USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 21
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The coming, in recent years, of large numbers of people from Ireland, Italy, and other Catholic countries has led to the founding of important collegiate institutions, among which are Mount Saint Joseph's Seminary in West Hartford in 1874, by Bishop O'Reilly-a training school for young women; Saint Thomas' Seminary in Hartford in 1897, to edu- cate young men in the classics for the priesthood; Missionary College of La Salette, in Hartford in 1898; and Novitiate and Senior Scholasticate of Saint Mary, under the Fathers of the Holy Ghost, in Ferndale in 1906. There are also seventy-five parochial schools in the state with 31,877 pupils.
CHAPTER XVIII
DEVELOPMENT OF THE HIGHWAYS
THE development of a state is marked not only by its courts, industries, and schools, but also by its high- ways, since the road is a type of civilization, a duct of trade, a symbol of culture and progress. At the start, there were in the wilderness only Indian paths-"trodden-paths," they were called in the early court-records-narrow passages scarcely two feet wide, deepened by the Indian moccasins, the hobnailed shoes of the settlers, the tread of cattle, and the feet of horses, often with blazed trees as guide-posts,- later known as "bridle-paths." For many years there were few horses in New England, and those that were owned there were too valuable on the farms to be spared for travel- ing. When Bradstreet was sent to Dover as Royal Com- missioner, he walked both ways in the Indian path. Streams were crossed on fallen trees, or at fords. There is one record of Governor Winthrop carried "pick-a-back" by a sturdy Indian guide. The Indians showed the English the two turnpike trails from Connecticut to Boston.
The New Connecticut Path started from Cambridge, and ran through Waltham, Framingham, Dudley, and Woodstock, through the " Wabbaquasset Country." The most famous of all the trails was the Bay or Connecticut Path, through Framingham, Ashland, Hopkinton, Oxford, Charlton, and Brookfield (where turned off the Hadley Path), then south to Hartford. J. G. Holland wrote of these trails:
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No stream was bridged, no hill graded, no marsh drained. It was the channel through which laws were communicated, through which flowed news from distant friends, loving letters and mes- sages. That rough thread of soil was a trail that radiated at each terminus into a thousand fibres of love, and interest, and hope and memory. Every rod had been prayed over by friends on the journey and friends at home.
Gradually the paths widened into roads, though for years the phrase was "the path to New Haven," "the path to Agawam, "and the first reference to a road appears to be in 1638, when it was ordered that a road be made to Windsor, which is probably the oldest road in the state. There are records of appeals to the General Court for permission to lay out roads until all the towns were connected. In 1679, it was ordered that the roads from plantation to plantation be repaired, and that the inhabitants once a year should clear a roadway of a rod wide at least on "the country roads, or the king's highway." In 1684, the records say, "great neglect was fowned in mayntaining of the highways between towne and towne; the wayes being incumbered with dirty slowes, bushes, trees and stones." It was at that time that William and Mary granted the colonies the right to have a postal system, and the first regular mounted post from New York to Boston started January 1, 1684. The first post road between those two cities passed through Providence, Ston- ington, and New London, and extended two hundred and fifty miles, following closely the old Pequot Path as far as Providence. In 1698, travelers and postmen complained that they "met great difficultie" in journeying, especially through Stonington, which "difficultie arises from want of stated highways, or want of clearing and repairing, and erect- ing and maintaining sufficient bridges, and marks for direc- tion of travellers, " and it was ordered by the legislature that these defects should be remedied, under penalty of a fine of ten pounds. A road was laid out, by order of the General Assembly before 1700, between New London and Norwich,
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Development of the Highways .
passing through the Mohican fields, being surveyed by Joshua Raymond, who was paid with the gift of a fine farm upon the route.
In 1704, Madame Knight went from Boston to New York on horseback, and her experiences with bad roads, miserable taverns or huts, where she stopped for the night, give us a dis- mal picture of the rudeness of the times. On October 2, 1704, she wrote in her journal: "Began my journey from Boston to New Haven; being about two hundred mile." The food offered at the taverns was apt to be trying; in one place the "cabage was of so deep a purple," she thought it had been "boiled in the dye-kettle." She speaks of a "cannoo" so small and shallow that she kept her "eyes stedy, not daring so much as to lodg my tongue a hair's breadth more on one side of my mouth than tother, nor so much as think of Lott's wife, for a wry thought would have oversett our wherey." She wrote that after leaving New London,
Wee advanced on the town of Seabrook. The Rodes all along this way are very bad. Incumbered with Rocks and mountainos passages, which were very disagreeable to my tired carcass. In going over a Bridge, under which the River Run very swift, my hors stumbled, and very narrowly 'scaped falling over into the water; which extremely frightened me. But through God's goodness I met with no harm, and mounting agen, in about half a miles Rideing came to an ordinary, was well entertained by a woman of about seventy and advantage, but of as sound Intellec- tuals as one of seventeen.
