USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume II > Part 2
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Dr. Edward Beecher Hooker, the son of John Hooker and Isa- bella Beecher, was prominent in Hartford life till his death in 1927. He was born in 1855 and was educated in the public schools and at Boston University, where he was graduated in 1877. His medical courses he took at the College of Physicians and Surgeons
GEORGE H. WARNER
JOHN HOOKER, FOR MANY YEARS REPORTER OF SUPREME COURT, AND HIS WIFE, ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER
On lawn of their residence, corner of Forest and Hawthorn Streets, Hartford, about 1897
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in New York and at the Ecole de Medicin in Paris. In 1879 he married Martha C. Kilbourne and began practice here. He won national recognition as one of the outstanding authorities on homeopathy and for years was head of the Connecticut Homeo- pathic Society. As a leader in the battle against tuberculosis he was president of the local society and directed much of the effort throughout the state. Especially did he concern himself with preventive measures for children. He was active in the First Church and belonged to a number of clubs and patriotic orders. The children who survive him are Vice President Joseph K. Hooker of the Standard Fire Insurance Company, and Isabel, wife of Walter Gordon Merritt of New York.
As has been seen, in the account of the days of the Literary Colony on Nook Farm, Francis Gillette married John Hooker's sister, and their daughter Elisabeth married George H. Warner, the brother of Charles Dudley Warner. Their Nook Farm homes were near together. After the death of Charles, George and his wife left the Gillette homestead for a mountain home Mrs. Warner's brother, William Gillette, had built for himself some years before, near Pinehurst, N. C. Mrs. Warner died in 1915, and Mr. Warner six years later.
Attracted as much, perhaps, by his love for forest trees as by the chats with Mr. Warner on subjects akin to Hartford's park system, Frederick Law Olmsted came to Nook Farm. He was one of Hartford's most remarkable sons, born here in 1822 and dying in this period-1903. Not following his father as a mer- chant, he turned to the intimate study of farms and landscapes at a time when such a calling as landscape gardening was prac- tically unknown in America. It was in 1856, after much observa- tion in England, that he was appointed superintendent of the commission for laying out Central Park in New York. This was the beginning of a wonderful career in many cities, in this call- ing, interrupted only by the years he devoted as secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission throughout the Civil war, to organizing the Southern Famine Relief Commission and the New York Charities Aid Commission. Also he played an im- portant part in founding the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History in New York and laying out all the northern part of the city.
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One name after another suggests many whose careers were now closing after contributing much to the history of their times. Judge Nathaniel Shipman, who was born of old colonial ancestry, in Simsbury, in 1828, and died here in 1902, was one upon whose good sense and wise judgment the town relied. The law was his living, after his graduation at Yale in 1848; for nearly thirty years from 1850, or until Mr. Welch's death, he was the partner of H. K. W. Welch. There never was a time when he did not give freely of his best for the community. He was the last sur- vivor of the group of seven who in 1856 met to establish the republican party in Connecticut. His name was prominent in many activities. He was judge of the United States District Court from 1873 till 1892, when he was appointed to the Circuit Court of Appeals, serving till he resigned in 1902. Among his many positions was that of private secretary to the great war governor, Buckingham, and his counsel was prized in the direc- torates of several insurance, financial and public institutions. Yale gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1884. He married Mary C. Robinson, sister of Henry C. Robinson. His sons are Rev. Frank R. Shipman of New Haven, formerly president of Atlanta Theological Seminary; Arthur L., and Henry R., professor at Princeton. His daughter married President Stephen B. L. Pen- rose of Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash., and national presi- dent of the Y. W. C. A.
Among the insurance men was Charles T. Wells (1839-1909) of the Aetna (Fire) Insurance Company, son of Dr. Horace Wells, a collector of rare books and a supporter of the Atheneum and the State Library. He was one of the deacons of the First Church, where his services were invaluable. His membership in the Acorn Club indicated his literary taste, his membership in the Hartford Piscatorius Club his recreation pleasures, and his rank as major of the Hartford City Guard Veterans his military proclivities.
