USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 24
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The districts were subdivided from time to time till they attained the present number of nine: First or Center, Brown School; South School; Henry Barnard School, Second North Dis- trict; West Middle; Arsenal School; Washington Street; South- west District; Northeast; Northwest.
Doctor Barnard, never ceasing in his work for education, meantime had brought about the establishing of the state's first normal school, at New Britain of which he had been superin- tendent from 1850 to 1854. He earlier had seen his Board of Commissioners abolished (in 1842) on recommendation of Gov- ernor Cleveland and revived thirteen years later with him once more as secretary, he having abandoned the profession of law; he had been in similar work in Rhode Island; he had gained new ideas in Europe and his influence was being felt throughout the country. His presidency of the University of Wisconsin in 1850-54 and of St. John's at Annapolis in 1867-70 and then his selection to serve from 1867 to 1870 as the first United States commissioner were to win him the title of the "Father of the Common School" while his vast amount of publications and his Journal of Education were to be recognized at Yale, Union and Harvard by their awarding the degree of LL. D. (His work is summarized in the period of 1900, the year of his death.)
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A literary club in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was reminiscent of the Hartford Wits. It had a few issues of its
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LOOKING NORTHEAST, HARTFORD, ABOUT 1848
View from cupola of old statehouse. Buildings in foreground, reader's left to right: United States Hotel, Hartford Bank and Mitchell Building. At corner of Market and Kilbourn Streets behind is the old City Hall, where Police Department Building now stands. Beyond that the First District or Brown School Building. River was then at flood
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(From sketch for English manufacturers of choice dim.er plates)
HARTFORD ABOUT 1850
Taken from the east shore with little regard for perspective or proportions, but reveal- ing warehouses long since past. Statehouse is conspicuous near the center. To the north of it: Old Fourth Congregational Church, Old First Baptist Church, Christ Church, New First Baptist Church and New Fourth Congregational Church. South of Statehouse: First Congregational Church, St. John's Church, Second Baptist Church and Second Congregational Church
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Round Table, carrying productions of the members; it was not as brilliant as the vehicle of the Wits nor yet as sparkling as Behind the Hedge published from Woodland Street nearly a hundred years later, with a Beecherian and Perkinsian touch to it. Sam- uel G. Goodrich (1793-1860) during the years he was here, 1816-1822, the "Peter Parley" of the days when he was publish- ing in Boston, was the life of the club. His writings were many and varied, essays, stories, histories, poetry, and as a publisher he did no little in encouraging good literature. He served for a time as consul at Paris. The residence of his later days in South- bury and his grave in the cemetery nearby are visited by many who read his works on publication or whose interest in them has been revived. Other members of the club were Bishop J. M. Wainwright, Hon. Isaac Toucey, Judge S. H. Huntington, Jona- than Law and Col. William L. Stone who wrote history and biography.
Lydia Huntley (Sigourney) (1791-1865) was the queen of America's "Annuals," "Memorials" and "Gifts" period, when college men wrote diaries of an intensely introspective character. One edition of her poems was published in England where she was referred to as another Hemans. Her "Past Meridian" is an example of more mature production. Percival and Mrs. Willard cannot be stolen from the Berlin section of this history. Brain- ard and Prentice have already appeared in the consecutive tale. The former found his best themes in nature along the Connecti- cut. John Greenleaf Whittier loved these scenes no less than he. Theodore Dwight the younger can be claimed by New York. The poems of Senator James Dixon (1814-1873) are the more re- markable in that they came from a man most active in profes- sional and political life. Henry Howard Brownell (1820-1872), a native of Providence, a resident of East Hartford, has been mentioned but he must be included in this list for he was cut down before his impaired health would permit him to be classi- fied with those of the '70s and '80s where he otherwise surely would have belonged.
