USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 31
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The company has never avoided military service, of which it has had not a little experience. That same readiness to serve in actual war which took the company to Cambridge at the first has always been shown in the organization or in its individual members. Jointly and severally, the members of the com- pany deelared their readiness for the defense of the home town in the War of 1812. The company was called out in 1813 to quell a race riot at Long Wharf between Swedish and Portuguese sailors on one side and American sailors on the other, and was effective. Twice the following year there was a scare of British invasion, and each time the company stood ready, but the point of actual warfare was not reached. The company participated in the fortification of Beacon Hill in 1814, and later the same year, when the enemy landed at Bran- ford, it assembled, but again the war failed to come to New Haven.
The Foot Guard had a most honorable record in the years of the Civil War, though not distinctly under the name of the organization. The company be- came Company K attached to the Sixth regiment, C. V., and its muster roll shows three commissioned officers, thirteen non-commissioned officers and sev- enty-six privates. Captain Henry C. Gerrish headed the company at that time, and lost his life in the service, along with ten others. The home organization
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was retained throughout the war, and the company was in service for seventeen days during the draft riots of 1863.
In the Spanish War, at the expense of the company, 341 men were enlisted, and an infantry company of 106 officers and men were prepared for serivee and equipped. Many of these men entered the regular service for the Philippines or elsewhere in the years following.
In the present war the company has furnished some members for the service. but its greatest work has been as a home guard. Few thought ever to see the Foot Guards in khaki, but that was their garb in 1917 and the following year. They have been practically on a war footing, and though most of the men were past the age for military service, they stood ready to be effective in emergency. So the record of the company of participation in all the wars of this country's history is so far complete.
The company has had many notable leaders in its fifteen decades. When Captain Arnold resigned, he was succeeded by Hezekiah Sabin. Jr., a New Haven merchant. James Hillhouse the first was the third commandant of the company, being followed in turn by Daniel Bishop and Nathaniel Finch. In 1810 the major commanding was Luther Bradley. At the time of the reorgani- zation in 1893 Benjamin L. Brown was elected major, and held the position for several years. For some time previous to 1909 Major Frederick W. Brown was commandant, leading the company into one of its most prosperous periods. That year Captain George T. Hewlett was promoted to major, and for the following five years devoted himself with a zeal and enthusiasm greatly to be praised to the maintenance of the organization in accordance with its standing and history. He was succeeded for a year by Major Joseph A. Wooster. a descendant of General Wooster. In 1916 Major John B. Kennedy became com- mandant, and still holds the position. Under him the company has been main- tained at a high standard of morale and efficiency, altogether in harmony with its best traditions. Himself of Revolutionary ancestry, he fully appreciates the noble history of the company he commands, and has admirably succeeded in instilling his own spirit into every member. To him is due in no small measure the admirable showing made in the present war emergency.
TI
Military training went steadily on in the years after the Revolutionary War, but it was thirty-four years before another private company was raised. There were two companies of the Governor's Foot Guards, due to the fact that the seat of government alternated between Hartford and New Haven. So it came about that in 1808 New Haven men with a penchant for equestrian display thought that forty years was long enough for Hartford to have enjoyed the monopoly of a Governor's Horse Guard, and the Second Company, Governor's Horse Guard, was formed. It speedily became popular with men of sufficient means to furnish their own mounts and equipment-no light burden of ex-
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pense, we may believe. For the horse guardsman must not only have his own mount-and the horse had to be a live and stylish animal-but a uniform that was wondrous to behold. It consisted, at the time of organization, of a blne suit, trimmed with butf and a hat with a long white plume. These "knights" were glorious enough for any governor.
