USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 28
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By the middle of the nineteenth century the list of Hartford County physicians who had made a national reputation included, as has been told, Mason F. Coggswell, Eli Todd, Lemuel Hopkins, John L. Comstock, Samuel B. Woodward of Wethersfield and Samuel B. Beresford, and recently had been added to it the names of Horace Wells and John N. Riggs. Wells was the discoverer of anesthesia. After seeing laughing-gas used at one of the fre- quent public performances of the day, he went to his office on Main Street (the location now marked by a tablet), administered the nitrous-oxide gas to himself, and his assistant, Doctor Riggs, extracted a tooth. That was December 11, 1844. Later he ad- ministered the gas for operations by local physicians. State and city erected the monument in the doctor's honor on Bushnell Park. The doctor was born in Hartford, Vt., in 1815 and died in New York in 1848. Doctor Riggs was the discoverer of the cause of Riggs disease of teeth and gums.
The County Medical Society had been established in 1792 with Dr. Eliakim Fish and Dr. Elihu H. Smith as the officers. The Hartford Medical Society was formed August 27, 1846, two years after the Hopkins Medical Society had ceased to exist, and, as will appear in connection with the Hunt Memorial, has ever since been an important factor in the community.
One of the society's first grateful duties, while at the same time advancing the important cause of sanitation, was to crystal- ize public sentiment for a hospital. Evidence of the need had accumulated when the Society for Providing a Home for the Sick had been formed and a house rented at the junction of Maple and Retreat avenues. Then in March, 1854, came the explosion at the car shops of Fales & Gray near Dutch Point in which nine- teen were killed and forty wounded, and there was no suitable
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place for caring for the injured. The mayor presided at a pub- lic meeting inspired by the medical society and immediately thereafter the Hartford Hospital was incorporated-Francis Parsons (1st), president; William T. Lee, vice president; F. A. Brown, secretary and treasurer, and Chester Adams, G. B. Haw- ley and L. F. Robinson (1st), Executive Committee. Subscrip- tions yielded $31,000 and the state gave $10,000. Daniel Wads- worth made it known that he would bequeath $40,000. The Coggswell lot of nine acres, with buildings, near South (Bar- nard) Park was bought for $16,000 and the cornerstone of the administration building and north wing was laid by Governor Buckingham in 1837. Meanwhile the Home for the Sick had given its property where patients could be accommodated in lim- ited number at $3 a week, which price debarred two-thirds of the applicants.
The first doctors were S. B. Beresford, G. W. Russell, G. B. Hawley, E. K. Hunt, M. W. Wilson and A. W. Barrows. The library and instruments of the late Dr. George Sumner (widely known as a botanist as well as a physician and a professor in that science at Trinity) were bought and given, as also, later, was a library of worth, bought with a fund raised by Rev. Prof. J. J. McCook. In 1865, when there were seventy patients, wards for only forty-four and but ten attendants, a popular appeal pro- vided another wing. Four years later, the need increasing, the state allowed $20,000 on condition the people subscribed an equal amount; the subscriptions totaled $86,200, and the south and east wings were completed. The memorial tablet giving the names of donors of $5,000 or more was placed in 1870 and por- traits of benefactors and veterans of the staff were hung in the picture gallery. Ward 5 for men's surgical attendance and an isolation ward were added in 1876.
The growth has been marked by the purchase of much addi- tional land and the erection of new buildings, indicative of the community's pride and of the benevolence of individuals. Among the more prominent buildings are the pavilion for contagious dis- eases, Wildwood Sanitarium for the tuberculous (on the farm given by David Clark in memory of his son Lester), the Robin- son Children's wards (given by Mrs. Louis R. Cheney in memory of her sister, Miss Elizabeth Trumbull Robinson), the nurses'
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OLD PEOPLE'S HOME-HARTFORD HOSPITAL
HARTFORD HOSPITAL
Showing part of buildings on South Hudson Street. From right to left: Women's Building, X-Ray Building and wing and Administra- tion Building. Cheney Library is being built the other side of the Administration Building.
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residence, the nurses' memorial home (given by Mr. and Mrs. G. F. Heublein), the women's building, the Capewell X-ray build- ing (given by the family of George F. Capewell, inventor of the horse-nail and founder of the Capewell Horse-Nail Company), the Hall-Wilson laboratory (given by Mrs. John C. Wilson in memory of her father, President John H. Hall of Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, and of her husband), the superintendent's residence (given by Mrs. Mabel Perkins Clark), and the Mary Robinson Cheney Memorial Library (given by Col. and President Louis R. Cheney and his daughter, Mrs. John T. Roberts, in memory of the colonel's wife, the first president of the women's auxiliary). The value of the buildings now is nearly $800,000.
