Prudence Crandall’s Legacy

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Donald E. Williams. Prudence Crandall’s Legacy

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Prudence Crandall’s Legacy

This book is a 2014 selection in the Driftless Connecticut Series, for an outstanding book in any field on a Connecticut topic or written by a Connecticut author.

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The swift expansion of the local economy exposed the region’s inadequate road system, which consisted primarily of poorly constructed cart paths. Businessmen pressured towns to raise taxes and invest in new roads and bridges. A few years earlier, residents of the nearby town of Killingly defeated a proposed turnpike to the Rhode Island border; taxpayers said they would “never submit to such invasion.”80 Despite pockets of opposition and the occasional defeat, most towns moved aggressively to build the roads and bridges that linked their businesses to the rest of New England. The Brooklyn and Windham Turnpike—an important passageway to Hartford to the west and Providence and Boston to the east—was completed in 1826.

Long days of work on the Crandall farm in Canterbury and in Hezekiah’s cotton mill required hearty meals. Breakfast in New England was “no evanescent thing,” Samuel Goodrich observed in 1832.81 It often included boiled potatoes, beef, ham, sausages, pies, bread, butter, cider, and coffee.82 The common bread of the rural towns was made from rye and Indian corn.83 Pardon Crandall and other farmers set aside space in their homes to cure pumpkins, dry peaches and store apples, potatoes, and carrots.84 Dinner included seasonal fruits and vegetables, meats, salted cod, and white beans baked with salt pork until the beans were thoroughly saturated with fat.85

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