USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Centennial celebration of the incorporation of the town of Bristol [Conn.] June 17, 1885 > Part 3
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The school-house, the second great institution of New Eng- land Puritanisin, was not wanting in New Cambridge. Three years after the first incorporation as a winter society in Janu- ary, 1745, a school committee was chosen "to git in the school mony," and from year to year it was voted to have a lawful school. This early school was kept during the winter only-probably in some private house. In 1749 it was "voted, that would have a school kept in this sosiaty six mounths viz 3 months by a master and. 3 mounths by a dame."
In 1754 the town gave liberty to build two school-houses, of which one stood east of this green, near the Roman Cath- olie parsonage, and the other on Chippin's Hill, thus accom-
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modating the two principal sections of the town. In 1764 a third school-house was built, in what is now the Stafford district. Within a few years these divisions of the town had grown to five, and in 1768 a formal division and designation of the district lines was made.
These five districts may be roughly described as follows :
The house of Royce Lewis, on Maple street, lately pulled down by W. P. Stedman, was taken as a central point. All the territory north of that constituted three districts; the North, extending from the old road, now King street, a mile and a half to the west, and including everything north of that line ; the Northwest, including Pine Hollow (so called in the original layout), and Chippin's Hill; and the Northeast, Stafford and North Forestville. The land south of Royce Lewis's was divided into two districts, called Sonth and Southeast, by a line drawn from Maple street over the hill to the main mountain road. The Red Stone Hill settlement was excepted from this division, and kept a school in common with Plainville.
The three school-houses already built accommodated three districts, and the Sonth district now built one near the South grave-yard, and the North district one near the Parson New- ell house. These divisions proved to be only temporary ; Chippin's Hill was soon divided into two districts, and con- stant changes have been made in the number and boundaries of the districts ever since.
These early schools were not free schools in the modern sense of the term. The school-houses were built, and a part of the running expenses were paid, by the society, but cach scholar paid a certain sum for tuition in addition." The instruction included principally reading, spelling, writing, and ciphering, with careful training in the Westminster catechism, which was personally superintended every Saturday by Parson Newell.
The school-houses were all small, and built on the ancient. model, with a bench'running around three sides of the room,
* See Appendix C, vote of December 28th, 1749.
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on which the scholars sat, facing the wall for study, and which they climbed over, so as to face the centre of the room in recitation.
Our school system now includes twelve districts, employing twenty-eight teachers, and paying for all ordinary expenses nearly $17,000 per annum. The recent adoption of a com- mon conrse of study, the holding of connnon graduation exercises, and the establishment of a partial town high-school course, have done much to consolidate and benefit our educa- tional interests. .
When the French and Indian war broke out, Parson New- ell urged his people to their duties in the field, and a small body of New Cambridge volunteers entered the British army and served during the war. The date of this war is so remote, and there is such a dearth of records in regard to it, that the names of the individual volunteers, or the part taken by them, have almost entirely passed beyond the reach of history. The Revolutionary war was of so much greater importance, and retained so much stronger hold on the popu- lar memory, that the part taken by the New Cambridge set- tlers is a little more possible of ascertainment.
In 1774, when the enrollment of " minute men " was made, sixty-eight Farmington men signed the compact to march to the relief of Boston at a moment's warning, armed and equipped. Among these, at least four-Isaiah Thompson, Obadiah Andrews, Samuel Peck, and Wise Barnes-were New Cambridge men. A count, somewhat conjectural, and which doubtless falls below the real number, gives eighty- nine New Cambridge men as having served in the Revolu- tionary war. Many families sent more than one member to the field. Of these the Allen family sent two; Andrews four; Barnes seven ; Bartholomew eight, including Abraham Bartholomew with three sons, and Jacob with two; Gaylord three, one of whom shall be mentioned particularly hereafter ; Hotchkiss three ; Hungerford two; Hart three; Jerome two; Lewis four, of whom Lieutenant Roger Lewis left to his family his sword and canteen, the latter of which still bears a dent made at the battle of Mommonth Court-house; Lee
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two; Matthews three; Manross two, of whom Elijah, enlist- ing at sixteen years of age, acted as a musician and became fife-major; Norton two; Peck four; Roberts four, of whom Gideon, afterward our first clock-maker, with Jacob Bartholo- mew, became a captive in the famous British prison-ships; Thompson three ; Wilcox two ; and Warren two, sons of Elisha Warren, who, visiting his sons in camp at Boston, contracted the small-pox, and was buried back of his house, where the fragments of a grave-stone still remain.
