Surprising stories from Avon’s first century

Written by Carl Wiser staff writer 

Photography by Carl Wiser and Submitted 

"Heublein Tower, which looks like it's been there forever, is actually the fourth tower to grace the mountain," says Scott Lewis, author of Avon, Connecticut's First Century: Visionaries and Victims. "There were three predecessor towers and they were all located in Avon, not Simsbury."

That's one of many great insights in Lewis's book, which was published in October. Those first 100 years begin in 1830, when Avon was founded.

"Avon started off as a section of Farmington, as did a number of towns in central Connecticut," he explains. "So it was known as Northington until it became a separate town."

It was a much simpler time.

 "As was the case throughout the country back in the early 19th century, almost everybody was a farmer. You grew and ate your own food, and then you'd try to sell it to market as well. There were cities like Boston and New Haven and New York growing, so people did ship their produce or other products, but for the most part you ate what you grew."

Geography dictated the lifestyle: Sitting in the U-bend of the Farmington River Valley, it was good for farming but hard to travel. "The Talcott Mountain Range was a significant geological barrier because it really made it difficult for people to get over to Hartford. The Albany Turnpike, as it was known, was a treacherous route, so it isolated residents of Avon from the rest of the state."

Lewis has been living in Avon since 1998. He grew up in Glastonbury and went to UConn, where he got a degree in business with an accounting major. For 13 years he worked for the now-defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen, including a stint in Bermuda from 1994 to 1998.

"Bermuda was phenomenal," he says. "I worked very hard but lived just a six-minute scooter ride from the office in Hamilton. We had a beautiful place that we rented on the shore overlooking the ocean. It was a blast to live there. In Bermuda they call it 'rock fever' where you feel like you have to get off the island. I never got 'rock fever.'"

When he got off the Rock and moved to Avon, Lewis was married with two young kids. He worked for The Hartford in accounting and finance, and became their controller and chief accounting officer in 2013. When he retired in February 2023, his volunteer work with the Avon Land Trust (he's the treasurer) piqued his interest in town history.

"I maintain and improve and build new hiking trails for the town on Land Trust property," he says. "I had a lot of fun creating new trails and improving them, particularly up on Avon Mountain. In the summer of 2023 as I'm doing that work, I'm thinking, 'I spend so much of my time here, I'm curious about the history of this land.' As I dug into the research, I found some fascinating facts. When I did that research, I was invited to do a presentation at the Avon Senior Center, then I did the presentation again at the Avon Library, and that was very well received. Then people asked me to research other areas of the town, and I said, 'Well if I'm going to do that, I might as well write a book.'"

Lewis spent a lot of time in the history room at the Avon Library and in the archives of various universities, particularly Yale and Harvard. The Connecticut Museum of Culture and History was a big help, and the Hartford Courant was a valuable resource - they've been publishing since 1764 and have their archives available online.

"Research and writing was about a year," he says. "That's pretty fast, but because I'm retired, I could devote a lot of time to it, and I really got into it. Once that happens, it's hard to put it down.

"I started in January 2024, and in the fall I reached out to see if I could find a publisher. That is a bit challenging for a book on local history, particularly on the history of a single town, because the market is not that significant. But I was able to find a publisher who specializes in local history called Arcadia Publishing, and it's been great. I'm really pleased with how it came out and really appreciative of their support of local history."

The Civil War

 The section of the book on slavery, abolition and the Civil War has gotten a great response from readers. "Those stories are compelling," Lewis says. "Here's a time where the nation is divided. People understand that slavery is wrong, and yet try to rationalize it. In what's now known as the West Avon Congregational Church, that comes to a head. The parishioners are pretty much split right down the middle, and that battle plays out with competing motions about whether to denounce enslavers, and particularly anybody who was an enslaver that was a member of the church. That's where it became a real point of contention."

