Acknowledgements - Jim Meehan

Jim Meehan and his wife Marsha joined the Wethersfield Historical Society in 2006 after retiring from careers in Information Technology at The Travelers.

In addition to the historical society Jim is a member of the Men's Garden Club of Wethersfield where he edits the newsletter and writes a monthly column; The Wethersfield Beautification Trust where he moves dirt and pulls weeds; and (with Marsha) of WWUH - "Public Alternative Radio from the University of Hartford, 91.3 FM and wwuh.org" as members of the classical music staff.

He also writes essays for his Internet blog www.compostablematter.com.

Jim thanks Melissa Josefiak of Wethersfield Historical Society, Becky & Mike Zaliznock, and the staffs of the Wethersfield's Town Clerk's and Engineering departments for their help in researching this article. Special thanks to Marsha Meehan -- first-reader, editor, fact-checker and most importantly wife.


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The "Member Articles" section of this website includes research and writing of Wethersfield Historical Society members representative of their interest and enthusiasm for topics related to Wethersfield history and culture. Member Articles are not edited by Wethersfield Historical Society staff and while we hope you find the contributions to "Member Articles" interesting and informative, they do not reflect the research, scholarly editing, views, or opinions of Wethersfield Historical Society's staff, Governing Board or general membership as a whole

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Chapter 1 - The Colour of History
Chapter 2 - A Certain Parcel of Land
Chapter 3 - Substantially Correct Information
Chapter 4 - Brimfield Gardens
Chapter 5 - Plan of a Residence Suburb
Chapter 6 - Connecting With Hartford
Chapter 7 - Building The Boulevard
Chapter 8 - The Ark and the Gingko Tree
Postscript and Bibliography - Postscript and Bibliography
Acknowledgements - Jim Meehan

Chapter I - The Colour of History

When Marsha and I bought our house on the corner of Brimfield Road and Folly Brook Boulevard in Wethersfield we had neither the time nor the inclination to pay attention to the history of either our new abode or the area in which it resides. There was after all no "Battle of Brimfield Road", or any other textbook-worthy event in the past life of our new neighborhood.






















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Now, as members of Wethersfield Historical Society, we have come to believe that the history of our house and its surrounding neighborhood is, in its own way, as much a part of the story of our town as the 1781 meeting between General George Washington and General Comte de Rochambeau, or the great flood of 1936.

No house is typical of all others. No neighborhood is representative. In Wethersfield, as in all others towns, each home and every locality is its own unique tale, filled with its own singular collection of characters, and its own distinct set of happenings. The interweaving of all these individual narratives is the story of a town. The history of our home at 284 Brimfield Road is a part of the history of Wethersfield.

Doctor Samuel Johnson (essayist, poet, biographer, lexicographer and a critic of English Literature) said, "We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real authentick history. That certain Kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend on as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy of history is conjecture."

In that spirit here is what I have found and what I have conjectured about the history of my homestead and its immediately surrounding area.

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Chapter II - A Certain Parcel of Land

According to our mortgage dated April 13, 1977 we had acquired:

"A certain piece or parcel of land with the buildings thereon situated in said Town of Wethersfield, known as 284 Brimfield Road and as portions of Lots 50, 51 and 52 shown on a certain map entitled 'Brimfield Gardens Add. Property of Lucy E. Isaacson, Oscar Isaacson, Wethersfield, Conn. Scale 1 inch = 50 feet Dec. 1923 Spencer and Washburn, Inc., Eng'rs., Norman C. Spencer, Pres't' on file in the Town Clerk’s Office in said Wethersfield,
said premises being more particularly bounded and described as follows:
NORTHERLY - By Brimfield Road, eighty-seven and seventy hundredths (87.71) feet; EASTERLY - By land now or formerly of Alphonse M. Napolitano et el, one hundred fifty (150) feet;
SOUTHERLY - By land now or formerly of Charles Hanko et al, sixty-three and one one-hundredths (63.01) feet;
and WESTERLY - By Folly Brook Boulevard, one hundred fifty-one and eighty-four one-hundredths (151.84) feet."

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Or as described by the Town Assessor:
"Lot Size: 0.26 AC
House Style: Colonial
Year Built: 1946
Number of Stories: 2
Exterior Wall: Wood
Roof Style: Gable/Hip"

Neither of our Easterly and Southerly neighbors turned out as specified in the document. In fact our Eastern neighbor was a former high school classmate of Marsha’s (Wethersfield High -- 1961) plus her husband and two daughters.

