USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Centennial celebration of the incorporation of the town of Bristol [Conn.] June 17, 1885 > Part 4
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In this Mitchell factory Mr. Elias Ingraham, the founder and head of the E. Ingraham Company, learned the clock trade.
These factories, with the older ones, and the three at Forest- ville, were making in 1836 nearly one hundred thousand brass and wooden elocks a year.
The completion of the Farmington canal in 1826, by greatly increasing the facilities for transportation, had been a great assistance to our local prosperity. Before this all goods had to be hauled to and from Hartford or New Haven in horse-teams. These facilities were further increased in 1850 by the opening of the railroad. The panic of 1837 generally prostrated business, but the invention of the small brass one- day clock by Mr. Chauncey Jerome revived it on a stronger basis than before. Mr. Jerome himself sent an agent to Eng- land, established a market there, enlarged his business, and in 1843 built two large factories, one on each side of Main street, just below the bridge. Both these factories, and the Terry factory, the three largest in town, were burned in 1845, and Mr. Jerome moved his business to New Haven. But his cheap brass clocks had given an impetus to business which lasted until the great panic of 1857. Then almost every
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clock-maker in town failed, or suspended business. Since the revival of prosperity which followed, the business of our clock factories has gone on, with no such crushing disaster as came in 1837 and again in 1857.
. The Joseph Ives shop in Forestville, which has been men- tioned, was afterwards occupied in making small wooden arti- cles, and finally in making clock-parts by Elisha Manross. He built in 1845 the factory near the railroad, which was burned and replaced by the Welch and Spring movement-shop in 1870. Hendricks, Barnes and Company went into the old Ives shop, and made there the first marine clocks ever made. This location, after several changes, passed into the hands of Laporte Hubbell, who is still manufacturing in a new building on the same site. Soon after 1820, Chauncey Boardman and Joseph Wells built a factory in North Forestville, near the turnpike. This was one of the most important factories of that time.
Fifty years ago, besides the old houses on the turnpike, and a little settlement near the Boardman and Wells shop, there were only about a dozen houses in Forestville, and the neighborhood of the station and of the Welch Company's factories was still unbroken forest. In 1835, William Hills, J. C. Brown, Jared Goodrich, Lora Waters, and Chauncey Pomeroy built a fac- tory, and began work where the Welch company is now located. Mr. Hills built a house on the south side of the river, and Eli Barnes on the north side, in the same year. The name Forestville, which has been already used by anticipation in this address, was then selected for the locality; so that this centennial year of the town is also the semi-centennial of the village of Forestville. Mr. Brown bought out the rest of this firm, and in 1853 built what is still called the J. C. Brown shop. Upon his failure, this passed to Mr. Welch, and from him to the E. N. Welch Manufacturing Company, organized in 1864, now our largest clock-makers .:
After the panic of 1837, there was a general feeling that our investments had been too rigidly confined to one line of business, and the result has been the gradual establishment of hardware, woolen, and other factories, which now nearly or
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
qnite equal the clock business in importance. The Bristol Manufacturing Company, formed in 1837, the Bristol Brass and Clock Company, founded in 1850, and now doing, in its three factories, the largest business of any manufacturer in town, J. H. Sessions and Son, whose business was begun in 1869, and the Sessions Foundry Company, organized in 1878, N. L. Birge and Son, the Dunbar Brothers, Wallace Barnes, the Roots, Bartholomews, Warners, and other smaller con- cerns, engaged in various kinds of manufacture, give our prosperity a far more solid basis than it could have in the growth of any single business. There are now about thirty factories in town, many of them of considerable size, making in the aggregate nearly or quite three million dollars' worth of goods annually, sending and receiving by the railroad over thirty-five thousand tons of freight, giving the direct means of support to two-thirds of the inhabitants, and creating a ready market for all the produce our farmers can raise.
The civil war, and the part taken in that contest by this town, are too recent to need any detailed mention. To most of you that period is not a thing of history, but of memory. I will only say that of the early Connecticut regiments there were Bristol men in nearly every one, and during the first year of the war over one hundred enlisted. Company B of the Fifth, and C of the Fifteenth, contained little bodies of Bristol men, and companies K of the Sixteenth, and I of the Twenty-fifth, were principally made up from here.