They had, in the first half of the century, many times of festivity and of glory. But they lacked the historical distinction of the Foot Guards, so the prestige of the horsemen seems to have lapsed materially in the days preceding the Civil War. That stimulation of military activity brought them back. The company was reorganized, and celebrated the achievement by new suits. At that time they are described as wearing a gray suit trimmed with red, black leather leggins and bearskin hats. The officers wore chapeaux with plumes. The horses were decorated in harmony, being caparisoned with red collars and red pommels for their saddles. Thus restored. though they saw only nominal home guard duty during the war, they came into and remained in prominence. Toward the end of the century. however, they lapsed again. From which it naturally follows that about 1901 the Horse Guards were reorganized into cavalry, becoming a regular part of the state militia. This time they stole a march on Hartford, and became Troop A of the state cavalry organization.
Troop A, in turn, had its valuable but brief existence. For something like fifteen years it was popular, and became strong enough to build its own armory at 865 Orange Street. the state failing to help with funds. The character of the great war having made cavalry superfluous, Troop A of New Haven, Troop MI which was later organized and Troop B of Hartford were reconstructed into machine gunners.
The first infantry organization of those which later became a part of the state's national guard was the New Haven Grays. as for a century they were known. The company was organized in 1816, and was preparing to celebrate its centennial when great events began to upset all the plans of men and military organizations everywhere. It was from the start a first elass company, made up of the finest young men in New Haven, well organized, well officered and well drilled. It was New Haven's "crack" company, living strictly up to the striking uniform which it adopted, whose color gave it its name. Its superiority was no mere matter of local opinion, as the state military records for years will testify, but a reality of devotion to duty, drill and marksmanship.
In the years between its foundation and the Civil War the company lived the social life of the military organization of the time, entertaining and being entertained. Sophus Staples, a young lawyer, was its first captain. IIe left the city the following year, and was succeeded by Dennis Kimberly. At the opening of the Civil War the company offered itself in a body, and went ont in the Second Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers, of which Alfred HI. Terry was colonel. At that time E. Walter Osborne was captain. It returned to New Haven shortly after the battle of Bull Run, for it had volunteered for only
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three months. In 1862 it responded to the call for ninety-day volunteers, but its services were not required. Shortly after that a company was recruited in the name of the Grays for the Twenty-seventh Connecticut Volunteers, and several of its officers went with it.
Since the war it has had some of the best of its history, consistently main- taining its standard in the Connecticut military organization. Several years ago it became plain Company F of the Second Regiment, and at the time of the national reorganization of the militia was required to abandon its distinctive gray for khaki. It always retained its name until the final submergence which followed the outbreak of the present war. It went into service on the Mexican border in the summer of 1916 under the command of Captain Ellis B. Baker, Jr. Called into service again after the entrance of the United States into the war, it was merged in Company F of the First Regiment in the new One Hundred and Second, and left for France under the command of Captain Raymond B. Barnes of New Ilaven.
In 1828 there was a strife in the Grays that resulted in another company. Charles E. Whittlesey expected to be elected captain that year, but the office went to another. He and his friends felt so strongly that the position belonged to him that they seceded and formed another company, which they called the National Blues. Mr. Whittlesey was elected captain, but he declined the office, and Mason A. Durand was chosen. The company had an excellent organization and record in the years before the Civil War. It did not enlist in that war as a company, but the greater part of its members enlisted as individuals. After the war it was reorganized. In 1870 it became Company D of the Second Regiment. In 1884 Andrew H. Embler was its captain. For several years previous to the federalization of the militia George C. Freeland was captain. He went with the company to the Mexican horder, and made so good a record there and in the year following that when the company went out as a part of the One Hundred and Second, he was captain of the combined company.
The remaining New Haven companies were for the most part the outgrowth of home guard needs in the Civil War, though to this the Sarsfield Guards, who afterwards became Company C of the regiment, should probably be considered an exception. This company, as it has in recent years been known, was formed in 1865, but it was the outgrowth of the Emmet Guards, which date back to 1857. They had mostly disappeared in the years just previous to the Civil War. Its stress aroused the young Irishmen of New Haven, some of whom had formed the Emmet Guards, to the reorganization of the company immediately after the war, as the Sarsfield Guards. Under that name it had a fine record, which has since been maintained. The company became Company C of the Second Regiment. As such it went to the Mexican border and showed up as real soldiers. It was a valuable constituent of the new Company C in the com- bined regiment that went to France in the fall of 1917. It took its captain. however, from the First regiment, Alfred W. Griswold of New Britain.
