USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 43
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However, Cheshire has been in some distinguished ways a center of Episcopal influence. That foundation on which St. Peter's Church was built was laid only twenty-seven years after the Congregational brethren established their church. The number of followers of this creed was small then, but they resolved to have their own church. It was nine years before they secured a building, and that was small and crude. It was thirty-seven years before they had a settled rector. Meanwhile, Rev. Ichabod Camp, who founded the church, led the services now and then, but for the most part Joseph Moss, a layman, kept the people together. There is also mention of some assistance from Rev. Samuel Andrews. In 1788 Rev. Reuben Ives came as rector. A second building had been erected in 1770, which was a little better than the one built in 1760. In 1795 an ambitious steeple was added to this building, so very high that when the bishop of the dio- cese saw it he is said to have remarked, "they had better now build a church for the steeple." The steeple was discarded, and a brick church of appropriate architecture built in 1840, which with its adjoining parish house buildings, now serves the congregation admirably.
After the thirty-year rectorate of Rev. Reuben Ives there was a succession of men, some of them of eminence in the Episcopal Church. The Rev. Eben E. Beardsley was rector from 1835 to 1844, during most of which time he was also the principal of the adjoining Episcopal Academy, or military school. IIc resigned from the church in the latter year to give all his time to the charge of the school, but went to St. Thomas Church of New Haven in 1848. Rev. J. Frederick Sexton was rector of St. Peter's from 1887 to 1897. Rev. Marcus J. Simpson is at present the rector, and has been since 1912.
A Methodist Episcopal church was founded in Cheshire in 1834. At that time there was a colony of English miners in the barytes mine which was operated at "Ginny Hill." and they yearned for the worship of Wesley. Some
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of the zealous leaders united in the starting of a church, and around it the suc- ceeding followers of that faith have rallied ever since. Its people erected in that first year a briek building, primitive at first, but enlarged and improved suc- cessively in 1859, 1872, 1889 and 1894, until it excellently meets the church's Deeds. The Rev. E. F. Neumann, Jr., was pastor in 1917, and the conference of 1918 appointed Rev. W. P. Michel as supply.
Cheshire's widest fame comes from the school under the direct guidance of the Episcopal Church which has been located in the town for almost a century and a quarter. Founded in 1796, it is the oldest institution of its sort in the country. Up to the time of the establishment of Trinity College at Hartford it served also the purpose of a seminary for preparation for the Episcopal ministry. Later it was changed to a high elass secondary school, and military training became so much a feature of its currienlum that it was for several years known, and still is by many persons, as the Cheshire Military Academy. Then it gradu- ally lost its military features, and became officially the Episcopal Academy of Connecticut. In 1903 "The Cheshire School" was incorporated, and to this corporation the Episcopal Academy of Connecticut was leased.
In the school's distinguished history clergymen of national eminence have been its rectors or among its teachers, and men of even more ultimate distinc- tion, as laymen as well as clergymen, have studied in its halls. Rev. Reuben Ives, the first rector of St. Peter's Church, was largely instrumental in establishing it. Its first principal, or rector, was Rev. Dr. John Bowden, who conducted its elasses in the single square building north of what is now Bronson Hall. IIe closed his work in 1802, and was followed by Rev. Dr. William Smith and Rev. Dr. Tillotson Bronson, the latter elosing a remarkable period of twenty-six years' service in 1831. In his time the school had seen, because of the very broad service it had been required to render, its most distinguished days.
In the period sinee, and more especially in the past twenty years, conducted as a college preparatory school the academy has had some able teachers. Its principal at the time of its incorporation was Rev. John D. Skilton. In 1910 Paul Klimpke, M. A., became its principal, and continues in the position. The school has a distinguished location in the heart of Cheshire, oceupying four com- modious buildings. Bowdon Hall, built in 1796, was for nearly seventy years the school's only building. The others, Beardsley Hall, Bronson Hall and Horton llall, have been built sinee 1865.
