USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume II > Part 7
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The same necessity which compelled the enlargement of the high school was also compelling the enlargement of capacity in most of the central districts, and more parochial schools were being built. In the high school, Edwin H. Smiley, who had come here from Springfield in 1890 and was made principal in 1895, resigned in 1911 but remained as instructor in Latin till his death in 1928. Clement C. Hyde was appointed to the position of principal, which he has held ever since. Mr. Hyde came here as an instructor in his young manhood, two years after his grad- uation in 1892 at Harvard. The interim had been devoted to a graduate course at the university. He was born in Gardner, Mass., in 1871. He has been president of the Headmasters Asso- ciation of Connecticut and his distinction in the field of educa- tion caused Yale to give him the degree of M. A. in 1924.
Almost contemporaneously, the Kennedy School of Missions was established here (1911), soon to become a part of Hartford
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Seminary Foundation, and the seminary was to become one of several beneficiaries under trust funds created by Samuel P. Avery.
Another benefaction from J. Pierpont Morgan came to the city in 1912, when he gave the finely appointed new library build- ing and administration building, Williams Memorial, in keeping with the other stately buildings of Trinity College and so much like what Charles J. Hoadly and his predecessors would have wished to see-men who had brought the institution fame almost from the date of the founding of the college. Withal an endowment fund of $500,000 had recently been raised.
December 7, 1918, President Flavel S. Luther relinquished his duties as president of the college, which were taken up by Pro- fessor Henry A. Perkins as acting president and by him carried on till Remsen B. Ogilby was installed, November 17, 1920. Presi- dent Luther's special regard for Hartford dated back to 1871 when, the year after his graduation at Trinity, he married Miss Isabel Blake Ely, of this city. Two years later he received the degree of M. A. from Trinity and subsequently LL. D. from Tufts and from Wesleyan. He had come to Trinity from Brooklyn where he was born in 1850. The year he was married he was made deacon in the Episcopal Church, but his inclination was toward teaching. He taught at Racine College, at Gambier, Ohio, and at Kenyon College before coming to Trinity as Seabury professor of mathematics and astronomy in 1883. He was chosen to the presidency in 1904. In an exceptional sense he was as much a part of the city as of the college. He joined in all the serious studies that were undertaken of the community's needs in the period which has just been under consideration in these pages, and when the request was made in 1906 that he enter into politics as a candidate for the state Senate, he consented. Among his intimates, then and after he had taken his seat, to which his dis- trict saw to it that he was elected, his misgivings were tinged with that touch of homely humor which made him dear to the many who were privileged to know him. With extreme modesty and as though unconscious of the power of his terse, epigrammatic, often witty and always humorous form of address, he was afraid of being laughed at and of becoming a victim of certain legislative wiles he had heard about. The answer to his own mental queries was given in his immediate return to the chamber, for another
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two years of usefulness. His account to a friend, with whom he occasionally philosophized, of a dinner for a few of the senators at the home of one of them was such a mingling of psychology and art that at some later time it should be given to the world. And then, after all, he voted as his host would have had him on a sub- ject which, at the time of the dinner, was very remote from the president-senator's mind. After his retirement, his failing health necessitated his removing to California. He died in Pasadena in 1928.
His work in the Senate is best remembered by the law which his committee put through for abolishing the school district sys- tem in the smaller towns and by the legislation necessary for the establishment of trade schools. The labor element, in the first session, was cold toward the latter effort but opposition was with- drawn in the second session. Later he was chairman of the com- mission to report on the condition of the rural schools, turning in an analysis which was as valuable as any since the days of Doctor Barnard. The doctor also was deeply interested in mechanics; at the time of the ascendancy of the Pope bicycles, he was consult- ing engineer for Colonel Pope and one of his inventions was used on all the wheels. He was a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His appreciation of the value of athletics was manifested by what he did to establish the new athletic field for the college.
Professor Perkins brought to his work youth and enthusiasm along with scholarship. Of distinguished Hartford heritage, he was born in 1873, a son of Edward H. and Mary E. (Dwight) Perkins. Following his A. B. at Yale in 1896, he won his M. A. and E. E. at Columbia in 1889, took a further course at Yale and spent a year in the University of Paris. He has been profes- sor of physics at Trinity since 1902, acting president in 1915-16 and in 1919-20. Also he has been president of the American School for the Deaf since 1913 and is a member of both American and French scientific societies; he has contributed much to the literature of science and delivers lectures on zoology and also on color photography. His chief recreation is in winter sports and mountain-climbing.
