USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume II > Part 21
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goods in the state, was established in 1871 for the making of satinet which Peter Dobson of Vernon had introduced into Amer- ica. Latterly it devised the machinery and became the only American company to make tinsel threads to combine with wool. Today the threads are used in radio sets and in telephones; through the World war the company had to supply all the allies. John B. Windsor, who died in 1887 at the age of sixty, served as president of the Farist & Windsor concern, started 1845 as a steel-rolling mill by P. and E. J. Ripley, and was treasurer of the Farist Steel Company of Bridgeport. He was prominent also in finance, being president of the savings bank, a director in the United States Bank in Hartford and president of the Hartford Steamboat Company. Printing cloths and umbrellas were made by a Hartford company, the Connecticut River Mills, acquired after nine years by A. Dunham & Company of Hartford.
The Horton chuck was the child of the brain of Eli Horton in 1851. The first large factory was built in 1865 and before many years they were making several hundred varieties of this indis- pensable tool. The name now is the E. Horton & Son Company, on the canal bank. George P. Clark's invention of the rubber castor added more variety to manufacture, and from this his con- cern went on to other products, like drying-fans, trucks and wheels.
The first street laid out was Center Street, and the first house after 1776 was the Gaylord house, built in 1780 on Elm Street. The town was incorporated in 1854. The name Windsor Locks was not given till two years after the opening of the canal in 1829. Where the Windsor Locks Water Company gets its supply was in 1780 the site of Elijah Higley's grist mill and later of English's paper-mill. James J. English is the present head of the company, which was formed in 1890 by out-of-town men, headed by S. P. Townsend. E. B. Bailey bought the plant for Windsor men. It is now a part of the Northern Connecticut Power Company which, as seen in the Suffield section, is planning great changes for all this region.
There was a fording place across to Warehouse Point in the earliest days, used by the more venturesome even after the ferry was opened. It was below the mouth of Kettle Brook, across to
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old Horse-Pasture Island, and thence across the channel. The charter for the ferry was granted to James Chamberlain in 1783. In 1848 a swing ferry was constructed, with cable and piers so arranged that the boat could be aided by the current. A cable ferry was put in in 1870. The rights were sold in 1885 for $20,000 to the Windsor Locks Bridge Company which put in a suspension bridge. This became the first free bridge in the state in 1908 when the state authorized payment of $93,000 to the com- pany (as against owners' valuation of $160,000). The bridge was replaced by the present one, opened in 1921, at a cost of $500,000 for the county.
The first post office in town was established by Postmaster- General Gideon Granger of Suffield in 1802 after he personally had noted the need of one. He appointed Storekeeper Howard of the north end to take charge of the office.
Since the railroad put an end to the dreams of the Connecticut River Company and its fine canal of the '30s, as elsewhere told- but did leave an excellent water power for the industries, there have been prospects of other development in keeping with scien- tific developments. When Henry C. Douglas in 1894 bought of Clinton Terry Terry's Island, as it was then known, and the story of which is given in the Enfield section, it was understood that a syndicate was to dam the river and create a great electricity plant. A few days later Ezra B. Bailey bought the property with view to getting a charter for the dam. The water privileges, repre- senting 3,000 horse power, had been under control of the Dexter and Coffin families since the '60s when in 1913, nothing having materialized from previous planning, they were sold to the pres- ent Northern Connecticut Power Company whose hydro-electric station is here and whose office is in Thompsonville. The present situation relative to a great power plant is described under Suf- field, and again hopes are high.
While the passing of the canal project was a disappointment, there was good transportation by the railroad and then by the trolley, and the Main Street center and the canal bank have always been the scenes of activity. The government continues on the town basis, with public interests thoughtfully looked after, covering fire and police departments. Mrs. Herbert R. Coffin is chairman of the Board of Park Commissioners, all the members of which are women whose desire to have suitable grounds, espe-
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cially for children's sports, was realized in 1910 when land that had been leased was bought by the town from the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. Mrs. Julia L. Coffin proffered the use of adjoining grounds for tennis, baseball and other games and provided a bandstand, Miss Mary Burnap contributed the electric lighting, Selectman Charles A. Norris built a dance pavilion and this year Herbert A. Coffin has added a grandstand. The sup- port of the park now is by town appropriation and popular sub- scription.
