USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 30
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Another printing firm of more than state importance exalts New Ilaven in the publication world. Its progenitors began to print directories in New Haven as early as 1840. Price, Lee & Company, now incorporated as the Price & Lee Company, was organized in 1873 as a publishing firm. A strictly printing firm, the Price, Lee & Adkins Company, was organized in 1889. The publishing name remains the same today. The printing house was reorganized in 1915 as the Wilson II. Lee Company, which reveals the name of the man who for nearly forty years has made the business in both departments. The house now issues forty-one directory publications, which serve about sixty-three cities and towns in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Hampshire and New York.
Another of the old firms, engaged in newspaper making, is the Carrington l'ublishing Company, which for more than half a century has issued the Journal- Courier. It has a history going back to 1852.
New Haven has forty-six printing houses at present, some of them long estab- lished, but more of them of recent growth, though doing, for the most part, the good work which the standard of the leaders requires. Among these leaders are the Whaples-Bullis Company, Van Dyck & Company, the Tuttle Color Print- ing Company, the Ryder Printing House, the Harty Musch Press, S. Z. Field and Bradley & Scoville, the last being also blank book manufacturers.
IX
Great among the makers, in a city whose manufactories are so important as are New Haven's, are the men who make those industries and direct their course. Not a few of these men, much in every work for the city's advancement, have repeatedly been mentioned. The genius of the great Winchester industry for many years, a business man to whom it owes much of its growth, is Thomas (. Bennett. Though now out of the active management, his work is well con- tinned in these days by his son, Winchester Bennett. To Henry B. Sargent is naturally and rightly ascribed much of the success of the great firm with which he has since 1871 been identified, but his work for the welfare of New Haven has been broader even than that. Walter Camp's activities have touched New llaven at many points, but he has given first allegiance to the clock making firm which Hiram Camp had so great a part in founding. No less valuable a citizen is Edwin P. Root, who has a large part in the carrying on of this business, but finds time for many New Haven activities besides. He has been in the clock
SECOND NATIONAL BANK, NEW HAVEN
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business since 1877. His interests are varied, and not the least of his service for New Haven is as director of the Public Library.
The Aeme Wire Company, which within a short time has had a wonderful development, and is now one of the leading industries, owes a large part of its success to the personal executive ability as well as the capital of Victor M. Tyler, its president and treasurer. Next to him Edgar L. Hartpence, its masterly general manager, has had much to do with raising it to a concern employing almost a thousand men. Both are citizens whom New Haven values for many other reasons. The work of Max Adler and Isaac M. Ullman in developing their great industry, and their part in the npbuilding of New Haven, are well known. Henry L. Hotchkiss and HI. Stuart Hotehkiss have been powers aside from their connection with the city's rubber industry. Howard E. Adt, one of the geniuses of the Geometric Tool Company, is a citizen whom New Haven prizes highly, while Perey R. Greist of the Greist Manufacturing Company has been foremost in many efforts for the good of New Haven. John B. Kennedy, conspicuous for high citizenship, patriotic leadership and banking ability, makes it his principal business to direct the English & Mersick Company, makers of lamps and ear- riage hardware.
Andrew R. Bradley, George P. Smith and Theodore R. Blakeslee are the men behind New Haven's leading confectionery industry, and all are citizens of service and progress. Mr. Bradley recently passed from earthly activities. Mr. Blakeslee, youngest of three brothers who have been very much in the making of New Haven, is a man of high ideals, who is ever ready to serve the publie good. Harry B. Kennedy, president of the Hoggson & Pettis Manufacturing Company, is active in church and public work, a sincerely helpful citizen. Samuel R. Avis, though a veteran manufacturer, is best known through his valuable service for years at the head of the board of public library directors. Lonis C. Cowles, head of one of New Haven's sterling firms, C. Cowles & Company, which makes carriage hardware, is a gentleman and a citizen of the fine old school. Clarence B. Dann, of Dann Brothers, Joseph E. Hubinger, head of a large starch industry, and Ed- win S. Swift, thoroughbred manufacturer and whole-hearted citizen, are other members of a great company.
