I've been meaning to get back to Connecticut's Windsor Farms Historic District ever since exploring that rural area in December 2020 (see December 17, 2020, "A Towering Discovery in Tobacco Country"). And if you're reading this, and you have half a brain, you probably realize that I fulfilled that goal with another visit to South Windsor.
There are dozens of beautiful old homes in the district, which is located between the Connecticut River and John Fitch Boulevard, also known as Route 5. Main Street bisects the area, which is dottted with farms. As a general rule, I don't make photos of old houses, even gorgeous historic ones. And many of the privately owned farm buildings in the district are inaccessible to folks like me. So my destination was a nicely restored barn/warehouse building that I'd spotted ahead of time on Google Maps.
As I mentioned in the previous South Windsor post, the historic district has been home to tobacco cultivation for roughly 300 years. While many other Connecticut River Valley towns that were once engaged in the shade tobacco business have seen that activity wane in recent decades, the Windsor Farms Historic District "is one of the few farming villages remaining in Connecticut still devoted to tobacco agriculture," according to this Living Places document. "Unlike the more typical historic rural areas of the state where the historic components are widely scattered, the Windsor Farms Historic District is a highly concentrated, cohesive entity," the article continues. "Not only does it contain a significant group of farmhouses, barns, and other specialized buildings related to tobacco agriculture, it also encompasses approximately 1,500 acres of contiguous historic farmland."
According to the South Windsor assessor's database, the barn/warehouse above was built in 1910. The ghost sign across the top says, "ADLER & DOBKIN."
While researching tobacco companies in my native state in the past, I haven't found a lot of information. The same is true here. I discovered that Adler & Dobkin was a cigar-wrapper business based in Manchester, Connecticut. I have no idea when the company was founded, or whether it went out of business or merged with another entity. This building is currently owned by the J.E. Shepard Company, which was founded in 1888 and was at one time (and perhaps still is) the largest grower of broadleaf tobacco in the Connecticut Valley, according to an obituary for a former company executive.
The Shepard company has extensive real estate holdings in South Windsor - nearly four dozen properties by my count in the assessor's database. These include farm, industrial and commercial sites, as well as open land. Perhaps homes, too. Among the company's holdings are at least two golf courses, Willow Brook, which closed abruptly in 2020, and Topstone; Nomad’s Adventure Quest, which includes Revolutions Bowling and Red’s Tavern; and Nomad’s Outdoor Adventure, which closed last year.
Since the warehouse I'm featuring here is in such good shape, and the property includes a barn that also appears in good repair, AND there are large fields located behind them, I'm guessing that J.E. Shepard still grows tobacco here and elsehwhere.
L.J. Peretti Co. has been in business for 150 years in Boston. That's pretty good for a business selling products that are bad for your health, and that pollute the air we breathe. Don't get me wrong: I have no problem with cigars and pipes, especially the latter, which always smell good and remind me of my late uncle. The number of folks who smoke them, though, has decreased significantly in the last 15 years.
Founded in 1870 in Boston's North End, Peretti at one time had a factory in Park Square where "fifty rollers...produced some of the finest cigars in New England," per the company's web site. "Not only did Peretti's manufacture blended cigars, but they also created Clear Havana Vitolas such as the legendary La Mirendella."
The tobacconist at one time had stores in the Financial District and elsewhere, but I believe this one at the intersection of Boylston and Charles streets, just steps from the Boston Common, is the sole survivor.
Perched outside the front door is a stogie-holding Punch.
Half of the ancient comedy duo Punch & Judy, the cigar-loving wag has been common outside tobacco shops for decades and probably centuries.
Last fall, at a presentation at the Newton Camera Club, I learned an important lesson: if you find something you like, shoot the hell out of it.
And so I did, this past Thanksgiving, when I was staying at a hotel in Windsor, CT.
I shot this lovely old tobacco barn once before (see September 20, 2017, "One-Stop Barnstorming Tour"). This time around, I got a little more up close and personal.
This property is home to Foundation Cigar Company, which, in the video below, claims the land is "one of the oldest tobacco fields in Connecticut." The video features this barn.
The company's founder and owner, Nick Melillo, wants to bring the tobacco industry back in the Nutmeg State, as he told the local NBC affiliate last year.
