USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 36
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Making a trip to England in 1877, he placed the first large order for bicycles and his active mind had conceived the plan which was to result in the Pope Manufacturing Company. The following spring he gave the Weed Manufacturing Company the first order for the manufacture of wheels, and George H. Day became affiliated with that concern which still had the class of workingmen that had brought prestige during the flowery days of the Weed sewing machine. Under the influence of the bicycles the value of the stock sped up from $5 to $75 in 1885 and reor- ganization became necessary. With Mr. Day as president, capi-
tal was reduced from $600,000 to $240,000 by making par $10 instead of $25. In 1890 Colonel Pope bought that company, pay- ing $15 a share for it. He was the owner of the patents for the Columbia bicycle which continued the favorite machine, with the company's "Hartford" next, through the days when men, women and children were riding. More buildings and a fine office had to be erected on Capitol Avenue, branches were established and in 1890, the Hartford Cycle Company was formed as a derivative. The introduction of low wheel, the rubber tires and soon the pneumatic tires and then the chainless wheel aroused more and more public furor. Capital was increased several times. Need-
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COLONEL ALBERT A. POPE (1843-1909) Pioneer in bicycle and automobile industries and building good roads
AT PINTO BANKING COMPANY ..
HIRAM PERCY MAXIM (ON THE CURB) AND HIS FIRST COMPLETED CAR, 1898 Photographed near the corner of Main and Pearl Streets, Hartford. He first ran a vehicle propelled by gasoline in 1895
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ing tubes, the colonel built the Pope Tube Works; needing rubber he took the Hartford Rubber Works.
When the coming automobile cast its shadow before, he was quick to detect it, along with Mr. Day. Electrics were the first consideration and the elaborate plant of the Columbia Electric Vehicle Company at the corner of Park and Laurel streets (now Billings & Spencer) told of the determination to lead in this industry. There were problems in financing. The bicycle busi- ness went to the American Bicycle Company. Subsequently, when that concern was about to collapse, he bought its stock and formed the new Pope Manufacturing Company for the manu- facture of both bicycles and automobiles.
Meanwhile Hiram Percy Maxim, then an engineer in the Thomson-Houston Electric Company at Lynn, Massachusetts, had visited Hartford to get tubing for an experiment with an engine run by the new thing, liquid gas, the engine to be attached to a tricycle. Mr. Day was especially interested and had Maxim come here for his experiments. A few weeks later, in September, 1895, Mr. Maxim astonished and amused the public by appearing on Park Street with the first practical gasolene car of which there is authentic record in America. There had been reasonably en- couraging experiments in foreign lands and doubtless some in this country, but no inventor had knowledge of the others' doings, and since Dr. Apollos Kinsley ran his steam car on Main Street in 1797-following in the footsteps of Nathan Read, also of Hart- ford, ten years earlier,-and since Christopher M. Spencer was annoying the farmers hereabouts with his roaring steam car along the highways in the early '60s, it is not of record that there had been such an innovation as this gas car. "It was a three- cylinder, four-cycle engine," says Mr. Maxim,-"no brake, no reverse, and the carburetor a nightmare. Fortunately there were jounces enough to keep the engine from stalling." In an- other year the car was running to New York and Boston and the great Pope Hartford, of which some are in service today, was born. "Those first miles," Mr. Maxim declares, "were filled with adventure and the spirit of conquest." His father, Sir Hiram S. Maxim, had been the first to make the airplane fly, in England in 1890.
Could the promoters have had their way, Hartford might
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have been the Detroit of today, but much ready capital was needed and there was more that was idle in the vicinity of Detroit. The days of the colonel's products at other plants, in addition to the Pope Hartford-cars like the Pope Toledo of Toledo, the Pope Tribune of Hagerstown, Pennsylvania, and the Pope Waverly of Indianapolis,-are conspicuous in the annals of the automobile. But the early days of the automobile industry in America were feverish; some reviewers maintain that the rivalry to improve on the foreign models and adapt them to the rougher and longer roads of America was too strenuous though the final outcome was meritorious.
