USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 36
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Patrick T. O'Brien, son of New Britain, trained under Indge Henney of
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Hartford, has become recognized as one of the ablest of the attorneys of Meriden in the recent period. Of him it has been said that "he is faithful to his clients, l'air to his opponents and honest to the court." It is a good picture of him and of an ideal lawyer. Besides that he is prominent in the highest fraternal eireles and a hard worker for his city's welfare. There are George L. King, who has been prosecuting agent for the county, and Henry T. King, able lawyer and park commissioner, both of them prominent in legal circles. Wilbur F. Davis, for successive terms corporation counsel of Meriden, and prominent still as a counsel for some of the city's large corporations, is among Meriden's ablest older law- vers. Judge John Q. Thayer, though his life work has closed, has been a promi- nent factor in the city's life in the present period, being probate judge for almost two score years following 1893.
Of those whose service political has been at home Meriden has some dis- tinguished examples. Edgar ). Doolittle, for five terms mayor, a member of the state senate, since a bank director, always prominent in public work. has been one of the best ohler examples. Another was Benjamin Page, mayor in 1890 and 1891. These are a few of a long list, including such mayors as Lines, Reilly, Danaher and Cooke.
The amount of business done in Meriden requires a number of banks large in proportion to the city's size. Hence we are not surprised to find seven sub- stantial banking institutions-three national banks, two trust companies and two savings banks. The Meriden National Bank, chartered in 1833 and national- ized in 1855, has capital of $200,000 and its president is Herman Hess. The Home National has $400,000 capital and $175,000 surplus. It was founded in 1855 and nationalized in 1865. Edgar J. Doolittle is its president. The First National was chartered in 1863, and has capital of $200,000 and surplus of $300,000. Charles L. Rockwell is its president, as he also is of the Meriden Trust & Safe Deposit Company, with a capital and surplus of $75,000, and of the City Savings Bank, which has deposits of $4,957,506. The Puritan Trust Company, with a capital of $54,300, has C. E. Schunack for its president. The Meriden Savings Bank has been in existence since 1851, and has deposits of $8,542,474. Its president is Engene A. Hall.
Meriden has had the common experience with newspapers which have sprung up early like the grass, and withered and blown away, but some notably fit ones have survived. The older of these is the Morning Record, for it is the combination which was made in 1899 of the Meriden Republican, founded in 1860, and the Meriden Record. William A. Kelsey, the man behind the Kelsey printing press concern. has been a power in its publication, and Thomas II. Warnock is at present its editor. The Meriden Journal, which with growing acceptance fills the Meriden evening field, was started in 1886, and the men who laid its corner stones were Francis Atwater, Low Allen, Frank E. Sands and Thomas L. Reilly. The first has retired from active publication work, the see- ond rests from his earthly labors, Thomas L. Reilly has chosen the glittering path of politics and Mr. Sands remains the gatherer of the harvest of his and
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their hard work. He has proved in many ways that he is equal to the task of running a high class publishing business and getting out a good newspaper. He is a thoroughbred publisher and editor. a historian of accuracy and information, and a citizen who believes in Meriden and helps greatly to make the town worth while.
The unfolding story of Meriden has paid in the eloquent record of deeds the highest tribute that could be paid to some of the men who have made the town. They are only a few out of many. There has been a notable company of them in the past three decades, men who have honored their fine old New England com- munity by exalting the qualities that make New England great in the capitals of their state and nation, as well as at home. The life and work of one of these men have centered in Meriden, though his duties have often carried him far afield. One could not name three of the men who have made Meriden in the last quarter-century and fairly leave him out. George HI. Wilcox, son of the senior of the founders of the silver industry, son of Meriden, son of Yale, is nevertheless a man who has made himself. There is a romance, even if it is a romance of hard work, in his rise in a quarter of a century from office boy in his father's manufactory to president of the fifteen-million-dollar silver trust. He has done that-by keeping everlastingly at it. But there is a nobler romance in the way he has served his town. Wilcox. ITubbard, Miller-it is a great tri- umvirate. But with it must needs be ranked a dozen if not a score more of those who, hiding at home, have made the town.
