USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > East Windsor > East Windsor heritage; two hundred years of church and community history, 1752-1952 > Part 5
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One early source of income was fruit-growing. Though apples from apple-producing towns were not packed and shipped as much as they are today, cider and cider brandy were staple by-products of orcharding. And according to Lemuel Stoughton Sr., not a little of such beverages was local- ly consumed. Rev. Shubael Barlett records that in one good year he and his sons picked forty-one bushels of apples from the trees in his orchard. Instead of selling them to the local cider mills, he shipped several barrels to relatives as far away as Baltimore, and devoutly gave thanks to the Giver of All Good for permitting him to lay in a goodly store for his family's winter use. The Fruit of the Forbidden Tree, having at last
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become the subject of offering gratitude to God, had found a safe place in the good parson's cellar.
My own house, as I was told by my Father, in the manner of 'tradi- tion-so-has-it', was built in 1831 by money realized on the raising of teasels. Something like huge sand-burrs with tremendously long and strong spikes, Teasels were commonly used in wool-combing. On its 1949 centenary, the Broad Brook Company displayed some teasels-imported from France! For weaving the finest woolens, teasels are still preferred to the best comb- ing machinery. And, about one hundred and twenty-five years ago, with the advent of the woolen cloth industry, teasels must have been in high demand.
Rev. Shubael Bartlett's diary further confirms the fact that teasels were once an important commercial crop. His entry of October 14, 1842, records that on that day his son David went to Bridgeport to sell 10,000 teasels grown by himself and 120,000 grown by Dr. Watson. But teasel- growing-like grain crops, sheep-raising and all the other parish indus- tries-has long since yielded to economic pressures beyond local control.
These past two centuries have witnessed many transitions. But, from those days when the pioneers swung axes to carve out a living, down to the beginning of the atomic age, the fruits of this good earth have in generous measure been dedicated to the support of the gospel ministry. And this constant purpose has been upheld and sustained despite ruinous storms, changing markets, and the hazards known only to those who live close to Nature and Nature's God.
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CHAPTER VIII
INDUSTRY
Although this history of the planting, growth and maturity of the seedling church has properly stressed the spiritual side, it would not be complete without a brief description of the sinews which gave it its mate- tial support. By 1752, Ancient Windsor, like all Connecticut towns, had settled down to a period of material prosperity. The uncertainties of pion- eer days were past, and the hardships of the Revolutionary War were yet to come. The impact of the French and Indian War was not too onerous.
Though money continued scarce, barter did a great deal to ease the shortage. This method of exchange was a more satsifactory standard than the paper money authorized by the various colonies. For this reason, and not because farmers were poor, assessments for "support of the gospel min- istery" could be paid in corn, wheat, or rye, at so many shillings per bush- el. And accounts usually specified the kind of money, such as "legal ten- der", "old tenor", or silver. Although ecclesiastical records fail to disclose what disposition was thereafter made of the grain, the several local grist mills and distilleries unquestionably provided ready markets.
The land to which the Roxbury settlers had brought their church, while not flowing with milk and honey, was certainly not without its nat- ural resources. At first, trapping, fishing and hunting went hand in hand with clearing the forests for cultivation. Venison, deer hides and wild tur- keys were sold in neighboring Hartford. Beaver were plentiful. Turpentine and tar were staple products from the pine forests towering upon sandy uplands.
At the mouth of the Scantic and at Quarry Wharf, first eastern termi- nal of the ferry to Windsor, seasonal shad and salmon fisheries prospered. That Connecticut River salmon, today extinct, were once plentiful, is at- tested by the practice prevalent in those days of requiring shad purchasers to buy a salmon with every shad. At Warehouse Point, a thousand shad at a haul, and at Osborn's Mill on the Scantic, an ox-cart-ful, were not uncommon. When the supply for immediate use exceeded demand, large quantities of the best fish were dressed and salted down for city markets or local consumption. Inferior qualities were used for fertilizer; the common rule was a shad to a hill of corn. It was not this seeming extravagance, but pollution of the Great River and its tributaries-the indefensible by-product of our industrialized civilization-which most likely accounted for today's scarcity of shad and for our complete loss of salmon.
