Welcome to Jube Road

This is my blog about local history, genealogy, community and technology. I am a museum curator, researcher, historian, genealogist, map geek, and technophile.

In the course of my day job, research and ramblings I come across long forgotten tidbits of local knowledge. My head is bursting with these one-off facts and this seemed like the perfect place to share them.

Jube Road is one of those facts. This tidbit comes from Edwin R. Brown (1837-1930), a Cheshire Historian and author of  Old Historic Homes of Cheshire, Connecticut . Brown, in describing the East part of Cheshire says “North of the East District School House on the Jube Road…” He relates some history of the Talmadge families living on the road and then says “A short distance south of Wm. Warners on same side of road an old negro by the name of Jube lived. This old negro furnished the name for this road.”

My mother and grandmother grew up a stones throw from Talmadge Road, down in Copper Valley, near the sharp corners on Wallingford Road. My mother has no recollection of Talmadge Road being called anything but Talmadge Road, and certainly knew nothing of Jube. My grandmother passed long ago, but my guess is that the name Jube Road had passed from memory many years before she was even born.

It is this kind of history I want to document. It is the memory that long before Arby’s was opened on South Main, before it was KFC, even before it was a bank (or two) it was a restaurant named Judy’s. It’s memories of  spinning around on the stools at Mortons waiting for a soda, sledding (or skiing) down Mixville (or Brooksvale) or having your first beer at Cheshire Pub. It is all those other memories we made as children and young adults growing up here in Cheshire that I want to help preserve.