At the beginning of the Civil War a company called the City Guards was Vol. I-17
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formed, which a year later became the New Haven Light Guards. It had a large part in home defense during the war, and many of its members served in different regiments at the front. After the war it was reorganized, and soon after became, as Company E, a unit of the Second Regiment. It had its taste of war training at Nogales, and went into service in' France a year later under Captain Joseph E. Felsted of New Haven.
There was organized during the Civil War part of a regiment of colored men, which called itself the Wilkins Guard, after its first leader. It equipped itself, accomplished a good organization, and as the First Separate Company was ad- mitted to the Second Regiment in 1879. It had participated in all the activities of the regiment thereafter until 1916. When the Connectient troops were called for the Mexican service, this company was not included. Exeept so far as its members have enlisted with some of the colored troops at various points, it is not included in the present service. But it has an admirable history and reeord. Its present captain is Samuel W. Titus.
The Machine Gun Company was organized about 1880, and had a good record in the twenty-seven years preceding the opening of this war. It had been largely recruited, in recent years, from New Haven citizens of Italian birth. It went into the war under the command of Captain John Shipke of Wallingford.
The organization out of which grew the Second Regiment, formed in colonial days, has had a varied existence, but can be traced continuously. At present it seems lost in the maze of military forees in France, but it is in a positive man- ner preserved by the Second Regiment of the Connecticut Home Guard, of which Colonel J. Richard North is commander. That out of this regiment the Second Regiment of the Connecticut National Guard will be reorganized after the war is over is a contingency not at all improbable.
The Connectieut Naval Battalion, now the Naval Militia of the Connectiont military organization, had its' beginning in 1893, when a single division was formed under Lieutenant Edward V. Reynolds of New Haven. It had grown to three divisions in 1897, and its commander was Edward G. Buckland. Its bat- talion headquarters has been New Haven from the first. Its commander in 1917 was Cassius B. Barnes of New Haven, and most of its battalion officers were from New Ilaven and vicinity. It has grown to five divisions and an aeronautic seetion, and is now doing service in the war as an auxiliary to the regular navy.
III
This record of the private and public military organizations of New Haven takes on a look of strange unreality against the background of the great war. Events of the years 1917 and 1918 have altered all standards. New Haven has been a very important center of recruiting and war service and war work. Where something like a thousand men were two or three years ago in the military service of the state, there now are over four thousand in various branches of the nation's military service. In detail, these are: National Army, 1,023; 102nd
1
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regiment, 649; 101st, 103rd and 104th regiments, 160; Black Watch and First Connecticut, 130; Medical Corps, 200; Aviation and Engineers, 170; United States army, 870; Navy, 960.
This makes a total of 4,162. It does not, of course, take into account those serving in the llome Guard, a number considerably exceeding, for New llaven and vieinity, the thousand or thereabout who made up the old contingent in the National Guard. Nor does it indicate the other hundreds, women as well as men, who at home are doing constant service directly for war purposes. These center in the organization known at the New Haven War Bureau of the Con- nectient State Conneil of Defense, of which Hon. John K. Beach is chairman, and Professor John C. Tracy director.