Meriden, wreathing his tomb, cordially gives first honors of statesmanship to her "grand old man" at Washington, Senator Orville H. Platt. Ilis work and his rank make a tale familiar but never old. He was one of the best examples in the closing days of the last century at Washington of the men who by character make a small state great in the national gathering.
It is not through Senator Platt alone that Meriden has been represented at Washington. There is cordial appreciation from all for the man who rose from humble newspaper ranks to represent this district in the lower house and made a clean record there. Thomas L. Reilly, trusted citizen of Meriden, as his fellows proved by electing him mayor, made good, as ever, in the greater task.
And Meriden has had a governor in this period. It was as a foremost citizen of his town, where he stood at the head of one of its sound banks, that Abiram Chamberlain went to the governor's chair at Hartford. IFe won and held the honor of the state as well as he had held that of his own town, and came back to still greater honors. His work is done. but his inspiration lasts.
There is a woman of national fame who has carried Meriden with her to the temple. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, though not Meriden born, was so long associated with the community that it shares in her fame. It is not ashamed of the part- nership, for she has written down many words that have the germ of immortality.
One citizen with a service of a different sort has earned the highest gratitude. George Munson Curtis, son of the George R. Curtis whose memorial the public library is, with the best of old Connectient blood in his veins and true apprecia-
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tion of tradition and record, has earned unending gratitude by his services as Meriden's historian. His "Century of Meriden" is one of the most faithful and painstaking records which a citizen ever preserved for his loved eity, and to it the writer of this imperfect sketch of Meriden today cheerfully acknowledges great indebtedness.
Greatest of all the sons who have served Meriden are some, perhaps, whose story is yet to be told, who, on the far fields of battle for democracy, are offer- ing their lives, as have sons of Meriden in all our wars, for the cause of the right and true. The daily growing record of them cannot be set down here, nor of the many others, men and women, who are serving the war cause in number- Jess ways. They are the evolution of the military companies which grew up with Meriden in its progress, Companies 1 and L of the Second Regiment. They had in their ranks some of the best of Meriden's young men. They went with the Second Regiment to Nogales. They entered the maelstrom of war with the rest in 1917. Later that year they vanished into the mist of the west-European front. Company L commanded by a Meriden man, Captain Frank II. MeGar, and with two Meriden lieutenants, Samuel A. Tyler and Henry A. Riecke. Com- pany I went out under Captain William H. Whitney of Kensington. but two of its lieutenants were from Meriden, John R. Feazel and Herman St. J. Boldt.
CHAPTER XXX
MERIDEN (Concluded )
INTERESTING GROWTH AND PRESENT MANUFACTURING GREATNESS OF THE "SILVER CITY," A CHARACTERISTIC YANKEE MANUFACTURING TOWN
It would be difficult to find in the state of Connecticut a town so small or re- mote that it lacked, even from its earliest years, a trace of the practical working out of Yankee ingenuity. Meriden was no exception. Sodom Brook and Harbor Brook turned their water wheels in the early days, no doubt. As far back as the time when Meriden got its practical independence as a separate parish there was some activity of this sort, though it has for the most part escaped the record. It was well toward the end of the eighteenth century that Samuel Yale com- menced to make cut nails, partly by machine and partly by hand, each being separately headed by dint of heat and hammer. It seems to have been as an out- growth of this that there was a small factory in 1794 for the making of pewter buttons, and afterward for the production of other small articles of metal.
These were but straws to indicate the direction of the Meriden inclination, prophecies of what was to be. We have had conclusive modern demonstration that a manufacturing community is not made without either water or railroad communication, and Meriden in those days had neither. The great canal that was to make some part of Connecticut's fortune passed it five miles to the west- ward. The railroad did not come until 1840. Then Meriden manufacturing, whose substantial foundations were already laid, took a remarkable spurt. It must have been as early as 1820 that Meriden's manufacturing career really commenced. A considerable quantity of goods was produced, and toted by wagon to New Haven, or possibly to the canal, to be carried to market by water. Despite handicaps, the manufacturing of Meriden must have had a substantial start by the time the railroad came, for hardly in less than ten years should a town of 2,500 people have developed the thirty-five manufacturing establish- ments and seeured the 590 workers which the town had in 1849.
