Montville - At first glance, the junction of Route 85 and Flanders Road in Chesterfield is nothing special. A stop sign and a little grass median surrounded by woods, it's a nondescript country intersection that could be anywhere in New England.

But more than a century ago, this little corner was the site of Connecticut's first rural synagogue, the center of a pioneering, tightly knit community of Jewish farmers. The descendants of these farmers would go on to build the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, one would become mayor of New London, and others would open countless small businesses across the region and state.

While their influence can still be seen and felt, though, their historical presence in Chesterfield is not as obvious. Today, the synagogue site, which also included a creamery and a ritual bathhouse, is little more than a collection of rough stone foundations, the buildings having burned down decades ago. But one descendant is determined that the legacy of the New England Hebrew Farmers of the Emmanuel Society, as the congregation was known, endures.

Since the early 1980s, Nancy Savin, who lives in Riverdale, N.Y., has worked to preserve both the physical site and the memory of the group. She officially revived the New England Hebrew Farmers as a nonprofit religious organization and registered the site at the intersection as an archeological preserve and a designated historic place. In November, she received a state grant to fund an engineering survey of the fragile foundations. Additionally, she's started a website - www.newenglandhebrewfarmers.org - to publicize the group and help reconnect the "Chesterfield Diaspora" of descendants.

"It's an unusual kind of site," said Helen Higgins, the executive director of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation. "There's a significant story that goes beyond the Chesterfield site," Higgins said.

"It's an important part of the larger history of Jews in Connecticut."

Classic immigrants' story

"It really is the quintessential immigration story," Savin said.

The original farmers were born in Russia, coming to New York City in the 1880s to escape religious persecution and violence. But conditions there weren't much better - the city was filthy, and the language barrier made factory work the only viable option. So, in 1890, nine families seeking a better life for their children, led by Savin's great-great-grandfather Hirsch Kaplan.

Their path to southeastern Connecticut was paved by the Baron de Hirsch Foundation, an organization established by a German philanthropist to assist European Jews in forming small agricultural "colonies" across the United States. Chesterfield, along with Colchester and Ellington, was chosen because many Yankee farmers in the area wanted to move to the more profitable land out West and were willing to sell entire farms at a large discount.

"The efforts of the de Hirsch Fund to take advantage of these open farms and to match them to people willing to work hard is something that over the years has undoubtedly resulted in a greater ethnic diversity in rural areas that would have otherwise not been the case," said Jon Chase, the Montville town historian.

By 1892, more than 30 Jewish families had settled in Chesterfield, and the group used money from the de Hirsch Fund to build a one-room synagogue, a creamery and a ritual bathhouse known as a mikvah.

The congregation eventually swelled to more than 500 people, and the area was basically transformed into a self-contained Russian village. In addition to running the farms, many of the settlers had trades as well and could provide services to one another.

According to an original minutes book from their meetings, written entirely in Yiddish, they even had their own arbitration system for resolving disagreements.

But life for them was far from idyllic. The land was exhausted, and to make matters worse, few of them actually knew anything about farming. They worked from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. and made a meager living. Most didn't have indoor plumbing or electricity. There was a fairly high turnover rate in the early days as discouraged newcomers would sell out quickly and move to cities such as Norwich and Hartford.

Nevertheless, over the next 30 years the community flourished. Articles from The Day at that time about the group show that their Yankee neighbors admired their strict work ethic. Several clothing factories were built, and the creamery sold butter, milk and cream to the fancy hotels and restaurants in nearby towns.

To supplement their farming income, many farmers also turned their homes into summer boarding houses for people escaping the heat in New York City.

'Out into the American way of life'

After World War I, though, the Jewish population in Chesterfield started to decline. The first generation to be raised entirely on the farms had grown up and spread out across the state to start their own families and lives.

"The farmers all had aspirations for their kids' futures that did not involve staying on the farm," said Jerry Fischer, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut. "They wanted them to go into professions or move to other places with more opportunities for starting a business."

In New London, many of the small businesses that used to define downtown were run by descendants of the New England Hebrew Farmers, including Kaplan's Travel Agency, Kaplan's Hardware, Schneider Hardware, The Juvenile Shop and Kay's.

Moses Savin, whose father was a horse farmer, started Savin Bus Lines. He served in the state legislature and became mayor of New London in the 1950s. His brother Abraham Savin started A.I. Savin Construction, the company that built the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, the Baldwin Bridge over the Connecticut River and the Charter Oak Bridge in Hartford.

"The point was not to stay there, it was to get out into the American way of life," Savin said.

"That's what they did, and that's what the original settlers would have wanted for them."

By 1936, there were only 10 descendants of the original congregation and just two operating farms left in Chesterfield. The creamery had gone bankrupt, but Nancy Savin, who was born in 1937, visited her grandmother in the area almost every Sunday, and she has vivid memories of attending services in the synagogue on the High Holidays.

'Out of sight, out of mind'

As the last of the community died or moved away in the 1950s and 1960s, the site fell into disuse and abandonment. Savin herself stopped going when her grandmother died in the early 1960s, and over time, the creamery and the mikvah burned down. In 1975, the synagogue was destroyed by an arsonist.

"It's horrible to me now to think that from the 1960s until 1975, no one paid any attention to it," she said. "Once people stopped going, it was just out of sight, out of mind."

But about 30 years ago, Savin determined to change that.

She worked with Montville to erect a monument at the site to coincide with the town's bicentennial celebrations in 1986. In 2006, concerned that the land might be sold and developed because it was technically still owned by the defunct congregation, she and other descendants legally revived the New England Hebrew Farmers society and registered it with the state as a religious nonprofit to take ownership of the property.

Since then, the site has been designated as the state's 24th archaeological preserve, and it's listed on the Connecticut Register of Historic Places. In November, the group received a grant from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation that will pay for an engineer to survey the site and figure out a plan to preserve the crumbling stone foundations.

Equally important to Savin is reconnecting descendants of the original farmers. The website, which was launched in 2009 and lists dozens of last names from the original congregation, has already helped bring together several people from across the country who didn't realize they were related.

Tempting as it sounds, there are no plans to rebuild the synagogue. Eventually, Savin wants to neaten up the site and possibly turn it into a little state park with posters or an audio tour explaining its history.

But for now, she said, she'd be happy if people just stopped throwing trash nearby.

"Sometimes it takes the next generation to see something like this as a valuable resource and a part of their legacy," she said. "We really would like the ensuing generations to know this great story."