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150
YEARS OF MERIDEN
RIDEN
1506
-
1956
NIAI
Gc 974.602 M54me 1988924
M. L ..
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
yet 750
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01149 1302
Connection
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY YEARS OF MERIDEN
150 YEARS OF MERIDEN
PUBLISHED IN CONNECTION WITH THE OBSERVANCE OF THE CITY'S SESQUICENTENNIAL JUNE 17-23, 1956
MERIDEN, CONNECTICUT: 1956
COPYRIGHT 1956 BY THE CITY OF MERIDEN, CONNECTICUT, U.S.A. COMPOSED AND PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Table of Contents
Foreword vii
Bibliography
ix
Song of Meriden
xi
Pictorial Sections:
Facing pages 52, 84, 116, 148, 180, 212, 234, 276
1. Colonization 1
2. Indians 6
3. First Meeting Houses 10
4. Place Names 18
5. Old Houses 21
6. Roads and Travel 30
1988924
7. Early Schools 38
8. Meriden in the Wars 43
9. Old Customs, Old Ways and Progress 50
10. Separation from Wallingford 58
11. Meriden Mines 64
12. Slavery 66
13. The Railroad, Past and Present 69
14. Industry of the 19th Century 81
15. The Civil War 93
16. City Government Before 1900
99
17. The Spanish War
108
18. Street Railways 111
19. Notes of a Spacious Era 113
20. The Century Turns 122
21. The Automobile Age 125
$9.50 goodspeed Feb 21-1978 PO 9001
127
22. Theaters, Past and Present
23. Sports Celebrities 134
24. World War I 138
25. World War I Memorial and Boulevard 143
26. The Depression 148
27. City Government in This Century 152
28. Local Industry Since 1900 168
29. World War II 183
30. The Korean War
193
31. Labor Unions 194 32. Public Utilities 196 201
33. Meriden Newspapers
34. Financial Institutions 207
35. Retail Business
218
36. Parks and Playgrounds
227
37. The Meriden Post Office 235
38. Public Institutions 238
39. Organizations
249
40. Meriden Churches 262
41. Meriden Schools; 1860-1956
273
42. Building Meriden 299
43. The Sesquicentennial 301
Index 302
Foreword
A CITY has many aspects, and these aspects change with advancing years.
But one aspect of Meriden is as immutable as the forces of nature which brought it into being: its location in the pleasant valley rimmed by the unique formations of up-ended stone which are its heritage from the glacial age. These hills, with their wooded slopes, are the blessing and inspiration of today's generation as they were to the first inhabitants who set their homes and houses of worship upon the high land in the eastern section to overlook a morass which they were still unfitted to conquer.
Eventually the swamp was covered and made firm. The city spread westward, wiping out all traces of the ancient wilderness. For more than half of the nineteenth century Meriden was a village, until, after 1867, it took shape as a municipality. By 1906 it had assumed much of the form we know today.
Meriden is fortunate in many respects, not the least of which is its ability to retain some of the village's advantages while growing to its present population of 48,000. One of these advantages is the closely knit community spirit which binds and has always bound it together. It is this spirit which earned for the city, during World War II, the national title, officially bestowed by the U. S. Government, of the "Ideal War Community." And it is this spirit which promises well for future achievements as we look now, with pride, at the best which has gone before.
The hundred years from 1806 to 1906, and the earlier era when Meriden was a part of Wallingford, have been recorded in previously published histories. But no book has been printed, until now, to cover the last 50 years. This volume, authorized by the General Committee for the Sesquicentennial, is the first effort to bring the story up to date. Its compilation and writing were entrusted to a committee of four, which has labored for months to sift past and present sources of information and produce a work as complete as possible within the limits of allotted space.
The committee owes much to previous historians, and to
vii
numerous individuals of the present who have helped it to gather material. Thankfully, it acknowledges the services rendered by the following:
Robert W. Seekamp, Russell H. White, Florence Minkwitz, F. Harold Grimes, Eleanor Dossin, Glover A. Snow, John F. Molloy, Barbara White, Cyrus Baird, Arthur Service, Arthur Barber, and members of the staffs of the Meriden Record and the Meriden Journal for assistance along the way. Technical advice on questions of publication and illustration was given by Spencer H. Miller of Miller-Johnson, Inc. and by Harold Hugo of the Meriden Gravure Company.
