2/5/1984

Many would be surprised to learn that the growing of tobacco in Simsbury and the surrounding area has been an enormous agricultural industry since the 1800's. Known as "Connecticut Shade" tobacco, the plants are grown under a cheesecloth fabric so that the light is filtered and less harsh on the leaves which are used as the outer wrapper on cigars. One Fire Company member recalls that when you would come over the mountain in the 40's and 50's and look down into Simsbury, it was one vast expanse of white cloth.

The industry is still very prevalent in the area, but no where near what it was during its heyday when the local companies built and maintained many structures including curing sheds and homes for the workers, several of which were constructed by Fire Company member John Mirick. Over the years, the Fire Company has been given the opportunity by the local tobacco companies to burn down several of these buildings and train under live-fire conditions.

One of these drills took place on February 5, 1984 when the southern portion of the Morehouse Dormitory was burned down. Water was supplied by drafting from a nearby irrigation pond, and other skills such as stretching supply lines, ground master streams and tower ladder operations were practiced. After many drills were held at the structure, the remaining portions were consumed in one final, huge controlled burn.

This structure however, had an interesting footnote in American history. The dormitory which was located where Scarborough Road is today, sat on a large complex at the corners of Firetown Road and Barn Door Hills Road which also contained barns for wagons, cows and horses, water towers, silos, a granary and a large barn for storing potatoes.

The building and complex was known commonly as the Morehouse, as students from Morehouse College in Atlanta came north each summer to work the tobacco fields and earn money for school. Because of a decline in enrollment due to the war, Morehouse had allowed promising high school students the opportunity to fill-out the incoming class for 1944. One of those promising students was a fifteen year-old eleventh grader named Martin Luther King, Jr. who traveled to Simsbury that summer with the other Morehouse students.

The time that the youthful MLK spent in Connecticut had a profound and lasting affect on him, and it helped to form the foundation for the important civil rights leader that he would become. During the summer of '44, he participated in a boy's choir and led religious services for the students, and years later remarked that his call to the ministry "came about in the summer of 1944 when I felt an inescapable urge to serve society."

The absence of segregation in the north also laid the groundwork for the struggles he would pursue in the future. In letters home to his parents, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about the absence of discrimination. While in Simsbury, the students ventured into town and attended church, went to the movies and enjoyed milkshakes at the drug store alongside whites. After a trip into Hartford, Martin Luther King wrote in a letter home that he "never thought that a person of my race could eat anywhere but we ate in one of the finest restaurants in Hartford," and also went to the largest show in the city.

To learn more about the time Martin Luther King, Jr. spent in Simsbury, visit the Simsbury Historical Society or read The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume One: Called to Serve, January 1929-June 1951.

The first nine photographs in this gallery are from the drills held at the Morehouse Dormitory and the final two photographs are from the final burning of the structure on March 4, 1984.