USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 26
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The Merchants, chartered in 1857, had the backing of such
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HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
men as Samuel Woodruff, James Bolter, Ebenezer Roberts, Guy R. Phelps, W. H. D. Callender, Charles T. Hillyer, Richard D. Hubbard and William L. Collins, and Mark Howard was its pres- ident. The loss at Chicago was five times the capital. President Howard and Secretary James Nichols, formerly judge of pro- bate, thereupon formed the National with an unutilized charter granted in 1869. From this developed the powerful company of today.
The North American, 1857, carried on till the Chicago fire. The New England in 1858 and the Union in 1859 were crushed by the adverse conditions of the war period. The Charter Oak Fire and Marine, 1856, ended with the Chicago fire; the endeavor to revive it as the Atlas was futile. The Putnam, 1864, was born in a period of speculation and folly and did not long survive.
§
To a life insurance world like this of today, the conditions so late as the time we are considering are incredible. The primitive idea of taking no thought of the morrow had been so misinter- preted in the religious confusions of the middle ages that it had become sanctified in the minds of the devout, and to insure one's life was sacrilegious. How in half a century insurance was ele- vated to a position next to that of the church itself is a story with but few equals in the history of civilization. In Hartford, Dr. Pinckney W. Ellsworth and James L. Howard were missionaries of the Prince of Darkness rather than ministers for the good of the race. Howard had secured a policy in a New Jersey company when he set up an office and began his preachings. Dr. Guy R. Phelps, who had come from Simsbury to open a drug store, and Elisha A. Pratt gave encouraging attention, and soon other men who were accepting fire insurance as a matter of course were studying possibilities. Under Phelps' leadership these men, with President Brace of the Aetna, Judge Eliphalet A. Bulkeley, Dr. David S. Dodge, Edson Fessenden, Nathan M. Waterman and others, secured in 1846 a charter for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company. Bulkeley was chosen president and Phelps secretary.
Judge Bulkeley, born in Colchester in 1824, one of the dis-
INSURANCE APPEAL IN THE '60s
Is apparently on village green in front of the church. The high-hatted insurance man hands a bag of gold to a widow and her little ones who are absorbed in watching the bird in the foreground burn. This illustration is taken from cover of Phoenix Mutual pamphlet as example of "Publicity" of the times
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THE PHOENIX MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD
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HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
tinguished Gershom Bulkeley family and starting as lawyer and banker in East Haddam, had come to Hartford in 1847. He served successively as first judge of the police court, school fund commissioner and speaker of the House. There is significance in the fact that this first company was mutual; it meant apprecia- tion of the popular repugnance to be overcome and of the neces- sity of avoiding the appearance of money-making. The whole town was watching and when the doors were opened December 11, 1846, there were applications for $100,000 insurance. The rest of the story of Hartford life insurance is the story of lessons learned in handling vast sums and fixing premiums on a scien- tific basis, of constant remembrance of the high purpose of in- surance and of enlisting the genius of men whose type already had given Hartford its high position. Among his other positions, Judge Bulkeley held that of counsel for the Aetna. After two years of the presidency he made way for Maj. James Goodwin whose career has been sketched in the preceding chapter. Re- turns to faithful policyholders were found possible each year on an arbitrary schedule of "dividends" till 1869 when actuarial science had developed the distribution plan of Shepard Homans. Thenceforth premiums and returns were based upon carefully analyzed mortality experiences in insurance and upon propor- tionate sharing in investment earnings. Major Goodwin was succeeded by Doctor Phelps in 1866 but was recalled on the doc- tor's death in 1869. It was a wild period of speculation through which he piloted the company with great ability till his death in 1878 when Col. Jacob L. Greene came to succeed him.
Hartford would not have been true to Yankee-land had there not been in this formative period exploration for new fields for insurance. In 1848, following a conception in the office of the Connecticut Mutual, a company was formed for health insur- ance, only to find, however, that that uncharted sea was alto- gether too dangerous. By 1852 the company had changed to reg- ular insurance, under the name of the Hartford Life, and tried, fatally, a plan to insure shiploads of slaves and coolies. A better venture was one in 1865 when Doctor Phelps of the Connecticut Mutual secured action on his belief that something could be done for those who did not come up to the medical requirements for regular insurance, and the Connecticut General Life was launched with $500,000 capital and such strong men as John M.