When Francis B. Cooley (1822-1905) came here for a visit after a very successful mercantile career in Chicago (his firm was the parent of Marshall Field & Company and of several others), he was persuaded to stay and decided to make it his home. This was in 1865. His ability as a financier caused him to be imme- diately requisitioned as president of the National Exchange Bank, and when he resigned he was continued as vice president of the institution till his death. He also was president of the Society for
HENRY K. W. WELCH (1821-1870)
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Savings, of the School for the Deaf, and of Landers, Frary & Clark of New Britain, and was director in some of the insurance companies. In 1883-5 he was a member of the state Senate. His sons, Francis Rexford and Charles Parsons, have followed him in the paths of finance and of community welfare. The Center Church House in his memory has been mentioned.
In following the story of the community it must have been noted long before this that a large number of the men who were prominent in finance, commerce, industry and the professions also were supporters of and active in the public institutions. To an exceptional degree it is true that in the full lists of the directors of the private and semi-public concerns, from the time there began to be any, appear the same names that one finds in the correspond- ing lists of organizations where service is without other com- pensation than the sense of duty well performed. A full publica- tion of all these lists would be of great service to the student of the psychology of the town, constant through the different periods, and such some day will be forthcoming; in the concrete story of all phases of the life there can be only such instances and gen- eralization as shall intimate.
Rowland Swift was a name known to everybody, not so much because he was in the service of the American National Bank for nearly fifty years till the time of his death in 1902, filling differ- ent offices and that of president after 1871, but because of his administering private trusts, participating in church work at the First Church, and withal the treasurer of the Watkinson Library. He was a descendant of Governor Bradford of the Plymouth colony and was born in Mansfield in 1834. There were also the Redfields-speaking of this particular period. John R., born in Essex in 1838, cashier of the National Exchange Bank from 1859 and succeeding Mr. Cooley as president in 1886, was a chosen and helpful member of several institutions till his death in 1908. His brother, Henry A., born in Essex in 1832, discount clerk in the Phoenix National Bank in 1858, had succeeded John L. Bunce as president in 1878 and continued in the office till his physical condition forbade in 1904; active also in various other capacities. He died in 1907. (The remarkable persistency of family names in Hartford concerns is here again illustrated when it is noted that Mr. Redfield was succeeded by Frederic L. Bunce, son of the late President John L. Bunce.) Joseph G. Woodward
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(1836-1908) was at one time president of that Young Men's Institute to which, it has been seen, Hartford owes a debt of grati- tude. Willimantic was his birthplace and he was associated here with the National Exchange Bank till in 1876 he established his brokerage office. He evinced deep interest in patriotic societies and in American history. His son, Joseph Hooker Woodward, attained high place in insurance, beginning in Hartford.
In the industries and commercial circles it was as in finance. The name of Ney in France was illustrious in war. John M. Ney, a member of a branch of that family and born in Lorraine, made it illustrious here. To him was due, perhaps more than to any other man in the land, the working out of principles by which gold could be better employed in the arts and in science. The house of John M. Ney & Company, which he created, never has lost the reputation he passed on to his descendants. Meantime his will- ingness and efficiency in official positions in the city caused him, at this period, to be nominated for the State Senate and to win (in 1903) by a large plurality when his associates on the demo- cratic ticket were defeated. In 1906 he was nominated for lieu- tenant governor. There was Maro S. Chapman, a very con- spicuous figure in public affairs here and in his residential town of Manchester. A positive force in the Plimpton Manufacturing Company since 1865, superintendent of the United States Stamped Envelope Works in 1874, and general manager till his death in 1907 of the large plant after the merger as the Hartford Manufacturing Company, Mr. Chapman was also president of the Hartford City Bank (from 1904), and with his own resources organized, built, equipped and turned over to the stockholders the trolley line that linked Manchester and Burnside with Hart- ford, of which he served as president and also general manager till it was absorbed by the Consolidated Railway Company in 1906. His zeal in Manchester caused him to be sent to the House in 1882, and to the Senate in 1884, and in 1900 he was a presi- dential elector. Mr. Chapman, like so many of these indefatigable workers of the later generations, was of early colonial ancestry. He was born in East Hartford in 1839 and went to the war with the Twelfth Connecticut.