Since then homes have been repainted or covered with siding; additions and decks have been built; children have grown and moved away; adults have retired and relocated -- or stayed; couples and families have moved in -- and out; sewers have been improved; yards have been re-landscaped; new trees have been planted, old ones cut down while the survivors have increased dramatically in height; and neighbors have been born while others have died -- two of them good friends. Still the general character and look of the neighborhood is pretty much the same as it was on our April 1977 closing date.

We bought the house from Mary Ellen and Tom Willsey who had purchased it one and one half years earlier from Louise and George Burns. Mr. Burns was apparently extremely well known around town as evidenced by several conversations that I had similar to one at Premier Dry Cleaners shortly after we had moved in to 284 Brimfield Road.

As I was giving my address the person waiting on me said without hesitation, "Oh, George Burns' house." We never met Mr. Burns but several years ago his son did stop by our house, identified himself, and asked to take a quick walk-through of his old residence. It still being the pre-9/11 trusting world of the twentieth century we allowed him access and after about a five-minute tour he thanked us and left.

Shortly after we moved in a man walked into our yard while I was doing lawn work and introduced himself as Ed Kenyon, the initial owner and the person from whom George Burns purchased.

That was pretty much the extent of my neighborhood knowledge when I decided to undertake this little historical project.

I also had a few questions.

* Why is it called Folly Brook “Boulevard” rather than “Road” or “Street”?

* What was the origin of the two Gingko trees ­-- those unusual deciduous Chinese conifers, with fan-shaped leaves and yellow flowers -- that live up the street?

* What exactly was the “Brimfield Gardens Add” of which (according to my deed) my land was once a part?

* Who was the architect and builder of our house and did they build others in town?

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Chapter III – Substantially Correct Information

Fortunately for me the Wethersfield Town Clerk's Office is staffed by a group of women who have pretty much heard all the possible off-the-wall questions from the most neophyte researchers. And are able to answer these queries with patience and direct us to the appropriate resources, while at the same time issuing marriage licenses to nervous young couples and supplying dog licenses to anxious pet owners who have waited until the very possible last minute to acquire them.

The department is, from one perspective, a people and paper based search engine -- a word that today means a "program for the retrieval of data from a database or network, esp. the Internet" but historically has meant the manual recording and filing of complex essential information, accurately, using a process that then allows anyone to promptly find it.



The "certain map entitled 'Brimfield Gardens Add. Property of Lucy E. Isaacson, Oscar Isaacson, Wethersfield, Conn. Scale 1 inch = 50 feet Dec. 1923 Spencer and Washburn, Inc., Eng’rs., Norman C. Spencer, Pres’t’on file in the Town Clerk’s Office in said Wethersfield,'" was listed in the map index and a copy was pulled from the appropriate shelf and presented to me within minutes.
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At the bottom of the document were the words, "We hereby certify that this map is substantially correct. Spencer and Washburn, Inc., Eng'rs” [emphasis added] Quick access to "substantially correct" information -- I was off to a really good start.

Tracing the ownership of property proved to be equally simple.

Adjacent to the office area for the Town Clerks was a series of books containing the "Grantee (or Grantor) Index to land Records in Wethersfield Connecticut." Grantees are basically the buyers and Grantors the sellers. (When I did most of this research the Town Clerk's Office was in its temporary location during reconstruction of the Town Hall.)

I was shown how to look up the grantee information from our purchase of 284 Brimfield Road. The object of my search was the volume number of the book and within that the page number where the documents officially recording the transaction are stored -- in this case volume 305, page 217.

The records themselves were stored behind the grantee/grantor information in a twenty by twenty foot room with books along the outer walls and a five-foot tall metal-topped table with a slight peak in the middle. It was filled with the scents of dust, leather and decaying paper -- the aroma of historical research.

The older records, including ours, were kept in leather bound volumes of several hundred pages each. The animal skin covers are fading in color and about one quarter inch thick. These tomes were stacked on their sides with the volume number printed on their spine so that it can be read from that angle. Each cubbyhole had small metal wheels on which the ledgers slide in and out. At several hundred pages each plus the covers the books are relatively heavy, as they should be given the heft of history that is within.

The newer ones are kept in considerably less impressive looking hard plastic binders with way-fewer pages and stored upright in conventional office shelving. Sixty years from now these polymer binders will no doubt look positively "historic" when compared to the electronically stored information of that time.

Volume 305, page 217 contained a copy of the same mortgage document that we had in our home files with one major exception. Written by hand along the right edge of the page were the words "Volume 295, page 546" indicating the location of the immediately preceding transaction relating to his property. In this case the reference led me to the sale of 284 Brimfield Road by George R and Louise E Burns to Thomas and Mary Ellen Willsey (v 295, p 546 – 7/30/75).

