USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 31
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That Connecticut was the site of valuable mineral deposits
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was an early belief of its exploiters; the reservation by the Earl of Warwick, in the original patent, of a tithe of the gold products, was only "common form" and safeguarding the future, but the obtaining by Governor Winthrop in 1651 of a license to prosecute mining is more to the point. In 1661 Winthrop prospected in the neighborhood of Middletown. An argentiferous lead mine must have been worked in that locality by skilled miners; for some two centuries later, on reopening the mine about fifteen hundred feet of excavation, well timbered and in good preservation, were found. While Winthrop was governor he made frequent excursions to dif- ferent localities in search of minerals, especially to a moun- tain located in the northwest corner of the present town of East Haddam; he was generally accompanied by a servant, and is known to have spent three weeks at a time on these expeditions, although he never derived any special advantages from the mineral privileges granted him.
The mining industries of Connecticut lay dormant for over half a century, when outcroppings of copper were dis- covered at Simsbury and Wallingford. The General Assem- bly in 1709 granted the first charter in America to a mining company ; this organization was formed to work the mine at Simsbury. The product was of a vitreous and variegated copper with some malachite; it was found in beds, strings, and bunches, embedded in a red sandstone formation, in contact with the gneiss and granitic rocks. The proprietors of the mine sent to Germany for miners, and the ore was shipped to England; it assayed from fifteen to twenty per cent. of pure copper, intermixed with sprinklings of gold and silver; but it was refractory in the smelter, owing to an ex- cess of quartz, and though it was in great demand for alloy by jewellers, the cost of production bankrupted the specula-
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tors. The copper was coined into currency, known as Gran- by coppers, from the town where the mint was located. An attempt was made to work the Wallingford mines; but on the sinking of a shaft, they became so inundated with wa- ter that it was abandoned.
In the middle of the eighteenth century the Simsbury mines were purchased by the colony and utilized as a prison; and though mining with convict labor was attempted, it proved unprofitable. It was used during the Revolution for the in- carceration of Tory prisoners; and though much has been written of the sufferings they endured while in captivity, they were not to be compared with the treatment of the Ameri- cans in the English prison hulks in New York harbor.
Winthrop's explorations in natural science led him to all parts of the colony. All over its hilly sections quartz was found impregnated with iron ore, and attempts were vari- ously made to work it; but the chief deposit was in the Berk- shires, the largest being at the northwestern corner of the colony. In 1730 mines were first opened at Salisbury, where was an abundance of rich ore, while the adjacent forests fur- nished the required charcoal. Mines were operated in Sharon and Kent; the ore, like that from Salisbury, was a brown hematite, a hard dark form of limonite. This ore differed from that found in the eastern part of the colony, which was known as bog ore, was found deposited through- out Tolland and Windham Counties, and was mined and smelted in the early colonial days, although it has long since become unprofitable. On the shores of Long Island Sound, between Stonington and New Haven, a quantity of magnetite was found; but though it was smelted, the undertaking did not prove remunerative. The mine at Salisbury was an im- portant factor during the War of Independence; the iron
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ranked foremost in quality, and was utilized in the manufac- ture of cannon, heavy chains, gun-barrels, and other military equipments. While iron and copper were the important ores mined in the colony, lead, zinc, bismuth, arsenic, nickel, and cobalt, besides other rare and less useful metals, were dis- covered.
The cause of New England's early development of manu- facturing, besides its farming, probably resulted from a com- bination of factors. The early exhaustion of first-rate agri- cultural lands, the costliness of imported manufactures, the scarcity of hired service which developed the handiness of everybody and the invention of labor-saving appliances, the abundant water-power from mountain streams, and a picked colonization of resourceful men, doubtless all co-operated in stimulating domestic manufactures, and presently manufac- turers for export. The "protective" laws by which the home government crippled them could not be endured as successfully as the corresponding commercial laws, or a manufacturing shop must remain in one place ; but there was a considerable growth despite them.
In 1732, Parliament in response to a petition forbade the exportation of hats manufactured in the colonies to any locality, even neighboring plantations. The production was also controlled by allowing a manufacturer only two appren- tices, who served seven years in learning their trade. The iron industries of the colonies were next assailed. The Eng- lish manufacturers were willing that the colonists should pro- duce pig and even bar iron, to provide them raw materials, but no developed products. In the middle of the eighteenth century Parliament passed a bill prohibiting the erection or continuance of any mill in the colonies for the slitting or rolling of iron or the making of steel, or of a plating forge to
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work with a tilt hammer, under a penalty of £200; the mills were declared a nuisance, and if not abolished in thirty days after the passage of the act, were to forfeit £500.