Many merchants have made New Haven, which was intended by its founders, it will be remembered, as a great trade center. Their ideals have been more than realized. Men have gone on and names have changed, but many a business has continued the policy of its founders since far baek in the last century. Older citizens well remember A. C. Wilcox, later A. C. Wileox & Company, whose store on Chapel, between Orange and State, was deemed one of the great trading centers half a century ago. After Mr. Wilcox's death, it became Howe & Stetson, and was greatly enlarged. There was another evolution in 1906, when the business was purchased by Shartenberg & Robinson. It is now Sharten-
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berg's, and Henry M. Shartenberg, an able citizen as well as merchant, is its directing force. An older department firm is the Edward Malley Company, now well advanced in the second half of its eentury. At or near the corner of ('hapel and Temple streets it has been since Edward Malley the elder started in a little country store building. Through successive managements, generally under Malley financing and control, even if under other names, it has progressed to its present degree of size and efficient service. Walter E. Malley is the present head of the corporation. Mendel and Freedman have for approaching thirty years conducted a popular department store on Chapel Street, and are old merchants as well as respected eitizens, with a remarkably efficient and modern store at the present time. What was Brown and Bolton, then was F. M. Brown & Com- pany, and since 1898 has been Gamble & Desmond, is one of the sterling firms of. the city. now conducted by the second generation of its founders. Such a "hall- mark" store as one expects to find in a conservative community like New Haven is the Charles Monson Company, established under its present name in 1892, doing business on the south side of Chapel Street below Orange. Its present head is Charles M. Walker, an influential and progressive citizen.
In many other lines New Haven has had able merchants, who have labored for the publie good as well as for their own advantage. There was Nathan T. Bush- nell, whose hardware store was always a place for superior goods; another Bush- nell, younger, but of the same family, has long been prominent in the wholesale grocery trade; C. S. Mersick established a remarkable firm for the wholesale and retail distribution of building and plumbers' hardware, and it has been advanced in recent years. as C. S. Mersiek & Company, former Governor Wood- ruff being its present head. John E. Bassett & Company is the modern continna- tion of a firm with considerably more than a century of existence, which is now more efficient than ever in the sale of sterling hardware. George J. Bassett is its present head. Edward P. Judd was long "the bookseller" of New Haven, a man of wonderful ability, and a firm he fonnded still leads, Frank S. Platt is identified with a farm supply and seed business which has a wide reputation. The Chamberlain Company, which the late George R. Chamberlain and William MI. Parsons made a leader among furniture firms, is now headed by Robert R. Chamberlain, son of the former. Frederick Meigs founded a prominent elothing business, which still bears his name, and Colonel George D. Post is the local head of another leading clothing firm. Miner, Read & Tullock and Dillon & Donglass are two wholesale grocery firms made up of men who have had a large share in the progress of New Haven.
In a literal way some men have made the eity which is today. This is the day of the engineer. Of men eminent in this profession New Haven has not a few. It is a great task to direct the engineering activities of the enterprise which the New Haven railroad has become in these days, so it may be safe to give its
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chief engineer, Edward Gagel, a leading place. He has deserved his success, and done great things for the city in which he lives. One of the oldest of New Haven engineers is Albert B. Ilill. Some years ago he was city engineer. and in the years since he has steadily grown in experience and ability, always contributing to the best interests of New Haven. Many of the works of the New Haven Water Company stand as monuments to his ability. Frederick L. Ford had a high reputation when he eame from Hartford in 1910, where he had been city engineer. Ile came to the same position here, and under him the office has been exalted and its work been made much more effective.
