Called a “compelling history of a unique community,” a new history of the city was published this week by The Connecticut Press and a native son, who thought the story too good not to share with public. Called Visible Saints: West Haven, Connecticut, 1648-1798, the book traces the first 150 years from the founding to the ear just after the war for independence.

Peter J. Malia, a city native, who now makes his home in Monroe, published the book saying the history buffs of the nation would be fascinated by the struggles in this community, where sharp divisions have been part of its fabric.

Visible Saints tells the story of a village that quickly earned a reputation as the problem child of Connecticut. In a sharply divided community of Puritan saints and Anglican dissenters, West Haven’s curious blend of religion and politics made for an explosive mix that propelled a people on the road to the American Revolution.

“It’s really the story of America in miniature,” Malia says. “What happened in this little New England seacoast village in its first 150 years is a very engaging story about the birth of democracy and groundbreaking decisions that continue to impact our lives even now,”he said this week.

Challenging the world’s most powerful military force during the Revolution, West Haven’s shoreline location often brought the war to its very doorstep and changed the community forever. Its citizens emerged from that experience not as Puritans or dissenters, Patriots or Tories, but as Americans in a country that was fresh and brand new. That was something Malia wanted to convey in his new book.

 ”This is the story of a people driven by the same motivations that have defined human nature throughout time,” Malia says. “Love and hate. Anger and revenge. The drive to succeed and the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Here it all was playing out in a small community made up of people not very much different from ourselves. They gave us the gift of freedom that we should never forget or take for granted.”  

For Malia, learning about West Haven’s history when he was in elementary school gave him his first taste of the special struggles that happened in West Haven. He remembers when the Thomas Painter house, home of the man who first alerted West Haveners of the invasion of the British, was dissembled for its move to Litchfield.

“I grew up in West Haven. I guess my first encounter with West Haven history that I can remember occurred while walking to St. Lawrence Grammar School a half century ago. Along Main Street across from the old West Haven High School, there was an ancient house I passed every morning. It looked run down and abandoned. I remember how surprised I was one day to see an army of workers carefully disassembling that house like some giant jigsaw puzzle,” he said.

“ People told me it was the Thomas Painter House. That didn’t mean much to me at the time. But seeing that old house being taken down piece by piece stayed with me through the years. I don’t know what I missed more – watching the crews dismantle the place or simply rummaging around that hole in the ground where a piece of West Haven’s history once stood,” he said.

Years later he learned the fate of the Painter House, which is now on the site of the former Lyman Beecher home. By then he was a graduate student writing a thesis on the colonial history of West Haven at Trinity College.  I was often asked to turn that study into a book, but I never seemed to find the time to do so until now. I ended up completely rewriting the thing.

In his research about the book, a few things stood out for him.

“I always felt that West Haven’s colonial history was the greatest story never told. It has all the elements of a really compelling novel, only it’s true. Counterfeiters, witches, financial depressions, religious schisms, revivalists, pandemics, wars, and a number of invasions -- all occurring in the span of 150 years. 

The religious question was an important one in staunchly Puritan New England. Christ Church was founded by a former Congregationalist minister from First Church, who grew to accept the claims of the Anglican Church, went back to the mother country to get ordained, and then founded a parish here.

 During his research some things stood out about the West Haven community.

“The most important aspect of colonial West Haven was the significant role it played in helping to shape Connecticut’s future. Through its first 150 years, the village never gave up its struggle to win its freedom from New Haven. It became something of a problem child in Puritan Connecticut as a sharply divided community of Puritans and Anglicans whose religious and political differences proved to be an explosive mix that pushed them along the path to revolution maybe a bit faster than most others.,” he said.

 Malia will go before the West Haven Historical Society on Nov. 12 at First Congregational Church at 7 p.m. He will discuss the famous story of Adj. William Campbell, and may even have found a descendent back in Edinborough.

After St. Lawrence, Malia attended Notre Dame High of Fairfield. He graduated from Providence College and completed his graduate studies in American History at Trinity College and Fordham University. He served as primary research historian at Sleepy Hollow Restorations in New York, assistant editor of Sleepy Hollow Press, and editor and publicist at The Connecticut Historical Society. I am currently am the principal owner of The Connecticut Press, based in Monroe, a specialty publisher of American History, art, photography and reference works developed in partnership with non-profit museums and institutions.

For more information on the book, see www.connecticut-press.com. Visible Saints is also available through Amazon or local bookstores.

Visible Saints: West Haven, Connecticut, 1648 – 1798 (2009). 274 pages, 68 illustrations, genealogical appendix, annotated bibliography, index.