After crossing Saybrook ferry, she stopped at an inn to bait, and to dine, but the broiled mutton was so highly flavored that the only dinner received was through the sense of smell. After leaving Killingworth, she was told to ride a mile or two, and turn down a lane on the right hand. Not finding the lane, she continues, "We met a young fellow, and ask't him how farr it was to the lane, which turned down to Guilford. He said we must ride a
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little further, and turn down by the corner of Uncle Sams Lott." She found the people possessed of as "large a por- tion of mother witt, and sometimes larger than those who have been brought up in Citties" but needing "benefitt both of education and conversation." Making shrewd comments she reached Rye, and stopped at a tavern where she ordered a fricassee, but could not eat it; she was then conducted to her bedroom, by way of a very narrow stairway. She says:
arriving at my apartment, a little Lento Chamber furnisht among other Rubbish with a high Bed and a Low one,-Little Miss went to scratch up my Kennell, which Russelled as if she'd been in the Barn among the Husks, and suppose such was the contents of the tickin-nevertheless being exceedingly weary, down I lay my poor Carkes, and found my covering as seanty as my Bed was hard. Annon I heard another Russelling noise in the Room- called to know the matter,-Little Miss said she was making a bed for the men; who, when they were in Bed, complained their leggs lay out by reason of its shortness. My poor bones com- plained bitterly, not being used to such Lodgings; and so did the man who was with us: and poor I made but one Grone, which was from the time I went to bed to the time I Riss, which was about three in the morning. Setting up by the Fire till Light.
Through mud, forests, and all sorts of difficulties she made her journey to New York and home again in Boston, and after an absence of five months, she broke out into the following verse:
Now I've returned to Sarah Knight's, Thro' many toils and many frights,
Over great rocks and many stones, God has presarv'd from fractured bones.
In 1711, the General Assembly of Rhode Island voted that "a highway be laid out from Providence through Warwick and West Greenwich to Plainfield," and the following year the legislature of Connecticut voted that the selectmen of
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Development of the Highways .
Plainfield lay out at once a road to make the connection eastward from the Quinnebaug River; a part of the distance the road was four rods wide, and elsewhere eight rods. Highways improved slowly: at the opening of the eighteenth century there was no good road through Thompson, except mean gangways to Boston and Hartford, crooked paths, winding among "rocks, mountains and miry swamps, " which had been trodden out by the people, and made barely pas- sable. It was in 1732, that the first was reported in that section, and soon after that, references are found to roads "to the meeting-house" from the houses of "a considerable num- ber of the nabors"; and some of those "nabors" were com- pelled to pull down twelve pairs of bars before they reached the village. The layout of the early roads depended largely on the location of the houses, and since it was customary to build on the hilltops, perhaps as greater security against the Indians, the roads were as hilly as possible. The roads were also poor even in Hartford, where wheels sunk to the hub in the native clay of Pearl Street after the nineteenth century was well advanced. About the middle of the eighteenth century some effort was made to improve Main Street, but little was done then or for fifty years afterwards except to fill the worst holes and quagmires with stones. Benevolent farmers in Wethersfield, and no doubt in other towns, kept oxen yoked in "mud time" to relieve distressed teamsters, and there is a tradition that, near the opening of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Daniel Wadsworth on Thanksgiving Day was unable to cross Main Street from her home near City Hall to Colonel Wadsworth's home on the Atheneum lot, except on horseback. In 1774, when the county jail was on Trumbull Street, the prisoners petitioned that the jail limits be ex- tended to the court-house on the east, that the charitable who might aid them could get to them, since "all the roads which lead to it (the Hartford jail) being for a considerable part of the year miry and uncomfortable to walk in."
