USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Guilford > A yankee post office : its history and its post masters > Part 5
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Another member of the family was the late beloved
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Thomas Hart Landon, clerk of the Supreme Court, dis- trict of New York, and who died here in 1883. His son, Thomas Hart Landon, is the only member of the dis- tinguished family bearing the name living here to-day, although the family was once numerous.
George Hart was born in Guilford February 8, 1794, the son of Deacon Thomas Hart, spent his life here, and died in what is now known as the old Hart homestead in Water Street, on May 28, 1848. His father, Deacon Thomas Hart, was a deacon of the First Congregational Church from March 29, 1809, to May 29, 1829. His son's life was passed in this town, yet it has been exceed- ingly difficult for me to obtain much information about his business or his personal life.
It seems quite strange that there is no more material concerning him now obtainable. His career, together with the one of Roger Averill, caused the author more futile research and investigation than any of the other Postmasters of the 143 years' era. What this man did during his life is more or less shrouded in mystery. Talcott's Genealogy shows he married when he was twenty-two years old Miss Clarissa Parmele of Guilford, on March 27, 1816. Seven children were born to this couple. One of his daughters, the late Miss Ruth Hart who was born in 1819 and died on May 6, 1905, was one of the choicest characters Guilford produced during her era. She was a woman of surpassing charm and intelli- gence and her distinguished kinsman Professor Samuel Hart once described her to me in almost these exact words. Long after the remainder of the family had died she lived on and held a sort of "court" in the small, typically eighteenth century residence in Water Street.
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It was the good fortune of this writer during his youth, forty or more years ago, to call on this remarkably attractive woman whose life reached so far back into the ninteenth century. It was a visit never to be forgotten. The charm of that personality lingers after a lapse of almost half a century.
George Hart probably engaged in farming. There were few in Guilford who followed any other avocation. The land records show us that in 1817 he leased for three years of Israel Halleck, father of the distinguished poet, a piece of land in West Lane, wherever that was. It could not have been on Water Street for that has been known as either Bridge or Water Street for more than two centuries. However, Hart's activities in real estate were fairly numerous, for his name appears frequently in various transactions on pages 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61 and 62 of Volume 31 of the Guilford Land Records. During the years of 1837 and 1839 he was the warden of the borough of Guilford. No trace of his activities other than those here mentioned have been secured by the writer after a zealous and steadfast search. President Polk appointed him Postmaster of Guilford in 1845, and he held the position exactly six months, from January to July. Where the Post Office was kept during that period it has been impossible to ascertain with certainty. The records at Washington do not indicate it nor is there any way of finding out this fact.
It is probable that he lived most of his life in the home in Water Street. It has been impossible to check this statement as accurate, but it is probable his daughter spent her life there so that furnishes a good basis for the
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assertion. Postmaster Hart died at fifty-four. His life from a financial standpoint does not seem to have been a success. The inventory of his estate occupies several closely-written pages on the Probate Records, but the total amount of his worldly belongings when he died amount in the net to only $442.66. His liabilities, some claims of which had to be examined and passed upon by a commission, totaled $814.64; and it is recorded on June 18th, 1849, that Judge Ralph Dunning Smith, then Judge of Probate for the District, allowed the sum of $40 for the support of Hart's family during the settle- ment of the estate. It is announced in the records that the judge "deemed that amount reasonable!" When the estate was finally settled, if it ever was, does not appear as there is no record of such a transaction avail- able. That he was possessed of no real estate when he died appears in the inventory of his estate. But his daughter continued living in the house where he died for almost sixty years after her father's death.
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CHAPTER XII
Elisha Hutchinson July 29, 1845, to June 8, 1849
President: James Knox Polk. Postmaster General: Cave Johnson, Tenn.