The Committee SANFORD H. WENDOVER BLANCHE HIXSON SMITH
ELMO A. DECHERD
CHARLES A. NEWTON
viii
Bibliography
A GAZETTEER OF CONNECTICUT AND RHODE ISLAND (1819)
Pease & Niles HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT - ITS PEOPLE AND INSTITUTIONS George L. Clark
FACTS ABOUT CONNECTICUT Conn. Chamber of Commerce
CONNECTICUT HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS John Warner Barber
STORY OF CONNECTICUT Charles W. Burpee HISTORY OF MERIDEN & WALLINGFORD C. H. S. Davis CENTURY OF MERIDEN Curtis - Gillespie GUIDE TO HISTORY & HISTORIC SITES OF CONN. Crofut
STORY OF CONNECTICUT Lewis Sprague Mills
THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND John Fiske
RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN (Faith) Frances Breckenridge
CENTURY OF SILVER Earl Chapin May
MERIDEN'S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION compiled by Atwater
HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF MERIDEN G. W. Perkins
HISTORY OF THE MERIDEN HISTORICAL SOCIETY compiled by C. Marvin Curtis
1893-4 PAPERS IN COLLECTION OF THE MERIDEN HISTORICAL SOCIETY CONNECTICUT PAST AND PRESENT Odell Shepard
HARTFORD COURANT, MAGAZINE SECTION JAN. 1956
RAILWAY AGE (Article by Glover A. Snow)
CHARTER AND BY-LAWS OF THE CITY OF MERIDEN, 1931 CODE OF THE CITY OF MERIDEN
MERIDEN MUNICIPAL REPORTS
MERIDEN CITY DIRECTORIES
RECORDS OF THE MERIDEN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
RECORDS OF THE MANUFACTURERS' ASSOCIATION NEWS FROM HOME
(Letter from Meriden U.S.O. to Meriden men and women in the service, copies from Nov. 1943 through Aug. 1955) RECORDS OF MERIDEN NATIONAL GUARD COMPANIES IN WORLD WAR I Arthur A. Service
ix
CITY RECORDS OF WORLD WAR II compiled by Ernest Kirkby RECORDS OF THE MERIDEN COMMUNITY FUND HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN COUNTY Rockney Records compiled by the late Frank E. Sands Special editions and the newspaper library of the Meriden Record and Meriden Journal
X
Song of Meriden
I
II
In the heart of old Connecticut A few miles from the sea, There stands our city, Meriden, Ideal Community; Thus honored as our country's choice To share the pride we feel, That in the whole United States Our city is ideal.
One hundred fifty years ago, A small town was begun; Surrounded by protective hills And smiled on by the sun. The early settlers planted deep Their roots within this earth; And now, in nineteen fifty-six, We celebrate its birth.
III
The busy hum of industry Is heard from day to day; Our silvercraft and sparkling jewels Are all on world display. Although we're modern, up-to-date, We are old-fashioned, too; We love our concerts in the park, Sweet summer's rendezvous.
IV
Our City Hall commands a hill In strong democracy, From where a glance may rest upon A mountain or a tree; The Christian Church and Synagogue Stand closely side by side, In friendly peace as God would wish All people to abide.
V To God we pray upon this day That faith in Him increase, To build for children after us An everlasting peace; That through all time we'll keep the name We are so prideful of, The Silver City of the world, The place of home and love.
- LYDIA B. ATKINSON
CHAPTER ONE
Colonization
ONE HUNDRED and fifty years ago Meriden attained its identity as a separate community. It was in 1806 that the General Assembly in Hartford granted a petition from the residents of the northern part of the town of Wallingford asking recognition as an incor- porated town on equal footing with its parent, Wallingford. The first town meeting of Meriden was held in June, 1806.
The history of Meriden, however, goes much further back. It must include not only the Wallingford background from which it stemmed. An understanding of the character of the people who founded Meriden depends upon knowing something of the causes of the migration which turned an erstwhile wilderness into cul- tivated farmlands. Meriden's history does not go back to the very beginnings of New England. Yet her character is shaped by the Puritan exodus from Europe as surely as is the charac- ter of Massachusetts where the colonists first took root.
Those first settlers in Massachusetts were rugged individualists. Mayflower passengers were followed by a continuing flow of immigration caused by religious strife in England. In 1630 a thousand Puritan men found their way across the Atlantic with John Winthrop at their head, and the Massachusetts settlements were firmly established. These men were less in search of political liberty than of freedom to live by the Bible as they interpreted it. The Bible was to them a code of law. Anyone who would not accept their interpretation had no place in their community.