One of Connecticut's first ventures was the establishment of iron works at New Haven. The assembly and towns remitted taxes to those who erected furnaces, and in 1716 a slitting mill was given by the legislature a legal monopoly of the business for a term of fifteen years. Ironmongery, however, was generally confined to people in the winter va- cations from farming, and evenings, and was practically all domestic, the chief surplus for exportation being nails.
The home spinning and weaving of the colonists produced a plain homespun cloth and durable linens; though they were coarser, they were stronger in texture than the imported.
In 1732 began that most enduring of bubbles, the attempt at silk culture, with which was connected what was not a bub- ble, the silk manufacture. One of the earliest planters of mulberry trees was Governor Jonathan Law; he introduced the raising of silkworms on his extensive farm at Cheshire, and appeared in public in 1747 in the first coat and stockings made of Connecticut silk. The following year Ezra Stiles, at the commencement at Yale College, was appareled in a gown of the same. The present foundation of the immense silk interest of Connecticut is due to Dr. Aspinwall of Mans- field, who permanently established the enterprise in that and the neighboring towns.
The commerce of the American colonies was confined, by edicts of the mother country, to Great Britain and that part of the continent south of Cape Finisterre. It was in 1662 that Charles II.'s colonial board directed that sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic, and other dyeing woods, should only be exported to the parent country or her prov-
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inces. Two years later it attempted to control the shipping of the colonial imports, by ordering that they must be sent direct from England, Wales, or Berwick-on-Tweed; excep- tions being made of salt which could be shipped from any part of Europe, wines from Madeira and the Azores, and provisions from Scotland. The vessels engaged in the trade were to be of English bottom, and to be manned by a crew three-quarters of whom were to be of native birth.
The trade between the colonies was subject to no restric- tion till 1672, when England placed a duty on white sugar of five shillings, on brown sugar of one shilling six pence per one hundred pounds, on tobacco and indigo one penny, on cotton and wool a halfpenny on the pound. At the same time molasses, tar, pitch, turpentine, hemp, mast-yards, bowsprits, copper, ore, rice, beaver-skins, and other furs, were added to the exportation act of 1662. The New England colonies were engaged in a lucrative commercial trade, in grain, fish, lumber, horses, mules, and cattle, with the French, Spanish, and Dutch West Indies; for these commodities they received in exchange, sugar, rum, and molasses. In response to a de- mand of the English sugar planters, Parliament increased the duties on these articles to a prohibitory degree. A set of drawbacks, however, carefully rectified this, and the col- onies rectified it still further by paying no attention to it.
In the Connecticut colony's report to the Board of Trade and Plantations in 1730, in answer to their queries, we find that the merchant marine fleets of the colony consisted of forty-two ships, aggregating over thirteen hundred tonnage. The largest of these was sixty tons, the smallest twelve. The ownership was divided among seventeen towns: New Lon- don and New Haven owned five each; Hartford, Guilford, and Norwich, four each; Saybrook and Stratford, three
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each; Greenwich, Killingworth, Middletown, and Milford, two each; and Haddam, Branford, Norwalk, Wethersfield, Fairfield, and Lyme, one each. The foreign exportations were limited to a few voyages to Ireland with timber; a few ships and cargoes had been sold at Bristol, England, while a small trade had been carried on with the West Indies in ex- porting horses and lumber, which were exchanged for su- gar, salt, molasses, and rum. The surplus of provisions, tar, and turpentine, had been shipped to the neighboring colo- nies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York.
The French interfered more or less with the foreign trade which had been established by the colonists; but West India voyages and privateering partially made up for commerce. The importation of English merchandise consisted of all kinds of woolen cloths, silks, scythes, nails, glass, pewter, brass, firearms, and cutlery; and while a small por- tion of this was imported direct, the greater quantity was ob- tained by exchanging surplus food products with Boston and New York. The natural products of the colony were timber, English grass, Indian corn, flax, hemp, tobacco, horses, cat- tle, sheep, and swine. There were tradesmen, tanners, shoe- makers, sailors, joiners, smiths, and carpenters among the inhabitants.
Connecticut in 1753 had eight convenient shipping ports, though all masters entered and cleared at New London, where there were large shipbuilding interests; smaller vessels were built at Saybrook, Killingworth, and New Haven. An estimate of the ocean trade of Connecticut can be arrived at by taking one year, 1749-50, as an illustration; there were cleared from the port of New London sixty-three brigantines, sloops, and schooners, while thirty-seven entered.