An office of the State Fish Hatcheries is located here, remi- niscent of the days when shad were plenty, and there were exten- sive hatcheries at Poquonock.
The Windsor Locks Trust and Safe Deposit Company of which John M. Morse is president, was organized in 1908 with capital of $50,000. In addition to commercial deposits of over a million, it has savings deposits of $300,000.
Windsor Locks lawyers have held prominent positions in the county bar. George A. Conant, who recently retired, was clerk of the Superior Court for many years. Frank E. Healy has been tax commissioner, speaker of the House of Representatives and attorney-general. Timothy C. Coogan, after practicing here, went to San Francisco, where he became eminent as an insurance lawyer. His brother, John W. Coogan, was a well known Hart. ford lawyer.
The fine granite Memorial Hall was given in 1891 by Pres. Charles E. Chaffee of the Meddicott Company for J. H. Converse Post, which was organized by the veterans of the Civil war in 1884. Major Converse went to the front from his native town of Somers with Company C of the First Connecticut Volunteers, was made captain of Company A of the Eleventh and promoted to be major. He was killed at Cold Harbor. In proportion to numbers and in contributions to the cause the town in the Civil war as in all other wars did its full duty. Company C of the First, Levi N. Hillman commanding, had all its officers and fourteen men from Windsor Locks.
For the World war, many went to Hartford to join the old First Regiment and others were in the National Army. A com- pany for the First Regiment, Connecticut State Guard, was formed. Verdine L. Mather and John J. Burke were captains.
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The Congregational Church owes its inception largely to Asa B. Woods, who came from Hartford to have charge of the locks of the canal on its completion in 1829. Up to that time attend- ance had been at the church in Windsor. Mr. Woods and others inaugurated a Sunday School which in 1833 developed into a formal society and a chapel was built. Fourteen years later a church was built and when it was burned in 1877 it was promptly rebuilt. Mention already has been made of the generosity of some of the leading citizens; their successors have been no less assidu- ous. St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church began with services held in 1827, in which year Rev. Dr. John Power came up from New York to attend upon a workman who had been injured. In 1852 this became a regular parish under Rev. James Smythe and the stone church was erected. St. Mary's School in connection with it was established in 1889. The Methodists had been in membership with their brethren in Warehouse Point till in 1850 Major Brown gave them the use of his hall (later Coogan's Hall). Their present church on Church Street was built in 1865. St. Paul's Episcopal Church was organized as St. Bartholomew's in 1856 with reading services, in connection with the Warehouse Point church. In 1870 it was established as a parish, Rev. G. M. Wilkins the rector, and the edifice was erected two years later for which James B. Colton of Warehouse Point left funds for a memorial bell and an organ.
There is but one voting district, the grand list of which is over $6,000,000. The first school was moved from its original site in 1825 to the corner of Elm and Center streets, where it stood till 1844. In that year the town was divided into two districts, but after twenty years consolidation was voted and a new building was built. The high school is on Church Street. It is something to be proud of that long before there was a law on the subject, and at the request of the manufacturers, children under fourteen on applying for work were required to show certificates that they had attended school the required length of time.
The Windsor Locks Journal dates from 1880, when it was launched by Sherman T. Addis. John M. Morse became the pro- prietor in 1895 and in 1910 it was incorporated as the Journal Printing Company.
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What with present canal filled in, sidetracks provided for the industries located between it and the Connecticut, on the main line of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, a new and deeper canal built around the "falls," navigation improved and all the other benefits contemplated in connection with the merged Connecticut River Company and the Northern Connecti- cut Power Company, under federal license of fifty years, present anticipations-this time due to the era of electricity-are com- parable with those in 1829.
LII NORTHERN MIGRATION
SUFFIELD AND ENFIELD IN THE BOUNDARY WAR-A FAMOUS ISLAND- FIRST CANAL PLAN, IN 1792-EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENT-GEN- ERAL LYMAN AND GIDEON GRANGER AMONG THE GREAT MEN- THOMPSONVILLE'S INDUSTRIES-HAZARD'S POWDER MILLS.
