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Revision as of 03:50, 22 December 2008 by JohnWBarber (talk | contribs) (→History: add information)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Cannondale is a section of the Town of Wilton in Fairfield County, Connecticut. The actress June Havoc created the Cannondale Historic District, a collection of old buildings mostly moved to a site abutting the east side of Cannondale Railroad Station. The neighborhood is one of the wealthier sections of a wealthy town, with many old homes on large, almost rural lots now largely wooded. It has been inhabited since Colonial times.
The area was originally called "Pimpewaug" by the Indians, and it was the name originally used by the Colonial settlers. The Cannon family became prominent in the area, in part because of the Cannon Store, which started operating in the 1790s. In March 1852, the Danbury & Norwalk railroad opened a station in the neighborhood, near where the tracks crossed Cannon Road, and named it Cannon Station. Soon after, Charles Cannon began a campaign to get a post office in the neighborhood, and on April 29, 1870 it became a reality in a store east of the railroad tracks (very probably in a building which also functioned as a general store and the train station). At this point, the neighborhood became known as "Cannon Sttion". In 1882, the U.S. Post Office changed the local office's name to "Cannon", then changed it back to Cannon Station in 1896. In November 1915 the post office name was changed again, to Cannondale. The post office was closed in 1967 but the name remains, generally covering an area centered on the intersection of Danbury Road (U.S. Route 7) and Cannon Road.
Geography and soil
Cannondale is in the east-central part of Wilton, just north of Wilton Center (Wilton's downtown area). Route 7, the Norwalk River and the train tracks (now the Danbury Line of Metro-North Railroad) all run close to each other from south-southwest to north-northeast through the neighborhood. At its widest, the neighborhood stretches 2.1 miles from east to west and 2.8 miles from north to south. The Norwalk River valley is 250 feet above sea level in the north of Cannondale and descends to 200 feet above sea level at the southern end of the neighborhood. Turner Ridge, the western border of Cannondale, rises as high as 500 feet, but the ridges east of the river are 350 to 450 feet high. At the far eastern side of the neighborhood are the Saugatuck River and Wilton's border with the town of Weston, Connecticut.
According to Cannondale: A Connecticut Neighborhood (hereafter referred to as "CACN"), published by the Wilton Historical Society, The soil that graces Cannondale remains, arguably, the best in the state", with dark brown, sometimes red-tinted, surface soil of a type that extends from New Milford in the north down to the shore of Long Island Sound and named "Wilton Loam".
Transportation
The Cannondale station is part of the Danbury Line of Metro-North railroad.
History
The Indian name for the area was spelled in various ways by early colonists, with "Pimpewaug" being one common spelling. The area known as Pimpewaug covered a somewhat larger area than present Cannondale – from Honey Hill and the Split Rock in the north to the site of the present Wilton railroad station, and west from Drum Hill to Buckingham Ridge in the east.
The neighborhood, like the rest of Wilton, was originally a part of Norwalk, founded in 1651. By 1726, a separate parish was created for Wilton, allowing area residents to avoid the long trek into Norwalk for Sunday church services (and for men to travel down to Norwalk for militia drilling). Organizationally, the parish was split into a church and an "eclesiastical society" responsible for secular matters such as levying taxes for support of the church, schools and the militia, as well as for building roads and maintaining them and cemeteries.
Pimpewaug became one of the three original school districts in Wilton. Pimpewaug school met in August and September. For the rest of the year, children were employed on their families farms, which were the original and primary industry in the area until well into the 19th century. The Norwalk River supplied power for sawmills and gristmills. By 1809, Cannondale resident Thomas Cole used Norwalk River power for a machine to form wheel hubs for carriages. His brothers, Sherman and Curtis Cole, and nephews later ran the business under the name Cole, Nichols & Company. The plant was probably on the northeast and southeast corners of the intersection of Seeley and Danbury roads, with a sawmill, hub shop, blacksmith shop and a shed for trimming or stripping, where wagons, chaises and sulkeys were built. In the late 19th century, the business was replaced at the site by a wire mill.
A number of homes from the colonial era survive today in Cannondale. William Belden's home at 5 Scribner Hill Road, built in 1740 near the Split Rock, is one. The buildig is considered "a splendid example of the region's colonial architecture" and, with its original 2 1/2 stories, four rooms on the main floor and five upstairs, is somewhat larger than was normal for the time. Belden's 60 acres of land produced better harvests than that of his neighbors, and in some years they would buy grain from him.
In 1792, the Wilton Parish School Committee established nine school districts in town, with District 7 corresponding to the present-day Cannondale neighborhood. By 1795, the districts passed from control of the local Congregational society to a new Wilton School Society, independent of ties to a particular religion. Through 1830, Wilton received a state subsidy of $600 from the sale of lands in present-day Ohio, part of a "Fire Lands" settlement the state of Connecticut received to compensate residents for the burning of five towns by the British during the American Revolutionary War. The 1792 boundaries of District 7 were used by mapmakers Beers, Ellis and Soule for their 1867 Atlas of New York and Vicinity to define the section of town they called "Pimpewaug". According to CACN, the boundaries still define the neighborhood.
The influence of the Cannon family, particularly Charles Cannon (1824–1892), his son George (1784–1829) and his grandson, also Charles, was so great that the central area of Pimpewaug became known as "Cannon's" or "Cannon" by the time the railroad line was built through the area and needed a name for the new station.
In the late 1780s, John Cannon (1752–1802) established the Old Red Store, later known as the Cannon Store. The building survives, preserved behind a home on Danbury Road. The exact original location of the store is not known, although many believe it was at the site of a small (100-by-150-foot), oval, man-made pond on the west side of Danbury Road, just south of its intersection with Olmstead Hill Road. The water table, about 6 feet below ground, is the source of the pond, which has no brooks leading in or out of it, and the digging and establishment of the store building's foundation might have lead to the creation of the pond. By 1829, the store was located on the east side of Danbury Road. Although the business did well as late as the 1850s, by 1860 it no longer existed, and Charles Cannon was listed in the U.S. Census as simply a farmer with 60 acres of land. Already in the period from 1849 to 1857, however, Cannon had begun other business ventures, including employing area women to sew vests, pants, shirts, coats and overalls. Eighteen Cannondale women, representing about one in four families in the neighborhood, sewed clothing for Cannon's business. They were among 303 women employed that way by Cannon over a seven year period.
In the early 1850s, Cannon became a subcontractor for the building of the Danbury & Norwalk Railroad through Pimpewaug. From March to December 1851 he employed between 51 and 86 Irishmen (and only Irishmen) each month in constructing roadbeds and laying tracks. One working man, Timothy Sullivan, was paid 75 cents per day, working six days most weeks in March, for a total of $14.44. Of that, $10 was deducted for board. The line opened in February 1852.
Notes
External links
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