USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Suffield > Celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Suffield, Connecticut, October 12, 13 and 14, 1920, with sketches from its past and some record of its last half century and of its present > Part 16
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Thomas Huxley, who came to Suffield in 1678, was licensed to keep a public house in 1686, and it was situated for a long period where the house recently known as the Thaddeus Spencer place stands. He was one of the first freemen, and held many important town offices including that of selectman.
Captain Aaron Hitchcock was an innkeeper and for half a cen- tury a prominent man in the town-town clerk for thirteen years and town treasurer for twenty years. Gad Lane's tavern was a prominent one of its day and is illustrated among the old houses. A notable one in the Revolutionary period was that of Seth Austin in what was later known as the Archer place (also il- lustrated). Eliphalet King kept a tavern in the house now owned by William S. Fuller, and the Pease tavern at one time was prominent. The house on Feather Street at the corner of the road formerly leading to Enfield bridge-later known as the Napoleon Adams place and the home of the late Willis Adams, the artist-was a tavern for a considerable period.
With the coming of the railroads the long era of tavern and turnpike was doomed. From the old roads that had held Suffield in the channel of through travel the stage coaches and the lum- bering carts and wagons carrying merchandise up and down the valley disappeared, while the taverns, losing their outside pat- ronage, rapidly declined and in time either went out of business or changed their characters. A stage was run to and from Wind- sor Locks regularly, and for a considerable period Wilkes Tavern was a prominent landmark on the north corner of Day Avenue, but the building was many years ago removed to Depot Street where, as the Bee Hive, it had a varied career, until burned about ten years ago. The Suffield House which Samuel Knox bought, together with the Windsor Locks stage line, when he came to Suffield in 1866, and which for many years was con- ducted by his sons Waldo and Wallace, is the sole survivor in Suffield of tavern days.
Dining Room in Gay Mansion
A Bed Room in Gay Mansion
Hall in Gay Mansion
The Pool, Built by Ebenezer King, Jr., About 1808 (p. 174)
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Crooked Lane
Contrary to what many may suppose, the old Springfield Road gained its ancient name of Crooked Lane, not because of its own deviations from a straight course, but from the sharp bend in the cross road to Halladay Corner. October 10, 1680 the committee for settling the town of Suffield granted allot- ments for homesteads "beyond or at the upper end of High Street" to Victory Sikes, Thomas Cooper, Luke Hitchcock, John Barber, James, Jonathan and Samuel Taylor and William and Ebenezer Brooks. The tract lay between upper High Street on the west and the Springfield Road on the east, and just north of a grant already made to David Froe. There was to be a high- way on the south between them "ten or twelve rods wide." But in 1684 the town voted "seven rods wide out of it to be given to David Froe on the south." This left the road a mere lane or "driftway". Mr. Sheldon found no record that the town ever laid it out as a highway.
This lane had an "elbow or crook about the middle or where the brook runs through" and the lots conforming therewith were correspondingly crooked. This fact was not mentioned in the first records leaving only straight lines to be inferred. To remedy this omission and "lest any of the present proprietors, or any of their heirs or successors in after generations should, out of a cross humor or for some sinister end, call or challenge a straight line, which could not be denied, for both law and reason would enforce the same, where nothing in the record or otherwise is exprest to the contrary," the proprietors made, signed and had recorded an agreement April 19, 1697 that "all the lots should run with an elbow or crook as it now does" and "so to continue from one generation to another forever."
These lots became known as the Crooked Lane lots, and Crooked Lane soon supplanted the "Springfield Road." Its ancient and honorable name held sway for about two hundred years, or until some twenty years ago when the question of a branch postoffice arose, and the name Crooked Lane did not conform to the regulations of the United States postoffice de- partment for postoffices. With some regrets and against the protests of many, the name was changed to Mapleton. The
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postoffice was conducted only a few years at the home of Arthur Sikes, when rural free delivery routes were established.
The Postoffice
For over a century the taverns were the postoffices of the old towns and Suffield was no exception. This was a natural devel- opment of the practice originating at the ports of taking the incoming ship's mail to a specified tavern where it was spread out on a table to be called for. As the settlements extended into the Connecticut valley, the taverns became the stopping places of the early post riders and so continued long after the stage lines were established. At about the time of the settlement of Suffield, the Colonial Government of New York established a monthly mail to Boston and some thirty years later this was changed to a fortnightly service, the messengers meeting alter- nately at Hartford and Saybrook. The former route passed through Suffield.
