USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume II > Part 40
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But one thing after another brought depression. Smallpox was among them and those who had fought against the use of virus now granted Dr. George Griswold the right to set up his inoculation hospital, in 1792. Worse than that plague was the Government's embargo prior to the War of 1812. In that war, local men joining with those of East Hartford went to New Lon- don for a few weeks till danger of a British attack in that quar- ter subsided, and came home to feel again the gloom of discour- agement, due to the Federal Government's behaviour. In the hour of depression, religion of the fathers was forgotten and the civic and moral laws based thereon were in contempt. But by the close of the second decade of the century there was a wave of new endeavor and, churchwise, Manchester was fortunate in the coming of Rev. Elisha B. Cook at the Congregational Church in 1815. His influence was felt in every little hamlet that was springing up around this and that reviving mill site.
Manchester came into membership with the towns in 1823, at the opening of the new era. Mr. Cook died that year, but the church continued to prosper under Rev. Enoch Burt and in 1826 erected a new edifice at the Center. This continued to be the place of worship, till fifty-three years later the present structure was built. The old one was moved a little to the westward and was taken over by town for its public hall.
The Pitkin glass factory's business continued till the '30s when the historic plant, the first of its kind in America, was dis-
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continued. The picturesque ruins of the native-granite building have this year been given by the heirs of Horace W. Pitkin to Orford Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, which will make of them a permanent memorial to the founders of the Revolutionary period. The location is southeast of Manchester Green, today a beautiful residence section.
For many years, Manchester Green, on the King's Highway to Boston, boasting its Woodbridge tavern and the first post office, was the center of activities, dividing fame only with Buck- land district. There in 1816 was built the brick schoolhouse on the site of the present school, the top floor of which was an assem- bly hall, scene of festivities and meeting-place for Odd Fellows and Masons. It was then the East District and the pupils who sought more than the elementary training went from this to the East Academy, located at present Greenhurst. The old brick blacksmith shop was the property of Benjamin Lyman, perfecter of the first iron plowshare and iron hub. It was here that Aaron Cook later invented a fountain pen which was taken over by the Watermans. Daniel Wadsworth, town clerk, and Ralph Cone were among the carriage-makers near by and the establishment did business till 1898. Together with Bliss' carriage shop was Bliss Hall where the Village Improvement Society met. In the house now owned by John Young, "Yankee Soap," later to be made so famous by Williams Brothers of Glastonbury, had its origin. The only drug store was there, run by George Williams, and behind it was Wells Woodbridge's distillery. Money taken in at public dances at the tavern was used to buy books with which a fine library was started in the hall of the McChesney residence on Middle Turnpike. Mrs. Martha Hooker, sister of the Williams brothers of Glastonbury, and Grace Greenwood, the writer, devoted much time to it and its collection was utilized in organizing the library in South Manchester, which is now prac- tically one with the Green. Manchester's first post office was at the Green, but in 1850, the year before the railroad was built through what is known as North Manchester, it was removed to that section. Wells Woodbridge, the first postmaster, served twenty-six years, a record broken by John A. Alvord who distrib- uted the mail for thirty-six years. The colonial residence of
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Richard Pitkin, on the site of the present Loomis house, was one of the best known between Hartford and Boston. The one fac- tory-known successively through the years as the Pacific, the Seamless Hosiery owned by Keeney & Colt, the factory of C. G. & M. Keeney, the Manchester Knitting Mill of Addison L. Clark and finally a branch of the Glastenbury Knitting Company- bade fair to become the leading factory in all the town and con- tinues today one of the foremost. The rolling fields to the north- ward were utilized for the first links of the golf club.
