USA > Connecticut > History of Connecticut, Volume III > Part 7
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Five years later, the private company opened its books to receive subscriptions to the capital stock. In July, 1859, a contract was made by the original incorporators with Eli Whitney and Charles McClallan and Son for the construction of the works. By the spring of 1860 enough capital had been subscribed for the commencement of the work by the contractors; and the present Whitneyville Dam and the Pros- pect Street Reservoir were constructed and a water pump installed at the foot of the dam. This pump, composed of two thirty-foot wa- ter wheels, constructed by the Farrell Foundry of Ansonia, the fore- runner of the present Farrell Birmingham Company.
On New Year's Day, 1862, water distribution to consumers in New Haven became a reality. Work continued, and in 1871 the first steam pumps at the Whitney station were started. Four years later the works and franchises of the Fair Haven and the Mountain Water Companies were absorbed by the growing New Haven company, add- ing Maltby Lake and Wintergreen Lake to the source of their supply.
In the next fifteen years, the growing company established a pumping station at Lake Saltonstall, and a reservoir built in the annex to provide water for the lower portions of the city ; a dam was thrown across West River in Woodbridge, forming Dawson Lake, and dis- tributing pipes laid to the city ; and Sargent River was dammed, form- ing Lake Chamberlain. The turn of the century saw the New Haven Water Company in still greater strength, not only through its con- tinued building program, but also by receiving the works and the franchise of the West Haven Water Company.
In 1907 David Daggett, then secretary of the company, compiled a history of the first fifty years of its growth. Today, as the New Haven Water Company nears the century mark in service to the
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community, the total history seems even more fantastic. Actually, since its founding in 1851, eleven presidents have guided the affairs of this great public utility. And today, even with the tremendous increase in population, the company supplies an average one hundred and forty- three gallons of pure water daily to each of the residents of its service area. To do this means that a large staff is always on the job, day and night, three hundred and sixty-five days a year-engineers, chemists, inspectors, maintenance men and others. It means the gathering of waters from a one-hundred-and-eighteen-square-mile watershed into seventeen reservoirs now comprising the New Haven water supply system. It means that dams have been built to store and control this supply, and that nine hundred and fifty-two miles of pipe have been laid to bring the water to the users.
But this does not begin to tell the whole story. Throughout this large water system-the largest in the entire state, extending from the Housatonic River eastward for thirty-one miles along the Sound to Guilford and twenty-one miles north to the town of Southington- sanitary engineers are ever on guard against pollution of water; forests are cultivated to prevent erosion; rainfall is measured and charted; and continuous service is maintained. Also a laboratory is maintained where chemists are always on the job, analyzing the water for purity and cleanliness. The magnitude of their task is indicated by these facts: forty-three million gallons are distributed daily on the average-an amount which is doubled on hot summer days. In the seventeen reservoirs are stored twenty-one billion gallons of water. One reservoir, Lake Gaillard, covers eleven hundrd and fifty acres and has a capacity of sixteen billion gallons.
The presidents of the New Haven Water Company over the years have been: Ezra C. Read, 1851-1854; W. W. Boardman, 1854- 1857; W. S. Charnley, 1857-1858; E. C. Scranton, 1859-1860; David Cook, 1861-1863; W. W. Boardman, 1863-1867; Henry S. Dawson, 1867-1893; Eli Whitney, 1893-1894; Eli Whitney, Jr., 1894-1924; G. Y. Gaillard, 1924-1953; and Arthur L. Corbin, Jr., since 1953.
The present board of directors is composed of C. Raymond Brock, president of Brock-Hall Dairy, Inc .; Allan R. Carmichacl, former vice president of Connecticut Savings Bank; Arthur L. Cor- bin, Jr., president of the company; Abbott H. Davis, president of The First New Haven National Bank; G. Y. Gaillard, chairman of the board; Frederick D. Grave of F. D. Grave and Son; William B. Gumbart, attorney, of Gumbart, Corbin, Tyler and Cooper; Louis L. Hemingway, chairman of the board, The Second National Bank; and
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Frank O'Brion, president of Tradesmen's National Bank of New Haven.
Headquarters of the company are at 100 Crown Street.