When in 1753 Benjamin Franklin became Deputy Post- master General of the colonies by the King's appointment he proceeded to systematize the routes, and it is said that he personally went over the main routes. The tradition that in that year he went over the route through Suffield is undoubtedly correct. He records the fact that on this journey Yale first and then Harvard gave him the degree of master of arts. Forty years afterward Congress passed its first act for the Federal ad- ministration of postoffices and the records show that the post- office at Suffield began to make quarterly returns on October I, 1796. Hezekiah Huntington was the first postmaster of record.
The succession of Suffield postmasters to the present time has been as follows: Hezekiah Huntington, 1796-8; William Gay, 1798-1835; Odiah L. Sheldon, 1835-41; Horace Sheldon 2d, 1841-2; George A. Loomis, 1842-50; Samuel B. Low, 1850-53; George Williston, 1853-61; David Hale, 1861-9; Richard Jobes, 1869-70; Edward E. Nichols, 1870-72; Miss M. Maria Nichols, 1872-4; Miss Ella S. Nichols, 1874-81; Frank H. Reid, 1881-5; Alonzo C. Allen, 1885-91; Richard Jobes, 1891-08; Edmund Halladay, 1908-13. Edward Perkins, the present postmaster, was appointed May 20, 1913. The rural free delivery route No. I was established December 15, 1900; No. 2, October 15, 1901. Village delivery was established April 16, 1918.
CIVIL WAR DAYS AND SINCE
At certain periods events or conditions of trade or industry have produced changes in the population of Suffield, but for about one hundred years after the settlement, nearly the whole growing population was embraced by the family names of the first settlers or proprietors. Families were large, cousins and second cousins multiplied, and the children so intermarried that by the time of the Revolution the blood of the proprietors mingled in most of the population. More than eighty per cent of the young men enlisted in the French and Indian wars bore the old family names. There were new names in the army rolls of the Revolu- tion, but they were in the minority and in the main were the names of families that had soon followed the first settlers to the town. For a period after the Revolution, it is probable that the industrial enterprises-the iron works, cotton and other mills -brought in new families, but in about the same period branches of the old Suffield families were established in other places. The speculative land fever took many to western New York, Ohio, Indiana and later to Michigan and other future States.
In 1786 Connecticut ceded to the United States all her rights and title within her ancient charter limits, and in this first set- tlement received a tract of land of about 3,600,000 acres in the northeastern part of the Ohio territory known as the Connecti- cut Reserve. In May 1795 the Connecticut Legislature appointed a committee of eight persons to make sale of the lands, and to appropriate the proceeds to a permanent fund, the interest of which should be annually distributed among the several school societies of the State. Two of the committee, Samuel Hale and Gideon Granger Jr., were Suffield men. In December of the same year this committee disposed of the tract to Oliver Phelps, as agent for the Connecticut Land company, for the sum of $1,200,000, payable in five years with annual interest after two years. Oliver Phelps, who was born in 1749, had been engaged in business in Suffield and Granville, Mass., and had acquired a considerable fortune. He had already been engaged in extensive land speculations in the West, having been a partner in the pur-
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chase from Massachusetts of about two million acres of land now comprised in Ontario and Steuben counties, N. Y. This had been a profitable speculation apparently and genealogical re- cords show that several Suffield people moved to this region. Besides the towns of Phelps and Granger, Ontario county has several towns duplicating Hartford county names
The other Suffield men interested with Phelps in the purchase of the Western Reserve lands were Gideon Granger, Jr., Luther Loomis, Ebenezer King, David King, Asahel Hatheway, and Sylvanus Griswold. Their aggregate share in the purchase was $330,916 and of this it is said that Oliver Phelps had something more than one-half, and Ebenezer King and Luther Loomis together about one-quarter. It proved an unfortunate specula- tion for those who remained in it. Ohio established a territorial government in 1800 and Connecticut ceded her rights. None of the Suffield members of the company settled in the reserve ex- cept possibly David King. Oliver Phelps sold the Burbank place to Asahel Hatheway, and Ebenezer King his new mansion to William Gay and both moved to Canandaigua in Ontario county N. Y.
A few years later, in the early part of the last century, came the change that ever since has much affected the population of the town-the development of the tobacco and cigar industry. As elsewhere stated the cigar industry came first and brought in several families of prominence.
