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Centennial THE MIDDLESEX MUTUAL ASSURANCE COMPANY
1836 - 1936
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Centennial, 1836-1936.
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries
http://www.archive.org/details/centennial18361900midd
Centennial
N. E. DAVIS, PRESIDENT MIDDLESEX MUTUAL ASSURANCE COMPANY
Centennial 1836-1936
A brief account of the more significant events in the history of the County of Middlesex and of the growth of the Middlesex Mutual Assurance Company
MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT 1936
Copyright 1936 by THE MIDDLESEX MUTUAL ASSURANCE COMPANY MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT
Designed & Printed at the Sign of the Stone Book by THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD COMPANY Hartford, Connecticut
+
Foreword
T HE MIDDLESEX MUTUAL ASSURANCE COM- PANY was founded in Middletown in 1836 and for one hundred years has served faithfully and well, in its own sphere, its home, its county and state. It is fair to say that it has not been without honor among those who know its history. Small in its begin- nings, for a full century it grew in ever increasing use- fulness and strength.
Now, upon entering on its second hundred years of life, old Middlesex, but ever young, wishes to express appreciation for the wise devotion of those who guided it so well in the past, gratitude to its patrons and agents who aid it in the present, and faith in the future.
It was thought not unfitting to have this expression take the form of an historical sketch of the region where the Company was born one hundred years ago,
and where we trust it will remain and flourish in the years that are to come. This sketch shows the Colonial background of Middletown up to the time the Com- pany was founded, and since that time is a concurrent history of the town and the Company until after the Civil War. The more recent history, being fresh in the minds of most of us, is largely omitted. This story is a simple one of constancy to the primal thought of mutual security and service, conceived by Middletown merchants a hundred years ago and carried on stead- fastly by their successors.
It is our hope that the "Centennial" will prove of interest to many who know and love the home region of the Company here in the very heart of Connecticut, the sweet county of Middlesex.
Middletown, June 2, 1936.
N. E. DAVIS, President.
1
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE Before the Curtain Rises PAGE I
CHAPTER Two Protecting Capital PAGE 26
CHAPTER THREE The Railroad and Civil War Period PAGE 38
CHAPTER FOUR At the Helm and in the Field PAGE 56
List of Illustrations
facing page
N. E. DAVIS, PRESIDENT MIDDLESEX MUTUAL
ASSURANCE COMPANY frontispiece
MIDDLETOWN'S MAIN STREET 4
THE SIXTH POLICY WAS ON THE HOME OF JOHN L. SMITH 6
1836, POLICY No. 6-1936, POLICY No. 234,719. HOUSE ON LEFT 8
LOOKING UP MAIN STREET IN THE 60's
12
CIVIL WAR DAYS 16
THIS MURAL ON THE WALLS OF THE COMPANY SHOWS MIDDLETOWN OLD AND NEW 20
LOOKING DOWN MAIN STREET IN THE 80'S
28
JOHN L. SMITH 32
THE COMPANY'S FIRST HOME, THE JEWELRY STORE OF JOHN L. SMITH 34
OUR SECOND HOME WAS IN THE BASEMENT OF THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH 36
THE MIDDLESEX MUTUAL BUILDING, OUR THIRD HOME
40
D. W. CAMP, S. BABCOCK AND D. W. CHASE IN THE 80'S
44
THE HOME OF GOVERNOR O. VINCENT COFFIN, PRESIDENT OF THE COMPANY 1884-1917 48
THE ANCIENT PUMPER NOW ON THE GALLERY OF THE MIDDLESEX MUTUAL
58
THE PRESENT HOME OF THE MIDDLESEX MUTUAL ASSURANCE COMPANY-BUILT 1928 60
1
Centennial
Centennial
Chapter One Before the Curtain rises
I HE WORLD STILL TURNS TO CLASSIC GREECE for leadership in art, drama and philosophy. Stu- dents of the law and military tactics even yet learn lessons from ancient Rome. Those who hold democracy dear look to old England's constitutional development up to the early 17th century, and from that time on find democracy's finest fruition in the Eng- lish colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut. We are
.[ I ].
not here concerned with "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" but rather to sketch the background for the political advance in democracy which paradoxically reached its peak in our own Con- necticut River Valley.