Early in the eighteenth century horses were more numer-
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ous though the drain to the West Indies was heavy and con- stant. The Narragansett pacers were much bred, and highly esteemed; heavy draft horses were also imported, and from them sprang a race of powerful animals. Coaches were not common for years, though John Winthrop had one in 1685, and Andros in 1687. Roads were too poor for them outside of the towns, and the Puritan leaders lamented their coming as savoring of luxury and extravagance. A variety of carriages came into use as the roads improved, and wealth increased. There were the calash, a chaise with a folding top, the chaise with the fixed top, a two-wheeled gig with no top, the sulky for one traveler; these being hung on thorough-braces. There was also a four-wheeled carriage called a chariot. There is a reference in an inventory of 1690, to a "sley," and Bostonians had such vehicles for snow, though they were not common in Connecticut until a generation later.
It was a little before the Revolution that the first chaise appeared in Norwich; owned by Samuel Brown, who was fined for driving in it to church, since the rolling of the wheels broke the solemn and holy stillness of the Sabbath. At the Revolution there were six chaises in Norwich; the most wonderful was that of General Jabez Huntington, the first in town with a top that could be thrown back, being a large, low, square-bodied affair, studded with brass nails. Another belonged to Dr. Daniel Lathrop, said to have been the first druggist in the state. This had a yellow body and large windows in the sides of the top. We find references to carriage-making in Windham Green in 1808, and in the following year a wagon owned by Roger Huntington of Windham was sent to Leicester for a load of machine cards, and there could not have been more curiosity manifested along the road if it had been a menagerie. At Woodstock a crowd gathered to examine the new vehicle that was to kill the horses. One man had seen such a thing in Hartford, "and the horse dragging it was fagged nearly to death."
1
The Stage Coach America
Drawn by Capt. Basil Hall, R. M., by means of a camera obscura
Chaise belonging to Sheriff Ward of Worcester
From a Photo, by H. C. Hammond
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Development of the Highways
On the return the next day with a load, Esquire McClellan and the others decided "that perhaps such wagons might come into use after all."
Taverns came early, and under order of the General Court in 1644, they were established "not only in Hartford, but others in each town upon our river." An old authority tells what a guest might expect:
Clean sheets to lie in wherein no man had been lodged since they came from the landresse, and have a servante to kindle his fire and one to pull off his boots and make them clean, and have the hoste and hostess to visit him, and to eat with the hoste or at a common table if he pleases, or eat in his chamber, commanding what meate he will according to his appetite. Yea, the kitchen being open to him to order the meat to be dressed as he liketh it best.
The landlord was not to allow a person to be intoxicated in his house, or to drink excessively, or to tipple after nine at night. Reference has been made in an earlier chapter to the tavern of Jeremy Adams on Main Street, Hartford, where the legislature held its meetings for nearly fifty years. Quite as famous was the Black Horse Tavern, which was built near the line of Main Street, not far from the Atheneum, and for half a century it was the most widely known of all the inns in the region. After a time the Bunch of Grapes Tavern of David Bull outstripped its neighbor in popularity. Many taverns were poor affairs, as Madame Knight discovered. From the first, they were closely connected with the church, and were licensed to promote public worship. It was usually next to the church, and such proximity was the single con- dition on which it was permitted to sell "beare." There is a record of a permission granted to John Vyall in 1651,- "libertie to keep a house of Common Entertainment, if the County Court consent, provided he keepe it near the new meeting house,"-convenient for worshipers and voters. Strict laws regulated taverns, and in New Haven
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twenty acres of land was set apart to pasture the horses of travelers in.
Just before the Revolution, John Adams wrote of an En- field landlord as follows: "Oated and drank tea at Peases-a smart house and landlord truly; well-dressed with his ruffles &c. I found he was the great man of the town, representative as well as tavern-keeper; retailers and taverners are generally in the country, assessors, select-men, representatives and esquires." Notices of town meetings, elections, new laws, and ordinances of administration were posted in the taverns, where also could be found bills of sale, records of transfer, business exchanges, and daily gossip,-a local substitute for a daily paper. Distances were more apt to be reckoned from tavern to tavern than from town to town. Courts and town meet- ings were sometimes held there, as well as committee meetings and consultations of selectmen. Care was taken to clear the tavern when the time came for public worship in the bleak meeting-house, and citizens were frozen out of the one to be frozen within the sacred refrigerator. The Black Horse Tavern, which was built in 1732, by Samuel Flagg on Main Street, Hartford, nearly opposite the First Church in its present location, was for half a century the most widely known of all the inns for miles around, and later, the Bunch of Grapes Tavern of David Bull, standing near the corner of Asylum and Main streets, was more popular.
