USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 32
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51
A younger association, in age and character, is the New Haven Girls' Club, which was organized in 1914. It has its headquarters at 14 Trumbull Street, with a large membership, and is doing a good work.
The New Haven Conneil of Jewish Women exists to serve the welfare of women of that faith in and near New Haven, and has a worthy record of service for. the welfare of the community.
The New Haven County Farm Bureau, organized about five years ago, opened to women of earnest endeavor an opportunity which they were quiek to seize, and New Haven women have already had an enviable share in a work which is becoming state and nation-wide. The league aimed to improve the condition of the farmer, but women must look after the farmer's wife. From New Haven, the headquarters for this county, women have gone out to all the towns around with advances of the efficient plans of the Farm Bureau, and of the Federal Department of Agriculture for showing the farmer's wife how better to help herself. Important results of this work have already been shown in the reports of the Farm Bureau.
II
Women have associated from the start in the work of the New Haven Civic Federation, but no more positive or important fruit of their work has appeared than in the achievements of the section for the protection of minors.
In March of 1915 the federation published a study of the problem of girl delinqueney in New Haven, by Miss Mabel A. Wiley. It was not sensational.
264
A MODERN IHISTORY OF NEW HAVEN
It showed, probably, conditions no worse than might be found in most eities of the same size, and some smaller than New Haven. But taken in connection with reports that had been made of delinqueney among boys, it convineed think- ing men and women that it was high time to do something more and different for offsetting the waywardness of some of the unprotected young.
Especially did the city need, they believed, a children's court. But why stop at that ? There was no proper provision for children, that is, minors, from the time of their arrest until the time of their trial. The Organized Charities Building, thongh ill fitted, had served this purpose in a way, but the number of delinquents had increased to the point where it could no longer do this. It was not a jail and could not, if it was minded to do so, ensure the retention and delivery to the court the next day of those left in its eare. Moreover, there was no means except the service of an overworked probation offieer to see to the proper direction of delinquents kept on probation by the court. And there was no woman probation officer.
Women had brought these matters to public attention ; women met the emer- geney. They would not have been able to do this so soon or so effectively but for the material assistance of two of their mmmber. The gift to the City of New Haven, fully refitted and prepared for its work, of the Children's Building at 281 Orange Street, has already been mentioned. With it goes a story.
Early in 1916 it was announced that some philanthropie eitizen or citizens, whose name was withheld, had purchased the building on Orange Street and would refit it for a place of detention and trial for juvenile delinquents. There was some wonderment, but the work began at once. Not until the spring of 1917, when the building was completed and opened, were the names of the donors made known. The gratitude was greater than the surprise when they were revealed as Mrs. Percy T. Walden and her sister, Mrs. Frank D. Berrien, and the building a memorial to their father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Whittlesey. But there was a surprise of another sort when the full nature and purpose of the building were made known.
For this was not a jail; it was a home. It was not a place of stern tribunal; it was a place where the judge and the delinquent might talk it over in quiet and without the publicity and other undesirable features of the poliee court, and come to a settlement giving the youth all the ehanee the law allowed. The whole arrangement was such as to attempt a cure for delinqueney, not that aggravation of it which the police and courts had so long, from no particular fault of their own, been prodneing. It is as fine a tribute as could be given to the spirit and discernment of womanhood in New Haven-for this was dis- tinetly a woman's work-to deseribe the Imilding somewhat in detail :
The building is one of the fine old residenees of Orange Street, still bearing, outwardly, all the attraction of the earlier days. It has none of the earmarks of a police building or place of detention. Inside, it has a court room which looks as though it might be the library of a gentleman prepared to receive visitors, that gentleman being the judge. It has two adjoining rooms where
265
AND EASTERN NEW HAVEN COUNTY
probation officers meet the boys and girls who report to them. It has detention quarters for boys, which include single bedrooms, not eells, with equipment for shower baths, central recreation room and supervisor's room. There are de- tention quarters for girls, which also consist of comfortable rooms with single beds. There is a pleasant dining room and house kitchen.