George A. Fairfield, a name to be remembered, was a member of the city government and of the Board of Park Commissioners, which in itself means thoughtful service. His business was that
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of a mechanic, which he developed till it amounted to what today would be called a profession-that of industrial engineer. He began in Lansingburg, N. Y., where he was born in 1834. In 1857 his name appeared on the list of men at Colt's, where he designed labor-saving machinery for the United States Arsenal at Springfield and for the machinery contract for the Russian government. He became the largest special contractor in the famous plant. Rather in advance of his times he opened a school of mechanical drawing in 1858; many there got their start in helpfulness to industry. After the war he developed the tract of land along the avenue which now bears his name, on the sightly ridge to the south, and devoted himself to building up the Weed Sewing Machine Company. When that line of business showed congestion, he joined Colonel Pope in the manufacture of bicycles. In 1876 he developed C. M. Spencer's automatic screw machine, one of the world's most conspicuous labor-saving devices, and after that the caligraph and later the "Hartford" typewriter. But there always was time for thought and work in the city's interests.
Charles A. Jewell's death in 1906 recalled anew what his family had done for the town-elsewhere recounted. He was the youngest of the brothers and had survived Governor Marshall Jewell by about twenty years. He was officially connected with the belting and pin companies and other concerns bearing the family name and a director in the Hartford City Bank and the Hartford Chemical Company. His interest in public affairs is best remembered by what he did for the Y. M. C. A. He was president of it for many years, following Daniel R. Howe, and it was in appreciation of his helpfulness that Jewell Hall was named. In the war he was adjutant of the Twenty-second Con- necticut; after that, a member of both the active and veteran organizations of the City Guard and an aid on the staff of his brother when he was governor.
Other illustrations of these principles are furnished by men whose labors were being ended in this period, like Lieutenant Governor George G. Sumner in law, James Bolter in banking, Rufus N. Pratt, R. W. H. Jarvis, brother of Mrs. Colt and suc- cessor of E. K. Root as president of Colt's, Charles M. Beach, whose heirs gave the Home for the Aged on Wethersfield Avenue, Knight D. Cheney of Manchester and Vice President Edward H.
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Sears of the Collins Company, in manufacturing; Ambrose Spencer who through the Atheneum attested his love for art, Edwin D. Judd, Collector of Customs E. B. Bailey and James U. Taintor, vice president of the Board of Trade. George M. Welch, with wide associations, before he helped organize the Charter Oak Bank and for long was president of the Connecticut River Bank- ing Company, had taken over and for thirty years had conducted the historic drug business of Albert H. Bull, which he sold to George W. Williams & Company. Thomas Sisson (1828-1907) was the dean of druggists in the state, at his death having been sixty-four years in the business and at the same stand-the Sisson Drug Company of today, the oldest concern in continuous business and a record unparalleled in the state. Born in West Hartford, he began as a clerk for William T. Lee and A. L. Butler, being made a partner in 1858. There were few changes in the firm till George P. Chandler was taken in (1874) ; at his death the man- agement of the incorporated company went into the hands of his son, George A. Chandler. Mr. Sisson, who was active up to the last, was the oldest director in several institutions. Drayton Hillyer (1816-1908) had been one of the town's most progressive men, like others of his family. In England, back of the days when John Hillyer was one of the settlers of Windsor, it was a family of noted lawyers. Drayton, who was born in Granby, was for a time a clerk in the store of his uncle, Charles T. Hillyer, and when he came to Hartford it was to be manager of the store of the Collins Company, which shipped its axes and cutlery from here. In the '40s he formed partnership with James M. Bunce in the wholesale grocery business, later the wool business. Jonathan B. Bunce became partner on the death of his father; in later days. when Mr. Bunce was an official of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insur- ance Company, Henry C. Dwight and Col. William C. Skinner were members of the firm and the name became Dwight, Skinner & Company, one of the best known woolen houses in New Eng- land. Mr. Hillyer withdrew in 1900 and the firm was dissolved. Mrs. Hillyer cooperating, he was helpful in advancing worthy organizations here and in other places. What was done for the promotion of art and music at Smith College, by both of them, now takes the form of a memorial bearing the family name.
XXXVIII
NEW CENTURY ATTACKS DISEASE
HARTFORD DISPENSARY, CITY HOSPITAL AND KINDRED INSTITUTIONS- WAR UPON TUBERCULOSIS-PHYSICIANS WHO HAD LED.