Elisha Hutchinson, M.D., was a prominent physician of Guilford for eleven years, occupied high offices in the town of Guilford, but eighty-five years after he left hardly anything could be secured to prepare a sketch of his life. Steiner's History mentions him in only a casual manner. The writer secured the fact from Washington that he was four years Postmaster of Guil- ford, yet precious little available information was ob- tainable concerning his life. After much research it · was found in the archives of the Yale Medical School that he entered that school from the town of Lebanon. Various Yale obituary records were examined to no avail. Then, Orlo D. Hine's "Early Lebanon" was consulted and further pertinent facts about him were unearthed. Extensive search was carried on for some time in other places which resulted finally in a trip by the author to that charming old town of Lebanon on a beautiful day late in August. In this ancient town, which, by the way, furnished five governors to this Com- monwealth and produced the great Jonathan Trumbull, the history of Elisha Hutchinson was finally "recre- ated" as it appears here. Altogether the author spent about a month in following different "leads" in order to secure material for this sketch.
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Elisha Hutchinson, for four years Postmaster of Guil- ford, justice of the peace, warden of the borough, and socially prominent, was born in Lebanon on February 12, 1800, and was the son of Dr. Daniel Hutchinson born November 22, 1767, and of Susanna Throop. His father practiced medicine in Lebanon for many years. The Hutchinson family name appears in the Lebanon records as early as 1702 and has been prominent in that town for a great many years. Dr. Elisha Hutchinson's uncle, Elisha Hutchinson, from whom the Guilford Postmaster was named, was town clerk of Lebanon from 1805 to 1831. Dr. Hutchinson's early life was spent in Leba- non, and he was married there on September 23, 1826, to Marietta Bailey, born there in June, 1803. This marriage took place while the young husband was a student, apparently, in the Yale Medical School which he had entered some time before. A daughter, Marietta, was born to the couple. She died in Brooklyn some years ago. Upon his graduation from the Yale Medical School in 1828, he returned to his home in Lebanon and soon after became a member of the Connecticut Medical Association. He commenced at once the practice of medicine, presumably with his father who was then known far and wide as a successful practitioner in that interesting section of the state. From all that can be gathered, after consulting with Town Clerk Abell of Lebanon and a member of the family there, Dr. Hutchinson's wife must have died in Lebanon some time previous to 1838; and it is considered that this sad event contributed largely to his moving to Guilford. How- ever this may be, it is certain the physician set out in the early part of 1838 and traveled the sixty odd miles
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to Guilford to make this town his future home. His career in Lebanon was of an exceedingly successful char- acter so far as can be learned and the prestige of his family would naturally have cemented him to that local- ity for his life's work. But he had some reason, not yet disclosed, to lead him to Guilford.
On his arrival in this town he commenced his practice in a house standing on ground later occupied by the Music Hall, but now known as the store of Morris Wolozin. In this house he lived during his residence in Guilford. He changed his membership in the Connect- icut Medical Association at that time, from Lebanon to Guilford, and rapidly created a good professional busi- ness. It has been told the author of these sketches by a responsible person and, indeed it was also spoken of as highly probable by a member of the family in Lebanon, that soon after his arrival here Dr. Hutchinson married either a sister or a daughter of the then well-known physician Dr. Anson T. Foote, whose home was next to that occupied by Amos Seward. This ground is now occupied by the present "A. and P. Store," on the west side of the Green. In any event a son was born to him in Guilford, whose name was William Hutchinson, and who lived for a long time after his father's death.
Dr. Hutchinson was a forceful man, a man of large ability and much social standing wherever he lived. The house he lived in during his life in Guilford was situated not far from one occupied a century before by another extremely forceful character, Rev. Thomas Ruggles, Jr., pastor of the First Church, who died in 1770, and who wrote the first registered History of Guilford. Dr. Hutchinson appears to have been a man
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of exceptional and attractive qualities, for he was "taken up" by the townspeople and offices were bestowed on him almost immediately after he arrived. This has never been what might be called a "characteristic qual- ity" of Guilford's system of dealing with "strangers." By the word strangers it might be calculated on general principles that anybody, man or woman, was a stranger at any time within a ten-year period or so of satisfactory residence in this town. It is understood that his med- ical practice was excellent from the first and that his social status also kept pace with his professional work.
