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The HISTORY OF HAMDEN CONNECTICUT 1786-1936 RACHEL M. HARTLEY
M. L.
Gc 974.602 H175h 1127836
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
The Sleeping Giant
C
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00075 1203
4,50
.
.
Courtesy of A. J. Tefft
The History of
Hamden, Connecticut
The HISTORY OF HAMDEN . CONNECTICUT 1786-1936 Sponsored by the Town
RACHEL M. HARTLEY
Hamden, Connecticut
1943
Copyright, 1943 by RACHEL M. HARTLEY
Printed in the United States of America by QUINNIPIACK PRESS, INC. New Haven, Conn.
1127836
PREFACE
T HIS book is the outgrowth of the town's celebration of its sesquicentennial in 1936. First Selectman F. Raymond Rochford, as he set up the program for the colorful com- memorative exercises, became increasingly enthusiastic about the progress and accomplishment achieved in Hamden's one hundred and fifty years of existence. He was dismayed to discover the great dearth of accur- ate comprehensive historical records, and he was con- vinced that the history of the town should be brought up to date.
An examination of The History of Hamden, which was published in 1888, revealed the fact that it had been "prepared and published by authority of the town, under the editorial supervision of William P. Blake, chairman of the centennial executive committee."
Mr. Blake, the noted geologist, had compiled a book which included 48 pages of "an account of the centennial celebration, June 15th, 1886," and chapters on mining, forest trees, and agriculture written by John H. Dick- erman; military matters by William F. Smith; "The poor of the town" by Charles P. Augur; and "Taxation and records" by Ellsworth B. Cooper; as well as such historical material as he could find about churches, schools, manufacturing, public works and family his- tories.
The town records showed that at the time of the cen- tennial the town appropriated $1,000 for the cost of
Preface
printing the book. Such a plan seemed suitable to use again, and in 1938 the first appropriation for the pres- ent volume was set aside.
Grateful acknowledgment is here made for the in- valuable help received from those who recounted old- time happenings or loaned important family papers, and it is hoped that all who find their contributions within these pages will take pleasure in knowing that they had a part in telling the story of their town.
Arnold G. Dana gave many of the old pictures as well as details concerning the Sleeping Giant Park. Charles Rufus Harte gave generously of his time and criticism in regard to the story of the Canal. Lauretta Plumley, who wrote the Hamden sesquicentennial pa- geant, contributed material about the Indians from her expert knowledge of them. William G. Benson gave geological facts. The vast and complicated story of the school system, school laws, and early Hamden School Board action-aside from the actual records-was sup- plied by my father, Charles F. Clarke, from his memo- ries of seventeen years' service on the School Board. The manuscript was criticized for its historical accuracy and construction by Professor Frank Monaghan of Yale University. The cover, type, and general arrangement of the book was designed by First Selectman Rochford.
An earnest effort has been made in this history to show not only the necessary dates and facts, but anec- dotes and human interest stories that portray Hamden's character and personality and how she came to be that way. So much of what was important to remember had, over a period of many years, crystallized in the minds of very old residents: the real value of some of the sim- ple, unspectacular things; the basic standards of beha- vior that were repeated so often as to become marked as
Preface
our personality. Through their eyes as much as through the story told by the records, Hamden emerged as a corporate personality.
One may observe currently that townspeople are prone to say, "I wonder if the town will let us do thus and so," or, "Our town has a definite policy in regard to such matters."
Following along with the thought of Hamden as a person, we must consider her ancestry: her parent, the theocracy of New Haven Colony, with its established Congregational Church so long in practical control of the governmental powers, and to whose church services our first settlers, who were almost exclusively farmers, traveled so far, until at last they founded the town of Hamden so that they might set up their own more con- venient parishes.
Hamden's grandparent was the state of Connecticut, "the land of steady habits" where people pay as they go, and whose natures have become as flinty as the uncount- able rocks and stones that they have been forced to move in clearing and farming their land.
Even our gravestones show what were our beliefs and attitudes, our changing thoughts, and the epitaphs were significant of their times.
It would be a mistake to believe that all color and romance have always been somewhere else, for they are here in abundance, only that sometimes perhaps they were too close to us to be seen.