Soon the seeds of discontent were sown. Massachusetts was fertile ground for them. A provision of the colonial government ordained that none but church members should vote or hold office. Dissenters began to speak out against this narrowed assump- tion of power. Not all the clergy approved of so much temporal power in the hands of churchmen. One of the most eloquent dissenters was Thomas Hooker, a pastor in New Town, now Cambridge. He said that "in matters which concern the com- mon good, the general council, chosen by all, to transact busi- nesses which concern all, I conceive most suitable to rule and
1
COLONIZATION
most safe for relief of the whole." This was in answer to Win- throp who had said: "The best part is always the least, and of the best part the wiser part is always the lesser."
As the historian John Fiske writes, "It is interesting to meet, on the very threshold of American history, with such a lucid statement of the strongly contrasted views which a hundred and fifty years later were to be represented on a national scale by Hamilton and Jefferson." It was Thomas Hooker who led a hundred or more of his parishioners in 1636 to make a settlement in the Connecticut valley, and to bring with them what we now call the "Jeffersonian philosophy" of democratic government.
Thomas Hooker's followers made the Hartford settlement and the separate existence of Connecticut began. The Hooker philos- ophy was contained in his powerful sermon at the opening of the General Court in 1638 when he said "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people."
In the spring of that same year, 1638, New Haven was founded under the leadership of another pastor, John Davenport. He had been "converted" by Hooker and others when, back in England, he had tried to dissuade them from their plan to emigrate to the New World. Accordingly he recruited a group of merchants from Yorkshire, Kent, and Hertfordshire to come with him. Their arrival in Boston coincided with some of the bitterest dis- putes between the tolerant and the intolerant. Davenport found Boston uncomfortable. His flock wanted a good harbor and a site with a commercial future. They also wanted a place where they could match their civil management to their own particu- lar interpretation of Scriptural guidance.
Davenport and his followers heard about a place called Quinni- piack on Long Island Sound. Men who had been on a campaign against the Pequot Indians reported in glowing terms on the possibility of this location. So the Davenport party began their project which rapidly grew to spill over eventually into Wallingford and what is now Meriden. Also fresh arrivals from England settled Guilford, and a New Haven overflow settled Milford. When Stamford was added in 1640 the four towns united in a republic of New Haven similar to the confederation of towns around Hartford that constituted Connecticut.
There the similarity ended. Connecticut followed Hooker's ideas that the choice of public officials "belongs to the people
2
COLONIZATION
by God's own allowance." In New Haven "pillars of the church" governed and were judge-and-jury all in one. The New Haven colony was less democratic than Massachusetts from which Hookerites had fled. The first settlers of New Haven were the wealthiest of any that came to any part of early New England. They built large and handsome houses similar to the ones they were accustomed to in England. Theophilus Eaton's house on Elm street, New Haven, had 19 fireplaces. John Davenport's just across the street had 13. One of the most interesting rooms in the Davenport house was the "study." Mr. Davenport spent so much time with his books that the Indians dubbed him "So Big Study Man."
New Haven and Hartford had been settled for 35 years before the settlement of Wallingford was undertaken. It was a formid- able project at best. Unfriendly Indians were dangerous. Those who professed friendship were viewed with a wary eye. Wolves ran rampant and were a constant menace to man and beast. But men who had come to this New World to make new lives for themselves, had to have lands to cultivate, space to expand. Con- sequently a committee from New Haven granted lands held by New Haven for the new settlement of Wallingford upon the solemn promise of the planters to live the same sort of godly community life as the parent New Haven community did.
Wallingford grew. Farmers moved out in a northerly direction. The north part of the town, though owned by Wallingford, was not a part of Wallingford, writes Dr. C. H. S. Davis in his history of Wallingford and Meriden. With transportation difficult and little more than pathways for roads, farmers in the northern area found it an increasing annoyance to attend church meetings in Wallingford proper. The trip was particularly arduous in winter. Probably as early as December, 1724, these Meriden farmers held their own church services in homes. Some say there were meetings in the Daniel Hall homestead prior to the building of a meeting house.
During this same period Hartford was spilling southward in its parallel growth, not only to Wethersfield but to Berlin and on beyond. Thus did the Thomas Hooker influence from the north meet that of John Davenport from the south right here in Meriden. The melding here of the two communities is par- ticularly evident in what happened to the Gilbert - later called
3
COLONIZATION
Belcher - farm in the northern part of Meriden.