Next in importance to the tavern was the stage-driver with his stage. As early as 1717, the General Assembly voted to grant Captain John Munson of New Haven, to- gether with his executors, administrators, and assigns the sole and only privilege of transporting persons and goods between Hartford and New Haven for seven years. The only con- dition was that on the first Monday of every month, except December, January, February and March, he should, if the weather permitted, drive to Hartford and back again within the week. In winter there was no regular communication between the two cities by stage or boat. The most famous
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Development of the Highways
stage-driver in those days was Captain Levi Pease, who was born in Enfield in 1740, and on October 20, 1783, he started a stage-route from Boston to Hartford, leaving Boston at six in the morning, and a man named Sykes set out from Hartford, changing horses at Shrewsbury. Pease advertised to go in "two convenient wagons, " but the tradition is that the "carriages were old and shackling," and the harnesses partly ropes. At ten at night the passengers put up at a tavern, and were called at three, or before, the next morning. If the roads were heavy with mud or snow, the passengers were expected to get out to lessen the load. The wagon of Pease's stage-route was at first almost empty, but a resolute man like him was undisturbed, and he started a movement for better roads, an effort which resulted in the first Massa- chusetts turnpike, which was laid out in 1808. Pease has been called the "Father of the American Turnpike." After a time there was the
New Post-Coach Line Dispatch, in six hours from Hartford to New Haven, leaving Hartford every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at eleven in the forenoon, passing through Farmington, Southington and Cheshire, and reaching New Haven in time for the steamboat. The above line of Post-Coaches are new and modern in style, horses selected with great care and are first rate, drivers that are experienced, careful and steady.
The horses were usually tough and wiry, weighing about a thousand pounds. Stages became less rude and primitive as the turnpikes spread, and as the schedule time was ten miles an hour, a breakneck speed was required down hill to compensate for the slow up-hill progress. A frightened passenger, after a terrible jolting down the western slope of Talcott mountain, stuck his head out of the window, and beckoning to the driver said, "My friend, be you goin' down any further? Because if you air, I'm goin' to get out right here. I want to stay on the outside of the airth a
17
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A History of Commecticut
leetle longer." Another traveler, who, to relieve the horses, had toiled on foot up a long hill in Barkhamsted, entered the tavern, and asked if the Lord was in. "For," he explained, "it seems to me that we've come high enough to find Him."
After a time the roads leading to the cities were used in the winter by farmers, who filled their two-horse pungs or one-horse pods with the products of toil and skill, and drove to market. They carried dressed pigs, a deer or two, fir- kins of butter, cheeses in casks, poultry, beans, peas, corn, skins of mink, fox and fisher-cat, birch-brooms the boys had made, stockings, mittens, and yarn. They carried their rations with them with feed for the horses; rye and injun, doughnuts, pies, cold roast sparerib, and inevitably some frozen bean porridge, and when the pung was crowded, the chunk of porridge was suspended by a string to the side of the sleigh; a hatchet was put in to chop off a dinner of this nourishing food, called by the Indian name of tuck-a- nuck or mitchin. On reaching the city the goods were disposed of and a less bulky load carried home; a few yards of cotton cloth, spices, raisins, fish-hooks, powder, shot, a few pieces of English crockery, jackknives, and ribbons. Emigrant wagons were often seen on the roads, and the peddler, the commercial link between city and country, was welcome everywhere, as he carried tinware, dry goods, and a hundred notions. Many a pack peddler was seen, and as he plodded along the dusty road, he dreamed of the time when he should have a wagon, and of the still more distant day when he should own a permanent stand in the city, whence he would send out wagons in all directions.
It was an important epoch in Connecticut history when the turnpikes came in, for then began some method in build- ing roads. There had been the trails and bridle-paths from scattered farms to one another and to the church, store, and mill, and there had also been communication between the towns by the country roads, which were sandy in summer and
Boston, Hartford & New- York MAIL STAGES
Accommodation Stages.