It seems a long stride from 1796, when the Hartford Board of Health was organized, to 1900. In 1796, on the verge of new discoveries, they were battling against diseases which they thought came from bad drainage and impure water, with special thought for the devastations by smallpox, and with view to enabling all the townspeople to benefit; in 1900, after a century's progress in medical science, they were battling against disease from new sources, on the verge of more discoveries, and with view to having the humblest being within the community share in the blessings. The idea of bringing within the reach of even the lowliest the results of the world's patient experiments in the art of healing had been conceived in Hartford as early as 1871, when there was no institution in the state to give aid to those without the price. George Brinley, Gustavus F. Davis, James Goodwin, Austin Dunham, Henry A. Perkins, Calvin Day, Gen. William B. Franklin, Roland Mather, E. H. Owen, Dr. J. A. Butler, Eras- tus Collins and a few others whose names have become familiar to the readers of these pages incorporated the Hartford Dis- pensary. The list of the consulting board and the attending staff included about all the physicians of the city, headed by Dr. Gurdon W. Russell. The dispensary was opened at the corner of Ann and Asylum streets. There is significance in the fact that paucity of patients, both at the dispensary and at the Hartford Hospital when the dispensary was transferred thither, caused abandon- ment of the project. The kind of people for whom it was intended were suspicious of the new idea; vile alcoholic concoctions with "patent medicine" labels were still plentiful at the stores; modesty in its falsest form was still prevalent in all circles, and population
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was not so large and varied as it was to become in another generation.
In 1884, Dr. Joseph E. Root, who had just come here, and Dr. M. M. Johnson opened a dispensary in the back room of the former's office on Pearl Street. The reaction was such that the corporation was revived, the churches took up collections, the quarters were removed from the private office and attending physicians were appointed-Doctors Root and Johnson, G. C. Segur and L. A. Davison. A small fee was charged. Advice on the care of infants was one of the early steps for general welfare; segregation of contagious diseases resulted in the furnishing of a temporary ward at the Hartford Hospital. For four years from 1896, the work was carried on in the basement of the First Bap- tist Church, the accommodations donated. Then quarters were provided in the Hunt Memorial. The institution was well pre- pared to take advantage of the advance in medical science of the following few years; a tuberculosis clinic was established in 1905 and the staff was reorganized with medical and surgical depart- ments. The doctors in the former were M. H. Bradley, Charles T. Beach, J. C. Wilson, Robert Lee Rowley, Anna Davenport, Maude W. Taylor, C. M. Hatheway and Howard F. Smith; in the latter, H. Ely Adams, Morris Tuch, A. R. Keith, E. R. Storrs, A. H. Williams and J. C. Pierson. More room being necessary, a board of managers secured the house at the corner of Winthrop and Ely streets, where since 1909 the dispensary has further developed till it has become one of the foremost of the charitable institutions and of now well understood economic benefit to the community altogether. Nor can the psychology be overestimated, as seen in the changed attitude of the masses toward physicians and toward those humanitarians who are represented by the young ladies of the Junior League and others who give their services as attendants.
There was everywhere a reviving spirit to fight disease wher- ever it was found-in the home of the millionaire or in the quar- ters of the town's poor. Since the removal of the almshouse from the old "town farm" on Sigourney Street to the much more suit- able grounds on Holcomb Street, the care of the sick, insane and imbecile had been a constant study. The Board of Charity Com- missioners, created in 1896, had given it special attention. Most of the patients were sent to the two hospitals in the city; mild cases-mostly of alcoholism-were looked after by a town physi-
HARTFORD CITY HOSPITAL AND ALMSHOUSE
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cian, while the insane and imbeciles were dispatched to the state institutions. Male wards were provided as early as 1897, but the increase in the number of female cases, many tuberculous, caused the commissioners to plan a hospital extension at the alms- house. Public sentiment was sharply divided, but by 1905 the addition had been built, at a cost of $25,000, and Dr. Harry C. Clifton was in charge. The commissioners were J. Howard Morse, L. B. Haas, Atwood Collins, James B. Bacon, Leopold de Leeuw and William BroSmith. The year previous to the open- ing of this hospital which was to become the Municipal Hospital, 620 patients had been sent to the Hartford Hospital and St. Francis Hospital. Incidentally 295 insane and imbecile subjects had been sent to state institutions, placed mostly at town expense, and forty-one children had been "placed out" to local institutions, only two of them foreign-born. The board had given assistance to 131 families, 630 persons, and as usual had been greatly helped by the Union for Home Work, the almoners of the Charitable Society and the Niles Fund. The daily average number of alms- house inmates was 290, costing 373/4 cents per day per head. Entertainments were given there by the Daughters of Rebecca, the Friendly Visitors and the Union for Home Work.