The name of Meriden begins to figure in documents of Con- necticut's history as early as August 28, 1661, when Jonathan Gilbert was granted by the Connecticut Colony "a farm to ye number of three hundred acres of upland and fifty acres of meadow." When he took possession of the property, Mr. Gilbert called it Meriden, although the spelling appears variously in doc- uments as "Meridon," "Merrideen" or "Merridan."
Mr. Gilbert who was a man of considerable means and wide interests did not occupy his farm personally. It was first lived on by Edward Higbee as tenant, and later in 1686 was pur- chased by Gilbert's son-in-law, Andrew Belcher. The name Belcher has clung to the area down to present days. By purchase and grant Mr. Belcher added to his holdings until the property extended to the top of Mt. Lamentation.
In 1664 Edward Higbee rose in the world from his position as Mr. Gilbert's tenant to become a landholder in his own right. The land between the Gilbert property and Pilgrims' Harbour was deeded to him by a Hartford Indian. Records show that all the property north of Harbour Brook had been bought pre- viously by New Haven in about 1638 from Montowese. The land being more accessible to Hartford than to the New Haven Colony, and the original right of the Indian to sell being ques- tioned, positive ownership remained in doubt until Gilbert and later Higbee established their grants by occupation.
The land reaching to the edge of the "Meriden Farm" had been deeded to Wallingford in 1683 by John Talcott who had purchased it from Adam Puit, who in turn claimed title through an Indian deed. When the area now known as Meriden had its petition granted to be a parish of that name as a part of its parent Wallingford, the chance for further controversy about title to the lands was officially ended.
In years that followed attempts were made, successfully blocked by Wallingford where there was no desire to lose such a fast growing community, to separate the two parishes. While the struggle continued the part called Meriden lost to Berlin some parts of the original farm which gave the name to the community. The part of the original farm which extends from Corrigan's Corner to the southern part of Cat Hole Mountain went by petition to Berlin in 1798, and in 1803 another strip about a half
4
COLONIZATION
mile wide was added to Berlin in the same way.
Although Meriden lost some of the "Hookerites" in this fashion, there was left enough overlapping into the New Haven Colony influence to change the character of the community. It might be said Meriden was a melting pot into which converged fragments from those original migrations of organic commu- nities to the north and to the south.
In The Beginnings of New England, John Fiske says that in these movements, not of individuals, but of whole communities, "united in allegiance to a church and a pastor, and fervid with the instinct of self-government, we seem to see Greek History renewed but with centuries of added political training." He writes that the government of the United States is in lineal de- scent more nearly related to that of Connecticut than to any of the other thirteen colonies. Connecticut's strength lay in the fact that it was a federation of independent towns with the individual communities retaining all the attributes of sovereignty not ex- pressly granted to the General Court of the colony.
In 1643 New Haven Colony joined with Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut to form the United Colonies of New England. Soon after this Roger Ludlow was requested by the Connecticut General Court "to take some paynes in drawing forth a body of Lawes for the governing of this Comon welth." His code of laws was adopted four years later. A quite different code was put forth by the Colony of New Haven. These are the two documents so often referred to as the "Blue Laws," both containing precepts popularly supposed to be stiff-necked.
Connecticut Colony's John Winthrop was a man of great tact. Somehow he persuaded Charles II to sign in 1662 the Charter of Connecticut which gave that colony a freedom from the mother country enjoyed by no other British colony. It was possession of this Charter which persuaded New Haven Colony, albeit unwillingly, to unite eventually with Connecticut Colony.
So it is that Meriden, sitting in the middle between the two sections, occupied by people stemming from both, is marked by a fusion of the spirit of both. Meriden's character always con- tained considerable respect for the aristocratic and theocratic features of the original new Haven Colony, but was from the first permeated with fervent devotion to democratic principles char- acteristic of the founders of Connecticut Colony.
5
CHAPTER TWO
Indians
IN NO PART of New England were the Indians so numerous as in Connecticut, says Dr. Davis in his history of Meriden and Wallingford. Deforest as an expert on Connecticut Indians esti- mated the number at from six to seven thousand. Other sources push the number considerably higher. (The quantity of fish, fowl, and game afforded by Connecticut made the area attrac- tive to the Indians.) At any rate when John Davenport and his followers arrived in New Haven they found red men in pos- session.