The Pope Manufacturing Company had a capital $22,500,000 when in 1904 the Pope Motor Company was organized, $1,000,000 capital, with the colonel as president, his son Albert L. Pope as vice president and Col. George Pope as treasurer. Of the parent company Albert L. Pope was first vice president, Col. George Pope treasurer and C. E. Walker and Wilbur Walker second vice president and secretary respectively. After four years the mo- tor company's name disappeared from the Hartford records and in 1916 the record of the main company read: "George Pope, re- ceiver." This was due largely to the attitude of outside stock- holders and also to the fact that western competition in com- pleted cars was becoming keen. There was a somewhat similar story in Springfield and Bridgeport, and New England was to learn that her share in the new industry would be the furnishing of "automotive parts," in which ingenious Hartford continued to excel. The Westfield bicycle plant-formerly the Lozier-went at a low figure and was built up to its present capacity by the Walkers. The main Hartford plant went to the neighboring Pratt & Whitney Company and was to know few days of idleness.
With all his activities, Col. A. A. Pope made time for promot- ing the cause of good roads, arousing the legislatures and Con- gress. While his home was near Boston, he was in Hartford much of the time and the Pope Park he bestowed will preserve the memory of him as one who gave much thought to the recrea- tion and pleasure of the public as a whole. He died in 1909. Col. George Pope was a cousin of Albert A. Pope. At twenty he was a captain in the famous colored regiment of Colonel Shaw of Massachusetts in the Civil war and a year later was lieutenant- colonel. He came to Hartford in 1890 as president of the Hart-
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ford Cycle Company. After a few years he went to New York but returned and was conspicuous in the work for the new bridge. Four terms, or till his death in 1918, he was president of the National Association of Manufacturers and a worker in the cause of good roads. He won the coveted honor of an election to the Albany Burgess Company.
Fifth in descent from Gen. Israel Putnam, George H. Day was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1851. After the Pope company took over the Weed plant he continued in charge as vice president and general manager and was instrumental in having the head- quarters of the company removed here from Boston in 1894. In 1899 he went into other enterprises and did much to develop the manufacture of automobiles. When the American Bicycle Com- pany combination of concerns was planned and much capital sought, the Pope company joined with the others, Col. Albert L. Pope as manager. On the organization of the Columbia Vehicle Company Mr. Day was made president and general manager. This position he resigned to organize the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, licensed under the patents of George B. Selden who himself had put forth little that was practical but who won his contention that in his patents of 1879 he had covered some of the essential ideas. The Electric Vehicle Company, hold- ing exclusive rights to the patents, sublet them to other companies while the patents were good, and in the days before Henry Ford assumed his attitude. Mr. Day continued for some time as gen- eral manager of the association but in his later days, and until his death in 1903, his time was devoted to his duties as member of the boards of oncoming enterprises like the Underwood. In the presidency of the Electric Vehicle Company he was succeeded by M. J. Budlong.
The Hartford Rubber Works, which continued to grow and is now a chief part of the national organization of the United States Rubber Company with its nearly 20,000 square miles of rubber plantations in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, had been started by John W. Gray, a Hartford rubber merchant, in 1881. Robert W. Thompson of England had patented rubber tires in 1847, and in the early '70s they began to be seen on ex- pensive carriages in this country, but it was only as if they had come to prepare the way for the bicycle and the automobile. Gray's company began making solid tires in 1885. When the
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Hartford Rubber Works Company was incorporated in 1888, its capital was $20,000. The Pope company in 1892 increased the capital to $200,000. There was reorganization as the Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company in 1899 and the first solid motor- tire was made there. From then on it brought out one improved tire after another, enlarging as the fast increasing business re- quired. After its acquisition in 1917 by the United States Rub- ber Company, it was enlarged still more and kept on as the Hart- ford Rubber Works Company, lessee of the United States Rubber Company and with its United States royal cord tire as its chief product. The first use of fabric was suggested and worked out by Charles D. Rice, now of the Underwood Typewriter Company.
OLD RAILROAD ROUNDHOUSE, HARTFORD
Removed to make way for the State Arsenal and Armory, dedicated in 1909
XXXI
ERA OF PARKS
REVIEW OF THE TIMES-PARTICULARLY AS TO POLITICS, BANKING AND TRANSPORTATION-SPLENDID GIFTS FOR NEW SYSTEM OF RECREA- TION GROUNDS-GLIMPSES OF SOCIAL LIFE.