Prof. Robert Baird Riggs, recently dean of the faculty, did much to carry on the work of the college before the new president
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was elected. A native of Hazelwood, Minn., where he was born in 1855, he took his A. B. at Beloit (1876), his Ph. D. at Goettingen (1883), and received his Sc. D. at Trinity in 1920. Before com- ing to Trinity as professor of chemistry in 1887, he filled a simi- lar position at the National College of Pharmacy and he was chemist of the United States Geological Survey in 1884. He married Maida L., daughter of Thomas Sisson, of whom mention has been made in the earlier pages.
President Ogilby came of a scholarly New Jersey family and was born in New Brunswick, that state, in 1881. After gradu- ating at Harvard in 1902 and getting his M. A. in 1907, he attended the General Theological Seminary and was awarded his B. D. at the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge the same year. For two years he was curate at St. Stephen's in Boston, and was headmaster of Baguio School in the Philippines, 1909-18. In the war time he was chaplain in the regular army on duty at West Point. He was master at St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H., when called to the presidency of Trinity. He is a member of several associations of scholars.
Unity in the spirit of the city is a Trinity tradition. Such names as Professor McCook, whose career has been reviewed, Prof. Edward H. Humphrey, who serves on the high school board, Prof. Odell Shepard, who writes and lectures, and Prof. Charles F. Johnson, who in English literature has attained high rank, and others are familiar in all local circles.
XLII
THE CITY FINDING ITSELF
REVIVAL OF THE RAILROAD-MERGING OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS- SIGNIFICANCE THEREOF-"INSURANCE CITY" WORTHY OF ITS NAME.
Altogether, in the later years before the great war cloud broke, the community and the country as one appeared to be finding itself after the era of transition and to be adjusting itself more calmly and efficiently to the new scale. Considering the now com- paratively commonplace thing, the parcel post, as an index: The first stamp was sold here in 1913; people wondered, as they did over Benjamin Franklin's post roads, but today postal routes and parcel post are on about the same plane of the ordinary. For another parallel: James L. Cowles' fellow citizens hereabouts had looked upon him as a very well educated and courteous "crank," but a crank none the less and one who was wasting his fortune. Even the keen newspaper men, while publishing his articles, treated him personally only with tolerance. Mr. Cowles was one of the well known family of that name in Farmington. Son of James, he was born in 1843, was graduated at Yale in 1866, com- pleted his law course and then began to interest himself in the problems of railroads and the postal service. Free trade also com- manded his attention; he was a member of the Cobden Club. The Postal Progress League was his favorite association and by means of it he got wider circulation of his earlier propaganda. His days were prolonged till his painful but always cheerful sacrifices were rewarded, and one more thing had been added to conveni- ences of life. It was prophesied that the innovation would wreck express companies, and their stock did drop till there had been a reorganization; also that the government, not allowing a proper proportion for carrying as in the meticulous days of the past, was depriving the railroads of a large part of their income.
The railroad system upon which Hartford County depended was the most distressing feature in the hour of progress. Presi-
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dent Mellen's theory of consolidation on land and water, which has been noted herein, had brought upon itself something besides the wrath of the federal government, carried to an injurious limit though that was; there was sad negligence of increasing operat- ing costs and of depreciating equipment; in those years when the demands for transportation were far ahead of what the most far- sighted managements could have foreseen, the "New Haven" sys- tem was wobbly. In 1913 the road which from 1873 to 1893 had paid dividends of 10 per cent, and from that time to 1913, 8 per cent, omitted payment in December. Especially inasmuch as it had been a "widows-and-orphans" investment throughout this section and a stand-by for savings banks, great distress followed. Mr. Mellen was succeeded by Howard Elliott. In 1917, Edward J. Pearson, a native of Indiana and with training in the West, came into the presidency. To many, receivership seemed inevit- able, but New England was aroused and in the quiet man Mr. Pearson was seen one who could plan and who would work. To the public it looked like the work of despair. Damage to rolling stock and beds had been tremendous under Federal control. The once $250 stock was down to $10 in 1923. From the Government prior to the war had been borrowed $44,000,000; at the end of Federal control, such indebtedness was $60,000,000, and $30,- 000,000 was borrowed at a later date. Yet by 1928 the tense situation had been wholly relieved, in main by issues of preferred stock and bonds which were highly acceptable to the market inas- much as the physical improvements were pronounced. President Pearson's administration was providing better and more econ- omical facilities in every way. In February, 1928, the road declared a dividend-1 per cent on the common and no promise concerning the future but with the market reflecting popular judgment. Of this, one financial expert writes: "It is very significant that the road's recovery, both financially and in an operating way, has occurred during the most severe industrial readjustment [in the cotton-manufacturing sections] that New England has faced in half a century."