In 1914 was completed, in the central part of Cheshire at the junction between the road to Waterbury and the road to Milldale, the Connectieut Reformatory. The state institution has a commanding location, some commo- dious modern buildings, and is doing a truly reformatory work for delinquents between the prison and the "reform school" ages and elasses. Its board of directors consists of Morris W. Seymour, president: Charles Hopkins Clark, vice president : John P. Elton, secretary ; E. Kent Hubbard, treasurer, and Anson T. MeCook. The superintendent is George C. Erskine. Training as much as possible, restraint as little as may be permitted, and the modern system of
THE OLD GOVERNOR FOOTE PLACE, HOME OF ADMIRAL FOOTE. CHESHIRE
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reform by persuasion with free outdoor work are some of the methods which characterize this institution. Within two years of its foundation the manage- ment of the reformatory had been able to demonstrate their ideas by constructing, largely through the labor of its boys, the section of state eement road between Cheshire and Milldale.
In addition to its central graded school, Cheshire has district sehools at Brooksvale, West Cheshire, Mixville, Cheshire Street and at five other points around the edges of the town, all of which are well conducted and are doing competent educational work. The present school committee is Jacob D. Walter, Clinton C. Peek, Arthur S. Backus, Charles A. Buckingham, Frederick Doolittle and Howard E. Ives.
Temple Lodge, No. 16, F. & A. M., was established in Cheshire in 1790, an l has continued in strength and prosperity to the present time. L. A. Thomas Lodge, I. O. O. F., was instituted in 1888. Other organizations and societies are Edward A. Doolittle Post, G. A. R .. established in 1881; Cheshire Grange, No. 23, and three temperanee societies.
Cheshire has one of the oldest soldiers' monuments in the country. The noise of the conflict had hardly died away when a committee was formed to arrange for suitably memorializing the brave deeds of the town's soldiers and sailors in the Civil War, and through a generous fund a shaft of Plymouth granite was raised on the green in front of the Congregational Church in 1866. What Cheshire will do to honor the greater number of its citizens who are now offering their lives in many forms of service in the great war remains to be seen. but it will be something adequate.
Cheshire's Publie Library was established in 1892, and abundantly serves the needs of the town. It has 6,442 volumes, and the librarian is Miss Mary E. Belden.
The Yankee followed hard after the farmer in Cheshire. Before the eighteenth century was born "mills" had begun to spring up wherever there was water power. By 1800 there were varied lines of manufacture all over the town. The works of the cooper abounded. The wheelwright was hard at his eraft- and the roads of those days kept him busy. There were carding, dressing and fulling works. There were sawmills and fanning mills and tanneries, plants where they made threshing machines and tinware. Old residents of not so many years ago, used to tell of the long wagon trains with finished goods headed for the New Haven markets which used to wend their way ont of Cheshire in the early days of the last century.
That was before the canal eame. for the New Haven-Farmington waterway had its eourse through Cheshire. By the time it was replaced by the railroad changing conditions had thinned out most of the small industries, and the town was coming into its destined function as an agricultural community. With the coming of the railroad, the remaining factories, and others that were later started, gravitated toward the western side of the town, or West Cheshire. In that community a group of factories was started about the middle of the century.
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The Cheshire Manufacturing Company dated From 1850, and the Cheshire Brass Company from 1866. In 1853 the John Mix Manufacturing Company developed from a business which had been making britannia spoons, and turned to gimlets and auger bits. West Cheshire, also, had a web factory from about 1853 to 1857. Of these the survivors are the Connecticut Brass Company, makers of sheet brass, which seems to be a descendant of the Cheshire Brass Company, and the Ball & Socket Manufacturing Company, which makes a specialty of buttons and light brass goods. These employ a considerable and increasing number of men.
In the main the fine old town's foundation is agricultural. It has not as many people today as it had half a century ago, whereby hangs a tale of a very interesting industry of the past. In the "Cheshire Mountains" about 1855 was discovered a deposit of barytes. Outside capital rushed to the feast, and it is said that in the next sixteen years some 160 tons, worth then $4,500,000, were extracted from the soil of Cheshire. The town profited from it to the extent that it brought hundreds of people there, many of them English miners and good citizens. Cheshire's high water mark in population was at about the end of this period. After that it dropped back slightly, and now is about the same as in 1855. Cheshire partakes of the fruit raising and market farming prosperity of its neighbors, for it has even better land than theirs. It is also becoming the summer home place of dwellers in nearby cities, and as it has many natural attractions, this condition is likely to increase.