Looking back now, that seems a small beginning. The census of 1910-and the city and town have hardly stood still since that time-reported that the year before there were 120 manufactories in Meriden, with a total of 7,845 employes. These were backed by a capital of $17,645,000, paid annual wages and salaries of $5,429,000, and produced goods valned at $16,317,000. These are the last official figures available, but on the basis of the increase in the previous decade, it would
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be conservative to place the present number of Meriden's factory workers at 9,000 and its value of manufactured product at exceeding $20,000,000 a year. This showing, it must be remembered, is for a town of not over 35,000 people. And though Meriden participates in some measure in the manufacturing intensity which the demand for war materials has created, it does so less in proportion to its size than most larger cities.
Outside of Meriden, the popular impression is that little but silverware, or "white metal" goods, is made there. Meriden does not especially object to the nickname "Silver City." It earned it. It inherited the silver business. So it came about that in the era of great combinations of trade (or in restraint of trade, as you please) which the turn of the century knew, it was in Meriden that the International Silver Company found it desirable to establish its headquarters, and in and near Meriden that it found the majority of its important branches. It was not really silverware, but "Britannia, " that made Meriden famous. There was no trace of silver in the original Britannia metal, whose manufacture Asha- bel Griswold started in the upper part of Meriden in 1804. but it led. through the later invention of electro plating, to the development of modern plated ware as we know it. Ont of the Griswold enterprise, really the original Meriden manu- facturing venture of importance, grew a little less than half a century later the Meriden Britannia Company, which still fifty years later was merged in the International Silver Company. Over a century ago it was the town's most impor- tant industry. Today, employing between 3,000 and 4,000 persons, it still leads.
With that industry is inseparably connected the name of Wilcox, as indeed that name is associated with Meriden progress in many ways. Next to I. C. Lewis, who was president of the original metal industry when it was first incor- porated, were the brothers Horace C. and D. C. Wilcox, the former being seere- tary and treasurer. His son, George H. Wileox, today the president of the Inter- national Silver Company, is the evidence that the control of the industry has never gone out of Meriden's hand. In fact, Meriden is and has been, by virtue of the mastery of this foremost citizen of the town, the center of the great silver manufacturing industry, the largest of its line in the world, with an invested capital of $20,000,000, with fifteen factories in the United States and an interest in several more in other countries.
Not all the silver shaped in Meriden is handled in this factory, however. There are nine other plants in the town. Five of them are branches of the Inter- national Silver Company, and most of them were in existence when the combina- tion was formed. Of these the oldest and most important is the already men- tioned Meriden Britannia Company, now "Factory E," at 48 State Street. The next in age, and first in importance as a maker of silver plate, went into the trust as William Rogers Manufacturing Company, that being the name of a factory which was brought down from Hartford. The Meriden name was C. Rogers and Brothers, and its product was so famons that it is still sold under the Rogers name, though it is now Factory Il of the combination. Then there is the Barbon Silver Company on Colony Street, Factory A. The Forbes Silver Company is
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a department of Factory E, and the Wilcox Silver Plate Company is Factory N. These make, with the factories in Wallingford, not only the head but three- fifths of the body of the great American silver trust. Two more of the constitu- ent companies are in Waterbury, only twelve miles away. This is what makes Meriden the "Silver City."
Next to silver, perhaps the factors which make Meriden most widely famous are the "Miller lamp" and the "Parker gun." A great part of the world still uses the classic wiek to feed its flame, and the lamps which run by oil outnumber far the jets of gas or the electric glows. The Edward Miller Company, which today makes the Miller lamp in one of Meriden's largest factories, employing nearly a thousand people, traces its beginnings to 1844, when the business had its first modest start. Incorporated in 1866, the company flourishes by the mak- ing of lamps, lanterns and chandeliers of all sorts, as well as brass kettles, tinners' hardware and allied articles. Edward Miller, eminent citizen of Meriden, is still the president of the concern.
The manufacture of guns is but a part of the business of Parker Brothers, but their excellent firearm, as a sporting gun, is justly and widely known. Their plant, while smaller in apparent size than some of the city's well known indus- tries, employs largely skilled mechanies, and has a standing important ont of proportion to its size.
There are other things with the Parker name which play an important part in the city's industry. For there is a Parker lamp that has its fame as well as the Miller, and there is a Parker clock. The former is made by the Charles Parker Company, of which Charles Parker is president, and the latter by the Parker Clock Company, which gets its name from the same Charles Parker. its founder. Its president is W. H. Lyon.