Value of interior navigation, emphasized by the embargoes, and astonishment at New Haven's and Farmington's plans to
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filch Hartford's trade were occupying busy men's minds rather more than schools and colleges. The Wethersfield sandbars being mastered first by the Union Company in 1800, the thirty- feet Enfield falls had remained the only barrier to a sweep of the Connecticut up into Vermont. Massachusetts men were dig- ging around the comparatively minor obstructions up-river. By poling the falls, trade had been good but it must be better. Plans had been started to overcome the handicap in Revolutionary days but they had not materialized. Enfield got the right to build a canal in 1798 and built a bridge instead. It required one man to every ton of freight to pole the falls, and the time required to make the round trip to Wells River was one month. In 1825 New York had opened the Erie canal and robbed Philadelphia of her chance to become the metropolis. New Haven, aided by Farmington, had a similar dream and its Farmington Canal Company, Inc., could easily tap the river trade at Northampton and after that go to the very northern boundaries with a water- way down through Farmington that would make New Haven the outlet for all central and western New England and eastern New York. The more men talked, the bigger the prospect.
Hartford, the "head of sloop navigation," could not be caught napping. Citizens assembled New Year's Day, 1824, at City Hotel, to discuss expediency. In May they held a charter for the Connecticut River Company to improve navigation from the city northwards-and to have steamboats, the latest thing in trans- portation, impossible on long canals since they would wash the banks away. The company held its meetings at Joseph Morgan's Coffee House, the hatchery of so many other great enterprises. David Porter, John Russ and Eliphalet Averill put out a cir- cular descriptive of the virtue in "expeditious communication" from the Sound to Lake Memphremagog. All towns on the river sent delegates-Hartford's were Porter, William Ely, Alfred Smith and T. K. Brace-to a convention in Vermont; sites for factories the canal would make possible were checked up; the government was persuaded to send a "brigade" of engineers; 2,000,000 New Englanders, including Hartford's 7,000, were to be benefitted along the 219 miles of water in its descent of 420 feet. The cost of the improvements, including $368,000 for the upper canals, would be $1,500,000.
THE DIME SAVINGS BANK OF HARTFORD
DIRECTORS' ROOM, DIME SAVINGS BANK, HARTFORD
Mural decorations copied from paintings of West Point and New York Bay in 1834, by F. Zipelius and Eugene Ehrmann of Alsace
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That implied financing. The Connecticut River Banking Company, being incorporated in 1825, at $500,000, also began meeting at Morgan's, and at the same place had been associating since 1819 with the very successful men who in that year had organized the Aetna Insurance Company. There was coopera- tion. The insurance company remained there sixteen years and the bank four. Stress was laid on the employment of steam- boats, for it was in the day when they were crowded into the list of the world's Seven Wonders. The first one in the state had been made here in 1818; Captain Pitkin, of notable ancestry, was making regular trips to Saybrook the next year, stopping any- where to suit; the same year the Connecticut Steamboat Com- pany had been chartered with Elisha Colt as clerk and was run- ning a boat at six miles an hour "notwithstanding the wood was not seasoned"-tar gas making up for that. New York's mo- nopoly of the waters in her vicinity was broken by the Supreme Court in 1824 and immediately the local company put into opera- tion to and from that city a boat bearing the name of the former chief justice-Oliver Ellsworth.
In late November, 1826, the river company, with the seventy- five foot, stern-wheel Barnet, proved before the eyes of a good part of the 2,000,000 souls referred to that a boat could go from here to Bellows Falls, Vt., under its own steam, simply being boosted over Enfield Falls, on its initial voyage, by two scows lashed to it and poled. Newspapers of the day vied with each other in expressing their amazement. Everywhere the boat and President Alfred Smith were met with bands and salutes of bells and guns, and every day along the way "banquets" were waiting. After a few trips the boat was returned to New York. It was an historic demonstration, but steam had still other wonders in store.
The directors of the river company sent a commission in 1826 to England to investigate the portent of a railway train that had begun to run a few miles at the rate of six miles an hour. The commission found that so long as freight could be carried by the cheaper canal method four miles an hour there was no occasion to fear competition from the railroad. Immediately work was begun upon the canal which was opened in November, 1829, and the Blanchard and the Vermont, soon to be followed by a fleet of
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good craft, made excellent time through the six miles of canal with its three locks at the lower end and one at the head. Prosperity reigned the length of the valley. Charles Dick- ens honored the enterprise in his "American Notes," whimsically describing his trip from Springfield in 1842 when he was feted in Hartford. But the six-miles-an-hour railroad enterprise was gaining in speed till in 1844 the New Haven line was extended to Springfield and the canal as a profit-making institution was doomed. Through succeeding generations, however, it has been of much use, while its water power attracted industries to Wind- sor Locks. In 1846 a large part of the town was much excited over a plan to continue the canal down to Hartford to furnish water for power, for fire purposes and for domestic use, and thereby make Hartford the great manufacturing city of New England. The cost would be $965,000. The recommendation of the committee composed of Stephen Spencer, Leonard Kennedy and Denison Morgan, was not approved.
