USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume II > Part 15
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The most versatile mechanical genius during the Revolu- tion was Abel Buell, a native of Killingworth. He was apprenticed to a gold and silver smith, and before he was twenty years of age was detected raising a five-shilling colonial note to five pounds. The notes were bound in book form, and when taken out, left a stub. The work of Buell was so ingenious that his crime was only detected by com- parison with the stub. He was caught in the act, by the colonial official mounting a ladder and observing him through a window while he was at work. He was imprisoned at Nor- wich, and his forehead branded by the letter C. While in prison, he constructed a lapidary machine which is believed
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to be the first used in this country. With this machine he produced a curious ring, which he presented to the king's attorney, and it eventually secured his pardon. Buell, after his release from prison, located in New Haven, and in 1770, with the assitance of Amos Doolittle, engraved and published the first map made in America. His ingenuity was utilized, during the Revolution, in establishing a type foundry in New Haven, and in coining coppers for the State; he having con- structed a machine that could produce 120 in a minute. At the close of the war, he visited England, to gain knowledge of the machinery used in the manufacture of cloths. On his return to this country, with a Scotchman named McIntosh, they erected the first cotton factory in America. The enter- prise was a failure, however, and it was not until 1794 that a successful manufacture of this staple product was estab- lished in Connecticut. In that year, Samuel Pitkin & Co. at Manchester began to manufacture in considerable quantities, velvets, corduroys, and fustians. The only other cotton mill in operation at this time was at Providence, Rhode Island; but a mill was afterwards erected at Paterson, New Jersey. There was but little progress made in cotton manufacturing until after the beginning of the nineteenth century.
An important invention, for the development of the manu- facturing interests of Connecticut, was made in 1784 by Ebenezer Chittenden, who was the possessor of wonderful mechanical genius. While a resident of New Haven, he per- fected a machine for bending and cutting card teeth. The machine was worked by a mandrel twelve inches in length and one inch in diameter, and was run by a band wheel turned by a crank. It required six independent parts of the machine to make a complete tooth; this was accomplished by one revolution of the wheel. The capacity of the machine
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was sufficient to supply all the manufacturers in New Eng- land; its complement being 36,000 teeth an hour. Mr. Chit- tenden was of a frank, ingenuous disposition, and communi- cated his knowledge to a party who went to England and secured a patent, claiming to be the original inventor.
The most ambitious attempt to manufacture cloths was made at Hartford in 1788, when a company with a capital stock of £1,250, divided between thirty-one stockholders, was incorporated. The State, to encourage the enterprise, abated the taxes for five years. The year after their incorporation, the company placed on sale their product, a dark-brown cloth. At the first Presidential inauguration, the President, Vice- President, and many of the attendants were robed in Con- necticut broadcloth. The mill made other mixtures, among which was the famous pepper-and-salt; the cloth retailed at from two dollars and a half to five dollars a yard. The first annual production was over 10,000 yards. The mill sus- pended operations in 1794, as it could not be made profitable.
The silk industries were encouraged by the legislature, which offered a bounty on the raising of mulberry trees, and for raw silk. The State government had distributed half an ounce of mulberry seed to each parish. The Connecticut Silk Society was incorporated in 1785, with its headquarters at New Haven. Its object was the encouragement of silk cul- ture and manufacture throughout the State. The banner town for silk industries was Mansfield; her inhabitants in 1793 received a bounty on 265 pounds of raw silk. This town was prolific in early inventors. One of them made a buzz-saw for cutting the teeth of horn combs; another, a screw auger; while steelyards and spectacles were manufac- tured there at an early date.
Connecticut has become famous for clocks, which have
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announced the time of day throughout the civilized world; yet it is only a little over a century since Eli Terry first con- structed in Plymouth the old-fashioned wooden wall clock. The wheels and teeth were made by hand; marked out first with a square and compass, then sawed with a fine saw. The movements alone, at this early day, cost £25. The first self- winding clock was the product of the brain of Benjamin Hanks of Litchfield; who invented an ingenious attachment which operated by the means of air.
