USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 37
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The finest of Revolutionary American ancestry was Mr. Lines's heritage, and in his busy life he has found time to pay large tribute to the traditions of New England and the nation. He is a member of many patriotic societies, and his spirit of brotherhood is evidenced in his fraternity and elnb affiliations, which are numerous. He is a thirty-third degree Mason. How he has been for three terms mayor of Meriden, how he was member of the Legislature, delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1902 and candidate for Congress, how he has been a leader in many a work for the betterment of Meriden and his state- these and many other features of his abundant career are written on more enduring pages than those of any history.
The firm which Mr. Lines has founded is today an institution in Meriden, as potent for the establishment of the town in American honor as the varied products which Meriden sends over the world. It was Perkins & Lines when it was founded in 1864, and in 1878 the H. Wales Lines Company was formed,
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being incorporated ten years later. Henry E. Fairchild, whom Mr. Lines associated with him in 1878, remains as a prominent member, now vice presi- dent. Outside of its numerous structures in Meriden, one of the best examples of the firm's work is the remarkable group in Naugatuck for which the late J. II. Whittemore was responsible. It must always be the pride of this firm that it had a large hand in the building of what, shaped by world-famous architects, competent judges have declared one of the finest groups of buildings in America. Their like as to construction is all over Connecticut, on the campuses of Yale and Princeton Universities, at Philadelphia, in New York City, at Mount IIer- mon, Massachusetts. The Lines Company's most widely known building work, possibly, was a model of fine old colonial architecture constructed as the Con- neetient Building at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, into which Mr. Lines must have builded the best of his finely appreciative soul.
CHAPTER XXXI
ORANGE
EVOLUTION OF THE COLONIAL PARISH OF NORTH MILFORD INTO THE TOWN OF ORANGE, AND THE CHARACTER OF A RARE FARMING COMMUNITY
There probably is not in all Connectient a town of stranger contrasts than is Orange as it stands today. The well-steered crow, flying between Conneeti- ent's two largest cites, would pass, as he left New Haven, first over an urban district scarcely distinguishable in nature from the Elm City itself. Then he would sight a modern amusement resort not rivalled in size or money-catching vanities this side of Coney Island. Then he would pass over some of the most delightful rolling farm district of the state, with widely scattered houses and winding roads. Then he would cross, just after leaving Orange, the state's noblest river next to the Connecticut, lying amid seenery which even that pie- turesque valley can hardly rival.
The town stretches from West River and the harbor due west to the Housa- tonie. For the most part its surface is gently undulating country. There is a point in the northwest corner locally known as Grassy Hill, and a longer range south of it, running over into Milford, down on the maps as "George's Cellar Hill." Wepawaug River, once a stream esteemed for its water power, flows down from the Woodbridge hills, and Rare brook comes to join it from the same direction. Indian River and Oyster River. streams that nobody outside of New England would deign to call more than ereeks, start in Orange. At the north are the Maltby lakes. The Wepawang, along with these, now finds its greatest utility in serving West Haven with water. And on the western side, a part of the town viewed comparatively little, it seems, by man, there is the Housatonie, a stream in which any town might rejoice. From West River to the Honsatonie is no more than eight miles. From the Woodbridge line to Oyster River Point it is about six.
Nature has done much for Orange: man has tried to do more. Three rail- road lines eross its territory. The main line to New York, now taking the width of four tracks, was the first. This did little for Orange except to afford it a station at West Haven, where once on a time the trains used to stop. Then the Derby line meandered across in a wavy curve. taking in the stations of Alling- town or West Haven, Tyler City and Orange Center. And the Naugatuck line slides down from Derby, hugging the east shore of the river, managing to avoid
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making any stop in Orange. Last of all came the trolley, skirting the northern edge of the town, mostly using it as a convenient course to get from Derby to New Haven.