III. Proprietors of the above Sags, mikro the Public, that they calculate run- . 15 the following mante | -\1.
I um Boston, by Wont de. Spr 366h, Hartford and New - Haven to Nex - York :
das, at ; affleck, A. M .; are as Benton, in the hours-From Boston, ma Hur- mettre Malle al, Hartford and New Homes In Non-York : leave. Barton. Sundays. To days, Thursdays and Saturi . a . work. A. M. ; arrivesat Hartford same sin -- Leau - Hausfind cours M . Wednesday and friday, at Boekak, A. M .;
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d .. . Monday, Sobreta .. and Todas, at Bodech, & M. ; arrives at Boston
1 ah passenger will be allowed halb baggage gratis, 106lb baggage will pay equal legge passengers the proper tos will not be accountable for an baggage.
1.01 EJOY
112 4141.1. PIJ K. DAMENKORT
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A Tavern Sign at Saybrook, Conn.
A Stage Notice at Hartford
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Development of the Highways
buried in snow in winter, and in the spring, when the frost was coming out, almost impassable. The story of the high- way to the Great Green Woods, as the north half of Litchfield County was called, illustrates the way roads were built. Dissatisfied with the rude bridle-paths, the inhabitants of Simsbury and Farmington joined the settlers of New Hart- ford in 1752, in a petition to the County Court for an order to open a road from Hartford to New Hartford. After the charter for the road was granted there came a war of words with emphatic language concerning the layout, and when the Old North Road was completed it was a wonder to the world that a direct route could be found through swamps and over steep hills, with all sorts of queer turns to keep it within the two-mile distance from a straight line, yet avoid rocks, and accommodate as many farmers as possible. Travel on the road was largely on horseback, and the wagons found a single roadway, with slight opportunity to turn out. In the Revolution, troops and munitions passed over that road, and detachments of Burgoyne's army marched there as prisoners of war. Iron was carried there on the way from Salisbury to Hartford; ship-builders found in the Litchfield forest lumber and masts; grist-mills were built on the streams, often with sawmills attached, and the road was convenient to some of these. It was over that road that Ethan Allen marched toward Ticonderoga; rugged men hastened over it toward Lexington and Bunker Hill.
When the New London Turnpike Company was chartered in 1800, it was ordered that all were to be exempt from pay- ing toll who were going to attend worship, funerals, school, society, town or freemen's meetings, to do military duty, attend training, go to and from grist-mills, and attend to ordinary farm business. The towns on this forty-two-mile stretch from Hartford to New London were to build and maintain bridges over certain streams. The charter required four toll-gates on the road and the toll rate was as follows: four cents for a person and horse or for an empty one-horse
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cart; six and a quarter cents for a one-horse pleasure sleigh, an empty two-horse cart, or a loaded one-horse cart; twelve and a half cents for a chaise, sulky, or a two-horse loaded sleigh, also for a loaded cart, sled, sleigh, or wagon; twenty- five cents for a four-wheeled pleasure carriage or a stage- coach; two cents for every horse, mule, or cow, and half a cent for every sheep or pig. It was not until 1857, that this road was wholly turned over to the towns through which it ran. Toll-gates were a favorite resort for the people who were eager to learn something of the doings of the great world. It was provided in some of the charters of the turn- pike companies that when the net earnings exceeded twelve per cent., the road reverted to the state.
One of the problems of the highway was the crossing of rivers, and the earliest method was by fords and ferries. As early as 1681, Thomas Cadwell of Hartford was licensed to
Keepe the ferry for seven years with sufficient boats to carry over horses and men, and a canoe for a single person. ... Fare for horse and man, 6d if not of this town. Fare for a man, 2d if not of this town. Fare for a man, Id in silver if of this town or 2d in other pay. Fare for horse and man, 3d in silver if of this town or 6d in other pay. And of those of this town whom he carrys over after the daylight is shutt in, they shall pay sixpence a horse and man in money or 8d in other pay. For a single person, 2d or 3d.
In 1691, complaint was made of the great disorder at the ferry on Sundays because of the many who were on their way to church, and three years later the difficulty was re- lieved when the people on the east side of the river obtained the "liberty of a minister among them." In 1712, the legis- lature granted Richard Keeney of Hartford liberty to keep a ferry near the bounds of Hartford and Wethersfield, and ten years later another ferry was established near the former. The old records contain many references to ferries at various
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points on the Connecticut and the other rivers, with a rigid fixing of rates. In 1745, the fares for the Hartford ferry were 9d for a man, horse, and load; for a man, 4d; for meat cattle, 7d a head, and 2d for sheep. In 1758, Hartford voted that two boats be used at the ferry, and two years later, that one of the two ferrymen should live on the east side.
