USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 32
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Cemetery needs had received no further attention than that which has been recorded till 1864 when Cedar Hill, to become the largest of all of them, was incorporated and during the years to be greatly beautified. It now embraces 300 acres. The stock was bought by the association till in 1897 the whole ownership was in the lot-owners. Northam Memorial Chapel, with bell in the west gable, was built in 1882 by Mrs. Charles H. Northam in memory of her husband who had bequeathed $30,000, increased by $10,000 by Mrs. Northam. The Gallup memorial gateway, built in 1889, was given by Mrs. Julia N. Gallup of Plainfield and Hartford who died in 1884. She also gave the memorial window in the waiting room.
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In the war cycle and following, first steps were being taken in industries which were to figure largely in subsequent history. The great Pratt & Whitney concern of today was started in 1861 on $1,000 savings of two mechanics trained at Colt's. Francis A. Pratt (1827-1902), a native of Woodstock, began at Colt's in 1858 and was made superintendent of the Phoenix Iron Works. Amos Whitney, mentioned elsewhere, went with him. Their own concern they started in a car shop. The first of their large build- ings on Capitol Avenue was built in 1865. Prescott, Plimpton & Company began making envelopes by patent process in that year. Linus B. Plimpton (1830-1904) incorporated in 1873 the present Plimpton Manufacturing Company, for turning out sta- tionery and books in addition to envelopes. Horace J. Wickham, coming as an apprentice, devised machinery which brought the concern into a fair monopoly of the envelope business, so that it
HARTFORD CLUB, PROSPECT STREET, HARTFORD
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BATTLE FLAGS AND GOVERNOR BUCKINGHAM STATUE IN THE CAPITOL, HARTFORD
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long held the government contract in competition with other con- cerns. The Hartford Manufacturing Company was organized by the Plimpton concern and the Morgan concern of Springfield as a branch to take care of the government work, the United States Stamped Envelope Works being merged with it. The capacity was 5,000,000 envelopes a day. The paper trust neces- sitated other changes and meeting all competition the Plimpton Manufacturing Company in 1908 became a division of the United States Envelope Company while enlarging its own special busi- ness. Mr. Plimpton served in the state Senate and as delegate to the republican convention in 1900. Maro S. Chapman, promi- nent in Manchester history and president of the City Bank, was closely associated with Mr. Plimpton and became vice president of the concern.
Other concerns were acquiring wide repute. The Smyth Manufacturing Company was formed in 1879 by George Wells Root and others, the company paying Mr. Root and Orianna Smyth for their patent which had revolutionized the binding of books. The Sigourney Tool Company, of which Mr. Root was proprietor, made the machines, and under the direction of John R. Reynolds improvements were perfected along with machinery for other features of binding. The two companies combined have occupied their plant on Sigourney Street since 1898. The Bil- lings & Spencer drop-forging plant, to become the largest in the United States, was conceived in 1869 by Charles E. Billings (1835-1920) in company with C. M. Spencer of rifle fame. There was a large plant in Canada besides those here and at Rocky Hill. The former plant of the Columbia Vehicle Company on Park Street is now the home of the concern. Mr. Billings was also prominent in banking and rendered conspicuous public service. The Hartford Machine Screw Company dates from 1876 when it began the manufacture of screws with the wonderful labor- saving machinery invented by C. M. Spencer. It was established by Mr. Spencer and George Fairfield. The William Rogers Man- ufacturing Company was organized in 1865. Under Bryan Ed- ward Hooker, sixth in descent from the founder, the Broad Brook Company, woollens, was enjoying a period of great pros- perity. Pliny Jewell, head of the P. Jewell & Sons leather-belt industry to which reference has been made, died in 1869 at a period of great activity in his business. His son, Lyman B.
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Jewell, continuing the concern, lived to be ninety, dying in 1917. The Hartford Carpet Company of Enfield, which always has re- tained its high position, was under the presidency of George Rob- erts (1810-1878) who was an East Hartford man by birth and held the office of president thirty-two years.
Names prominent in banking included: Gustavus F. Davis (1818-1896), president of the City Bank and of the State Sav- ings Bank, vice president of the Travelers and also president of the Hartford Dispensary; Charles H. Brainard (1813-1889), president of the State Bank who acquired a large amount of real estate, built the finest house in town on Capitol Avenue (now Mount Sinai Hospital) and lost heavily; Robert E. Day (1829- 1894), president of the Security Company from its formation in 1876 till his death.