Many other families were represented in the army by a single member. One New Cambridge volunteer, Ira Hooker, is known to have been a witness of the execution of Andre .*
Aaron Gaylord and his family had a peenliarly distressing experience of the horrors of war. In 1775 he removed to Wyoming county with his family. At the beginning of hostilities he was elected commander of the fort, which was scantily guarded, most of the men being absent in the army. The fort was attacked by Indians, and against Gaylord's judgment a sally was ordered by a council of the soldiers. The massacre which resulted is a matter of history. The single soldier who escaped brought back the hat of Lienten- ant Gaylord, and helped the women of the settlement to flee for their lives. Several weeks later the wife arrived at New Cambridge, exhausted, impoverished, and widowed. Two years later, however, she sent her only son, then fifteen years of age, into the army.
The great national struggle, which most of us remember so distinctly, obsenres in our mind the earlier and more desper- ate one, but our fathers made far greater sacrifices in 1776 than did we in 1861, and the enlistment and drafts ahnost stripped the handlet of adult men.
In December, 1780, the first action was taken looking towards a town incorporation. Committees were appointed to confer with the West Britain society as to terms of union, and to apply to the Assembly for an act incorporating the two societies as a town.
* See Appendix G
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The people of New Cambridge meant to secure the pre- cedence to which their greater size entitled them, and made it a condition of the union that New Cambridge should always be called the first society, and should have the town sign-post within its limits. This negotiation failed, and in 1781 it was voted " to make another tryal with West Britan." This was no more successful, however, and the matter was dropped for three years.
It will interest us all, I am sure, to know that a vital point of dissension was the building of a town building, which New Cambridge desired and West Britain opposed. Truly, history repeats itself .*
In 17844 negotiations between the two societies were re- newed, and in February, 1785, a conference was had, at which the town-building plan was finally dropped, and a full agreement was reached. I think that this meeting, or some similar one, must have been held under the old oak on Peacea- ble street. It has long been tradition that our first town- meeting was held under this tree, but this certainly is an error. It seems natural, however, that some of the meetings of the two societies in conference might have been held there, and that such a meeting could have been confused with the formal town-meeting in the popular memory.
A petition for incorporation was drafted, signed by com- mittees of the two societies, and sent to the Assembly which met in May, 1785. This petition was promptly granted, and the name of Bristol given to the new town. This name nowhere appears to have been suggested or asked for by the settlers ; for all that can be learned to the contrary, it was selected by the General Assembly on considerations of con- venience and enphony alone.
The first town-meeting was held, in obedience to the act of incorporation, June thirteenth, 1785, in the New Cambridge meeting-house, a few hundred feet from where we now stand.
* At the time of the delivery of this history, an animated contest between Bristol centre and Forestville, in which the former advocated, and the latter opposed, the erection of a town building, had just been temporarily disposed of by indefinite postponement.
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The first board of selectmen was then elected, consisting of Joseph Byington, Deacon Elisha Manross, and Zebulon Peck, Esq., of New Cambridge, and Simeon Hart, Esq., and Zebu- lon Frisbie, Jr., of West Britain.