The period which, in lighter vein, is sometimes called in gen- eral history the "Roaring Nineties" found Hartford County still conservative, undisturbed about the future but steadily planning for betterment, especially in assimilating the new groups that were fast coming in. Standards were to be readjusted but an- cient traditions to be so respected that newcomers should adopt them for their own-if the land of Hooker were to be shared with them. They were welcomed and encouraged as home-builders, but the reason for Hartford's being Hartford must be made to appeal to them. If any place in America should impress them with what constitutes free government and how only it can be maintained, this one should.
Local pride was cherished still more effectively and apprecia- tion of high standards was promoted by comradeship or, when called for, Good Samaritanism. Parks, transportation, local government, social affiliations, churches, schools, humanitarian endeavor, worked together, under the inspiration of men and women who were building well.
A gratifying incident in 1891 was an exchange of courtesies with England's old Hertford itself. As earlier related, Hartford was Hertford's namesake. Hertford had been the home of Rev. Samuel Stone and he had attended church at the ancient St. An- drew's Hall Church. That church was now raising a fund for building St. Nicholas Hall in the parish. Rev. Dr. Walker of the Hooker and Stone church, the First Church, heard of it and secured a good contribution to send across the water, while local industries participated in the bazaar which was held. In his address at the formal exercises, United States Minister Robert Lincoln referred to Samuel Stone and his coming to America and said of Hartford that it was one of the most prosperous towns in
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the United States and was remarkable in this respect that its in- fluence was greater all over America than that of any town ten times its size. The old bond between the borough of Hertford and this capital was formally renewed on this occasion and, as will be seen, was to be made still stronger in 1914.
Hartford's influence in the nation, to which Mr. Lincoln had made reference, was being thrown on the side of greater stability and equanimity.
The federal treasury was low and the action of the second Cleveland administration in selling government bonds to strengthen the gold reserve was causing the voice of the West to be heard in its first challenge to the will of the East. This the first cry, wafted across the Mississippi from where Mr. Bryan was entering into politics, was for free coinage of silver. Here- abouts the need of better financial reurn for agricultural prod- ucts was bringing farmers together in more and stronger asso- ciations for studying the problems. There were the energetic State Grange with its branches in every farming town and the Dairymen's Association, and in 1891 the Farmers League held its first annual meeting at the Capitol with George F. Chapin of Enfield as secretary and H. H. Austin of Suffield, Hartford County's representative on the executive committee. Its purpose was to take a more radical position than that of the grange; the members demanded oleomargarine legislation, the transfer of federal fund from the scientific department of Yale to Storrs School and that senators be elected by electoral boards, as in the case of the President. The days of legislative panaceas for sun- dry ills were coming on, tramps were trudging the highways; Coxey's Army was forming for its march out of the West for Washington. But Thompsonville was being made a port of de- livery and, like most of the East, Hartford County was not losing its industrial impetus.
The free-coinage bogey-the ratio of 16 of silver to 1 of gold- was to be given battle power under Bryan at the democratic na- tional convention in 1896, but the spirit of New England was to be well exemplified on October 31 of that year when, under the marshalship of Gen. William B. Franklin with a staff made up of the foremost citizens, the streets of Hartford were filled with marching men from every shop, office and hillside, called forth by the ringing editorials of a united press, all without regard to
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political faith. The "Boy Orator of the Platte," with his "cross of gold" went down, and Maj. William McKinley came in as President. The county stood 24,489 for Mckinley to 9,726 for Bryan-in a corresponding vote of 110,285 and 56,740 in the state. Hartford was to be represented in official Washington by John Addison Porter, editor of the Hartford Post, as private secretary to the President.
Within the state Capitol during this decade the corrupt-prac- tice and anti-lobby laws were enacted, the first good-roads bill was passed, and registration, examination and licensing of doc- tors was made compulsory. The constitutional amendment to increase the number of senatorial districts from twenty-four to thirty-seven was defeated, but the seeds were sown for the con- stitutional convention of 1902.
The Law and Order League, paid for by subscriptions and from a little income for detective work, under the secretaryship of S. P. Thrasher, was emphasizing the need of something more than local constabulary but was not in full approbation among those who felt that their power was not well established. The outcome, in 1899, was the formation of the state police, beginning with two officers and eight men, Thomas F. Egan as superin- tendent.