Buckland, without a church, had its jambstone quarry and its numerous family of Bucklands to depend upon. One of the seven of that name who participated in the Revolution was killed. Another, Aaron, received as a pension a grant of 1,000 acres in Buckland, valued at 17 cents an acre, and on this he established a powder plant. He also built and operated what is now the oldest woollen mill in the country, bearing today the name of Elisha E. Hilliard who developed it in the '20s and whose name attaches to the village that grew up. Mr. Buck- land, who began the manufacture in 1780, sold to Williams & Tracy who sold to Sidney Pitkin of East Hartford. With stone from the quarry, this Buckland built a tavern which Lafayette greatly appreciated. Buckland's residence was the first post office in that quarter, the postmaster being his son-in-law, Wil- liam Jones. It was in this district also that the Watson & Led- yard paper mill, heretofore mentioned, was located. For a num- ber of years now, Buckland, like its neighbors, Wapping and Hillstown, has been most famous for its tobacco acreage, Hack- ett Brothers and the Connecticut Sumatra Tobacco Company having many fields in the open and under cloth.
Manchester continued to contribute toward making this sec- tion of Connecticut conspicuous for its paper products. The con- cern founded by Henry Rogers in 1832 is on Hartford Road and Charter Oak Street, known as the Rogers Paper Manufacturing Company, makers of pressboard and specialties. Case Brothers, Inc., continue on the site of the plant of 1862 at Highland Park, with branches in Manchester, Unionville and Burnside. Notable public service was rendered by A. Wells Case and his son Law- rence W. Case in constructing a park on the mountain at High-
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land Park. In exceptionally romantic setting is a cascade with a sixty-five-foot drop to Hop Brook. Nearby was the old copper mine which disappointed the expectations of the settlers. Where once were mineral springs of wide repute there now is a com- munity club house. Henry Lydall came here from New Britain with his nephew William Foulds and began the manufacture of knitting-machine needles, in the section known as Lydallville. Mr. Foulds withdrew from the partnership and became the head of the Lydall & Foulds Paper Company, the William Foulds Company,-William F., Jr., E. A. Lydall and Arthur J. Straw being associated with him,-and of the Colonial Board Com- pany. The factories are in Parker Village, on the way from Manchester Green to the north end. The machine-knitting- needle industry of Henry Lydall and his son, E. A. Lydall, was moved to the north end.
The Henry Hudson Oakland writing-paper mill (1832) was kept up by Mr. Hudson's sons and grandsons till in 1864 when Cheney Brothers became interested in it and it was reorganized as the Hudson-Cheney Paper Company, which in 1879 took on the whole plant. In 1881, having become the property of N. T. Pulsifer, it was organized as the Oakland Paper Company. When the American Writing Paper Company was organized in 1899, it was made one of its charter mills. The Peter Adams Paper Company was bought by the Hilliard Company in 1901 and an auxiliary electric plant was there installed.
Manchester was to gain wide fame in a new way when in 1885 J. T. Robertson invented mineral soap and in 1891 removed his small plant here from Glastonbury, occupying an old grist mill near the corner of Oakland and North Main streets. This in a few years was to be the concern more extensively known than any except Cheney Brothers. Mr. Robertson formed a part- nership with W. H. Childs of New York in a plan to market the product. The J. T. Robertson Company gave this selling and ad- vertising agency a five-years' option to buy the right to manu- facture. Before the time expired, the Bon Ami Company was organized for marketing and the Orford Soap Company for manufacturing. After a fire in 1899 the plant was removed to Hilliard Street where the entire Mather plant did not long suf- fice and several additions have had to be built. The Bon Ami,
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with Eversly Childs of New York as president and W. H. Childs as vice president, established other plants in this country and Canada. William A. Robertson succeeded his father as plant manager upon his father's death in 1922. The feldspar used in the manufacture all came from the Glastonbury quarries at first but now additional supplies have to be brought from other states.
Moses Carlyle Johnson in 1884 invented a light-powered fric- tion clutch which resulted in the building of a factory in Ohio and, other mechanical devices having been perfected, an estab- lishment in Hartford was removed here in 1909 as the Carlyle Johnson Machine Company. The Gammons-Holman Company was organized in 1920 to manufacture a taperpin reamer de- vised by William B. Gammon.