Foundation isn't growing tobacco on this property right now, as far as I can tell. The company's headquarters is in an old farm house on the property. The company grows tobacco elsewhere locally, and ships the product to Nicaragua to be cured for two to three years, per the local TV interview linked above.
I've never smoked, other than a few times experimenting with cigarettes and stogies as a teenager, but tobacco is a minor theme in my life. I grew up in a Connecticut River Valley town that was once known worldwide for growing shade tobacco for the cigar industry. When I was a kid in the 1970's, local teens would rise early during the summer to pick tobacco alongside migrant workers. There were tobacco barns at the edge of my neighborhood and scattered throughout the town and others in the area. Some of those barns are still standing, although I don't think any of them are in use.
On a recent trip to visit with family in Windsor, Connecticut, I stayed in a hotel right off the highway. I'd stayed there before, and had a vague feeling that there was something worth exploring in the immediate area. As often happens when I sleep in a hotel, I awoke early. I left my wife and kids sleeping in their cozy beds and struck out on foot along the busy road heading west. There were no sidewalks, and although there wasn't much traffic on this Saturday morning, I felt ill at ease. After just a few minutes, however, I veered onto a side road.
My hotel was on Day Hill Road, a busy thoroughfare with other hotels, business parks and office buildings, so when I saw the side road sign said "Old Day Hill Road," I knew I'd find something good.
This is one of three old tobacco barns on this farm. There were crops all around, but I couldn't tell you what the farmers are growing. Seemed to be mostly vegetables. I would've explored more, but there was an SUV a short distance away that I'm guessing belonged to someone charged with keeping folks like me away.
The sun was already hot at 8:00, and I didn't have a hat or sunscreen, so I didn't walk too far on Old Day Hill Road. After returning home I discovered that there are some old potato barns just up the road a piece from where I stopped. Bummer....
Upon my return to the hotel, once my family was awake, I opened the curtains in the room. And got this wonderful view.
I wrote about another tobacco barn and the former church that served the little community of agricultural workers in East Granby, CT, last year (see July 19, 2016, "Tobacco Road").
When I was a kid, tobacco barns like this one dotted the outskirts of my suburban neighborhood, and teens could earn money during the summer working the fields in the area. My hometown, Simsbury, was (and to a much lesser degree, still is) part of what was called "Tobacco Valley," a fertile area stretching from Springfield, Massachusetts, south along the Connecticut River and its tributaries to Hartford, Connecticut.
Beginning in 1640, farmers imported seeds from Virginia, according to ConnecticutHistory.org, and for a long time after tobacco farming was the largest industry in the Valley. By the time I was growing up, from the late 1960s through the '70s, the industry had shrunk but was still a vital and visible part of the local economy.
A decrease in cigar smoking, combined with the availability of cheaper, mass-produced cigar wrappers, led to the demise of the tobacco farms. In the 1930's, total acreage in the Valley dedicated to growing tobacco stood at 30,000 acres, according to ConnecticutHistory.org. By 2006, the land for farming had dwindled to less than 2,000 acres. For more on the history of tobacco farming in Connecticut, read this article.
East Granby is just north of Simsbury, and was also part of the tobacco industry. My cousin's wife once mentioned an old building along a relatively new bike path (read: old railroad tracks) in that town. Recently, I got around to checking it out.
As you can see, this humble structure used to be a church.
Located in the Floydville section of East Granby, the church was built by a very determined religious woman in order to serve the spiritual needs of her small tobacco farming community.
Floydville Plantation, as it was once known, was owned by American Sumatra Tobacco, which I believe was a successor to the Connecticut Tobacco Company. The latter company counted among its executives one Marcus Floyd, according to this excellent article about the Nutmeg State's tobacco industry. Taking a wild leap: this plantation was probably named after Marcus Floyd.
"Floydville did not have its own town hall or post office," according to a memory posted by Dave Bergeron on RootsWeb, a community on Ancestry.com. There was a "warehouse where they sorted broadleaf during the summer. A.S.T would bring in Pennsylvania (workers) to work the fields. They would sleep in barracks in the Warehouse.”
