Issues → September/October 2008 → Interact → 10 Things to Do →

Wethersfield, CT, and Onions

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(page 3 of 4)

But the incongruous thing is that all these monuments to bureaucracy coexist with the historic district and its wide, sycamore-lush streets and that cornucopia of stolid old houses. Wethersfield's heyday ended by the second half of the 19th century, and in historic preservation terms, it's a lucky thing. Few had the money to renovate, and thus we are left with these splendid legacies, un-prettied up with Victorian filigree.

Stroll through this section of town, and someone will undoubtedly tell you what John Adams said about its charms. After attending a service at the Congregational church in 1774, he wrote that the view from the steeple was "the most grand and beautiful prospect in the world." That's a bit overdone, but this clutch of houses actually has few New England rivals for size and multiplicity. Take the Ebenezer Talcott house at 366 Main. It's a sturdy saltbox with an unusual peaked roof -- the original owner served aboard the Oliver Cromwell in the Revolutionary War. At 481 Main, you can see the George Hubbard Sr. house, circa 1637. It speaks of a rough, hunkered-down era -- note the house's squinty look, characteristic of the small, casement-windowed construction of the time.

There's also the 1692 Buttolph-Williams house, with its hewn overhang, the model for the house in The Witch of Blackbird Pond. But the real jewel is the sturdy chestnut-stained gambrel-roofed Webb-Deane-Stevens home, where Washington and Rochambeau met before their victory at Yorktown.

Follow Main Street to its natural conclusion, and you wind up on the Connecticut River at Wethersfield Cove. Notice the weather-beaten, chocolate-colored warehouse, Wethersfield's oldest structure. It has such heft and character. Indeed, this warehouse is the only one of a half dozen to have remained intact after the flood of 1700 -- a deluge that changed the course of the river. Its likeness appears on the town seal. "Every spring since, you can see the river trying to put itself back in its old channel," says Eleanor Wolfe. "It doesn't like the curve."

The cove provided a natural harbor, and because navigation northward was virtually impossible, Wethersfield became the main port on the Connecticut River. Ships from the West Indies came up from Long Island Sound. Animals straining on shore towed the boats through the narrower channels. Sea captains built homes in Wethersfield.

Unfortunately, we don't know in great detail about the town's seafaring past: In 1781 Benedict Arnold burned down the Customs House in New London, where all of Wethersfield's records were kept. Some of the ships may have been slavers, but by and large they were floating warehouses of the foodstuffs -- including those famous scarlet onions -- grown in the valley.

But truth be told, the cove itself is a little disappointing. In spite of a chain of rough wood sound barriers, you can hear the nearby rumble of Interstate 91. The parking lot crunches with gravel, and seagulls wheel about looking for scraps from picnickers. The opposite shore is more appealing, with its ribbons of green lawn unfurling to the water's edge.

Actually, it's not unusual to feel a little deflated sitting here in the cove. Kit Tyler, the 16-year-old heroine of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, had a similar reaction. Arriving from sunny Barbados in the mud season of 1687, she observed a shore "muffled in thick scarves of drifting mists . . . Her heart sank. This was Wethersfield!"

Oh, but on a milkweed-lazy, sun-shot spring day, outside Comstock, Ferre & Company, seed purveyors, you say, "This is Wethersfield!" and the exclamation point is a happy one. We are smack in the middle of the historic district here, and a scattering of gardeners, anxious to get back to their plots, pick over the goods.