The story of Cheney Brothers is one of the great romances of American industry, yet its earlier fascinating features are not familiar to the new-coming public. Eminent scientists like President Ezra Stiles of Yale were among those who had been satisfied in the eighteenth century that silk could be produced in this country and a great business be built up. In 1783, over forty years after Doctor Stiles had begun to push research, the General Assembly offered premiums on mulberry trees and on every ounce of raw silk produced. Stiles had begun by distrib- uting to selected individuals in each town a few trees each year. Dr. Pardon Brownell and Thomas Burnham of East Hartford were among those who met with fair success with their cocoon- eries. Publicity propaganda was rife and among the magazines which gave directions and told results was the Silk Culturist and Farmers Manual of Hartford. In the '30s trees were being im- ported along the whole seaboard, prices running up to $500 a hundred before the verdict of the farmers could be heard, namely, "This is not the climate." A panic ensued.
A family of Cheney descendants had become interested. It has been noted that Timothy Cheney was one of the versatile pioneers. Among other things, he and his brother Benjamin were among the first clock-makers in America and the tall and beautiful specimens of their handiwork are almost priceless to- day, and withal useful. Benjamin, who was named after their father and was born in 1725, clung to his profession and removed
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to Berlin. Another brother, Silas, remained in Manchester with Timothy who established an example approved by many of his descendants by interesting himself in public affairs and, when occasion arose, going into military life. After the Revolutionary war he removed from the Center to his farm about a mile south, building a sawmill on the stream near what still is known as the Cheney homestead. At his death in 1795, his son Timothy went back to the Center while another son, George, took the farm and mill, was town clerk in 1825 and was succeeded in that office by George Wells Cheney, Ralph Cheney succeeding to it a little later. The children of George were George Wells, John, Charles, Ralph, Seth Wells, Ward, Rush, Frank and Electra. John and Seth be- came artists of international fame. Ward, Frank and Rush, at a nursery in New Jersey, had sold $14,000 worth of mulberry trees when the boom collapsed in 1840 and four years later the growing trees were blighted, but not until after many farm women had substituted the spinning of cocoons for knitting.
Meantime, in 1838, Ralph Cheney with these three brothers and Edward Arnold had formed the Mount Nebo Silk Manufac- turing Company with a capital of $50,000 and had built for $262 a little factory on Hop Brook where the finishing mill now stands, in the rear of the main office building on Hartford Road. Silk thread was the product, the one thing that is not on the list today. Charles, John and Seth joined with their brothers in 1841, though John and Seth did not abandon their realm of fine art. The eighth brother, George W., was on the payroll in 1843, at $16 a month, seventy-two-hour weeks. The goods were taken to Northampton to be dyed. One principle established then has remained constant: the larger part of the earnings was regu- larly reinvested in the plant. Machine after machine was de- vised, plushes and velvets came in, dyeing was revolutionized and machines came to be built on the premises. Factory after fac- tory was built and in order that there might be concentration around one center, the ribbon-making plant for which a factory had been built in Hartford was called in. Generations of the large families, their homes and wide grounds making a com- munity in themselves, entered into the business as earnestly as had the founders till it now long has been the largest silk factory in the world, and the only one where the raw material goes
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THE CHENEY HOMESTEAD, SOUTH MANCHESTER
SOUTH MANCHESTER HIGH SCHOOL Gift of the Cheney Brothers
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through all the processes to the great variety and marvelous beauty of its goods.
No such results could have been obtained without workmen not only skilled but contented. It was through appreciation of that fact and the foresightedness of the management that the whole of South Manchester was given the benefit of gas and water and electricity and fine homesites and well-kept streets and school buildings and churches-not by free gifts as a prin- ciple but as incentive, the real principle being to encourage and assure a spirit of independence. For the workmen themselves the problem of industrial insurance was solved long before the state adopted a compensation law. All the leading industries have contributed studiously and wisely to the town's advance- ment, but, in their wonderful development, Cheney Brothers could and did make themselves an integral part of the "model town."
