USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 30
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From the first week to the last, the women of the county were tireless in their work. The Hartford Aid Association, for which large amounts of money and supplies were given, was in opera- tion several months before the organization of the United States Sanitary Commission. Mrs. John Olmstead and Mrs. S. S. Cowen were particularly active.
One of the most generous of givers for all causes and espe- cially of equipment for officers was David Clark who in 1865 was for a time owner of the Post. In later years the Post was under the management of J. M. Spalding and in its last days, before being taken over by the Times, of John A. Porter.
The Hartford City Guard was maintained by members of the militia who were unable to go to the front. One of its functions was to train men to recruit the companies in service, especially the unit that had gone with Artillery Company A, the original designation, as its nucleus. Colonel Burnham and Lieut. L. A. Dickinson had been of that company. At one time it was called out to guard the arsenal. Today its descendant is Company F of the local regiment, the One Hundred and Sixty-ninth Infan- try. It was immediately after the war that the state military units were reorganized, the first to use the French name, Na- tional Guard. In 1871, the number of regiments was cut down to one for each of the four congressional districts, ten companies each for maximum, sixty-eight men to a company, and later one machine-gun platoon to a regiment, and a battery of light artil- lery. Brigade formation was abolished in 1907, after the passage of the Dick bill, when more attention to uniformity throughout the country was the purpose of the guardsmen them-
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selves. Brigade encampments gave way to regimental and the Federal Government was more actively cooperating.
The posts of the Grand Army of the Republic in the county in 1927, with number of post in the state department, names of commanders and the number of members:
Nathaniel Lyon, 2, Hartford, Henry Lewis 13 members
Stanley, 11, New Britain, S. H. Wood 10 members
Gilbert W. Thompson, 13, Bristol, E. H. Allen 8 members Robert O. Tyler, 50, Hartford, Nathan Coe 33 members
Newton S. Manross, 57, Forestville, A. P. Stark 1 member
A. E. Burnside, 62, Unionville, J. H. Davis 5 members
Daniel C. Rodman, 65, East Hartford, W. H. Brewer 5 members 2 members
John M. Morris, 66, Wethersfield
Important in the functions of all organizations are the Department of Instruction, assisted by the Boy and Girl Scouts among others, and participation in the affairs of the Soldiers' Home at Noroton. There also is the Woman's Re- lief Corps which always has been an aid to the G. A. R .- one for each post. The Ladies of the G. A. R., recently or- ganized, give particular attention to school instruction. The Hartford tent is named for Lizabeth A. Turner. The Sons of Veterans, since 1927 the Sons of Union Veterans-teach patriotism and duties of citizenship. The Hartford organi- zations are Griffin A. Stedman Camp No. 9 and Hartford Camp, No. 50.
XXVII
RETURN TO PEACE
POLITICAL CONDITIONS-CHAPLAIN TWICHELL AND DOCTOR PARKER- STREET CARS-THE NEW CAPITOL-GOVERNMENT BUILDING-FOUND- ING OF TRAVELERS AND CONNECTICUT GENERAL.
From the end of the war till the '80s was a period of painful readjustment which, with all its tragedies, left no physical scars on a community of Hartford's enterprise. There were terrible struggles over the monetary standard in particular and calls for help from the Freedmen's Bureau at work in the South, re- sponded to by many including a number who had been engaged in educational work there before the war. Among these latter was Rev. John A. B. Rogers of the local Catholic Apostolic Church who had founded Berea College in Kentucky, in association with Rev. Francis Hawley, father of General Hawley, at that time a worker in North Carolina for higher standards; the college had been closed during the war but Mr. Johnson went back and reestablished it for children without distinction as to color.
In the remnants of returning regiments there were men for public affairs as well as thousands of skillful mechanics and in- telligent farmers whose places awaited them. The state, nor- mally a close one politically, had reelected Buckingham succes- sively through to 1866 (Julius Catlin lieutenant-governor from 1858 to 1861), though in the third year of the war the governor might have been defeated but for the vote of the soldiers in the field, Thomas H. Seymour opposing him on a "peace" platform. (Seymour, whose portrait, by vote of the Legislature, was turned face to the wall in the Capitol throughout the war, had thirty- eight votes for nomination for President at the democratic na- tional convention that year.) Hawley followed Buckingham in office, carried on by his own popularity and also by the wave of sentiment continuing so strong after the assassination of Lin-
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(Collection of Morgan B. Brainard)
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF HARTFORD, 1869
HARTFORD IN EARLIEST HORSE CAR DAYS
From spire of South Congregational Church, Main Street, looking north. On west side of street, to reader's left: South Baptist Church, Center Church, Christ Church; to the west of them, Pearl Street Congregational Church and North (Fourth) Congrega- tional Church. East side: Second Baptist Church, St. John's Episcopal Church (taper- ing spire); dimly beyond it, old statehouse dome. In right midground: Prospect Street, with fine residences, the one with pillars being George M. Bartholomew's; just beyond it, the Daniel Wadsworth homestead
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coln, but at the end of the year, the democrats were victorious. In the next election, Marshall Jewell won, was defeated the next year, then won again narrowly, after investigation of the appar- ent majority for his democratic competitor, and served two terms, or till 1873. After this second term, the democrats were successful for four terms and then again for the first of the pres- ent two-years terms, the candidate being Hartford's eminent law- yer and orator, Richard D. Hubbard. His successor also was a democrat.
