USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Guilford > A yankee post office : its history and its post masters > Part 6
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John Hale succeeded Franklin C. Phelps as post- master on May 16, 1861. He was appointed by Presi- dent Abraham Lincoln. He immediately established the office in his store where it took up but a small portion of the establishment. I am told that the little cage where the mail was delivered was located on the north side, about the central portion of the store, and through that small aperture passed for four years the War mail sent
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JOHN HALE
to Guilford from the battlefields and the camps of the Civil War.
Previous to his becoming Postmaster Mr. Hale had represented Guilford as a member of the Connecticut General Assembly. He went there in 1860 as a repub- lican, and he was one of the first, the party having been established in Connecticut four years before, in 1856. His colleague was Sherman Graves, father of Deacon John Graves, and a prominent citizen of the town.
A survey of Mr. Hale's life shows him to have been one of the substantial business men of the town, promi- nent in commercial affairs, in church and in state, and his sagacity may be properly measured by the fact that his estate, in spite of the devastation of the big fire of 1872, amounted to almost $16,000 when it was appraised by Sylvanus Clark and Deacon Eli Parmlee.
The family has practically passed out of the life of Guilford, and as so far as this author has searched, no members of it are living here to-day.
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CHAPTER XV
Samuel H. Seward June 26, 1865, to October 26, 1865
President : Andrew Johnson. Postmaster General: William Dennison, Ohio.
Major Samuel Henry Seward, a soldier with one of the finest of war records, occupied the position amongst Guilford's postmasters as having had the shortest term of anyone in the entire list. He served only four months, from June 26, 1865, to October 26, 1865. The reason for this was because he found himself hampered in carrying on the physical work of the office by bad wounds received, and the losing of his left arm, in the Civil War from which he had just returned.
Major Seward did not spend much time in the town of his ancestors, but did attain much fame in another section of the state where he passed the major portion of his life. Born in Guilford on April 16, 1835, he was one of eleven children born to Samuel Lee Seward. His brother was the late patent attorney of New York and Washington, D. C., Edward C. Seward; and Frederick W. H. Seward, a business man of Guilford and of Putnam for many years, is another brother. His sister, Miss Kate Seward, the former well-known school teacher, here and elsewhere, is still living, a resident of State Street. Major Seward's early life was spent in Guilford, and he attended in course the Guilford Institute as well as the famous old school kept
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SAMUEL H. SEWARD
by Major Samuel Robinson at the West Side, which had a widespread reputation for many years. After that he went to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he attended a business school. While in that city he was married, October 5, 1858, to Martha A. Smith. He married the second time, Sarah Maria Watson, in 1867. After leav- ing Indiana he worked in a factory in New Haven, and when the war started enlisted on August 15, 1862, in Company I, 14th Connecticut Volunteers. He was mus- tered into the service on August 23 of that year, and was later made a second lieutenant in Company I. He was in the battle of Antietam September 17, 1862, and later received a major wound on his left arm in the celebrated Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia. This wound resulted in the loss of his arm, amputated soon after the battle, and which left him so badly maimed.
Unable, of course, when he recovered to do regular army work he was transferred to Washington, D. C., where he was soon appointed a paymaster of the army, with the rank of major. At the close of the war he received an honorable discharge, was mustered out in July, 1864, and returned to his native town. The next year a movement was started to have him appointed the town's Postmaster, and Lincoln did this in June. Major Seward decided to continue the Post Office in the store of John Hale, so it was not moved. After four months he found it was impossible for him to do the necessary work involved with but one hand. Therefore, he promptly sent his resignation to Washing- ton and retired from the position. Then he became a law student with Judge Ralph Dunning Smith, and studied with the then celebrated Guilford lawyer.
