Economic changes, 1770-1810

Many factors drive all types of change. In our region, the transportation network and the disadvantages of our land and soil types set the stage for a change from agriculture toward manufacturing.

Let’s start with transportation For at least 2,000 years, transportation speed was governed by the ability of the horse to carry mankind from one place to another.

In 1766, regular stagecoach service between New York and Philadelphia took three days. It was not to improve until the era of the railroad, which did not come to our shores until 1828. The beginnings of improvement began with the turnpike era, inaugurated in 1791.

In this area, a group of investors undertook to improve sections of existing roads, or in some cases to create new ones, in order to charge tolls and realize a return on their money. The result was better roads throughout the region, although they did not prove to be very lucrative, and none of them survived more than 50 years.

The benefits to the areas served, however, were inestimable, as it made traveling and shipping vastly more efficient than the original rutted trails that passed as public highways.

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As for farming, early on it was the profession of choice. The religious beliefs of those times looked favorably upon farming and animal husbandry and unfavorably upon other trades or professions, unless it was a support profession to the farmer.

One of the first clashes occurred in Massachusetts Bay in the 1640s between the church and its followers and the iron manufacturers. The families that had been brought to Massachusetts Bay to produce the iron at the new blast furnace at Saugus did not have the same religious fervor that the Puritans did; they were not steady church-goers, and oaths fell from their lips as often as did prayers from the Puritan fathers.

What resulted was just short of open warfare. Eventually a sort of armed truce took effect, which lasted for at least a couple of generations.

Farming itself eventually contributed toward the coming age of industrialism, as more productive breeds of cattle and sheep forced their end products to be more labor intensive, improved breeds of sheep that produced high yields of wool being an example.

The manufacturing of clothing shifted from the home or from local seamstresses to larger, more centrally located sites such as the valley towns with the waterpower to turn mill wheels.

Brass buttons and buckles for belts and shoes, no longer available from England, began to be manufactured just south of here in the Naugatuck Valley towns of Waterbury and Thomaston.

As the infant industries grew, surplus workers from the farms began to find work there, and thus they became consumers of the farm products from the hill towns such as Litchfield, Winchester, Norfolk and Colebrook.

And then we have manufacturing. By the beginning of the struggle for independence, the old Puritan religious mores had begun to weaken. Initially there was an aversion toward investing spare money into any enterprise not espoused by the church, meaning specifically anything to do with manufacturing. It also carried over to other religions.

As Baptist, Presbyterian, Quaker and other beliefs took hold, the people espousing them tended to be more adventurous in professions other than agriculture and animal husbandry. Because they were greatly outnumbered by the Congregationalists, who controlled the purse strings, so to speak, the infant manufacturing concerns experienced difficulties acquiring needed capitol.

Eventually, as the older people passed on, attitudes gradually relaxed toward these “heretics,” and while their religious beliefs might not be embraced, they were considered worthy of financial investment.

Some examples of local relaxation of the old mores in Norfolk follow: 1785, permission to erect “horse housen” on the Green; 1776, a person embracing the Baptist persuasion was granted permission to do so; 1784 (a little backsliding), the town was still fining those who failed to attend church; and in 1782 they rejected a proposal to inoculate citizens against small pox.

Early manufacturing was agriculture oriented. Colebrook, before the first house was built, was ordered to have a working sawmill operational by May 15, 1766; within 12 years Colebrook Center boasted the sawmill, a shop for manufacturing agricultural implements and works for carding wool.

Another 11 years passed, and in 1788 the Rockwell family negotiated a 999-year lease on properties along Center Brook, built a dam that flooded part of the meadows along Loon Brook and commenced manufacturing iron products as well as significant amounts of high quality steel, some of which was sold to the federal armory in Springfield, Mass.

Within 40 years all this would be but a memory, as the infant industries had outgrown the ability of Center Brook to provide enough energy, and a move was made 9 miles south to Winsted, which enjoyed the advantage of the flowage from Highland Lake.

Because of the large iron deposit located in Salisbury, England passed special laws allowing the Colony of Connecticut to manufacture pig iron and merchant bar, a refined product of raw iron. England jealously retained the right to export to America finished products and import from them raw materials. (In 1760, the trade deficit was £38,000 to £600,000.)

The iron industry exerted a great influence on northern Litchfield County. Colebrook had four forges and the capability to produce both iron and steel from 1771 thru 1807. In the years prior to the War of 1812, the price of iron and steel fell past the point of profitability, and cheaper products from Russia, Germany and Sweden replaced those made in America.

In 1807, President Jefferson forced through Congress the Embargo Act, which effectively cut off trade with the outside world, especially England and France. As this embargo was for an indefinite time, every man in the country engaged in foreign trade was put out of business. The situation became so stressful that the New England states threatened to secede if the embargo was not lifted, but Jefferson held firm.

England suffered the most by the embargo, as they had a permanent loss of the shipping relationship from New England, as we turned to manufacturing, and from this small beginning that branch of industry grew until the New World surpassed the Old World in manufactories.

By 1810, the die was cast; New England, once known during the War of Independence as “the breadbasket of the nation,” saw her agriculture shift west and south, and in its place arose the dynamic industrial sites along the rivers and streams of her valleys that were to remain a dominant force in American industrial strength until well past the middle of the 20th century.

Bob Grigg is the town historian of Colebrook.