Governor Jewell was appointed by President Grant minis- ter to Russia and a year later to be postmaster-general, which position he resigned in 1876. He was chairman of the Repub- lican National Committee till his death. Governor Hubbard (1818-1884) was a native of Berlin and a member of the law firm of Waldo, Hubbard & Hyde. He had been representative in the Legislature, state's attorney, and congressman in 1867. The statue of him on the Capitol grounds was provided for in the will of his friend, George D. Sargeant.
General Hawley succeeded Julius L. Strong in the lower house of Congress in 1873 and served another term in 1879-81, enter- ing upon his long series of terms as senator in the latter year (till 1905). In 1868 he was chairman of the republican conven- tion which unanimously nominated Grant, who, in his letter of acceptance to Hawley, wrote the words which became the cam- paign slogan, "Let us have peace." In his address at the conven- tion, attacking the talk of repudiation among some of the opposi- tion, Hawley uttered the words that made another slogan- "Every bond must be as sacred as a soldier's grave." In 1876 Hawley was president of the Philadelphia Centennial Commis- sion for the exhibition which did much to bring North and South together.
William W. Eaton (1814-1898), a native of Tolland and four years in business in Columbia, S. C., had been in both houses of the Legislature before removing to Hartford, and while a resi- dent in Hartford had been speaker of the House in 1853, a mem- ber in 1863 (the "peace-campaign" year) and again in 1868, continuing there till 1874 when Governor Ingersoll appointed him to the Senate to complete the term of Senator Buckingham who had died. He was sent to Washington again, as representative, in 1883.
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Gideon Welles (1802-1878) continued as secretary of the navy through Johnson's administration, after which he returned to live among his old friends. He was born in Glastonbury. As an adherent of Jackson's, he made his influence felt through the columns of the Times. Beginning with 1827, he served two terms in the Legislature and three terms as comptroller, and was chief of the bureau of clothing and provisions in the navy department in 1846-49. As a republican he was delegate to the convention that nominated Lincoln. In 1872 he joined the liberal repub- licans and in 1876 supported Tilden.
For the period here reviewed mention also should be made of the fact that throughout the war J. Hammond Trumbull was sec- retary of state. Charles M. Pond was treasurer in 1870 and George G. Sill was lieutenant-governor in 1873-77.
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What was to prove to be epochal in the religious, literary and social life of the city was the formation of the society for the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in 1864. Leading men who believed the development of the city to the westward warranted a Congregational church on the "Hill," where Prof. Calvin E. Stowe was holding Bible classes, came together on February 3 of that year with A. G. Hammond as chairman. Erastus Collins pre- sented the subject and with Samuel Coit and A. M. Hurlburt was made a committee to secure the approval of the other churches. On June 16 organization was perfected, J. M. Allen, clerk, J. S. Tryon, treasurer, and a building committee composed of Mr. Coit, Mr. Allen, Henry French and Newton Case. The committee on pastor, Mr. Hammond, Mr. Tryon, Mr. Collins, Rev. J. R. Keep and John Beach, in due time recommended Rev. Jos- eph H. Twichell who came on December 13, 1865. The first mem- bers were thirty-three from the North Church, twenty-five from the Pearl Street, four from the Fourth, two from the South and ten from outside these parishes. Their first year, while holding their meetings in the old West Middle schoolhouse, they erected their brownstone edifice, for which Roland Mather gave the spire and his daughter the clock.