Clarenee Blakeslee is the engineering member of the firm of C. W. Blakeslee & Sons, and has made possible some of its most important construction. He is a thoroughly able engineer as well as a citizen of high publie spirit and fine char- acter. Perhaps his greatest work so far is the construction of a section through an unusually difficult piece of territory, of the Catskills-to-Manhattan aqueduet. Aside from this the greatest engineering work of the Blakeslee firm was the construetion of the "eut" through the city for the New Haven road, and of this Dwight W. Blakeslee, another of the Blakeslee brothers, was the engineer, and lost his life in the work. Charles A. Ferry's ability as an engineer has already been told in the story of the Yale Bowl, which he designed. Ile was a thorough engineer before, or he could not have done it. His wide reputation, then achieved, has since been enlarged. Ile is a citizen, besides, of truly fine character. Charles C. Elwell's ability was abundantly recognized by the New Haven railroad before he came to the city, and has grown since until he was made, first engineer for, and later a member of the Connecticut Public Utilities Commission. New Haven values him highly as a man. Alexander Cahn has grown up in New Haven, and from the time he chose engineering as his pro- fession he has demonstrated that his choice was the right one. He has done mueh excellent work, and the city owes him a great publie debt.
There are some makers who do not classify, for they stand by themselves. There is hardly an institution to which New Haven of the past half century owes more of abiding construction than to the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion. Organized in 1866, it has had a career of struggle, for the most part, but of late it has come into its own through service. In its beginnings small, always needing more resources than it had with which to meet pressing demands, it has been carried on from the beginning by men of sacrifice. Clarence B. Willis was its first seeretary, and gave it a wonderful start. Living in rented rooms, not well fitted to its needs, for over three decades, it came about the beginning of the century into its own home, a commodious building on Temple Street. It had even greater burdens to earry then, and it staggered under the debt. Noble citizens, such as Pierce N. Weleh and John T. Manson, substantially assisted it with funds, but it was not until after 1910 that it approached a supporting
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basis. Some of its secretaries in the recent period have been William G. Lotze, Robert S. Ross, and the present secretary, who has proved a saving executive, and led the association to its best work, Judson J. MeKim.
The makers of the future are not neglected. In the present decade New Haven has made the leadership of its boys a public work. The publie has financed the Boy Scout movement and given it paid executive management. Over a thousand of the boys are organized in nearly forty troops, attached to churches and other organizations. For three years, before the opening of the war, Gilbert N. Jerome was the first paid executive. In 1917 he resigned to enter the war aviation service, and the direction of the work fell heavily again on the veteran scout leader, James P. Bruce, though a loyal local council assisted greatly. Judge Mathewson was head of that council for several years, but in 1917 Clarence W. Bronson was chosen to the position.
The story of the makers of modern New Haven could hardly be better rounded out than by mention of a service which the nation's history already has recog- nized, but which New Haven can never too intimately know. Among the finan- cial and industrial developers of New Haven in the days just before and after the Civil War was Cornelius Scranton Bushnell, native of Madison, an honored son by adoption of New Haven. He was a man of remarkable foree, a patriot of saving vigor. How he saw the invention of John Ericsson, how he believed in its virtue for the saving of the nation, how he petitioned Washington in vain for financial backing for the first Monitor, how he found the money himself in his own resources and those of his friends, how he made it possible for the Monitor to appear at Hampton Roads at just the psychological time-these are but the high points in the history of his service.
Mr. Bushnell was not, as the world judges, a successful man. But there were those in New Haven who believed he achieved what was vastly more worthy of recognition than success. The outcome of their faith was the organization at New Haven, on March 9, 1899, of the Cornelius S. Bushnell National Memorial Association. The fruit of that association, in addition to the promotion of a true estimate of Mr. Bushnell's character and work, was the erection in May, 1906, on Monitor Park, at the junction of Chapel Street and Derby Avenue, of the Cornelius S. Bushnell Memorial. It is a simple shaft bearing at its crest a vie- torious eagle, and having inscriptions historieally commemorative of the work of Eriesson and Bushnell. It is a public adornment to New Haven : its erection is an ornament to the city's appreciation of patriotic service.