There was a "North Milford" within a score of years after New Haven was founded. There was a "West Haven" as soon as the settlers of Quinnipiac began to overflow to the westward. But there was no Orange until 1822. In that year the town was incorporated, and in some tardy sense of gratitude to William, Prince of Orange, for his generosity to Connecticut in the matter of a charter, it was named after him. The settlers eould hardly have felt any such gratitude to a certain Englishman who came later than William of Orange, one General Garth, though there seems good reason to believe that he put Orange on the map, as it were. Anyway, he discovered Savin Roek, for he landed there on July 5, 1779, proceeding thence to New Haven without any more delay than was caused him by the "Defenders" at the Allingtown gates. One who enters New Haven by that route now has startling reminder of that event, in the militant Defenders' Monument.
Up to the time of its incorporation as a town, the center of Orange, as we now know it, had continued to be called North Milford, as it was, indeed, in origin. That section had been surveyed in 1687, but was settled somewhat later than 1700. There are a few scattering names of pioneers. One of them was Richard Bryan, who gave the name of Bryan's Farms to a certain locality. There was Jonathan Rogers, with his sons Jonathan T. and Jonah. There were Benjamin Clark and his sons; also Jonathan Treat. Matthew Woodruff came later, and there are his prominent descendants. Still later was S. T. Oviatt, who kept the store, and when the railroad eame was its first station agent, com- bining that with the office of postmaster.
In the outcome of settlement, we have the widely divided Orange of today. The effort to make the part called Orange the main part has never been a suc- eess. The center of population was West Haven at the first: it is more than ever so now. The center of town government is at West Haven. Orange, as the place of the railroad station and postoffice of that name, is only a minor part of the town. But for purposes of historieal precedence, and for even better reasons, we may consider Orange first in the order.
Orange-or North Milford, as it was-had scattered farms from near the beginning of the eighteenth century. It had become quite a village, we may suppose, by the beginning of the next. It has grown with becoming deliberation ever since. Now and then a city resident sees a place that takes his eve, and buys to build. Now and then an old resident, who had wandered to the city, comes baek. Its whole eastern part, especially its upper shore front, is taken up by growing West Haven and ingrowing Savin Rock. Allingtown, an over- flow of New Haven, gradually works westward. But there is wide room for this western movement, and the major portion of the territory of Orange is yet the unspoiled country-broad acres, favorable for the farmer.
Time was when somebody had a dream of building a metropolis, or some-
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thing of the sort, in the very heart of the town. It was in 1887 that the factory of the Peerless Buttonhole Attachment Company was established in what is known as Tyler City. A railroad station was soon after built, whose traees still remain as a flag station. A large school building was erected. Surely here were the "makin's" of a city. It was a short-lived dream. Within eight years the factory had vanished, and the school building was used as a county home. The rare trains on the New Haven-Derby line still stop, on request, at the old station. Otherwise. Tyler City might be forgotten.
Earlier than that, Orange had a mining boom. There is hardly a town in Connecticut which does not show sufficient traces of some supposedly precious stone or mineral to create an excitement, if properly exploited. In Orange it was, supposedly, silver and copper. A New York company developed a copper mine in the western part of the town. There was a nine days' furore, but the copper turned ont as all other copper mined in Connecticut has done. It was real. but it was in microscopic quantities and was mined at extravagant cost.
Some years ago there was some desultory attempt to utilize the Wepawang, the enterprising creek that flows through the center of the town, for manufactur- ing purposes. At one time the Allings had a woolen mill somewhere up the stream. But long ago that was given np, and the Wepawang is mainly utilized as a feeder for city water supply. At Allingtown, in a new factory built within the past three years, the American Mills Company, which owns what was the New Haven Web Factory at Centerville, has a branch textile mill. Aside from that, the Orange manufacturing district is now confined to West Haven, which has a number of important industries,
The one "country church" of Orange, the Congregational, dates back to the North Milford days of 1791, thirty years before the incorporation of the town. As Bryan's Farms the center seems to have been best known when the people made the first beginnings of a church there. They had become tired of driving five miles to church in Milford, and moreover, they wanted to start their own community. So they built in 1791, on the "public green," we are told, the plain thirty by thirty-six building that formed their first church. Their number was small, and they seem not to have dared assume the burden of supporting their own pastor. These fledglings must have been tenderly regarded by the mother church, for its pastor, the Rev. Bezaleel Pinneo, was good enough to come up once in two weeks and preach to them. How long this arrangement continued is not clear, but apparently the church had no pastor of its own until 1805, when it settled the Rev. Erastus Seranton, a native of East Guilford. lle remained for twenty-two years. The records date the organization of the church from 1804.
