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Community Corner

Historical Society President Don Menzies Is Fascinated by History

He has also been a book collector since a childhood trip to Whitlock's Book Barn.

Longtime president of the Amity & Woodbridge Historical Society Don Menzies said he has been fascinated with the past since he was a youngster.

"I’ve just been interested in American antiques and history all my life," he said.

Menzies grew up in Cheshire, but he and his wife, Dana, a first-grade teacher, settled in Bethany in the 1980s. They moved to Woodbridge in 1993.

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He joined the historical society about 25 years ago and has been president almost 20 years. Don and Dana even dress up for fundraiser events as Thomas and Abigail Darling, prominent 18th Century residents of Woodbridge who built the house that is now the society’s headquarters.

The Menzies themselves live in an historical house built in 1795 by barrel-maker Thomas Clinton along the Litchfield Turnpike, the main road connecting the New Haven and Litchfield courthouses.

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He said the society possesses the records of the Straits Turnpike Company, which built the toll road and maintained it until it became a state road after the Civil War.

"These towns never grew like Hamden or Cheshire because we never had navigable waters, never had a canal and never had a railroad," Menzies said.

Instead, Woodbridge and Bethany stayed mostly farmland until after World War Two, when people began to move out of the cities.

Besides leading the Amity & Woodbridge Historical Society, Menzies, a quality control officer for the regional water authority, is also a novice bookbinder and antiquarian book restorer.

He said he has been taking lessons at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, which has a completely equipped bindery.

"I’ve been a book collector forever," he said. He took up the hobby after a sixth-grade field trip to Whitlock’s Book Barn in Bethany.

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