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HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
Niles, Edward W. Parsons and Thomas W. Russell to conduct it. The directorate included E. K. Kellogg, G. D. Jewett, James G. Batterson, Charles M. Pond, Leverett Brainard, William G. Al- len, Francis B. Cooley, Charles T. Webster and Henry J. John- son. It soon was proved that there were not enough sub-standard risks willing to be classified as such, so another idea that has been well worked out in modern times had to be relegated. In 1867 the company began to confine itself to first-class risks and developed into the great corporation it is today-as will appear. Mr. Russell's is one of the foremost names in insurance.
Another fascinating experiment was that undertaken by the American Temperance Life in 1851. The most systematic of all the national temperance waves was then at its height. The Fountain, published on Pearl Street under the editorship of Ben- jamin E. Hale of Glastonbury, was one of the conspicuous organs in the land. Statistics were obtained to show that "teetotalers" lived longest; hence they should have a lower insurance rating. Former Chief Justice Thomas S. Williams, Barzillai Hudson of Courant prestige, Francis Parsons, leader in law and public serv- ice, James B. Hosmer, philanthropist, Tertius Wadsworth of the Connecticut Fire, Albert Day, John H. Goodwin and the ubiqui- tous Edson Fessenden (who, with his other functions, was now proprietor of the Eagle Hotel, clubhouse for men of affairs) en- tered earnestly into the plan, with Hudson as president-later Fessenden. In determining losses, trouble developed in ascer- taining whether a policyholder had kept his pledge. An encour- agingly large business was done by near-and-far apostles of tem- perance and on what was then considered a mutual basis. With the subsidence of the wave and the approach of the war, how- ever, wisdom dictated a change in name to the Phoenix Mutual Life so well known in the field of insurance today. President Archibald A. Welch and his associates discriminate against "drinking men" but with a scientific criterion in this as in all other features of the modern carefully built-up and universally accepted standard.
The result of later experiments in three other directions- accident, assessment and explosion-will be taken up in chrono- logical order; the seething period of the '50s is not yet covered.
When the Aetna was chartered in 1819, there was a gambling
PHOENIX FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD
CONNECTICUT GENERAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD
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HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
form of life insurance in England-the Lloyds, not for protec- tion for dependents-and also another for annuities. By mar- velous prescience, the incorporators of the Aetna provided in their charter not only for annuities but for the then taboo life insurance. Judge Bulkeley on returning to the company after his favorable experience in the Connecticut Mutual looked up this forgotten provision and on June 6, 1850, the foundations were laid for the great Aetna Life Insurance Company of the years to come. It first was an appendage of the Aetna (fire), but the wise principle of keeping fire and life separate caused the individual incorporation under present name in 1853, with the judge entering upon his long career as president. The conspicu- ous names of promoters were Austin Dunham, Mark Howard, John Warburton, Roland Mather, Simeon L. Loomis, John W. Seymour and W. H. D. Callender, and, as in the case of the other companies, many as they were, there was no dearth of subscrip- tions. All of the company stocks were much over-subscribed. Within six years the company had to seek quarters of its own, and located at the corner of Main Street and Central Row, and the principle of mutuality was added to that of stock-company in- surance.
In life insurance, the Charter Oak and the Continental were established in 1850 and 1862 respectively. There could have been no more enthusiasm than that aroused for the former of these ill-fated concerns. Gideon Welles was the first president, and his board included Calvin Day, Tertius Wadsworth, Thomas Belknap, James G. Bolles, John A. Butler and Lucius F. Robin- son, 1st. Mr. Welles was succeeded by James C. Walkley. Thomas W. Russell was at one time vice president. The com- pany did a large and high-class business but bad management developed and the end was as described later on. The Continen- tal started with an equally good opportunity but at an unfortu- nate time. John S. Rice of Farmington was the first president and Samuel E. Elmore secretary. Mr. Elmore became presi- dent in 1870, following which time internal wrangling increased and methods were resorted to which brought the downfall later described.