Roland Mather (1809-1897), descendant of Rev. Richard Mather, who came over in 1635, was born in Westfield, Mass., and removed to Hartford in 1828. The commission house of Howe (Edmund G.), Mather & Company became Mather, Morgan (Junius S.) & Company. Mr. Morgan went to Boston but the firm continued till Mr. Howe's death in 1873. Mr. Mather re- tired at the age of forty-two to give his attention to his private business and to his duties as director in many corporations. In 1838 he was major of the Governor's Foot Guard. His interest in philanthropic institutions was marked by his $500,000 in gifts while living and his bequests in his will. The estate was the larg- est that ever had been probated in this district.
Hon. Dwight Loomis (1821-1903), born in Columbia, gradu- ate of Yale in 1847 and Rockville's first lawyer, came here (after the war and after having completed his term in Congress), serv- ing as judge of the Superior Court. He was appointed to the Supreme Court and continued till he reached the age limit in 1891. Yale gave him a LL. D. David S. Calhoun (1827-1912), who long had been judge of probate in Manchester, came to Hart- ford in 1870 and for twenty years was judge of the Court of Common Pleas. On retiring he had an office with his son, J. Gil- bert Calhoun.
One whose counsel often had been sought during the stormy days was H. K. W. Welch (1821-1870), who stood high in the legal profession. He was born in Mansfield, the son of Dr. Archi-
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RESIDENCE OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, HARTFORD
MUSIC ROOM IN RESIDENCE OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, HARTFORD Portrait of Mr. Warner, wearing fez, on the wall
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bald Welch. He began practice here in 1850 and was a partner of Hon. Nathaniel Shipman.
Willis I. Twitchell (1852-1914), a native of New Haven, Vt., and a graduate of Middlebury College, had been four years prin- cipal of the Windsor High School when he came here in 1883 as principal of the Arsenal District School; in 1901 he succeeded Esther C. Perry as principal of the West Middle District, in- cluding the Noah Webster School. He was president of the Wat- kinson Farm School and among his writings was "The Pathfinder of American History," in collaboration with Wilbur F. Gordy. John W. Stedman (1820-1896), born in Enfield, was president of the Connecticut Historical Society for many years, secretary and treasurer of the State Savings Bank, bank commissioner (while living in Norwich) and insurance commissioner in 1874. Dr. Harmon G. Howe (1850-1913) began practice here in 1875; he was president of the city and the county medical societies and gave much of his time for the hospital and the Hartford Retreat. Monsignor Thomas S. Preston (1824-1891), born in Hartford and graduated at Trinity in 1843, left the ministry of the Epis- copal Church to join the Catholic, in which he became very promi- nent, being prelate of the Pope's household in 1873.
Names still familiar in leading lines of business include those of the following: Philemon F. Robbins (1807-1890), born in Rocky Hill, for over fifty years was head of Robbins & Wingate, cabinet-makers, and when he retired this and the furniture busi- ness was carried on by his sons. George P. Chandler (1844- 1922) came with the drug firm of Lee, Sisson & Company in 1865, one of the oldest and largest drug concerns in the state, Thomas Sisson (mentioned elsewhere) being head of it. When Mr. Sisson died in 1900 Mr. Chandler succeeded him and the name became the Sisson Drug Company; he in turn was suc- ceeded by his son, George A. Chandler-continuously at one loca- tion on Main Street. George W. Moore (1823-1889) was one of the earliest dealers in western mortgage loans, with his son James B. Moore and James H. Tallman who continued the business after his death, and it continues today. He was a director in many of the city's institutions and was largely instrumental in making Cedar Hill Cemetery what it is. A. A. Olds (1852- 1925) began for himself in the furnace and fertilizer business in 1877 with Frank H. Whipple, in succession to the firm of Allen'
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& Willard. Mr. Olds, with residence in Windsor, was one of the pioneers in the development of shade-grown tobacco. Frank S. Brown came here from Boston in 1866. With James M. Thom- son and William McWhirter, two Scotch business men, the firm of Brown, Thomson & McWhirter was formed which acquired the so-called Cheney Building erected in 1877. Mr. McWhirter retired in 1878, Mr. Brown in 1892 and Mr. Thomson in 1896, their successors being George A. Gay, William Campbell and Harry B. Strong, under the present name of Brown, Thomson & Company, drygoods and department store. The store of Moses Fox, started in 1847-for many years now G. Fox & Company- was also moving rapidly to its present position, despite serious fires, as a department store. W. H. Bulkeley was keeping the Bee Hive in the public mind. George O. Sawyer, Civil war vet- eran, came from Maine in 1869 and eventually built a building at the northeast corner of Main and Asylum streets to house his store for the years it continued. Isidore Wise meanwhile was developing the large establishment which bears his name and has taken over much property on Main and Pratt streets.