We are one of the largest towns in New Haven County, comprising 32 square miles (or 21,054 acres), and our mid-history shows that we branched out from our agricultural pursuits to become Yankee gadget- makers in company with other similar Connecticut towns.
Preface
Once more, in the martial cycle, we are at war, a cir- cumstance that has shaken us out of old habits, customs, and complacencies, and which may appreciably change us still more before it is over. Our returning soldiers (and please God there will be many of them) will share, if not indeed lead, our post-war plans and our peace- time policies. Their broadened aims and younger dreams may very radically change our municipal pat- tern. May we of the older generation be tolerant of good new ideas, and believe that they on their part will retain all that is of lasting value in what we and our civic antecedents have done, to make a continuing his- torical record that succeeding generations may view with pride.
R. M. H.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART
I -THE COLONIAL PERIOD
I
PART II - NEW ROOTS IN OLD SOIL .
95
PART III - WHEELS BEGIN TO TURN .
231
PART IV - ONLY THE GIANT SLEEPS
35I
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND APPENDIX
455
INDEX
473
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Sleeping Giant Front Endpaper
Indian Corn Grinding Stone, Dunbar Hill Road
Facing page
I2
Christopher Todd House, 1665, South of the Mill Dam
13
The Cut in the Mount Carmel Steps 48
Joel Munson's Mill Flume 49
Amos Bradley House, 1766, North of the Mountain
56
Hamden's First Schoolhouse, 1770, in Its Second Position "On the Brow of the Hill"
57
The Jonathan Dickerman "Old Red
House"
184
Whitney Armory and Covered Bridge in 1825
1.85
Canal and Railroad Near Brooksvale
208
Upper Axle Works
209
Hamden's Oldest Gravestone, 1751
224
April 31 Gravestone in West Woods
225
Peter Nielsen's Whitneyville Blacksmith Shop
240
West Woods One-Room School .
241
The Rectory School, Centerville
252
The Mount Carmel Young Ladies' Fe- male Seminary . . 253 . "The Transfiguration" Painted by Ban- cel La Farge 278
I36
Tollgate House on the Cheshire Turnpike Eli Whitney
I37
Illustrations
Ithiel Town's Covered Bridge at Davis Street
Facing page 279
Ives and Grannis Letterhead .
292
The Mount Carmel Post Office, Ivesville, James Ives' Store on Opposite Corner 66 66 293
The Centerville Web Shop, Where Good- year Shoes Were First Made
304
Kimberly Store and Lower Axle Works
305
Old State Street School
66
316
Sackett Hotel (The "New" Centerville
66 317
Elam Dickerman's Depot Store .
329
Bolt Company Employees
336
Whitneyville Post Office, on Whitney Av- enue at Augur Street . 66
337
Showing Day's Store and Boathouse, and the Old Icehouses
66 360
St. John the Baptist's First Meetinghouse . The Old Hamden Plains Methodist Church
66
361
Centerville Crossroads in 1836
66
408
The Door Tree, in Sleeping Giant Park . Mount Carmel Churchgoers in Costume on Sesquicentennial Sunday .
66
66
409
66
66
440
Sesquecentennial Group at Town Hall .
441
Part of Sesquicentennial Parade, showing Selectmen's Carriage
441
The Old Town Hall .
Back Endpaper
66
328
House), Northeast Centerville Corner Whitney Avenue, 1847-1880, Showing Railroad Tracks in the Road
66
66
408
Part I The Colonial Period
PART I THE COLONIAL PERIOD
THE WILDERNESS BEGINS TO FLOWER
I N the shadow of the same Sleeping Giant which overlooks our closely built houses, busy streets, and factories of Hamden today, were once only the forests and streams that the Indians knew. Throughout all the many changes of modes and of men which have passed in review since then before him, the old Giant-lying here through incalculable years- has inspired all those who have seen him. The Indians who loved him, the sturdy New Haven pioneers as they edged out into the wilderness, and we ourselves have looked upon him as a majestic landmark and a symbol of latent strength.
Who among all those early people could have fore- seen that Eli Whitney's experiment which shaped the industrial world of today would have its origin in this place? that canal boats-both clumsy freighters and dainty packets- would at one time be the major form of transportation through the whole length of the town? that casks for West India rum, axles for peddlers' wagons that roamed the far south, and the first Good- year rubber shoes would be made here and sent out to distant corners of the earth?