All over the town, after the lapse of more than two centuries, may still be found the names of the original planters. But with them are mingled many names new and old of discriminating folk of many origins, who choose the town for its inherent virtue. Among them are men who lead like Frederick Doolittle, Jacob D. Walter, Paul Klimpke, Rev. Marcus J. Simpson and Rev. Chalmers Holbrook, Drs. C. N. Denison, N. W. Karrman and George E. Myers, or Charles A. Buckingham, Graham A. Iliteheoek and Clinton C. Peek.
CHAPTER XL
NORTH HAVEN
EARLY OFFSIIOOT OF THIE NEW HAVEN COLONY, HOME OF DISTINGUISHED DIVINES. MODERN MINGLING OF INDUSTRIAL AND AGRICULTURAL TOWN
It is evident from its boundaries that North Haven was not laid out by the theodolite of any surveyor, not bounded by any plan, but "just growed." Its western line apparently started from Cedar Hill with good intention to stick to the Quinnipiac River, but suddenly changed its mind about two and a half miles up. It runs nearly west then for much over a mile, almost meeting Mill River. A little above there, it takes to the river until it is opposite the center of Mount Carmel, when it shies at the beginnings of the mountain itself, and turns sharply eastward, curving north and northeast under the brow of the mountain until again it meets the Quinnipiac. There is a notch in its northeast corner. while the line follows Worten Brook due east to make a right angle with a straight line running south. There is another notch eastward at Northford, then with fair regularity the line comes south almost to Foxon, then runs southwest until it meets Cedar Hill again.
There are 21.7 square miles within these boundaries, of river bottom, meadow, rolling hills and highlands. There is some little area that strikes the traveler as desert. But mainly North Haven is a combination of prosperous fruit raising and general farming country, brick producing flat and small manufacturing village. It is seven miles from north to southern end, and four and a half miles across at its widest point. Without anything like a boom or artificial aid, it has grown quite slowly but consistently from the village of about 1,200 it was when incorporated in 1786 to the 2.254 it had in 1910. Sufficiently separated from the city, it has its distinet community life. Dating its origin back to within two years of the settlement of New Haven, it has its independent history. It is self supporting, it is self reliant, it is prosperous and erowned with honor wholly ou its own account. All in all, it is an unusual combination of suburb and country. but withal, as respects both the works of nature and of man. a thoroughly delightful dwelling place.
North Haven seems to have grown naturally. and to have been early destined to separation from the parent town. Most of its planters at first came from the Davenport party, but apparently there was some extent of independent origin. For William Bradley, credited with being the North Haven pioneer, was not
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mentioned in the New Ilaven list. He is said to have been an officer in Crom- well's army, and surely was a man of distinction. He is traced on the west side of the " East River" in 1640. To his company came in a year or so a group of the New Haven pilgrims, but apparently they judged the east side of the river better for their purposes. In the planters' schedule of 1641 are found the names of Yale, Tuttle, Cooper, and Thorp, and the place-name of the region above Cedar Hill was "East Farms."
Presently to the locality which is now the southwestern point came Atwater, Turner, Potter, Brewster and Mansfield. The names of some of them are plain there today. Thomas and Nathaniel Yale came in 1660. Twenty years later Jonathan Tuttle and Blakeslee, Barnes and Broekett had come, and the tide was working slowly north. As early as 1700 there was a "North Village," and the history of North Haven proper may be said to begin then. For the next fifteen years the pioneers were busy with settling, and seem to have thought little about a community. They kept church connection with New Haven, though their dis- tance was approaching five miles.