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Among the richest natural resources was water power derived from the Scantic River, and from the Ketch,* Dry and Broad brooks. An old journal of 1696 records an item of income: "For my oxen to cart, two loads of bords from Scantic." And every spring, before the days of port- able steam-mills, the log-yard at Osborn's Mill on the Scantic (as it later came to be known) was full, and both sides of the adjacent highways were piled high. Besides lumber for building in local and neighboring towns, the sawmill products included hogsheads for the sugar, rum and molasses trade with the West Indies. Clear oak also yielded rived shingles and clap- boards.
Local timber was used by the shipyards at the Scantic mouth and on the Great River at Warehouse Point, and tall pine masts were exported. In fact, as early as 1687, wood was so generally exported that the General Court adopted what might be considered the earliest conservation laws, prohibiting timber and lumber exports without consent of the selectmen who issued such licenses. Even so, the primeval forest was steadily felled, and later growths have been exhausted, the most important of which were those sturdy stands of chestnut and oak that formerly yielded thousands of ties for the railroads.
The successive uses of water power, as the key to a changing economy, are clearly illustrated by its employment on Ketch Brook, at Ketch Mills, in the community today known as Windsorville, where for more than a century before 1800, saw, and grist mills turned out their products. For half a century there flourished a large gin distillery, which in 1842 burned down. In 1844, this was succeeded by a woolen mill. Fifty-five years later it was also destroyed by fire. Completing the cycle from the first Ketch Brook mill, run to propel a vertical saw to the age of electric power, after 1889 it was proposed that the Town of East Windsor purchase the Ketch Brook water power for a municipal hydroelectric plant. More than sixty years ago, Selectman Elisha G. Morton, long active in the affairs of this Ecclesiastiscal Society and Church, was the leading proponent of that radical, forward-looking suggestion.
Ironically enough, electric power later did come to the whole com- munity and, having received a decided boost from the noisy gasoline en- gine, has put out of business every kind of water power, one of the most- treasured properties of yesteryear. In a community which once boasted at least a half-dozen busy mill-sites, today only one mill pond, that of the Broad Brook Company, is still in use. The other existing pond at Windsor- ville, yielding water for farm irrigating, bears mute witness to the thriving
NOTE: "Ketch Brook"-The origin of this name remains obscure. In his "Windsor Farmes", John Stoughton contends that it is a Yankee corruption of "Catch Brook". That, in turn, requires some explanation: In earliest colonial days, grass, a much-prized asset, was not cultivated until 1765. Meadows where natural grass grew were scarce; the best were those east of the Connecticut. Until the three-mile lots were first set off, farmers just helped themselves to grass wherever they could find it. It is supposed that the Ketch Brook meadows, narrow though they were, produced desirable grass and, because they were freelands, it was a case of catch-as-catch-can. Hence, Catch Brook-in Yankee dialect, Ketch Brook.
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past, whereas the rapid waters of other power sites today flow unfettered toward the Great River.
There is space only for passing mention of other mills in this section of the North Parish. In 1809, Abner and Stoddard Ellsworth advertised for sale a comparatively new grist-mill, "within fifty rods of boatable water"-probably on Ketch Brook near the highway to Rye Street. Then and later the Scantic River was a "boatable" stream. And mills were located on Dry Brook south of the Ketch. Of particular interest was a fulling mill for finishing homespuns and woolen cloth.
The development of water power on Broad Brook, at the present vil- lage of that name, had great significance for the East Windsor Church be- cause, with the establishing of this woolen mill a century ago, the village grew and, in 1851, inaugurated its own Congregational Church. With the founding of this daughter-Church, another inroad was made on the size of the original parish.
Osborn's Mill on the Scantic River. Built about 1728.
The economic importance of water power to this early community is graphically illustrated by Osborn's Mill, a quarter of a mile or so east of the meetinghouse. Writing his reminiscences in 1892, Lemuel Stoughton, Sr., recorded that the mill then standing had been built in 1728 for a com- pany of men on The Street. An earlier saw mill had also been operated on the site of "this largest and best water power in Town". The deed, con-
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firmed in 1687, bounding a tract of land purchased from the Indians, men- tions Goodman Bissell's saw mill on the Scantic.
