Reflections on Five Hamlets

Reflections on Five Hamlets. . , The Largest Community in the valley was Cannonsville, a center of commerce and civic life. Presbyterian Baptist and Methodist Churches served both spiritual and temporal needs. The Cannonsville Community House hosted dances, lectures, and meetings, and housed a library. The area was home to a number of musicians, who often played at house parties and barn dances., The Hamlets of Granton, Rock Royal, Rock Rift and Beerston also had schools, stores, post offices, and businesses. Those communities and dozens of outlying farms were acquired by the City through eminent domain and were removed to make way for the Cannonsville Reservoir, built between 1955 and 1967. More than 900 people were displaced and 2,000 graves relocated., Photo Captions, starting at top left and going clockwise: , The Beerston schoolhouse, circa 1890. Beerston , settled by Connecticut emirgants, was first called “the Den.”, This unusual stone barn, built by David Lewis in Rock Royal, was so strong that dynamite was required to remove it during reservoir construction., The forests along the Delaware River provided timber, which was very much in demand by builders and boatyards downriver. Logs were lashed together and piloted by skilled and adventurous raftsmen to Trenton and Philadelphia., The Rock Rift acid factory used timber to make wood alcohol and other chemicals. Some 200 people lived in the hamlet, many of them in company-supplied housing., Rock Royal was a self-sufficient community and was among the first in the area to supply homes and businesses with electricity., A passenger waits for a train at the Rock Rift station of the Ontario and Western Railroad. The O and W was nicknamed by some the Old and Weary. It operated through 1957.,