USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 18
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(From Barber's Historical Collections, 1836)
NEWGATE PRISON, EAST GRANBY
XVI HOOKER SYSTEM FEDERALIZED
ELLSWORTH, OF ORIGINAL THREE TOWNS, FIRM FOR GRAFTING IT AND FOR CONNECTICUT COURT PRINCIPLES-WESTMORELAND, WESTERN RESERVE AND SCHOOL FUND.
Beginning with the Federation of New England Colonies (less Rhode Island), there had been sundry efforts to form a gen- eral union when Congress in 1776, on July 4, by mandate of the people, adopted the Declaration of Independence. Silas Deane of Wethersfield had been a delegate to the Philadelphia conven- tion of 1774, called on the passage of the Stamp Act. During the war it was more and more evident that there must be a con- gress that was something stronger than an advisory board. On November 11, 1780, a convention of New England and New York was held in Hartford, the home of independence since 1639, to advocate a congress on constitutional footing. Its recommenda- tions, including that for laying impost to raise revenue, were taken up by Congress and from that time forward there were constant efforts to build up a federal republic. One state after another acceded to the confederation idea and relinquished its claim to territory beyond its borders. Oliver Ellsworth of Wind- sor and Hartford was one of the three ablest lawyers of the day appointed to report on how Congress could be given the power of coercion without which victory in the war, even if possible, would be useless. The report was a document in the campaign of education, preparing the way for Washington, in his circular to the people after the close of the war, to insist upon a consti- tution.
In January 1781, Connecticut was the first of the states to grant import collectible by Congress-to the end of the third year after the war. Hamilton with Morris was working up the national bank. The next year New York spoke out for a federal convention, reiterating the ideas of the Hartford convention.
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Money meanwhile was being advanced by France-largely through Deane's influence-and all was going well till Rhode Island first and then Virginia opposed allowing anyone outside their borders to levy taxes on them. The six years' conflict be- tween Washington and Madison in the latter state against Rich- ard Henry Lee, champion of state sovereignty, had begun.
Meantime, led by Hartford County men, Connecticut was fur- nishing an example of the beneficence of authority by a union. Her claim to Westmoreland in the Pennsylvania section, strictly just by her charter, had caused warlike clashes between the Connecticut founders and the neighboring Pennsylvanians. Both states agreed to leave the dispute to five commissioners appointed by Congress, and Connecticut submitted quietly to the adverse decision, her precious charter for the first time overridden.
Connecticut's charter entitled her to all the land between the given parallels, to the Pacific, and her rights were acknowledged at different times, as when the Mississippi was to be considered the western boundary. In ceding her rights she asked and received rights to three and a half million acres west of the Penn- sylvania line, or eleven of the counties in present northeastern Ohio, the disposition of which will be mentioned later, since Hartford County men were much concerned in it.
The country's perils had thickened during the days of drafting the peace treaty. The venerable Governor Trumbull, retiring from public life, responded heartily to Washington's letter of warning to the people. Noah Webster, writing in Hartford, said that so long as one state had the power to defeat the will of the other twelve, the confederation was a cobweb; state sovereignty in relation to state government must be maintained, but on what- ever affected all states, a majority of states must decide. "As a citizen of the American empire, every individual has a national interest far superior to all others."
The hope of an industrial revival in Hartford and elsewhere was crushed by importation at low prices of English goods which merchants overbought; traffic with the Indies was destroyed by England's prohibition on American bottoms; pitch, ship mate- rial and tobacco no longer could be sold to England. The common cry was echoed in Hartford streets that there must be a congress to lay prohibitive tariff as states were doing independently. New
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seeds of bitterness were being sown. For England's part, she knew not how to deal with an un-united and now alien country and adopted severity, born of pessimism-applying rigid naviga- tion laws and holding military posts on the frontiers because some of her creditor citizens here had not been treated justly.
Further need of a union was marked in the confusion as to currency of different states. Connecticut had been the first, by act of the Assembly in Hartford when the Lexington alarm was sounded, to issue paper currency for war expenses. The bills were not good in private business, and the issue was suspended from 1777 to 1780. Then the Assembly discriminated between contracts calling for coin and those calling for paper and gave the courts authority to referee, meantime providing a table to mark the rate of depreciation. The first New England state to use paper money, it was the first to return to coin. "Its people," says Bancroft, "as they were frugal, industrious and honest, dwelt together in peace, while other states were rent by factions." "For demanding reforms, and persisting in the demands, Con- necticut had the most hopeful record."
