Stratford’s Boothe Park reopens
After a year of reduced capacity due to COVID, grounds will be free of charge Sunday
STRATFORD — The 32 acres of Boothe Memorial Park are every bit as eccentric as the two men who deeded it to the town in the late 1940s.
There’s an historic homestead. A clock tower. A lighthouse. A rose garden. A windmill. A blacksmith shop. And, for whatever reason, an old Merritt Parkway toll booth — just to name a few of the 18 buildings that dot the property.
And after a year of reduced capacity because of
the coronavirus pandemic, the public will be able to enjoy the grounds at 5744 Main St. free of charge Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
“This year will be the opening day we didn’t have last year,” Doreen Jaekle, of Friends of Boothe Park, said.
Activities planned for Sunday include blacksmith and weaving demonstrations, an antique car show, tours and a noon flag raising performed by the Stratford Veterans Museum and local VFW.
The park is named after Stephen Nichols Boothe and David Beach Boothe, the last heirs of an old English family that traced its roots in America back to 1639.
“We have deemed it only fitting that residents of the town of Stratford shall have an appropriate site for recreation and rest ... where the beauty and serenity of life may be enjoyed to its richest and fullest apportionment,” their joint wills, read in 1949, said.
The park was dedicated six years later by the town, which takes its stewardship of the property very seriously.
Town Council member Jim Connor, whose 8th District covers the park, serves as chairman of the Boothe Park Commission. He said he is proud to help oversee “what I believe is the most New England-looking property.”
“Many events and memories have been created since the opening of the park — of weddings, first dates and sledding,” he said. “I encourage everyone to come to opening day.”
Jaekle said the brothers were “very, very eccentric” — and surviving anecdotes attest.
One story has it the brothers wrote to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1943 asking for federal recognition of the homestead as the oldest in the country.
They never heard back, and, apparently dismissive of more pressing demands on the president’s attention at the time, vowed to vote Republican from then on.
That’s not the only yarn connected to a famous president — or the GOP.
“When you trace the genealogy, at times the name doesn’t have an e after it. But after the Civil War, they added it so they wouldn’t be accused of being a relative of John Wilkes Booth,” Jaekle said.
The brothers, who earned money from rental properties in Bridgeport and a family-owned farm machinery company, were always helping others, the stories say.
“They were eccentric, but they were also very altruistic,” Jaekle said.
They hosted fundraisers on the property for local church groups, hosted sunrise services on Easter, and during the Depression hired workers to build a two-story “technocratic cathedral” made of 4-footby-6-inch California redwood timbers shipped through the Panama Canal.
It’s unclear why the building is called a cathedral. It also used to be known as the “basket house” because it was filled with baskets, many of which were bought from American Indians.
“The buildings were left open and teenage boys used to go in and cut them down as Easter baskets for their girlfriends,” Jaekle said while showing off some of the old baskets inside the homestead. “We figured it’s more secure to display them here.”
The building now houses the product of a more philanthropic teen’s work — an extensive mineral collection donated years ago that local Boy Scout Kevin Collazo cleaned and re-labeled last year for an Eagle Scout project.
But baskets still bring visitors — and reminders of the brothers’ idiosyncrasies.
“A woman came and donated some baskets,” Jaekle recalled. “She said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but my father used to give the Boothe brothers a ride from the green back to their house.’ She said, ‘He told me they used to shoplift stuff in the grocery store.’”
Turns out the truth was even weirder.
“They would pay the grocers and other stores $25 a month so they could go in with their long wool coats and have people think they were shoplifting, because they got a kick out of it,” Jaekle said.