It was a strong body of men, many of them descendents of old families that led in the affairs of the town at the period of the Bi-centennial Celebration. Most of them had been born near the beginning of the century and had actively participated in the material advancement of the town during the years before the war and had been the leaders in town affairs in the trying period of war and reconstruction. Some of them have been mentioned elsewhere in connection with the institutions or enterprises of the town. Some of them, already advanced in years died soon after the celebration, while others younger became the men of influence in the seventies and eighties.
The committee chosen by the town to inaugurate the celebra- tion was a representative list of the leading citizens of that gen- eration. It consisted of Daniel W. Norton, Simon B. Kendall,
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Samuel Austin, Gad Sheldon, Elihu S: Taylor, Henry Fuller, Albert Austin, William L. Loomis, Milton Hatheway, Dr. Aretas Rising, Edward P. Stevens, George Fuller, Hezekiah Spencer, Artemas King, Henry P. Kent, Byron Loomis, Thaddeus H. Spencer, George A. Douglass, Silas W. Clark, Hezekiah S. Shel- don, Hiram K. Granger, Thomas J. Austin, Alfred Spencer, James B. Rose, Warren Lewis, Nathan Clark, L. Z. Sykes, Julius Harmon, Burdett Loomis, I. Luther Spencer, Benjamin F. Hastings, Frank P. Loomis, Charles A. Chapman, William E. Harmon, Horace K. Ford, Ralph P. Mather, John M. Hatheway and Henry M. Sykes.
About the middle of the century the change in agricultural conditions through the development of Connecticut seed leaf for cigar wrappers had brought in farm labor that later estab- lished prominent Catholic families in town. Among these men were Timothy Miskell, Patrick and John Haley, John Gilligan, John F. Barnett, Patrick O'Brien, John Welch, Patrick Carroll, John Sliney, Edward Cooney, Patrick Devine. Joseph Roche, Peter Shea, John Dineen and Robert Obram.
From the forties, when Orrin Haskins and Silas W. Clark came from Washington, Mass., the town for a period of thirty years gained many substantial families through men of old New Eng- land stock whose ancestors had early established themselves on the post roads of the hill towns of Western Massachusetts- towns that with the coming of the railroads began to lose their old advantages and importance. Following Silas Clark, came his brother Nathan, William and Ebenezer Ballantine, Edwin A. and Almon Russell, Franklin and Benajah Brockett, Henry D. Tinker, Samuel and Hiram Knox, William and Abel Peckham, James and H. K. Spellman, Amos and James Chapell, William Soper and Clark Corey, all of whom purchased old Suffield farms. Leverett Sackett purchased the property north of the Town Hall, and his son Horace conducted a general store there for many years. The Graves brothers came from Middlefield, and for a long period conducted the meat business of the town. Albert Pierce came from Vermont and purchased the Thaddeus Leavitt, Jr., place from Albert Austin.
Asa L. Strong came to Suffield from Northampton in 1871 and established a drug store, located at first next to the postoffice
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and where Martinez' store now is, but he moved to the Loomis block, now the Cooper block, in 1876. He conducted the local pharmacy for over forty years.
Warren W. Cooper first came to Suffield in 1857 and drove the stage from Suffield to Windsor Locks. He went west for a period and returning to Suffield established a coal business in 1874 and gradually extended it into a general business, later acquired by Clinton and Samuel R. Spencer and now conducted by Spencer Brothers, Inc.
Early in the seventies a group of Irish Protestant families came to Suffield and later acquired some of the fine old farms of the town-the Barrs, Colters, Grahams, McCarls, Orrs, Adam- ses, Firtions, Barriesfords and others.
The considerable extension of tobacco acreage in the nineties creating a larger demand for labor was coincident with a large immigration to this country from Central Europe and particu- larly from Poland. The Poles quickly became the chief reliance for farm help. Industrious and in the main thrifty, they soon began to acquire good tobacco farms and in a period of little more than twenty-five years they have become 25 per cent. of the population.
Tobacco
Though some tobacco was raised by the planters of the Massa- chusetts and Connecticut colonies, it was mainly in small patches and for their own use. From time to time both colonies passed restrictive laws and it was not an extensive crop in Suffield until the nineteenth century. Whenever in the earlier period the town by vote established the prices at which farm products should be received as town pay, tobacco was not in- cluded.