A very notable gift in November, 1928, is that of Edward B. Peck, who was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1840, came here with the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company in 1868 and was assistant secretary at the time of his death in 1928. He left $800,000 to the Hospital, $25,000 to the Atheneum, $20,000 to the Hartford Orphan Asylum, $20,000 to the Charity Organiza- tion Society, $10,000 to the Newington Home for Crippled Chil- dren and $10,000 to the Young Women's Christian Association.
There are forty-five free beds, caring for about 350 patients annually. In addition to the large gifts for these there is a me- morial fund of over $200,000, contributed by individuals, and a number of other funds, the larger of which include the following bequests and memorials: Citizens endowment, $25,000; Isaac B. and Marian Davis, $310,000; Lyman B. Jewell, $30,000; Keney fund, $50,000; Roland Mather, $30,000; William B. Mc- Cray, $43,000; Junius S. Morgan, $20,000; Mary I. B. Russell, in memory of Dr. G. W. Russell, Mary S. Beresford and Francis Beresford Marsh, $40,000; Oliver Grant Terry and Amelia Smith Terry (from Miss May Terry), $220,000; Josephine Williams estate in memory of Lyman B. Jewell, $100,000; Josephine Wil- liams, $654,000. The annual admissions are over 12,000, repre- senting forty-four nationalities, of which about 10,000 are United States-Russia, Sweden, Canada, England, and Austria ranking next, and in this order. By occupation, housewives stand first, followed in order by "none," school, and laborers.
The Training School for Nurses was organized in 1877, of
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which Mrs. F. A. Tuttle was superintendent for fifteen years. In 1898 Mrs. Charles Dudley Warner published a call for funds for a nurses' home; the result was a completed building in 1900, in which is a tablet to the memory of Mary Sweeney, a veteran nurse who died in South Manchester intestate and whose prop- erty, through the instrumentality of Col. Frank W. Cheney of South Manchester, was turned over by the state for this home. A social service department was organized in 1913.
The Old People's Home on Jefferson Street, in connection with the hospital, dates from 1873 by charter amendment, and the present building was erected on Jefferson Street in 1884. Charles H. Northam, late president of the hospital, left $50,000 for it. Subsequent gifts were from Henry and Walter Keney, Timothy M. Allyn, Mrs. Lucius H. Goodwin, Thomas Smith, and Mrs. Lois Sargent of Hartford, Charles Boswell of Wethersfield and Hart- ford, and Mrs. David Gallop of Plainfield.
The incorporators were David Watkinson, Samuel Colt, S. S. Ward, Amos M. Collins, Albert Day, James G. Bolles and A. W. Butler. The presidents after Francis Parsons, 1st, have been C. H. Northam, Edson Fessenden, G. W. Russell, Harmon G. Howe, A. C. Dunham and Louis R. Cheney; the superintendents, Leander Hall, Benjamin S. Gilbert, J. M. Teniston, Winthrop H. Smith, A. W. Smith and Dr. Lewis A. Sexton. The history would not be complete without the name of Dr. William D. Mor- gan who for many years has been chairman of the Executive Committee. Under the superintendency of Doctor Sexton, who was appointed in 1917, the hospital has ranked among the high- est in the country, official attest of which was given at the time of the national survey by the Smithsonian Institution in 1926.
Of origin in this period also was another of Hartford's proud- est assets-its parks, about which much will be said later. Rev. Dr. Horace Bushnell is here once more conspicuous, for it was he who looked upon the sordid conditions along Little River from the old Imlay Mills site to the Main Street bridge and said this should be a park and not a heap of wreckage from the early rail- road days, of tanneries and of miserable cottages. Once more,
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as in the case of the water supply, his persistency proved effec- tual. William Law Olmsted, in the beginning of his career as landscape architect, gave freely of his advice, and Judge Sher- man W. Adams, another who devoted himself to public interests and to history, was superintendent. Under his direction the rough and swampy ground was filled in and graded, and a great variety of native trees was set out. In all there were twenty- five acres, to which half as much again was added when the new Capitol took the place of Trinity College on the hill. So appreci- ative was the city as the work progressed that the Common Coun- cil on February 14, 1876, the eve of the doctor's death, gave it his name. As will be seen, the present park system was not in- augurated till 1895. The chairman of the Board of Trustees having supervision of this first park work was George Beach, a descendant of Governor Bradford of Plymouth colony and of Wil- liam Whiting, second treasurer of Connecticut, himself presi- dent of the Phoenix Bank and for over thirty years a member of Hungerford, Phelps & Beach, later Beach & Company, importers of dyes.