Many notable men as well as important manufactures have gone out to far places from this small New Eng- land town-a town whose size and age are not the measure by which to gauge her greatness. Hamden has been slowly evolving a personality, made up of all the
4
The History of Hamden
countless happenings and doings of the past and of the moving present; she has characteristics and folklore; old houses antedating her incorporation as a town, that are still standing in simple and impressive dignity after nearly two hundred years; stories of the old-time trot- ting races in the heart of Centerville, where were also uniformed schoolboys drilling in a nationally famous military school; and public schoolteachers con- tent with a 75-cent weekly salary.
Even the Giant himself had a beginning; and while we know his charms and the beauties of other hills and valleys, fields and streams of our town as they are today, yet we also know that these contours were not always so, that they have evolved through countless years in a gradual progressive change that made a story-though told without words, still an eloquent one.
In dim past ages Connecticut was covered with lofty mountains which in the course of centuries were planed down by weather and running water, to their bare roots. Weaker bed rock wore down faster, but at last the whole area became a great, comparatively flat plain, broken here and there with large, slow-moving rivers. Streams from the uplands deposited a red sediment which when piled up on this low plain began to force the original land surface to subside.
Then a great break in the earth's crust appeared near Branford, and the land on the western side of the fault began to sink. At least three different times eruptions of a volcanic nature occurred, opening huge fractures deep enough to reach down to liquid rock, which sprang up and filled them to the top.
When the lava cooled in the fissures it formed what is called trap rock; and its ridges or trap dykes stand up as East and West Rocks, Pine and Mill Rocks, and
5
The Colonial Period
Mount Carmel. The eruptions caused a mixture of fire- made rock with the water-made sandstone. In time an almost uniform uplift of northern New England tilted the old plain gently toward the Atlantic. Then the streams flowed more swiftly, cutting deeper valleys, and again the weaker bed rock was more rapidly eroded than the harder, more resistant rocks, which became the hills.
In the Ice Age came the great glacier, so thick that it covered the highest points, moving slowly southward, carrying with it soil, stones, and blocks of bed rock which it dropped along the way. Whenever the ice loosened its grasp, it left behind high and broad plains, rich fertile lands, and clay beds which were later used for brick-making. The sandstone of the valleys was deeply excavated, but the hard trap rock, though some- what broken off, suffered little from the glacier's action and was left in prominent ridges.
By the time a more temperate climate had freed Connecticut of the glacier, most of the original covering had been carried away, but boulders and soil from Mas- sachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire were inher- ited in its place. Large boulders were carried from the north, traveling anywhere from fifteen to seventy-five miles with the glacier, to be dropped in the New Haven region. The great stones of the Judges' Cave on West Rock were among them, and if the cave was once a single rock it must have weighed a thousand tons. It is of a fine-grained stone quite different from the top of West Rock where it stands. There are many such boulders in the New Haven area, weighing over ten tons, which must have been carried by an agent much more powerful than running water.
On Shepard Avenue the group of large rocks called "The Brethren" is Hamden's outstanding example of
6
The History of Hamden
such boulders; they made the journey with the glacier from some place many miles north of here. Other traces of the glacier's progress are the small lakes and the "pot-holes," or "Giant's Kettles." There was once one of these at the roadside by the Lake Whitney dam; and one can now be seen close by Mather Street. The New Haven Palladium, October 24, 1881, told of the filling in of a huge kettle, or "punch bowl," two miles south of Centerville on the railroad, 150 feet in diam- eter and 100 feet deep; in the center was a huge chest- nut tree, its branches reaching the top of the hole, which was filled in around the tree.
The passing of the great glacier ten thousand years ago was a mere yesterday to geologists, who have familiar knowledge of the period when the Connecticut River was cutting the valley millions of years ago, and even before that, when the whole state was a great mo- notonous plain.