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No less impressive than in insurance was the world name being made through industries. The romance of the evolution of Colt's revolvers, and again of the Gatling's and the Brown- ing's, has been translated into many languages, for all of the battling world is concerned. Samuel Colt, son of Christopher Colt, a manufacturer in Ware, Mass., and grandson of Maj. John Caldwell, was born in Hartford in 1814 and could have been a gentleman of leisure. The sea attracted him as a boy. He sailed to distant ports and employed his spare time making a wooden model of a repeater pistol. On his return he gave laughing-gas exhibitions to secure independently the money to push his device. Our Government not interested, he went to Europe to secure a patent and encouragement, after which, in 1835, a patent was secured at Washington, a factory was set up at Paterson, N. J., and he was seeking a market. The Government still indifferent, the factory had to close in 1842, but not till it had turned out enough weapons to attract attention in the Seminole war. To quiet his uneasy mind, he laid the first submarine telegraph cable to Coney Island. At the outbreak of the Mexican war, the Gov- ernment ventured an order for a thousand revolvers at $24 each. To make these he rented rooms of the Whitney Arms Company in New Haven but soon removed to quarters on Pearl Street in Hartford. His faith confirmed by the news from the battlefields, he exercised his natural foresight and, incorporating, bought a site of 250 acres near where the old Dutch fort had stood, diked it, built large buildings, devised much of his own machinery for making tools, assembled skilled mechanics-importing many from Switzerland and building a street of Swiss cottages for them near his grove of willow trees where, out of mill hours, they could fashion very marketable baskets-and was well prepared when the Civil war made its demand. His own services he offered as colonel of "Colt's Rifles" but fortunately, perhaps, nature had given him a dictatorial nature, the plan fell through and he re- turned to the place where he was most needed. He died in the moment of greatest success, in 1862. He had been welcomed and honored in all the capitals of Europe and had had the unprece- dented distinction of addressing the English House of Commons.
Building for the future in more ways than one he had gath- ered around him men who could carry on, like Elisha K. Root,
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SAMUEL COLT (1814-1862)
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HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
one of the most accomplished mechanics of the time, who suc- ceeded him in the presidency, and when the fire of 1864 was wiping out $1,200,000 worth of the great plant, President Root was designing the replacement. Another permanent principle Colonel Colt had instilled and Mr. Root had cultivated was that only first-class men should be engaged and that they should be inspired to keep on learning. General Franklin, as told elsewhere, assisted in carrying on the famous institution after his war serv- ice. Among other prominent men who have helped make it what it is today was John H. Hall (1849-1902) who had made his name in enterprises by building up the Pickering Governor Company and then the Shaler & Hall Quarry Company in his native town of Portland when called to take charge of Colt's in 1888 and later to become president, as which he continued till his death. By his remarkable insight and ability he reorganized the concern on the permanent basis it ever since has enjoyed.
As in the World war, Hartford genius was in demand by the Government when the war came. Christian Sharps in 1848 had invented the breach-loading rifle and in 1851 had incorporated and then had built on Capitol Avenue a factory which had to run day and night to meet the requirements for guns each of which was worth ten men. Christopher M. Spencer of Manchester and Hartford, driver of a self-made steam vehicle, inventor of a screw-making machine which revolutionized that industry, and at one time the junior partner in Billings & Spencer, drop forgers, had invented his repeating rifle, the first of which were carried by a Massachusetts company in 1861. Pratt & Whitney were meeting new requirements for tools of marvelous accuracy. The Gardner machine guns were to be made there in the '80s and the company was to contract to furnish equipment for arsenals in the Orient and elsewhere. Colt's was doing the first drop forging. The Phoenix Iron Works, predecessor of the present Taylor & Fenn, was furnishing Colt's with special machinery and tools. Wood- ruff boilers for naval vessels were made by the Beach concern.
A. F. Cushman in 1830 was turning out the Cushman chuck, indispensable to good workmanship. The same year the first hooks and eyes were made here by Levi Lincoln. D. W. Kellogg was the first commercial lithographer, in 1832. Austin Dunham, in 1854, had organized the Willimantic Linen Company to sup-
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ply the humble but important item of cotton thread-a concern which by 1876 was to lead all others in the country. Ebenezer N. Kellogg had been the one to introduce the scouring of wool in 1841, and with Austin Dunham, D. P. Crosby and Ezra White had built a great industry with a plant in Windsor Locks. The first electro-plating had been done by Asa H. Williams and Sim- eon S. Rogers in a Hartford cellar in 1856. Nearly all the clocks in the country were made in this county. Steam heat with grav- ity return was being employed. The first galvanized water pipes were in use. Henry and J. F. Pitkin of East Hartford were making the first American watches in 1834 and Alonzo D. Phil- lips was the first to get a patent on friction matches. In 1837, George and John Abbe Burnham of East Hartford, in a shop near old South Green, made the first oilcloth.