Mr. Twichell (1838-1918) who had been chaplain of the Sev-
ASYLUM HILL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, HARTFORD
JOHN BROWNLEE VOORHEES, D. D. (1875-1918) Pastor of Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Hartford
REV. DR. JOSEPH H. TWICHELL (1838-1918)
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enty-first New York Volunteers, was born in Stonington and had graduated at Yale in 1859, where, as has been said, he was a member of the first famous crew, and where he was to serve many years as a member of the corporation. From his coming till he was made pastor emeritus in 1911, he lent distinction to the church and to the town in whose civic and literary life he played a prominent part. His first American ancestor, Joseph, had been a member of Hooker's party out of England, and he had had his theological training at both Union and Andover seminaries. With special zeal for the mission work in which his church was a leader, he always inculcated the spirit of patriotism and, there- fore, it was as by inheritance of his brave ideals that his suc- cessor at the time of the World war, Rev. Dr. John Brownlee Voorhees, gave his life in Y. M. C. A. service overseas. At the age of thirty-seven Dr. Voorhees had come here in 1912, with his bride, after serving in the Union Reformed Church of New York and in domestic missions, and he had upheld the worthy traditions of the parish.
Mr. Twichell-he would not accept the degree of LL.D. till in his last years-found among those welcoming him one who for sixty years was a civic and religious leader, Rev. Edwin Pond Parker (1836-1920) who had succeeded Rev. Walter C. Clark as pastor of the Second or South Church in 1860. One of his ancestors was William Parker, of the Thomas Hooker party, and another was one of the settlers of New Haven. His mother was a relative of Dr. Joel Hawes of the First Church and of Rev. O. E. Daggett of the Second Church. He was born in Castine, Me., and was graduated at Bowdoin and at Bangor Theological Seminary. His broad views, especially on "future probation," caused a discussion in the religious press which con- tinued for several years. The hymns he wrote will live long, while several of his addresses are among Hartford's classics. He and "Father" Fisher were the first formally elected chaplains of the Legislature. He was a member of the Yale corporation from 1895 to 1919 where he was associated with Mr. Twichell and Rev. Dr. George Leon Walker, making three from the commun- ity that fought hard to have the college locate here in its early days. After he resigned in 1911 he was made pastor emeritus.
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Asylum Hill and South Main Street did not seem so far apart as they did before the war. For street cars had come. They came in 1863, the same year the first letter boxes had appeared around the center. The horse-railroad company to run toward Wethersfield had been incorporated two years before the war, but it was not till April, 1863, that the first car appeared on the line to Spring Grove Cemetery, and in March one ran as far as the railroad station and back again to the old State House. It was not till 1872 that one could ride all the way to the top of Asylum Hill, by aid of an extra horse on the steep grade. Elec- tric cars were run on the Wethersfield line in September, 1888, to Glastonbury in 1892, to the South Windsor line in 1895- which marked the end of horse service. Subsequent develop- ment is described elsewhere.
Charles C. Goodrich, native of Wethersfield, organized the first company to transport freight on the river. The company failed in 1882 and was bought by the Hartford and New York Transportation Company, Mr. Goodrich continuing as vice presi- dent till his death in 1921.
The feeling that Hartford was the more suitable place for state business and should be the single capital gained ground after the war. Despite New Haven's protests, the vote went that way and the last session of the Legislature was held in New Haven in 1874. The decision was influenced by Hartford's gen- erous offers, in accord with which city bonds were issued up to a total of $1,100,000 for expenses which amounted to $2,532,524 for land and building. Hartford had bargained with Trinity for its site at $600,000, the college to have the use of the build- ings till 1877, and the college moved to its present location on Rocky Ridge, far more desirable for its purposes. The Capi- tol site is unexcelled by any in the country, the grounds being practically a part of Bushnell Park. The building, of East Canaan marble, which was begun in 1872 and finished in 1878- of secular Gothic design. 300 feet long and 257 feet from the ground line to the top of the Genius of Connecticut which sur- mounts the dome-is near the railroad station, to be seen by all passing through, separated from the tracks by what is now called the Park River. The curve the river makes to the vicinity
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THE CAPITOL AND BUSHNELL PARK, HARTFORD
With Corning Fountain in the foreground and Soldiers' Memorial Arch to the left, over Park River
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of the station and then around by the Memorial Arch to the southeast seems almost artificial as it allows the broad sweep of lawn, the Corning fountain and the terrace as one looks toward the majestic building from the station and across Asylum Street. The special joy of Chairman A. E. Burr of the commission was that the total cost was within the appropriation. Other mem- bers of the commission were Jeremiah Halsey-descendant of the one of the same name connected with the building of the Bul- finch State House-Nathaniel Wheeler, William P. Trowbridge, Austin Dunham, Gardner P. Barber, Franklin Chamberlain. Richard Upjohn was architect; J. G. Batterson, builder; Gen. W. B. Franklin, superintendent. The State House, as elsewhere told, was turned over to the city for a City Hall.