Many of our soldiers fought through the entire war, and entered Richmond with Grant at the close: many died in battle, or by disease, and were buried in unknown graves; the large body who belonged to Company K of the Sixteenth had ahnost a harder experience than either, for after two years' service they were captured at Plymouth, N. C., and sent to Andersonville prison; and there, or'in other prisons, there died twenty-four of the original seventy-four who had gone out with the company.
The entire number of enlistments credited to this town's quota was three hundred and eighty-seven. Deducting re-
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enlistments and non-resident substitutes, the number of sepa- rate men, resident here, who entered the service cannot have been less than two Indred and fitty. Of these, fifty-font, over one-fifth, died in the service; sixteen of wounds in battle, twelve of disease, two at sea, and twenty-four of the unspeak- able horrors of Andersonville, Florence, and Libby prisons.
When the war was nearly over, the grief of our citizens at these severe losses, and their respeet for the memory of their slain townsmen, found expression in the building of our sol- diers' monument, which was completed in 1865, one of the very first in the country.
Another notable monument, in the Forestville cemetery, is the tribute paid by Amherst students to their Professor, New- ton S. Manross, who enlisted with the Sixteenth, was elected the first Captain of Company K, and fell at the head of his company, at the first meeting with the enemy.
In 1785, the grand list of the town was . $83,309.27, In 1797, this had decreased to . 61,715.35, .
and in 1806, still further to 54,416.52.
A corresponding decrease in population took place during the same period. The division of the town in 1806 divided nearly in halves both property and population, and a loss even from that is shown by the census of 1820. Then, it will be remem- bered, began the especial development of the clock business, and from that time the town has steadily increased in popula- tion, and more rapidly in wealth. The increase reported by the census during the decade from 1870 to 1880, from 3,788 to 5,347, was over forty per cent., a gain egnaled by very few Connecticut towns. Since 1880, we believe that this rate of growth has been fully maintained, and that the town has now more than six thousand inhabitants. This increase of popula- tion since 1870 has been accompanied by a marked develop- ment of the town : the two banks have been organized, the two newspapers started, most of our important business buildings erected, many business and residence streets laid out, and the general appearance of the town strikingly changed.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
The record which we look back upon to-day is not one glit- tering with brilliant deeds, nor made illustrious by great names. But our fathers, with the honest, rugged virtues, that made early New England an uniqne power in the world, have laid for us a good foundation. Industry, integrity, wise conservatism of thought, the reverent fear of God, are deeply implanted in the rocky soil of this hill. Let not this genera- tion depart from these. Old-fashioned manners are disappear- ing; let not old-fashioned virtues also disappear. Let not the increase of our material prosperity produce, nor accompany, a decrease of intellectual or moral worth.
We cannot but wonder what will be the history read at our next Centennial Celebration, when the telegraph and tele- phone are ernde curiosities for a loan exhibition, when the Great Rebellion is as remote to the thought as is the Revoln- tion now, when perhaps our acts, and words, and names shall seem as quaint and antique as our fathers' seem now, when perhaps our thirty factories, and six thousand people, our churches, and schools, and institutions of every kind, shall be as petty and strange as the New Cambridge life is to us.
The illustration on the opposite page is a representation of the Bartholomew (or " Barthomy") Tavern, which stood on Peaceable street, near the boundary line between the two parishes, and nearly opposite the old oak tree referred to in the historical address, page 41, under which, according to tradition, our first town meeting was held. It has become historical as a place where the citizens were accustomed to gather to talk over the business interests of the town, and to arrange the tickets for officers to be presented at the annual town and electors' meetings. It is alluded to in the historical address on pages 44 and 45.
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The audience next sang " America," led by Mr. Miles I. Peck, Colt's Band accompanying.
Mr. Newell then introduced Rev. Edward M. Jerome of New Haven, as follows: -
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : Forty or fifty years ago, proba- bly the name of no business man or manufacturer was more prominent in Bristol, than that of Chauncey Jerome, whose name has been mentioned by the historian. We have with us to-day his son, Rev. Edward M. Jerome, who will now address you.
