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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02851 0011
Gc 974.602 C168ca
Gc 974.602 C168ca Canton sesquicentennial, 1806-1956
CAN
ON
C
0 6
1956
PRIDE IN THE PAST
FAITH IN THE FUTURE
CANTON SESQUI- CENTENNIAL 1806-1956
BLISHED BY THE CANTON SESQUI-CENTENNIAL COMMITTEE, INC.
CANTON SESQUICENTENNIAL 1806-1956 A SHORT ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF CANTON
Edited and Published by CANTON SESQUICENTENNIAL COMMITTEE in conjunction with PHOEBE HUMPHREY CHAPTER DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
PRINTED BY PLAINVILLE PRINTING COMPANY
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
CONTENTS
Section l
Page
Origin of the Name Canton 5
It Never Has Been Easy to Get Rich in Canton 6
Industrial Briefs 11
Changes in Town Government 14
Canton Churches 16
Fifty Years of Progress and Expansion in Education 22
Canton Public Library 30
The Flood of 1955. 32
Section II
Alphabetical Index of House Occupants. 46
Part I
Old Houses - East Hill, Canton and Albany Turnpike. 50
Part II
Old Houses - Canton Center, North Canton and Breezy Hill 87
Part III
Old Houses - Collinsville 119
Part IV
Early Schoolhouses 140
Part V
Churches 144
SECTION I
₲
R
A
N
B
Y
Y
D
1
E
RIDGE | RID
RD
T
T
....
$
1
DYER
Z
M
SYMONDS
· AVENUE
A
U
O
H
C
5
K
R
B
A
1
ALLEN
THAYER AVE
North Canton
RD
WEST
Collinsville
SIMSBURY
I ROAD
BRANCH
RIVER
ST
ROAD
ROAD
ROAD
2
0
1
0
1
1
ROAD
EAY
R
SM.
7
5
BREEZY HILL V
179
0
N MOIN
F
RATLUM MOUNTAIN
Brook
BAR80'
MEADOW
DRIVE
PROAD
1
-
1
1
ONION MOUNTAIN
PUDDLETOWN ROAD
Canton Center
HILL
Via
R
EAST MILL.
EAST
1
I
C
Bahre Corner
V
179
BAHRE
Brook
I
-
0
-
Cherry Broo
Y
DYER
CEMETERY
MOUNT HORR
ROAD
CIRCLE-'
NILL "'IROAD
BIRCH
GREEN
1
1
YER
DOWD AVENUE
44
4
3
A TORRINGTON
N. M
1
1
177
2
ENLARGEMENT UPPER LEFT
TO HARTFORD
Collinsville
- HUCKLEBERRY
HILL
N
O
V
J
A
-
BURLINGTON
-
HALLO
(Cherry)
ROAD
ROAD
BarbOM
BUNKER
WEST
root"
ROAD
NORTH
MOUNTAIN
B
PINE
ROAD
TO WINSTED
4.
C
u
HUMPHREY
EAST
ROAD
1 NVWIVON
GRACEY
CORNER ROAD
POWDER
ovoi
BUSHY
. Y.
1
how
1
3
NE PAug Auy
RIVER
ROAD
RIVER
OLET CANTINA
OLD US 44#1 BRASS LANTERN
CANTON
SPRING RD
AROAD
ROA
BOND
OLD US 44#2
---
FOREST LA
ELIZABETH
COLINSST
DUANE ALS
Nepang
-- Resevoir
SEE
TOWN OF CANTON CONNECTICUT
1
MTN
WEST
che
MOUNTAIN
ROAD
SEXTONS HOLLON
1
ROAD
בשושאפוב P
WEST MOUNTAIN
ROAD
HICH
ROAD
WRIGHT
BROOK
N. BRANCH -
NEW HTFP
FARMINGTON
RIVER
AVENUE 0 231.
MAYE
STREET
PLACE
LAVE
ROAD
MAPLE AVE
RATLUM MOUNTAIN
HANSEN
BURLINGTON
WapNo
ROND
W
BREEZY
ROAD
RY BROOK ROAD
ROAD
INDIAN
FARMINGTON
ROZ
MORGAN
ROAD
ARY BRIDGE
WASHBURN. ...
LAWTON
--
CASE
I RIVER RD
--
NY NH & N AR
WOODCHUCK HILL
The Origin of the Choice of Canton as a Name for Our Town
The following words are quoted from the historical address given by William Edgar Simonds at the town's celebration of the nation's centennial in 1876.