The steam carriages of the twentieth century would not cause much excitement among the fathers of the Revolution, if they should revisit their old haunts. At the close of the eighteenth century, Dr. Apollos Kinsley traveled the high- ways of Hartford in one of the first steam carriages ever con- structed; of which he was the inventor. The doctor was an eccentric but ingenious personage. He patented a brick- pressing machine, which greatly aided that industry. His machine for making pins was not a success; but he perfected a card machine which was operated by dog power. In 1798, Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, established a manufactory at Hamden to complete a contract he had with the United States government to furnish them with 10,000 stand of arms. Several contracts were let at the same time, but Whitney was the only contractor who did not lose money. His success was due to his wonderful mechanical genius, by which he was able to reduce the production to a simple pro- cess.
There were, at the close of the eighteenth century, linen and button manufactories at New Haven; glass works, snuff and powder mills, a duck manufactory, besides various iron works, at Hartford. Iron foundries were scattered over the State: one at Stafford manufactured hollow ware enough to supply
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the demands of the Commonwealth. Paper was made in a number of different localities. The manufacture of tin ware had so increased that $250,000 worth of raw material was used annually. Large quantities of metal buttons were made at Waterbury: ironmongery, nails, hats, candles, leather boots and shoes, were produced throughout the State.
Connecticut's exports consisted of live stock, lumber, dairy products, cereals, fish, leather, candles, pot and pearl ashes. There were five ports of entry, and the value of the exporta- tions amounted to about one million and a half of dollars annually; her commerce was chiefly with her sister States and the West Indies. Vessels aggregating about 33,000 ton- nage were owned and employed in her merchant marine ser- vice.
The manufacturing and commercial interests of the State demanded the establishment of money exchanges for the transaction of business. Between 178 1 and 1784, State banks had been organized in the three leading commercial centres of the United States. The establishment of a bank at Prov- idence, Rhode Island, in 1791, caused the question to be agi- tated through the newspapers, in the early part of 1792, as to the feasibility and local needs of a bank at Hartford. At about the same time, the monetary situation was under discus- sion by the citizens of New London. In 1792, the May ses- sion of the General Assembly chartered the Union Bank of New London and the Hartford Bank of Hartford. The former consummated its organization, and was ready for business, prior to the Hartford Bank, which opened its doors to the public Aug. 8, 1792. The same year, a bank was chartered in New Haven, but there was some difficulty in obtaining subscriptions to its capital stock; this was finally reduced, and the bank began business in October, 1795. In
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that year, articles of incorporation were granted for a bank at Middletown; but its organization was not completed until the early part of the nineteenth century. The granting of a bank charter to the citizens of Norwich in 1796, and the opening of a financial institution in that city in the same year, completed the banking facilities of the State at the close of the century.
The unsuccessful attempts of Jonathan Hulls in England to apply steam to navigation, were supplemented in the United States by a son of Connecticut, whose memorial tab- let adorns the rotunda of the Capitol of his native State. John Fitch, who first utilized steam as a marine motive power, was born in what is now East Windsor, Jan. 21, 1743. He was apprenticed to learn the clock and watch trade; but having contracted an unhappy marriage, before the break- ing out of the Revolutionary War he removed to New Bruns- wick, New Jersey. He remained in that State, following his trade, until the occupancy of the territory by the British caused him to emigrate to the interior of Pennsylvania.
It was practically at the same time that two American inventors, without any previous knowledge of a steam engine, began experiments to propel a vessel by the force of con- densed steam. There had been, a decade before this, various trials on the river Seine; but though the Marquis de Jouf- froy constructed a steamboat of considerable size, it was deficient in power. James Ramsey had exhibited on the Potomac River, in 1784, a boat propelled by machinery; and two years later, a pump worked by steam power drove a stream of water from the stern, and thus furnished motive power. His death occurred while he was preparing himself for other experiments.