ADDRESS OF REV. EDWARD M. JEROME.
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I shall occupy your time but a few moments, because there are other gentle- . men who will come after me, whom I think you want to hear far more than you do me. And what I shall say in the few moments of time that I shall take, will be a mere random talk.
I can assure you that I have very peculiar feelings in com- ing here into my native town on this occasion, after an absence of forty years, in which I have visited it only at rare intervals. I have feelings of both pride and pleasure, though they are mingled with sadness,- feelings of pride and pleasure when I go about your town and see the evidences of its pros- perity and growth; for what I have seen to-day has indeed been a revelation to me, because in these streets west of that church yonder, I have never been before.
It is all new to me. And so, I say, when I see these evi- dences of your progress around me, it hardly seems possible that when I left this town there was not a building between your present depot and the Pequabuck River on the west side of the street, except the old red factory on its banks.
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ADDRESS OF REV. EDWARD M. JEROME.
Where the depot now stands, was a little, one-story cottage, and, on the other side, was only the house in which Mr. Mitchell now resides, until you come down to where was the house back of the store. And right back of the present depot, where I was to-day, in that Coliseum, was a little stream running under one corner, where I used to fish for trout.
I say, when I think of all this and of your wonderful pro- gress, I have feelings of pleasure. But, as I have said, they are mingled with sadness. For there come before my mind, even to-day, the forms and faces of those who were prominent in business and social life forty years ago. I recall the Iveses, Chauncey and Lawson, Chauncey Boardman, George Mitchell and John Birge, Tracy Peck the elder, Elisha Man- ross, and Elisha C. Brewster, my old Sunday-school teacher, when a boy, in that church yonder; and there are other names, but they do not now come to my memory. But it was the sterling worth and character, and business enterprise of snch men, whose fruits the inhabitants of Bristol are to- day enjoying.
It can hardly be credited by the present generation what an intense rivalry there was in those days, between what was called the North and South Sides. And well do I recall it, and some peculiar incidents in connection with it. The North Side, as was said in the paper just read, was the scene more particularly of the coaching business of the town, where stopped the stages of that great stage route between Hartford and Litchfield; and here was situated the principal hotel of the town. But down at the South Side new industries were coming forth, and the people were beginning to feel pretty smart.
As I said, I recall some amusing incidents in connection with this rivalry between these two districts of the town, and one in particular. On one bright Sunday morning, in that church yonder, there tiled into the house a long line of young men. (I believe they were from the South Side on that occa- sion.) They filed up the gallery with tall white hats and broad black bands upon them. They took their seats along
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in the front rows of the gallery, and put their hats before them on the breastwork. How that astonished our young men ! The following Sunday there came (I believe from the North Side) the same number of young men, who filed into . the church, with tall black hats and broad white ribbons [laughter] ; and they sat there and put their hats on the front breastwork of the gallery. [Langhter.] That was one of the peculiar incidents connected with that rivalry between these different sections.
And what shall I say about those exciting ball contests at old wicket ball! Well do I recall some of those exciting games. There is one man whose name I can remember .. Ile is now living in New Haven. He then lived in Forest- ville ; " Rocky " Goodrich. And what a player he was with that lame leg of his. [Laughter. ] He could accomplish more than any other one player or a dozen players. And he sent the ball over the Green, down yonder, something like a quarter of a mile sometimes.
I remember, also, how we had our exhibitions of training on the first Mondays in May and September, and that old Bristol Artillery Company, with their white pants and blue coats, led by Captain Hiram Camp, now the venerable presi- dent of the New Haven Clock Company. He would be here to-day, but that he is absent at Northfield, Mass., where Mr. Moody's educational institutions are, in behalf of which he has been so generous a benefactor, and where, I understand, one of those institutions is to-day being dedicated.