Although our Anglo-Saxon forbears were familiar with representative government over a thousand years ago under King Alfred, when "esteemed men" were chosen as representatives to the County Court, it is quite generally conceded that the extension of the prin- ciples of free representative government over most of this continent is due to the early English settlers in America. Dissatisfied with their lot under the English crown and the lordly Bishops, the Puritans migrated, for the most part, in church congregations led by their pastors to New England where they hoped to set up church and state on a pattern of their own. But dif- ferences of opinion soon arose. Shortly after the first few groups had "set up housekeeping" in the new land, conflicts of opinion began to arise chiefly on questions of organization and government rather than doctrine. In fact the first step in founding a church in Massachu- setts was accompanied by a bitter dispute, which resulted in a forced "return voyage" to England by a number of the malcontents. The Puritans, however, brought with them, in addition to their different notions of law and government, their English custom of handling local affairs in primary assembly, a primitive type of the later New England town meeting. Desiring to build a commonwealth on the pattern of that of the children of Israel under the Judges, the autocratic magistrates of Eastern Massachusetts restricted the privileges of voting and holding public office to those whom they
.[ 2 ].
considered sanctified-members of the Congregational churches qualified to take part in the common service.
Because of the high-handed rule of the early leaders in Boston and Dorchester, the dissatisfied grew in num- bers and divided into groups of a kind. Then these groups set off through the wilderness to found each their own little commonwealth. Thus New Hampshire came to be settled by Puritan refugees under the lead- ership of John Wheelwright; the Providence planta- tion by Roger Williams and his followers and Rhode Island by the banished Anne Hutchinson and her friends.
Reverend Thomas Hooker, often called "the father of American Democracy," graduate of Em- manuel College, Cambridge, England, came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633, where many fol- lowers and friends had preceded him the year before. As pastor at the New Towne, now Cambridge, he soon made his influence felt and very shortly joined with Reverend Samuel Stone in opposition to the policy of the rulers of the Colony. Three years after his arrival the three congregations of Dorchester, Cam- bridge and Watertown migrated in a body to the western bank of the Connecticut River, or "long tidal stream," as it was called in the language of the Algon- quin Indian. Here the new Dorchester became Wind- sor ; the new Cambridge fell heir to the name Hartford after the Reverend Samuel Stone's English birthplace (spelled with an e but pronounced the same way) and Watertown took on the name of Wethersfield after the birthplace of one of its principal leaders, John Talcott. Along with this general exodus of dissenters there went another group from Roxbury, led by Wil-
.[ 3].
liam Pynchon, who settled on the eastern bank of the Connecticut to found Springfield, Massachusetts.
These group migrations from the home colonies to the uncharted wilderness had very real influence on the entire course of American history; for, if the expan- sion of New England had been gradual like that of Virginia or Pennsylvania, the frontiers would have crept slowly back from the shores of Massachusetts Bay, opposing with a solid front the savage perils of the wilderness, and the outcome would have been one large state with its seat of government at Boston.
The desire for freedom, however, which burned so furiously in the breasts of the members of each con- gregation, led them to risk their lives for their political ideals and individual opinions rather than submit to the arbitrary authority of the "Brethren" (early Massachusetts leaders of the Puritans). The exodus to the Connecticut Valley was the first thrust for freedom, to be followed for over two hundred years by other adventurous and independent groups until there were no more wests to conquer and over three million square miles of territory had been settled.
For two years after the migration to the Connecti- cut Valley, although unquestionably beyond the juris- diction of Massachusetts insofar as grants from the crown were concerned, supervision was still exercised over the three new settlements by persons claiming a commission from Boston. Then in February 1639 the men of the three river towns started the long list of "firsts" for which Connecticut has since become known, by drawing up a written constitution and thereby creat- ing the state of Connecticut-the first instance known to history in which a commonwealth was thus created.
.[ 4 ].
