USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Berlin > History of Berlin, Connecticut > Part 21
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CHAPTER XIII.
Lower Lane .- Isaac Norton and his Descendants .- Norton's Saw Mill .- The Great Flood of 1797.
As we go eastward from the Blair factory, the first left-hand corner turns onto Hart Street, or "Lower Lane." We are told that this road once extended farther south, half a mile or so, to a point north of the Edward Hall place, where it came out on the Hartford and New Haven turnpike. In early times this Lower Lane road was the main street, the highway of this part of the town. In 1786 Elnathan Norton and Roger Riley, for the consideration of thirteen pounds, sold two acres and eighty-five rods of land to the town of Berlin for a "High- way," described as "bounded East on country road, West on Highway, North partly on said Eluathan Norton's land, partly on sd Roger Riley and partly on land lately sold to Samuel Hart, Junr., South partly on land of sd Eluathan Norton, and partly on Elijah Loveland's land," and "is to run Easterly and Westerly in parallel line with the road that runs east and west between sd Norton's and Samuel Harts dwelling house, to be improved forever as an open road only." "Said piece of ground is 135 rods in length East and West, and 3 rods in width."
This road is the one that extends from Jarvis corner to Hart Street. The brothers, Darius and Nelson Richardson, lived in the large, square-roofed house near the west end of this street. Their father, Zenas, had a shoe shop, east of the house; their mother was Vashti Norton; her father, Andrew Norton, used to grind tan bark in the lot opposite the house, where the remains of several dams and one of the old mill stones may be seen to-day.
The ponds are dry now, but back in the fields are springs, which, a hundred years ago, fed a brook of sufficient power to turn Andrew Norton's mill wheels.
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Mrs. Arnold, the mother of Mrs. Leonard Hubbard, used to say that when they came to Berlin, in 1838, that stream ran through their lots, and on north, under the little bridge, west of Benjamin Fanning's blacksmith shop, to the Matta- bessett.
Besides the Richardson house, there was one other built on this street soon after it was opened in 1786. It stands on the north side, near the east end, a very attractive old place. Three generations of the Wood family lived here. Father, son, and grandson bore the name of Charles.
In the early fifties Tom Thumb was exhibited in Berlin and everybody went to see him, down in the old church. Tom's showman asked to have some little girl from the audience placed upon the platform beside him, and when a little miss was brought from the back of the church, people whispered "that's little Rosa Wood; isn't she pretty ?" And she was, pretty as a picture, with her great brown eyes and dark curling hair. Rosa was the daughter of Charles Wood, 2d. She was married at sixteen to Oliver Bacon and died soon after her marriage. Her schoolmates still speak of her remarkable beauty.
Nelson Richardson married Hepsy Dickinson, one of the five daughters of Russel Dickinson, who lived in the house on the west side of Hart Street, nearest the Blair factory road now known as the Shaw place. Mr. Dickinson was a tinner.
The house on the corner northeasterly from the Shaws, formerly owned by Ansel and George Thomas, is now occupied by Edgar M. Carter, the plumber.
The next house north of the Shaw's on the same side was the home of Elijah Stanley, who for many years made fine, well-fitting shoes. He had a number of apprentices. Elijah Stanley died in 1857, aged sixty-five. The Stanley place is now owned by C. O. Hanford, who has made extensive improve- ments in the dwelling house.
Hiram Francis and his family lived in a large white house next north of the Stanley place. They moved to Meriden about the year 1870, and soon after that the house, while occu- pied by John Hannon, was burned. It was replaced by the
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house recently occupied by E. S. Burnham, now owned by George B. Carter.
Still going north we pass, on the left hand, the farm long known as the Samuel Durand place. Mr. Durand and his wife Eloisa (Lewis) came to Berlin from Cheshire. They joined the Worthington church in 1827. At first they lived in what was known as the "blue house" next east of the Bridge Cemetery. Mrs. Durand died in 1832, leaving children whose names were: Frederick L., Henry S., Andrew, John, Sarah, Frances, and Mrs. Jennette A. Durand Cox. She joined the Second Congregational Church of Berlin in 1831 and was dis- missed in 1837. Mr. Durand married, in 1834, for his second wife, Rebecca Root, sister of Cyrus and Timothy Root. Their children were: Almira H., Louisa R., Jane E., Hannah, Loyal R., and William.
Mrs. Rebecca Durand died at Milwaukee, September, 1896, aged ninety-five.