Simultaneously an object of modern execration was going up on the park to the east of the historic State House, that object being the government building, of what was then a standardized architecture, mansard roof and ungainly in its proportions. It should be said that the "square", with the fountain the poet thought was immortal, had become a sort of catch-all and was about as unsightly as the government building is to modern eyes. The long drawn-out sequel will be related later; hearts long sick with deferred hope are now convalescent. The government re- quired from 1873 to 1882 to build the monstrosity. In the prac- tical phase of it, it was outgrown fifteen years ago.
The Catholics, as previously indicated, in this period, in the year 1876, had broken ground on the old Morgan farm on Farm- ington Avenue for their cathedral. In 1878 the Sisters of Mercy had acquired land at Mount St. Augustine on Quaker Lane, West Hartford, for their school for young boys; in 1880 the for- mer home of Rose Terry Cooke on Albany Road for St. Mary's Home for the aged, and there were soon to follow St. Joseph's Convent with its academy ; St. Catherine's Convent and Asylum for Girls, St. Joseph's Asylum for Boys, the Sacred Heart Con- vent of Mercy, St. Joseph's parochial school on Capitol Avenue, St. Peter's parochial school for girls on Franklin Avenue, the boys' school of St. Patrick's under the charge of the Christian Brothers -and much similar building in New Britain and elsewhere around the county.
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The foundations of the $17,000,000 Travelers Insurance Company were laid by James G. Batterson in a way described in the analysis of his career, given on another page. It reads some- thing like a fairy tale but there were items of administration in the '60s that would have been enough to daunt less determined men. By the charter of 1863 the capital was placed at $100,000. Organizing in 1864, the directors were Mr. Batterson, Ebenezer Roberts, W. H. D. Callender, Thomas Belknap, Jr., James L. Howard, Charles White, George W. Moore, C. B. Erwin, Mar- shall Jewell, Hugh Harbison, G. F. Davis, G. S. Gilman and J. B. Bunce-Mr. Batterson president, Mr. Davis vice president and Rodney Dennis secretary, the company to insure people against accident. All were comparatively young men who had to face a wholly new problem, working out the company's salvation. Similar companies were springing up elsewhere which were to succumb to the difficulties that always were besetting. The Rail- way Passengers Assurance Company, with headquarters here and Mr. Batterson as president, was formed by seven companies in 1866, of which the Travelers was the one survivor and the re- insurer of the rest, and soon was turning the business over to its ticket department. In 1874, venturesome men, with Rich- ard D. Hubbard as figurehead, went out to form the Hartford Accident; it lived two years. Meantime the Travelers had taken up life insurance, by stock plan, with such success that it was fortified against the perils from the still confusing accident business ; a 25 per cent dividend was paid in 1865 and stock was increased to $500,000, and to remain at that till stock dividends made it $1,000,000 in 1892. It had its own building on Prospect Street in 1872.
But that is only a part of the chapter of the unending ro- mance of Hartford in insurance. These boiler explosions which were causing such mortality in Hartford as elsewhere were due largely to man's careless familiarity with the great giant, Steam. Young men like E. K. Root, F. A. Pratt, Amos W. Whitney, E. M. Reed, Charles F. Howard and J. M. Allen, with Prof. C. B. Rich- ards of Yale as a helper, had formed the Polytechnic Club in 1857, the one thought being the study of causes and prevention, not insurance. From that earnest beginning of students not in- surance men, looking deeply into the principles of prevention, de-
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THE TRAVELERS INSURANCE COMPANY
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veloped with the aid of local insurance genius that which has overcome the terror which threatened to limit the value of steam to mankind. The outcome, delayed by the war, was the Hart- ford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, for whose scientific guidance employers of the giant have been glad to pay liberally. Hence the business ranks as insurance of a most valuable type in the progress of civilization. The first directors were Henry Kellogg of insurance experience; R. W. H. Jarvis who was to be one of the strong men at Colt's; Frank W. Cheney, head of Cheney Brothers' silk industry; and others more concerned in the harnessing of steam than in insurance as hith- erto popularly conceived-J. A. Butler, C. M. Beach, J. B. Bunce, Daniel Phillips, G. M. Bartholomew, J. G. Batterson, Marshall Jewell, E. M. Reed, and several from other cities, for the interest naturally was nation wide. And Jeremiah M. Allen, of whom one reads much in Hartford history, was chosen president. As he could not accept at once Enoch C. Roberts was called to the position. Disaster impended through the failure of the employ- ers of steam to grasp immediately the scientific idea, and in 1867 Mr. Allen was prevailed upon to return from New York to take up the difficult task of chief executive. The company continued to occupy only one small room, but the thoroughness of its in- spection service was saving it from losses, state insurance de- partments were enthusiastic and in 1869 began the continuous period of dividends not less than 10 per cent.
