Trinity Church, Lime Rock, Salisbury, America, the World In New History Book

Trinity Church, Lime Rock, Salisbury, America, the World In New History Book
Geoff Brown has published a history of the elegant 19th-century stone church in Lime Rock, Conn., that places the church and our region in the larger context of world history. 
Photo by Janet Manko

Some books are better when you dip into them, and don’t try to read them end to end. Cookbooks are an obvious example. Marcel Proust’s epic multi-volume masterpiece is another, in my opinion.

For journalists, the “Associated Press Stylebook” works that way.

A new, region-specific example is historian Geoff Brown’s 650-page history of Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock, Conn.

Lime Rock is one of the five villages that make up the town of Salisbury.

In modern times, it might be best known as the location for a small but active race track.

Historically, it was a center of the iron industry that helped build the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. The most important company involved in that industry was called Barnum & Richardson.

Brown explains in his introduction to the book that Trinity Church is the last part of Barnum & Richardson  that is still fulfilling its original function.

It’s a beautiful stone church, designed by Henry Martyn Congdon in the 1870s — and it takes 73 pages of history before you arrive at the birth of this lovely new (now old) church, which is on Route 112 just across from the race track.

The book begins roughly “475,000,000 years before the present (YBP)” with the Taconic Orogeny and then proceeds to “2,000,000 YBP” and the Pleistocene Epoch (the Great Ice Age).

Somehow Brown, who has an easy, conversational writing style, makes those early bits of planetary history interesting and relevant: It was that prehistoric geologic activity that helped create the physical landscape of the Northwest Corner — and that put in place the elements that made this part of the world a center of iron production in the 18th and 19th centuries. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this part of the world is what it is today because of iron ore.

Brown generally follows the funnel style of writing, in which he begins with the larger context for an event. He does it like a skillful math teacher, who starts you off counting straws into bundles of 10 and pretty soon has you adding, subtracting and doing fractions.

This tale moves inexorably toward the 21st century, but there are stops along the way to explain everything from the Irish potato famine to the annual mud season in this part of the world (March and April!) to the war in Vietnam.

All of it has an impact on Trinity Church and on Salisbury and the surrounding towns. Brown only writes a couple sentences on all these things but he skillfully pulls it all together.

Normally, a history of a small church in a small town would only be of interest to parishioners of that church; or to dedicated historians.

But Brown has made it a fascinating history of the world at large, and of Salisbury’s place in the world. An experienced historian, Brown is founder of the Salisbury-based Between the Lakes Group, which publishes history books and articles about states and towns all along the Eastern Seaboard. Find out more about those books, choose from a deep well of history articles and enjoy some cool historic postcards at www.betweenthelakes.com.

Like “Trinity Lime Rock in Context: A History,” the website is a wonderful place to dip a toe in from time to time. Every time you visit, you’ll be glad you did.

Short visits to the book are easy to manage, because of the way Brown has organized the text into short snippets, separated by date and topic.

Order “Trinity Lime Rock in Context: A History” on Amazon; the paperback edition is $29.95.

Information on services at Trinity Lime Rock can be found online at www.trinitylimerock.org.

Latest News

State intervenes in sale of Torrington Transfer Station

The entrance to Torrington Transfer Station.

Photo by Jennifer Almquist

TORRINGTON — Municipalities holding out for a public solid waste solution in the Northwest Corner have new hope.

An amendment to House Bill No. 7287, known as the Implementor Bill, signed by Governor Ned Lamont, has put the $3.25 million sale of the Torrington Transfer Station to USA Waste & Recycling on hold.

Keep ReadingShow less
A sweet collaboration with students in Torrington

The new mural painted by students at Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut.

Photo by Kristy Barto, owner of The Nutmeg Fudge Company

Thanks to a unique collaboration between The Nutmeg Fudge Company, local artist Gerald Incandela, and Saint John Paul The Great Academy in Torrington, Connecticut a mural — designed and painted entirely by students — now graces the interior of the fudge company.

The Nutmeg Fudge Company owner Kristy Barto was looking to brighten her party space with a mural that celebrated both old and new Torrington. She worked with school board member Susan Cook and Incandela to reach out to the Academy’s art teacher, Rachael Martinelli.

Keep ReadingShow less
In the company of artists

Curator Henry Klimowicz, left, with artists Brigitta Varadi and Amy Podmore at The Re Institute

Aida Laleian

For anyone who wants a deeper glimpse into how art comes about, an on-site artist talk is a rich experience worth the trip.On Saturday, June 14, Henry Klimowicz’s cavernous Re Institute — a vast, converted 1960’s barn north of Millerton — hosted Amy Podmore and Brigitta Varadi, who elucidated their process to a small but engaged crowd amid the installation of sculptures and two remarkable videos.

Though they were all there at different times, a common thread among Klimowicz, Podmore and Varadi is their experience of New Hampshire’s famed MacDowell Colony. The silence, the safety of being able to walk in the woods at night, and the camaraderie of other working artists are precious goads to hardworking creativity. For his part, for fifteen years, Klimowicz has promoted community among thousands of participating artists, in the hope that the pairs or groups he shows together will always be linked. “To be an artist,” he stressed, “is to be among other artists.”

Keep ReadingShow less