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HAYES & ROBERTS. 173 MEAT MARKET. 175
MIDDLETOWN'S MAIN STREET
Unlike the Magna Charta, or medieval town char- ters in England, or the early colonial charters, which were always in form a grant of privileges from an overlord to a vassal, the eleven articles in the "Funda- mental Orders of Connecticut" made no mention of the British sovereign or of any other overlords. This constitution was purely a contract drawn by and for men of the three river towns-Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford-under which all agreed to conduct their public affairs. Unlike the subsequent Declaration of Independence, it contained no high sounding phrases about liberty and equality ; it took them for granted and proceeded at once to the business of defining duties and limitations of state and local government. Thus Ameri- can Democracy was born in the Connecticut valley eleven years before the flood tide of emigration from England and from New England overflowed onto the fertile banks of the Connecticut north of the rift in the Chatham hills, first known as the "Mattabessett" (in the Algonquin tongue meaning "end of the carry- ing place" for canoes) now called Middletown.
Just as the first surge of migration into Connecticut at Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield moved far afield from Boston and broke off all allegiance, so did subsequent settlements of independent Puritan spirits from these towns seize the more tillable and defensible open space in Central and Southern Connecticut. Indi- vidualists in each new Puritan settlement, seeking a still greater freedom moved on to new territory which they could control. But this individualistic tendency of the Puritans served posterity well by speeding the
.[ 5].
colonization process and spreading the tenets of local self-government, still believed by many as necessary to a strong national union of states.
The western movement into Connecticut brought contact with the resident Indians. Interests of settlers and natives clashed and war resulted. So relentless were these wars against the red men that the fiercest tribe and ringleader-the Pequots-were almost anni- hilated, before the white settlers had peaceful oppor- tunity to colonize, during the next four decades, the coast from Point Judith to the East River.
The Puritan founders of New Haven, Milford, Branford, Guilford and Stamford, whose ideas were just as autocratic as those of Winthrop and Cotton, first established little, self-governing republics each independent of the others. Soon, however, they formed a federation, the New Haven colony, after the example of the three river towns which created the colony of Connecticut. Despite the desire of each new little com- munity to maintain its own individual entity, the neces- sity for prompt and concerted protection against the Dutch, the French and the Indians made some form of consolidation necessary. Thus came into being, in 1643, the New England Confederation, which included the four colonies of Connecticut, New Haven, Massa- chusetts and Plymouth. The New England Confedera- tion was of inestimable value as a field of study of the workings of democracy by those who a century later sought to form a national federation.
The Colony of Connecticut quickly reached out to lay claim to several desirable locations on Long Island Sound. Roger Ludlow, of Windsor, led the first group of settlers west along the Sound to found Fairfield,
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(No.
THIS POLICY WITNESSETH,
That Thereas,
of thedela. .... in the County of Hitetlen. and State of Connecticut, be duc become member + of the MIDDLESEX MUTUAL ASSURANONI OOMFA and bound and obliged Showerfeed baire, overstore and adminintention to cav ell sunt i'my de needed by the different, pursuant to the Act incorporating said Company bereueto unaesed, and also secured to said Company the sum of , Faire ly
dollars, being the amount of the premium for insuring the sum of Fifteen Headrest dollare uato the said
heira, executors, administratore and assigas, upon the following described buildings, viz .-
Elle Wood Swelling House , her Stevens hish, is treated on the " Forth delle of Front shin", in the City of Middletown.
reference being had to the application of the said he di Jeran No. 6 oc file in the office of said Company, for e moro particular description, and as forating a part of this policy, during the term of FIVE TEARS, commencing at noon, on the Lucky de mit day of june eighteen hundred and thirty six and ending at room on the freely fremuth day of flores eighteen hundred and forty one
NOW, Be it known, That We, the members of said Company, for and in consideration of the pro. mines, do hereby certify that he said to have & muth & turan touch. ba 2-€ become, and hy these presenta fre insured in and by said Company, open the building aforesaid aod u above specified, in the sum of Freffeene Hundred dollars. And wa do hereby promise, according to the provisions of said act, to pay uoto the said insured three executors, ad. ministratore or amigos all eucb losses or damage, not exceeding in the wholo the sum insured as above specifi. ed as aball bappen by, or by means of fire to said building during the time this policy abail remain in forca. The said losses or damage to be estimated according to the true and actual value of said building at the time tha samo obali bappen, and to be paid within three months after notice aball be given by the insured, according to the provisions of said ect. Provided, that if this policy abell be assigned, or any other insurance upon any of all the above named buildinga chall exist, during the continance of this policy, without the consent of this Com. peny under the band of the Secretary, io aither ense, this policy sbail bo void and of no effect ; and providod aloo, that if such other insurance shall exist with consent of this Company an aforesaid, and a loss sball happen ; this Company shall be boldoo to pay only its just proportion of sueb loss, according to the wbolo amount insured on such building or buildinge.