The Farmington Canal, begun in Granby in 1825, did not get to New Haven till 1829. The account of its rise and early fall is in the Farmington section of these volumes.
The River Banking Company became a wholly separate in- stitution after the collapse of the canal business. Its original directors were Daniel Wadsworth, Thomas S. Williams, James H. Wells, William H. Imlay, Eliphalet Averill and Alfred Smith who was president of both companies and twice held the office for the bank. In 1829 the bank moved its offices to the east end of the block of buildings which Henry L. Ellsworth had erected along Central Row. In 1870 it went to the new building of the Charter Oak Life Insurance Company on Main Street; thence in 1887 to the southeast corner of Main and Pearl-during the presidency of Samuel E. Elmore who held office thirty-eight years -and thence in 1913 to its present quarters in the Travelers building, close by the Travelers Bank and Trust Company, its affiliated institution (1913) of which President L. Marsden Hub- bard of the "River Bank" is also president. To the vice presi- dent, Henry W. Erving, the world is indebted for collecting the interesting items of the romantic canal history in his book on the bank.
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INTERIOR SOCIETY FOR SAVINGS, PRATT STREET, HARTFORD
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We have seen that the first bank was associated with insur- ance, that the second was for developing inland trade and the third to promote river navigation. Those which followed may well be taken as index of the good that resulted-along with the savings bank-and of the obstacles that had to be overcome, po- litical and otherwise. The Farmers and Mechanics, chartered in 1833, was expressly for the purpose of providing more capital for increasing business. The list of incorporators includes some names already prominent in public affairs and others of those which were to become so-men like James T. Pratt, Job Allyn, Horace Goodwin, 2d, Albert Day, A. H. Pomeroy, Solomon Por- ter, Nathan Johnson, Henry and Walter Keney, Julius Catlin, Roland Mather, George C. Collins, David Clark and Ellery Hills. Their capital was half a million and they were not asked to pro- vide a bonus. The same year the secretary of the treasury re- moved from Middletown to Hartford the United States depos- itory in lieu of a branch bank. James Dodd was the president of the new bank.
President Jackson was beginning those attacks upon the fed- eral banking system which were to precipitate a great panic. The Government was inquiring to see how many state banks would receive Government deposits and render the service the United States Bank and its branches were now giving. The new bank was designated a branch bank. In another year, reviewing the "derangement of currency" and destruction of confidence which was producing industrial and commercial depression, the help- ful petition for a charter for the Exchange Bank, with half a million capital, was accepted (on the furnishing of the bonus previously referred to for the encouragement of the silk industry and the Capitol fence). Of this bank Roderick Terry was president.
During the administration of Van Buren as well as of Jack- son, financial interests continued much disturbed, reaching one climax May 10, 1837, when specie payment had to be suspended. In following suit, as they were obliged to, the Hartford banks, preeminently sound, agreed to recognize each other's bills; they had $4 due them on every dollar outstanding. Although a year later, there was general resumption, the evil effects were felt for years. The State Bank (giving a bonus of $10,000 for the
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first normal school) and the City Bank were organized in 1849 and 1851. In 1852 the Legislature followed the example of New York with an act to make banking free to anybody, securities to be deposited with the state against the circulation of the banks and the treasurer to issue the currency to the banks thus organ- ized. Three banks were established under this plan-the Bank of Hartford County (later the American National) in 1852, the Charter Oak in 1853 and the Mercantile in 1854. These banks were allowed to retain their charters under the old system by pay- ing a 2 per cent bonus in 1855 when this unsatisfactory law was repealed.