CLARA CLEMENS GABRI- LOWITSCH Singer. Daughter of Mark Twain
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WILLIAM GILLETTE Actor, playwright and novelist
XXIX
BEGINNING OF SIXTH HALF-CENTURY
FOUNDATIONS FOR A GREATER FUTURE-HONORING THE SOLDIERS- LEADERS IN NEW ACTIVITIES-CHINESE STUDENTS-WELFARE IN- STITUTIONS.
Town and county entered upon the last half of the third cen- tury with restfulness following the storms of the national recon- struction era, inflation and speculation. Conditions at last had reached normalcy after the Civil war, specie payment had been resumed, a new generation was coming on to succeed that made restless by the war, and the western plains were being opened for those who felt the urge of adventure. Agriculture not yet had begun to feel the pull of western competition, industry was enjoy- ing an impetus with inventions, many of them in Hartford shops, and the comforts of peace and unfeverish progress were in evidence.
The state fairs in the fall at Charter Oak Park, once Zeph- aniah Bunce's farm, were more worth while; Washington Street was the scene of a continual carnival during the sleighing season with "Earle," "Lady Scud," "Glencoe," and a score of their mates, driven by such proud owners as H. A. Redfield, Henry Keney, William H. Bulkeley, Ludlow Barker, Henry Hitchcock, Charles R. Hart and R. G. Watrous, and, mounted on bicycles, people of all classes and ages were getting out into the open. J. H. Hale's peach orchards in Glastonbury were developing into the finest in this section; the dam of the Holyoke Water Power Company, dat- ing from 1870 and representing much Hartford capital, was to be replaced at enormous expense ; Colonel Pope was improving the bicycle and calling for better roads; the Legislature was meeting only every other year and always in Hartford; the new county building on Trumbull Street was going up at a cost of $170,000 and with provision for a large law library for the Hartford Bar Association, which dated from 1795, and the new post office was lifting its somewhat ungainly form on the neglected State House Square. It truthfully could be said of the Government structure
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that it was greatly needed. It came to its slow completion in 1882. Like the railroad roundhouse near the Capitol, built soon after, it was purpose, not ornament that people had to consider. The Roman classic fence around the State House grounds, ordered by the Legislature in 1834, was removed to the Old People's Home on Jefferson Street and traveled thence to the West Middle school grounds which it still adorns with its iron fasces.
Recent experiences, nation-wide, developed such practical- mindedness as this, and yet art was giving new evidence that it had not been smothered. Indeed commercial and industrial pros- perity, as ever, was contributing to art, education and religious and charitable institutions and aiding in the progress of human- ity. The Hartford Art Society, organized in 1877 as the Society of Decorative Art, was incorporated in 1886 and connection es- tablished with the Atheneum-"heir to the ideas of Daniel Wads- worth." Members were privileged to study the old pictures, the society assuming expense of heating and care. Mary D. Ely, one of the founders, was president till 1891 when her strength failed, but long before her death in 1902 she had the pleasure of seeing her hopes realized. By the encouragement of that society, many were to go forth to attain prominence in the world of art, here and abroad. The Keney scholarship was increased by gifts from other friends, and selected pupils were sent to such institutions as the art school of the Boston Museum. Then the Paige traveling schol- arships enabled pupils to go to European art centers. The exhi- bitions were of value to the community, especially, as will be seen, with the developments which have come in these later days.
Among the names that linked this period of art with that of the past was that of Frederick E. Church, born on Temple Street in 1826, one of America's greatest landscape painters for all time. He owed his career to Daniel Wadsworth and the Atheneum, in which institution is an historic specimen of his earliest work, "Hooker's Journey," along with others of later days but none that satisfied him. He was wont to try to buy something worthy to send here but, as he told Charles Dudley Warner who fre- quently was his traveling companion, he always was outbid, much more being given for his pictures than he ever got himself. His greatest picture, "Niagara," which was the admiration of both continents, brought $12,500 at a sale in Paris when the canvases of the most famous Frenchmen brought little more than half that.