Frederick Durand was a lawyer and settled in Rochester, N. Y.
Henry was first a merchant at Meriden, at Berlin and at Kensington. Afterward he went to Racine, Wis., and became a noted fire insurance adjuster.
Andrew went south and was living there during the Civil War.
John, a railroad man, lived in Rochester, N. Y.
Loyal went west and was in the fire insurance business, as is also his brother William. Loyal died soon after the Chicago fire, overtaxed, it was said, by the strain of work incident thereto.
Samuel Durand died December 4, 1871. Then the farm was purchased by Huber Bushnell, and Mrs. Durand, with her daughters Louisa and Jane, went to Milwaukee to live with William.
Almira and Hannah (Mrs. Gould) live in Rochester, N. Y.
Frances (Mrs. Miller) lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
Jules, a colored man, and his wife Flora, who worked for Mr. Durand, lived in a little house that stood a short distance south
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of the Durand house. Jules used to blow the church organ after Charles Stocker died. He was a big man. The school children were afraid of him, and used to run and hide when they saw him coming along the road.
Now prepare to take off your hats to the men, and women, too, who dwelt around the corners to which we approach. In 1705 the men of Great Swamp, who, with their wives and children,-babies in arms, muskets in front, muskets in the rear, had been obliged to tramp eight miles through the forests to Farmington village, for their Sunday privileges, decided that they must have a church nearer their homes.
The town gave consent, and a petition dated October 11, 1705, sent to the General Assembly, was granted for the people on this side of "Blow mountain" to "set up in this desolate corner of the wilderness" for themselves.
Isaac Norton was one of the signers of that petition. He was described as a rich merchant, pious and useful. He bore the titles of Ensign and Lieutenant. He and Elizabeth Galpin of Stafford, Conn., were married in 1707. They were members of Christian Lane church in 1712.
Their dwelling was here on the northeast of the four cor- ners, to which we have come-not the present corner house, that is modern,-but farther east.
The children of Isaac and Elizabeth Norton were; Elizabeth, b. 1708, married Jonathan Edwards of Middletown [near Edward Hall's]; Charles, b. 1710; Ruth, b. 1711, m. Wil- liam, son of Rev. William Burnham of Kensington; Isaac, b. 1713, m. Sarah Seymour; Abigail, b. 1716, m. Luke Hitch- cock of Springfield; Tabitha, b. 1718, m. 1740 Colonel Isaac Lee; Achsah, b. 1721, m. Jedediah Norton of Guilford [it was he who gave the church organ in 1791]; Josiah, b. 1726; Elnathan, ninth child, b. 1729, m. first, Rachel Woodruff, second, Sybel Goodrich.
Solomon Norton, son of Elnathan, inherited the Isaac Norton place. From him it went to his son, Elisha Norton.
The late James C. Arnold came to Berlin from "down the River," about 1838. He purchased from Elisha Norton his
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great-grandfather's house, with a part of the lands adjoining. The house, which then had a double-hipped roof, was remodeled by Mr. Arnold beyond recognition, but the foundations and frame, with a part of the ell, remain, and the floors are the very same that on that July evening of 1740, trembled under the dancing feet of the guests, "Beckleys and Buckleys, Norths and Roots, Gilberts and Porters," at Tabitha's wedding. For Tabitha, the heroine of Mrs. Willard's "Bride Stealing," was the daughter of this "rich Isaac Norton."
Isaac Lee, the bridegroom of "twenty-three," "grave and sedate," "of giant mould," was commissioned Captain of the Thirteenth Company of Train Bands in the Sixth Regiment in this colony, in May, 1767. The same year he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fifteenth Regiment, and in March, 1775, Colonel of the same regiment.
Lieutenant Isaac Norton died January 10, 1763, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.
Elnathan, his youngest son, born 1729, lived on the south- west corner, diagonally opposite his father's house. In 1756 he and his wife, Rachel (Woodruff) were enrolled as members of the Christian Lane church. They had three sons and three daughters.
Elnathan Norton was a large landholder. It is said that he owned down south as far as Edward Hall's, over west as far as Norton's saw mill, and east up to the "Street." We can hardly go amiss of his name on the old deeds of this locality. Elnathan Norton died July 30, 1801, aged seventy-two.
Solomon Norton, born 1760, son of Elnathan, lived in his grandfather Isaac Norton's house. He had three sons: Linus, Isaac, and Elisha. Linus lived in Beckley Quarter.