It was in the village of Neshaminy near Philadelphia, in
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1785, that John Fitch built a model of his paddle-wheel boat. The inventor sought the aid of Congress, but his appeal was rejected, and termed the dream of a hare-brained mechanic. Obtaining from New Jersey the right to navigate her streams, and receiving pecuniary help from Philadelphia, Fitch completed, in the summer of 1786, a boat that attained the speed of seven miles an hour. A more ambitious attempt was completed the following summer, the boat being forty- five feet in length; the first successful trial of a steamboat took place on the Delaware River, Aug. 23, 1787. The fol- lowing year a patent was obtained, and in the summer a new steamboat appeared, with a tubular boiler, and three paddles on its stern. On the trial trip on the Delaware, near Burling- ton, New Jersey, a boiler pipe burst; the boat was aban- doned and drifted back to Philadelphia. She was afterwards repaired, and run regularly between Philadelphia and Tren- ton; her maximum rate of speed was about eight miles an hour. These trips encountered various disasters, which caused a feeling of suspicion amongst the public; so the enterprise was abandoned.
At the request of one of the stockholders of the steamboat company, Fitch visited France to introduce his invention in that country. It was during the French Revolution ; receiving no encouragement, he returned to his native land, leaving his drawings and specifications in the keeping of the gentleman who requested him to visit the country. This was unfor- tunate for Fitch, as the party was the United States consul at L'Orient. He showed them to Robert Fulton, who was at that time experimenting in France. Discouraged and dis- heartened, Fitch on his return to America moved West, where, after passing a few years in obscurity, he died on July 2, 1798.
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An invention that gained a world-wide reputation, and received the indorsement of prominent professional men, was that of Elisha Perkins, who patented in 1796 his metallic tractors. They were about three inches in length, one resem- bling brass, the other steel; but it was claimed that they were made from a peculiar composition. They were used to cure® local inflammation, pain in the face and head, and in rheu- matic, neuralgic, and similar diseases. An application was made to the afflicted parts, and the tractors were allowed to remain twenty minutes, drawing downwards. This system of treatment became known as Perkinsism, and met with prac- tical use among the medical fraternity of Europe and Amer- ica. It was alleged that thousands of patients received per- manent relief from it; it was made the subject of medical works favoring its use, among which was a report of the medical staff of the Royal Frederick Hospital of Copenha- gen, Denmark. Early in the nineteenth century it was discov- ered that the materials used in the construction of the trac- tors were iron and brass; the physicians began to doubt the efficacy of the remedy, and its use was largely discontinued. It is probable that many patients were benefited by the mechanical stimulus given to the afflicted parts, which was similar, though of less power, to the manual rubbing and kneading so universally practiced at the present day. Still more perhaps was due to the mental excitation directed to the nerves of these parts.
Dr. Perkins was a native of Norwich, where he was born Jan. 16, 1741. During an epidemic of yellow fever, while engaged in demonstrating a remedy for it, he contracted the disease,and died in New York City, Sept. 6, 1799.
There were many other inventions, the outgrowth of the fertile brain of the Connecticut Yankee. The envious flings
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at the alleged fraudulent inventions have been dealt with else- where.
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CHAPTER XVIII COURT, COUNTY, AND TOWNSHIP ORGANIZATIONS
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T HE organization of Middlesex County in 1785, from Hartford, New London, and New Haven counties, and in the following year, of Toland County, from Windham and Hart- ford counties, completed the civil division of the State by counties. At the January session of the legisla- ture in 1784, New Haven and New London were incorpo- rated as cities; at the following May session, Hartford, Mid- dletown, and Norwich became municipalities. There were numerous changes in the constitution of the courts in 1784; the office of Judge of the Superior Court was deemed incom- patible with a seat in the General Assembly, or in either branch of Congress.