Such was the demand for currency, especially for railroad building in the West, that the Connecticut banks passed through an experience exceedingly complimentary to them but a bit em- barrassing for their home patrons. The great promoters of roads pledged their all for loans of currency in the East, negotiating most of the loans in Hartford. They marked the Connecticut bills for identification, locked them up for convenient periods and shipped reimbursement when hearing that the currency had come in for redemption. This was convenient for the banks and the large borrowers but not for the local people, so in 1855 the Legis- lature put a stop to "protected circulation" and allowed the banks to loan out of the state not to exceed one-quarter of their capital, deposits and notes issued. Following this, the Aetna and the Mer- chants and Manufacturers (today the First National) obtained charters in the summer of 1857 with utmost encouragement but what proved to be on the very eve of the collapse of the highly speculative market when railroad securities dropped with the rest, failures were many and in this state alone outstanding cir- culation fell from ten millions to six. New York banks suspended specie payment in October, the Hartford banks, except the Con- necticut River, did the same the following day. At the critical moment the Bank Commissioners, by court direction, had brought the County, Charter Oak, Mercantile and Exchange Banks into the hands of receivers, and kept them there till wholly able to go on. With the resumption of specie payment in December, confidence returned and continued till the Civil war brought its terrors. Of the conduct of the Hartford banks in that tremen- dous emergency, Rowland Swift wrote: "To the extent of their utmost ability, they gave their cooperation at every issue upon
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STATE SAVINGS BANK
STATE SAVINGS BANK, HARTFORD
FIRST NATIONAL BANK, HARTFORD
CONNECTICUT RIVER BANKING COMPANY (LEFT) AND TRAVELERS BANK AND TRUST COMPANY (RIGHT), HARTFORD
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the national credit; and the same may be said of their ready help in every similar emergency of our own state."
A bank was added to the county list in New Britain in 1860 which reorganized as a national bank in 1865. The Merchants and Manufacturers became the First National under the na- tional currency act of that year, and soon after all the banks were in line except the State and the Connecticut River which re- tained their state charters. The Bank of Hartford County changed its name to the American National. The Suffield Na- tional Bank had come into existence in 1864. Twenty years later all the banks renewed their charters for a like term except the City which went back to the old form.
The State Savings Bank was organized in 1858, the Mechan- ics in 1861, and the Dime in 1870, and all, as will be seen in these volumes, have buildings which, like the banks themselves, are a credit to the city.
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ECHANICS SA VOS BANK
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MECHANICS SAVINGS BANK, PEARL STREET, HARTFORD
XXIII
STEAM'S REVOLUTION
RAILROAD PIONEERS MORGAN, GOODWIN, PHELPS, DAY AND OTHERS- COINCIDENT CHURCH DEVELOPMENT-HORACE BUSHNELL-CATH- OLICS AND JEWS VIGOROUS.
The revolution caused by steam was no less thrilling than that in the last days of the century caused by electricity and the automobiles. It aroused more combativeness. The first steam- boat to New York, in 1824, has been mentioned. The Jacob and Cornelius Vanderbilt line entered into competition and fought for supremacy for four years. The lines of packets to the more distant ports held their trade for a considerable time. By 1839 when a railroad had been opened from Boston to Worcester, one could leave Hartford at 4 in the morning by coach to Worcester and be in Boston at 6 in the evening, "J. Goodwin Jr., & Com- pany, agents." Another favorite line was by coach to Albany and thence by boat to New York. Edson Fessenden was agent for the line as far as New Hartford. That year saw the steam road from New Haven to Hartford completed. Much printer's ink and oratory had been wasted by the turnpike men to pre- vent the granting of the charter; the work had been opposed step by step. President Jackson himself had said that railroads would prove an evil because they would drive out horses.