Isaac, born 1788, lived on the southwest corner, after his grandfather, Elnathan, and built a new house, still standing there. He married Milly, daughter of Asaph and Eunice (French) Goodrich, his next-door neighbor, on the south. A deed of January 7, 1796, shows that at that time Elnathan Norton sold to Asaph Goodrich a piece of land bounded as
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follows : east on highway, south on Roger Riley, north and west on his own land.
Asaph Goodrich, born 1767, married Eunice French, daugh- ter of Daniel French, and he, Daniel French, made, over on the site of Norton's saw mill, the first cut nails in the country. The dam was built by George Hubbard. Mr. French died in 1784, aged thirty-eight, and the business was taken to Middletown.
Deacon Selah Goodrich, grandson of Mr. French, was the authority for the foregoing statement.
Asaph Goodrich was a tinner. He used the front room of his house, built next south of Elnathan Norton's, for a shop. His specialty was foot-stoves, which, with various articles of tinware, were displayed in his front windows.
Mrs. Goodrich was a faithful attendant on church services. One Sunday, as she walked down the north side of the hill, on her way home, she saw some kind of a plant growing in the lot, that she wanted, and so she bent over between the rails and picked until she had a handful. As she gathered the flowers she moved along to a place where the rails were so near together that when she tried to remove her head it stuck fast. There she hung, and there she would have died had she not been discovered by a neighbor coming along the road.
Of three children born to Isaac and Milly Norton, Henry was the only one who lived to maturity. He married Gertrude, daughter of the Rev. Asahel C. Washburn. In 1869, with father and mother Washburn, and mother Norton, they moved to Syracuse, where Henry was engaged in the fire insurance business.
The family met with severe financial losses, and to cap the climax, Henry died, leaving five little children. Gertrude, his wife, was a student of Mt. Holyoke, and had taught in the schools of Berlin. She rose to the situation, started a kinder- garten, and by her indomitable energy succeeded in giving a good education to her two sons and three daughters. The boys went to Cornell, and are now employed in smelters, Wads-
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worth at Murray, Salt Lake, Utah, and Alfred at East Helena, Mont. Of the daughters, Nellie is a stenographer, Lena is a school teacher and a violinist. Gertrude also is a school teacher.
Formerly it was a custom of the churches to appoint indi- viduals to go about from house to house to solicit contributions for benevolent objects. Mrs. Isaac Norton would wear a straw bonnet to church all winter, but she always welcomed a collector for foreign missions with a gift of five dollars.
Over west of Isaac Norton's, a family by the name of Miller lived in a small house that was burned. The Millers, husband and wife, were drunkards. In their sprees, she would scold him, and he would abuse her. Once, when she ran out of doors and yelled "murder !" the neighbors, who went to her rescue, found him in the house, rocking the baby, as nice and pleasant as could be. One day, while Mrs. Miller was at work for Mrs. Norton, as she saw her husband going by the house, she put her head out of a window and said some hateful things to him, whereupon he picked up a brickbat, threw it full drive at her, and smashed in all her front teeth.
The Millers had a daughter, Amelia, who was quite a pretty girl. This was in the forties.
Elisha Norton, son of Solomon, married Laura Belden, April 28, 1830. They had two sons, Horace and James, and five daughters, Amelia, Harriet, Emily, Julia, and Ellen. They lived, at first, on the old Isaac Norton homestead. Then Mr. Norton sold that place to James C. Arnold and built a new house on the southeast corner, now owned by the Hall brothers.
One of the industries of the early settlers was the clearing up of land. When Mr. Arnold purchased his place the lot opposite the house was a tangle of wild grape vines, and it was a hard task to root them out. People used to come from a distance to gather grapes from those vines. Mr. Norton and Mr. Arnold, both carpenters, carried on business together under the firm name of Norton & Arnold. They built the present Congregational church, in the village, which was afterward altered by putting in side galleries and a lower ceiling. The steeple was also strengthened by a new one built outside of and
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higher than the old one. Mr. Arnold built the Lyman Nott house, the Washburn house, the Fowler house, and in 1850, the old Berlin depot. Mr. Norton's joiner shop still stands, east of the house where he lived. Mr. Arnold moved his shop, which was east of that, across to the north side of the road and made it into a dwelling house; then he bought a shop from some place, up on the street (where ?) and moved it down onto the site of the first one-where it still remains.