Windsor pioneers had not pushed far beyond Pine Meadow to secure new territory before they came upon those advancing from Agawam (Springfield), encouraged by John Pynchon whom Hooker had scathingly described. How it was that Suffield was for long a Massachusetts town is told on another page, as a part of the colony boundary dispute. Suffice it now that ignorant surveyors had blundered, and let Hartford County rejoice that its history properly takes in the history of the picturesque town- ship. At the time of the settlement, the region was not such as to make it of itself a bone of contention, desirable as mere pos- session appeared to be in the eyes of Pynchon. Unlike its neigh- bors it had no river meadow to allure; instead it had a bold and forbidding line along the Connecticut; it was seamed with rough ridges from north to south and in large part it was so densely wooded that Pynchon suggested special privileges for those who might venture to take up land there. His only special interest was in Warehouse Point across the river where comfortable navi- gation ceased, because of steep rapids, and where therefore he had built his warehouse so essential to his commerce. And if that were in his bailiwick, the line west must take in Suffield, good or worthless.
Massachusetts as early as 1660 had allowed six men to locate on Stony River, which is still the name of the stream that cuts through southeasterly from Massachusetts to the Connecticut, but the prospectors must have become discouraged. Nine years later Springfield selectmen, independently of the General Court, "com- mended to the town" that Samuel and Joseph Harmon, John Lamb and Benjamin Parsons have land at Stony River. The
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petition to the General Court read that inasmuch as there was land down there which might be "capable of a small plantation" and as there were men who needed land and to "prevent the marring of that which might be comfortable township by such as otherwise may take up these lands for farms, and to preserve the lands and woods of the south line of the colony in that quarter towards Windsor," the grant should be made; signed, John Pyn- chon and others prominent in Springfield. This was granted in 1660.
Without finesse this was a challenge to the Connecticut settlers and also to all that constitutes present Connecticut. It had been agreed that Pynchon's town could be considered a part of the Bay Colony, wherever the Warwick Patent line ran, but this was far from agreeing that jurisdiction could extend down several miles further. Connecticut people became concerned.
The land wanted by Pynchon was six miles square, and Pyn- chon, Elizur Holyoke, Lieutenant Cooper, George Coulton, Ensign Benjamin Cooley and Rowland Thomas were appointed a com- mittee to make rules for governing the town, which first was called Stony Brook, then Southfield and finally Suffield. The rules began by prescribing that "rank was to be determined by quality, estate usefulness and other considerations, as the committee di- rect." The petitioners, including this committee, could have land there-but none of them applied. No one could sell land without consent of the committee or selectmen. Persons of quality might allow others to occupy the land granted to them but only such others as were approved. Goodly portions should be set apart for the church and minister and forty acres for the support of a school forever; then 100 acres for the General Court, 400 for the county and twenty for a common to be utilized as a meeting-house or schoolhouse site or as training ground. In general the arbi- trary tone was almost the antithesis of that familiar in the Con- stitution Towns down-river. But it sought to be a benevolent even if high-handed form of government, and Pynchon and County Surveyor Mansfield thoughtfully laid out the town for the set- tlers, the committee in Springfield approved, and there have been but few changes since, except that Feather Street common was subdivided sixty years later-Feather Street being the road along the most easterly of the ridges and the common being between it
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and the river. The road along the next ridge but one to the west was to be High Street, with the church and the better buildings on it, the favorite trail from Springfield to Hartford. The town plot was to be north of Stony Brook and eastward of the road to Northampton. King Philip's war caused a dispersal but nearly all of the hundred families returned the next year. Lieutenant Cooper of the ruling committee had been killed when the Indians attacked Springfield, October 5, 1675. The town was organized with 400 inhabitants and the committee turned over the govern- ment to it May 2, 1682. Among the grantees and proprietors were a few from Windsor and vicinity. Pynchon, who in fatherly fashion had bought the land from the Indians for £30, sold it to the proprietors in 1684 for £40. Suffield Mountain and the land west was not divided among the proprietors till after the boun- dary settlement; the north half of Manituck Mountain went to Capt. Abraham Burbank and the south half to Samuel Kent, in payment for services in restoring the town to Connecticut. Both of these men founded families well known through the later years.
Christopher Jacob Lawton, born in 1701, was the first so- called lawyer and promoter of settlements. When Windsor and Simsbury gained the southwest corner of the original town, in the settlement of the boundary line, feeling toward Massachusetts was intense and equivalent land was demanded. Lawton already had secured much land in Berkshire, Mass., and 500 acres as a sort of subsidy for the tavern he offered to build on the old high- way to the Hudson. Then he had the present town of Blandford awarded to Suffield and built his tavern there. The Berkshire land which had been awarded as an "equivalent" became of little value to the Suffield men; Lawton bought them out and sold to the settlers of Blandford.