Many of those who picked tobacco in Connecticut were African Americans who migrated from the South, or arrived with college groups for the summer (Martin Luther King, Jr., spent time in Simsbury picking tobacco in the 1940's, during his time at Morehouse College). Others came from the Caribbean islands. When I did my initial research online about Floydville, I checked out Google Maps, and saw a beautifully worn-down yellow barn along Floydville Road. This evidently was the warehouse spoken of in the quote above. I was sad to find upon my arrival at the site that the building had been torn down.
There are a few rundown houses along the dead-end Railroad Ave, which parallels the bike path (which follows the former New York, New Haven & Hartford rail line), but the most telling evidence of the old plantation community is the church.
(An old box spring outside the church.)
(Faux stained glass on the ground outside the church. It's in surprisingly good shape.)
So who built this church?
Rushia James came north from Americus, Georgia, in 1917 with her parents and at least four siblings to find better opportunities in Hartford. The granddaughter of slaves and already a teacher in her native Georgia, she found the only employment in the north for blacks was menial. Responding to the call from tobacco growers, Rushia’s family moved to Granby around 1918....By 1920 Rushia was married to another Georgia native, Theodore West, and she worked as a tobacco sorter. In 1921 Theodore was able to purchase about five acres of property along side the railroad tracks in East Granby off Floydville Road. Over the years she and her family made the trek each week to Hartford so they could worship at a Seventh Day Adventist church. The local Congregational churches lacked the welcome and the Pentecostal spirit she and other tobacco workers of color desired.
From The Shade Laborers: Tobacco Worker Recruitment Through the 1940s by Dawn Byron Hutchins
In the 1950's, Rushia's mother was in poor health. The time had come for the daughter to plan the church that she and her mother had dreamed of, according to Hutchins. After paying $50 to have a foundation poured, Rushia spent the next 15 years funding the growth of the one-room church. She ran into permitting issues with the town of East Granby, but eventually a contractor helped her past those obstacles and in 1976 the West Community Church was dedicated, Hutchins writes.
(The light was tough, and I didn't want to trespass inside, so this was the best shot I could get of the inside of the church.)
(A fridge in the basement of the church.)
I'm guessing that parishioners used the church in the years prior to its dedication in 1976. Sadly, though, all use of the building seems to have ended in the mid-'80s, according to Hutchins's book, which is available online as a PDF.
Her dream church caught the attention of the local and national press, who ran articles on it and chronicled its ongoing difficulties – monetary support, its founder’s age, physical access and competing congregational interpretations of the Bible – until 1985 when all mention of it stopped, according to the book. By 1990 Rushia West had passed and along with her the memories of the community she built.
(I was taken aback by this sign, "GRACE," draped over the rickety front steps of the church.)
This Backside trip was unusual in that I brought along a special guest: my mother. I was visiting her for the day, and as I told her ahead of time, "I'm not a man of ulterior motives, except when it comes to the Backside of America. Would you like to join me?" She was quite happy to come along.
After I snapped pictures of the barns at the top of this post, we got off the bike path and onto Railroad Avenue. In short order we came across the church. After a few minutes of snapping pictures, I heard a voice through the bushes, back toward the ramshackle houses we'd passed.
"Hello? Can I help you? This is private property back here."
Uh oh. Was I about to get hauled to the slammer, with my 83-year-old mother in tow?
"Oh, hi," I answered. "I'm just taking a few pictures. I love old buildings like this."
The woman was very nice, explaining that since it was private property, she had to be concerned about people getting hurt exploring the church, which is falling apart on the inside.
"It hasn't been used in about 30 years," she said. If I'd known more of the background of Floydville Plantation at the time, I would have asked this woman if she was related to Rushia West.
To see some very good photos of the church's interior, and read a short post about a local woman's visit to the site, read this Facebook post.
A quick note about the former tobacco-growing land of Floydville Plantation: at some point the business was sold to Culbro Corp. (which was evidently known at some point as General Cigar), which is the name I recall from my youth. With the cigar market floundering, Culbro expanded into several unrelated markets, including nurseries, forming a partnership with Imperial Nurseries, according to Culbro's web site. Imperial Nurseries operates a business directly across from Railroad Avenue today. Along the western edge of the bike trail is a business listed as Monrovia Nursery Company. I'm unclear on whether the two nursery companies, which have pretty massive operations in East Granby, are related.
To cap things off, here's Eric Burdon and War doing a blazing 14-minute version of John Loudermilk's "Tobacco Road," a song covered by numerous artists over the past six decades.