A little bit of church history from Lewis: "In 1815 there was one church. The Church of Christ, as they called it, which we know as the Congregational Church. The Northington Parish became the West Avon Congregational Church. We did not really have separation of church and state until 1818, when the state of Connecticut revised its constitution and allowed for the more free expression of different faiths."

The Farmington Canal

Lewis's new research project is on the Farmington Canal, a notorious boondoggle.

"I've been fascinated with the canal for some time, in part because I love to ride my bike down from my home in Avon to New Haven on what's known as the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, which particularly down in Cheshire and Hamden, follows right along what was the canal. But it was an era that didn't last long. The canal only existed from 1828 to 1848.

"It's connected to Avon history in an important way. Avon became the intersection of Albany Turnpike and the canal, and therefore it was an important transportation depot. That event, the canal in 1828, was an impetus for the citizens to separate from Farmington, and two years later, Avon becomes its own town.

"Why did they embark on this? It seems like a crazy idea to dig a ditch all the way up to Northampton, Massachusetts from New Haven. As I've gotten into this, there's a lot of aspects to it that are very interesting. They dug what was known as a prism, so it was wider at the top than at the bottom. Four feet deep of water, about 30 feet wide, and there was a tow path for horses to pull the canal boat on one side of the canal, and an embankment on the other to contain the water. So it was quite an engineering feat, particularly because of the sandy soil we have in many places. There were constant washouts from rainstorms. It was a financial fiasco. It was ill-conceived, and they knew better."

Scott Lewis at BeanZ & Co. in Avon.

Lewis's wife, the ballet dancer and choreographer Ruth Lewis, has her own dance company called Dimensional Dance. They've been together since 1982 (when Scott was 19) and have lived in the same house since 1999. We got to know him better over coffee at BeanZ in, of course, Avon.

What do you like to do with your spare time?

I'm the treasurer general of the Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, which is a national genealogy society. My ancestor is Josiah Bartlett, who was a signer from New Hampshire. Because they always voted north to south, he was the first to vote yes verbally for independence, and he was the second person to sign the Declaration of Independence after John Hancock.

What are some of your favorite places in the area?

My wife and I love to bike, we love to hike. There's lots of different hiking options locally, but we also like to go hiking out in the Northwest Hills or Bear Mountain.

I'm gluten-free, so I love Pure Love Bakery because everything they offer is gluten-free. We frequent different restaurants in the area, like Max A Mia and DaCapo.

What is the hidden gem of the Avon Land Trust?

 It's a hard choice for me between The Wellner Preserve and the Thompson-Osborn Preserve, which is off Scoville Road. The Wellner Preserve is right behind Petco. Here it is so close to Route 44, and yet it's a natural amphitheater, so when you get in there it's pretty quiet, and it's just a beautiful landscape. There are little to no invasive species in there, and there's a viewpoint to the Heublein Tower.

What's something you'd like to learn?

I'm fascinated by authors who have the ability to take narrative nonfiction, to the point where it reads like a novel. Learning that skill and practice is something I'm interested in.

What's one of your hidden talents?

I played the trumpet all the way through college. I take it out once in a while. I was in the UConn marching band as a freshman and the UConn symphony band as a sophomore.

Name some of your favorite books and authors.

David McCullough, James McPherson, David Grand. My all-time favorite book is called Over The Edge Of The World, written by Laurence Bergreen, which is the story of Magellan's circumnavigation of the world around 1520. It's just incredible what all those shipmates experienced on his voyage across the world.

What wisdom would you give to your younger self?

Make time for things I have a passion for. I do have some regret that I didn't keep up playing the trumpet.

Get the book Avon, Connecticut's First Century: Visionaries and Victims at Arcadia Publishing or at Amazon.

Sidebar:

Why the name Avon?

 Nobody is quite sure where the town name came from. "We do know that people as early as the 1750s started referring to themselves as Avon rather than Northington," Lewis says. "Perhaps the most likely explanation is English colonists who were familiar with the River Avon in England. It reminded them of that countryside."