It was not until 1716 that the planters were permitted to be a parish, and to form an ecclesiastical society. There were forty families then. They pro- ceeded to ereet a meeting house, finishing it in 1717. Their first minister was Rev. James Wetmore, who remained four years. Rev. Isaac Stiles, who followed him, became early a powerful constructive force in the making of the town. lle was thirty-six years with the church, and in that time he established it and its people greatly in that faith and character to which the North llaven of our times owes so much. and whose results it so greatly exemplifies. Following Mr. Stiles came one of the most remarkable men who have lived in North Haven, in many ways one of Connecticut's most distinguished citizens. Rev. Jonathan Trumbull. who came to the church in 1760, was in his time a national character, and in the years since has been no less renowned as a historian. He was a man of active inclinations, and when Colonel Wooster raised his famous regiment in 1775, he went out with it as chaplain. Following the war, he wrote that history of Connectieut on which his reputation rests. It was in two volumes, covering the period from the earliest settlement to the close of the Indian wars. It is recog- nized as "the most careful, minute and conscientious chronicle of the colonial history of the state ever written." It was Dr. Trumbull's intention to follow this with a history of the United States, a work which he was well qualified to do, and it is a matter of regret that he achieved only one volume, which was pub- lished in 1810. Advancing age and other cares stopped for him all work but that of the church. which he continued until his death in 1820, preaching his last sermon only nine days before that, when he was past eighty-four years. His service of three score years in the noble oll church of North Haven, in addition to being the chief life work of one of the state's most distinguished men of that period, was in its mere length a conspicuously notable pastorate.
It is not easy, regarding the work of men like Dr. Stiles and Dr. Trumbull, to exaggerate the influence of the pastors of the single church in the making
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of the town. They set a high mark, not only for those who followed them in this pulpit, but for all the citizens. And they were followed by men who profited by their traditions. The day of such pastorates as theirs seems past, and the list from then till now would be a long one. For thirteen years after the death of Dr. Trumbull Rev. W. J. Boardman was pastor. Passing over thirty years, we come to another long pastorate, that of Rev. William T. Reynolds from 1863 to 1893. Rev. William G. Lathrop, now at Mount Carmel, was pastor for seven years after that. From 1900 to now there have been Rev. Charles Franklin, Rev. Frederick L. Hall and Rev. Howard G. Parsons, the present pastor.
The first meeting house was of the ungainly type of 1717. It did not last long, and was replaced in 1739 by an edifiee of the best architecture of that time. It was barnlike at its best, yet it was rejoiced in by the people as one of the best church edifiees in the state outside of the cities. When built, it had only a turret. A tall spire replaced the turret in 1800, and the "tinkling bell" gave way to an adequate one. In 1835 a brick church of goodly architecture, with a symmetrical spire, was built. That was the stately building which most of this generation have known, the edifice which was burned in 1910. The building erected two years later to fill its place is of a radically different type, modern, symmetrical and admirably appointed, but somehow, to those who know the traditions of this ebureh, it leaves something to be desired.
Harmoniously with their Congregational brethren have dwelt since 1722 the Episcopalians of North Haven. Of St. John's Church the Rev. James Wetmore was the father, and the first worship of this order was in the houses of the men- bers. It was some time after 1722 that there was a definite organization. For nearly sixty years after that Wallingford, Cheshire and North Haven Episco- palians joined forces in the "Union Church," built in 1740 in the Pond Hill distriet. That building was not a thing of beauty, but in it was the spirit of worship. By 1761 the people of North Haven felt strong enough for their own church, and in that year built at the northeast corner of the Green a wooden house with no steeple or poreh. Rev. Ebenezer Punderson was the rector at first, being followed, in the days of the Revolutionary War, by Rev. Samuel Andrews. The latter was a man of influence, but divided the people because of his loyalist principles. Rev. Edward Blakeslee followed him in 1790. In recent times the church has been a goodly force in the community through such leaders as Rev. William Lusk, Jr., and since 1908, Rev. Arthur F. Lewis.
There is at Montowese, the settlement with the famous name at the lower end of North Haven, a Baptist church, established in 1811. Joshua Bradley had much to do with its founding, and it has had a useful career. It has been minis- tered to in the past three years by Rev. Carl Swift. There is also, at Clinton- ville, a Union Mission, founded in 1889.