Meriden's light can never be hidden under a bushel. Another reason why is the Bradley & Hubbard Manufacturing Company, another outgrowth of that group of veteran industries that were laying the foundations before the days of the railroad. Its incorporation was in 1852, as Bradley, Hatch & Company. There were the names of the men who later led it into its great prosperity. William L. and Nathaniel Bradley. Walter Hubbard. a name which stands for great and good deeds in Meriden, came into the firm later. The Bradley interests still predominate. and are represented by N. L. Bradley, the present head. This concern, second as an employer of citizens of Meriden, now with a capital stock of $950,000 and not far from 2,000 employes, makes a wide variety of lamps, gas and electric fixtures, and its product has a great fame.
There is a different and more general line of silver manufacture which is represented in Meriden by four important concerns, who make silver plated nov- elties, jewelry of silver, granite and plated table ware. They are Manning, Bowman & Company, A. H. Jones & Company, Wilbur B. Hall and the Frank Tilling Silver Company.
The third product for which Meriden has an international reputation is cut- lery. A generation ago, if the Connectient boy-as Connectient boys always did
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-looked at the heel of his jackknife blade to see where it was made, the chances were about ten to one that he found the name of a Meriden concern. The Meri- den ('utlery Company has been making table and pocket cutlery at South Meriden since 1855. Formerly its factory was run entirely by water power. It has one of the finest equipments for this line of work, and produces now, as it did half a century ago, goods whose name is their guarantee. The coneern employs about 300 people. II. A. Curtis is its president, and treasurer of its $400,000 eap- ital. The other eutlery concern, equally prominent, is the Miller Brothers Cut- lery Company, which for almost half a century-it was organized in 1870-has been doing its share to make Meriden famous. Its line was general for many years. Its specialties today are steel ink erasers and steel pens. It also employs upward of 300 persons. Apparently it is now a Rockwell concern, for C. L. Rockwell is president and C. F. Rockwell treasurer and general manager.
Once again, Meriden is widely known through its product of musical instru- ments. In the days when music depended somewhat less on mechanical perform- ance, when the cabinet organ was found in every home that did not have a piano, "Wileox & White," was a household name. W. H. White, the pioneer organ builder, was the mechanical man behind it, and the Wilcox was the even more sub- stantial Horace C. Wilcox of the silver industry. Since 1877 it has made goods as sterling as their silver. the cabinet organ as long as it was demanded, then the "pneumatie symphony" or self playing organ, still later the " Angelus." This is a playing attachment for any piano, now developed to a high degree of accuracy and shading capability. It has a capital stock of $450,000, and employs upwards of 250 people. The Aeolian Company was organized in 1887, when the demand for mechanically played musical instruments began to be positively manifested. It makes player pianos of a high grade, and its capital stock of $2,000,000 may indicate something of its place of importance in the instrument making world. It employs about 500 people. The heads of the company are H. B. Tremaine, president. and Frederick L. Wood, superintendent of the construction of musie rolls.
Meriden has a large manufacture of electrie fittings and appliances. Besides the Bradley & Hubbard Company, whose line runs now largely to electric fixtures, there are the Connecticut Electric Equipment Company and the Connecticut Telephone and Equipment Company, with a quarter of a million capital, mak- ing telephones, telephone specialties and electric goods in general. The Handel Company, with a capital of $100,000, has since 1903 been making electrie light fixtures. It employs about 150 persons. Henry B. Todd is a producer of X-ray machines and appliances.
In the making of out glass Meriden has seven concerns-all but one of the industries of this sort in the state. In addition to the International Silver Company. there is the J. D. Bergan Company, which James D. Bergan and oth- ers organized in 1891, greeting a four-story factory on Miller Street. This concern is one of the leaders in the manufacture. The other concerns are the Meriden Cut Glass Company of Pratt Street, now a branch of the International
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FACTORY OF THE WILCOX & WHITE ORGAN COMPANY, MERIDEN
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Silver Company as Factory 'T, the Silver City Cut Glass Company of Hicks Street, Hall & Callahan of Webster Street, James J. Niland of Miller Street and C. F. Monroe Company of West Main Street, which has an important and unusual factory now employing over 200 people. With these are more or less allied four substantial jewelry-making concerns. Probably the leader of these is the E. A. Bliss Company, started in 1882 and incorporated in 1890, which employs over 100 persons in the making of artistic jewelry of con- siderable variety. Armstrong Brothers have a good sized plant on Vine Street, and the others are the American Jewelry Manufacturing Company on Pratt Street and C. G. Armstrong on South Vine.