Pliny Jewell in 1845 removed his primitive leather-belting business from New Hampshire and began a plant on Trumbull Street near Little River which was to develop into the largest in the world by the time of the war. His four sons were associated with him-Pliny, Marshall, Lyman B. and Charles A., all of whom, as will be seen, were to be prominent in city and state affairs. And a little later, in 1863, the then most popular sewing machine was being made at the rate of 2,000 a day by G. F. Weed's company at present Capitol Avenue and Broad Street.
Some of the most important of the things these men of in- tense activity did are yet to be considered, but it must not be lost sight of that they were not too absorbed in their banking, insur- ance, railroading, manufacturing and commercial affairs to give heed to the town's requirements. To mention some of the re- quirements might give the impression that the men had been heedless previously, but to this it can be said that in the reforms they were now inaugurating they were ahead of most communi- ties of their size.
Amusingly primitive conditions as to water and fires have been referred to. Horace Bushnell first voiced and then in 1847 preached public sentiment from his pulpit, taking "Prosperity Our Duty" for his subject. These underground cisterns, of which there were then twenty-one, had been reinforced for a time by a piping (or logging) system, of distressing incompleteness. Logs with two-inch holes bored through them lengthwise brought
HON. MORGAN GARDNER BULKELEY
President of the Aetna Life Insurance Company, Hart- ford. Mayor, 1880-1888; Governor, 1889-1893; United States Senator, 1895-1911
FF
17
AETNA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD Wadsworth Atheneum on the right
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the water from Cedar Hill and vicinity down under Park River and along Pearl and Main streets with side branches for those whose well water was unsatisfactory. This system was aban- doned before 1850. Somehow talk of a water supply never had been popular since the Hartford Aqueduct Company was organ- ized in 1797-and stopped. How the wonderful Enfield canal and reservoir proposition had died has been told. In 1851 Joseph Trumbull was among those who felt something must be done at once. He was grandson of Jonathan Trumbull, had served as president of the Hartford Bank and had just finished his term as governor. He with Calvin Day, E. K. Root, Thomas Belknap and others incorporated as a private company and began ar- ranging for a pumping station. The people, feeling that this was too great a trust for a private concern or for management by the Common Council, secured in place of this charter an enact- ment giving custody and power to a board of commissioners, sub- ject in certain particulars to the council. (Later, when the board was doing a large business and some tried to have the power vested in the council, there was protest by the "best and most intelligent citizens"-to quote R. D. Hubbard-and the proposi- tion was laughed out of court.) The first board consisted of Ezra Clark, Jr., E. K. Root, E. M. Reed, Daniel Phillips and Hiram Bissell. The preparations made by the private company were ap- proved and pushed. The board's first report to the council was so caustic that the council refused to accept it-but 500 copies were published the next year; for, after seven years Doctor Bush- nell's adjurations had had effect. Water in 1855 was pumped from the Connecticut to an artificial reservoir on the top of Lord's Hill where now are the tennis courts of the Hartford Fire Insur- ance Company.
The intervening years had been full of trouble, if not graft- ing. There was great waste, much expense, and at best only a week's supply could be stored. The wranglings continued mo- notonously after 1860 and courts were resorted to, to culminate, however, in the purchase of eighty acres in West Hartford and the damming of Trout Brook for the first of the present remark- able chain of reservoirs. There were still more battles, in Legis- lature and Common Council, so it was not till July, 1865, that the water began to flow cityward. The reservoir was five miles
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from the city's center, 260 feet above low water, covering thirty- two acres and holding 145,000,000 gallons. Fortunately the pumping station was not dismantled; it had to be resorted to several times before 1900. In less than a year after the first dam was built and before the second was completed, a heavy rain carried both of them away. Other reservoirs were added in 1869, 1875, 1879 and 1884, which brings the subject down to the modern well supported, well regulated and highly meritorious progress. Meters began to be introduced in the early '80s.