"THE NEW LONDON EVENING DAY"
The only evening newspaper in southeastern Connecticut, and in existence for more than three-quarters of a century, "The New Lon- don Evening Day" has today a circulation of twenty-seven thousand and enjoys a high reputation among small-city daily newspapers. It has more than a hundred employees, its payroll is considerably more than $600,000 dollars, and it is the leading newspaper of the area between the Connecticut and Pawcatuck rivers.
"The Day" was first issued as a four-page morning newspaper on July 2, 1881. The founders of the paper were Major John A. Tib- bits, later consul to Bradford, England; John C. Turner, later town clerk for many years; and William J. Adams. The first office was in Bank Street, over the present Darrow and Comstock hardware store, and during the first year its circulation was a thousand, and its em- ployees received a payroll of a little more than ten thousand dollars.
After a few months operation, new capital was sought for fur- ther expansion, and it was then that control of the paper passed into the hands of F. H. Chappell, one of the wealthy men of New London. A corporation was formed with several smaller stockholders. Of the founders of the paper, Mr. Adams had left, and Mr. Turner dropped out when the new company was formed.
When the "Evening Telegram," the competing paper in New London, was closed by a sheriff's attachment in 1885, "The Day" appeared that same day in the afternoon, and it has remained an evening paper since that time. Other competition appeared in the years that followed, "The Evening Globe" failing some eight months after its reorganization as a morning paper in 1933, and "The Morning Telegraph" failing in 1920. Each had been in the field several years.
In 1891 Theodore Bodenwein, a printer working for "The Day," and then aged twenty-seven, bought the newspaper and the plant from the Chappell interests for the sum of twenty-nine thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars was paid in cash, and the balance was to be paid off at the rate of one thousand dollars a year. The venture proved more than successful, and Mr. Bodenwein was able to cancel his in- debtedness far in advance of his schedule.
"The Day" moved its offices five times, occupying three locations on Bank Street, one former one on Main Street, and it is now per-
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manently established in its own building at 47-53 Main Street. Floor space and equipment have doubled and to the present structure will be added an addition containing twelve thousand square feet, while property opposite its plant on North Bank Street, has been acquired for future storage and parking expansion. The present printing plant features a five-unit straight-line Hoe press with a capacity of eighty pages. It is noteworthy that long service records are the rule on "The Day," its Twenty-five-Year Service Club, organized in 1947, numbers thirty-three living members, and several have been employed continuo- usly for more than forty years.
"The Day" suffered little damage from the famous 1938 hurri- cane. A borrowed generator enabled the staff to print an issue daily, operating part of the machinery, and deliveries were continued in spite of blocked and washed-out roads.
Upon the death of publisher and principal owner, Theodore Bo- denwein, on January 12, 1939, the stock of "The Day" was trans- ferred to a trusteeship, trustees being remaining directors of the cor- poration. Under Mr. Bodenwein's will, after provision for his living heirs, profits of the newspaper operation were to be placed in the Theodore Bodenwein Public Benevolent Foundation, administered by the Commerce Branch of the Hartford Bank and Trust Company, and eventually all profits were to benefit communities in which "The Day" had substantial circulation. To date, more than one hundred thousand dollars has been distributed to non-profit, non-commercial organizations for public, religious, charitable, scientific and educa- tional purposes.
The present trustees and directors and officers of The Day Pub- lishing Company are : Earle W. Stamm, president ; Orvin G. Andrews, executive vice president, of whom there is more in the biographical section of this history, treasurer and general manager; Charles R. Sortor, assistant treasurer; Judge Thomas E. Troland and Gordon Bodenwein, son of the late publisher. Barnard L. Colby is corporation secretary and assistant general manager.
THE NORWICH SAVINGS SOCIETY
One of the oldest of New England banking institutions is The Norwich Savings Society, second organization of its kind to be estab- lished in Connecticut. It began its existence in 1824 under the leader- ship of twenty incorporators, who in turn elected twenty others as associates in the Society. They were men of vision, whose names are well known in the history of the state. At that time, Norwich had
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fewer than four thousand inhabitants, but it was already a thriving commercial center with a considerable West Indies trade, and on the brink of realizing its potentials in water power and manufacturing. A number of the founders and early members of the Society were also leaders in establishing Norwich as an industrial center.