Congress continued impotent. Virginia led the way with the tentative Annapolis convention and then inspired the great one at Philadelphia in 1787. Some states were backward, but for Connecticut the voice heard in Hartford was no less certain than that heard when Hooker addressed the General Court, or when Fletcher got his answer, or when the die had been cast at Lexing- ton. Elizur Goodrich of Wethersfield, in his election sermon, invoked the shade of a prophet of Israel to prove the need of a national union and a national honor. Governor Huntington urged on an Assembly which sent to the convention Roger Sher- man, William S. Johnson and Oliver Ellsworth, the Windsor
statesman and jurist, imperturable of nature, clear-minded and convincing. They were "so able that scarce any delegation stood before them," to use the words of an eminent commentator. Ells- worth, only 42, had served on the committee in 1781 for amending the then Constitution and the committee in 1783 for considering further reform. He had been a student at Yale and had gradu- ated at the College of New Jersey in 1768. He had been state's attorney, a member of the Assembly, and, like Sherman, was a judge of the Superior Court.
Connecticut with her inheritance, and her experience under
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it for 150 years, was against the Virginia plan for two houses of Congress both with representation by population, and a presi- dent and judiciary appointed by such Congress. Between the "large" and "small" states her delegates became the mediators. "This," to quote Historian Johnstone, "is the crowning glory of the system which Hooker inaugurated in the wilderness, and of the commonwealth of Connecticut." "It is hardly too much to say that the birth of the Constitution was merely the grafting of the Connecticut system on the stock of the old confederation, where it has grown into richer luxuriance than Hooker ever could have dreamed of." Ellsworth agreed that the first (lower) house should be chosen by the people but held to the principle that the Senate should be chosen by the legislatures, to tie in the state and federal governments. Then he threw his whole strength into his motion that vote in the upper house should be by states, making the government partly federal and partly national; "if the great states refuse this plan, we shall forever be separated."
This is known in history as the "Connecticut compromise." Long and earnestly the battle raged around it. For the first and only time, some of these, the country's ablest, stooped to person- alities. The convention seemed doomed to failure. When on subsequent days this feature came up, Ellsworth and his col- leagues, voting as one, were firm, unperturbed. Virginia could not yield. Franklin was moved to ask that sessions be opened by prayer, for their trust should be in the Lord. All hearts were heavy. To hasty aspersion upon Connecticut by the powerful Madison, zealous promoter of the convention, Ellsworth replied calmly, fixing his eyes upon Washington, the presiding officer:
"To you I can with confidence appeal for the great exer- tions of my state during the war in supplying both men and money. The muster rolls will show that she had more troops in the field than even the state of Virginia. We strained every nerve to raise them; and we spared neither money nor exertion to complete our quotas. This extraordinary exertion has greatly impoverished us, and has accumulated our state debts; but we defy any gentleman to show that we ever refused a federal requisition. If she has proved delin- quent through inability only, it is not more than others have been without the same excuse. It is the ardent wish of the state to strengthen the federal government."
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On July 5 five states voted with Ellsworth; five of the "national" states voted against him. Georgia, the sixth "na- tional" state, was divided when Abraham Baldwin, a native of Connecticut, voted for the Connecticut plan. Franklin also had come to favor it. The matter went back to the special committee of one from each state. On July 16 the committee submitted an amended report. It was now evident that New Hampshire and Rhode Island if present would vote against the nationalists who still refused to see that their plan must some day enable the large states, by controlling the votes of both houses, to establish a tyranny over the small states. When finally the vote was taken, North Carolina broke from the large states and the Connecticut plan was adopted by a majority of one. Governor Simeon E. Baldwin's comment is: "It was the influence of Connecticut that thus stamped on the United States its dual character, and left the states still sovereign, though within a narrowed sphere." And he continues :
"Two years later the new government came into being. It was Oliver Ellsworth, sent by Connecticut to represent her in the first session of the Senate, and made chairman of its judiciary committee, who drew up the act of Congress under which the courts of the United States were organized. It shaped the judicial system of the Union closely to the pat- tern of that then existing here, and its merit is evinced by its remaining substantially unchanged for a hundred years, and with but slight modifications to the present day."