Though this is not reckoned a leader among the city's industries, Meriden has nine hardware making plants, the largest of which is Foster, Merriam & Company, dating back to 1866. This coneern, now capitalized at $240,000, employs nearly 500 people. It makes a general line of cabinet hardware, and has a wide reputation for first class product. Meriden is also a prominent pro- ducer of casket hardware, the leader of that at present being the International C'asket Hardware Company, capitalized at $100,000 and employing over 100 men. The others are the Charles Parker Company, already mentioned, the Bird- sey & Raven Company on East Main Street, the Browne & Dowd Company, general specialties, the M. B. Schenk Company, casters, and the F. J. Wallace Company on Britannia Street. This last concern is also prominent as a maker of saddlery.
The variety of the others is almost endless, and among them are not a few concerns prominent either because of their long establishment or because of the conspicuous excellence of their product. Here is the Connectieut Shock Absorber Company, a concern founded as recently as 1911, making a standard automobile fitting, with a capital of $110,000. Ernest C. Wilcox is president. Griswold, Richmond & Glock Company is an oldl Meriden concern which makes cornices. The Lane Construction Company, John S. Lane & Son, quarrymen and the Lane Quarry Company, three allied concerns, employ together a con- siderable number of people, and form an important portion of Meriden's indus- tries. The Lyon & Billard Company is an old concern supplying coal and build- ers' materials. The Meriden Tron & Brass Company, the Meriden Machine Tool Company and the Meriden Press & Drop Company are a group of standard con- cerns contributing materially to the general prosperity. A younger firm than the makers of the Parker gun is the Meriden Firearms Company, which keeps half a thousand employes busy in the making of standard guns and small arms. It was organized in 1905, by machinists from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, who took over the old plant of the Meriden Malleable Iron Company, closed since 1895. It is now controlled by Sears, Roebuck & Company of Chicago, and makes goods worthy to be ranked with the more famous Parker gun.
Meriden has long been marked as a center of the printing and publishing trade, and well advertised as a producer of printing presses. Aside from its newspaper plants, which have elsewhere been mentioned, it has the Curtiss-Way Vol. I-20
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Company, a large concern which was established in 1902, and employs nearly 150 persons in the production of calendars, calendar pads and similar special- ties. The Meriden Gravure Company, established since 1888, has a wide repu- tation for the production of high class photogravure and all types of modern reproduction and printing work. Meriden has one printing press manufactory, incorporated in 1905, but considerably older than that in its beginnings. The Kelsey Press Company, started in 1872, now capitalized at $75,000, makes hand and small power presses in large quantities, and its product is widely and well known. William A. Kelsey is at its head.
The list of industries in Meriden could not more fittingly be rounded out than by mention of a firm whose work stands in almost every town of Connecti- ent, and in many towns beyond, in every case a truly living monument to the ability, industry and genius of a man whom Meriden can never honor too gen- erously. II. Wales Lines is not a native of Meriden, but the finest of the blood of old Connecticut stock is in his veins, and he did not immigrate from farther away than Naugatuck. Moreover, he came to Meriden when he was only twenty- six, and he has stood by the town ever since. What he has been to Meriden in the over half a century sinee is written in the political, the civie, the financial, the industrial and the constructive history of the town. When he came, a rap- idly developing manufacturing community was just expanding to the status of a city. It had the virile, aggressive, progressive swing which strongly appealed to his positive spirit. He threw himself with all his vigor into its life. He has been a part of it ever since-is still, despite the slowing weight of four score years. In a very broad sense he has been a constructor. He was a mason at the start, and the works of brick and stone which he and his firm have buildled stand in almost every city and many of the towns of the state he loves, and in eities of at least four other states, while Meriden shows in numerous examples of its best publie and private architecture his industry and skill. These stand, and sneh is the character of their construction that for ages they will stand, memorials to a very remarkable man.
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