Great Island, called King's or Terry's Island in recent years, in the vague geography of that time was supposedly included in the purchase from the Indians by the Windsor people and their pioneers. Its own romance and the part it has played in history even in this present day entitle it to description herein. It lies between Suffield and Enfield, about two miles below the head of the Connecticut River rapids or "falls." The rapids extend to just below Windsor Locks where is the steepest drop-17.8 feet.
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It is a conspicuous object from the railroad bridge which crosses the river above Windsor Locks and Warehouse Point. Its hun- dred acres are oval in shape, the southern end being densely wooded and untillable. On the west side the water flows shallow over a rocky bed; on the east side, somewhat narrower, the water is deep and swift. The dam for the present locks at Windsor Locks (west side of the river) is about six miles above the island.
Rev. Ephraim Huitt, Windsor's second church teacher, for some unknown reason sought possession of the inaccessible place and obtained it by grant of the General Court in 1641. When he died three years later, he gave it back "for the country." The value he saw was nearly 300 years in coming within the range of vision of others, but it was not without a vicarious worth. The first phase developed after John Lewis of Windsor independently bought it of the Indians in 1678 and conveyed it to Daniel Hayden five years later, illegally because purchase of the Indians for one's own benefit was prohibited. The attention of Major Pynchon, ruler of Agawam, whose boundary line already had sequestered much of the territory of his one-time Connecticut associates, was drawn to the island with the result that the Massachusetts Gen- eral Court gave it to him for his "paynes in running our patent line."
When he died in 1703 it was valued in his estate at £10. His heirs sold portions to others. Rev. Ebenezer Devotion of Suf- field was at one time part owner. In 1754 Gen. Phinehas (as the name usually was spelled) Lyman bought it for £500, only to sell it for £200 in 1774, when he was leaving for Mississippi to take up land granted him by England in recognition of his services in the French-Indian war. This sale was to Col. Roger Enos of Windsor, who sold at once to Roger Newberry and he to Gen. Peter Olcot and John Ely. Ely had a mill dam on the west side in 1787, swept away in 1810. Daniel King, 2nd, of Suffield, was chief owner after 1794. Portions conveyed by him were recorded in Enfield, which fact has given periodical rise since then to an Enfield claim on the taxes. DeWitt C. Terry and Milton Ives came into possession in 1864. Terry, who was of the Advent faith and a "Millerite," took up his abode on the island. In 1873 he was joined there by a considerable body of Millerites to await the carefully calculated hour when the heavens should roll away,
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even as others had awaited such hour in 1843. He remained after the others had been fed by conscientious people from the mainland and had left. In 1894 Henry C. Douglass of Windsor Locks bought the property of Clinton Terry with expectation that a syndicate would establish an electric light plant. Within a few days Ezra B. Bailey, Windsor Locks manufacturer, bought the island and the prospect of a dam and power house caused rejoic- ing. However, there were difficulties to be overcome.
The 3,000 horse power generated by the old Enfield dam through the canal was under the control of the Dexter and Coffin families of the "Locks" from the '60s to 1913, when it was sold to the present Northern Connecticut Power Company for estab- lishing the hydro-electric plant at the "Locks." This company, under the management of Walter P. Schwabe, by development of surrounding territory and by mergers, has taken rank among the power companies of New England. Mr. Schwabe, who came in 1908, is president of the water companies in Thompsonville and Stafford Springs and of the Connecticut River Company which built the canal, and since 1925 president of the Northern Con- necticut. The greater power this company today requires is brought from the Turner's Falls Company up the river. Seeing further possibilities hereabouts, the management in this year 1928 has succeeded in securing from the Federal Power Com- mission a fifty years' license for damming the river at the island, removing the present disintegrating dam farther up, creating a reservoir to set back to the Holyoke (Mass.) dam, and by a deeper canal on the west bank provide better navigation facilities, filling in the old canal meantime. If the War Department engi- neers improve the river conditions, this will fit well into the general plan. The estimated cost is five and a half million dollars.