And Ellsworth later was appointed by Washington to be chief justice of the United States.
The story of the ratification of the Constitution by the indi- vidual states is another exciting chapter in American history. Connecticut's ratifying vote, at convention held in Hartford. was 128 to 40.
To complete the account of the Western Reserve in Ohio: In 1792 some 500,000 acres in the western portion of it were given for the relief of those who had suffered by the raids of the Brit- ish during the war and came to be called the "Fire Lands." The rest of the land was sold in 1795 for $1,200,000 to a land company composed of forty-eight men in the state, the foremost of whom were Oliver Phelps of Windsor and Suffield and Gideon Granger, Jr., of Suffield, after which considerable bodies of emigrants
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journeyed to that wild frontier, still often referred to as "Con- necticut Reserve." The money was set aside for a school fund, the interest from which has ever since been devoted to school purposes. Mr. Phelps was also prominent in a similar enterprise for land granted to Massachusetts which land is now Westchester County in New York.
XVII
THE CITY INCORPORATED
WHAT HARTFORD WAS THEN-WASHINGTON'S ORDER FOR INAUGURA- TION SUIT-FIRST SELF-PROPELLED VEHICLE-INVENTION OF THE STEAMBOAT-SOCIAL CONDITIONS-CHRIST CHURCH PARISH.
Habit of thought and ways of doing business had been greatly changed by the long war period. Bankrupt as the state was, the activities of individual men had been quickened and thought had been given to improving methods. In Hartford, New Haven, New London, Norwich and Middletown there was resolve to incorporate as cities, a privilege granted Hartford May 29, 1784. The lines ran from "Dutch ground" to a point north of Charter Oak Avenue (using present-day designations); thence to the southwest corner of Wethersfield Avenue and Wyllys Street; thence westerly to the corner of Washington and Jefferson; thence northwesterly to about the corner of Park and Lafayette; thence northerly to Broad (Imlay's "upper mills") ; thence north- erly to the corner of Windsor Avenue and Belden Street; thence east to the river. With changes in 1821, 1853, 1859, 1871 and 1873, town and city lines were made the same in 1881. Annually in March the freemen were to elect a mayor, to hold office during the pleasure of the Assembly; four aldermen and a maximum of twenty councilmen as a court of common council; also a clerk, a treasurer and two sheriffs. All by-laws must be submitted to popular vote. There should be a city court presided over by the mayor and two aldermen to hear personal actions (where land title was not involved) grounded on contract or injury.
George Wyllys, senior justice of the peace, presided at the first election, June 28, 1784, when Col. Thomas Seymour, 4th, was elected mayor, a position he held thirty-eight years. The alder- men were Col. Samuel Wyllys, Jonathan Bull, Jesse Root and Capt. Samuel Marsh; councilmen : Capt. John Chevenard, Barna- bas Deane, Ralph Pomeroy, James Church, Chauncey Goodrich,
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Peter Colt, Capt. John Olcott, Capt. John Caldwell, Zebulon Sey- mour, Zachariah Pratt, Ashbell Steele, William Nichols, John Trumbull, Barzillai Hudson, Capt. Israel Seymour, Daniel Olcott, Daniel Hinsdale; city clerk, William Adams; treasurer, Hezekiah Merrill; sheriffs, Capt. Joseph Talcott, James Wells. To the list of councilmen should be added the name of Col. Jeremiah Wads- worth who had written from abroad that he intended to use some of his means to "build up my native town." Solomon Porter's plot of the city was made and approved, street lines were cor- rected and nuisances abated and prohibited.
There had been fierce opposition to the incorporating, on the ground that town power was ample. It would mean heavier taxes to provide the improvements and it were better to let well-enough alone. What, then, were the conditions at the time ?