From there I followed the very short trail backwards in time

Edward H and Mary B Kenyon to George R and Louise E Burns.
(v 174, p 155 – 12/28/56)

Frances E Young to Edward H and Mary B Kenyon
(v 121, p 479 – 12/10/46 and v 121, p 481 – 12/10/46)
(two transactions: one for the Easterly 26.75’ of Brimfield Gardens lot 51 plus the Westerly 23.25’ of lot 50 and the second for the Westerly remainder of lot 51. The Kenyons later (v 148, p 487 - 9/21/53) bought the additional five feet that makes up 284 Brimfield Road from James H and Hetta B Torrey.)

Francis E Young acquired the property in two separate transactions:
• a purchase of Lot 51 from Lucy Isaacson on September 26th, 1935
• and the acquisition of Lot 50 from the Town of Wethersfield who had foreclosed it on January 3, 1945.
"Taxes Due May 1, 1930 thru 1933, 1935 and 1936 $31.47
Taxes due July 1, 1937 thru 1942 $31.84
Interest due $25.98
Lien fees due thereon $30.41
Sewer Assessment Metropolitan District laid 7/6/38 $ 8.07
Sewer assessment Metropolitan District laid 6/1/38 $130.06

"...fair market value of each of such properties is not more than five thousand dollars and such value is less than the total amount due..."

Beginning with the 1935 sale all the documents contained the statement "Lots number 51 and 52 ...were affected by the building line of the lay-out of the Folly Brook Boulevard as laid out by the Metropolitan District Commission [and]...are subject to said building line..."

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Chapter IV Brimfield Gardens

Brimfield Gardens was a planned development of the land on Brimfield Road, Clearfield Road, the south side of Dale Road and Wolcott Hill Road between Dale Road and Brimfield Road.

Five maps were filed with the Town Clerk of Wethersfield:
1) Brimfield Gardens Filed 12/14/21
Lots 1-36 on Brimfield Street and Wolcott Hill Road [East side of Wolcott Hill Road]

2) Brimfield Gardens Add. Filed 4/1/25
Dale Road, Clearfield Road and Brimfield Street

3) Brimfield Gardens Add. Filed 4/1/25
Lots 37-140 and 120A-120B-1221A-121B Wolcott Hill Road-Dale Road- Clearfield Road- Brimfield Street

4) Brimfield Gardens West Filed 11/9/27
Lots 143-268 Brimfield Street and Clearfield Road [from Brimfield Gardens Add West to Ridge Road]

The map of Brimfield Gardens Add [ition] referred to in my deed was filed in December 1923 by Lucy and Oscar Isaacson and was bordered:
NORTHERLY - By Dale Road with defined lots on the south side of that street
EASTERLY - By Wolcott Hill Road
SOUTHERLY - By property of the Churchill Brothers along what is now the southerly property line of Brimfield Road houses.
WESTERLY - By property of Lucy E Isaacson or John Isaacson about midway between what is today Folly Brook Boulevard and Edward Street.

The map and several other documents use the name Brimfield "Street" rather than "Road". Brimfield Street itself was laid out with thirteen lots on each side of the street (#s 45-57 on the south side and #s 58 – 70 on the north). Twenty-four of the lots have a fifty-foot frontage and two show a front of seventy-one and five hundredths feet. All of them are one hundred fifty feet deep.

According to the Grantee Index to Land Records in Wethersfield, Connecticut, the vast majority of the property in Brimfield Gardens and Brimfield Gardens Addition was owned by members the Isaacson family -- Charles, Edward, Oscar, and Lucy -- and were purchased from various grantors as early as 1896 continuing into the 1920’s.

Among the properties purchased during that time were "The Robbins Pasture" and "Meadow Island" by Edward Isaacson from Silas Robbins and Andrew Brougher respectively and "The Swamp" by John Isaacson from Eliza S and Lewis H Francis.

There is an Edward A. Isaacson is identified as being a Hartford Trolley Carman in 1910 in "The First 100 Years, Transit to Wethersfield" at the Wethersfield Historical Society. While we cannot be certain that this is the same person, Melissa Josefiak, Assistant Director at the society, says that it was a common pattern for people to obtain professional jobs in larger cities in order to earn money and establish credit before investing in suburban areas.