The cigar industry began in Suffield before extensive tobacco growing. Soon after the peace of 1783 cigars began to be im- ported from the West Indies. Suffield was probably the first town in New England to make cigars-certainly to any great extent. In 1810 Simeon Veits, who lived in West Suffield, began to employ and to teach women to roll cigars for sale. He hired a Cuban, who seems to have drifted into town, to instruct them n the art. Some native but mostly cheaper kinds of Cuban
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tobacco was used. Veits continued to employ women and to send out peddlers to sell "the real Spanish cigars" until 1821, when he failed and some years later, 1838, died penniless, though he had established an industry.
Among the first peddlers he employed were the Loomis brothers-James, Parks, Allen, Neland, Aaron and Wells-who soon after his failure began manufacturing cigars and laid the foundation for ample fortunes. Between 1821 and 1831 other Suffield men embarked in the enterprise; among them were Jabez Heath, Henry P. Kent, Moses, Samuel and Homer Austin, and Robert B. Dennison. Within this period the art of making cigars was so generally acquired and the demand for the product so great that the spinning wheel, the loom and the dairy gave place to the cigar table and the cuttingboard. From 1830 to 1850 a large number of the families of Suffield depended upon cigars or "supes" made by deft fingers of their own household for their store supplies. Most of the merchants were glad to ex- change their goods for cigars at from $1 to $1.50 a thousand. At that time the Connecticut tobacco from which they were generally made was not marketable for any other purpose. It was customary to strip off the bottom leaves for cigars as soon as tobacco began to cure on the poles, but the art of sweating, packing and pressing was unknown or unpracticed. When this change was made, shortly before the Civil War, it worked a revo- lution in the industry and made Connecticut Seed Leaf the finest tobacco then known for wrappers. It became too valuable to work up into the old "supes" and this branch of female industry was abandoned.
The pioneers in this change were Henry P. Kent and Henry Endress. The latter came to Suffield in 1827 and went to work making cigars for Preserved Allen. In giving his recollections some years ago to Mr. H. S. Sheldon he said that Connecticut tobacco was not used to any extent to make good cigars till 1845. A man by the name of Phelps in Warehouse Point first began packing it in boxes, sometime in the thirties, but Cuban tobacco held its own some years longer.
Notes left by Mr. Sheldon for the decades from 1850 to 1870 indicate that the value of the tobacco crop in 1850 put in cases was not more than $33,000, while the value of the cigars manu-
5
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factured in town totaled $165,000. The different manufacturers employed 152 men and 80 women. In the order of the volume of business the principal manufacturers at that time were Samuel Austin, Henry P. Kent, Samuel N. Reid, H. A. & R. Loomis, Charles Mather, Aaron Loomis, William H. Hanchett, Henry Endress, Neland Loomis, and John W. Loomis. The annual output of these factories was 11,340,000 cigars, while eleven other smaller manufacturers produced 3, 142,000, the total being 14,482,000. They used about one pound of Connecticut Seed to five pounds of Spanish or Cuban tobacco.
The value of the cigar product increased steadily for the next twenty years and the growth of Connecticut Seed in town ap- pears to have increased from about 109,000 pounds in 1850 to 720,000 pounds in 1870, while the value of the cigar product rose to nearly $300,000 a year. At that time most of the pioneers had gone out of business. J. W. Loomis was then the largest manu- facturer and among the new names were Joseph Wallace, Robert F. Brome, Philip Lipps, William R. Cherry, Benjamin Wood, Richard Jobes, Austin & Burbank, B. F. Hastings, C. L. Humason, and Andrew Martinez. Later William Drake es- tablished an extensive manufacturing business, afterwards con- ducted by L. P. Bissell, and at his death acquired by Karl C. Kulle.
By 1870 the cigar industry in other places had had an exten- sive growth and a large market for Connecticut Seed developed in New York. There were about 300 growers in town, the acre- age of each being small. The farmers usually assorted their own crops into wrappers, seconds and fillers, and wrappers usually commanded about forty cents a pound.
In the next decade, or along in the eighties, the practice of growing Havana Seed developed, and the cultivation of Connec- ticut Seed in Suffield practically ceased for a period. At about the same time methods of cultivation changed, mechanical planters took the place of the old hand planting, lath took the place of twine and the acreage increased, though the weight per acre decreased with the lighter leaf. As a result the large dealers began to establish packing houses in the town and the leaf, bought unsorted, was more thoroughly graded by length and color. These and other changes including a large increase in
SUFFIELD VETERANS ASSOCIATION, CIVIL WAR. At the Soldiers Monument May 30, 1902. Front Row, Left to Right-A. L. Francher, A. C. Harmon, J. B. Doolittle, J. R. Middlebrook, M. T. Newton, C. D. Towne, S. D. Todd, F. O. Newton, Asbury Jobes, Levi Toothill. Back Row, Left to Right,-F. E. Hastings, Richard Jobes, A. R. Austin, G. T. Beman, H. W. Gridley. A. M. Remington, W. R. Cherry, A. R. Pierce, A. H. Graham, E. A. Fuller.