In population, Hartford had 3,027 in 1756, a little less than Farmington and Windsor; in 1782, Hartford had 5,495, about the same as Farmington and 2,000 more than Windsor; in 1790, after East Hartford had been set off (1783), Hartford numbered 4,000 to Farmington and Windsor each about 2,400. Streets were still in disgraceful condition in the '80s. Agriculture and ship- ping were the chief occupations. The "public landing" was on Little River east of Front Street, where long had been a landing, near Governor Hopkins' house, and there the trade of the South Side was largely conducted. The Boston-New York stage began running bi-weekly in 1772. Toll roads did not come in till 1792, and it was to be nearly a hundred years (1839) before towns took care of highways. From 1640 to 1784 only one new highway was ordered in Hartford. In 1760 Hartford's main street (Queen Street) was declared, in a futile petition for a lottery, to be the worst road in the colony. The first stones to make it more pass- able were put in in 1790.
The number of stores had been increased since 1747 when Ebenezer Plummer of Newburyport had been advised to locate in Glastonbury because Hartford already had one. Most of them were near the warehouses along the river, but now their signs were beginning to appear on the main street. These stores were in the lower part of dwellings which encroached upon the original road. Dr. William Jepson opened a drug store in 1783 near the South Church, and kept a supply of surgical instruments. From
POST
PHŒBU
NUBILA
COAT OF ARMS, AFTER THE CITY's SEAL ADOPTED IN 1832
1
THE FIRST SEAL OF THE C'ITY OF HARTFORD, 1785
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Meeting-house Yard northward, the east side of the street already had been preempted by drygoods, together with jewelry, drugs and provisions. On the west side it still was mostly residences. Capt. Samuel Wadsworth's house stood on an embankment eight feet high on the north corner of present Asylum Street.
Most of the maritime trade preceding the Revolution had been with the West Indies, and in it were men of such familiar names as Bunce, Forbes, Chevenard, Goodwin, Caldwell, Olcott and Bigelow. John Ellery, proprietor of the "Great Store" at the foot of present Potter Street, and Col. Samuel Talcott were two of the leading merchants in this river district. Col. Jeremiah Wads- worth (1743-1804), son of Rev. Daniel Wadsworth of the First Church, was one of those who took advantage of reviving trade. He served in Congress and the upper house of the Legislature. He was the father of Daniel Wadsworth, founder of the Athe- neum. His wife was the daughter of Governor Trumbull. In Minister's Lane, which was being opened as Prospect Street, because of the wonderful view it had over the lowlands and down the river, he built two houses, one for himself on the site of what is now the Atheneum Annex, a part of the institution named in his honor. The Watkinsons and others built there, making of it quite the select residential section, remote from business activ- ities. As such it remained through many generations, defying the crowding of business and changing most gracefully, without losing its atmosphere, to admit Club Row, the beautiful Times building, and the eastern grounds of the Civic Center. Jacob Ogden built a large warehouse on Ferry Street in 1781 and the building on State Street which became the celebrated Ransom's Coffee House and later Exchange Hotel. John Morgan (1753- 1842) was another of those active in retrieving after the war. He was beginning activities which were to give him a leading position well on into the next century. He built the most notable block of stores on the street which bears his name, and there also his own fine residence. Elias Morgan, his half brother, built two houses and the New Theater.
Maj. John Caldwell (1755-1838), son of Capt. John Caldwell, owned large ships in the carrying trade but his fortune was wiped out by the War of 1812. As already noted he was the first com- mander of the Governor's Horse Guard, was president of the Hartford Bank and altogether was one of the most valued citi-
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zens. His daughter Sarah was the mother of Col. Samuel Colt; his daughter Margaret married Jared Scarborough who owned much land on Scarborough Hill, now Prospect Hill. Barnabas Deane, who previously has been mentioned, was one of the leaders.
"Sinking Fund" was for half a century the common name for the section along the river north of Morgan Street. A number of leading merchants in 1791, including Morgan, Caldwell, Wads- worth and Jones, bought the section and built docks, all profits to be put into a sinking fund till the property was paid for. The river teemed with trade southward to Potter Street, where there was a busy shipyard, while the northern docks attracted little and went to ruin. Flatboats extended the trade to northern New England, being poled over the falls at Enfield, and great rafts of timber were floated down from the north. For inland trade, over fairly good roads, there was a long string of carts to the west and northwest till the Boston and Albany railroad was built, and a tavern every few miles. At the one near the corner of present Windsor Avenue a fresh barrel of rum was opened each morning for the refreshment of tired drivers. The increase in business compelled the extension of State Street from Front to the river in 1800, and warehouses began to encroach on the residential section of both Front and State streets. Before many years the Courant's advertisements showed there were enterprising establishments conducted by Dennison Morgan, James M. Bunce, Eliphalet Averill, Elisha Peck, Nathan Morgan, Russell Bunce, Solomon Porter and Company, David Porter, David Watkinson, Edward Watkinson and Eli Ely. The largest West India concern was that of Eliphalet and Roderick Terry, sons of Eliphalet Terry of Enfield, at the junction of Main and Windsor streets.