About the year 1857 Mr. Norton removed to Racine, Wis. It was said, there, that Elisha Norton had the handsomest family of daughters in Racine.
It used to be required of voters that they should own a certain amount of real estate. A citizen of Berlin, anxious that his son should vote, deeded to him a piece of land on the south side of this street, with the understanding that the son should convey the property back to him after he had voted, but the young man concluded to keep it, and built himself a house there. The house and the people are all gone now.
Near this place lives John Hudson Webber, now in his ninety-fourth year, who for many years made shoes in a shop attached to the rear of his dwelling.
Over in the lot back of Mr. Webber's, once stood a slaughter, used by many butchers. At times the south winds wafted from that spot were enough to make a horse break into a run. The house recently remodeled by George S. Schofield was occupied about the year 1840 by a brick mason whose name was Noble. He disappeared, and his family were in great distress of mind. A German doctor here, who professed to have magic sight, said that the missing man had been murdered and that his body was secreted up on Newington mountain. A wagon load of men from the village-it was a Sunday-went up there, but found no trace of him. A few mornings after that William Bulkeley, on his way down to the south district school, met Noble, in the road, coming this way. The boy ran home, as fast as his feet would carry him, to tell his father that Mr. Noble was not dead-he had come home. The man had been off on a "drunk."
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The house now owned by Henry L. Porter was occupied in the forties, and later, by Marvin Lee, who used the basement as a shoe shop, the entrance to which was by a door cut through the brickwork. This doorway was afterwards closed, but its outlines are still in evidence. The Lees had two gentle, fair- haired daughters, Caroline and Mary. The family moved away to New York State, and Anson Porter succeeded Mr. Lee in the shoemaking business.
We do not knew when this street was opened but Aunt Abby Pattison always spoke of it as "the new road." The Isaac Norton house and the brick house, now owned by Leon LeClair, are the only really old houses built upon it and both are so near the main streets that they might have been placed there before this road was cut through by the town, and then in old times a laneway was possible. A comparatively modern house, that stood west of Mr. Arnold's, on the corner now owned by E. E. Austin, which was burned some twenty years since, was said to have been built by Evelyn Peck, a stone cutter, who had a marble yard connected with his house by a woodshed. This place was occupied for many years by the Henry Deming family. Silas Hurlburt, who married Elizabeth Deming, had a stove store on the premises.
In August, 1797, Berlin was nearly drowned out by a flood. A tremendous quantity of water fell from the skies-some called it a cloudburst.
At a town meeting, held April 9, 1798, Captain James North, Amos Hosford, and Selah Hart were appointed a committee to examine respecting the damage done by the late flood, and determine how much shall be paid to each parish out of the town treasury to make good such damage. At the same meet- ing it was voted that "the town will be of the expense of building and repairing the wood part of Beckley's and Kirby's bridges, and that the several societies shall be at the expense of the other work and bridges in each parish."
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May 4, 1798, committees were appointed for Kensington parish and for New Britain to make good the damage done by the late flood. Nearly or quite all the bridges in town had been swept away and according to Deacon Selah Goodrich, who was then a well-grown lad, every milldam but the one at Norton's sawmill was carried off.
Here at the "corners," Andrew Norton's pond broke away, and washed nearly up to the houses. Great gullies were made on the hillside that may be seen to-day.
If Norton's milldam withstood the flood of 1797, its time came later. Mr. Bulkeley remembers that it went off when he was a boy. It was rebuilt by Philip Norton, who, in 1849, built the mill and put in machinery for sawing lumber from logs carried there by farmers of the vicinity.
In 1860, John Norton, son of Philip, was doing a prosperous business at the mill making carriage lumber from fine trees which he selected and bought for the purpose wherever he could find them.
John Graham used the ground floor for turning spokes for his wagon wheels. This mill was burned December, 1905. No insurance.
West of the pond, and also farther east, on the north side, over in the Brown's pasture, are clay pits and traces of brick kilns that were in use fifty years ago or so.
The clay was ground by a wheel with one horse power, then poured into wooden moulds, and slipped out onto boards to dry-all by hand work.
Back of Norton's mill, up in the cliff, in a sort of natural cave, enlarged by hacking, lived Sam Smith, known as an out- law, a robber, and a horse stealer. It was said also that he stole sheep and threw their bones into the pond.
A house that stood next west of the mill was occupied by Abraham Stephens, who had a large family of children. They had a carriage and an old horse, with which they took much pleasure in driving about the country. One day, when Mr. Stephens was at work in a field, and his women folks were all out riding, the house took fire and was destroyed.