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He began drawing with Benjamin Coe and water colors with A. H. Emmons. Mr. Wadsworth noticed him at his work in the Atheneum and persuaded Thomas Cole of New York, the "father of painting," to teach him. He was Cole's first pupil. Church's preference was for the grand and the transcribing of atmosphere. Honored abroad as at home, he traveled extensively for his sub- jects, and his last days, in 1900, at his beautiful home in the Cats- kills, were full of joy. So desirous was he that his native town should have something worth while to remember him by that he sold to Timothy Allyn at a comparatively low price what he con- sidered his masterpiece, "Jerusalem."
Dwight W. Tryon was another native, born in 1849 and living till 1925. As a clerk at Brown & Gross's bookstore, he earned the money to go abroad to study art-contrary to the advice of his friend, Mark Twain. He won many notable prizes and was a member of several societies. For thirty-three years he was head of the art department at Smith College.
T. Sedgwick Steele, descendant of a Hartford founder, was still doing fine work, continuing till his death in 1903. He also found many of his subjects in foreign lands. N. A. Moore, of Kensington, was delighting with his landscapes. D. F. Went- worth was beginning to win the applause which still is his today. Gurdon Trumbull, Jr., was specializing in game fish, for which he had no superior. William R. Wheeler (1829-1893) was paint- ing governors' portraits. Frederick S. Jewett had been a mem- ber of the city's first park board, helping in the layout of Bush- nell Park; from his brush came charming productions. Hartford is proud of its examples of the skill of the sculptor, Olin Levi Warner (1844-1896), who was a native of West Suffield; the statue of Governor Buckingham in the Capitol is one of them. He had gained national fame and was engaged in designing bronze doors for the Congressional Library in 1896 when he died as the result of an accident. Carl Gerhardt had won the honor of de- signing the soldiers' monument at Utica, N. Y., of which George Keller was the architect, and the prophecies of his friends were fulfilled. Bunce, Flagg and others were entering upon careers which bring them more appropriately into a little later period.
Other sons were bringing credit in fields no other Hartford sons had trodden. Two of them are far from being through bringing it. The slightly elder of them is William Gillette who
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now has his castle-like home on the high cliff (the "Seventh Sis- ter") at Hadlyme, overlooking the Connecticut. Mention has been made of his work, in the Nook Farm section. In these later days he turns to novel-writing.
Otis Skinner, born in 1858, three years after Gillette, is a clergyman's son and came to Hartford with his parents while yet a young school boy. His first stage was in the basement of the Universalist Church of which his father was pastor. He made his public debut in Allyn Hall as second in the cast of "The Dead Shot," played for charity in 1877, in the fall of which year he appeared as "Jim, an old negro," in the cast of "Woodleigh," by the Philadelphia Museum Company. What he has been since, for half a century, the world knows well. Lew Clapp ("Lew Dock- stader") was a leader among those who made minstrel entertain- ments an actual boon for the "tired business man." And Lew never forgot his old Hartford associates. Maude Granger, whose father, Abraham B. Brainard, was a foreman in Pratt & Whit- ney's great plant, comes here to visit her relatives and girlhood friends after her half-century of acting. Lucille Saunders, in the period we are reviewing, was singing in opera in London after winning laurels on this side.
Among the citizens there was more thought of the future than there had been through the previous quarter of a century, more joining in fellowship, more care for the welfare of others, young and old. The Watkinson Farm School was opened in 1881 on Park Street, near the orphan asylum, in which David Watkinson had been greatly interested. Mr. Watkinson's bequest of $60,000 in 1857 had come, by careful management, to equal $200,000. The institution had been chartered as the Watkinson Juvenile Asylum and Farm School in 1858 and since 1864 had received a few boys with the aid of the orphan asylum fund. Now twenty acres of land had been acquired near Park Street and the school formally opened as a training school and home for boys in need of care. Today it has excellent buildings and facilities on the former Prosser farm of 130 acres, at the corner of Albany Avenue and Bloomfield Road where, thanks to the generosity of Rev. Francis Goodwin, in 1895, the Handicraft School in connec- tion with it was established, for the education of a large number of boys in horticulture, floriculture and kindred subjects.
OTIS SKINNER
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To Horia,
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(Copyright 1992 by Byrer, N. Y.)