The night patrol early in the century, previously referred to, was supported in large part by the insurance men, and the Hart- ford Fire provided a salvage service. In 1820 when the "watch" was increased to five men to walk nightly, at $1 a night, this company paid so much of the bill that no tax was called for, till 1822. One of the statements of loss approved by the company about this time reveals how particular the claimants had to be. It is the statement of Joseph Wheeler of Hartford:
32 squares glass broke paid for setting and mending frames $ 4.50
1 Bed Stead sides and end pieces gone and rope. 2.00
1 silk umbrella (new) lost 5.00
1 sett castors cost 12 dolls. damage done, say 4.00
1 salt cellar broke, 1.50, 2 or 3 Tumblers broke 2.00
Damage done paint on house, Barn etc. 18.00
35.50
Deduct Umbrella
5.00
30.50
Clock key lost
.50
31.00
Policy 794. Paid in full, Dec. 7, 1819.
A more serious memorandum, and one giving a glimpse of the reading of the day, is as follows:
1,000 President's Tour at $1.25 $1,250
500 Memoirs of Jackson 625
800 Labourne's Campaigns at $2.25 1,800
5 Setts Scott's Bible 160
500 Uncle Sam in Search after His Lost honor
at 50c 250
DRINK
SO DE
"JUMBO" One of the first and largest of the steam fire engines
NATIONAL FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD
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HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
The first tax for fire apparatus and cisterns was £300 in 1789, when Miles Beach was made chief of the watch. Later, by authority of the Legislature thirty men were chosen out of the militia to serve in two companies. By 1835 the number had been increased to 400-population 10,000. Chief Beach was succeeded by James Ward in 1805 and during his term a hook and ladder was added to the equipment of buckets. This was followed by a double-deck engine, worked by forty men, in 1815, by a sack and bucket company furnished by the insurance company in 1816 and a hose company in 1821 with Nathan Ruggles as foreman. The first parade was a gala occasion in 1827; water was pumped by hand-pumps through the hose. Every man must attend a fire and remain till it was extinguished. The insurance company contributed $30 toward a hand engine in 1834 at which time there was a reorganization and a chief engineer was appointed to have control both of the volunteers and of the men designated to respond to alarms. Mayor Thomas S. Williams had given an engine so that in all there were six for Chief Engineer William Hayden to command. From 1836 till recent times balls were given and aid otherwise solicited to maintain the Firemen's Be- nevolent Society. Fire escapes were introduced in 1840. In 1848 designated firemen were allowed $5 a year.
The first steam engine was procured in 1861, against the ad- vice of Chief Edward Norton. Four years later the hand engines had become antiquities. The fire board on practically its present basis was resolved upon in 1864, but it was not till 1871 that the appointive power was given to the mayor, subject to aldermanic approval. The first self-propelled engine-and one of the first in the country as well as the largest-was "Jumbo," bought in 1876, and it was all that the famous Chief Henry J. Eaton (ap- pointed in 1868) could do to keep his no less famous white horse ahead of it. The latest and most important addition to the de- partment's many buildings is the recently completed headquar- ters on Pearl Street. For many years alarms were sounded on a great bell in a tower in the rear of headquarters on Pearl near Main Street, but latterly electric sirens have been used, merely as a warning to traffic. The signal system is of the most ap- proved type.
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HARTFORD COUNTY. CONNECTICUT
The "watch" of the early days were also the police, wearing long coats and carrying lanterns and staffs. Citizens exempted from twelve nights' duty a year paid $12, from which total amount the "regulars" were paid; thus till 1822 when a tax of one mill was laid. Jeremy Hoadley was captain of the force in 1820 and the first lock-up was in the rear of his hat shop. Pris- oners were haled before a justice of the peace. What with no hold-ups, bootlegging or "cracking," the chief offense was being on the street in the night time without reasonable excuse. In 1824 a riot in the negro quarter necessitated the assembling of the Foot Guard for a day and a night. The City Hall of 1830, on Market Street, furnished cells. The first board of police commissioners was appointed July 6, 1860, after strenuous endeavor of Mayor Henry C. Deming to secure unanimity of purpose. Walter P. Chamberlain was made chief of the first and uniformed force thus created, Charles D. Nott captain, and Charles Brewster, lieutenant. The board met in the old Union Hall at the corner of Main and Pearl streets. A station house was provided on Kins- ley Street in 1867. The present police building, on the site of the old City Hall, was completed in 1898 and is now inadequate.
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