This is only a part. The court has to observe the law as to penalties, and of course in the most flagrant eases the law must take its course, but there are very few of these. This building is not intended for the incorrigible, but for the majority who are corrigible. When the boy or girl enters that building- it is through the basement-a bathing and sterilizing department does its best to make him or her and the elothing elean outwardly. After the court has done its part, the child is sent home if there is a place that can properly be called its home. Often there is not, and that is the reason why the child is in detention. In such a case, there are the disciplinary schools, one for the boys and another for the girls. These are under the direction of the Board of Education, and are used for the compulsory instruction of chronic truants as well as for those who have been arrested. They are in many ways attractive sehools. For the boys they have their shops as well as sehoolroom, with shower baths, playground and garden. The girls have the same advantages, except that they may learn domestie science instead of woodworking.
In some ways the work of this building is preventive as well as corrective. Its whole attitude is that of winning, not punishing, the unfortunate child. It is recognized that although what is for convenience called delinquency is more often the sin of parents than of their offspring, and the whole plan of the organization is to prevent, if may be, its repetition in another generation. Those who have observed the workings of this institution in its comparatively brief time of operation are convinced that its theory is sound, and that its plan will be a snecess.
III
Some five years ago a company of thoughtful New Haven women started after the same end-that of preventing delinquency-by another course. The viee of the dance hall, and the viee it bred, had been sadly shown. It was, as it then existed, doing more than any other single thing to ruin the young girls-and for that matter, the young men-of the city. The police wouldn't or didn't stop it. It seemed that the sensible thing was an antidote. Why not try offering the young people a place for daneing which should have more attractive- ness than the danee hall of commerce, but none of its vicious elements, with a supervision that would be real, but unobjectionable ?
The first problem was to find the place. It did not take the ladies long to diseover, if they did not know to begin with, that certain of the modern school- houses, having large assembly halls with good floors, were nearly ideal for the purpose. But the Board of Education was not easily persuaded that such a use
266
A MODERN HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN
of the school halls was justifiable. By which they meant, perhaps, not that they cared themselves, but that they felt unequal to the task of convincing the taxpayers, some of whom would never get the ladies' point of view, and cared mighty little, seemingly, about the girls who were going wrong in the dance halis, that their costly school buildings should be used for dancing. Meanwhile, the Board of Education tried to cover their excuse up with objections about the difficulty of janitors, lighting, musie and the like.
The ladies, seeing that they should need all the strength of organization as well as the arts of persuasion, had meanwhile formed themselves into the Social Service Dance Committee. The number was small at first, then increased, and . now has settled down to fifteen. Mrs. Stewart Means, the moving spirit of the whole affair from the first, was and is the chairman, and for most of the time Mrs. Charles W. Vishno has been the able second in command, though most of the ladies who have formed the changing committee from time to time have been on it because they saw the point, and were willing and able to help.
It is not especially a matter of interest to trace the process of convincing the guardians of the school buildings and securing the halls. It is sufficient to know that they got them-five of them, eventually. They took them mostly in the congested distriets. Green Street, Truman Street and Strong schools were the ones mostly used. Barnard School, in one of the less congested parts of the city, was opened later simply because the danees became so popular that those who might be expected to prefer less democratic places of gathering simply demanded them. The fifth was Ivy Street School.
These were not free danees, however. The thing was run on a business basis. The enterprise cost money. It was intended for those, in the main, who had been paying money to attend dances at less desirable places. An admission fee of twenty-five eents for the young men and fifteen cents for the young women was charged. And as the attendance at certain times of the year rose to 1,500 a night, it is easy to see that the ineome was considerable. But so was the expense. The Board of Education was paid $6.50 a night for each school hall, which was supposed to cover the extra pay for a janitor and the lighting. The orchestras were paid, not volunteer. There were paid dancing instructors and helpers, the work of the committee being only supervisory. The committee aeted, so far as possible, as chaperons, giving a social status to the affairs.
These danees have been tremendously popular. Care has been exercised 'not to have unpleasant overerowding, but there have been no vacant places. Those who came eame again. They had a genuinely good time. They met young people of their own age and of their own neighborhood. They had the best of music and dancing of the highest elass-not neglecting the popular. The ladies who chaperoned had the time of their lives. They saw life as some of them had never seen it before. They saw good being done by wholesale. And incidentally, but important, the committee always had a good balance after all bills were paid.