LEW DOCKSTADER One of the Country's Greatest Minstrels
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The Old People's Home, on Jefferson Street, built with the $50,000 bequest of Charles H. Northam, late president of the hos- pital, was dedicated in 1884.
The Good Will Club, which has made better and happier citi- zens out of at least 25,000 youths since 1880, was preceded by the Dashaway Club, formed in 1860 by Miss Elizabeth Hamersley and others in the Morgan Street Mission School building, and by that club's successor, the Sixth Ward Temperance Society in City Missionary Hawley's night-school building in 1867. The temper- ance society's $1,000 fund went to the public library and its fur- nishings were utilized by the club of 1880. The Good Will Club was inspired and throughout her life, ending in 1927, was guided by Miss Mary Hall, in memory of her brother Ezra Hall. After graduating at Wesleyan Seminary and serving as an instructor in Lasell Seminary, near Boston, Miss Hall studied law and was the first woman in the state to be admitted to practice. The club became her life work. David Clark and A. E. Burr assisted her in making the start. By 1889, the club needing a building of its own, a fund was raised for the purchase of the former Female Seminary building on Pratt Street. Henry and Walter Keney were generous benefactors, and when a still larger building was required in 1910 Henry Keney saw to it that it could be located on the Keney homestead land, so that today it stands on Keney Tower square. The trustees from the beginning have been some of the city's foremost men. Under volunteer instructors the boys have practical courses, a company of cadets, drum corps and orchestra, games of all sorts and gymnastics, and also a "city," governed wholly by themselves.
Miss Hall was a daughter of Gustavus E. Hall, whose home was the once famous inn at Marlborough, in the story of which town will be found an account of it. Of late years, she had pro- vided a camp there for the boys; the inn itself she bequeathed to the Colonial Dames for public use. In her will she left $20,000 for the club. Willie O. Burr, editor of the Times, left $10,000 to the club fund which his father, A. E. Burr, had been instrumental in establishing.
The Veteran Firemen's Association was organized in 1889 and a building provided for it on Arch Street. The Police Mutual Aid Association, dating from 1880, was performing a worthy function; its record of dispensations today is over $85,000. For
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social and beneficent purposes there were coming in the Hart- ford Lodge of the Elks, Wadsworth, Nathan Hale and Parkville lodges of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, B. H. Webb Council of the Royal Arcanum, Capitol Lodge of Sons of St. George, Clan Gordon of the Order of Scottish Clans, Charter Oak Council of United American Mechanics, Hartford Tent of the Maccabees, and the German Aid Society, following chronologi- cally the German Independent Aid Society, three sections, estab- lished in 1875. College graduates were foregathering, the Yale Alumni Association in 1885 and the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association the following year. And of special literary flavor was the Monday Morning Club which since 1888 has been meet- ing at the homes of its members.
The still vivid memory of the Civil war, which a few years pre- viously had found expression in the organizing of Nathaniel Lyon Post No. 2 and of Robert O. Tyler Post No. 50, had been recog- nized by the forming of a Woman's Relief Corps for each of the posts, as No. 2 and No. 6 respectively on the state rolls, with Grif- fin A. Stedman Camp of Sons of Veterans No. 6 soon to follow, and in the early part of the Twentieth Century, Lizbeth A. Tur- ner Tent, Daughters of Veterans, and also the Citizens Corps to assist in Memorial Day exercises.
Such memory found more public expression on Buckingham Day, June 18, 1884, when 30,000 people came from out of town to join the throng. The 7,000 men in line included the veterans, the First Regiment of the Connecticut National Guard, contingents from other regiments, the Governor's Foot Guard and Horse Guard, Putnam Phalanx, and the Seventh Regiment of New York. The occasion was the unveiling of Olin L. Warner's statute of the war governor in the battle-flag corridor of the Capitol, with pres- entation by Speaker Henry B. Harrison, acceptance by Gov. Thomas M. Waller and oration by United States Senator Or- ville H. Platt.
On September 17, 1886, the Memorial Arch at the Trinity Street entrance to Bushnell Park was dedicated. The graceful brown stone structure had been designed by George Keller of Hartford, who that year had won the prize for the design of the President Garfield monument in Cleveland, with sculpture by Casper Buberl and Samuel Kitson. The town had appropriated $60,000 for it. There were more than 5,000 veterans in line, es-
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OLD RAILROAD STATION ON ASYLUM STREET, HARTFORD, 1885
WASHINGTON STREET, HARTFORD, IN THE '90s
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