"The Ecclesiastical Society of West Simsbury, containing about thirteen hundred inhabitants, was incorporated as the town of Canton, by an act of the General Assembly in 1806. The name Canton, suggested by the late Ephraim Mills, is derived from a supposed likeness to a Swiss canton, the meaning of the word being to divide or set off, and the partition from Simsbury made the name appropriate."
(Ephraim Mills was Mr. Simond's wife's great grandfather)
The second reference to the naming of Canton is taken from Sylvester Barbour's Reminiscences.
"Mr. Ephraim Mills, who was born in 1782 and died in 1863, was of an age to assist in the organization of the town, in 1806, and did materially assist. In connection with the Canton centen- nial celebration, a query arose in my mind how it happened that the town came to have its beautiful name. I had never heard, and, so far as it has come to my knowledge, there has been noth- ing said about it in connection with the celebration. I began an investigation and was informed by Mr. Mills' estimable daugh- ter, Mrs. R. O. Humphrey, whose memory goes back into the forties, that she had often heard her father say that he suggested the name. But, why Canton ? It came from Mr. Mills' interest in the Swiss people and their ardent patriotism, and was suggested to his mind by their territorial divisions into cantons. The name appealed to him, partly because of its pleasant sound, and its being so easy to speak and write."
5
IT NEVER HAS BEEN EASY TO GET RICH IN CANTON
BY L. K. PORRITT
It never has been easy to get rich in Canton. If you were not afraid of hard work, if you were willing and able to turn your hands to a num- ber of different things, you could manage to make a living. But, always it has been necessary to do business on Canton's terms - not your own.
Before the first European settlers arrived, a score or so of Indians managed to keep alive in the region that now is Canton.
As a matter of fact, from an Indian's standpoint, this region had quite a lot to offer. There were deer, bear and rabbits in the woods. There were beaver, otter, mink, muskrat and other fur-bearing animals along the streams. But, most important, the falls at what is now Collins- ville offered the last good fishing place on the Farmington River.
Three hundred years ago, the Farmington River teemed with fish. Big fish, some of them. Salmon that weighed as much as forty pounds. Shad. They weren't as big as the sal- mon but there were lots of them. Then there were millions of alewives. These could be eaten fresh or they could be smoked and dried. Also they made good fertilizer for the corn.
Shad, salmon and alewives. But these were not the only fish that surged up from the sea by the millions each spring to spawn in the upper reaches of the Farmington. Also, there were lamprey eels that the Indians considered a delicacy. Just why, I never quite understand. I would prefer fried inner tube. There were sea trout. Give a brook trout the chance to go to sea and he will take it eagerly and grow two or three times as big as his landlocked brothers. I have caught sea trout that would go ten pounds in the salmon rivers of Newfoundland. I've seen them as big as twelve or fifteen pounds. Big schools of big sea trout used to come up the river each spring.
There were plenty of fish in the Farmington River as far up as Collinsville, and the falls at Collinsville offered an easy place for the Indians to spear them. Above Collinsville, the Farmington broke up into its three main branches: the Nepash, the East Branch and the West Branch. From an Indian's standpoint there was a lot to recom- mend the Canton region as a place to make a living.
But, when the first English settlers came into the region, about two hundred and twenty years ago, it was not as easy for them as it had been for the Indians.
6
For one thing, they wanted a lot more out of life than just a little corn, a few fish and some skins to drape around them to protect them against the ravages of the weather. And then the shad and the salmon began to dis- appear. The white man did not seem to know that these fish spawned up on the gravelly reaches of the smaller streams and that, if they put dams across these streams to power their gristmills and their sawmills, the sal- mon could not reach their spawning beds and would soon die out.
It soon became apparent to the first English settlers of this region that they had to be much more than farmers if they were to live and prosper on these rocky hillsides. For one thing, most of the farms did not have enough arable land to support a family by farming alone. Also, they needed implements, tools, clothes and furniture. Things that could not be grown but must be made. And, in those days, they had to be made at home because there were no factories, no mail order houses and money was very, very scarce.
So, for the first fifty or eighty years in the history of Canton - until after the close of the Revolution - the people of Canton lived on a sub- sistence basis. They raised their wheat, barley and corn. They grew flax and had flocks of sheep. They put up little shops along the mountain streams and hitched up crude lathes and saws to their homemade water wheels. Nearly everything they needed was raised, made or processed in and around their homes. Clothes from the wool of their sheep and the flax of their fields. Shoes were made in their homes, usually by the travelling shoemaker, from the hides of their horses and cattle. When they travelled, they went either on foot or on horseback for their roads were too rocky and rough for wagons or carts. Their heavy hauling they did by sleigh in the winter time when the snow ironed out some of the rough spots on the roads.