And what was the effect on the common dance halls? The cheapest and the
267
AND EASTERN NEW HAVEN COUNTY
worst of them died withont a struggle. The course which some of those deter- mined to survive took is perhaps the most interesting development, at any rate, the most convincing proof of the success of the effort. In Fair Haven, where Strong School was on Friday evenings taking away all his people, the proprietor of the principal dance hall saw a great light. He had a good hall, perhaps as good as Strong School's. Yet the young people would go to the school when it was open. What was the attraction? It must be the management of the ladies. So this proprietor, wise in his generation, came to the committee with a proposi- tion. They should take charge of his place two or three nights a week, and he would be coutent with sneh a pereentage of the profits as they saw fit to give him. The ladies were not greedy; they were too pleased with their moral victory to want any pay. But they made an equitable business arrangement, and for some time took partial charge of this publie dance hall, whose owner made good capital out of their prestige.
When hot weather made the elosing of the sehool danees imperative, the ladies looked about for some means of keeping the work going through the summer. They found the proprietor of the only dance hall at Savin Rock willing to give them entire charge one evening in the week. He offered them forty per eent over all expenses. They were content with twenty-five.
The committee now looks forward to the time when it may have its own eentral hall in the eity, where it may run danees several nights in the week, as the school danees are conducted only on Friday nights. But in any case, it feels that it has justified its faith, and those who know anything about the results of the work think so too. The members of the committee for 1917-18 are :
Mrs. Stewart Means, chairman ; Mrs. Charles W. Vishno, Mrs. F. W. Williams, Mrs. W. A. Rice, Mrs. Robert C. Denison, Mrs. Henry C. White, Mrs. Edward W. Hopkins, Mrs. F. J. Diamond, Mrs. F. T. Bradley, Mrs. Burton Mansfield, Mrs. F. C. Porter, Mrs. Arthur T. Hadley, Mrs. Alfred W. Wakeman, Mrs. C. J. Bartlett, Mrs. Joseph Whitney.
There is one woman who, in addition to participation in several of the activities already mentioned in this chapter, has been a leader in many others. Mrs. Berry L. Mott was for several years president of the Connectieut Congress of Mothers, and through it and other organizations as well as individual work has been very active for child welfare. For a year she was regent of Mary Clap Wooster Chapter, D. A. R. In the present war emergency she is active in a number of connections, chiefly, for the past year, the charge of a war farm which women maintained near Raee Brook, and which was a great sneeess. She has also for many years been a leader among the women in the work of Calvary Baptist Church. She is typical of many of the women of New Haven.
The work of the New Haven Chapter of the Red Cross has for years been carried on largely by women, and never more than in the present time. Rev. Robert C. Denison is chairman, but Mrs. Edward G. Buckland, as vice chair- man. is very active in earrying on the work. Some of her best assistants are
268
A MODERN HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN
Miss Edith Woolsey, Mrs. Raynham Townshend, Mrs. J. Morris Simmons and Mrs. Isaac M. Ullman.
Such are only a few of the features of woman's public work in New Haven. Her lines of endeavor increase with every year, as the scope of her activities and opportunities widens. As it stands, it is a record in which to rejoice.
CHAPTER XXVII
FRATERNITIES AND CLUBS
THE ANCIENT ORDER OF MASONRY IN NEW HAVEN-ODD FELLOWSHIP-THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS, ITS HISTORY AND PRESENT WORK-FRATERNITIES IN GENERAL- SOCIAL CLUBS- THE TRADES UNION
The universal tendency of man to fraternize has its demonstration in New Haven to an extent not often surpassed. There may be 175,000 men, women and children in the city today, but it seems as if there were fraternities, societies and clubs enough to hold them all. As a matter of fact, a great many of them are members many times over, and he who doesn't belong to something is poor indeed. Every organization in the long list has its purpose, some serious, some seemingly trifling. There is a wide range, from the Chamber of Commerce for the promotion of everything to the society for the promotion of eremation. Almost every fraternity which the broad empire of America can furnish is found here. And there are not a few that have been imported from other empires.