A year or two after Dr. Hutchinson had commenced his practice here an event took place which will occupy a place in this sketch, and also probably give rise to specu- lation on the part of those who may read this series of stories of Guilford's postmasters. In 1840 a vote was taken by Guilford citizens on the question of the sale of alcoholic liquors in the town for the coming year. The vote resulted 82 to 66 in favor of the sale of liquor, and Steiner records that those citizens who were properly licensed by the authorities to sell liquor were Miner Bradley, proprietor of the old Medad Stone Tavern at the northwest corner of the Green; Dr. Elisha Hutchin- son, Dr. Anson T. Foote, another prominent physician, who died in 1841 ; Frederick R. Griffing, later the town's wealthiest citizen, who also became a great railroad builder; Rossiter Parmelee, about whom I have secured no information, and Bildad Bishop, a West Side mer- chant whose "grog shop" was probably in the west basement of the present home of Carl Stevens. Just what Dr. Hutchinson's and Dr. Foote's status was in the sale of spirituous liquors in the town of Guilford in the
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happy year of 1841 is, of course, impossible to state, but it is at least an interesting question. All one may be permitted to assume is that these two worthy physi- cians, whose professional standing was of the best, obtained these licenses in order to be more easily allowed to use liquor in the practice of their profession. How- ever this may be, we have the fact established that the other two physicians who were practicing here at the same time, Dr. Joel Canfield and Dr. Alvan Talcott, did not deem it necessary or expedient to take out retail liquor licenses.
Liquor, especially that form called rum, and which came from the glamorous West Indies, such as St. Kitts, Trinidad, Barbadoes, good old Jamaica, and even the Bahamas, held high place in the history of most New England towns, and was well esteemed generally by both the medical fraternity and the laity.
Dr. Hutchinson was elected warden of the Borough of Guilford in 1843, and he held the position until 1845; he was also a justice of the peace in the year, at least, 1844, for the author has seen a document signed by him as such in that year.
His standing in the town, after a residence of only six years, may be fairly estimated by the fact that in 1845 he was appointed postmaster of the town by Presi- dent Polk. He conducted the office in a small addition to his home, on the north side, and it is told that the same old red tape system obtained there as it did at Reuben Elliott's, Amos Seward's and Albert B. Wild- man's. Stage coaches, or what were alleged to be stage coaches, still brought the "mail" with more or less promptness and regularity from New Haven, and
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Dr. Hutchinson, or whoever handled the same, picked out what was for Guilford, and the remainder was sent east for Saybrook, New London, and way stations. It has been impossible to gather much concerning that period. All that has been learned is that Dr. Hutchin- son directed the office with the usual success obtaining at that time and that there were no events during the four years that were sufficiently important to be re- corded now.
What prompted the doctor to leave Guilford is wholly conjectural. No clue explaining his action could be found in Lebanon. However, in the year 1849, after about eleven years in Guilford, Dr. Hutchinson left Guilford with his wife and son and daughter for Buf- falo, N. Y. This city he made his home for the re- mainder of his life. It was understood in Lebanon that he continued the practice of medicine in Buffalo and that he also met with a substantial measure of success. All that we know authoritatively was that he lived there until August 20, 1862, when he died aged 62, and was buried there. It is fairly safe to assume that Dr. Hutchinson took a leading rôle in Buffalo as he did else- where, for that was one of his characteristics. Soon after his death his wife and son and daughter returned "East" and settled permanently in Brooklyn, N. Y., living on South Oxford Street in that city. Mrs. Scott Bryan, Sr., attended a private school in Brooklyn while they were living there and she visited the Hutchinson family during those years.
The outstanding item concerning Dr. Hutchinson's history is that almost all of the facts about him and his work had to be gathered outside of Guilford.
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CHAPTER XIII
Franklin Collins Phelps May 5, 1853, to May 16, 1861 April 25, 1867, to March 4, 1869
Presidents: Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson.
Postmaster Generals: James Campbell, Pennsylvania; Alexander W. Randall, Wisconsin.
The late Henry P. Robinson wrote of Franklin Collins Phelps,
"Scarce figure, in our commune, could there be In retrospective days, more known than he,
More frank and full pronounced, nor diffident, Like soldier marched despite impediment."