In May, 1824, a charter was secured, and the first section of the act of incorporation reads as follows :
At a General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, holden at New Haven, in said State, on the first Wednesday in May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty four, an Act to Incorporate the Norwich Savings Society ... Be it enacted, by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Assembly convened, that Benjamin Coit, Charles Rockwell, Newcomb Kinney, Charles P. Huntington, Eber Backus, John Lathrop, Joseph Williams, Russell Hubbard, Jabez Huntington, Amos H. Hubbard, Bela Peck, John L. Buswell, John Breed, Dwight Ripley, Isaac Story, Nathaniel Shipman, Francis A. Perkins, Lyman Brewer, George L. Perkins, and William C. Gilman be, and they are hereby incorporated, by the name, style and title of "The Norwich Savings So- ciety," and that they and such others as shall be duly elected members of the said corporation, as in this Act provided, shall be and remain a body politic and corporate by the same name and title forever.
At the first meeting of the Society on the last Tuesday of June, the following additional members were elected: Erastus Coit, Ben- jamin Lee, Erastus Huntington, Daniel L. Coit, Joseph Huntington, Calvin Goddard, Joseph Perkins, Richard Adams, John DeWitt, Hen- ry Strong, Jed Perkins, David L. Dodge, James Treat, Jacob W. Kinney, Luther Spalding, Samuel Tyler, David N. Bentley, Roger Huntington, Joseph C. Huntington, and William T. Williams. Charles Rockwell was elected president, Francis A. Perkins treasurer, and Joseph Williams secretary of the Society. Jabez Huntington, John L. Buswell, William C. Gilman and Russell Hubbard were chosen vice presidents. The following members were appointed directors and trus- tees : George L. Perkins, Charles P. Huntington, John Lathrop, Eras- tus Coit, Richard Adams, Roger Huntington, Joseph Williams, John Breed and Lyman Brewer.
The first by-laws, containing fifteen articles, were adopted on July 12, 1824, and in addition to other interesting regulations provided that the Savings Society should be open twice a month, on the first and third Mondays, from ten A.M. to noon; that deposits should draw interest from the succeeding quarter day; and that dividends not called for within three months be added to principal. At the first meeting of the board of directors on July 12, an interest rate of five per cent annually was declared. Dorcas Mansfield of Norwich made the first deposit. Total expenses for the first year were only $63.92,
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of which forty dollars represented the treasurer's salary. (His pay was increased to seventy-five dollars the following year.)
Only once since it was founded has the Society failed to declare a dividend. This was the semi-annual dividend of 1843, which was made up in January, 1847, by a special dividend of three per cent for all "depositors of 1843 still on the books." When the organization observed the one hundredth year of its existence in 1924, it still had on its books an account which had been established by Eliza Esther Clark on January 31, 1833. She had deposited four dollars on that date, and another dollar on February 1, 1834, and thereafter the ac- count became dormant. By 1924, the total sum would have drawn in- terest totalling $357.30, except for a state law passed in 1915 relating to dormant accounts. The Society has on many occasions gone to great lengths to locate beneficiaries of such accounts.
In June, 1830, it was voted to open the office of the society on all weekdays. In 1843 the treasurer was authorized to secure a clerk to assist in making up the dividend accounts semi-annually. Constant growth soon made new quarters necessary. In August, 1847, it left its location, at the site where the Shannon Building now stands, and erected a building which was later owned and occupied by the Dime Savings Bank. In that year the books showed thirty-six hundred depo- sitors with a total account of nearly four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The second location was in turn outgrown, and a new office was opened on Shetucket Street in 1864, with deposits of nearly four million dollars. For over thirty years this remained the Society's ad- dress, and in the course of that time deposits rose to about ten million dollars. In 1894, the present building was erected, on the site where once stood a brick tavern. There George Washington was a guest on the night of June 30, 1775.