Thirty years ago, the historian was able to detail the list by name. Now that is a task too great for anybody short of the directory-maker. For there were, by the latest official count, 473 organizations of all elasses in New Haven. These classified somewhat in this way: Fraternal, 204; religious and benevo- lent, 46; soeial elubs, 47; war veterans associations, 12; miscellaneous, 164.
Inevitably, these reach a multitude of individuals-in fact, as has been said, practically all the individuals in New Haven. But it is obvious that they cannot be treated in detail. Some effort will be made to pay special attention to the oldest and most historie, along with those which have had the greatest influenee on the life and development of New Haven. Several of these, in faet, have been treated or will be treated elsewhere.
I
4
It is not alone as representative of the oldest fraternal orders that Masonry should be given first place in New Haven's fraternity record. For the lodge which stands first in the list of its Masonie bodies is "Old Hiram, No. 1." And that means, in brief, that Hiram Lodge, No. 1, A. F. & A. M., was the first chartered lodge in Connectieut. It was instituted by virtue of a warrant granted on the 12th of August, 1750, by "St. John's Grand Lodge of Boston,
269
270
A MODERN HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN
as descending from the Grand Lodge of England." General David Wooster, whose name is not otherwise unknown in New Haven annals, was the applicant.
General Wooster (he was Captain Wooster then) was the first master. The old charter, dated November 12, 1750. is still preserved in the archives. The first meeting was held the following month, and the lodge has had a continuous existence ever since. It has been the ancestor of many societies of its order. The old records are fragmentary, but sufficient to show steady interest, growth and prosperity. There were many movings in the early years, though an effort was made to provide an abiding home. The first meeting is believed to have been at Jehiel Tuttle's inn, which is said to have been on the west side of College Street, just north of Elm. Two years later. the lodge moved to Joseph Goldthwaite's, and appears to have met there mostly for the following deeade. Then there is mention of the "Bunch of Grapes" Tavern and the Fountain Tavern, kept by Christopher Kilby, one of the brothers. In 1769 and the years following there is varions mention of Brother Robert Brown's, the Masons' Arms and Brother Lathrop's. This moving habit was eontinned until 1801, when there was an establishment in the house of Amos Doolittle which lasted until 1813.
At the beginning of 1813 the lodge took up quarters in Harmony Hall in the Union School Building, which stood on the east side of Little Orange Street near the corner of Crown. It was a two-story structure, and at this time the first floor was fitted for a school building and the second for a hall, which hall now became the home of the lodge. Most of the stock was owned by the members of the lodge, so that this might be called the first home owned by the society.
This headquarters served until 1841, when the growth of the order in New Haven, and the prosperity of Hiram Lodge, made a more adequate building seem indispensable. This time it was proposed that the lodge ereet its own building, wholly snited for its purposes. There was, however, an alliance . with the Union School corporation which had to be continued or adjusted. The com- mittee charged with the matter arranged with the corporation to sell its building on Little Orange Street, and erect a new building with the top floor fitted for lodge purposes. The effort succeeded. after some controversy, to have this new building called the Masonic Temple. It was occupied by Hiram lodge in 1844, and served not only for this lodge, but for many years for all the Masonic lodges of New Haven.
Bnt within less than thirty years these quarters had become inadequate. The Grand Lodge found them so unsatisfactory that it declined to hold its grand ses- sion there in 1870, and found accommodations in the old State House. The Ma- sonic bodies appointed a joint committee to seeure a new temple. At that time Cornelins S. Bushnell, one of New Haven's leading citizens, a member of Wooster Lodge, was planning the erection of a lodge building at the southeast corner of Chapel and Union streets, and the committee arranged with him to make the building a Masonie Temple, with the top floor laid out according to the wishes of the craft. This temple was completed in 1872, and was said at the time to con-
271
AND EASTERN NEW HAVEN COUNTY
tain, in the "Blue Room" provided for Old Hiram, one of the finest lodge rooms in the country. It had been decorated, we are told, at an expense of $8,000. Each of the other lodges leased its share of the Temple.