This was probably a comprehensive and proper pic- ture of the man who for a long term of years held first rank as a leading man of the community. Dignified, schooled in old-time courtesies, a democrat of the first grade, and loyal to all his friends, he spent his life an honored resident of the town and its vicinity.
In my father's diary for the year 1873, on the date December 29th, is written the single sentence, "Franklin Phelps died today AE 71." That was all he wrote for the day. It was apparently the most impor- tant event in the town where this man had been known and honored in many ways for a good part of two generations.
He was born in 1803, probably somewhere in New York State, the son of James Phelps, and spent his life
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here. He lived in the old house on State Street at the junction of Union Street and what is now called Market Place. The property is now the headquarters of the Guilford Visiting Nurse Association. I am not ac- quainted with his early life and the family name does not appear in Talcott's Genealogy of Guilford families. He probably belonged to a New York State family, but I have found no trace of his early years except the bare fact of his being born in the Empire State. However, we do know with certainty that most of his life was spent here, and that he first came to Guilford in his youth as a stage driver. He was generally honored and placed in important offices, and his power in the town was as great as that of any man of his day with the exception of Judge Ralph Dunning Smith, lawyer and historian. The careers of the two men, one an ardent democrat of the oldest school, and the other a strict republican of the Lincoln type, ran almost abreast of each other for thirty or more years. One was of the brusque, warrior type, of abundant "choler," and of iron will; and it was indeed a brave man who hazarded the experience of a political argument with him; the other was a less turbu- lent character, possessed of deep scholarly instinets, a legal, scholastic mind, of vast accomplishments ; a scholar and a historian select and certain in his trends. Phelps was of small stature, and had club feet. Smith was tall, stately, impressive, and a man set apart in many ways.
Early in his life here he married Emeline Munger, daughter of Miles Munger whose house was the one in which Franklin Phelps spent the remainder of his life. He had a store on State Street near the corner of Broad and State streets, facing east. It was a sort of general
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store, and during the years inclusive from 1853 to 1861 this was the Post Office of the town. From at least one source I have been informed that the old red tape system of holding letters for their recipients still obtained during the eight years the Post Office was on State Street. It occupied only a very small section of the store, although the postal system had materially grown during the previous seventy or more years of its history. It is said of him as has been previously stated that in his very early years he was the driver of a stage coach carrying the mail between New Haven and Guilford; and it is probable that he settled here after many visits to Guilford.
Postmaster Phelps served his third term from 1867 to 1869 following the expiration of Dr. Hutchinson's term, when the latter left the town. He moved the office during that time to the old store known in later days as Henry Chamberlain's meat market and which stood for many years at the corner of Park and Broad streets. It was an old landmark to Guilford folk, was of unknown origin, but it had housed mercantile estab- lishments for many years. Mr. Phelps had moved his business there previous to his third appointment as Post- master. A general store business was carried on by him in that building in the same manner as on State Street. He remained in that location and in that business until his death.
Mr. Phelps was an ardent and a life-long Methodist, and he played an important part in the founding of the local church, now extinct.
The Methodist Church, at least in this community, was formed through the efforts of Rev. Nathan Kellog who
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preached, it is recorded in Steiner's history, his first sermon after the formation of the local church, in the house of Mr. Ebenezer Hopson in Boston Street. The Methodist church building, now the furniture store of Nelson H. Griswold, was erected in 1837 and 1838, and the church was dedicated soon after. The first board of trustees consisted of Franklin C. Phelps, as well as John Hale, William Hale, Henry Griffing, Samuel Leete, Samuel A. Barker, Lucius Elliott and Alvah Kelsey of Moose Hill.
Throughout his life, or rather, from that period, he was deeply and substantially interested in the welfare of the Methodist Church and was one of its leading members. Its fundamental principles always found a brave and a well-known defender and advocate in Mr. Phelps. He always backed his convictions in an elo- quent and sometimes a "fiery" manner.