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CHAPTER XXVI
THIE PART OF WOMAN
WOMEN AS INDIVIDUALS AND IN VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS-THEIR REMARKABLE CON- TRIBUTION TO THE PREVENTION OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY-THE ACHIEVE- MENTS OF THE SOCIAL SERVICE DANCE COMMITTEE
I
One may well imagine that when the tired pilgrims climbed from their boats of the tumbling sea to the solid if slippery terra firma of West Creek banks in that April of 1638, the men led the way. It was the order of the times. We hear little of the women in the histories of that day. But looking baek now, it is impossible to imagine any of the activities of even that day in which women failed of a substantial if silent part. In the centuries since woman has had an unfailing influenee in the development and the betterment of New Haven. In the period of which this history treats it has been an organized and recognized part.
The men ran the churches of John Davenport's time. They continued to take an apparently great interest in them as long as they had political and govern- mental features. Later they lost their interest, in large measure. They were content to elect the officers and fill all the conspicuous offices, but the doing of the detail work, and in some cases the raising of a good deal of the money, they presently became wholly willing to leave to woman. How woman accepted with- ont challenge this burden thrust upon her, how for two centuries she performed her task for sheer love of the end to be sought, content to have all the honor and all the praise go to the men-these are matters of common record not only in New Haven but elsewhere.
Earliest in its period of influence, enmulative up to the present moment, her work in and through the churches must be put first in the record of woman's part in the building and shaping of New Haven. Women's home and foreign missionary societies are now in their second century. Women's aid societies, more especially for local work, are at the very foundation of the growth and influence, and even of the continued existence of many, if not most, of the churches. And no one who regards thoughtfully the history of New Haven can fail to recognize how great a part the constantly increasing number of churches has had in its formation. For that, therefore, which most especially makes the character of the city we may justly give woman eminent credit and praise.
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It may have been forgotten that when in 1833, there was formed in New Haven a society for the ercation and management of an asylum for orphans, the name given to it was "The New Haven Female Society for the Relief of Orphans, Half-Orphans and Destitute Children." There has been no diffienlty, however. in recognizing that this institution known as the New Haven Orphan Asylum was founded by women, has heen largely supported by women and is in the main conducted by women. It was started with Mrs. Abram Heaton as its first presi- dent, in a cottage on Grove Street, near Church. Five years later it had to move to quarters on Oak Street to accommodate its growing work. To be sure, it was a mere man, James Brewster, who became the "angel" of the institution in 1854 and built the beginning of the edifices which it still oeenpies on Elm Street, but he received his inspiration from the unfailing work of the women. Men have helped, then and since. Men always used to help with their work and money in the annual donation days. James Brewster's son, Frederick F. Brew- ster, came to the rescue again in 1916, when the growth of the institution made it imperative that it have more room, he gave a large traet of land in Whitney- ville for the new plant, and gave a generous start to the $250,000 fund for new buildings. Men helped raise the rest of it. But when the new buildings, whose erection is delaved by war conditions, are erected, women, as they have done from the first, will still carry on the noble work. And the foremost of the women, in this case, will be Miss Lina M. Phipps, who for years has been the guiding spirit of the institution.
St. Francis, the Catholic institution which jointly with the one just men- tioned, cares for the orphaned young of New Haven, was founded in 1865. Its business affairs are managed by a corporation consisting of all the Catholic pastors of the New Haven district which it serves, but the Sisters of Mercy do the actual work of the institution, and here again the women have been for half a century past laboring for the good of New Haven.
It is distinctly stated that the Home for the Friendless, which for some years past has been located at Clinton Avenne in Fair Haven, was "started by benevo- lent ladies." By such it has been conducted ever since, and through them the money is raised for its support. Its original plan was to serve a purpose some- what like that of the Florence Crittenton Home, but since the Crittenton insti- tution has come into such adequate prominence, the Home for the Friendless is given opportunity to do a somewhat broader work, and cares for destitute wives with small children, for women without means who have become enfeebled in health, or have reached advaneed years without friends or resources. It is, in- deed, in a large way what its name indicates. At the head of its board of man- agement is Mrs. J. M. Greist.