But that temple, after serving for over thiry years as the best home the New Haven Masons had ever had, was found in the path of that merciless division of New Haven which the railroad made when it constructed its "ent" in 1905, aud the building was purchased for destruction. Somewhat suddenly, Old Hiram was compelled to look for other quarters. Many of the other lodges had estab- lished themselves in Masonic Hall on Church Street, which had become and still is the headquarters of most of the Masonie bodies of the city. But Hiram found that the space available to it there was not adequate to its considerable needs. Seeking other quarters, it tarried for a time in a building belonging to the Elks on Crown Street, but soon went to what had formerly been the Masonic Temple on Court Street, then the Steinert Building. There, in what. was called Fraternity Hall, quarters comfortable but not altogether satisfactory, it met for the next ten years.
The move it made in 1915 is justly regarded by Old Hiram as the most sat- isfactory in its history. For this was into a building erected almost exclusively for its own purposes, at a convenient central point in the city, handsome without and sumptuous within. Hiram lodge is very proud of its building at 234 Crown Street-not far. in a direct line, from where the fathers first landed only a little more than a century before its institution-and so are all New Haven people who pass it.
One hundred and sixty-eight years of Masonry in New Haven is but out- wardly sketched by these movements of its oldest lodge. The oldest records, in their incompleteness, fail to show just how many charter members the lodge had, but the tattered old initial page of the record book holds the names of twelve men who were present at that first meeting at Jehiel Tuttle's. It was on May 4, 1916, at the old lodge's newest home on Crown Street, that Winton C. Peck, raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason, made the one-thousandth member. But in those years. also, the one lodge has grown to six lodges of the A. F. & A. M. with several thousand members. In the immediate New Haven district there are also lodges at West Haven, Hamden, Branford and North Ilaven. There are two chapters of Royal Arch Masons in New Haven and one in West Haven. There are two councils of Royal and Select Masters in New Haven. It has its commandery of the Knights Templar, and three bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. So has the one body of 1750 grown to fourteen Masonic bodies in New Haven alone. The eleven others in the county eastward of New Haven are most of them direct descendants of the New Haven body, mostly of Old Hiram. Nearly all of them are veterans, now. as to age and standing.
Hiram Lodge, No. 1. instituted in 1750, has been duly described. Its master for the present year is Samuel A. Moyle. Following historieal rank, Wooster Lodge, No. 79, was instituted in 1851. Its master for 1918 is Carl W. Johnson.
.
272
A MODERN HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN
The next lodge to be instituted in New Haven proper was Trumbull, No. 22, in 1869, of which George C. Stock is now master. Connecticut Rock Lodge, No. 92, was instituted in 1864, and Carl A. Kandetski is master for the present year. Adelphi Lodge, No. 63, was not a New Haven body when instituted in 1823, being across the Quinnipiac in what was then East Haven. It thus comes next in age to Old Iliram. It meets in Masonic Hall on East Grand Avenue, and its master for 1918 is Ellsworth E. Cowles. Olive Branch Lodge, No. 84, in the Westville district, has since 1857 had a flourishing history. It has its own Masonic Hall at 905 Whalley Avenue. Hugh Gibb is its master for 1918.
West Haven also has its Masonic Temple, and its flourishing lodge, insti- tuted in 1873, is Annawon, No. 115. Joseph E. Southerton is its present master. Branford has one of the old lodges of the state, Widow's Son, No. 66, instituted in 1825. It meets in its own commodious Masonie Hall. James Milne, Jr., is its master. Day Spring Lodge, No. 30, of Hamden, is very old among the lodges, having been instituted in 1794. Its meeting place is in the Town Hall at Centerville, and its worthy master for 1918 is Leroy C. Wright of Whitneyville. North Haven's lodge is Corinthian, instituted in 1867. H. Wilson Clinton is its master for 1918.
Franklin Chapter, No. 2, Royal Arch Masons, was instituted in New Haven in 1818. Its present master is Daniel H. Gladding. Fair Haven East also has its Crawford Council, No. 19, of the same order, instituted in 1852, and Edwin C. Ilitcheoek as master.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.