BERLIN – County officials agreed to fund a sign recognizing Briddletown in Berlin.
The Worcester County Commissioners agreed this week to spend up to $2,000 on an interpretive sign marking the Briddletown area of Berlin. The sign was suggested by descendants of the Briddell family last year, according to Lisa Challenger, the county’s tourism director.
“Typically folks in the tourism industry are considered the storytellers,” Challenger said, “telling the history that isn’t told. We think this is a chance to do that as well as make some connections between some of the existing historic sites in the Berlin area.”
Challenger said Paul Touart, an architectural historian, had spent the past two months researching the history of Briddletown. He said that to sort through oral history and factual history, he researched the land records of 13 parcels on Flower Street.
Touart said that while some local residents had thought the community of Briddletown went back centuries, land records revealed that was not so.
“The road that is currently called Flower Street was actually created or declared as new in the 1860s,” he said, adding that it had been referred to as new in 1866 when records showed that Benjamin Pitts had purchased 2.25 acres of land formerly used as pasture in the Flower Street area. From then on, parcels of what had been farmland were broken into lots.
“Between 1866 and the 1870s, a community did develop there along that road,” Touart said.
He said the name Briddletown did not surface until the 1910 census.
“By that time I presume there were enough residents with that surname that they decided to start calling it that…,” he said. “It’s an interesting history. Prior to that road being created there were large farms. That road was the catalyst for developing that small community. There were free black communities in and around most of the towns in Worcester County prior to the Civil War. This particular one surfaces after the Civil War.”
Challenger said Touart’s research would help with the development of the text for the interpretive sign.
“We think it’s a pretty neat story and coming from the citizens who’d like to see something there, we’d like to make that happen,” she said.
Commissioner Diana Purnell said Touart’s research had helped the Berlin community with other historic sites, such as the Germantown School.
“It’s been very important in the community because oftentimes our history is lost,” she said.
The commissioners voted unanimously to approve funding for the sign.