The saw and grist mills under Moses Osborn greatly prospered. The mill ground huge quantities of grain for the gin distilleries, chiefly located in Warehouse Point, and also did custom grinding for local farmers. In the mill's loft, according to Mr. Stoughton, wool-combing and carding were carried on. "The long slim rolls were produced for the family spinning wheel, two of the first processes toward making cloth . .. Women did the weaving here, and those about the neighborhood who might have looms for it." Thus, an integral part of the industrial system, even in its earliest and most primitive stages, was the farming-out of piece-work.
A flax mill, four stories high, on the east bank near the end of the dam, turned out to be not so successful. A house built on that side was later moved across the river and uphill to become the Boucher home of fifty and more years ago. The Osborn sawmill was first to yield to changes in our economy; and in the early 1900's, the grist mill turned its wheels for the last time. All the available native timber was then readied for mar- ket by the portable mills; and when the Western States began shipping grain to the Eastern markets, the custom grinding of grain practically ceased .*
Brickmaking, too, was once a common and profitable industry. Lem- uel Stoughton, Sr., recalls that at one time there were eight brickyards in East Windsor west of the Scantic River. Five of them were on The Street, and cheap transportation to Hartford was provided by the River scows. In Scantic there were three brickyards, of which two were near Osborn's Mill; and some of the scows on the "boatable" Scantic were capable of carrying a maximum load of twenty-five tons.
Before the days of coal, scows were also used for transporting wood to Hartford. Built of white pine in Vermont and New Hampshire, these Connecticut River scows were usually loaded with white pine boards, and by the end of the North Society's first century all stands of this valuable timber had been exhausted.
Mr. Stoughton cites the brickmaking industry as illustrating the indus- trious habits of the people. The making of bricks was carried on in con- junction with farming, and the farmer-brickmakers were as resourceful as
NOTE: Farmers did not always pay cash for grinding. Millers listed the tolls they levied, depending on the kind of grain and type of grinding. One amusing in- cident is related about Vinton's Mill on Broad Brook, today known as Sadd's Mill's. The mill-owner, Mr. Vinton, was a self-important, pompous man. One day in a neighboring tavern, the village wit, who had a reputation for fashioning rhymes and jingles, whenever set up to a drink at the bar, volunteered to oblige if Mr. Vinton would buy him a drink. The bargain was that the wit would contrive the first line, down his drink, and then complete the couplet. When he began with "Vinton's Mill runs still and wist", the puffed up owner bought the drink and impatiently waited for the concluding line. The wit, who must have heard some- thing of the notoriously high tolls that Vinton charged, delighted everybody among his listeners except Mr. Vinton when he capped it with: "And for his toll he takes the grist!"
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industrious. They drove their oxen around and around in the pit in which the mortar was made, so that their hoofs stirred up and mixed the ingre- dients preparatory to shaping the bricks.
At Quarry Wharf the clatter of loading bricks mingled with the thud of red sandstone. The story of this Quarry, source of exceptionally high- grade stone, is related by Mr. Stoughton: "A short way east (of the high- way) is the stone quarry begun by me in 1842. After a time Frederick Hall bought an adjoining lot of about thirty acres and joined me in working the quarry. We shipped stone to New York and Philadelphia, most of which was put on board vessels down to the River here where we had built a wharf. High water was necessary for loading.
"After about two years (the business) went into the East Windsor Quarry Company. Not long after, a new company, called the Connecticut River Quarry Company, took over with Charles Shelton its head. Now came a rush of business and activity. A railway (narrow gauge) was built to the wharf, and other structures (were erected). This company had a connection with a New York stone-dressing company, but it failed after about two years. Sheldon bought into the wreck and went on for a time and left it. Next a company, mostly from Waterbury, took hold of it .... I suppose profits were so light that they disposed of it after a short time. Since then it has changed hands several times, with more speculation than stone quarrying
"The better part of the brick is of excellent quality, but the quarry has had (in 1889) little judicious management and much waste of money by poor movements. Whether it will ever be revived and worked, the future must tell."