Philanthropy in the most peculiar form in the history of the county established what today is the Larabee Fund. Charles Larabee, born in Windham in 1782, was a captain in the Regular Army in 1812 and was breveted major for bravery at Brown- stone, where he lost his left arm. For four years from 1831 he was surveyor of revenue in Cincinnati. He came to Hartford to spend his last days. In 1847 he willed his property to the city and town, the income to be used for the needy and lame or de- formed women. In 1859 he included West Hartford and said, in his will, that he considered about $500 to each beneficiary would be enough. Subsequent codicils to the unique document, which he wished to have printed and the one pamphlet copy of which is in the city treasurer's office, directed that ladies from each church should handle the fund, which he had "increased twenty-fold," and that Stiles D. Sperry be executor. The sum received by city and town in 1864 was $6,342. This has been increased by gifts and bequests till now the fund which is held by the treasurer with interest disbursements by the ladies is over $83,000.
A revered asset of the city which was lost in this period was the historic Charter Oak which was blown down August 24,
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1856. A dirge was played over the tree by Colt's Armory Band, and Lydia Huntley Sigourney and others wrote poems on it. Every inch of the tree was saved for relics and memorials.
An asset which was to disappear when the Government Build- ing came was the State House Green. It was further beautified in 1856 by turning on the new fountain. An editor wrote: "All improvements of this kind soften the ruggedness of our Puritan character with something of artistic fineness," and a poet proph- esied, in a faith totally blind, that the fountain would play for centuries to come. In 1928 there is renewed faith in a recurrence to a softening effect, as the vacated site is once more to become the city's.
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BEGINNING OF BUSHNELL PARK, HARTFORD
From Wells Street, 1865. Trinity College, where Capitol now stands
XXVI
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD
CONNECTION WITH MEXICAN WAR-HARTFORD SLAVE TRIAL-POLITICAL AND MILITARY £ CONFUSION-PUTNAM PHALANX-WIDEAWAKES- SECRETARY WELLES-COUNTY'S RESPONSE TO THE CALLS.
The courage, self-sacrifice and horrors of the Civil war in the field have been memorialized in cemeteries and in public places throughout the country, and the home cost of the conflict has been counted not only in written records but in the handicaps that fell to soldiers' families and descendants for two generations-in- deed, in many instances, still have to be endured. But, as in the long-approaching Revolution, though not as in the swift World war, there can be small appreciation of the tense atmosphere, especially in a community like this Constitution County, without a review of circumstances preceding. Especially true is this of the Mexican war. In the instance of the Civil war, history no longer can tolerate the dismissal on the ground that it was fratri- cidal and that, therefore, local divergence of views had best be forgotten. From standpoint of military science that war takes precedence over all others, but it is the thrilling story and not the underlying features and their more remote causes, in the various towns, that has crowded the printed page. In the progressive study of a county with its Constitution history, at least a guide to these features will be looked for by present and future readers, even though space be limited.
The Mexican war of 1846 was not popular in Connecticut. In a resolution adopted by the Legislature, it was considered un- constitutional, because of President Polk's sending troops into Mexican territory. Since the Government called for volunteers at large, the question of the militia and the federal service was not raised as in 1812. A total of some 700 enlisted in Connecti- cut chiefly for intermittent state duty along the shores; her
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officers already in the army won distinction. Thomas H. Sey- mour, of notable Hartford family and one who had been cap- tain of the Hartford Light Guard-counted among the few earn- est companies in a militia that was overgrown and seedy-was major in the Connecticut portion of the one formal New Eng- land regiment, the Ninth, for service at the front. It was said Texas had been annexed merely to establish a new empire of slavery and this country should not have concerned itself about Mexico's treatment of it.