As Hartford grew and its business increased, it became evident early in the nineteenth century that the ferry was insufficient, and on April 24, 1810, a bridge across the Con- necticut was opened to the public. The construction of this bridge was pushed through by the Hartford Bridge Company, the president of which was John Morgan, and the cost of the bridge-ninety-six thousand dollars, was obtained by the sale of assessable shares. The toll was twelve and a half cents for a double team, sixteen cents for a barouche, twenty-five cents for a stage, and two cents for a foot pas- senger. This bridge was so seriously injured by the freshet of 1818, that the company vacated its charter, but was persuaded to go on under a more favorable charter and rebuild. The second bridge of 1818, was seriously injured in the great storm of January 23, 1839. The growing de- mands for a free bridge came to a climax in 1889, when the state paid the company forty per cent. of the cost of the old bridge, and Hartford, East Hartford, Glastonbury, Manchester, and South Windsor the remaining sixty per
cent. The bridge was made free on September II, 1889, burned on May 17, 1895, and as the pine lumber sent out its blaze, twenty thousand people looked on. Work on a temporary structure began at once and a month later it was open to traffic, but before a year passed it was swept away. A second temporary bridge was opened on May 4, 1896, and that lasted until the present bridge was ready in 1907. The stone bridge was built under the auspices of a commis- sion appointed by the legislature soon after the burning of its predecessor. Its total length is twelve hundred feet lacking seven and a half, and it is said to be the largest
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A History of Connecticut
stone bridge in the world. It is of granite, and the stone came from Leete's Island and Stony Creek. There are nine spans, and the weight of the largest finished stone is forty tons. The cost apportioned among the towns of the bridge district was one million six hundred thousand dollars.
The present interest in good roads and promotion of them owe much to the invention of the Blake stone-breaker. This machine had its origin in the brain of Eli Whitney Blake of New Haven, a relative of Eli Whitney of cotton-gin fame. The Blake Stone-Breaker is ranked with the great labor- saving inventions of the world. Wherever railroads are to be ballasted, foundations of bridges or great buildings to be laid, and roads macadamized, the Blake Stone-Breaker is used. Blake was led to make the invention by seeing the need as he superintended the macadamizing of a street in New Haven. During the ten years between 1862, and 1872, the direct saving, computed from the actual working records of the five hundred breakers then in use, was over fifty million dollars. Since that time the machine has found its way over the world. The systematic movement for good roads began in 1895, when the legislature appropriated seventy-five thousand dollars to be distributed throughout the state, with the conditions that the counties should fur- nish one-third and the towns another third. In 1897, one hundred thousand dollars was appropriated; in 1899, one hundred and seventy-five thousand; in 1901, two hundred and twenty-five thousand; in 1903, the same; in 1907, three- quarters of a million, a third of which was for trunk lines, of which the longest is the road from Westerly to Port Chester-one hundred and twenty miles long. In 1812, there were three thousand miles of roads in the state, and in 1913, fifteen thousand. Much attention has been given of late to a system of trunk lines, of which there are fourteen, gridironing the state, enabling the commissioner to superin- tend the outlay of appropriations with foresight and system. The General Assembly of 1911, appropriated for two years
The Connecticut River Bridge
The Connecticut River Bridge The Original Bridge was Built 1809 and Carried away by Freshet in March, 1818. Rebuilt as Shown above in December, 1818. Became a Free Bridge September 11, 1889. Destroyed by Fire May 17, 1895
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Development of the Highways
two million dollars for trunk lines, in one million of which the towns have a share, two hundred thousand for repairs, and twenty thousand for special post-roads.
The coming of the automobile calls for better roads and furnishes more money to make and repair them, and now oil and tar harden and coat the surface of them that the swift tires may not destroy them. Multiplication of accidents at grade crossings, since touring cars raced over the state, has given an impetus to the movement to remove this fertile source of danger. It is a long cry from the Indian trails, the Bay Path, and the Newer Connecticut Path to the Hartford and New Haven Turnpike, carefully graded and smooth as a floor, with its flying motor-cars from every state in the Union, suggesting the complex conditions into which the commonwealth has grown.
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