. It was voted that the selectmen should do the business free of cost to the town. This economy was given up the next year. however, and the selectmen were paid three shillings a day. Jacob Bartholomew was elected treasurer, Judah Barnes collector for New Cambridge, Abraham Bartholomew collector for West Britain .*
The grand list of the town amounted to £17,000, and of this about half belonged to each society. It was provided in the act of incorporation that town-meetings should be held alternately in the New Cambridge and West Britain meeting- houses, and this arrangement was followed during the twenty- one years of the union. But the union of two societies of so nearly equal size was productive of continual small jealonsies, and as early as 1795 the town declared its wish to be divided. The troubles were patched up for a time, but soon broke out again. New Cambridge appears to have claimed the right to always have three of the five selectmen, and West Britain to have the majority of the board taken from each society alter- nately. The claims of West Britain in this respect were generally successful, as they were able to carry the meetings held in their society.
The election of representatives to the Assembly was also a cause of rivalry, and the town tried in vain to obtain the right to send two representatives.
In 1804 the New Cambridge voters carried another reso- Intion to have the town divided, which the West Britain meeting promptly voted to oppose. The General Assembly divided the town in May, 1806, giving the old name, Bristol, to the New Cambridge society, and calling the northern society Burlington. The organization and limits of the town of Bristol have since been substantially unchanged.
One hundred years ago this hill top had already become a " See Appendix D.
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publie spot. A little to the northeast of the present site stood the Congregational meeting-house, in which the town had just completed its organization, radiant in " spruce yellow " sides, white doors and windows, and "Spanish brown " roof. Across the road was the still smaller Episcopal church building, with its cemetery in the rear. Farther south stood the " Sabba'-day " honses, a most necessary insti- tution in those days of stoveless churches; little houses belonging to different families of the congregation, where each kept a Sunday fire, and during the noon intermission filled their foot-stoves, ate their lunch, and warmed them- selves for the afternoon service. These were built in the highway, by permission from the town, as early as 1754, and were still standing in the present century.
Near the head of this green were the whipping-post and stocks, neither of which, I think, was often used. Close by the whipping-post stood a tree, on which the Whigs had hanged a Tory caught at one of the meetings at Chippin's Hill, during the stormy times of the Revolution. The arri- val of an early traveler, who ent down and resuscitated this man, saved the instruments of the law from being over-shad- owed by the victim of popular violence.
On the east side of this green stood, probably, the school- house, then some thirty years old, which had originally served for the whole society except Chippin's Hill.
This ground itself had been already dedicated to public use. and was a militia training-ground. A company of " trainers " had been formed in 1747, of which Caleb Matthews was the first captain. Judah Barnes was afterward elected captain, and the trainings were held back of the Barnes tavern; but before the Revolution the members of the society bonght this land for that purpose, and it has ever since been public ground. The principal distinction attained by the Bristol militia was a century later than the first organization, when the attempts of this company to evade training, by a succes- sion of ingenions and successful devices, made Bristol a terror to the state officers, and finally, it is said, led to the downfall of the state militia system.
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The two roads inclosing this green were already laid out, but in what condition they were it would be difficult now to tell. The road-making was then done by special tax, which one might pay, or work out, at his option, receiving in wages, if he chose to work out his tax, three shillings a day in the spring, and two in the fall, and a like amount for a yoke of cat- tle. Until some time after the town's incorporation the roads leading out of town were hardly better than the Indian trails which had preceded them. When the Lewis family came to Bristol, Josiah Lewis was a week in traveling from Southing- ton with his family and goods, having to cut his way through woods, and to find a ford or make a bridge across the brooks. The turnpike, which was laid out in 1805, taught people how to make roads for the first time. Before that, "corduroying" muddy places, and removing stumps and stones to some extent, as in our cart-paths, had been all that was attempted on most of the roads.
The opening of the Abel Lewis tavern, in 1794, in the house now occupied by Miss Stearns, completed the quartette of public buildings-meeting-house, church, school, and tav- ern-and made this green a well-equipped village centre.