When I stop and picture these things as I do to-day, and then see your progress and what has been accomplished, I say, it fills me with strange feelings. As I saw, to-day, that pro- cession going along, and read on one of its banners " Newton S. Manross Post," oh ! how that called up the scenes of the past. Newton Manross! Well do I remember him. When a young lad he used to come from his Home in Forestville and foot it over this mountain to the school here on the hill. For years after that we were separated, and then met in the same class at Yale College, where we were four years together. And then I think of him in his researches in science, and of
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ADDRESS OF REV. EDWARD M. JEROME.
his noble character. And with much interest I followed him after he left college as he pursued his studies in Europe, and investigated science in Central America and Mexico, and when he afterwards became a Professor of Chemistry and Botany in Amherst College. And well do I remember how, at the call of his State, he came down. here and enlisted a company, and in three weeks from its inception went into camp at Hartford, and then down into the South -and (I suppose by some blunder or other), before they had any train- ing whatever, called to that terrible battle of Antietam; and hardly had they got into battle, before a cannon ball pierced his shoulder, and in two hours he was a corpse. Thus do I remember that noble man of unvarying good temper, of kindly qualities, of which any town might be prond. [Ap- plause.] And you not only honor his memory in the name your Grand Army Post has taken after him, but yon honor yourselves and the town which gave him birth. It was the commander who succeeded him who told the colonel of the regiment that the soldiers cared more for Manross' old shoes than they did for the best man in the regiment. That was the kind of man that Newton S. Manross was. And it gives me pleasure to pay this tribute to such a noble man, of whom your town may well be proud.
But, ladies and gentlemen, I will not occupy your time further; for, as I have said, there are others who will succeed me, who will interest yon more than I can. But I cannot refrain from telling you the pleasure I feel in looking into the faces of those I once knew in this town, this grand old town, a town that has richer and dearer associations to me than any other. There is no other place I love so well. I love its rocks and hills, I love its charming landscapes, its beautiful scenery, its splendid forests, its winding rivers. May God bless you all now and in the future. [ Applause. ]
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The next speaker was Charles E. Mitchell, Esq., of New Britain, who was introduced by Mr. Newell, as follows : -
Ladies und Gentlemen: It is an old maxim that " Blood will tell," and as the next speaker's veins contain the blood of the Mitchells and the Hookers, we expect he will tell us in fif- teen minutes all that has transpired during the last hundred years. Charles E. Mitchell, Esq., will now address you.
ADDRESS OF CHARLES E. MITCHELL, ESQ.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,- Old Friends: You need not think that I shall undertake the formidable task that has been assigned me, of telling all that has taken place during the last hundred years, or that I shall long occupy your attention.
The last speaker dwelt for some time upon the great change which has taken place in Bristol since he was accustomed to know it in his youth. At first I wondered why it was that he should have been severed from its associations so completely, while I, who left Bristol for an adjoining town not many years after, had kept pace with its growth, had watched its changes, and been quite familiar with them all. But, as he proceeded, I discovered the cause. He remarked that there was a stream down here where in his youth he was accus- tomed to fish for trout. Well, I have cultivated that stream from that day to this, and, in order to do so, I have been com- pelled to keep acquainted with the home of my youth, as it has indeed been my pride and pleasure to do so from the day I left it till to-day.
The battle of Bunker Hill was fought one hundred and ten years ago to-day. Ten years afterwards the inhabitants of these hills and valleys, sharing the spirit of the new-born nation's life, became incorporated as the town of Bristol, and entered upon a separate political career. The civil enterprise they then inaugurated, under God's favor, has greatly pros-
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ADDRESS OF CHARLES E. MITCHELL, ESQ.
pered. The human interests that then were taken in charge by the young and ambitious township have been carefully guarded and preserved ; and that is why we come together at the end of the first completed century to honor the found- ers, and the town they founded, by whatever mortal means are in onr power.
And we do well to celebrate this day. We honor the pion- eers, and we honor ourselves also, when we turn aside from the factory and from the furrow, and from whatever else belongs to the rich surroundings of our material life, to dwell for a day in the departed century, and to recreate the memo- ries of the olden time. It is natural for men to love the acres of their origin. There is, therefore, a human interest in every centennial occasion, however uninteresting the spot may be that becomes for the time the Jerusalem of the tribes. But it is easy to see in the fervor and universality of joy here beaming in human faces, and speaking in numberless glad greetings, that there are elements of interest in this day and celebration that are not always present even on centennial days.