Mr. Stoughton's future has thus far spoken in the negative. Of course, the water-filled quarry holes remain, and the young folks of today like to swim in them. Here and there traces of machine installations are to be seen; and until a few years ago parts of the old railway bed were still visible. Of the "other structures" nothing remains. Speculation and bad management may well have contributed to the successive failures of this promising in- dustry. But the geological formation was basically at fault. The best veins of stone, preferred for trimming New York's brownstone fronts, pitched sharply toward the southeast. The sandstone deposits were underground rather than exposed near the surface of a hill, bluff, or mountain, such as the Simsbury and Portland quarries. Tremendous quantities of earth and shale had to be removed in order to lay open the marketable veins. The labor thus required, together with the job of keeping the quarry pump- ed out for working, resulted in an un-economical overhead.
Important contributors to the working economy of their day were the tradesmen, such as the blacksmith, the cobbler, and the tinsmith, whose places of business were almost within a stone's-throw of the meeting house. Businesses and social institutions of considerable importance were also the taverns, one in the house which is the present-day parsonage, and another on the site of the cellar-hole opposite the former parsonage. Cider mills flourished, some hand-operated, others by treadmill, and the last sur-
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vivor by steam. All these, together with the major industries, have disap- peared as the inexorable result of a changing population which began to be concentrated in the villages. Transportation, moreover, as it improved from generation to generation, at last brought the village store-yes, even the city mart-nearer in time to busy folks than was in those days the neighbor grocer a mile or so away.
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CHAPTER IX
CIVIL FUNCTIONS
In public meetings, all the perennial questions pertaining to public education have ever been red-hot 'issues', and there is ample precedent for the zeal with which such matters are today threshed out in New England town meetings. The records of this and other ecclesiastical societies abound with votes and reports on such questions. Just as today many commend- able plans of impartial committees are kicked into the proverbial cocked hat, so, too, it was when public schools were the responsibility of eccle- siastical societies.
Such schools could never be so conveniently located as to suit the needs of everybody in a given district. For example, it might be voted that "William Bartlett, now living at Scantic Mills, belong to the school dis- trict east of the Scantic River, as reported". But perhaps the Bartletts did not particularly care for the local schoolmaster, or it might have been a shorter walk for the Bartlett children to cross the district line than it was to attend he school in the district in which they properly resided. Ob- viously, from time to time, Mr. Bartlett-and others-exerted sufficient influence to obtain some special consideration.
Until 1795, ecclesiastical control of public education in Connecticut derived from the first settlers' intense concern for education, which they placed second only to religion. The North Society in Windsor was but six months old when it voted "to raise twenty pounds, old tenor, for schooling to be spent at the same places as last year". Though this may sound fairly indefinite, that sum was actually set aside as the first educational budget in what is now East Windsor, in order to support those two schools es- tablished on The Street by the parent Second Society.
Before the Society relinquished control of the schools, twelve districts had been set off and defined in order to accommodate the needs of an in- creasing population. With a few minor modifications, these school dis- tricts continued to operate a century longer until, through the efforts of Rev. Dr. William F. English, they were consolidated under town manage- ment.
The support of public education did not entirely rest on the property tax annually levied by the Society and collected by the one-man committee for each district. In 1783, the State had allocated to the societies certain monies derived from the sale of part of "The Western Lands, so-called." In 1786, the North Society threatened to sue the Second Society (today South Windsor) for its just share of this fund, which today would be part of the School Fund retained by the town for the support of public edu- cation. Then, too, there were "the avails from the Town's selling of the
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common lands and useless highways", for the purpose of which a special committee was annually appointed.
In 1795, when the General Court established the Connecticut School Fund, the ecclesiastical-school bonds were broken. This Fund was acquired through the sale of the rest of the Western Lands, some five million acres south of Lake Erie. The Congregational Church, still strongly entrenched in state government, lost its fight to have the fund's income devoted, as local authority might determine, either to public education or to the sup- port of the ministry.
