 1800s through the mid-1900s, a major industrial and trade center in northern New York State. With more than 200 images, Watertown tells the fascinating history of this community, once known as the Garland City. This pictorial history looks back at a time when horse-and-buggy travel was a way of life, when crowds gathered to cheer for the returning troops, and when life seemed less hectic. Here are the Watertown public square, the first ten churches that were built in town prior to 1850, and the faces of schoolchildren-the ancestors of today's residents. Also in view are the early days of the Watertown Police Department, the industries that supplied jobs for thousands, the mighty Black River which powered these industries, and Thompson Park and the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library-two gifts donated by benefactors who anticipated the community's needs.
Watertown is a perfect place to raise children, where criminal mischief and scandal are the rare exception to the rule. Discover over a century and a half's worth of exceptions. Travel back to the origins of Watertown, when the house next door might be a brothel and the man on the street might be a serial killer. Hear the tale of poor ninety-five-year-old Mary Kodesch, whose son left her to freeze to death in the barn, and that of the two young boys whose 1890 campaign of arson targeted everything from a church to a box factory. Then press on into the violent history of the Cleveland Street poltergeist house as Jannke delivers a thrilling combination of thoroughly researched fact and inexplicable mystery that will leave the hardiest Watertown residents torn between eagerly turning the next page and nervously looking over their shoulders.