The following men have served as president of The Norwich Savings Society since it was founded, and their names are followed by the years they held office: Charles Rockwell, 1824-1826; Jabez Huntington, 1826-1833; Francis A. Perkins, 1833-1835; Charles W. Rockwell, 1835-1842; William Williams, 1842-1847; Henry Strong, 1847-1851; Lafayette S. Foster, 1851-1856; Joseph Williams, 1856- 1866; Charles Johnson, 1866-1879; Franklin Nichols, 1879-1891; Amos W. Prentice, 1891-1894; John Mitchell, 1894-1901; Charles Bard, 1901-1913; Arthur H. Brewer, 1913-1923; Charles R. Butts, 1923-1938; Henry A. Tirrell 1938-1952; William A. Wilkinson, presi- dent since 1952. The other officers of the bank at the present time are Hartwell G. Zuerner, vice president and treasurer; Wesley C. Sholes,
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vice president and secretary ; Nelson G. Wraight, assistant treasurer ; Mary V. Elliott, auditor; and Veronica Woyasz, assistant secretary. Members of the board of directors are Arthur B. Barnes, Allyn L. Brown, Harold C. Dahl, Charles O. Duevel, Jr., James J. Dutton. Paul W. Franklin, William C. Harding, Charles W. Jewett, Theodore C. Mallon, Harrison C. Noyes, William G. Park, Marvin H. Phillips, Wesley C. Sholes, William A. Wilkinson and Hartwell G. Zuerner.
In the bank's statement of condition as of December 31, 1958, total assets now exceed fifty million dollars and total deposits exceed forty-three million. The bank is taking an active part in the mortgage lending activity to encourage home ownership and currently has in- vestments in conventional loans, veterans loans and F. H. A. insured loans in excess of twenty-six million dollars. Surplus and reserves are in excess of six million dollars. In carrying out its function as a mutual savings bank, The Norwich Savings Society offers all of the custo- mary savings bank services and includes School Savings facilities for the local public and parochial schools performed as a community serv- ice. The bank is also an issuing bank for low cost savings bank life insurance which is sold in amounts from $250 to $5,000, with various types of policies available.
In keeping pace with the changing times, Norwich's oldest savings bank established the first branch bank in Norwich which is located in the Meadows Shopping Center at 45 Town Street.
PONEMAH MILLS
The story of Ponemah Mills at Taftville, Connecticut, has been one of steady growth, and of the constant development of finer cloth, manufactured both for the apparel trade and for commercial use. Organized in 1865 just after the close of the Civil War as the Orray Taft Manufacturing Company, it did not begin manufacturing opera- tions under the name Ponemah until 1871. The name is of Indian origin, and signifies "great hope."
When Ponemah Mills was first organized it was the purpose of the founders to establish a fine goods industry in the United States, since all fine cloth had previously been imported from Europe. The company first acquired a mill site consisting of six hundred acres and water power with a fall of twenty-five feet on the Shetucket River.
There followed several years of construction work which must have astounded the people in a country which had seen but few changes since the days of Indian Chief Uncas. Indeed, it has been said that the site had been Indian "sacred soil" two centuries before
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the mill was constructed. The first plant built, known today as Po- nemah's Mill No. I, was seven hundred and fifty feet long, seventy- five feet wide and five stories high-an unusually large structure for that period. At later dates the company erected three other mills, two of which are still used.
Another important project in connection with the new mill was the building of a dam across the Shetucket River. This dam was four hundred and eighteen feet long and twenty-four feet high. It is re- ported that sixty teams of horses were required in the construction work in hauling supplies from the nearest railroad station.
In equipping the first mill, American looms were installed but all the preparatory and spinning equipment, largely mules, had to be im- ported from England. With the machinery came experts and techni- cians to install this equipment and to teach American operators how to spin fine yarns. Many of these men stayed as overseers after the mill went into production.
By 1879 the mill was running on fine cotton yarn, weaving an outstanding line of high-count fabrics consisting of cambrics, percales, Victoria and Persian lawns and nainsook checks and stripes. In Forrest Morgan's authoritative history of Connecticut, Ponemah Mills is des- cribed as "one of the three largest cotton mills in the United States." Morgan pays further tribute to Ponemah cloth by saying, "Its percales and fine lawns for printing have a reputation second to none in Amer- ica." In addition to being the first mill in this country to use British spinning machinery, Ponemah was also the first manufacturer in America to use long-staple Egyptian cotton.
From the beginning of its operations, Ponemah's management has consistently held to the conviction that improvement in the art of producing fine fabrics was a fixed need in the textile trade. Now and in the past there have been many followers but few originators. As a result of its continuous policy of progress, several Ponemah's devel- opments have become household words, not only in the trade but also in homes throughout the country. For example, the name "Soisette," a Ponemah development, was for years known to almost every house- wife in the country. Ponemah Mills is also noted as a leading producer of typewriter ribbon cloth, which equals or surpasses any domestic or imported cloth of that type. Ponemah today is known in the textile market as the "Style" mill because of its ability to produce so many different types of fabrics due to its policy of diversification and fabric development.
