Essex Town History Highlights
Indigenous Peoples
Indigenous or Native peoples have been living in the Connecticut River Valley for over 10,000 years. The Connecticut River offered transportation and sustenance while adjoining woodlands abounded with game. During the late Woodland Period (1,000 BCE - 1600s) the Western Nehantics lived around the mouth of the Connecticut River. The Nehantic word “Potopaug” or “jutting of the land” described the peninsula that was to become downtown Essex. Sadly, contact with Europeans caused pandemics among New England’s Native peoples, drastically reducing their populations. However, the Nehantic Nation continues on the Connecticut Shoreline. Click here to learn more.
Saybrook Colony
The town of Old Saybrook began as an English colony in 1635, separate from the ones in New Haven and the Hartford area. This original Saybrook encompassed nine modern towns, including Essex. After joining the Connecticut Colony, Saybrook residents William Pratt, John Lay and John Clark surveyed lands on both sides of the Connecticut River, assessing the potential for expanding settlements. By 1648, Saybrook divided itself into four separate quarters or large tracts of land. “Potapaug Quarter,” borrowed from the original Nehantic word, included the areas of today’s Chester, Deep River and Essex.
Center Saybrook
European settlement of Potopaug Quarter took time to develop. The first proprietors or their tenants needed to clear the forests, establish subsistence farms and build shelter for the harsh winters. By the 1660s, a community took shape in the area of today’s Centerbrook, where the relatively flat land was more suitable for farming, crossed by Native footpaths that developed into an early colonial road network. Access to the Falls River allowed for the development of water-powered trades, such as an iron forge, gristmill and sawmill. In 1722, residents of Potopaug Quarter petitioned Connecticut’s General Assembly to form their own congregation, creating Saybrook’s Second Ecclesiastical Society. The parish’s first minister, Rev. Abraham Nott, led efforts to build the village’s first meeting house, organize local government and establish the area’s first schools. Over the 18th century, the village became known as “Center Saybrook,” eventually shortened to “Centerbrook.”
West Indies Trade
Potapaug’s commitment to the American Revolution ran deep as over 40 veterans are buried in Essex’s River View Cemetery. The Hayden Shipyard built the 20-gun frigate “Oliver Cromwell” in 1776, the largest ship built on the Connecticut River at that time, ushering in the village’s prominence as a major shipbuilding community. Westbrook’s David Bushnell built the world’s first combat submarine, the “Turtle,” with timing devices built by Potapaug clockmaker Phineas Pratt. While the “Turtle’s” three combat missions on British warships proved unsuccessful, its design proved seaworthy.
Shipbuilding
This trade network fueled Potopaug’s family-owned maritime industries, from blacksmiths to sailmakers. Small shipyards from the 1730s expanded into larger ones, as the village on Potopaug Point took shape, creating the area’s primary industry, shipbuilding. Between 1750 and 1900, over 600 vessels were built in the Essex area. Much of the population shifted from Centerbrook to Essex as Potopaug’s residents realized the prosperity in a maritime economy.
American Revolution
Potapaug’s commitment to the American Revolution ran deep as over 40 veterans are buried in Essex’s River View Cemetery. The Hayden Shipyard built the 20-gun frigate “Oliver Cromwell” in 1776, the largest ship built on the Connecticut River at that time, ushering in the village’s prominence as a major shipbuilding community. Westbrook’s David Bushnell built the world’s first combat submarine, the “Turtle,” with timing devices built by Potapaug clockmaker Phineas Pratt. While the “Turtle’s” three combat missions on British warships proved unsuccessful, its design proved seaworthy.
The British Raid of 1814
Thirty years after the Revolution, American and Britain clashed again during the War of 1812. Potapaug’s shipyards produced privateers (privately-owned vessels licensed by the government to attack and capture enemy shipping) to run the British blockade of the Connecticut coast. On April 7-8, 1814, a British force of 136 sailors and marines rowed up the Connecticut River to attack and destroy American vessels at Potapaug. In six hours, they burned 25 ships, captured two as prizes, which they later set on fire as they escaped under heavy fire by the Americans. The raid marked the largest maritime loss of the war and it commemorated in Essex each spring during the Bruning of the Ships parade. Potapaug took on the name ‘Essex’ shortly after this period, appearing on maps around 1820. Essex officially separated from the town of Saybrook (today’s Old Saybrook) in 1852.
Transportation & Commerce
Centerbrook’s relatively flat land saw the arrival of arterial road networks, notably the Middlesex Turnpike in 1801-1804, connecting Old Saybrook to Middletown, and later to Hartford. By 1823, steamboats began to make regularly scheduled trips between New York and Hartford, stopping in Essex to take on passengers and cargo. Stagecoach stops, taverns, the steamboat landing and local stores serviced travelers. Small industries using the dammed waterpower on the Falls River welcomed improving transportation networks to provide access to raw materials and then distribute their finished products. By 1872, the Connecticut Valley Rail Road ran through Essex transporting both passengers and freight, connecting Essex to distant communities and markets.
Ivoryton’s Comstock, Cheney & Co.
The Lower Connecticut River Valley possessed a long history of working with finely-cut bone and ivory for buttons, hair combs and novelties, as early as the 1790s. Small industrial shops opened and closed based on economic factors as well as access to capital and raw materials. Engineer Samuel M. Comstock developed a number of these small shops in partnerships and eventually as a sole proprietor of an ivory shop on the Falls River near his boyhood home in ‘West Centerbrook’ in 1847. By 1860, he partnered with ivory importer George Cheney to create Comstock, Cheney & Co., a firm producing small ivory novelties and the ivory veneers for piano keys. With the rise of the American middle class based on the growing Industrial Revolution, a growing consumer market required that every ‘respectable’ parlor needed a piano.
E.E. Dickinson Witch Hazel
By the turn of the 20th century, Essex developed another national commodity, the distillation and bottling of witch hazel, a cool, soothing astringent, common in every medicine cabinet. Edward Everett (E. E.) Dickinson, worked with his father Thomas Newton (T.N.) Dickinson to outpace or absorb other witch hazel production firms, cornering the market and staying abreast of advancements in marketing and technology. Their distilling and bottling plants straddled Essex’s railroad network with high standards for efficiency and product purity, creating a household name for the product
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