The disaster of the Chicago fire in 1871 has been reviewed and the fall of the State Mutual, to be followed by the strong Orient of today with its affiliations. Likewise mention has been made of the beginnings of the Connecticut General Life Insur- ance Company in 1866 whose first directors were J. M. Niles, E. W. Parsons, T. W. Russell, E. K. Kellogg, G. D. Jewett, J. G. Batterson, C. M. Pond, Leverett Brainard, W. G. Allen, F. B. Cooley, C. F. Webster, H. J. Johnson, and representatives from Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Baltimore and Boston. Mr. Par- sons succeeded Mr. Niles as temporary president, Mr. Russell being secretary.
In this connection should be mentioned P. Henry Woodward (1833-1917), quiet, unassuming-one of the city's best history- builders. His birthplace was Franklin. Graduated at Yale in 1855 and studying law, he came here in editorial capacity on the
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Courant during the war. In 1865 for what in itself was a life achievement, he accepted an appointment in the postal service at Washington. The first year he helped reconstruct the railway branch of the service in the southwest and in 1874 became chief of another branch, retiring about the time Grant dismissed Sec- retary of the Treasury Bristow and the postmaster general. Thomas L. James, Garfield's postmaster-general, recalled him to take charge of the investigation of the Star Route frauds which resulted in the saving of millions of dollars. With the change of administration in 1885, he returned to Hartford where he found opportunity to exercise his genius for research by com- piling, in conjunction with the Board of Trade of which he was made secretary, a history of Hartford's enterprises and institu- tions. Among his subsequent publications was, in 1897, the first complete detailed history of insurance in the state. In 1899 he began as vice president to give of his superior knowledge of finance to the Connecticut General and continued in office till his death. The company since has had the benefit of the genius of his son, Charles G. Woodward, along similar lines.
"Accident" was the feature in name and scope of the Hart- ford Life when chartered in 1866. In two years it was changed to include life and then annuity, with little success till 1880 when H. P. Duclos of Vermont had devised his system of assessmentism with safety-fund feature. At that time, however, assessment- ism was being legislated against, territory was cut down, and after changes in administration and ownership, the life part of the business was sold to J. G. Hoyt of Cincinnati, to become a part of the Missouri State Life. The assessment feature has to be continued here, without new business, till such time as the amount at risk shall drop to the point where the safety funds (one for men and one for women) can be divided among sur- vivors according to the provisions of the charter.
The state insurance department, created in 1865, was not established till Dr. George S. Miller of Enfield (later superin- tendent of agencies in the Phoenix Mutual Life) was appointed commissioner and John M. Holcomb (later president of the Phoenix Mutual Life) actuary.
HARTFORD STEAM BOILER INSPECTION & INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD
XXVIII
NOOK FARM "LITERARY COLONY"
MRS. STOWE AND "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN"-MR. WARNER, MARK TWAIN, WILLIAM GILLETTE AND OTHERS-FIRST TELEPHONE AND AIR CRAFT-MEMORABLE BATTLE-FLAG DAY-SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE.
To furnish a review of the works of the Hartford Literary Colony is not within the scope of county history. Something of the atmosphere and effect does, however, belong to the study of the life of the Constitution Towns. There is in these pages occasional reference to "Nook Farm," for comparison with which there is nothing in New England except the quite differ- ent "Brook Farm" of Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau and their friends. Nook Farm dates from Constitution days when it was part of an apportionment, as "the nook," to Governor Haynes, it taking its name from the nook caused by the winding of Little River between present Farmington Avenue and Laurel Street. The hundred acres between Imlay Street and this river was bought of W. H. Imlay by John Hooker and Francis Gillette in 1853 for their home lots and farms. Hooker was a lineal de- scendant of the founder; Gillette, whose senatorship has been mentioned, was a descendant of settlers of Bloomfield where he had a unique home of rough stone and where he had won a name as an abolitionist which had caused him to be drafted three times for candidate for governor on the Free Soil ticket. In these fields and woods, each built a residence of architectural design which has held its own through the years, Hooker's of brick on the lane now Forest Street, near Hawthorn; Gillette to the northwest, west of the lane and on a wooded bluff overlooking the stream. Mr. Gillette's wife was Mr. Hooker's sister.
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