The church saw prosperity under Mr. Scranton, and such growth that the primitive first building was soon outgrown. For as early as 1810 it was replaced by the present typical New England church edifice, which excellently serves its purpose, though the congregation often, in these days of modern church houses,
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feels the need of ampler facilities for doing neighborhood and community social service.
Of the pastors who have served this church in the recent period some of the best remembered are Rev. H. W. Hunt, who was pastor from 1884 to 1896, and Rev. B. M. Wright, from 1896 to 1907. Since 1908 the pastor has been Rev. Newell M. Calhoun, D. D., a leader and teacher of distinguished ability, and a meniber of the Yale corporation. Under his guidanee the church shows good health in all its departments, and is serving the community as well as it has done in all its history.
As ever since the early days, Orange preserves its distinet existence apart from the life on its eastern and southeastern borders. Though less than five miles from a large and busy eity, though it has what amounts to a eity within its town limits, Orange is still the unspoiled country town. It is governed from West Haven-but West Haven pays the bills. It also furnishes much of the business for Orange. Orange has its own life, and with it is well content. It has its own sterling citizens, some of whom rank high in the honor and work of the state. They do not deserve. and doubtless never did, the unenlightened stricture of the East Guilford father of the Rev. Erastus Seranton, who is said to have flippantly remarked that "Erastus is preaching the gospel to the ever- lasting heathen of North Milford."
The name of Woodruff, for almost two centuries associated with Orange, has more than ever a leading place there. In the very center of the village is the seed growing farm of S. D. Woodruff & Sons, employing a large force of men, and producing reliable farm and garden seeds and supplies. The head of that firm is the Hon. Watson S. Woodruff, who has run the gamut of the local offices, been state senator and still occupies a prominent position in polities. Robert J. Woodruff, attorney, has his office in New Haven, where he has been prosecutor in the court of common pleas, but he has always lived in Orange, where he has a fine residence, and an interest in the seed firm.
One of the institutions of the Orange of today is the model dairy farm of Wilson H. Lee-Fairlea Farm. Some dozen years ago Mr. Lee, with foresight of the part the farm was to have in the publie appreciation and service of this time, purchased a farm in the heart of Orange. There he established a plant for the producing of milk on scientific principles, with the application of the same exact business methods which he uses for the making of a perfect eity directory, or any product of the printer's art. He has demonstrated, more con- cInsively. perhaps than any man in Connecticut that farming, at least as far as the producing of milk goes, ean be made an exact science. He not only raises milk of an extremely high quality, but he raises it in an excellent way-and he makes the process pay. Tributes to his success are the demand for and the price paid for his product, and the fact that his dairy is recognized as one of the finest in America. Moreover, experts come even from other countries to study his system and methods, some of which were distinctly original with Mr. Lee. He has succeeded as well with other branches of farming than the raising
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of milk. In short, with Fairlea Farm he is performing a wonderful service for the agriculture of the state, a service which he supplements by his work through the state board of agriculture and the farm bureaus of this and other states, whose work he has had great influence in promoting. As for Orange, he has done more to "put it on the map" as a town of fine farming possibilities than any farmer it has ever had.
Many others, seed of the sterling old North Milford stock, make the Orange of today. Names like Clark and Russell and Treat, Andrew and Baldwin and Stone, are still conspicuous in the town. Mingled with them are patronymies like Pucilio and Farino and Cuzzoereo. Ceretto and Linquist and Logidice. The farmers taught in the Old World are competing with those taught in the New. The social order of the old town changes accordingly, becoming thereby more truly democratic.