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acreage have taken place in the last forty years and more re- cently the development of large plantations controlled by syn- dicates or stock companies and raising large acreage under cloth. In all these changes the pre-eminence of Suffield leaf for cigar manufacture has been maintained.
Suffield in the Wars
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Suffield numbered 3260 in- habitants. About 350 were between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, subject to military duty, and the names of two hun- dred and eighty-six are on the honor roll. Three companies were recruited at Suffield. The first in response to the call of the Presi- dent in April, 1861, was mustered into the service as Company C, Fourth Regiment, Connecticut Infantry, May 23, 1861. This regiment was changed June 2, 1862, to First Regiment Connec- ticut Heavy Artillery, and ranked as the best in the field. Forty- eight men, most of them residents of the town, were accredited to Suffield. Thirty-two served three years. Twelve of these re-en- listed as veterans, and served through the war, with the excep- tion of Eben P. Hall, who died of his wounds July 12, 1865. Their names were: Charles G. Ball, Eben P. Hall, Ezra W. Bar- num, Heman A. Cone, John Galvin, John P. Rheim, Joseph Walker, Justus Vogt, Oscar H. Graham, Peter M. Hall, William H. Proctor, William H. Ramsdell. Captain Rolland S. Burbank commanded the company from its organization, until his resigna- tion, Feb. 2, 1863. Willis A. Pomeroy was his First Lieutenant, but soon resigned. William Soby, his Second Lieutenant, also resigned and re-enlisted in the Seventh Connecticut (General Hawley's regiment). He was wounded at Pocotaligo, and died of his wounds, Nov. 9, 1862.
The second company recruited in Suffield was Company D, Sixteenth Regiment Connecticut Infantry, in July and August, 1862, for three years' service. Sixty-four men of this company were accredited to Suffield. This company of raw recruits left the State August 29, 1862, and within twenty days were thrust into the front of the fight in the battle of Antietam, at Sharps- burg, Md. Four-Horace Warner, George W. Allen, Henry Barnett, Nelson E. Snow,-were killed in battle; three-Joseph
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Pockett, David B. Carrier, John B. Letcher-died of wounds; eight were wounded and discharged; three-Franklin Allen, John L. Winchell, Joseph Hoskins-died in Andersonville prison; two-Orlando E. Snow, George J. Pierce-died at Flor- ence, S. C; George W. Carter was drowned and Daniel Bont died of disease.
The third conpany was Company G, Twenty-second Regiment Connecticut Infantry recruited, in September, 1862. This was the first regiment in Connecticut, recruited for nine months service. The company numbered ninety-five men. Seventy-two were accredited to Suffield, and the remainder to the town of Union. The company was mustered out July 7, 1863, at Hart- ford, after more than ten months' service from the date of its enlistment.
The town furnished thirty-seven men to the Twenty-ninth Regiment (colored). They were recruited chiefly in December, 1863. They were mustered into the United States service March 8, 1864, and discharged at Hartford, Nov. 25, 1865, with a most honorable record. On the morning of April 3, 1865, when Rich- mond was abandoned by Lee's forces, a strife to be the first to enter the city took place. That honor was conceded to have be- longed to Companies C and G of the Twenty-ninth Connecticut Regiment. Twelve Suffield recruits were in Company C and shared in that honor. The remainder of Suffield's quota were enrolled in other regiments. Twenty-two names are found in the roll of the Seventh Connecticut Regiment. Of these, Luther L. Archer was wounded at Fort Wagner, and William M. Reeves and Oscar L. Smith were killed July 11, 1863.
The Soldiers Monument
The first effort to erect a monument to the soldiers of the Civil War was in the annual town meeting October 2, 1865 and a com- mittee was appointed to secure estimates. It reported in Novem- ber that it would cost $2000 and an appropriation was made but the effort failed, and in February 1866 the appropriation was rescinded and the committee discharged.
During the years following there was always a strong senti- ment for a monument, but it did not take shape until November 2, 1887, when, at a special town meeting, $3000 was unanimously
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