Instead, the General Court voted to distribute the income among those school districts in which voting was not restricted on denominational grounds. The meaning of that condition was clear. In order to receive aid from the State, school districts must henceforward operate as units inde- pendent of the ecclesiastical societies. Therewith, an important civil func- tion of the North Society had ceased to exist. Nevertheless, throughout all the years, its members have continued to be active and substantial support- ers of public education .*
In a manner of speaking, the Ecclesiastical Society exercised a cradle- to-the-grave protective interest in the population. Its sexton was explicitly hired to "provide water for baptisms". Then came the supervision of schools, their sessions irregular and frequently in winter months restricted to attendance by the older boys. Moreover, should any member of the par- ish become indigent, special collections provided for his maintenance. (This function of caring for the poor was later assumed by the civil authorities.) At the close of life, the Society provided the bier-cloth, hearse and burial-place.
The Society's meetings were frequently devoted to such matters as ac- quiring land, fencing it, and providing sextons, for the three cemeteries. The original vote of 1755 was for "one burial place convenient to the meeting house." In 1820, the Society's Committee was directed "to provide a suitable place for the hearse and that liberty be given to the inhabitants of this Society to use the same when they please." After this quaintly- worded vote, there is no further mention of that vehicle.
A hearse-house was nevertheless built, probably by the town; and this meeting of 1820 was the last to be concerned with additions to the cemeteries. Obviously, the civil authorities assumed such responsibilities. That rather gruesome concern with burials has since progressed from such
NOTE: On page 57 of his History of the Ecclesiastical Society, Deacon Roe surmises that the Legislature in 1795 probably took some action which accounts for the fact that from then on no further mention of the schools was made in the Society's records. He was right. The General Court's vote was precisely that action.
There is an error on page 56 in Deacon Roe's description of the bounds cir- cumscribing the Warehouse Point District: the phrase "Coventry road" should read "Country Road". No records exist of there ever having been a Coventry Road in East Windsor; but the frequently mentioned Country Road is that highway (later Town Street, now U. S. Route No. 5) laid out on the elevated ground east of the Connecticut. Like Route No. 5, the Country Road went over Prospect Hill east of Warehouse Point.
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stipulations as that the bearers must carry the casket-once at least for seven miles-with several sets taking turns at the laborious task, down to our present-day complete and oft-too-elaborate arrangements by "morti- cians", successors of the despised undertakers. This exquisite refinement in caring for the departed, evolving through the years, has become thorough- ly professionalized.
Though neither the ecclesiastical authorities nor the Church, in their respective capacities, have ever organized for war purposes, in every crisis they have contributed to the national defense. The meeting house was in- variably the focal point for organizing to arms-as in response to the Lex- ington Alarm; and even in the War of 1812, a company met and formed here. During World War II, and to this day, the meeting house has re- mained the main evacuation center should there be any bombing of nearby villages or even of distant cities.
The votes of 1754 stressed the remoteness and inaccessibility of the first meeting house-an objection to the site deplored by the inhabitants of The Street. At that time, Mr. Henry Wolcott was named to apply to the County Court for a committee "to lay out suitable roads to the meeting house in this Society". This was followed by a vote for a "jury to prise the land taken for the added roads". Such action did not go the whole length of exercising civil jurisdiction, such as prevailed in regard to schools; but it does illustrate the ecclesiastical authority's awareness of the needs of its people. And, in the absence of any other interested authority, the Society filled the void.
In all its concern for these civil functions, the Society patently demon- strated a sense of responsibility to the community. More had to be provid- ed than a preacher of the gospel and a place of worship. The Ecclesiastical Society of old, while fashioning a whole community, faced a total respon- sibility and met it with total action.
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CHAPTER X
TRANSPORTATION
At the 150th anniversary of this Church its third pastor, the venerable Rev. Samuel J. Andrews remarked that he liked the swiftness of the bicy- cle, the trolley, and the automobile but unlike the stage coach of the years of his pastorate, they did not cultivate the grace of patience. Then the high-wheeled bicycle had given away to the chain-geared vehicle we know with its pneumatic tires, the trolley line connecting East Windsor Hill and Warehouse Point, completing through service between Hartford and Springfield, had recently been opened, and the first automobile to plow up the dusty highway was soon to appear. The milestone that transporta- tion had reached in 1902 marked a long course with an accelerated devel- opment in the last half of the nineteenth century. And that pace was to be outstripped in the next fifty years. In a century the grace of patience of the stage coach era has given way to the fever of impatience with transportation that moves at less than fifty miles per hour.
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