Orange, though West Haven spreads from the entrance of West River to the harbor down to the point of Savin Rock, is not without seacoast. Between Savin Rock and the beginning of Woodmont there are over two miles of shore front, today well occupied by the summer dwellings of those who seek the sea, with now and then a residence of one whose love for the sea is not wholly a summer fancy. Oyster River Point, Merwin's Beach and Burwell's Beach are communities with which the Orange we have been observing has little in common, to be sure, but they are, in their way, important parts of that town.
In the far western part of the town, along the Housatonie River, is a section which has possibilities undeveloped. Rough and in large measure unsettled, an area of hills and rocks and woodland, it is the most picturesque part of Orange. Lovers of nature have found it in the past, and will continue to find it in the future. The lower Housatonic, approached more commonly from the Hunting- ton side, is a river second to none in the state and ranking with the best in New England for beauty and commercial value. Some day when state or federal authority redeems our water courses from the pollution which destroys their value and poisons those whom they serve, Orange will have no small part in the redemption and no small part of the interest.
CHAPTER XXXII
WEST HAVEN
THE SEPARATE COMMUNITY ON THE NEW HAVEN SIDE OF ORANGE WHICH HAS GROWN INTO A NEAR-CITY-ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMUSEMENT RESORT, SAVIN ROCK
I
Geographical convenience, the aceident of West River, made West Haven a part of the Town of Orange instead of the Town of New Haven. It was from early times more naturally identified with New Haven than with any community to the westward. It is hardly four miles from New Haven Green to the green in West Haven, and it was easy and natural that there should be an overflow from the eity in that direction. Moreover, we have good evidence that the earli- est settlers on the west bank of West River eame from the direction of the larger community.
But one is prone to forget that the bridges of today did not exist in 1695, or even a century later. The settlers found their way across, for at low tide West River is fordable even well toward its mouth. But going back and forth was not so simple a matter. So it was inevitable that the pioneers should from the start shape themselves into a separate community. They were farmers at the beginning, and what became West Haven was early "West Farms." It was that till almost 1800. Shortly later the name of West Haven began to be used, and has held.
For up to that time. it seems, there was little serious thought of including West Haven in the town of Orange. Rocks and hills divided North Milford from West Farms, and the people saw little of each other. If the eitizen of either village in 1800 had been asked to prophesy as to town organization. he would most likely have said that there was destined to be a town of North Mil- ford and another town of West llaven. But the two communities together, it will be noticed, contained only about 1,200 people when Orange was incorporated in 1822. Of these the large majority. no doubt. were in West Haven. Orange needed West Haven, and the natural boundary of the West River prevailed. So the present geographieal arrangement came about. But West Haven kept right on growing by itself as if nothing had happened.
The year 1695 is set for the first beginnings of independent settlement at West Farms. Such names as George Lamberton, Thomas Stephens. Thomas
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Painter, the Benhams, the Wards and the Clarks appear among the pioneers. The marks of their building are plain to be seen yet around the center of West Haven, for with their usual accurate sense of the most favorable location, they settled around what is now the green.
The framework of that early community history is the history of the churches. In the parish days, before West Haven became a part of a separate town, the church had by law a positive authority of government. It was the community center, and received more proportionate attention than now. And as usual, it was in this case the Congregational Church that led the way. The settlers had not been by themselves in West Farms more than two seore years before they felt able to form their own church. Their feeling could not have been unjusti- fied, for whereas other parishes of the sort found themselves unable to support their own pastor for several years after church organization, West Farms seems to have done so from the start. The church was formed in 1715, and the first pastor, Rev. Samuel Johnson. came at once. In fact. the church was able to ereet its own building as early as 1719.