The docket of the Superior Court had assumed such pro- portions, that in order to relieve the legal business of the State, a new court was instituted, to be known as the Supreme Court of Errors; it was to consist of the Deputy Governor and Council, and sessions were to be held annually, at Hart- ford and New Haven alternately. The Secretary of State was ex-officio clerk of this court; in 1793 the governor was added as a member. The court thus established was to be the resort of all matters brought by error or complaint from the judgment or decree of the Superior Court, in mat- ters wherein it was found that the rules of law and principles of equity had been erroneously adjudged; the decrees of this Superior Court of Errors were to be final and conclusive to all concerned. There was a marked change in the membership of the court in 1806. The Council, or what is now the State Senate, was not generally composed of men versed in law; therefore on final decisions the best legal results were not obtained. The Superior Court sessions had been changed in 1801; they were to hold a winter and summer term in each
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county, and their membership was increased to six. To restore the standard of the Supreme Court of Errors as a court of last resort, the judges of the Superior Court, of whom five were to constitute a quorum, were substituted for members of the Council. The Superior Court membership was increased to eight members and a chief justice. There were no other changes in the formation of the courts of the State, until the adoption of the Constitution of 1818.
The military affairs of the Revolution so engaged the atten- tion of the people of Connecticut that there was but little accomplished in the organization of towns. The legislature in 1779 incorporated the town of Barkhamsted. The terri- tory had been granted in 1732 to the citizens of Windsor ; the first settlement was made ten years later, and increased slowly, there being but twenty families within its limits as late as 1771. The adjoining town of Colebrook was settled in the winter of 1765-66, and incorporated with town privileges in 1779. The town of Southington was originally included in Farmington; it was divided among eighty-four proprietors in 1722. Five years later an ecclesiastical society was estab- lished there; by an act of legislature, in 1779, it was granted township rights.
Washington was formerly a part of the towns of Wood- bury, Litchfield, Kent, and New Milford; the first settlement within its limits was made in 1734. It was one of the four towns incorporated by the legislature, at its session held in 1779. A religious society was organized in 1741, and given the name of Judson. Cheshire was originally a parish in the town of Wallingford. As early as 1723, a society was organ- ized consisting of thirty-four families; it was erected into a town in 1780. In the same year, township privileges were granted to Watertown, which was formerly a parish of
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Waterbury. The first town to be incorporated after the war was East Hartford, in 1783; it was that part of the town of Hartford on the east bank of the Connecticut River. The following year the parish of Amity, which had been settled since 1739, and was a part of the towns of New Haven and Milford, was erected into a township and named Wood- bridge. The year 1785 saw four towns added to the town- ship organizations of Connecticut. Berlin, under the name of Kensington, was organized in 1712 with a congregation of ten families, as the second society of Farmington. There had been subdivisions of the church made in 1753 and 1772. The territorial limits of the town were formerly in the con- fines of Farmington, Wethersfield, and Middletown. Bris- tol was the parish of New Cambridge, in the town of Farm- ington, and in 1747 became an independent society. East Haven was originally a part of New Haven. Thompson had been settled since 1715; later a church society was estab- lished, and known as Thompson's parish; it was within the limits of the town of Killingly.
Eleven new towns were incorporated in 1786. Bozrah was originally a part of Norwich, Brooklyn was formed from Pomfret and Canterbury; Ellington formerly belonged to East Windsor; Franklin was taken from Norwich, Granby from Simsbury, and Hamden from New Haven. There was an ecclesiastical society in Hampton since 1723, which con- sisted originally of seventeen families, taken from the towns of Windham, Pomfret, Brooklyn, Canterbury, and Mans- field. Lisbon was originally a part of Norwich; North Haven was taken from New Haven, and Montville from New London; and Warren was formerly a part of Kent. Bethlehem, a part of the town of Woodbury, was incorpo- rated as a town in 1787; the same year a portion of Wood-
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bury, that had been settled since 1672, was erected into a town and given the name of Southbury. The parishes of Northfield and North Fairfield, in the town of Fairfield, were incorporated as a town in 1787, under the name of Weston. In the western part of the State in 1788, from New Milford, Danbury, and Newtown, the town of Brookfield was formed. Though there had been a church society estab- lished since 1724, and an Episcopal church since 1741, in the northern part of Stratford, it was not organized as a town until 1789; it was given the name of Huntington.
In the last decade of the eighteenth century, six new towns were incorporated: Sterling, a part of Voluntown, was sepa- rated in 1794. The year following, Plymouth, which had been an independent parish since 1739 under the name of Northbury, was taken from Watertown and invested with town privileges. Wolcott, originally known as Farmingbury, was taken from Waterbury and Southington in 1796. Trum- bull, a portion of Stratford, was incorporated as a town in 1797. Two towns were created in 1798,-Oxford, taken from Derby and Southbury, and Roxbury, which was a part of Woodbury.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Connecticut was divided into eight counties and one hundred and seven townships.
