Hidden History of Old Lyme, Lyme East Lyme by Jim Lampos Michaelle Pearson

Author:Jim Lampos, Michaelle Pearson [Jim Lampos, Michaelle Pearson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, New England (CT; MA; ME; NH; RI; VT)
ISBN: 9781439669990
Google: e-PZDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2020-08-10T03:08:34+00:00

New Haven, New London and Shoreline Railroad, 1860. David Peters Collection, Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, UCONN Library.

The railroad cracked Lyme open. As an 1876 Harper’s Weekly article noted, the town had always prided itself on its “moral and intellectual character” and “self respecting inner life,” but the early nineteenth century had not been kind. Lyme suffered a decades-long decline in its economy and population. Farmers moved to more fertile fields in the Western Reserve of Ohio and later moved on to the Midwest or followed the gold rush to California. Some went to sea to hunt the whale. The shipbuilding industry moved to deeper harbors, and the small mills along laconic streams could no longer compete with the larger enterprises flourishing in towns such as Worcester, Lowell, Waterbury and Norwich. The Industrial Age left Lyme behind.

Citing its reputation for having a salubrious atmosphere, upright citizenry and a centuries-long tradition of quality public education, “friends of the New Haven and New London Rail Road,” such as James Brewster Esq., wrote letters to the editor promoting Lyme as a refuge for parents seeking the ideal place to raise their children: “If the city is the right place to make money, it is the wrong place to bring up children. The prosperous men in the city were reared in the country. It is rare to see a prosperous, intelligent, moral man in the cities of Boston and New York who were educated there. They commit a great mistake who go to New York to bring up children. They may accumulate wealth, and their children die in the almshouse. There is DEATH there.”

An 1857 piece in the Hartford Courant used Lyme’s reputation for fine schools and recreational attractions as a drawing card to lure wealthy families: “Till within a few years, Lyme seemed almost closed to the traveler. But railroads and boats now made it of easy access. Its union of inland and sea-side pleasures will make it, more and more, the resort of the more sober class, who leave the city for a house in the country during the warm season.”

It goes on to say, “It has long been known that Lyme has its educated and cultivated circle. If parents wish to place their sons in a private or select school they will find one of the first order.”

One hundred years before people across America fled the crowded inner cities for the promise of idyllic life in the suburbs, Lyme was already enticing the family squire to leave the metropolis and raise his progeny in the paradise of the countryside, all within easy commuting distance on the steamboat or locomotive to his affairs in the capitals of commerce. Over the next century, Lyme would become a summer resort that attracted the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Felix Frankfurter and Albert Einstein. It would also host artists from New York City, such as Henry Ward Ranger and Childe Hassam, who would help found the Lyme Art Colony and make Old Lyme the home of American Impressionism.

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