The number of taverns which were then kept is one of the curiosities of the time. Ebenezer Barnes had very early begun to keep a tavern, and when the Pierce family bought the Barnes house in 1795, they continned the business. About 1750, Zebulon Peck opened a second tavern near the old Brownson house. At the beginning of this century there were in Bristol, besides the old Pierce tavern, and the Lewis tavern just mentioned, one on Fall Mountain, kept by Joel Norton, one on West street, kept by Austin Bishop, a deacon of the Baptist church, one at Lewis's corner, by widow Thompson, one at Parson Newell's former residence, the Dr. Pardee place, by his son's widow, one on Chippin's Hill, by Lemuel Carrington, one in the north part of the town, by Asa Bartholomew, and possibly others. Each one of these had its pole and sign, consisting of a tin ball with decanter, foot-glass and punch-bowl painted thereon. Their principal business was the supply of liquor to the neighbors, and prob-
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ably only one or two of them exceeded the lawful require- ments for the entertainment of travelers, namely, one spare bed and stable-room for two horses.
They supplied in some degree the place not only of our hotels and eating-houses, but of clubs, newspapers, and post- office, for not even a weekly mail came nearer than Farming- ton till 1800, and what little general news ever reached the town was cirenlated by the nightly gatherings at the taverns. The Bartholomew tavern (" Barthomy tavern" as it was called,) was the most important one, situated as it was mid- way between the two societies, and there the meetings of town officers were generally held, and much of the publie business was done.
My limit of time and your limit of patience must greatly condense this sketch as to the history of the century which has elapsed since the town's incorporation. The building of the stage-route, and the establishment of a weekly mail, abont 1800, which fixed the business centre at the north side, the building of the railroad in 1850, which changed the business centre again to the south side, the establishment of the Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist, Roman Catholic, and Adventist churches, the settlement and growth of the village of Forestville, and the establishment and steady development of onr clock and other manufacturing interests, have been the principal features of this history.
The Baptist church has the oldest continuons history of any except the Congregational. In 1791 the Baptists of Bristol, Wolcott, and Plymonth united to organize a church, and for eleven years meetings were held in the three societies alternately. Elder White Osborne was the first pastor, then Isaac Root and Daniel Wildman. In 1802 this church built a meeting-house on West street, forty-two feet by thirty-two. This building is now a part of the Barnes Brothers clock factories. The church still standing on the old site was built in 1830, and the handsome brick one on School street in ISSO.
The early history of this church included a enrions contest with the supernatural powers. A witchcraft excitement of
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very considerable extent broke ont in the town, and Elder Wildman, Deacon Dutton, and others of that church became the especial victims of the evil deeds which tradition has reported. Elder Wildman boldly invited to his house, and tried to cure, a girl who had been afflicted by witches, and, as the story goes, was not only unsnecessful, but was griev- ously tormented himself. Deacon Dutton's ox was bodily torn in pieces before his eyes, after he had uttered some expression of unbelief, and others on West street and Fall Mountain told marvelous tales of demoniae possession. This witchcraft excitement was begun and kept up by a young man named King, who was studying for the ministry with Elder Wildman. On his departure, the activity of the evil spirits ceased.
The present Episcopal society was organized in 1834 with twelve members. Services were held at first in the Congre- gational and Baptist chapels. In 1835 the Reverend George C. V. Eastman was settled, and a church built ou Maple street. This was occupied until 1863, when they moved to the Main street church which they now occupy, and sold their old building to the Forestville Methodist society.
The Methodist Episcopal church was organized in April, 1834, and meetings were held for a while in the West street school-house. Great hostility was felt toward this church by the other religious bodies, and they could only buy land for their meeting-house by concealing the purpose for which it was intended. They completed a meeting-house on West street in 1837, which they vacated for their present Summer street church in 1880. The Reverend Albert G. Wiekware was the first pastor, and the church at organization had twenty-seven members.
The Forestville Methodist church was formed in 1855, and in 1864 bought the Maple street Episcopal church building, which they still nse.
The first Roman Catholic services were held about 1840, near the north copper mine, by missionaries from other parishes, to accommodate the workmen there. When the mine was abandoned, and railroad work began, many of the
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workmen moved to Bristol centre, and the services of the church followed them. In 1855 a church building was erected, though the parish was still a missionary one. It was made an independent parish in 1866, and the Reverend M. B. Roeldan, who is still its pastor, began his labors.