It was not, like some of its contemporaries, a church of long pastorates in its early days. Between the close of Mr. Johnson's pastorate and 1870, a period of some 140 years, nine pastors served this church. Then came the pastorate of Rev. George Sherwood Dickerman, native of Mount Carmel, which continued from 1870 to 1873. After him was Rev. Norman J. Squires, with a pastorate as unusually long as the pastor was himself notable, from 1881 to 1914. Rev. Albert R. Brown eame that year, and remained until the spring of 1918. He went to Y. M. C. A. service on the war front, his departure being on leave of absener from the church
As pastors came one after another, so did buildings for the church. The first was erected in 1719, and must have seemed, by the time it was replaced in 1852, pretty ancient and primitive. In 1859 this was burned, and was replaced in the following year by the present example of the New England church archi- tecture of the time. It serves the congregation's purposes well, especially since the completion of its ample and unusual parish house in 1916. This edifice, adjoining the church, was built at a cost of $35,000, and is one of the best appointed and equipped church auxiliary buildings in the New Haven distriet. Beginning beneath the main floor, there are commodious dining rooms and a modern kitchen. On the main floor there is a large audience room. with gallery divided for elass rooms. And on the upper floor there is a gymnasium to delight the heart of all who have faith in physical exercise as an aid to religion true and undefiled.
Christ Church, said to be the oldest Episcopal church in the state, now occu- pies a stone edifice. of architecture dignified and attractive, which also stands in the center of West Haven, an outward adornment to the community as the service for which it stands is an inward adornment. Its foundation dates offi- cially from 1740, but it is said to have been as early as 1722 that Rev. Samuel Johnson, the first pastor of the neighbor Congregational Church, became eon-
ST. LAWRENCE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, WEST HAVEN
MASONIC BUILDING, WEST HAVEN
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vinced that no man could be saved by Congregationalism alone. He proceeded to work out his faith in West Haven. How early the first building was erected is not clear, but there was surely a frame meeting house-though it was not permitted to call it that-by 1740. As to rectors, in the period between Mr. Johnson's work and the coming of the Rev. Edwin S. Lines in 1874 there were no less than twenty-eight different rectorates. Mr. Lines was with the church but five years, going on to New Haven in 1879. In 1886 Rev. Ilobart B. Whit- ney was rector, and since 1909 Rev. Floyd S. Kenyon has been in charge of the growing work. Christ Church also has just completed a model parish house.
The West Haven Methodist Church dates only from 1870, being organized with Rev. C. W. Lyon as pastor. It has done a useful, aggressive work and pros- pered from the first, growing with the rapid growth of West Haven. In 1916, under the leadership of Rev. William Redheffer, it completed a new building on Second Avenue, which is a substantial addition to the church equipment and publie architecture of West Haven. The present pastor is Rev. Charles E. Barto.
St. Lawrence is the Roman Catholic church, of West Haven, and is now ministering to large congregations, with a fine building and good equipment. West Haven continued to be, as to Catholicism, a part of the Milford parish up to 1876, when St. Lawrence was established. It has had a succession of able leaders. Rev. James MeGetrick came to the church in 1909, and was with it for six years. Rev. John Fleming served for a year, being followed in 1916 by the present pastor, Rev. Francis M. Murray.
Its nearness to New Haven makes West Haven the more independent in some ways, and one of them is in respect to schools. It has an excellent school sys- tem. directed by Superintendent Edgar C. Stiles, who has demonstrated him- self a superior educator and director. The central borough distriet has a com- plete graded system, with a principal, Miss Clara Sutherland, and fifty-six teachers. Outside of West Haven, Orange has the North School district, with an equipment of seventeen teachers, and the school in the County Home at Allingtown, where four teachers care for the children.
West Haven was incorporated as a borough in 1837, only fifteen years after the establishment of Orange as a town. This early incorporation in part explains the independence of the borough of the town of which it is supposed to be a part. The rest of the explanation is in its size, which has steadily and rapidly grown in proportion to the size of Orange. Today West Haven has at least 13,200 of the 15,000 people of the town. This is almost three times the size of the borough in 1900. The rapid growth, the considerable size of West Haven, and especially certain peculiar problems which require a strong government, have for some years past impelled some of the citizens of the borough to consider its incorporation as a city. There was a faction, more in evidence formerly than now, which believed the simplest solution would be consolidation with New Haven. But those who took that view never approached a majority. The inde- pendent spirit of West Haven invariably prevailed, and will prevail. Some day, probably, there will be a City of Orange. Meanwhile, there is a positive,
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