17
CHAPTER XIV.
Disposal of Highway Property .- The Building of the New Haven Railroad .- The Train Wreck at Peat Swamp.
In our early days much of the business brought before voters related to roads. At a town meeting held in Farmington December 27, 1784, the year before Berlin was set off by her- self, a vote was taken to sell the highways unnecessary for travel. A committee was appointed to locate such highways, and after three months' notice to individuals, for redress, to sell such highways to adjoining proprietors or to others, the avails to be and remain a perpetual fund for the support of schools in the several societies.
At a town meeting held in Berlin April 11, 1814, it was "Voted that the several Societies of Worthington have the 'priviledge' of the Interest of all monies arising from the sale of highways, within the limits of said Society in the same manner as the other Societies in the town of Berlin have to Improve the Interest of such monies in their Several School Societies, the principal of such money to be Subject to the Same rules and Regulations as in the other parishes."
According to the report of the town treasurer, Berlin has on deposit, held in trust for the benefit of schools in the Society of Worthington, a fund to the amount of $2,186.71, which accrued from the sale of highways. When the town was first settled, some of the roads were laid out twenty rods wide and even forty rods in certain places, an advantage in muddy weather. When one track was badly poached, another and another could be chosen.
In the year 1786, after it was voted to sell highways, over seventy deeds were given by the town to individuals who pur- chased land adjoining their own property. At first twenty- rod highways sold for nine shillings, ten pence, the length bordering on owner's land.
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Jonathan Edwards, one of the first settlers in the south part of Berlin, died in 1776, aged seventy-two. Miss Harriet Edwards, his great-great-granddaughter, says she used to hear that he lived on a road which was abandoned, over west of Edward Hall's place, and that the ruins of the house could still be seen there in the woods. Jonathan Edwards was succeeded by his son Josiah, Sr.
On May 30, 1786, a committee appointed by the town deeded to Josiah Edwards, for the consideration of fourteen pounds lawful money, "a part of the country road (so called) running westward from said Edwards' dwelling house butting west on the four rod highway so called and contains about two acres and eighty rods of land." "Four rod highway" ran around into Kensington.
Mr. Yale of Meriden used to say that once on a time there was a road west of the peat swamp, and that stages ran over that road. It butted on Hicks Street in Meriden and came out a little west of the Norris Dunham place in Kensington. There is still one house on that road near its Kensington termination, and the road is yet kept open as far as that house by the town.
At a town meeting held December 4, 1797, it was "voted that the selectmen be authorized to sell a highway east of the country road lying between the lands of Jedediah Norton and Josiah Edwards, and that they offer to Jedediah Norton that part lying on his lands which if he will purchase at what they shall judge its value they are to sell to him, otherwise they will sell the same at auction." Turnpikes were owned by corpora- tions or by individuals, whose revenue consisted of fees exacted from those who used the roads, and toll gates were placed at a distance of ten miles apart.
Certain travelers, as those going to a funeral or to church, or to a training, were passed free, as were persons who lived near the gate when going about their ordinary business. All ' others had to pay toll according to a schedule of rates-twenty- five cents for a stage or a two-horse carriage; six and a quarter cents-fo'pence-for a one-horse wagon, and one cent for a single animal when driven. Lovers who visited their sweet-
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hearts and remained until the small hours of the night would escape payment of toll on their way home. The gate would then be wide open.
About a third of a mile below the Abram Wright tavern was a curious toll-house; the lower rooms were divided by the width of the pike, so that teams could go through. The second story extended across over the road and made a shelter for the gate, gate-man and for travelers while fumbling for change.
A family by the name of Bassett lived there, and the children came up to the south district school. One of the sons, Erastus J., became a valued adjuster for the Ætna Fire Insurance Company. His house in Hartford is now owned by George H. Sage. Another son, Edwin, was an aeronaut. His mother worried so much whenever he made an ascension that he finally promised her he would never go up again, and he kept his word.
The gate was abolished in 1855.
As we go to Meriden on the steam cars, we see at the left, near the southern boundary of Berlin's town line, a large pond, with buildings bearing the sign "Hartford Ice Company." The basin of that pond is a peat swamp, some twenty-five acres in extent. A laneway which starts from the highway just south of the Henry Norton house, leads westerly and southerly, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile, to this same swamp, which was once included in Jedediah Norton's farm and was called "Old Fly."
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