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CHAPTER XIX
ECCLESIASTICAL SOCIETIES AT THE END OF THE EIGH- TEENTH CENTURY
A T the close of the Revolutionary conflict, nine- tenths of the people of Connecticut, were either communicants of the Congregationalist faith, or attended religious worship in churches of that denomination. The Baptists were the first religious sect to organize in the colony a congre- gation which was opposed to the established Church; this was in 1705. These seceders from the Church of their fore- fathers, were located in the eastern part of the colony, adja- cent to Rhode Island, which was the stronghold of Antipædo- baptists in America. The Reverend Valentine Wightman removed from South Kingston in that province, to Groton, where he organized a Baptist society; he was in charge of the congregation forty-two years, and at his death he was succeeded by his son, Timothy Wightman, who officiated forty years, and was also succeeded by his son, John G. Wightman, who held the position until his death in 1841; making one hundred and thirty-six years, during which the three generations of Wightmans had charge of the spiritual welfare of the first Baptist society in Connecticut.
It was a score of years after the establishment of the first Baptist church, that another was started, in the adjoining town of New London; and in 1743 a society was organized in what is now North Stonington. The growth of this religi- ous denomination in Connecticut was slow; at the end of the eighteenth century it had not over twenty churches in the State.
The greatest withdrawals from the ranks of the Congre- gationalists were caused by the opposers of the Saybrook Platform; the disciples of the Separate churches, as they were called, insisted on an open confession of faith, with a public recital of religious experiences, and the right to choose
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and ordain their own officers; they were strongly in favor of clear evidence of regeneration, and the right of every mem- ber of the church to exercise the gifts God had bestowed upon him for the edification of his brethren. Their first church was established at Canterbury; and there were several other congregations scattered throughout the colony, though they never numbered over thirty societies, some of which were fully organized while others were only gatherings of peo- ple, assembling together for religious fellowship. The broad- ening of the religious and governmental principles of the Congregational churches in the latter part of the century, led some of these seceders to unite again with their former asso- ciates; while others joined themselves to Baptist societies.
Voluntown had a Presbyterian church in the first part of the eighteenth century, which was under the charge of the same pastor for nearly fifty years; at his death it was reor- ganized on Congregational principles. There was also a society at South Mansfield, which was nominally Presbyte- rian, but practically Congregational.
The seeds of Methodism were sown in Connecticut in 1787, by two of their ministers; and two years later, Rev. Jesse Lee made an itinerant tour of three months throughout the State, preaching in its principal places. The first society of Methodists was founded at Stratford, in September 1789, and consisted of three women; the next, at Redding, num- bered two persons; the first church edifice was erected at Weston, and was called Lee's chapel. The circuits of New Haven, Hartford, and Litchfield, were established in 1790; at this time there were only four Methodist clergymen in New England; three years later, when George Roberts took charge of Methodism in Connecticut, his district included nearly the whole of the State, besides portions of Rhode
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Island and Vermont. The sect grew slowly in the State; at the end of the century, churches were built in Middletown, New London, New Haven, and Norwich.
The doctrines of Unitarianism began to make their appearance in New England in the last decade of the eigh- teenth century. The Rev. Stanley Griswold, who accepted the charge of a church in New Milford, soon after his ordina- tion, manifested religious sentiments that were not in har- mony with those of his orthodox brethren, and invited to his communion table all of his congregation, whether they had been admitted communicants or not. He was the first apostle of Unitarianism in Connecticut, but was soon afterwards joined by Rev. Whitfield Cowles, who labored at Granby, Rev. John Sherman, who had charge of a society at Mans- field, and Rev. Henry Channing, who was pastor at New London. No Congregational church in the State, and but one Society, ever became Unitarian; one in Torrington, and another in Middletown, became Separates; both of these, however, reverted to their original connection.
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