THE SLEEPING GIANT
Some geologists have maintained that the Connecticut River once flowed straight down the state to New Haven Harbor, but that its course was deflected in the Ice Age, swerving at Middletown to its present channel toward Saybrook. One writer said that New Haven evened up this loss by eventually taking Yale College from Saybrook. Although this belief is no longer held, a similar explanation was made by the Indians of this region, who told a colorful tale of the "Long River" being taken from their valley and moved to the east- ward, and of how the Sleeping Giant came to be here. The story was that the Indians were very proud of their river, jealously guarding and cherishing its use, never
7
The Colonial Period
forgetting to give thanks to their special gods for the blessings bestowed upon them, and particularly for those gained from their possession of the beautiful river. But alas! they failed to do honor to Hobbamock, the spirit of evil, who in his anger at their neglect, and because of their devotion to the god of water, deter- mined to wreak vengeance upon them. Wrathfully he stamped down his foot in the center of the river bed, making the Long River waters roll to the eastward.
But all was not lost. Kiehtan, the Indians' good spirit, saw what had happened, and, although powerless to undo the great harm, was yet able to moderate the blow which had fallen upon his faithful believers, for he cast a spell of endless sleep upon Hobbamock. He then hid treasures in the pockets of the sleeper, saying as he did so that some day these would be sought and the children of the valley would be repaid for the loss of their beloved river. It was long after the Indians were gone that the Giant's pockets were examined and found to contain copper, silver, gold, iron, quartz, and lead-in small quantities to be sure-still, treasures of a sort they were.
The Sleeping Giant, first known and loved by the Indians, had a part in many of their legends. They explained the presence of the large boulders on the East Haven hills by saying that the Giant, in his dying agonies, flung them there after wresting them from the soil of Cheshire.
It was said that the Indians from the north used to make regular trips to the seashore for fish. They were extremely fond of oysters, and a chief once so over- indulged in the favorite delicacy that drowsiness over- came him and he lay down to rest awhile. A wicked spirit who found him outstretched in heavy slumber
8
The History of Hamden
amused himself by casting upon the recumbent chief a spell from which he never awakened. Indian mothers often warned their too-greedy children by gesturing toward the mountain and repeating the legend of the gluttonous chief doomed to eternal sleep.
Scientists have described the small crater on the fifth mountain as that of an extinct volcano. It is two hun- dred feet in diameter, and specimens of lava have been dug from its center. But the Indians said that the up- heaval was caused when the Giant once suffered a nightmare in which he moved a restless foot!
In early colonial days a hunter by the name of Samuel Payne made a long trip after game to the forests of the Giant. Upon his return home he told glowing tales of the marvelous view from the top of the hills, in which he saw a great long island stretching away over the sea for a tremendous distance. He said that while he was hunting he discovered a lake of surpassing beauty. The Indians whom he encountered told him of their venera- tion of the place as the abode of the spirits of their race. They believed that the good god Kiehtan dwelt in a frowning pinnacle of rock where, high above the valley, he held council with his followers when they came there to seek his guidance. The hunter stood one unforget- table evening just at nightfall, drinking in the wild beauty of the wilderness lake. The moonlight tipped the trees with light and glinted softly on the water. There was no sound, but as he watched, a birch-bark canoe glided from a cavern at the base of a cliff and across the surface of the lake.
After the red man's passing, this lake eventually became no more than a spring of clear mountain water, a present-day reminder of that early time when the Indians believed that a deity ruled over the place, giv-
9
The Colonial Period
ing forth oracles from this sheltered spot, hidden among the huge forest trees.
The mountain has been called by three distinct and appropriate names. The earliest one, "the Blue Hills," originated from the deep blue color which the whole range holds when viewed from a distance. Mount Car- mel, the name given to the ecclesiastical parish by the General Assembly of 1757, was also used to designate the mountain, which continued to be so called after the parish was absorbed into Hamden. No one knows who chose the title, but it was doubtless suggested by the Biblical allusion to Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, and seemed a fitting name for this place with its own beautiful majestic mountain.
The third name, "the Sleeping Giant," has been used more frequently as a title in recent times, although the singular likeness to a huge recumbent man has always been recognized.
The Giant's ample form is plainly visible from a great distance; it is two miles long-the height of his chin above sea level is 540 feet, and his 736-foot chest is the highest point of his figure. One can believe that the New Haven colonists saw him as one of their first landmarks, standing out in bold relief against the north- ern horizon. Theophilus Eaton may have been im- pressed with the Giant's grandeur and the desirability of making him a part of the Colony; and purchase of the land including the Giant was one of the earliest transactions between Eaton and Davenport and the Indians.