The crude road was completed to Springfield in 1844. The local station was on Little River at the foot of Mulberry Street, the Springfield line forming the north arm of a letter Y. Till the line from New York to New Haven was completed in 1848, passage from New Haven was by boat. The first Asylum Street station was opened in 1849. The road from New Haven to Plain- ville was completed in 1848 and through Farmington to Turner's Falls in 1881; that to Fenwick in 1872, and there were branch roads to Middletown, New Britain, Suffield and Canaan. The
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(Collection of Morgan B. Brainard)
HARTFORD, FROM THE DEAF AND DUMB ASYLUM, 1849
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HARTFORD, FROM EAST SIDE OF THE CONNECTICUT RIVER, 1841
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Manchester Railroad Company was incorporated in 1833 but this road east was not built till the Hartford & Providence secured the charter in 1847. A company for a New York line by way of Danbury merged with the Hartford & Providence (which was open to Willimantic in 1849), and carried the line through to Bristol in 1850; to Providence in 1854; to Waterbury in 1855, and was surrendered to trustees in 1858 who ran the line the fol- lowing twenty years. The Boston, Hartford & Erie, incorpo- rated in 1863, bought a majority of the stock of this Hartford, Providence & Fishkill, but did not cover the bonds. Three years later, with mortgage on the roads including the Hartford, Provi- dence & Fishkill arranged by the trustees, the Boston, Hartford & Erie issued $20,000,000 in bonds. These were subject to the first mortgage of the Hartford, Providence & Fishkill prior to the Boston, Hartford & Erie purchase. The trustees under the $20,000,000 or Berdell mortgage in 1871 took over the Boston, Hartford & Providence together with the right to wipe out the mortgage of the Hartford, Providence & Fishkill. In 1872 the Erie had completed the road through to Boston. The following year the New York & New England was incorporated for the amount of the Berdell bonds and it bought all rights of redemp- tion of the Providence line. By borrowing of individuals it liquidated the first mortgage bonds of the Providence line and acquired the property. The road was put through to the Hudson in 1881. The returns being insufficient, the road went into the hands of a receiver-C. P. Clark, recently second vice president of the New York, New Haven & Hartford-December 31, 1883, and in two years was able to pay all obligations. Step by step the "New Haven" came to acquire all the roads in Southern New England and the control of the Connecticut Western (1872) which runs from Hartford to Rhinecliff on the Hudson. This includes Hartford to Winsted by way of Plainville, New Britain to Berlin, Hartford to Westfield, Mass., Hartford to Broad Brook, and Hartford to Tariffville and Suffield, and also the Hartford & New York Transportation Company or the line of freight and passenger steamers and tugs. Trolley and bus lines are likewise included.
Such is the summary of many years of effort to keep pace with the rapidly increasing demands, of the competition for control
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and, by the same token, of the enormous amounts required for construction through the rough territory, involving at times the ruin of many individuals but, thanks to patience and courage, bringing everything through well for transportation and indus- try and retaining the management within the state.
Many of the men foremost in banking, insurance and trade were intimately concerned in these enterprises. The "J. Good- win, Jr." (1803-1878), descendant of the early settler Ozias, and son of James, began his career as clerk for Joseph Morgan whose daughter Lucy he married. At twenty-one he had been propri- etor of the mail stages running east of Hartford, all of which and several others he disposed of when he entered into the railroad projects and became a director of the Hartford & New Haven. In insurance he was president of the Connecticut Mutual Life for many years and until his death and a director in the Hart- ford Fire, while at the same time associated with the leading in- dustries of the county, promoter of the hospital, trustee of Trin- ity College and vestryman in Christ Church.
Joseph Morgan, in the line of the Springfield pioneer Miles Morgan and proprietor of the coffee house bearing his name, had been a promoter in banking and insurance. He married the daughter of Rev. John Pierpont of Boston whose name was hardly second to that of "Peter Parley" as a writer of books in general use in the schools but was to get still wider fame when given to descendants of Mr. Morgan of the third and fourth gen- erations. Joseph's son, Junius Spencer Morgan (1813-1900), soon after his birth came to Hartford with his father. After banking experience in Boston and New York he returned here as junior partner in the drygoods house of Howe, Mather & Com- pany and continued the business with J. M. Beebe and, in Bos- ton also, as Morgan & Company. In 1854 he was made junior partner of the firm of George Peabody & Company of London which, on the retirement of Mr. Peabody, was J. S. Morgan & Company, the great financial house continued by his sons and grandson. The part played by all of the family through these and the later years of the railroads was conspicuous. The section of Farmington Avenue in the vicinity of the present cathedral was known as Morgan's farms. There in 1840 Junius built a residence for his son, John Pierpont, who had been born in a
THE REV. DR. HORACE BUSHNELL (1802-1876)
REV. JOHN BRADY Pastor of the first Roman Catholic Church in Connecticut, 1837
THE REV. J. W. PENNINGTON Fugitive Slave Pastor Colored Congregation, 1833
THE REV. WILLIAM W. PATTON, D. D. Installed pastor of the Fourth Con- gregational Church in 1846
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