The firm's management roster at the present time is headed by
PRATT A COMPANY
ENTRANCE TO PRATT & WHITNEY COMPANY'S MAIN OFFICE AND PLANT IN WEST HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
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Henry A. Truslow, president. Mr. Truslow has had a wide business background, having previously been associated with F. G. Shattuck Company of New York; the Whitin Machine Works of Whitinviile, Massachusetts and Charlotte, North Carolina; and Pepperell Manu- facturing Company of Biddleford, Maine and Fall River, Massachu- setts. He is a director of the Chelsea Savings bank; president and director of the Northern Textile Association; director of the Southern New England Textile Club ; past president and director of the Norwich Manufacturers Association; chairman of the large firms division of the United Fund of Norwich. He is affiliated with the American Cotton Manufacturers Institute; the Norwich Chamber of Commerce; the National Association of Manufacturers; and he is a former president and director of the Norwich Manufacturers Association. He was re- cently named to the advisory board of the Thames office of the Con- necticut Bank and Trust Company. He is a director of the Norwich Commerce Club; a member of the Union League Club of New York; the Acoxet Club of Westport Harbor, Massachusetts; West Brock Fishing Club; and he is an honorary chief of the Taftville Fire Com- pany.
THE STORY OF PRATT & WHITNEY COMPANY
No individual company in all the world has contributed more to the production line in industry than has Pratt & Whitney Company, Incorporated of West Hartford. Even before the company was form- ed, one hundred years ago, its two founders were imbued with one ambition above all others: to make parts so accurate that they could be assembled interchangeably. Pratt & Whitney has been guided by that precept ever since.
In the early years of the company's history the need for inter- changeability was most critically felt in hand gun and rifle manufac- ture. The Civil War was in progress then (the first "modern" war, as Mr. Bruce Catton, the historian, has said, because there were guns available in the Civil War that could shoot accurately more than one hundred yards). Pratt & Whitney developed the machine tools that made it possible for highly accurate firearms to be produced in volume.
Since that time Pratt & Whitney has been associated closely with the development of all the familiar production line products of today : typewriters, calculators, weighing scales, automobiles, telephones, and so on. In its long history this famous Connecticut company has created many new machines for various purposes, in addition to engineering and developing a variety of types of machine tools for producing
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parts, gages for checking parts, and cutting tools for removing and shaping metal.
Some of the most notable and ancient (but still workable) products of Pratt & Whitney are on exhibit in the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and in the Smithsonian's new Hall of Tools in Washington.
Today Pratt & Whitney occupies fourteen modern, efficient build- ings (dating from 1939) on a 116-acre tract in West Hartford once known as Charter Oak Park. Before Pratt & Whitney moved there, the Park had been one of Connecticut's most popular fair grounds, and was famous throughout the East for harness racing. Enough of the trees and lawns of Charter Oak Park were left untouched to make this location the first and finest industrial park in the area.
As in the beginning, Pratt & Whitney is still known principally as a manufacturer of machine tools, cutting tools and gages. But its most exciting products of today are a far cry from those of even a few years ago. Within the past two years Pratt & Whitney has un- veiled a tape-controlled Jig Borer (the first, hand-operated Jig Borer was invented by Pratt & Whitney in 1917), and since then tape-con- trolled hole grinders, rotary tables, milling machines and gages. Pratt & Whitney engineers in the year 1959 must be qualified not only in mechanical engineering and metallurgy, as in the past, but they must have a sound understanding of electronics, metrology, telemetry and other sciences as well, since Pratt & Whitney, first in interchange- ability, is now a leader in the trend toward automation in industry.
The founders of the Company-Francis A. Pratt and Amos Whitney-had somewhat parallel careers before joining forces. The elder of the two, Pratt, was born in New York but grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. After grammar school he became an apprentice for one of the outstanding mechanics of that time and place. At twenty- five Pratt moved on to Colt's Pistol Factory-practically a graduate school for the finest mechanics the country was developing-in Hart- ford. He left Colt's to become superintendent at Phoenix Iron Works (now Taylor & Fenn Company ).
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