Partly because of poor transportation, prosperity was nothing more than moderate in the year preceding the European confla- gration. A mere glance at the conduct of the banks, however, was enough to create confidence that adjustment was being completed
1 ...
THE HARTFORD-CONNECTICUT TRUST COMPANY, HARTFORD View south on Main Street, 1927
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and that, with feverishness passed, there was promise of a happy future on this new plane. It has been noted that in the latter part of the previous century there had been a check on the form- ing of new banks; the second decade of this century marked the time when men began to think that larger banks instead of more was a desideratum. The Hartford, the oldest, the Aetna, one of the most successful, and the Exchange were one in 1915; the next year, the Phoenix National, another of the originals, and the Charter Oak which was to be followed by the young Colonial were united. For such changes there were sundry reasons which will become clearer in the post-war decade. In 1919 when dividend rates were increasing and conditions were inviting the organiza- tion of new banks-in Hartford, Manchester, Glastonbury and Broad Brook-there was another very significant consolidation, it being that of the long-established Hartford Trust Company and the Connecticut Trust and Safe Deposit Company, under the name of the Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company. As a note in passing it is well to remark that in 1911 the Municipal Art So- ciety was warning that there should be a limit to the height of buildings, especially around the center. The Hartford-Aetna's skyscraper and a little later that of the Hartford-Connecticut Trust appeared to be the answer.
What was to be a still greater group of buildings was in its early stages. In 1906, in the administration of Sylvester C. Dun- ham, who had succeeded James G. Batterson on his death in 1901 as president of the Travelers, that company, then located at the corner of Grove and Prospect streets, bought the corner of Main and Grove streets where for years after 1661 the General Court held its sessions in the tavern of Jeremy Addams, built the north wing of its Main Street building; the south wing in 1913, and the east or Prospect Street wing in 1919, together with the thirty- story tower (527 feet ), the highest building in New England. Nor were the extensions to stop there; across Grove Street they swept and in 1928 the latest addition has replaced the once famous Mar- ble Block on Central Row, towering high above Old State House Square, with a symmetry and architecture so in harmony with the Bulfinch structure as to furnish one more remarkable effect for the city.
Mr. Dunham did not live to see the tower rise. A descendant
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of Elder Brewster, he was born in Mansfield in 1846. After residence in Ohio, the family returned and Mr. Dunham studied law and was a newspaper man in New Britain till he came here in 1871. He had served in public capacities when called to the Travelers in 1885 as counsellor. He was made secretary and treasurer of certain companies holding a large amount of terri- tory acquired by the company in Colorado and was chosen vice president of the company in 1899, president in 1901. The assets had increased from $3,000,000 to over $100,000,000 in that length of time. Louis F. Butler succeeded to the presidency of the com- pany and its components, a Hartford man by birth (1871) and by education, and a Travelers man since 1894. He was made assistant secretary in 1904, secretary in 1907 and vice president in 1912.
Among other insurance builders who were taken from their activities in this immediate period were John D. Browne and James Nichols. Mr. Browne, who in his earlier years had been instrumental in developing Minnesota, was chosen secretary of the Hartford Fire in 1870 and was president from 1880 till his death in 1913. Mr. Browne also was president of the Board of Managers of the Hartford Retreat and of the Hartford Charity Organization Society. In West Hartford he conducted a model farm. He came of colonial family and was born in Plainfield, Conn., in 1836.
