Jonathan Trumbull Jr. House Museum

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The Town Green

By 1730, the last remaining undivided land had been distributed to those with rights to distribution except for the section of the broad street in the center of town that had evolved into public space. This is the area known as the town green.

The road width for central streets was usually quite large, but the travelway was little more than dirt paths. Travelers went around mud holes, rocks, and fallen trees. Because of the size of the old roads, they were used for building meeting-houses and schools, and pasturing animals. The poor were also allowed to build in the road, and there are instances of this being permitted in Lebanon.

In Lebanon, a 30-rod highway was authorized to go between the home lots in 1697. It was the site of the meetinghouse, a place for public assembly, the training ground of the militia, and other public uses. A map from 1731 shows the meetinghouse in the center of the intersection of the roads now known as Routes 87 and 207.

The green itself is perched on a plateau over a very deep layer of clay and is notoriously wet. It is easy to see how the traffic pattern in this area of the highway evolved into two separate streets on either side of the green. The broad street was referred to as "the Town Street" until about the mid- 19th century when the references become "East Town Street so-called" and "West Town Street so-called."

Ownership of the Green

Professional genealogists estimate that the number of descendants of one set of parents over the course of three centuries can be as high as 10,000 descendants. Multiplying this by the number of descendants of parents who had a proven claim, either as heirs or assigns, to the undivided land of the green would bring the number to well over hundreds of thousands.

Given this huge number of possible claimants to the green and the fact that they remain unidentified, it is not possible for one person or a small group to assert proprietary tights to the green unless it is in proportion to that of all the other thousands of claimants. Claimants would also have to show they are descendants of those heirs or assigns who had proven proprietary rights since the rights to undivided land may not have been part of a sale or an estate.

The tracing of the records of the transfers of proprietary rights is a formidable task that has never been undertaken. No one pays taxes on the green. The town maintains liability while abutting property owners follow the traditional custom of making hay. It is this unique and symbiotic relation ship that has preserved the green as a vast open space for public use.

Source: Alicia Wayland, Remembering Lebanon, 1700-2000 (2000), 6. 

 
 
 
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