IX QUIENESS WHEREOS, the President of said Company has signed this Policy, and the Secretary thereof bas countersigned the same, et Middletown, this ite caly serenkday of same one thousand eight hundred and Thesty done
8um insured $ 1510 at per cool.
Premium Note $
63 per cent. paid io cash, $ (c
President.
Policy,
Secretary.
THE SIXTH POLICY WAS ON THE HOME OF JOHN L. SMITH
while another group settled at Stratford, at the mouth of the Housatonic river, thus separating Stamford from its sister towns in New Haven colony. To strengthen still further its outlets to the sea, Connecticut colony bought Saybrook in 1644, from Lord Saye and his friends. A colony was planted at the mouth of the Pequot river (later changed to Thames) by John Winthrop, Jr., the name of the settlement being changed to New London. Connecticut colony had now seized the mouths of three great rivers, and by its conquest of the Pequots, laid claim to all lands from which that domineering tribe had exacted tribute.
With the "keys to empire" in her hands, Connecti- cut Colony now began looking to her internal develop- ment, starting with the founding of Farmington in 1645. Then in 1646, the General Court took notice of the fertile cleared space just north of the Wodunk, or great bend in the Connecticut river, at the narrow cut in the Chatham hills, but colonization at Mattabessett (Mid- dletown) did not begin until about 1650, although a few years prior a Wethersfield committee, headed by one Phelps, had arranged to plant a colony there. The committee reported sufficient land on both sides of the river to support fifteen families, where now there are over 5,000 families.
To the white man's credit, land upon which the first settlement was made, in 1650, on both sides of the Little river, north of the present city of Middletown, was bought from Sowheag, the great Sachem or ruler of the Sequins. This and other land purchases from the Indians were not quite the mockeries they have been pictured by some historians and which they may now seem to us; they were bona fide sales usually recorded
.[ 7 ].
by a deed upon which the Indians affixed their signa- tures, and for which they received what they greatly desired-glass beads and rum, steel hatchets and grind- stones and occasionally muskets and ammunition. By the order of the General Court, in 1651, Mattabessett became a town and selected a constable. In 1652, the town was represented in the General Court, and in the following year its name was changed to Middletown, according to its location about midway on the river between the upper towns and Saybrook Fort. It was one of the earliest instances in America where a new and descriptive name was used instead of one taken either from a beloved spot in the mother country or from the Bible.
Middletown is fairly surrounded by running waters -streams that flow swiftly brimming over their banks in the spring and after heavy summer rains but which become tiny rivulets in prolonged spells of drought. Coming out of the hills from the northwest and south- west these streams gradually expand as one after another unite before flowing through the lower south- west and northwest sections of the present city to join the Connecticut. To the Indians these spring-fed brooks meant valuable fishing grounds, many of which they reserved when selling lands to the early settlers. Then, moisture, landlocked by the heavy vegetation, fed the brooks more evenly than today's cleared acres parched by wind and sun. To the early Connecticut settlers even many small streams provided power to turn water wheels, and create a power to run their woolen and grist mills and other primitive machinery.
When the first peaked hats of the Puritans approached the mouth of the Sebethe river, Sowheag
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1836, POLICY No. 6-1936 POLICY NO. 234,719. HOUSE ON LEFT
and his warriors had their headquarters atop of Indian Hill (still retains name) where signal fires could call aid from nearby red neighbors, living near the "Great River," as the Connecticut was then called. Although the original extent of the territory purchased from Sowheag cannot be definitely stated, ten years after the original settlement it stretched about five miles southward from the Sebethe river, northward as far as Rocky Hill, westward from the Connecticut river nearly ten miles and eastward more than six miles, the latter expanse including the present areas of Portland and Chatham.