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The "Law School" was the small building that stood for a great many years detached from the south end of the present residence of Dr. F. DeWitt Smith in Park Street. This was the practice obtaining for many years throughout Connecticut, and many other states. He finally became qualified to practice and was admitted to the bar. His first scene of legal activity was in the town of Stafford Springs where he lived for a short time, and then he moved to Putnam, the seat of Windham County. In that town in the northeastern corner of Connecticut he passed the remainder of his life. Entering the town almost unknown the young man became one of the leading lawyers of the county, occupied various offices during his career, and was for a great many years the County Clerk, and also the Clerk of the Superior Court of Windham County. These offices he held until his death. Major Seward took a leading part in the pro- fessional as well as the social life of the town and the county.
Major Seward was a well-known and impressive speaker throughout the state especially on the occasions of Grand Army meetings and kindred celebrations. He was often heard in Guilford his native town, and was looked upon as not only an excellent orator, but also as having had one of the best war records of any of the men who went to the conflict from this town. In Put- nam, up to a short time before his death, which took place May 8, 1901, he was active in all the important activities in the town, was a leading member of the Putnam Congregational Church, and President of the Day-Kimball Hospital of that town. He was buried in Alderbrook Cemetery in Guilford.
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CHAPTER XVI
Henry Ellsworth Norton October 26, 1865, to April 25, 1867
President: Andrew Johnson. Postmaster General: William Dennison, Ohio.
Major Seward's successor as Postmaster was Henry Ellsworth Norton, a young man who had come to Guil- ford a few years before from his home in North Madison. He was born there August 3, 1836, and was the son of Ellsworth Norton, a well-known, respected farmer of that section. Soon after coming to Guilford this young man started to forge ahead at a rather rapid pace, and he was one of the men of prominence who signed the call for a special town meeting in 1860 for the purpose of taking action on Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops. The signers of that petition were for the most part men very much older than Norton, and were in most instances the leading citizens of the town. His education was under- stood to be of an ordinary character, but he seems to have possessed much native ability which pushed him forward in what was considered unusual rapidity for so young a man, especially one who was not born within the limits of the township.
Therefore, at the age of twenty-nine years this man received the appointment as Guilford's postmaster, and he took up the duties of the office at once. He decided, as did Major Seward before him, to continue the Post Office in the business establishment of John Hale where it had been located for some years past, in fact
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since the early portion of the Civil War. The old store on the west side of the Green seemed to have had a monopoly for some years on housing the Post Office of the town. A man who was connected with the Hale store at the time, and who was well-known and acted as an assistant to Postmaster Norton, was George A. Foote, son of the late Dr. Anson Foote, whose home was the next building north of the Post Office.
Previous to his appointment as postmaster Mr. Norton had represented the town of Guilford in the 1864 session of the General Assembly. He was elected to that office as a republican when he was only twenty-eight years of age. His colleague at that session was John Hooker Bartlett, a man very well known in the community.
Soon after his entrance into the town Mr. Norton became a member of the Third Congregational Church and he was prominent in the life of that organization for a long time. He was honored by being elected a deacon of the church in 1877, at the age of forty-one years, serving until 1880. He was also the superin- tendent of the Sunday School.
But Mr. Norton's greatest ability seemed to center around the business activities of Guilford, and for some time after he became a resident he figured in a large way in the commercial and manufacturing circles of the town. In the year 1868, J. W. Schermerhorn of New York established a business here on South High Street where previously, since 1868, J. S. Norton had conducted a brass foundry. Norton's business was unsuccessful. The author has been told that H. E. Norton soon after his removal to Guilford entered the service of the Schermerhorn concern. This business proved eminently successful at first, but later their trade fell off rapidly,
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and in 1877 financial setbacks caused Schermerhorn to close the factory. Almost immediately after this took place another company was organized which was called the Enterprise Manufacturing Company, and on Octo- ber 22, 1877, commenced to occupy the building previ- ously owned by Mr. Schermerhorn. This was a local affair composed entirely of Guilford men. The presi- dent was Christopher Spencer; the secretary, Henry E. Norton. The original capital was placed at $10,000; but in a few months it was increased to $15,000, and in October, 1881, the capital was still further increased to $30,000. For quite a period this company was uncom- monly successful, according to Steiner's History of Guilford. But the historian later asserts that an "un- fortunate choice of managers and a disastrous fire in May of 1884" operated to reduce the capital structure to $15,000, and to erect a new brick building to replace the wooden one. A substantial effort was made to once more reach success. But the plant finally closed soon after the occupancy of the new building.