It was not until the mid-eighteen twenties that things began to change in Canton. Then a number of new influences began to be felt.
The Albany Turnpike was one of them.
Starting in the late seventeen nineties, a number of corporations were organized to build a stagecoach road between Hartford and Albany. By 1820, it had built up a large volume of traffic. Daily stagecoaches ran from Hartford to Albany. Others went from New Hartford and Winsted north into Massachusetts.
Taverr food Lodging
These stagecoaches used a lot of horses, and those horses ate a lot of hay. Soon Canton farmers were offered a cash market for their surplus hay and a little money began to circulate in the region.
7
Then someone invented the breast water wheel and made it possible to harness large rivers such as the Farmington. Samuel Collins bought up the old gristmill that stood at the falls at Collinsville and started his axe factory.
The axe factory offered full time jobs at steady wages. Company houses were built around the axe factory and were occupied by people who had no time to farm, make their own clothes, hunt or trap. These people began to buy the things they needed, paying for them out of their wages. They bought salt pork, vegetables and milk from the neighboring farmers - and a little more money began to percolate into the region.
When the Farmington Canal opened down to New Haven, it stimu- lated traffic on the Albany Turnpike. Lime from Canaan, lumber from Barkhampsted, iron from Cold Spring was hauled down the Turnpike to Avon, where it was loaded into barges and taken down to New Haven. Enterprising New Haven merchants were trading horses, shingles, corn meal and other country products in the West Indies for rum, sugar and molasses. Now that the Canal offered easy transporta- tion, they bought some of these products in the Farmington Valley region. This put a little more cash into circulation.
The axe business grew and flourished and other factories sprang up in Canton. For many years there was a busy powder works on the Nepash River, just before it joined the Farmington. It blew up once or twice, killing a lot of people, but there always seemed to be plenty of others ready to take their places.
Like the Collins axe factory, the powder mill and the other shops put some money into circulation in the form of wages. Also, the Collins Company used a lot of charcoal in its steel tempering operations and kept scores of charcoal burners busy in the hills.
Incidentally, one of the unusual things about the Farmington River region is that most of the trees were cut off for charcoal, rather than for lumber. As far as I have been able to learn, only one log drive ever came down the Farmington. Lambert Hitchcock, when he had his furni- ture factory in Unionville, bought up a lot of standing timber in Bark- hamsted and delivered it to the mill by way of the river. Big log drives were common on many of the other tributaries of the Connecticut, some of them coming down as far as Chicopee as late as 1910.
As an example of how hard people worked in Canton to make a liv- ing a century or more ago, take Zenas Dyer, great grandfather of our genial electrical contractor, Thomas C. Dyer.
Zenas Dyer was one of the biggest landowners in this region. He had seven or eight hundred acres. In addition to farming the less rocky stretches of his domain, Zenas ran a busy and popular hostelry, the Dyer Tavern. In addition to this, he distilled his own apple brandy,
8
butchered his own meat. Also, for many years, he held the road mainte- nance contract for the Talcott Mountain Turnpike - the stretch be- tween the top of Talcott Mountain and New Hartford - and spent much of his summers working on the road.
In his spare time he hauled coal from Woodford's dock in Avon, on the Farmington Canal, to the Collins Company at the rate of seventy- five cents a ton. I figured that it would take him an average of about two days to haul a ton, so his wages at this work averaged about thirty- eight cents a day, making no allowance for the feeding and upkeep of his yoke of oxen.
When the Canal road first pushed up into this region in 1850, and the Connecticut Western followed in 1871, the first effects of the rail- road seemed adverse rather than helpful to the people of the Canton region.
For one thing, it knocked out the Turnpike and killed the market for horses and hay. Also, Col. Hazard did not like to have the railroad trains running so close to his powder works, so he pulled up stakes and moved his powder mills to Hazardville, where they continued to blow up from time to time, until the invention of dynamite and smokeless powder put them out of business.
However, the railroad made it possible to ship farm products to distant city markets. In those days, Hartford, for example, was only a small city and was able to draw its milk supply from the farms that surrounded it. These farmers, however, could not fill Hartford's needs for butter and cheese as well as milk, so soon creameries were estab- lished in towns such as Canton, Simsbury and Farmington, where local milk was converted into cheese and butter and these products shipped by train to Hartford, Boston and New York.