THE FIRST WHITE MEN
Dutch traders were the first white men to come to New Haven Harbor. In 1614 Adrian Block caught
IO
The History of Hamden
sight of the setting sun shining on the bright red face of East Rock, and was inspired thereby to name the place "Roodenbergh," or "Red Hills." In the years between 1614 and the coming of the English to New Haven in 1638, the Dutch traders did a profitable busi- ness with the Indians in animal pelts, chiefly beaver, from which fact the Beaver Ponds received their name. The trading company's records showed the receipt of 63,000 skins within a nine-year period.
The New Haven colonists were among those unhappy Puritans who came to New England to escape the tyran- nical rule of Charles I. During the years between 1620 and 1640, as many as 20,000 English people migrated to this region and established settlements from Boston to the Connecticut River, embracing large areas which they confidently expected to be occupied in time by a continual influx of their countrymen. But in 1640 the autocratic government of Charles was tottering. It was the beginning of the Cromwellian revolution, in which the Puritans were coming into power. Not only did emigration to New England cease, but many who had settled in the new country decided to return to Eng- land, where it was felt that a better government might be had without the hardships attendant upon building one across the seas.
The New Haven settlement, in common with the Connecticut River towns, set out to be a port of trade. Its leaders were men of wealth and education, who planned to continue a comfortable and profitable busi- ness life.
In the spring of 1638 Theophilus Eaton purchased from Momauguin, chief of the Quinnipiac Indians, the original tract on which the New Haven colonists set- tled. He paid for it with 12 coats of English trucking
II
The Colonial Period
cloth, 12 alchemy spoons, 12 hatchets, 12 hoes, 24 knives, and 12 porringers.
In November of the same year Eaton bought of Montowese, chief of Mattabeseck (Middletown), an additional piece of land, going 10 miles northward from the original purchase and extending for 8 miles east of the Quinnipiac and 5 miles to the west-altogether about 130 square miles, paying for it with II coats of trucking cloth and a fine coat for the chief. In this tract were what later became Hamden, North Ha- ven, East Haven, Woodbridge, Wallingford, Cheshire, Branford and North Branford, and portions of Orange and Meriden.
THE QUINNIPIACS
The peaceful Quinnipiac Indians were from the be- ginning friendly to the white man and quite willing to share with him the bountiful gifts of Nature which more than supplied their simple needs. They supposed that the white man would wish nothing more than a place to live, enough land to till for his own table, and free- dom of the woods and streams in which to hunt and fish. They little dreamed that his coming meant the vanishing of wild life-fish, animals, and birds-van- ishing forests, and at last, inexorably pressed back far- ther and farther from their beloved home, the vanishing of the Indians themselves.
The Indians used signs and symbols as much as spoken words. Often these symbols were ceremonious and impressive. The sale of land was consummated by the chief taking a clump of earth and sod and offering it to the purchaser as a symbol that all things growing within the soil of this property were hereby given to
I 2
The History of Hamden
him. One of his followers then took a twig from a pine tree and stuck it into the piece of turf as a symbol that all which lay beneath the branches of their forests was also given to the "white brother." In this poetic man- ner did the land pass from the native Indian to the white man.
Reverend Benjamin Trumbull of North Haven, writing in 1779, estimated that in 1633 there were as many as 20,000 Indians in Connecticut, but this figure has been vehemently disputed by other historians, who do agree, however, that there were many more in Con- necticut than elsewhere in New England. The fondness of the Indians for seafood was doubtless a prime reason for so many making their homes on the Sound and the banks of the rivers, as is evidenced by the old middens of clam and oyster shells which have been found along the shores. Probably they lived by the shore in the summer time and in the forests in the winter.
There was an Indian cave, or rock shelter, in Pine Rock in western Hamden, in which were found in 1910 stone implements, daggers, skinning knives, pottery, and the bones of deer, elk, bear, raccoon, fox, beaver, and blackfish, and heaps of clam and oyster shells. These articles were removed to the Peabody Museum of Yale University, where they were placed on exhibi- tion. The shelter was completely destroyed in 1912 by a heavy dynamite blast from the near-by quarry. On Dunbar Hill there is a large flat stone, hollowed out in the center, where an old squaw used to grind her corn.
It is impossible to say how many of the Quinnipiacs inhabited our own forests in more remote times. When the colonists came, they were situated in a village on the east side of New Haven Harbor in East Haven,
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