Hence, for the action of the President in sending troops for protection of the new state before war had been declared, one must go back to the story of the annexation of Texas as President Tyler was leaving office in March, 1845, after its troubles as an independent Mexican state since in 1835. Two of Hartford's foremost sons wrote much upon that subject, John M. Niles (sen- ator 1835-1839 and 1843-1849, former editor of the Times and writer of an authoritative book on Mexico) and Prof. William G. Sumner of Yale, who was born in Hartford in 1840. The former detailed the perpetual brutal conduct and machinations of the Mexican government (not the people) ; Sumner, at later date, be- lieved that pro-slavery had been at the bottom of it all. A vigor- ous review of the contentions, with decision that the pro-slavery theory was due to utter misapprehension, was published in 1908 by Maj. Charles H. Owen, able Hartford lawyer and veteran of the Civil war. Incidentally and not significantly, President Polk was received in Hartford in 1847, during the war, with all the honors that should be accorded a chief magistrate. And the demo- cratic Congress meantime was cutting down the protective tariff, on which New England industries depended. Incidentally also, Seymour was to be elected governor in 1850 and to be reelected twice; his subsequent changeful career, as it will be outlined, is intensely significant of change in popular sentiment.
Coming to the slavery phase, of which the Texas-Mexico affair was in reality such an important adjunct, everyone is on more familiar grounds. From 1808, when the South had joined with the North in congressional prohibition of importation of slaves, until 1836, slavery had publicly ceased to be an issue; Washington's and Jefferson's hopes had been fulfilled. But underneath fire was smoldering; it was known privately that
LIFE
MAIN AND PEARL STREETS, HARTFORD, IN THE '60s Showing site of the present Hartford National Bank and Trust Company
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slaves were being imported. The fact was forced into public notice at Hartford in 1839, the bicentennial year of the Consti- tution. Fifty-three slaves were brought to the jail .* They had been seized in Africa and on the Spanish ship L'Amistad were being taken from Havana to Puerto Principe, with America their probable final destination, when they killed all the crew but two whom they ordered to return them to Africa. Finding they were being deceived, they forced a landing at the end of Long Island where they were taken in charge by a Government vessel. President Buchanan yielded to Spain's demand for de- livery of ship and cargo. Protest being made, the slaves were brought here for a trial of the issue, there being no treaty pro- vision. Seth B. Staples, Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., of New York and Roger Sherman Baldwin of New Haven defended and won. The Government appealing, the Circuit Court in New Haven up- held the decision as also did the Supreme Court in 1841, on the ground that the men had been kidnapped and were not bound by treaties. Most of them were taken to Farmington where they were well cared for and given a rudimentary education till re- turned to Africa.
In 1833, the breach between North and South had been opened not on the slave question but on the question of protec- tive tariff, when South Carolina attempted nullification of the tariff law and Webster's immortal speech on the Union was de- livered. About the same time, William Lloyd Garrison of Bos- ton and others had taken the field for liberation of slaves; the breach then was wide open. Locally, the Christian Freeman of William H. Burleigh took up the cry of abolition and, despite the conservatism of traders and manufacturers who valued their southern patronage, the cry increased in intensity. Governor Baldwin in 1844 voiced it before the Legislature (which would not vote to give colored men suffrage), and the following year the abolition or liberty party had a full ticket in the field. The Missouri Compromise and its subsequent negation swept many of the conservatives into line.
* This jail had been built in 1837 on lower Pearl Street to replace the one near the corner of Trumbull Street, used since 1793, and was to continue to be the jail till the present one on Seyms Street was built in 1874 at an initial cost of $211,481 for land and building.
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The discovery of gold in California in 1848 created a divert- ing craze. Whereas the question of slavery and southern wrath had monopolized conversation everywhere, men now marveled over the reports from the Pacific coast. A demand sprang up for ships to transport seekers for wealth; for a time business in general felt the impetus. The names of some of the "Forty- niners" who sailed around Cape Horn indicates the worthy kind of men who were eager to join with the adventurers-Capt. Or- rin Sellew of East Hartford (commander of a ship), Reuben Kellogg, Dr. M. D. Coe, Henry Dean, J. P. Smith, W. O. Sexton, John Grow, Jr., G. H. Sexton, A. S. Whittemore, L. G. Chaffee, B. B. Hastings, H. R. Sage, H. P. Sweetzer, Hezekiah Chaffee, Edward Pratt, E. J. Bolles, Merrick Moore, L. G. Hale, William A. Goodwin, W. R. Freeman, H. M. Butler, Charles E. Mitchell, James Spencer, N. L. Turner. From Bloomfield-C. H. Huma- son, Henry Hubbard, Powell Green. From Canton-T. B. Hig- ley. From Windsor-Stiles Edgerton, E. E. Fox, D. G. Hatha- way, H. H. Phelps, Johnson Clark. From Newington-J. S. Kir- ham, George Shepard, N. E. Judd, Lafayette Gladding, R. R. Rockwell. From Granby-J. R. Hill, C. C. Culver, Donald Grimes. From Wethersfield-Walter Griswold, Henry Rhodes. From Suffield-Horace Rising. From Glastonbury-William and Anson Dean, Thomas Goodale, D. B. Curtis, G. B. Curtis, William Welles. From Farmington-Jonathan Cowles. From East Windsor-C. L. Waters, William Johnson, Francis Reid, George Watson, Luke Watson, Jr., C. F. Osborn.