The development of the creameries was very important to the back country farmers. For the first time in their lives, many of them began to receive a regular cash income. Also, the creameries would take all the milk they could produce, which gave them an incentive to expand their operations.
New England soil had been cropped for decades without any effort being made to put back some of the fertility that had been mined out of it. As a consequence, some of the fields were so adapted that they could raise little more than devil's paint brush or wild carrots. When the farmers stepped up their herds of cattle to meet the demands of the creameries, they also increased their supply of animal manure. Soon the fields began to benefit from this and the yield per acre of corn or potatoes began to climb.
Another valuable by-product of the creameries was occasioned by the fact that cream needed refrigeration to keep it fresh. The old spring or the well was no longer sufficient. Farmers began to harvest ice to
9
keep their cream fresh, and they soon learned that it could add to their comfort and convenience in many other ways.
When the mills sprang up at Collinsville, Unionville, Tariffville and other places along the river, the offer of steady work which they held out drew people away from the hill towns. No longer were there enough people left in some of these localities to keep up the church or support the village store. As a consequence, bitter feelings often developed be- tween the hill towns and the mill towns.
When the railroad came through, however, a new industry developed in many of these hill towns - keeping summer boarders. This helped to put a little more money into circulation in regions where money had been mighty scarce.
Another new industry that was created by the railroad, and which lasted until the supply of raw material ran out, was trapping passenger pigeons.
In the eighteen seventies and early eighteen eighties, great clouds of these birds would descend into the woods of Canton each spring and nest here all summer. Lucian Case and John Case were two farmers in the East Hill section of Canton who made a large part of their living by trapping these birds and shipping them into Hartford, where they sold for five or ten cents apiece.
According to Amiel Bahre, who well re- members the passenger pigeons, the last wild pigeons he saw in this region were in the year 1887 - the year before the great blizzard. No one has reported seeing a passenger pigeon for more than fifty years. What happened to them is a great mystery. It is possible that they were wiped out by some disease.
During the past twenty-five years, a revolutionary change has taken place in the way of life around Canton. No longer is the tinkle of the cow bell heard on our hills. The bulldozers of the real estate devel- opers rather than the plowshares of our farmers are now tearing up our fields.
Now a great tide of motor vehicles ebbs out of Canton each morning headed toward Hartford, New Britain and other industrial centers, and floods back into our hills and valleys each evening.
We hope that old industries will continue to flourish and new enter- prises and occupations will spring up within the boundaries of Canton for we love our town the way it has been. We like to hear our own shop whistles blow each morning and evening. We want as many of our people as possible to work here as well as to live here for in these mod- ern days your job is your treasure. Where it is, there will your heart be also.
10
The Railroad Reached Collinsville in 1850
INDUSTRIAL BRIEFS
BY PORTER DOWNEY
Almost without exception, up to the turn of the century and well beyond, the Collins Company was the only Canton industry serving other than nearby markets. Products from the saw mills, grist mills and creameries of the 1800's rarely left Connecticut.
L
Exceptions include Major Joseph Daily & Sons of Canton who made carriages for the Southern market before the Civil War; Titus and Calvin Case, whose wood-turning mill in Canton Center produced dur- ing the same period such varied products as tool handles, coffins, beds, picture frames, barrels and, many years later, a fine-cut tobacco marketed as "Dew Drop." The powder mills, of course, served a wide market but ceased operation after their Civil War bonanza.
None of these industries, however, had as great an impact on the Town of Canton as the Collins Company. The early history and growth of this concern is well documented, and 100 years ago the factory was making and exporting over 150 different patterns of machetes and axes, in addition to supplying axes and other farm tools to the domestic market. With the Collins Company enploying over 600 persons, it was inevitable that the village of Collinsville became the population center of Canton. Perhaps just as inevitably, the company became the town's biggest landowner, biggest taxpayer and biggest landlord. More signifi- cantly, on the company's business fortunes depended to a large extent the economic welfare of the entire town - not only the factory's own wage earners, but also local merchants, craftsmen and farmers. This situation continued, if in gradually decreasing degrees, right up to World War II and still persists today despite the westward movement of Hartford suburbia into Canton.
With the Collins Company exerting such a powerful influence as employer and landlord, it was natural that the town's population tended to remain static. Sons followed fathers into the factory much as farms
11
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3 1833 02851 0011
of the northern sections of the town remained in the same families over the generations. Nestled geographically between the industrial centers of Hartford, New Britain, Bristol, Torrington and Winsted, the town was not dominated by the influence of any one of them until after World War II.