The Mattabesitt tribe lived in and around the present site of Middletown, - "river Indians," they lived near the waterway but roamed for great distances. At the time of the settlement of New Haven, Sowheag was the great sachem of the Mattabesitt tribe ruling from a fort on high ground near the narrows of the Connecticut River, his power extending over what are now Meriden and Wallingford. It was this sachem who sold the land to Davenport and his company.
To Sowheag, to the Quinnipiacs, and other Indians with any claim to the area taken over including East, North, and New Haven, Woodbridge, Orange, Branford, Cheshire, and Hamden in addition to Meriden and Wallingford, the well-to-do mer- chants from London via Boston paid in goods. Odell Shepard lists the payment to the Quinnipiacs at twenty-four coats, twelve hatchets, twelve hoes, two dozen knives, twelve spoons, twelve pewter porringers, and four cases of French knives and "sizers."
The deed for the transaction with the Mattabesitts deals with the sachem's son Mantowese, whose mother seems to have been the actual lineal inheritor of the land transferred. To Mantowese Davenport, Theophilus Eaton, et al., paid eleven coats made of trucking cloth, one coat for himself of English cloth, made after the English manner, and one reserve piece of land for planting what his small band of followers might need. It all seemed very friendly with a mutual agreement to make reparation for any
6
INDIANS
damages incurred by either side - by the Indians' dogs on the white man's cows or by the white man's hogs on the Indian corn.
Indians in this part of Connecticut actually welcomed the arrival of the English among them. They hoped to obtain assist- ance from the new settlers in defense against depredations of Pequots and Mohawks. Both of these tribes were constantly on the warpath and demanding tribute from weaker, less warlike peoples like the Mattabesitts.
Meriden was never used as a permanent camping ground by any tribe, but it was the happy hunting ground of both the Quinnipiacs and Mattabesitts, says Robert W. Seekamp, past pres- ident of the Archaelogical Society of Connecticut and a Meriden resident. Mr. Seekamp has made an exhaustive study of Indian lore and Indian relics. We are indebted to him for the following information.
The Quinnipiacs numbered some 400 when the Davenport party purchased the New Haven area. For centuries they had lived at the East Haven site on New Haven harbor during the rigors of cold winters. Milder temperatures along the Sound and access to salt water game and shellfish attracted them to make their permanent home on the coast. During milder and warm weather they journeyed up the Quinnipiac river, making tem- porary campsites near spring holes or where game was most plentiful.
The trails followed by those Indians are today the highways we use. The road from Red Bridge to Cheshire was an Indian trail, as is also Capitol Avenue from West Main through the pass to Kensington, West Main to Milldale, East Main to the reservoir, and Preston Avenue from Baldwin to Westfield Road.
Temporary campsites have left their marks in the presence of a profusion of old weathered clam and oyster shells, flint and quartz chips and Indian artifacts. Such reminders of the Indian past have been found on the old Raven farm at Meriden airport, around the spring on Meeting House Hill, in the vicinity of Red Bridge and up on Allen Hill, in the hummocks north of Peat Works Pond, at the base of Mt. Lamentation near the Houston property, Spruce Glen, and down on the lower reaches of South Broad street.
The historian John Fiske says there can be little doubt that the material comfort of the Indians was for a time considerably im-
7
INDIANS
proved by their dealings with white men. Their want of fore- sight and thrift left them to face an annual struggle against famine during the harshness of winter. When the settlers came the In- dians had a good market for the skin of every fur-covered animal they could catch. If trade didn't provide them with all they needed, they could count on the white man's charity.
Not only do Connecticut records show that every bit of land was obtained by honest purchase from the Indians, save for territory conquered in the Pequot war, but the general laws prove there was every intent to treat the Indians justly. No mat- ter how good the white man's intentions, his way of life, his very aspirations that had brought him to the New World, made him interfere with the ways of the Indian. Even the friendly Indians of this section of Connecticut where Meriden is located, Indians who remained allies of the English first in the Pequot war and later in King Philip's War, found themselves pushed out in the march of progress.
After all it is hard to tell today how much the Indians actually understood what it meant to "sell" their property. They had known no such thing as private ownership of land as the white settlers understood it. They lived a tribal life. Their land be- longed to the tribe for the use of everyone. They shared hunt- ing and fishing rights on certain "preserves" with other tribes. Their idea of the "sale" of land on which Meriden now stands might very well have been that it was just a general invitation to white men to share the tribal privilege in return for which the white man would share his arts of defense against enemy tribes. We cannot be too smug about the purchase by which was acquired our Meriden heritage at the expense of the gradual eclipse of the red men who once hunted and fished the land and waters.
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