Barn Record Newtown

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Building Name (Common)
Morris Farmstead
Building Name (Historic)
Eli Gould Morris/Charles Gould Morris and Elisabeth Woodbridge
Address
125 Berkshire Road (Rte 34), Newtown
Typology
Overview

Designations

Historic Significance

Architectural description:

There are two major barns in this complex:

Barn I:

This is a 1 1/2-story gable-roofed, three-bay, eave-entry barn with a gable-roof addition.  The main eave-side facade faces west and the ridge-line of the barn is parallel to Berkshire Road, which runs north-south.  There are two sets of hinged doors covered by a hood in the center and south bays of the west eave-facade.  The north bay has a single, fixed six-pane window.  A gable-roof addition with a dormer window on the east side is attached to the north gable-side of the barn.  A single window occupies the east side of the gable attic above the addition on the north gable-side.  There appear to be two fixed windows in the gable attic of the south gable-side of the barn.  The barn has vertical, flush-board siding painted red. 

Barn II:
A second, larger barn sits at a right angle to the first barn just beyond the gable-roof addition to the north.  It is a 1 1/2-story, eave-entry barn with a shed-roof addition on the west gable-side and a shed-roof addition on the north eave-side.  The entrance appears to be on the south eave-facade of the barn.  There is a seam in the ridge-line suggesting that the barn was erected in two stages.  Four fixed windows are found on the north eave-side on the east side of the barn.  The west side appears to to have only one window in north eave-side.  A row of three fixed, six-pane windows and a square hinged door fill the gable attic of the west, gable-side of the barn above the ridge of the shed addition.  The second barn has vertical, flush-board siding with traces of red paint.  Both barns are covered with asphalt shingles. 

Historical significance:

The oldest barns still found in the state are called the “English Barn,” “side-entry barn,” “eave entry,” or a 30 x 40. They are simple buildings with rectangular plan, pitched gable roof, and a door or doors located on one or both of the eave sides of the building based on the grain warehouses of the English colonists’ homeland. The name “30 by 40” originates from its size (in feet), which was large enough for 1 family and could service about 100 acres. The multi-purpose use of the English barn is reflected by the building’s construction in three distinct bays - one for each use. The middle bay was used for threshing, which is separating the seed from the stalk in wheat and oat by beating the stalks with a flail. The flanking bays would be for animals and hay storage.

Historical background:

The main house (133 Berkshire Road) was sold to Eli Gould Morris in 1818 for $3000 by the heir of Salmon and Esther Curtis. The house itself has been variously dated from 1740 to 1800, but a date c. 1790-1800 appears likely. The deed of 1818 included 81 acres of plowland and upland meadow, a barn, a cider mill, outhouses, a carriage house, and a horse shed (Mitchell).

Eli Gould Morris (b. 1750) married Lydia Bennett (b. 1794) and had come with his father Daniel from Fairfield to settle in the nearby Grays Plain section of Newtown. Their son Eli James Morris remained here and farmed the property with his wife Jane E. At the time of the 1860 census, Lydia Bennett Morris and Eli James’s sister Martha Jane, a schoolteacher, were also living here. They were identified as a separate household at that time, which may be a clue to the date of the second house, 125 Berkshire Road. Photographs of Eli James and Jane survive in the Morris Family Papers (Yale MSS 622) along with a pair of farm ledgers from 1790-1823 by Amos Beardslee and from 1822-1861 by Eli Gould Morris.

Eli’s brother Luzon Burritt Morris (1827-1895) left Newtown to attend Yale and became a lawyer in New Haven. He served in the State Senate and was elected Governor in 1893. Luzon died shortly after the end of his term, in 1895.
Luzon Morris and his wife, Eugenia Laura Tuttle Morris, had six children, as listed in the 1880 census in New Haven (they built a home at 230 Prospect Street now owned by Yale University). Their second son, Charles Gould Morris (1871-1961), also attended Yale College (BA 1895) and Law School (LLB 1897), and was a prominent lawyer in New Haven through the first half of the 20th century. Another son, Robert T., the eldest, was a prominent surgeon. Both brothers shared interests in natural history.

Charles Gould Morris inherited the “Old Morris Place” on the death of his uncle Eli James, and subsequently operated it as a gentleman farmer. Through the first half of the 20th century, Charles Gould Morris owned and operated several ice cream and dairy businesses, was active in New Haven municipal affairs, in civil service reform, with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and issues of the modern dairy farming, and also in Newtown civic affairs including the Fairfield Hills Hospital, of which he was a trustee.
In 1899, Charles Gould Morris married Elisabeth Woodbridge (1870-1964), a graduate of Vassar College and one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. at Yale University.

Before her marriage Elisabeth Woodbridge had taught English and history at Vassar, and she continued to write and publish even as her family grew. The papers contain some of her writings, but the greatest quantity of material dates from her work with the Industrial Relations Club of New Haven and the Consumers’ League. With other educated women, many of them wives of prominent Yale faculty, she organized studies and lobbying efforts concerning the working conditions in industries primarily employing women (Finding Aid for MSS 622, Yale University Library).

Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris published several books, academic volumes in the field of English literature and personal essays, including “The Jonathan Papers” published in 1912 In “The Grooming of the Farm,” she described the demolition of several ramshackle sheds and the construction of a new carriage barn, presumably the extant Barn II on the property.

The 1920 census shows the Morrises with six children and two servants, living in New Haven. At the time of the 1966 survey by the State Historical Commission, Elisabeth Morris was still the owner of the Berkshire Road farm.
A series of maps from the 1850s to 1905 and 1942, record the Morris family’s ownership of this site through decades in which roads were paved, the river dammed, bridge locations altered, and automobile travel from New Haven became easier, allowing use of the farmstead as a part-time home. The 1854 Fagan map depicts the “Home of E. J. Morris” as a vignette; similarly, a 1905 Newtown Bicentennial map includes a photograph of the “Residence of C. G. Morris.” The current owners are only the second following the Morrises.

Field Notes

Listed on the State Register of Historic Places 4/03/2013 125-133 Berkshire Road, Sandy Hook - House construction: 1740 Sources: "Touring Newtown’s Past: the Settlement and Architecture of an Old Connecticut Town;" Mary Mitchell and Albert Goodrich, Newtown Historical Society, Newtown, Connecticut, 1996, p. 122-3 pre-1826 House Inventory. Newtown Assessor’s Records.

Use & Accessibility

Use (Historic)

Use (Present)


Exterior Visible from Public Road?

Yes

Demolished

n/a

Location Integrity

Original Site

Environment

Related features

Environment features

Relationship to surroundings

The barns are to the south of the house with which they are associated.  The ridge-line of the house is parallel to Berkshire Road, which runs approximately north-south.  The house was constructed c. 1740 and has a gable-roof addition to the north with porch-like structures on the east- and west-eave sides and a two-story, hip-roof addition to the south.  A second smaller house, c. 1875, is located to the north, with its ridge-line north-south. The barns are set back from the road farther than the house and are arranged at right angles to each other so that a courtyard is formed on the interior of the property.  The ridge-line of the smaller carriage barn on the west side of the courtyard is parallel to the house and road.  The larger barn occupies the north side of the courtyard with its west gable-side facing Berkshire Road.  A gable-roof shed is aligned with the second barn to the east.  Behind the house to the north is another gable-roof shed.  An unpaved driveway enters the property between the house and barn.  A stone wall and a row of trees line the western border of the property along Berkshire Road.  Most of the 8.0-acre property is woodland.  The area surrounding the site is residential, light agriculture, open space and woodland.


Map/Block/Lot 50/ 9/ 14/

Typology & Materials

Building Typology

Materials


Structural System

Roof materials


Roof type


Approximate Dimensions

Barn I: 40' x 70' Barn II: 24' x 46'

Source

Date Compiled

11/14/2010

Compiled By

Amy Prescher & Todd Levine, reviewed by CT Trust

Sources

Photographs and field notes by Charlotte Hitchcock, 3/15/2008, 1/10/2012.
Interview with Erick Feucht, property owner, 1/10/2012, at the site.

Map resources:

Newtown Assessor’s Records http://maps.newtown-ct.gov/ags_map/
Parcel ID: 50-9-14
Newtown GIS Viewer http://maps.newtown-ct.gov/ags_map/

Aerial views from:
http://maps.google.com/  and http://www.bing.com/maps/ accessed 11/17/2011.

Beers, Ellis, and Soule, Atlas of New York and Vicinity, 1867.

Bicentennial Map of the Town of Newtown, 1905.

Chace, J., Clark’s Map of Fairfield County, Connecticut, Richard Clark, Philadelphia, 1856.

Fagan, L., Map of the Town of Newtown, Richard Clark, Philadelphia, 1854.

United States Geological Survey Maps, Danbury and Derby, 1892.

UTM coordinates: http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html

Print and internet resources:

Ballard, Rose-Marie, Historic Resources Inventory of Newtown, 1996.

Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, Historic Barns of Connecticut Resource Inventory, 2010,
http://www.connecticutbarns.org/5767

Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials, History of Land Use in Newtown CT, http://www.hvceo.org/luchange_newtown.php , accessed 3/14/2012.

Mitchell, Mary, Goodrich, Albert, Touring Newtown’s Past, Newtown Historical Society, 1996.

Morris, Charles G., “The Middleman in the Milk Business,” Newtown Bee, October 2, 1914, reprinted from The Connecticut Farmer.

Phillips, Morgan W., 1966 Inventory Form, State Register Files, Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office.

Sexton, James, PhD; Survey Narrative of the Connecticut Barn, Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, Hamden, CT, 2005, http://www.connecticutbarns.org/history.

U.S. Federal Census data, 1870-1930.

Visser, Thomas D., Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings, University Press of New England, 1997, 213 pages.

Woodbridge, Elisabeth, The Jonathan Papers, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1912.

Charles Gould Morris Family Papers, MSS 622, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

“Touring Newtown’s Past: the Settlement and Architecture of an Old Connecticut Town;” Mary Mitchell and Albert Goodrich, Newtown Historical Society, Newtown, Connecticut, 1996, p. 122-3 pre-1826 House Inventory.

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