When Luzon B. Morris of New Haven, who had been declared governor by the Senate but not by the court, had triumphed at the polls in 1892, the Hubbard Escort was in its full glory. It had been formed by Hartford democrats in the days of Governor Hubbard and long continued as a political and social organiza- tion. Its annual dinners brought together the leaders of the party in the state, and republicans as well as democrats listened (or read) with respect. Governor Morris was succeeded by O. Vincent Coffin, republican, a Middletown banker, in 1895 and he by Lorrin A. Cook, of same faith, a Winsted manufacturer, in 1897. All of these were men of sound financial judgment which perhaps was what was most needed in the changing times of the visionary and uncertain. Ernest Cady of Hartford held the office of lieutenant governor when Mr. Morris was chief execu- tive, and Joseph L. Barbour was speaker of the House in 1897.
Speaker Barbour (1846-1915) had added to his prestige of wit and forensic skill by the phenomenal feat of carrying every ward in Hartford and with the largest plurality ever given. Born
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in Barkhamsted in 1846, he had made his way in the world. After finishing his studies at Williston Seminary, he taught school (in Meriden) and came to Hartford in 1867 as night editor of the Hartford Post, then owned by David Clark. When Isaac Brom- ley, later of New York Tribune fame, bought that paper and was the editor, Mr. Barbour was the associate editor, a pair of ex- ceptional humorists. Entering his brother's office in New Britain, he forsook the press for the bar in 1877, soon had run the clerkships of the Legislature and had been prosecutor in the police court. Of his stuttering he made a virtue; in his public speeches there was no trace of it and he everywhere was in de- mand. To prevent possible interruption of orderly thought in his office, he caused the chairs for his visitors to be fastened to the floor.
The representative in Congress from this district in 1891 was William E. Simonds (1842-1903) who was born in Collinsville, of ancient English ancestry, and was graduated at the New Britain Normal School. In the Civil war he was a lietenant in the Twenty-fifth C. V., promoted for bravery. He made patent law his specialty after graduating at Yale Law School in 1865 and in 1891 had become United States patent commissioner. Sev- eral of his books on patents were recognized as standard works. The one year he was a member of the Legislature he was speaker of the House. In Congress he aided in the passage of the first international copyright law.
Mr. Simonds' successor in Congress was Lewis Sperry (1848- 1922) who served two terms and refused to run again. Descend- ant of an agent of the Earl of Warwick and one of the New Haven colonists, his ancestors migrated to what is now East Windsor Hill, of which Mr. Sperry's beautiful farm home was one of the distinctive features. His class at Amherst was '73. He began his law practice in the office of Waldo, Hyde & Hubbard, and formed partnership with Lieutenant-Governor George G. Sill in 1876. He was representative from South Windsor that year. When the office of county coroner was created in 1883 he was the first in the county to hold it and he continued in that capacity till elected to Congress. In the House he was one of the sixteen democrats who opposed the Wilson tariff bill-in which course he was applauded by the democratic Hartford Times. When he re- turned to his practice he formed partnership with George P. Mc-
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Lean, now United States senator, and Austin Brainard. In his later years he practiced alone and for many years was counsel for the Aetna Life and also for the bridge commission, of which he was a member. In the Constitutional Convention he played a prominent part and after the new draft had been rejected at the polls he made a codification of the 1818 Constitution, embracing all amendments. This in turn went through the regular course but was not accepted by the people.
Of special interest in the politics of the time was the reelection of General Hawley as United States senator in 1899. The term "Old War Horse" applied well to this veteran of war and political campaigns. He had held high position in the Senate since he first appeared there in 1881. Connecticut was appreciative of the worth of long service in that body, but more than that, it loved the rugged, out-spoken man. He was a friend with everybody except those whose principles he mistrusted or who politically opposed him and his supporters. He was on in years but still a hard worker as his record in the recent war times had shown. At this session of the Legislature two candidates appeared in the field against him. One was former Governor Bulkeley, the other Samuel Fessenden of Stamford-a third veteran of the Civil war, a member of the Republican National Committee, speaker of the House in 1895, state's attorney and deservedly popular. It was he who orginated the phase, "God Almighty hates a quitter." Hawley was within one vote of winning on the first ballot. On the seventh, Bulkeley threw his strength to him and he was elected. Bulkeley's turn came six years later, just before the general's death. But much was to transpire before those days.