He served as a democratic representative from Guil- ford in the legislature of 1849, he being a colleague of Reuben Stone, also a democrat. In 1863, ten years before his death, he was elected democratic senator from this district. Mr. Phelps also served as warden of the borough of Guilford from 1860 to 1861, and up to the conclusion of his life he invariably held an important and an affectionate as well as an honourable place in the community. Although engaging in business for many years he left a very small estate.
Mr. Robinson, in "Guilford Portraits," gives us important suggestions as to why this man of small stature and rather undistinguished physical appearance held so important a leadership in the town of Guilford for so many years. He writes :
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"Prodigious was his will, nor he unkind; But was a marked example of a mind To bring, and bend and hold beneath his sway, Some things resolved to go the other way.
His frame was full and puffed with might restrained ; His head and dignity high hat contained.
Once Senator, twice master of the Post, The man, in life, was in himself, a host."
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CHAPTER XIV
John Hale May 16, 1861, to June 26, 1865
President: Abraham Lincoln. Postmaster General: Montgomery Blair, Missouri.
John Hale, the ninth Postmaster of Guilford, was, for a generation after he held the office, known as the War Postmaster. Through his office during the Civil War period in our history came most of the mail that was received in Guilford from the battle front. Anxious fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends made many trips to Hale's store on the west side of Guilford Green during those crucial four years of Civil War and many heart-rending messages were taken from the deliv- ery window of that village Post Office.
John Hale was one of the well-known Hale family that occupied places of prominence in Guilford for many years. He has been considered by many as being one of the family to which Henry Hale belonged, who lived here many years, and who also conducted a general store near the site of John Hale's store. But Henry Hale's family was from North Branford while the other Hale family had been residents in Guilford since Colo- nial days. Talcott's Guilford genealogies shows no con- nection between the two Hale families.
John Hale occupied a position of prominence in the town for a good many years. He was not only store- keeper but he held other offices and was one of the
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"pillars" of the Methodist Church. He was born here December 11, 1810, and was the son of William Hale who also was born here in 1780. A brother of John Hale's, Zebulon Hale, was also a citizen of prominence in the town, and he had his home where the present Guilford Sanitarium now stands. John Hale's residence was the large old-fashioned mid-Victorian house on Whitfield Street, almost directly across the street from St. George's Roman Catholic Church. It used to be occupied in later days by Jonathan Meigs Hand, brother of the famous philanthropist, Daniel Hand. This site was the original home lot of Thomas Chatfield, one of the original founders of Guilford. It is, therefore, an important place in the history of Guilford.
He married early in life, Abigail Spencer, member of another old Guilford family, and she survived him for some years. John Hale's father, William Hale, estab- lished a general store on the west side of Guilford Green on the ground now occupied by the home of the late Dr. Walter 'Murless. The store was operating on that site early in the century so far as I am able to discover. It was for many years previous to 1865 one of the prin- cipal places of business in the town, and how far back of that period it is impossible to learn. It is highly probable that a store might have been located there during the Revolutionary War, but that is naturally conjectural. John Hale succeeded to his father's busi- ness and conducted it for many years. It was one of three buildings destroyed by the great fire on the night of February 28, 1872, and which has been talked about ever since. The fire started in the house known as the Dr. Anson Foote place, next to the store. The store
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and house were destroyed in a short time, and then came the home of Mrs. Labadee, formerly the home of Benjamin Corbin, owner of probably the first drug store in Guil- ford. After this fire the original Hale store was not rebuilt as John Hale died by suicide (hanging) on April 2, 1872, a little more than a month after the disaster. Whether or not the excitement of the fire contributed materially to his tragic death I have not been able to ascertain as his generation has long since passed away, yet it is highly probable this catastrophe was the real cause of his act. But in the John Hale establishment was transacted much of the business of the town for a long period. The proprietor was an enthusiastic Whig, and later a leader in the newly organized Republican Party. He was a close friend of Albert B. Wildman's at the south end of the Green, and the two occupied places on the committee appointed to represent Guilford in the early efforts of Guilford to do its part in the great Civil War. The committee's personnel is described in the sketch of Mr. Albert Board- man Wildman in a preceding chapter. In the early history of the Methodist Church in this town John Hale took a leading part and continued as a devoted and leading member of the church until his death.
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