The "Rate Book List of 1930 - Town of Wethersfield" lists Edward A. Isaacson as owning property on Wells Road listed at $64,695 and taxed $1358.60 and an auto business also on Wells Road listed at $610 and taxed at $12.81

Tax records from the Town of Wethersfield also at the society show that Oscar and Lucy Isaacson lived at 695 Wolcott Hill Road - Lot Number 80 (95 feet by 174.31 feet) of the Brimfield Gardens Addition. The house was sold to Clarence N. Gustafson and Emmy J Olsen in 1946.

The 1930 Rate Book showed Oscar and Lucy paying $671.24 on their listing of $31,965 which included the property at 695 Wolcott Hill Road as well as "Capitol City Lumber" ($1,30/$28.35) on lot numbers 55-59, 65 and 66 and "Atlas Sand and Gravel" ($750) on lot numbers 63, 64, 51 and 52 -- two of the lots that now make up my property.

I found an entry for the lumber company in a 1920 State of Connecticut Comptroller's Report as the recipient of $24,756.40 from the State Park Commission and another mention in Geer’s 1898 Hartford City Directory with the following:
Inc. May 31, 1893, Capitol $10,000, 25 Front St.,
H.W. Fox, Pres & Tr. Timothy Burke Sec'y
Directors - H.W. Fox, John Kimball, Timothy J. Burke
Annual meeting first Tuesday after 2d Monday in June

In addition to corporate information there were listings of individual persons in the directory but no mention of any named Isaacson.

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Chapter V – Plan Of A Residence Suburb

Because of the lack of more definite information on Brimfield Gardens or the Isaacsons, Melissa suggested that I look at "Plan of A Residence Suburb Wethersfield Connecticut prepared for the Town Plan Commission in 1928 by Herbert S. Swan, City Planner" (of which the society has several copies) to see what else was happening in town at that time.

The document begins "But yesterday Wethersfield was a rural community; today it is semi-rural; tomorrow it promises to be one of Hartford’s densely built suburbs."

Whoever they were, the Isaacson clan apparently shared the view of the 1928 Town Plan Commission as to the future direction of this small town immediately south of Hartford.



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And the Brimfield Gardens template fit nicely into the Proposed town plan of 1928 with one exception -- in some of the places where the Isaacsons envisioned houses the town saw a pressing need for some major north-south thoroughfares.

"If nothing is done to assure that the most heavily traveled through streets are permanently retained as express routes for the future, it will only be a question of time until all of these main traffic highways will become clogged with slow traffic. It is of utmost importance to retain these arterial traffic-ways as through express streets for fast traffic between distant points.

"To make such thoroughfares 100 feet wide and leave them as ordinary streets will not accomplish this end....

"...With a width of 200 feet, such a parkway could have sidewalks and planting strips on either side of the roadway, aggregating a width of 72 feet...

"Four of these parkways are recommended in the comprehensive plan for Wethersfield: Griswoldville Parkway, Middletown Parkway, New Haven Parkway and Goodwin Parkway

"... Goodwin Parkway extends from the southerly limits of Goodwin Park up either side of Beaver Brook to its source, as an informal parkway varying in width according to the contours of the ground as well as to the limitations imposed by private developments. At the source of Beaver Brook it proceeds as a formal parkway in a southerly directions to Griswold Street, which it crosses, and thence in a southeasterly direction down Goff Brook into Mill Street, across the railroad tracks to its intersection with the Middletown Parkway."

The map included with this report shows a dash-line drawn parkway and the word "GOODWIN" drawn on top of parts of lot numbers 52-55, 63-60, 95-98, 103-106, and 135-138 of Brimfield Gardens Add. -- pretty much the route of today’s Folly Brook Boulevard.

Houses had been built in Brimfield Gardens Addition prior to the publication of the town plan -- although, like our house, not strictly according to the Brimfield Gardens plan.

In 1920 the houses at 256 Brimfield Road (lot 44) and 237 Brimfield Road (lot 76) were built. Lucy and Oscar Isaacson sold the former to Gertrude Tower November 11, 1926 and the latter was purchased from the same sellers by James Miller Rasmussen on July 16, 1924. Other houses on Brimfield Street that were built in the 1920's were: 245 (1924), 242 (1925), 268 (1926), 248, 253 and 264 (1927), 209 236, 263, 267, and 270 (1928).

Brimfield Gardens, in one form or another, was coming to fruition; Wethersfield was transforming itself from semi-rural to suburban; and a plan, at least on paper, was in place.
"Now that it has prepared a town plan, the work of planning Wethersfield has but fairly commenced. The preparation of a plan, of course, merely inaugurates the planning program." (1928 Town Plan)

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