From the beginning there was a strong bond with Enfield across the river, where also Pynchon had organized a colony. John Allyn was the first ferryman. Gov. Jonathan Trumbull's an- cestor, Joseph Trumbull, was among his successors. The ferry was about where the Thompsonville bridge now is. Through the usual stages of progress, the boat became the steamer Cora, which was retired in 1892.
The bridge problem was a hard one but had to be solved. And
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ENFIELD BRIDGE Built in 1826 and swept away in 1900
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in the story thereof in the state records is the hitherto overlooked germ of the famous canal of the 1820s. It appears that these men of Suffield were considering a canal as early as 1792, a genera- tion before the Erie Canal had aroused the tremendous Connecti- cut emulation described in the general history volume.
Luther Loomis in 1792 conducted an "Enfield Falls" lottery with hope of improving navigation. Nothing came of that. In 1798 John Reynolds and others obtained a charter for a toll bridge "with locks for the benefit of navigation." The bridge-the first in the state across the Connecticut-was opened in 1808. John Taylor, president of the company, then asked the Assembly to permit the building of a channel on the west shore in lieu of the proposed locks. It being found that the channel was an impossibility, the company reported that it must employ the lock system, to which end it must have some sort of a low dam above the rapids to divert sufficient water, but it was thought best to inquire whether a dam of any kind could be built in a navigable stream without the Assembly's consent. This was the first question of its kind in America. The Assembly sent a com- mission to report on the novel proposition. Its report was that the lock (one only) should be on the east side of the river and that a four-foot dam could be built in such a way as not to obstruct the normal navigation at this point; but-a lock at these rapids would not greatly benefit navigation unless there were another at the lower rapids, entailing heavy expense. The Assembly there- upon said the subject should be postponed until a company "shall appear" to erect locks at "both upper and lower falls."
The terrible set-back given New England by the War of 1812 interferred with the "appearing" of such a company till 1818. Then John L. Sullivan of Suffield and associates secured incorpo- ration by an act which reviewed the legislative action of 1808 and again authorized these proprietors of the bridge to "lock the upper falls," under the corporate title of the Proprietors of the Suffield Locks and Channel. The number of shares should be 400; that of the bridge company was 200. William Ely and Joshua Stow were made the commissioners and a regular state dam commis- sion, under pay, was created. The project did not go through. Six years later the Connecticut River Company was chartered for
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the canal and locks which were opened in 1829, as narrated in the general history.
The history of the old covered bridge itself has interesting fea- tures, somewhat distorted in published reminiscences. The 1808 bridge needed replacing in the 1830s. By means of a lottery the new structure was put up in 1832-34, but not till a second lottery had been pushed as none hereabouts ever had been. In this pri- vate and lucrative property William Dixon of Enfield owned a large interest which was inherited by his son, Senator James Dixon of Hartford. The railroad and the builders of the mod- ern bridge at Thompsonville had to pay the old company for the right to build. The senator transferred his interests to Miss Eliza Marsh of Enfield in 1873 and the bridge was owned by W. D. Marsh of Chicago when it was swept away in 1900, four years after it had been condemned and ten years after the new bridge had been built at Thompsonville.
A Pynchon grant of eighty acres in 1679 for the "encourage- ment" of John Younglove to become minister was the first evi- dence of church interest, and a meeting-house was built on the common southeast of the site of later years. The original site has been marked by the Sons of the American Revolution. The some- what aristocratic tinge to the Pynchon influence was not wholly pleasing to the settlers who were more susceptible to the Connecti- cut influence. In ten years Mr. Younglove was requested to re- tire. He was succeeded by staunch Benjamin Ruggles whom the church called the "first pastor." Before his death in 1708 the town was sending a representative to the Massachusetts General Court and the congregation was worshiping in a new house. The church in West Suffield was established in the succeeding regime of Ebe- nezer Devotion, during the great revival period. Ebenezer Gay, another Harvard graduate, was pastor at the time the church de- cided to have its distinct society, and the building of a new edifice for the original church was postponed till 1749. Mr. Gay's son succeeded him, the two together covering a period of ninety-six years. The present imposing structure was built in 1837. Mean- time the West Society, formally set off in 1740, had built in 1744 and the church of today was built in 1840. John Graham, Jr., was the first pastor, followed by Daniel Waldo, a Yale man, who later
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