One of the first items of evidence of forethought after the Civil war was the building of the South Manchester railroad two miles from the main road down to "Cheneyville." To go back a little,-John Mather, Royal S. White, Samuel Kellogg, Solomon Porter and Henry Hudson, pioneer manufacturers and business men, secured a charter as early as 1833 for a railroad from Hartford to Bolton. Capital not being available, they kept the charter alive till 1849 when it was turned over to the Hartford, Providence and Fishkill, and how the main line was built at that time is a matter of general history. The South Manchester line, under incorporation by the Cheney Brothers, was opened in 1869 at a cost of $67,000 and continues to hold its place for uniqueness -one of the shortest roads in the country and the only one owned by a single family. In ten years it was adapted for passenger as well as freight traffic. In the year of its opening came the "great flood," when eighteen dams on the tributaries of the Hockanum were swept away and seemingly irreparable damage was inflicted upon concerns which, with determined zeal, were put back upon a still more progressive career.
The first real reservoir for Manchester was the Taylor reser- voir, built for Cheney Brothers in 1872 for their mills and the immediate vicinity. In 1889 they organized the South Man-
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chester Water Company; the Porter reservoir was constructed in 1889 and the Howard in 1905. The supply is now augmented by connection with Roaring Brook in East Glastonbury. The Globe Hollow reservoir was built in 1906 to supply the manu- facturing needs of the mills. The Highland Park Water Com- pany was organized by the Case family to supply that section. At the north end of the town there was friction over the water question. The Manchester Water Company was incorporated in 1889 by a group of public-spirited men but in opposition to those who thought the district should own. The vote to agree on a rental at $625 a year for twenty-five hydrants, the company to build a reservoir at White's Brook, was carried by a small ma- jority. In 1907 the district incorporated to acquire the property on the expiration of the twenty years' contract but instead secured a new contract at lower rates. A district sewer system was inaugurated in 1904, using a septic tank to avoid polluting the Hockanum River. For the Ninth District, there are filter beds in the Bunce Section.
The first gas supply came from the silk plant and so, too, did the electricity. Members of the Cheney family helped organize the Manchester Light and Power Company in 1883 and the South Manchester company in 1893 which was merged in 1917 with the South Manchester Light, Power and Tramway Company. At one period the power was brought from Glastonbury and after- wards from the plant of the Connecticut Company at Edgewood; after that from the Hartford Electric Light Company with a station on New Street, built in 1923, which company now owns the stock. The gas company has become a subsidiary of the Hartford Gas Company.
Maro S. Chapman, a leader in political and business affairs in Manchester and Hartford, was the successful promoter of the trolley line to Hartford, opened in 1895. He organized the Hart- ford, Manchester and Rockville Tramway Company with him- self, Richard O. Cheney, Howard J. Wickham and Hartford and Springfield men as directors and soon had the line complete to Burnside, the eastern terminus of the Hartford line. Branch lines were run to South Manchester and to Rockville and then an extension to Manchester Green in 1908. The Consolidated Rail- way in 1906 took over the lines, in common with the others in
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THE PINES, MANCHESTER
Residence of Clarence Horace Wickham
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the state, at $900,000 or twice the original investment, the Con- necticut Company finally coming into control under the federal trusteeship.
Mr. Wickham, whose ideas and inventions had greatly advanced the envelope industry and who, like Mr. Chapman, as is told in the general history, was one of the strongest men in this great industry in Hartford, established a beautiful estate, the Pines, near Laurel Park on the road to Hartford, which is maintained by his son, Capt. Clarence Horace Wickham.
While Cheney Brothers always had maintained efficient fire service, they were instrumental in moving to meet the needs of their whole community by creating a department in 1897, now up-to-date in every particular and manned by skilled men. Hook and Ladder Company No. 1, though under control of the district commissioners, is equipped and maintained at the expense of Cheney Brothers whose immediate territory it covers. There are now four department buildings in South Manchester and one at the north end.