Soon after this manufacturing company ceased its activities Henry E. Norton, with his family, quitted Guilford where he had occupied positions of honor and of trust for a long time and with his family removed, around 1885, to Keneshaw, Nebraska. An effort was made to ascertain the nature of Mr. Norton's activities after he went to Nebraska, but it was without success.
He lived in that western town for fifteen years and died there on November 2, 1900, at the age of sixty-five years. His body was brought to this town and interred in Alderbrook Cemetery beside that of his wife, who was Miss Lucy A. Munger, and who died in Guilford long before her husband, on March 5, 1880, aged forty-five years.
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CHAPTER XVII
Charles Griswold
March 4, 1869, to March 29, 1886
Presidents : U. S. Grant, R. B. Hayes, J. A. Garfield, C. A. Arthur. Postmaster Generals: John A. Creswell, Md .; J. W. Marshall, Va .; Marshall Jewell, Conn .; David McKey, Tenn .; Horace Maynard, Tenn .; Thomas L. James, N. Y .; T. A. Howe, Wis .; W. Q. Gresham, Ind .; Frank Hatton, Iowa; W. F. Vilas, Wis .; D. M. Dickinson, Mich.
In many ways Captain Charles Griswold was the most important postmaster Guilford ever had. He not only served the longest term continuously of any of the twenty-one persons who held the office, but he also during his life held a most important state position. For slightly over seventeen years Captain Griswold was the Postmaster of Guilford, and it is said that during that long period of his incumbency no one probably ever conducted the business in a more thoroughly effi- cient manner. He brought to the office rare business sagacity coupled with modernized methods so that Guil- ford was served in a manner they had not experienced before. It was much like parting with an old and beloved friend when he at last left the office but his record had set an all-time high record for ability and continuity.
He came from an old Guilford family. He was the son of Joel Griswold and Polly Bartlett, being born here on July 26, 1841, and he was the youngest of nine children. He attended the Guilford Institute which
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CHARLES GRISWOLD
had been established when he was only fourteen years old, and at the age of twenty-one years, on August 5, 1862, he enlisted in Guilford for the Civil War. He was mustered in as sergeant of Company E, 15th C. V., on August 25 of that year, and his service was of a high order. He was promoted on February 8, 1864, to be captain of Company B, 29th C. V., and he served in that capacity until the close of the conflict. Captain Gris- wold, after a brilliant record, was mustered out of the service October 24, 1865. Returning to Guilford he took up his residence here and remained the rest of his life. He was variously honored by the people of Guil- ford and for a great many years was undoubtedly and properly considered one of the town's most important and valued citizens. In 1869, when he was twenty-eight years of age, Captain Griswold was appointed Post- master of the town to succeed Henry E. Norton. The first thing he did was to remove the office from its old location in John Hale's store to an addition to what was for many years known as Music Hall building on the west side of the Green. It was the first time in the history of the Guilford Post Office that it had occupied "quarters" of its own. Formerly, and for eighty years past, it had been a sort of side show, either in the home of the postmaster, or in his place of business. There- fore, for the next seventeen years it remained in that location and in that building, although at a later period the quarters were also shared somewhat by the then recently organized Guilford Savings Bank.
The administration of the office under Captain Griswold was most satisfactory, and we may almost declare it to have been the local opening of the modern
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postal era. Mail had been coming to Guilford by steam train for some years then and improvements were grad- ually being made all along the line so that there was little remaining of the system obtaining in the very early years of the century. The Post Office was located in the Music Hall building for so many years it became almost a sort of fixture in the town, and few could easily visualize its being operated elsewhere. Finally, how- ever, when Grover Cleveland was elected in 1884, it resulted in a new Postmaster, and the quarters formerly used by the Post Office were then devoted entirely to the Guilford Savings Bank of which Captain Griswold had for a long time past been the efficient treasurer. He occupied that position with the exception of four years for the remaining portion of his life.