The sons and daughters of Bristol have always been loyal to their native town. It used to be said that those who left Bristol to better their condition almost invariably returned. [ did not then know the reason, nor did I afterwards discover it until I had observed in many other places the conditions which enter into human existence and mingle the sweet and bitter in the enp of life. Then I said-and I have repeated it a hundred times, and I shall die in the faith of it - that the sun in all his journeyings, has never seen a spot of earth where more of happiness has come to the common lot than on the beautiful hills, and in the green valleys, of this good old town of Bristol. [Applause. ]
Other towns ean boast a greater antiquity. Other towns can tell over a longer list of fortune's favorites. No Plymonth Rock is within your borders. No battle here has changed the course of history. And yet I think I give our native town no second place, nor secondary praise, when I say that Bristol has to an unsurpassed degree solved the problem of uniting
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the comforts of life to the necessity of toil. Here the dignity of labor has always been recognized. Here men have been taken at their intrinsic worth. Here the individuality of no class of men has been destroyed. I have always accounted it a reason for the profoundest thankfulness that the Bristol work- man has always dwelt in his own house, selected by his own choice and adorned by his own taste, instead of in one out of a score or hundred houses, all of the same style and pattern, owned by the owner of the mill.
Then, too, the forms of industry that have been developed here, have, by a kind of reflex action, quickened the intelli- gence of the toiler. The man who makes a clock that will tell the hours, and days, and months, makes an astronomer also, while he makes his clock. Thus the fortunate peenliari- ties of the local industries have co-operated in forming a community in which men -men edneated for the most part in the common schools and upholding the churches as bul- warks of morality and of the State- have been the chief pro- ductions during the now departed century.
A hundred years ! And what a century of progress it has been ! Contrast it with the period between the settlement of Farmington and the settlement of this locality. Why, it took nearly a century for the " star of empire " in its westward course to pass from Farmington meeting-house to Federal Hill. In the last hundred years it has crossed the Continent like a meteor's flash, and burned for a generation over the Pacific coast. And what a change has come over the condi- tions of daily life. What enlargement, what emancipation, there has been. The pillion of Deacon Rew's saddle has become the parlor car. The tallow dip has become the elec- trie light. The pony of the post-boy whose coming made a ripple on the surface of the stagnant colonial life-in its place is the lightning express, and the telephone swift and silent as the fabled flight of Merenry. What would Zebulon Peck have thought if he had been told of a coming day when gospel privileges could be enjoyed by attaching a wire to the pulpit of the meeting-house ? And William Mitchell over there, making saltpetre to be-made again into continental
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ADDRESS OF CHARLES E. MITCHELL, ESQ.
gun-powder,- what would he have said if he had been told of the terrible energy that is stored in modern dynamite ?
But I must not dwell upon these alluring subjects. I will only add that, as I saw in the procession to-day those wonder- ful products of modern skill, the steam fire-engines, my thoughts went back to the time when the approved means of putting out a fire were a row of buckets, and the Baptist minister on the ridgepole directing operations by the right divine of natural leadership .*
But I am asked for reminiscences. I wish I could reproduce a picture of busy and bustling North Side as I first remember it. There were the principal stores and factories, the leading tavern, the livery stables, the post office, and the center of business generally. And as if to make its primacy forever secure, it was located on the Hartford and Litchfield turnpike, which promised to last as long as time should endure.
The great feature of daily life and excitement was the arrival of the stage-coach. It was no post-boy performance I assure you. I take my stand in imagination at the foot of the hill where now the school-house stands, then the home lot of my father. It is nearly time for the Litchfield stage. Soon a winding bugle blast is heard that echoes away into the depths of the forest we called the Hoppers. Then the leaders crawl over the crest of the hill. The wheel horses follow, and along with them comes the stage-coach, magnificent in yel- low paint, rocking like a boat on the billows, and carrying almost conscionsly the United States mail. [ Laughter.] Now comes the daily excitement. The driver lays down his bngle and gathers up all the reins. The long lash cracks above the head of the leaders. Down the hill they plunge, the coach rattling and thundering after them, and it seems as if they will never stop again. But by a daily miracle of the driver's art, the stage is wheeled quickly to the left, and comes to a stop in the finest style in front of Foster's tavern. The com-
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