The Florenee Crittenton Home, established in the eighties, was for nearly thirty years on Oak Street at the head of Dwight, but in 1913 was enabled to erect on Campbell Avenue in West Haven a building more adequate for its growing work. Though one of the chain of homes which were started by a man, its inspiration was a woman, and women have of necessity carried on its work.
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The Young Women's Christian Association was organized in 1880, and of course women were baek of it. It was chartered in 1882, and shortly after that acquired the building on East Chapel Street near Wooster Square out of which has evolved its present equipment. Miss Helena Wilcox, whose home was in Mad- ison, was identified with it in the earlier years. Last year a campaign was con- dueted for seenring funds for an enlarged building. It was successful, but like mueh work of this sort, it is being delayed for better labor and building con- ditions.
In 1872 there was formed a society called the United Workers, of which women were the controlling factors and chief workers. The society did an excel- lent general work, but its most conspienous activity for a part of its history, was its eondnet of a boys' club. This was started in 1875, and probably was the first boys' elnh formed in New Haven. It was supported and its workers paid through the efforts of the women. The value of its work is readily recognized.
No more valuable work has ever been started by men or women in New Haven than the day nurseries, now the care of the Mothers' Aid Society. Nobody but a woman would have thought of the idea of saving homes from breaking up by providing for women suddenly thrown on their own resources for the sup- port of themselves and their children a place where those children might be cared for while they worked by day. The women pay a fee for this care, which saves their pride but does not support the work. The women of the society see to it that the deficit is made up. These nurseries have again and again been praised as a force for conserving the future citizenship of the city. There are three of them now, the Leila on Greene Street, the Hope of George Street and one for Italian children on Oak Street. The president of the Mothers' Aid Society is Mrs. Frank S. Butterworth.
A work of similar nature is that of the Elm City Free Kindergarten society which provides for the care of young children who may not have satisfactory home conditions, or whose mothers may not be able to take care of them at all times of day. It has kindergartens at 49 Oak Street and 93 Water Street. Its president is Mrs. Henry Brewer.
Men and women have worked together in the Lowell House settlement work at 198 Hamilton Street, which has repeatedly been mentioned elsewhere, but the women have usually been in the majority. Its president is Prof. Henry W. Farnam, and Dr. Julia E. Teele is its secretary.
The Visiting Nurse Association is primarily a work of women. Supported by private voluntary subseription, it sends trained nurse visitors wherever in the city they are most needed, usually for temporary service. The value of the work thus done in relieving sickness, earing for those who need more time and care than a physician can devote to them, and teaching habits of right living and disease prevention, is beyond computation. The president of this associa- tion is Miss Lillian Prudden, and the superintendent for some years past has been Miss Mary G. Hills.
Such works as these are works of mercy and benevolence. Perhaps they
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are the most valuable that women have done in this community. But they are not all. For the work of women reaches to every field of endeavor in its con- stant course. Women, of course, have their patriotic societies here, and they are not patriotic in name only. The Daughters of the American Revolution have two chapters, of members worthy of their ancestry. The Mary Clap Wooster Chapter was organized in 1893. and its present regent is Miss Emily Louise Gerry. It is now one of the largest chapters in New England, and in all its twenty-five years has done a consistently practical and earnest work. Such an endeavor as helping to finance the work of John Foster Carr in providing practical guidebooks for immigrants is a good example of what its members have done. A second chapter, the Eve Lear, was organized in 1915, and as its founders were in part from the older chapter. its standing is equally high. Its regent is Mrs. John T. Manson.
The New Haven Woman's Club was organized in 1900 as the Mothers' Club. which name may indicate something of its original purpose. It was to improve the welfare of the younger generation, to make New Haven a better place for it to live in. It has worked in many ways, educational, literary, social and other. About three years ago, feeling that it might broaden the appeal of the elub, the name was changed to the New Haven Woman's Club. Its organizer was Mrs. Frances Sheldon Bolton. Its president in 1917 was Mrs. James Prior Wood.
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