The struggle to overcome financial stringency, heavy debt, high taxes and lack of stable currency, to say nothing of depre- ciation of labor and the lowering of moral standards, was brave but not always successful. The women in 1786 banded together in an association pledged to eschew ribbons, feathers, beaver hats, furs, muslins, chintzes and silks except for weddings, in the belief that "calamities are caused in great measure by the luxury and extravagance of individuals." This was not altogether pleasing to the followers of President Stiles of Yale who had been studying
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the silk subject since 1732 and with Nathaniel Aspinwall had originated the industry. He had secured the planting of mul- berry trees here and in many towns with view to raising the cocoons at home, and after forty years of devotion to the cause he wore a gown of Connecticut silk at commencement in 1789. The county's interest in the sequel to this in the next century was to be deep.
Manufacture of broadcloth was encouraged by legislation in 1788. On land acquired by Ralph Pomeroy near the foot of pres- ent Mulberry Street, Daniel Hinsdale and a stock company includ- ing men like Wadsworth, Jesse Root, Oliver Ellsworth, Peter Colt and Mayor Thomas Seymour, established the country's first woollen mill that year. The capital was $6,000. Before the mill became Cyprian Nichols' soap factory, it had given the name Factory Lane to present Gold Street and had made history. National advertising had been the first and most successful step. The first outside "display ad" appeared in the Daily Advertiser of New York, January 16, 1789. Nathaniel Hazard of 51 Water Street made known that he had "just received from the flourish- ing manufactory at Hartford a few pieces of superfine BROAD- CLOTHS of an excellent quality," in both "London Smoke and Hartford Grey."
By a letter recently found, George Washington read that advertisement and at once quoted it to General Knox, then liv- ing in New York, with commission to purchase him a suit of clothes of such color as the general should prefer, remarking however that if the dye did not seem well fixed or the cloth after all should not be very fine, "some color mixed in might be prefer- able to an indifferent (stained) dye." Nothing more would be needed except the twist for the button holes. He hoped the goods could be sent by stage within a short time. "Mrs. Washington would be equally thankful to you for purchasing for her as much of what is called (in the advertisement) London Smoke as will make her a riding habit. If the choice of these clothes have been disposed of in New York, where could they be had from Hart- ford in Connecticut where I perceive a manufactory of them is established?"
When the first Congress assembled that spring, President Washington, Vice President Adams and the Connecticut delega- tion, including Senator Oliver Ellsworth of the stock company,
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wore at the inauguration dark "Congress Brown" suits, and at the opening session of the next year, Washington's suit was of the same kind but of "crow color." This color then was adver- tised as "changeable hues-$2.50 to $5 a yard." Two years later, a lottery was authorized for providing more machinery; in 1794, a dividend was paid with goods in hand; that was the only divi- dend and the business collapsed under the pressure of cheaper goods from England.
Normand Smith was establishing in 1794 the first harness and saddlery business of importance in the country which was to be carried on for many generations by his descendants and continues today as the Smith-Worthington Company, on Sigourney Street.
§
Upon these scenes of renewed activity, and on Main Street, appeared in 1797 Dr. Apollos Kinsley in the first self-power vehicle, driven by steam and immediately dominating the mirey thoroughfare. It was the fruit of his own genius. Days of witch- craft were past but there were inhabitants who could see naught but evil in the invention, and their prophecy that the fiery, noisy thing could not live long was fulfilled. Discouraged most perhaps by bad roads, the doctor turned his genius to other lines, and invented a pin-making apparatus and the first brick-burning machine, by aid of which he built his house on Kinsley Street. The world's present revolution in vehicular traffic was postponed a hundred years.
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