THE MEMORIAL IS ERECTED IN HONOR OF
THE KONTRAS
BUSHNELL MEMORIAL. NEW HAVEN
CHAPTER XXV
MILITARY NEW HAVEN
THE GOVERNOR'S FOOT GUARD AND ITS ANCIENT AND MODERN SERVICE-THE HORSE GUARDS AND THE INFANTRY COMPANIES-NEW HAVEN'S PLACE IN THE WAR SERVICE OF TODAY
I
The Davenport pilgrims came hearing arms; they are bearing arms today. They were a peaceful people, but they realized that peace must be conquered and maintained by the sword. There was no question of universal military serv- ice in those first days of the colony. Every male of able body between the ages of sixteen and sixty was to be provided by the state with "a muskett, a sworde and a bandalier" and the things that went with them, and turn out at stated times to be instructed in their use. Bearing arms, in those days when mortal foes surrounded, or were supposed to surround the elect on every side was a matter of self preservation.
So every man was a soldier in the early days. The conditions bred a militant race. There was no military class in the distinctive sense. Indeed, for the first century and a half of New Haven's history, its people did little fighting. But they were able to send effective forees, when need arose, for the aid of their neighbors and their governors in the Indian fights and in the French and Indian War. So it was that Connectient was able to present some sturdy, well trained troops when the war of the Revolution came.
That, however, is a matter aside from the present purpose, except as it bears on the fact that New Haven has had a continuons and effective military organ- ization from that time to the present. The main body of soldiers, trained from year to year, independent of the semi-private companies which from time to time were organized for social effect and military glory, formed the "Train Band" or "Trained Band", the continuing military force ont of which grew the Connecticut Seeond regiment, and on that New Haven bases the claim that this is the oldest military organization in America. Even without that distinc- tion, it has a history in whose value and nobility New Haven, always its central point of rendezvous, takes pride.
In the main the history of military New Haven is a history of the forma- tion and growth of separate organizations, some of which have made their con- tribution and lost their indentity in this larger organization, some of which have never belonged to it. New Haven's oldest military organization is the Second
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Company, Governor's Foot Guard. It is popular, in these days when we reem to have made soldiering a matter of hard business, and shorn the soldier of all gold lace and gay color, to seorn the "ancient and honorable" private company as a relie of a grandeur and glory that was. This is in forgetfulness of his- torieal fact, as well as of the contribution which such companies have made to patriotic inspiration if not to actual service. The Governor's Foot Guard has outlived this false contempt. It does not depend on tradition alone for its justification.
On December 28, 1774, sixty-five men of New Haven met and signed an agreement that they would study together, under competent instruction. the military exercise until such time as they believed themselves competent therein. That thereupon they would form themselves into a company, choose their officers and suitably equip themselves at their own expense. It does not appear whether these men had any premonition of the war that was so soon to come; if they had, they failed to show it in their declaration of intention.
Be that as it may, they went ahead with commendable speed and enthusiasm in their task of training and organization. In less than two months they had progressed so far that they thought it proper to select their uniform, and that was no dun and undecorative sartorial prescription, either. Dress coat of searlet, with collar and cuffs, silver buttons, white linen vest, breeches and stockings, black half leggins, and small fashionable and narrow ruffled shirt were among its details. A month later they elected their officers. Benedict Arnold, as we well remember, then a druggist and sea captain, was made the company's captain and commander. Two weeks earlier this same sixty-five had prayed the General Assembly of Connecticut, then in session at New Haven, for a charter, and that document was granted withont delay.
So it came about that this sturdy body of men, well offieered, equipped and as their betters testified, well trained, were ready for action when an emergency eame. Their readiness made history for them. We are necessarily familiar with the action which they took consequent to the reverberation in New Haven of "the shot heard round the world." Private organization as they were, they drew themselves up in battle array and demanded powder from the public stores. Perhaps the selectmen were wholly within their rights in demurring. but the Foot Guards had that which was more effective than argument. They got the powder and they made quick time to Cambridge.