In the next decade there was a gradual increase in the
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shipping interests : there were employed in the ocean car- rying trade seventy-four ships with over 3, 100 tonnage; the vessels were manned by 415 seamen, but one having a crew of ten, while five had eight, the balance being distributed among the merchant service in crews of from three to seven. The foreign trade was limited to the British Isles and West Indies, with a few cargoes of fish to Lisbon and the Medi- terranean. The value of the British manufactured goods consumed by the colonists was estimated at £50,000, and the natural products of the colony aggregated £130,000. The excellence of Connecticut beef and pork created a ready de- mand in the neighboring colonies.
Shipbuilding had become a fixed industry, and Great Britain had purchased a number of vessels from the colonists. The shipping interests of the colony steadily increased, and in 1761 there were 114 ships in commission; while the ex- ported products amounted to £150,000, and the mother country was assured that nothing had been done hurtful to her interests. This was true, though not in just the way England intended. Systematic evasion of her orders had built up a great trade, of which her share was much larger than the whole she intended to keep by preventing its growth. These answers of Connecticut are masterly in the art of ex- plaining how, with the most ardent loyalty and the most anxious solicitude to obey the home government's require- ments, it has somehow been impossible to comply.
In the last report made by Connecticut to the Board of Trade and Plantations, just prior to the beginning of the Revolutionary hostilities, we find that the shipping interests showed a healthy increase, and the exporting trade of the colony had materially increased her wealth. The merchant marine service had increased to ISo vessels, with a tonnage
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exceeding 10,000, and employment was given to 1,200 sea- men; this showed an increase in the last decade of 66 vessels, or over 50 per cent., while the tonnage had doubled. The principal trade was in horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, food pro- ducts, and lumber, with the French and Dutch West Indies; to the north of Africa was shipped flour and lumber, while Gibraltar bought quantities of New England rum; the ex- ports to these localities aggregated £55,00 annually. Eng- land was a customer for lumber and pot and pearl ashes to the amount of £10,000, while flaxseed was exported to Ire- land. The importation of articles of English manufacture amounted yearly to about £200,000; there were few direct importations, as the Boston and New York merchants were the principal wholesalers of the supplies for the colony. There was, besides the ships engaged in foreign trade, a fleet of twenty small coasting vessels, employing a crew of ninety seamen. The natural products of the colony were all kinds of timber, wheat, rye, Indian corn, beans, barley, oats, flax, pork, beef, pot and pearl ashes.
Transportation throughout the colony had outgrown the canoe and pack-horse, but was still in a primitive state; the roads were mostly little more than bridle-paths, and had not arrived at the dignity of highways. The seacoast and several rivers of Connecticut formed an uninterrupted passageway for travel; this was one cause of its relatively dense popu- lation, and of immense value of its internal and external com- merce. Journeys of any distance were performed on horse- back; and though some of the colonists were owners of pairs of horses and private coaches, traveling vehicles of every description were the luxury of a few.
The early postal facilities in the colonies were limited to personal accommodation; a monthly mail was established in
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1672 between New York and Boston, which thirty years later was changed to a fortnightly one. The end of the seven- teenth century saw the appointment of Thomas Neale by the English government, to take charge of the colonial postal business ; he evolved a system of a sort, but there was no per- ceptible improvement till 1704, when the British government reorganized the service and placed it under the control of a postmaster-general for America, with fixed rates of postage.
The mail had been carried on horseback between Boston and New York, being on alternate fortnights; the relay stations being Hartford and Saybrook. The post roads were in bad condition, and the riders and postmasters had not the best reputations for honesty. In the first part of the eighteenth century, horseback riding and baggage wagons in England gave way to public traveling in stage coaches; these had been in limited use for over a century, but did not at once become popular. Their universal use in the parent country was speedily followed by their introduction into the New World. Travel and the transportation of the mail demanded the establishment of a stage route between Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Connecticut's seaboard inhab- itants had every intercourse with her sister colonies ; but her internal population, until the establishment of these avenues of communication, was isolated. The open- ing of the Revolutionary War found the internal transport between the colonies still in a state of infancy, which was a bar to the prompt execution of the plans of the authorities.
The venerable William Pitkin was the successful candidate for governor in the memorable political campaign of 1766, when Governor Fitch was punished for his conduct regard- ing the Stamp Act; so heavy was Fitch's defeat that it was currently reported the votes were not counted because Pit-
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kin's majority was too large to make it worth while. Gov- ernor Pitkin was born in what is now East Hartford, April 20, 1694. Early in life he became identified with the po- litical affairs of the colony, both in legislative and judicial capacities. He was of a commanding personal appearance, very affable and pleasing in manner; an uncompromising advocate of the colonial cause and a zealous promoter of the welfare of Connecticut. Governor Pitkin was elected for three terms, and died Oct. 1, 1769, before the completion of his last term of office.
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