Warren Historical Society

This past week in Warren’s history was the birthday of Major Eleazer Curtiss, (Sept 23rd, 1736 – Oct 1st, 1788). A Major in the Revolutionary War and a member of the convention that ratified the Constitution of the United States at Hartford, Ct. It was at his request that when the Society of East Greenwich incorporated as a town that it was named Warren to honor his favorite General who fell at Bunker Hill. Family lore also has it that his son, Eleazer the 4th, who accompanied the Major to the Battle of Danbury, caught General Wooster as he fell wounded from his horse.
Major Curtiss died at age 52. From his will, stating that he was of sound mind, but failing body. Oliver Wolcott Jr, who later became the 24th governor of Connecticut, was the probate judge that officiated that will.

From the vault; Warren was a farming town from it’s beginning. So how did you keep all those cows straight as to which cow belonged to which farmer. This book was used by the Town Clerk to record the notches cut into a cow’s ear to identify the owner.

Josephine Vorisek would have been around 10 years old when she made this seating plan of the Brick School over 100 years ago, giving us a glimpse of school life. One hopes that the students would get to rotate their seats to be closer to the wood stove in winter sessions.

New to the vault thanks to a donation from Toni Richardson!
Before the Vorisek family moved to Warren, they lived in NYC. In 1916 there was an outbreak of Polio that resulted in over 2000 deaths. The Vorisek family needed this pass to travel to Philidelphia at that time. In 1955 Dr. Jonas Salk’s vaccine was approved, quickly adopted worldwide and by 1962 the number of cases dropped to 910. The United States has been Polio free since 1979.

George Gillman Keith II (August 24, 1907 – September 30, 1961. He came to Warren in response to an advertisement for a Herdsman by Ludlow Melius. When the farm was no more, he founded his own building and excavating company. He and his family run company was frequently called by town officials from Kent, Cornwall, Sharon and even Roxbury when there was an emergency road construction or if the snows got too high for the town’s trucks to handle. Keith was also responsible for building an air watch tower to keep watch over Warren’s skies from enemy planes. The town, whose population was around 328 people, was not able to build it. As one of the first developers in Warren He sold one-acre plots to young families who otherwise would not be able to afford to do so. These homes are on Keith Rd., White Oak Lane, and Laurel Mtn Rd., along with many homes that are on Rte. 45.
Keith also created the parking lot for the new Town Hall on Sackett Hill Road and was one of the founders and first fire chief for the Warren Volunteer Fire Company.
A small military plane had crash landed in a field off of Brick School Rd, and Keith had the honor of towing and holding the plane in his yard until the government could send officials to investigate the incident back in 1960.
To hear more about him from his daughter Elaine Keith Layman, you can listen to her oral history on our website. https://warrencthistoricalsociety.org/history/oral-histories/
Photo by
Deane Coords for Chase Manhattan Bank ad in centerfold of Time Magazine.