Manchester's school system continued in much the same man- ner as in other towns of the size till the increase in population in the Ninth District made it imperative that something better be done. Col. Frank W. Cheney of Cheney Brothers was greatly interested. Doing all in his power to improve the schools under the old conditions, it became evident that while the wealth of the town was largely in this district the voting power was outside of it. At that time Cheney Brothers were paying seven-eighths of the town taxes. The Ninth District was enlarged in 1871 to take in more than its original territory and Cheney Brothers gave a new building. In 1895 the district was incorporated. The new building which had been enlarged from time to time was burned in 1913. Then the Washington, the Franklin, the Barnard, the Nathan Hale and the Lincoln schools were all built by 1921, to- gether with the West Side Recreation Building, on a decentrali- zation principle adopted earlier when primary schools were pro- vided. The South Manchester High School, with Frederick A. Verplanck the first principal, had been conducted in the main Ninth District school from its founding in 1893 till the new
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building was erected in 1904. It was made free to all pupils in the town.
The district was among the first communities in the state to find the solution of an urgent problem which Cheney Brothers had been meeting within their industrial organization, and the state Trade School was established in 1915. This added another to the buildings of Educational Square, which now include the Barnard School, the Recreation Building and the Trade School. There also are the night schools and an out-door school, Teach- ers' Hall and a central heating plant. Notable among the mod- ern buildings in other districts are the Manchester Green School, the two Eighth District schools and the Buckland School. Mr. Verplanck is superintendent of the Ninth District schools and the high school, and A. F. Howes superintendent for the other districts. A tablet in the high school, given by the children of the district, commemorates the services of Charles S. Cheney (1836-1907) for thirty-five years.
The buildings and general improvements in the Ninth Dis- trict represented a reproduction value of $1,567,924 in 1927 when Cheney Brothers, realizing that development had reached that point where a private corporation no longer should be party to a plan by which it was leasing each of the buildings to the town for $1 a year, offered the whole to the town for the mere cost value of $956,237. A new high school would soon be neces- sary and further buildings would be in order. Instead of paying seven-eighths of the taxes, the corporation was now paying but one-fourth, and as the town grew and was more and more pros- perous along varied lines, it was felt by many citizens that the educational plant should be wholly the town's. This offer was accepted in special town meeting. At the same time the proposal to consolidate the districts, which had been opposed by people of the north part of the town, was referred to a committee and is still under discussion.
The town is well provided with library facilities. Reference has been made to the early one at Manchester Green. The South Manchester Library, established in 1871, of which Jessamine M. Smith is librarian, has 20,000 volumes. In their early days Cheney Brothers bought books to be read aloud to their workers. The outgrowth was a library in the company's office and then in
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the basement of Cheney Hall which had been erected for the general use of the people. Its later quarters, on Wells Street, were burned in 1913 but the books were saved and since then the Eldridge homestead on Main Street has been the home for them, with a branch in Recreation Building. The Manchester Library originated in 1866 and was given new life in 1895 by the King's Daughters of the North Congregational Church, with location on North Main Street. After twenty years it was removed to the main school building of the district. Dr. Francis H. Whiton, leading physician and for many years a legislator, evidenced great interest in this library, of which Mrs. G. G. Boynton is the librarian.
The churches of the town are remarkable not only for their number and their choice locations but for their architecture. The original Center Church, whose early history has been given, is the fifth building of the society, dedicated in 1904, an imposing structure, true to colonial lines, and incorporated into it is the fourth structure as a parish hall. With its surroundings it gives the typical New England atmosphere to the beautiful town. It looks out toward the south over the well kept Center Park, on which is the picturesque Hall of Records, while across the broad street to the east, at the head of the attractive business street, leading down to Forest Street and the broad lawns and groves of the Cheney families, is the fountain of the Orford Parish Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution. The statute memorial to the Civil war volunteers is on Center Park. On the south side of the park stands the imposing edifice of St. James' Roman Catholic Church, on a site given by the Cheneys, an orna- ment to the section and a monument to the determined toleration of earlier days; for the vandals who desecrated it when it was nearing completion in 1876 simply gave opportunity for evidence that it was the will of the community that there should be rever- ence for all churches, whatever the creed. Catholic services had been held since 1850 and St. Bridget's had been built in 1858 on North School Street, Father Tully of Rockville in charge of the mission, succeeded by Rev. James Campbell, the first resident pastor. Father Campbell of revered memory ministered for both parishes till his death in 1890. Father Haggarty then be-
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