They went promptly. but they did not go thoughtlessly. Almost all of the company went, though there was no compulsion. They went realizing that it might be to battle and blood. They responded to the eall of freedom and of country. They resolved, as we know from a proclamation which they signed at starting, to go soberly, deeently and in submission to authority. They did not, moreover, go as rebels to the authority of England. Their proclamation was not anticipatory of the Declaration of Independence, though it did have a little of that tone. An action which they took just before starting on their march is still more significant, and had a great bearing on their later history,
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Filled with a sense of their responsibility, they lined up on the lower Green and listened to words of counsel and admonition, as we may suppose, from the pastor of the North Church, Rev. Jonathan Edwards the younger. It is a matter for regret that these words were not preserved for us, but out of that address grew a Foot Guard enstom of great value. It may be that there is something of the spirit of sport and show in the annual celebration, continued to this time by the company. of that start for Cambridge. It gives occasion for the entertainment of guests. for a gorgeous parade through the streets, for a review on the Green, for a feast at night. But it also gives occasion for a service in church, which is altogether of serious intent and effect. The patriotie music, the service of memorial for comrades deceased in the year. above all the sermon by the chaplain, make a most impressive and valuable occasion. The publie is freely invited, and the discerning come.
The company was not destined to see bloody service on that trip to Cam- bridge. The deed that precipitated the war was done before they arrived. and there was little for them to do, for the first fever had gone down. Their records show that General Putnam accompanied them for the latter part of their march. but neither he nor they found much to do. They remained at Cambridge for three weeks, quartered in the splendid house from which the patriots had driven Lieutenant Governor Oliver because he was too friendly with the British. Then they marehed baek to New Haven.
It may appear that the company had little influence on the progress of the Revolutionary struggle. Such was not the ease. Boston and Cambridge were then the center of things. These clashes at Concord and Lexington were but ineidental, in the view of the time. It had not been decided whether the colonies should take up arms against England. They had little idea what their strength might be. But the appearance on the field of such a company as this, well armed and drilled and especially-what eounted most of all in those days, though we may smile at it-gorgeous in their uniform. had a tremendous moral . effeet. They were the only completely equipped company on the scene. the equal, it was said, to any of the British troops, and half a hundred men so equipped and drilled looked large in those days of small armies.
The Foot Guards have always frankly owned Benediet Arnold as their first commandant. He marehed with the company to Cambridge. He did not. it seems, come back with them, but he had his honorable discharge. It was while in Massachusetts that he conceived the idea that the capture of Crown Point and Ticonderoga might be a serious interference with the British plans by inter- rupting communication with Canada, and he was commissioned by Massachu- setts a colonel to command such an expedition. The enterprise so appealed to the Foot Guards that twenty members of the company elected to go with their captain. It was then that he parted with the company. That trip to Canada. while not a Foot Guard expedition, was cherished in the annals of the com- pany, and in 1911 the company celebrated it by a tour over the Canadian route which Arnold and his followers took, being everywhere received by the now friendly Canadians with the extremest hospitality.
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The career of the Foot Guards sinee that first expedition has been in the main a peaceful one. The company has had its ups and downs, but generally a prosperous existence. It met General Washington on his way through New Ilaven to take command of the Continental troops, and escorted him as far as the historic "Neck Bridge," this being the first armed military escort tendered to the general. They had been compelled to make their Cambridge expedition under the name of the "New Haven Cadets," being technically rebels against the constituted authority. But only eight years later the General Assembly showed that all was forgiven by ordering the selection of New Haven to deliver to the custody of the company sixty-four stand of arms, in recognition, it would seem, of their valiant service in time of war.
On all occasions thereafter the company acted as the escort of the Governor whenever he was in the New Haven district, always participating with the First Company in inauguration events, and of late years tendering him a reception at New Haven cach year. The company has also assiduously observed all those laws of hospitality which exist between organizations of this sort, no matter what distanee divides them. When Lafayette visited New Haven in 1824 he was suitably escorted by the Foot Guards. They have been the center of glory in many parades during their century and a half. The most cordial relations have existed between them and similar military bodies in other states. Early in the nineteen hundreds they were guests of the Richmond Blues at Richmond, and in 1908 the company returned the compliment, giving the Blues for three days the freedom and the joys of New Haven. Such are their ties with other companies that at the New Haven week parade in 1911 they were able to bring to New Haven for participation the most distinguished military companies from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey.
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