It is probable that not more than half the workers of North Haven, at least in these days, are in agriculture. Industries of other sorts had an early start in the town. Several substantial brooks feed the Quinnipiac in its course through the town, and water powers are numerous. These had their saw and
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grist mills from early times. There were the usual fulling mills, and the tan- ning of leather was a familiar industry, as it was in almost every Connecticut town. As early as 1665 bog iron was mined in North HIaven, though it could have had little commercial value. But by 1720 they had discovered that the Quinnipiac clay beds would produce satisfactory brick, and that was the begin- ning of North Haven's really important industry. On both banks of the river, for several miles of its progress through the town, these plants have now been worked actively for over six decades.
The first systematically developed brick industry-though it is probable that brick was made long before that in a desultory way-was the North Haven Brick Company in 1854. But the same year Warner, Mansfield & Stiles was formed, and it is possible to see the successor of that firm in the I. L. Stiles & Son Briek Company, as the firm name has been since 1891, now the principal brick pro- ducer of the town. The output of North Haven brick has included all varieties, and has at times been enormous. William E. Davis & Company also have a large plant, and there is at Montowese a single large concern which makes the princi- pal industry of the village aside from farming, the Cody Brick Company.
These concerns, doing a prosperous business and employing more men today than ever before in North Haven industry, are the sole survivors of a long line. Time was when Clintonville, the village on the Air Line Railroad in the far northeastern corner of the town, was an important manufacturing point. There were valuable water rights there. In 1830 the Clintonville Agricultural Works made a standard line of farm implements, but years ago it was sold and removed to New Jersey. Twenty-three years later there was Clinton, Wallace & Com- pany, with a large factory, making considerable quantities of farm tools and implements. A quarter of a century later the farm tool industry had waned, but about that time a veritable craze for faney "visiting" cards swept across the country. There were at Clintonville at that time several print shops which developed an immense mail order business for these all over the country, and their advertising made Clintonville widely famous. Only a trace of this indus- try remains in the village today.
The list of industries that have waxed and waned is somewhat longer. In 1869 arose the Quinnipiac Paper Company. That is no more. The U. S. Card Factory Company, started in 1881. has gone the way of the other card indus- tries. The North Haven Manufacturing Company, which made tin spoons, is not found today. The Tuttle Brothers Printing Company, card publishers, went with the passing of the fad. Twenty-five years ago there were in North Haven and Clintonville four or five good sized concerns for the making of carriage woodwork, but of these the chief traees are Edward Clinton & Son of Clinton- ville and T. S. Stiles, wagon builder, of North Haven.
The agricultural development of North Haven has kept pace with that of the towns around it. North Haven peaches, strawberries and other small fruits have gained a favorable reputation in New Haven and other cities, and the «mantity increases each year, while garden truck and dairy products inerease
MEMORIAL HALL, NORTH HAVEN
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in quantity with the demand. North Haven land is good and easily tilled, and its farm prosperity notably grows.
In 1916 the town had 557 school children, provided for in a comfortable cen- tral building of four rooms and in eight district schoolhouses. North Ilaven's standard of education is high, and the work done in its well taught, well super- vised schools shows excellent results. The present town school committee is: Hubert F. Potter, George J. Merz, Andrew D. Clinton, Marcus D. Marks, Ralph W. Nichols, Isaac E. Mansfield, John R. North, David B. Andrews, Wilson E. Goodsell.
While North Haven was still a parish of New Haven the parent town in 1714 donated to "the neighbors" the eight or ten acres which constitute its "green." Probably it was wooded then. Gradually the trees were removed, but it was not until long after the town's incorporation in 1786 that any adequate effort was made to take care of the green. Indeed, well on in the past century it was so neg- lected that compared with what it might have been it was a source of grievance to many citizens. Of late years, however, the green has been better cared for, though it still shows room for improvement.
The North Ilaven Memorial Library was established in 1884, and is a well kept institution now circulating 5,510 volumes. Its librarian is Miss Clara E. Bradley. It was erected through the efforts of the Bradley Library Association, though a memorial legacy from the late Hon. S. Leverius Bradley of Auburn, New York, descendant of a prominent family of North Haven Bradleys, made it possible.
For many years North Haven's lack of a suitable town hall bothered many of the citizens, as did the absence of a monument to its soldier dead grieve many of the patriotically inclined. At length the double lack was supplied by a single means, and in 1887 the Memorial Hall, erected at a cost of $5,000, met a publie need and became a suitable soldiers' memorial.
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