The center of the original settlement was between Spring Street and the old graveyard where, in 1652, was built the first meeting house, a crude wooden structure 20 feet square and only 10 feet high. There, until 1680, the rock-ribbed Puritans came on Sunday through snow, rain, mud or biting sub-zero weather to listen to the minister reach a climax some time during the second hour. There they also conducted, during the week, their more important town meetings. Outgrowing the first, a second meeting house was erected on the east side of Main Street opposite Liberty Street. Around this was congregated the majority of the so- called Lower Houses. Above the Sebethe river for about two miles toward Hartford, and separated from the lower settlement by marsh meadow, was the village, originally known as the Upper Houses (now Crom- well). By 1703 the population of the Upper Houses was sufficient to become a separate parish and to have its own meeting house. This was the beginning of a separation, which nearly 150 years later, in 1851, resulted in the incorporation of Cromwell.
.[9].
The migration to Middletown was slow for many years, as in 1654 there were only 30 families and 52 by 1670. During this early period what is now macadam- ized road near the river was a forest, notched here and there by a staked plantation in a clearing where smoke issued from a log cabin. Plantations were staked only after due deliberation. For instance, at a town meeting held on March 15, 1652, William Cornwell was given land "to equal William Markham's division of meadow or other swamp ground lying on the east side of Pacoset Creek right against John Martin's meadow, to go between the hillside and the creek to the 'Bog Meadow'." At a meeting held April 11, 1653 the town granted lands "to William & Nathaniel Harris -the upland against the upper end of the long meadow fence to William Harris' meadow-to be equally divided between them, and to have it in lieu of plain land on the west side of the great river, until others were suited for quantity and quality equal to their upland and meadow and swampland being the higher or rolling surface; meadow, the lower or level tracts, subjected at times to being overflowed; and the swamp, the lowest, at all times marshy."
In 1654 the meeting records mention the building of a highway, and of reimbursing Nathaniel Bawn "through whose lands the highway is wanted, shall be given new lands elsewhere owned by the town." Two years later mention is first made of a committee to measure (survey), bound and locate each man's third division, the third division being the first bounded. Previous to this meeting and appointment of a measur- ing committee the land boundaries rested mainly in the honor and integrity of the occupant. In 1657 it
.[ 10 ].
was agreed at a meeting of townsmen that Thomas, the Indian, was to be permitted to be an inhabitant among them if they could agree on terms.
And so on are spread the quaint styled records of hundreds of the carly civic meetings in Middletown, then struggling to expand against great odds. Formality was a total stranger then. Meetings were called in a neighborly house to house manner. Sometimes they were held under the friendly shade of a large oak or elm tree, but were more often, as time went on, in the meet- ing houses. No words were wasted in the minutes; "At a town meeting held , voted tells the story of accomplishment.
Land on the east side of the town was divided into long and short lots, the long ones being narrow extend- ing from the river front three miles back, while the short ones ran from the first highway, laid out in 1656, on the east side of the river about opposite the present city. Contrary to present practice, the highways were then bounded rather than being the boundaries them- selves. In referring to them the custom was to say that a certain road "runs from Mr. Jones' land through Mr. Clark's and Mr. Brown's ending at Mr. Burr's". Money and adjustment of valuation of one man's land with another is never mentioned in the early record concerning exchanges of land. What little money came into the community was truly as much of an emigrant from Mother England as was the settler himself.
.[ II ].
[II]
L IFE MOVED SLOWLY on these virgin acres, with little to break the monotony of dawn to dusk labors in the fields and at the spinning wheel, except for Sun- day and town meetings, occasional Indian attacks and hunting and fishing trips. By 1673 the first list was made, showing each man's estate in acres, roods and rods, varying from twenty-five to two hundred without mention of any other estimate except land. First mention of the large quarries on the east side of the river was made in 1715 when a committee was appointed to take care of the town quarry, making certain that the stone was not moved out to an amount which would bring injury to the town. In the same year the first mill-a grist mill- was erected on land laid out by a committee on the west side of the West river, and granted to John Bacon by the town.
The townsmen were apparently quite content to handle the writing duties of a town clerk until 171I when Joseph Rockwell's name is mentioned as town clerk. Four years later Samuel Warner was elected surveyor, but upon refusing to work for less than five shillings per day, another election was held making James Wetmore surveyor at four shillings per day-a sapling shadow of today's long and bitter struggles over hours and wages. Some folks might call that "chiseling" on the part of the town fathers. Other town officers were also named in the early 1700's. By 1764 civic records had become more inclusive, and instead of men- tioning the bare facts, they began to set forth many in-
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