When he left the Post Office, Captain Griswold became interested in all public matters and was a very busy man. At a town meeting held in October, 1888, for the purpose of considering celebrating the 250th anni- versary of the founding of Guilford the following year, Captain Griswold, on the motion of Rev. E. M. Vittum, was named as the secretary of the committee of twelve to have charge of the important event which took place in September, 1889. He served in this capacity until he was forced to tender his resignation on August 7, 1889, and his place was then taken by Samuel H. Chittenden of East River.
During his life after he left the army, Captain Gris- wold was a leading member of the Grand Army of the Republic and gave much time and service to that organi- zation. The Parmlee Post, G. A. R., was organized June 17, 1873, in the little room over Henry Mack's
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CHARLES GRISWOLD
harness store in Water Street, and of course Captain Griswold was one of its earliest and most important members.
Following the election of Morgan Gardiner Bulkeley of Hartford as the fifty-first Governor of Connecticut in 1888, Captain Griswold was appointed by the Gov- ernor as one of the two Banking Commissioners of the state. He assumed his new duties in January, 1889, and served for four years. His appointment was for only two years, but as Governor Bulkeley "held over" an additional two years on account of the fact that Luzon B. Morris of New Haven did not receive a plurality of the votes cast in the election of 1890, Captain Griswold, as did most of the State's appointive officers, continued in the office for another two years. The duties of the State Bank Commissioners at that time was far more extensive than it has been in recent years. During the period he served the State all of the financial institutions, such as Building and Loan Associations, Insurance Companies of all sorts, and all chartered financial institutions in the state with the exception of National Banks, were under the charge of the State Banking Commission. This meant a vast amount of detailed work, and it also meant that the Commission, of which Captain Griswold was the head, had to per- sonally examine every institution in any portion of the country where Connecticut Banks, etc., had investments or financial interests. This large amount of work took him for long periods to all portions of the United States, and he not only visited every state in the Union but he also visited them more or less frequently. It was no uncommon event for him to be absent on one of these
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trips for more than a month at a time. His work on the commission was of a high order, and won abundant praise for him from leading financial men of the era. Soon after he terminated his work as a Bank Commis- sioner, Harvey W. Spencer, treasurer of the Guilford Savings Bank, died in November, 1894, to the regret of the community, and Captain Griswold was chosen to again assume his old position to succeed Mr. Spencer as treasurer of the bank. This bank was later merged with the Guilford Trust Company at the opening of the pres- ent century, and he remained with the bank as an official until he died, November 6, 1921, after a long life of great service to his country, his state, and to his native town. From any standpoint one wishes to review this man's career one inevitably concludes that he was one of Guilford's leading and most appreciated citizens for much over a generation. He was a man of high honor, much ability, and a citizen Guilford has always been proud to call her son. Mrs. Griswold survived him for some years, and she died in January, 1934, one of the most beloved and respected women of the town.
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CHAPTER XVIII
Harvey Walter Spencer March 28, 1886, to March 7, 1890
President: Grover Cleveland. Postmaster General: W. F. Vilas, Wisconsin.
Harvey Walter Spencer, the thirteenth postmaster of Guilford, has been dead for forty years, yet his name is often mentioned to-day, and he is generally referred to as one of the finest characters that Guilford produced during the years he lived here. Possessed of rare quali- ties, a man of keen business judgment and superior qualifications for public office, he left behind a name for probity and high standard of citizenship that will endure for many years to come. The author of this history was well acquainted with this fine man and he counts it one of the choice recollections of his early life that he was his friend, although nearly a quarter of a century older than the writer. The Spencer family has been promi- nent for a great many years in the history of Guilford and has produced many men who have occupied high places among those characters who have given this old town a name that caused men like the first President Dwight of Yale College many years ago to classify it in the higher brackets.
