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New Canaan There & Then: The New Canaan ‘Town Beach’ (RIP)

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli and Dawn Sterner. 

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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” — Mark Twain

“Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda” — Oxford English Dictionary (1606)

On the north shore of Long Island Sound, nestled east of a long sandy stretch comprising Rowayton’s public Bayley Beach and the exclusive Weeburn Beach Club, lies 12.8 acres of spectacular geographic beauty. That is the property of the Roton Point Association, since 1984 a recreational condominium club serving as the summer go-to place for its limited number of 400 members. From the 1870s through 1941, Roton Point Park, where the Association is now located, was one of the preeminent attractions along the shores of the Sound, home to an amusement park and venue for countless legendary musical acts of the big band era, including Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Billie Holliday. 

From its elevated shady picnic grove overlooking the water to its sandy beaches, hotel, dance floor, carousel, roller coaster, and midway rides, Roton Point attracted thousands of visitors each season. It even had its own steamer that would ply the waters between Rowayton and New York City to facilitate attendance. When the park fell on hard times following the Hurricane of 1938, which wreaked catastrophic havoc throughout New England, and the onset of the Second World War a few years later, its proprietor, Neville Bayley, put the park up for sale in 1942. 

The acreage of the Roton Point Park that today comprises Weeburn Beach Club had already been sold to the private club in 1934.

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New Canaan There & Then: Before ‘Johnny,’ There Was ‘Jack’

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli and Dawn Sterner. 

On Feb. 11, 1960, Jack Paar, America’s first late-night television king and the second host of NBC’s Tonight Show, on the cover of both Life and Time magazines and at the height of his fame and power, did the unthinkable: He quit his job. In tears. And in front of a live studio audience in Studio 6B of the NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York. But back to that moment a bit later .

New Canaan There & Then

New Canaan There & Then: John & Carolyn Kennedy, the New Canaan Couple That Might Have Been

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli and Dawn Sterner. 

Within days of the tragedy that summer of 1999, the New York Post carried the intriguing story that the beautiful young couple were under contract to purchase property in New Canaan. 

The story, titled in the Post’s inimitable way, “Estate Would Have Been Great for Kids,” was uncharacteristically fact specific:
“John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn were building a Connecticut dream house with everything a Camelot couple could wish for – even llamas grazing nearby. The spread has lots of rooms, lots of land, a tennis court, a swimming pool. And it’s in New Canaan, the tony town where Carolyn Bessette Kennedy spent part of her childhood and where her sister Lisa Ann lives.”
The Post story identified the property as 65 Barnegat Road, a large parcel of land at the northern tip of New Canaan, on the border with New York State. Construction there was well underway continued the story, and the Post identified the owner as Alex Kaali-Nagy, a respected architect and local builder responsible for a number of high-end construction projects in Greenwich and elsewhere in Fairfield County. Two days later, the New York Daily News threw water on the story of its arch competitor.

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New Canaan There & Then: Slavery in Connecticut, Venture Smith and the 200th Anniversary of Tom Peterson

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli and Dawn Sterner. 

The upcoming Independence Day is, of course, the sesquicentennial of our country.  For history lovers this Fourth of July will also be remembered as the 200th anniversary of the deaths of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1826 (in that order, despite Adams’ plaintive last words, “Jefferson lives”), in what surely is the most extraordinary coincidence in American history.  

But the year 1826 is also the bicentennial of the birth of Thomas Peterson, who spent much of his early life in New Canaan living in what is now the historic 1764 Hanford-Silliman House, a featured attraction on the five-acre campus of the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society.  And it is also possible that Tom Peterson, who died in 1901 in Milford, was the last former slave to live in Connecticut. ***

The history of the beginnings of slavery in Connecticut is scant.  There is a 1638 account where several Native American prisoners taken during the Pequot War (1636-1638) were exchanged in the West Indies for enslaved Africans; historians believe this is probably how the first enslaved Africans ended up in the colony. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be the last. 

By 1790, most prosperous merchants in Connecticut owned at least one slave, as did half  of all ministers.  Unquestionably, the state’s economic links to slavery were entwined with the colony’s religious, political, and educational institutions, making the sordid institution a part of the social contract in Connecticut.  According to U.S. census data there were 2,764 slaves in Connecticut as of 1790.  This declined during the early part of the 19th century, with the census indicating number reported as slaves in the state of 951 in 1800, 97 in 1820, and 25 by 1830. 

Perhaps the most enlightening account of 18th century slavery in Connecticut is the narrative autobiography of Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself.  The story highlights an individual who has been heralded as one of the country’s first black entrepreneurs. What’s particularly poignant about the narrative is how his enslaved experience could become seemingly run-of-the-mill, even where life was focused not on the active “pursuit of happiness,” as Thomas Jefferson posited, but daily survival, where human beings and their families were bought, sold and traded like a cow, a piece of furniture, or a collection of farm utensils. Born Broteer Furro in West Africa, he was kidnapped as a six-year-old and taken to the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) to be sold.

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New Canaan There & Then: Chester B. “Chet” Hansen, a Ringside Seat to The Greatest War

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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli and Dawn Sterner. 

The opening scene of the 1970 Academy Award-winning movie “Patton” is one of the most iconic in cinema history. 

Screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola brilliantly cobbled together various statements of U.S. General George S. Patton Jr. into one fiery and profane speech to his beloved troops, with the immortal first lines spoken in front of a giant American flag:
“At ease, men. Now I want you to remember . . . that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country .