The mayors of the century's final decade were: Henry C. Dwight, 1890, William Waldo Hyde, 1892, Leverett Brainard, 1894, and Miles B. Preston, 1896 and 1898. Town and city gov- ernments were consolidated in 1895 and the city was extended to the town limits. Wires were ordered put under ground, sewage disposal and systems were being discussed everywhere, the first real building ordinance was passed and asphalt pavement was laid on Main Street, the completion of which was celebrated with a grand bicycle parade in October, 1896. In the high school, in 1895 Principal Douglas' resignation was accepted and Edward H. Smiley was named to succeed him.
Financially, banking institutions which from 1800 had been
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the backbone of local enterprise were changing to meet the new requirements, with never a thought, however, of the tremendous changes that were to be necessitated at the end of only one more generation. To particularize for 1891: The Aetna National, 1857, capital $525,000, A. G. Loomis president; the American National, 1852, $600,000, Rowland Swift president; the Charter Oak National, 1853, J. F. Morris president; the City Bank, 1851, $440,000, Gustavus F. Davis, president; the Connecticut River Banking Company, 1825, $250,000, Samuel E. Elmore, president; the Farmers and Mechanics, 1833, John G. Root president; the First National, 1857, $650,000, J. H. Knight president; the Hart- ford National, 1792, $1,200,000, James Bolter president; the Mercantile National, 1854, $500,000, James B. Powell president; the National Exchange, 1834, $500,000, John R. Redfield presi- dent; the Phoenix National, 1814, Henry R. Redfield president; the State Bank, 1849, $400,000, George F. Hills president; the United States Bank, 1872, $100,000, Henry L. Bunce president; the Connecticut Trust and Safe Deposit Company, 1871, M. H. Whaples president; the Hartford Trust Company, 1868, $300,- 000, Ralph W. Cutler president; the Fidelity Company, $50,000, Edmund A. Stedman president; the Security Company, $200,000, Robert E. Day president; the Loan and Guaranty Company, $100,000, William L. Matson president; and the savings banks- the Hartford Dime, 1870, Alfred E. Burr president; Mechanics, 1861, Ward W. Jacobs president; Society for Savings, 1819, John C. Parsons president, and the State, 1858, Gustavus F. Davis president. The total of savings banks deposits was $21,250,000.
The Hartford & Wethersfield Horse Railroad Company was being encouraged by the producers of electricity (the Hartford Electric Light and Power Company and the Hartford Electric Light Company were consolidated under the latter name in 1896) to try trolleys, success of which was being attested in one or two other communities. In 1892 trolleys were actually running from the car barns on Wethersfield Avenue to Wethersfield and the plan was put through for electrification of a line from East Hart- ford Church to Glastonbury. The people celebrated, yet some felt that the wires were a source of great peril. And most in- auspiciously, the end of a broken wire in the street near the church caused the death of one man through delay in getting the power turned off. The privilege of running even horse cars
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across the Connecticut River bridge was long a subject of heated discussion but was finally granted while the temporary structure was in use. Thus one could ride from City Hall to Glastonbury in an hour for 15 cents. The company finally built its own power house, below State Street, and has maintained it till 1928.
It was not long before Hartford was the center of a network of trolley lines with two lines to Springfield. Most of these were separate and independent lines and merchants in Hartford found their business increasing fifty-fold. By what was known as the "Tucker grant," the Hartford company had to pay into the city treasury 2 per cent of its income perpetually for the privilege of using the streets, in addition to maintaining the pavement between rails, refusal to comply with which agreement recently caused litigation and a victory for the city in the Supreme Court. The stock of most of the companies was quoted at high figures at the time New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, during the administration of President Mellon, acquired the main part of them in common with the other lines around the state, and they became the Connecticut Company. Today the management is in the hands of federal trustees appointed at the time when the widely consolidated interests of the railroad were un-consolidated by action of the government. The service now is supplemented and widened by electric buses.
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