During these days of political heat, Isaac Toucey (1791- 1869) succeeded Governor Baldwin in 1846. He was a native of Newtown. Admitted to the bar in Hartford in 1811, he be- came state's attorney in 1822. From 1835 to 1839 he was rep- resentative. His election to be governor was by the Legislature, there not having been a majority for either candidate. In 1848 he was United States attorney-general, after which he served in both houses of the General Assembly and followed Baldwin to the Senate. His appointment by Buchanan to be secretary of the navy called forth a local editorial comment which expressed a growing northern sentiment: "What he is wanted for-know- ing nothing about ships-is to dispense patronage to the south- erners." He had to share with Jefferson Davis, secretary of
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PRESENT SHOPPING DISTRICT OF HARTFORD IN CIVIL WAR TIMES
Looking south from corner of Main and Church Streets. Christ Church on the right, Roberts Opera House the third building beyond, Melodeon Building (old Fourth Con- gregational Cnurch) with square tower, Pearl Street Church spire to the right of it, First Church and South Baptist Church spires beyond. On east side of street: Corner of New First Baptist Church, Touro Hall with square tower (old First Baptist, then Advent, then Beth Israel), and in the distance spires of Second Baptist Church (left), and St. John's Church (right)
TAILOR
(Photograph by The Ingrahams. From collection of W. J. Hickmott )
UNION HALL AND MAIN STREET, HARTFORD, IN CIVIL WAR TIMES
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war, the criticism of so distributing men and equipment as to give the South the advantage. The criticism was denounced by his old associates here. Thomas H. Seymour was governor from 1850 to 1853.
Francis Gillette, stanch abolitionist, was appointed to fill out the term of Truman Smith of Litchfield. James Dixon (1814- 1873) served as senator from 1857 to 1869. He had been con- gressman from 1845 to 1849. He came from Enfield, where he was born, to Hartford in 1838, to be nearer his large clientele as a lawyer, and acquired the large estate at the corner of Farm- ington Avenue and Sigourney Street where the Aetna Life In- surance Company is about to build. Reference has been made to his literary productions. Also, in the lower house, were James T. Pratt, 1853-1855, and Ezra Clark, Jr., 1855-1859.
The "free soil" party originated with democrats who be- lieved in no slavery in new states; but it drew more from the whigs than from the democrats, whose candidate, Cass, however, was defeated by General Taylor in 1848, and it held the balance of power in the lower house, leaving the Senate alone democratic. Four years later the whigs were disorganized by the defeat of their General Scott by the democratic compromise candidate Pierce of New Hampshire. The Order of United Americans, a mysterious band known as "know nothings" and bringing in pro- fessedly the Roman Catholic question, won surprising state vic- tories in 1854-5 so that Congress was made up of a variety of men representing a variety of sentiments. At this moment of the obliteration of the whig party, or 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" appeared.
Meantime the fugitive slave law of 1850 was being enforced by southerners, with attendant riots; a less sensational body than the original abolitionists was forming in the North-to be still stronger when the Supreme Court was to say, in 1857, that the fugitive slave law was constitutional inasmuch as the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and slaves were mere property -and the republican party was born in 1856. This party was drawn from the old whigs, from the small parties that had suc- ceeded them and also from the anti-slavery democrats. Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska bill and "squatter sovereignty" had furnished the heat for the welding. The party with Fremont as a candi- date was not strong enough to defeat the democrats with Bu-
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chanan, but events were continuing to shape for it. Among these other things was the great period of financial depression, due in chief measure to over-expansion and speculation following rail- road development and industrial rush. John Brown, native of Torrington, had begun his work. He had been a not unfamiliar figure in Hartford, where he made an address in 1857. While sympathy of some was with him in his Kansas settlement plan, he was considered somewhat "flighty" and he did not secure the Collins Company of Canton to make many spears for him.
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