With such an influence, however, the Collins Company inherited a responsibility that went even beyond the normal pattern of industrial paternalism. This responsibility in turn played an important role in shaping the company's postwar plans.
When stepped-up competition dictated major relocation of manu- facturing sites, the company took steps to protect the local work force against drastic displacement. In 1949 it purchased the Warren Axe & Tool Co. of Warren, Pa., and moved the axe-making operation to Collinsville. In 1953, it bought the Henry Cheney Hammer Co. of Little Falls, N. Y., and full hammer production is now carried out in Collins- ville. The company had not had an easy readjustment in the years immediately following the wartime boom but these acquisitions pro- vided a cushion against serious economic displacement in Collinsville when the company built two foreign plants - in Mexico City and in Sao Paulo, Brazil - in order to serve overseas markets more com- petitively.
But the Collins Company has by no means been the only industry in the Town of Canton, although admittedly the largest. There were others, several with roots extending well back into the last century.
The record of the Canton creameries indicates clearly the influence of population growth on Canton's dairy industry. Canton creamery was founded by a group of farmers headed by Gaylord Barber in 1878. It was a flourishing business and by 1900 was turning out up to 800 pounds of butter a day.
In 1886 dissatisfaction with pricing arrangements had led one group of farmers to separate from Canton Creamery and set up their own creamery to act as suppliers. This rival creamery, located on Ned's Brook, operated successfully until 1920, when it became more profitable for farmers to sell their milk to large Hartford dairy firms. Four years later, Ned's Brook Creamery was discontinued.
The same price problem confronted the Canton Creamery, which by this time had added a prosperous feed, grain and farm implement business to its operations. By 1918, when the business was incorporated as a farmers' cooperative, its dairy function was primarily as a depot for local farmers to leave their milk for the large city dairies to collect. Even this was discontinued in 1947, but the feed and grain business continues on a reduced scale.
In 1922 Dr. Ralph B. Cox started Cox Shops, a woodworking firm located in the old Canoe Club building near the junction of Rattlesnake Brook and the Farmington River. This firm supplied toys and such
12
items as door stops to Hartford and New York markets, and, later, axe and hatchet handles for the Collins Company. It was this function that led to its moving into the old Collins Company box shop building. It also made pump handles for Bridgeport Brass Corp., but despite its diverse products, Cox Shops like so many other small industries fell victim to the crash of 1929. Sold to Carson Bros., the firm was moved to Pine Meadow, where it held out until 1934.
Between 1916 and 1924, up to 25 persons, mostly women, were employed at the firm of Traut & Hine on Collins Road, making buckles for the Federal government. Although this business gradually dwin- dled away, in 1925 Harold Eaton occupied the old buckle works to make reproductions of Colonial hardware.
The Collins Road building burned in 1931, and Mr. Eaton moved his operation to a building on North Street between River and Center Streets in Collinsville. Mr. Eaton was reputed as one of the finest crafts- men in his line, and he served a mail order market, mostly antique deal- ers, in all sections of the country. He weathered the depression, finally selling his business in 1939.
Following World War II, the old Eaton building was purchased by Raymond Hurley of Winsted. In 1946 the operation was moved to Collinsville and Hurley Manufacturing Co. soon took its place as Canton's second most important employer. The firm greatly expanded the old building and now employs 50 persons making coil and flat springs for manufacturers all over the country, including International Business Machines and General Motors.
The old Eaton building was the site of several other small indus- tries. Edward Eustace, who once worked for Harold Eaton making hardware, now operates a small spun metals business in Canton Center. The building was once a livery stable, a garage, and a bottling works. The bottling works moved to River Road, but fell victim to the wartime sugar shortage of the early 1940's.
Another, larger, bottling works, the Canton Springs Ginger Ale Company, never recovered from the sugar shortage either. This firm was started in 1900 as Gray Rock Beverages, later sold to O'Keefe's Beverages, Ltd., of Toronto, and finally taken over by John Delaney of Canton. Before World War II the business flourished and supplied a wide market with soft drinks of all kinds. It employed up to 35 persons at its most active period, but failed in its struggle to recover markets lost during the war. It finally succumbed in 1954. The property has been purchased and improved by Swift Industries, Inc., Hartford goldbeat- ing firm, but no definite plans have yet been announced.
Several other industries appeared - and disappeared - in the decade following World War II.
Sweet Machine Co., a screw machine firm, operated from 1946-1949 on Old Canton Road near Route 44. It employed 12 women at one time,
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