By the charity commissioners' report of 1927, 241 patients were sent to Hartford and St. Francis Hospitals; 305 insane and imbecile subjects were sent to institutions; number of cases in the Municipal Hospital, 1,123; number cared for in the home, hospital and nursery, 1,325; children in the hospital and nursery, 507. The board had furnished outdoor relief to 157 families, or 877 persons, not in any institution. Books were being distributed -374 to 92 families. The total of all people relieved was 3,368, at per capita expenditure of $6.57, or 147/10 cents per capita of population. The expense for outside hospitals and asylums in 1905 was $53,776; in 1927, $55,123. The total of all almshouse, hospital and general expenses in 1905 was $113,383, and in 1927 $228,197; in the former year there was collected from towns and the state, $3,283; in 1927, $26,320. The hospital, which has its Nurses' Training School, its Social Service Department, its new superintendent's residence and its Nurses' Home, is rated by the National Association in Class "A" and sixty physicians are on the rotating staff. But only strictly charity cases can be admitted and no state pauper cases. Maj. H. Grant Bailey is the superin- tendent. The Board of Charity Commissioners is composed of
.
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Mrs. Lulu B. Van Beynum, Daniel A. Guerriero, Mrs. Sadie P. Mayer, Thomas B. Curry, Eugene C. Lamoureux (president), and James H. Harris. Dr. John Carter Rowley is president of the hospital staff, and Dr. A. W. Sherwood is city physician. Dr. Constantin A. P. Zariphes is resident physician.
In 1910 the Children's Home (and infirmary) was built-to be followed in 1913-14 by the St. Agnes Home for Children, on Asylum Avenue extension in West Hartford, under charge of the Sisters of Mercy.
But to return to the war being waged against tuberculosis in every state-Connecticut being among the worst of all of them. The Visiting Nurse Association (incorporated in 1901) and the Tuberculosis and Public Health Society were doing brave service. The Hartford Hospital in 1902 was providing extra wards in the new building on Cedar Hill called Wildwood, at a charge of only $1 a day, the state paying the balance (and that price never has been increased). There was a short pause for realignment when it was seen that cases far advanced were being sent to the hospital and were making the record alarming, but in October, 1903, there was another advance and the power to conquer the disease in its earlier stages was demonstrated. An item which cannot be omitted from history reviewing the past and comparing the present is this extract from the last annual report of Dr. James E. Murphy, resident physician at Wildwood and one of the best known of the fighters against tuberculosis-an item revealing one of the things that advancing science does not get at, namely the disposition of the individual and the toils of fashion. He is speaking of the decrease in tuberculosis in general but the sudden increase among the female sex : "The most likely causes for this, in the opinion of many tuberculosis experts, are the desire for the slender figure, so fashionable recently, with resultant dieting and undernourishment, the greater number of girls and women in industrial life with their consequent exposure to many hazards formerly peculiar to men, and the fact that many young girls are insufficiently clad, especially in this variable New England climate."
Agitation accompanied by demonstration like that in Hart- ford-one of the very first-was having its effect. Here in Con- necticut the Legislature was prompt in responding; sanitaria were soon being established in several of the counties with state aid. The first of these was Cedar Crest ("Hartford Tuberculosis
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Sanatorium"), a neighbor of Wildwood, which was put up in 1909-10 by subscriptions and an appropriation of $15,000 from the state. It was to receive patients in all stages of the disease. The workingmen were doing their share. Largely through the canvassing of John F. Gunshanan and the backing of Austin C. Dunham, they responded in 1905 with $7,500 for free beds and $4,000 toward advancing the work at Wildwood, which received the first free-bed patient in November, 1905. In 1908 employers cooperated with their men, contributing dollar for dollar with their employes. It was the first city in the country where work- ingmen voluntarily had organized for a part in the fight.
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