Occasional services were held in town from 1842 to 1858, by Adventist preachers. In the latter year a church was organized, and in 1880 they bought the old Methodist church building, and began to employ a regular pastor.
The people of Bristol early began to develop the mechan- ical taste which has been so remarkable a feature of the town ever since. Even before the beginning of the clock business, small shops in various parts of the town were making goods for the towns-people, and to some extent for market.
A grist-mill, that necessary incident of a farming commu- nity, had been started by Deacon Hezekiah Rew before 1745, near the Barnes tavern. This was sold to Joseph Adkins, who built a saw-mill at the same place, and afterward sold them both to the Barnes family. Mr. Adkins also built a mill on what is now the Downs site.
A distillery, saw-mill, and grist-mill were also running in Polkville in the early part of this century on the Bartholomew site, but were probably started half a century later than the Barnes mill.
Tin-shops were especially numerous, both in Bristol and in North Forestville, and I suppose that the huge tin-carts were then our principal medium of export trade.
William and Thomas Mitchell early made cloths, it is said in a shop near Goose Corner. It seems very likely that this family owned the cotton factory at the north side, which was afterward used in the clock business by George Mitchell, and is now used by the Ingraham Company. Another cloth mill stood on the river, near the Barnes tavern. ' William Mitchell was one of the first makers of cloth in America.
An account-book is still in existence of the tannery busi- ness carried on by Jabez Roberts from 1761 to 1770, in a shop near Albert Warner's, and Zebulon Frisbie probably built,
-
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during this period, the old tannery building still standing, long unused, on West street.
Before the town's incorporation a partnership built a forge at the falls on the Terryville road, where serap iron, and iron from the ore, was puddled and wrought for use. The original plan of this company was to extract and use the iron ore found at this locality, but, though abundant, it was found to be too brittle for nse, and the experiment was finally abandoned.
Other small shops were early established, but, as the clock bus- iness developed, all the capital and skill of the town was drawn into that. The pioneer of clock making in Bristol, and indeed in this country, was Gideon Roberts, who lived in what is now the town house, on Fall Mountain, and began in a crude way before 1790 to make clocks. His clocks were made entirely with hand tools at first, and peddled by him about the coun- try on horseback; after his sons grew up his business was in- creased, so that at one time in 1812 he had four hundred movements in process of manufacture, and his goods found a regular market, especially in the South. He became well off, is said to have owned the first chaise used here, and left a considerable property. During the latter part of his life he was known as a Quaker, and wore the garb of that society. Some of his clocks are still in existence in this neighborhood. Like all other clocks of this early period, they were made to hang on the wall; and at a later date were put into the familiar tall cases.
Joseph Ives began making clocks abont 1811 at the Laporte Hubbell site in East Bristol, and, soon after, he and his broth- ers started small shops, one on Peaceable street, one on the brook near the Noah Pomeroy site, and one near the Dunbar spring-shop site. . In this latter he made a clumsy metal clock of his own invention. Dunbar and Merriman were also loca- ted on the Pomeroy brook during this decade. About 1813, Chauncey Boardman, in a little shop still to be seen near Ashworth's factory in North Forestville, began making clocks of the primitive wall pattern.
The invention of the shelf clock, by Eli Terry of Plymouth,
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prostrated the trade in the long clocks that were made here, and our makers all stopped business about 1820. They soon adopted the new pattern, however, and during the score of years before the panie of 1837, the first Jerome factory, on the spoon-shop site, the Samuel Terry factory, farther cast, south of the river, where the Bristol Brass and Clock Com- pany's dam now crosses it, the Eureka shop, built by a large partnership, the Bartholomew factory in Polkville, the Burwell shop, built by Charles Kirk, the old Baptist Church building, converted into a factory by Rollin and Iremus Atkins, the Ephraim Downs shop, on the " Bone and Ivory " site, and the George Mitchell factory, which, originally the West Britain meeting-house, then moved to Bristol for a cotton-mill, is now a part of the Ingraham case-shop, were all occupied in the making of wooden thirty-hour clocks, or expensive brass eight-day clocks.
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