Harvey Walter Spencer was born at the West Side in the old Spencer homestead that has for five generations been the home of Spencers who have played an important rôle in the history of the town. He was the son of the
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A YANKEE POST OFFICE
late Henry R. Spencer, a man of sterling qualities, one of the leading farmers of the town, and a man widely honored and appreciated. The young man's early years were passed as most Guilford boys passed them. He went to the District School, helped as a boy in the work of the farm, later attended the recently formed Guilford Institute, as did his predecessor, Charles Griswold, but did not finish the usual course of four years. It is said of him that as a boy he was rather shy, or diffident, and on account of this he did not participate in the then very popular public speaking or the debates which were then one of the principal scholastic events held each week in the old school. In this Forum the late orator W. H. H. Murray made his first public addresses. On account of this fact Mr. Spencer did not complete the usual course but left school and for a time helped about the farm. Farm life did not apparently appeal to him so as a young man he secured a position as a clerk in the then well-known general store of Henry Hale, occupying almost the same ground as that of the late John Hale who had died some years before and whose place of business was burned.
He entered the store when he was in his early twenties, I am told, and remained there upwards of ten years. He was the bookkeeper of the establishment as well as a clerk, and he occupied the two positions with success and satisfaction. He seemed destined to spend most if not all of his life in the Hale establishment because he not only filled the dual position with complete success, but the customers of the store liked him and hoped he would not leave the service. During that period he was clerk of the borough, from 1878 to 1886. However, his
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HARVEY WALTER SPENCER
most important life work was destined to be served not as a merchant or as an accountant, but as the first Post- master appointed by a democratic President since the Civil War, and the treasurer of the Guilford Savings Bank. When Grover Cleveland was elected in 1884 it naturally meant a change in management of the Post Office. The long term of Charles Griswold was termi- nated after a most prolonged record of satisfactory service.
Of course this was a great chance for the democratic party, for the last democrat to have occupied the office was the doughty and more or less fiery Franklin Phelps who had then been dead for eleven years.
Many names were mentioned for the office. It had been conducted on such a high level of efficiency during the previous seventeen years that many shoulders were adroitly shrugged and men freely expressed the opinion that it was a mistake to "swap postmasters" as a result of the elections. But good old Andrew Jackson had inaugurated the practice and nobody had seriously objected to it in either political parties. Both sides seemed to like the "swapping" idea. However, Guil- ford was loath to experiment in Postmasters after such a recent exhibition of how the Post Office ought to be operated. Whom to choose for this position became a matter of almost public debate. Suddenly the name of Harvey Walter Spencer was announced. It is said that Mr. Spencer made no advances himself, but that friends quietly presented his name before the new democratic President, and he was promptly named for the office. He started his work near the first of April in 1886.
The first thing he did to make the change more com-
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plete was to move the office from its old location where Mr. Griswold had established it in 1869 to a small, queer looking sort of a building on the east side of Guilford Green. This building had been erected about forty years previously, had a "fleet" of uncomfortably steep stairs leading to its front door, and it had been for some years the drug store conducted by the late Harris Pendleton, Jr., who came here as a young man from New London soon after the Civil War. He had been the town's druggist for many years, a representative in the General Assembly, and clerk of the borough for a long time in the seventies. The building stood on the same lot as the present Town Hall, but very near the old house now standing immediately south of the town's property. It is now a masonic club house.
In this building Mr. Spencer conducted the Post Office for the next four years. He made an excellent postal official and people who had feared at first that the local Post Office could never be carried on with such success by a democrat as attended Charles Griswold's adminis- tration, were soon drastically disillusioned. All through the four years the Guilford Post Office, although in new and strange quarters, kept to the high level the town had become accustomed to, and it is said that if the people themselves could have done so they would have nominated and elected Harvey Spencer their Postmaster the remainder of his life. But politics again interferred and Grover Cleveland went the way of all democrats of that period, so that when the four years had elapsed the office was again in different hands.
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