Mr. Nichols, who was born in Newtown in 1830, was likewise a descendant of the early settlers. He was a practicing lawyer and had been judge of probate when he went into fire insurance in 1867 as special agent for the Merchants. When the Chicago fire brought disaster to the company in 1871 he was secretary, a position which he continued to hold in the National Fire which succeeded the Merchants under the able management of Mark Howard. At President Howard's death in 1887, Mr. Nichols was promoted to his position. He held many popsitions of trust in the city. The year previous to his death in 1916 he was made chair- man of the board and was succeeded by Harry A. Smith, his son- in-law, whose ability had been recognized in 1907 when he was made assistant secretary. His advancement had been constant.
The old Connecticut the year of President Browne's death became allied with the Phoenix, which recently had guaranteed
HARTFORD-AETNA REALTY CORPORATION BUILDING, HARTFORD From Old State House Grounds
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the policies of the Equitable Fire and Marine of Providence and was later to include the Central States Fire of Kansas, the stocks being held by the Phoenix Securities Company. The National, prior to President Nichols' death, had been obliged to tear down its building at the corner of Pearl and Lewis streets and rebuild on a much larger scale. Its capital of $1,000,000 in 1912 had been doubled and its president now was vice president of the Mechanics and Traders of New Orleans, for which the National was a gen- eral agent, and it also was the holder of the Colonial Fire Under- writers, by guarantee.
Lyman B. Brainerd, who had succeeded Jeremiah M. Allen as president of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company in 1903, died in 1916. He was born in Colchester in 1856 and had had much experience in financial and insurance affairs when he accepted Mr. Allen's invitation to come to this company as assistant treasurer. He was associated with other insurance companies and other corporations. He had succeeded Reverend Doctor Love as president of the park board. Charles S. Blake succeeded him as president of the company. Francis B. Allen (1841-1922) was vice president from 1903 till his death. An officer in the navy in the Civil war, he held high rank among naval veterans-was junior vice commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1897. He was active in forming Admiral Bunce Section of the Navy League of the United States. He was the father of Edwin S. Allen and of Walter B. and Arthur W. Allen, prominent Hartford insurance men.
The worth of making insurance a part of the general story of the "Insurance City" is no better demonstrated than at this juncture. "Insurance Circle" for several generations had been a feature of which the city was as proud in a way as of Bushnell Park; standing at the corner of Main and Pearl streets, one could say, "More insurance millions are received and paid out within a radius of three blocks than in any other area of the size in the world." The Orient's breaking away to build its effective Oriental building on Trinity Street, under the shadow of the Capitol, was received at first with astonishment. That was in 1904. Presi- dent McIlwaine maintained that nearness to the post office was not an essential to the modern insurance office, while plenty of
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space to grow was going to be a prime essential. In his office there must be also room for the London and Lancashire, of which he was United States manager.
The Rossia elicited praise and gained a local prestige commen- surate with that which it was gaining abroad when in 1913 it placed on Asylum Hill, at the corner of Broad Street, a beautiful adaptation of the Petit Trianon of Versailles with suggestion of the home office, then in St. Petersburg. The office at that time was the chief office of a group of reinsurance companies devel- oped by Carl F. Sturhan who in 1903 had introduced in America the branch of the Russian company, Americanized under a Con- necticut charter after the revolution; the French company was taken over by the Reassurance Company of New York, formerly of Paris, the United States department of which had been under B. N. Carvalho, now of the far-reaching Rossia combine.
Other companies were to join in the hegira from the center. The Phoenix in 1917 crossed Bushnell Park and became a neigh- bor of the Orient. The old home of the Connecticut at the corner of Grove and Prospect streets, not long since the most artistic of the insurance buildings, was to make way for the buildings of the Travelers, and the Pearl Street home of the Phoenix passed to the Connecticut General Life, which in turn crossed Bushnell Park in the '20s and built its massive structure at the corner of Elm and Hudson streets.
The Hartford Fire had to seek room for expansion. Enter- ing its second century, it had become the "Two Hartfords," the Hartford Accident and Indemnity having been added to the origi- nal with Richard M. Bissell president of both. Charles E. Chase, son of President George L. Chase, had become chairman of the board. The Hartford Livestock Insurance Company, the Twin City Fire of Minneapolis and other companies had been acquired, in addition to its own New York Underwriters Agency. More were to come in later. In 1919 building was begun on the site of the original home of the School for the Deaf on Asylum Avenue, and the stately colonial structure with its broad recreation grounds was opened in 1921.
The Scottish Union and National was already established on a choice site, behind its British lions, overlooking Bushnell Park.
The Phoenix Mutual Life, in a Spanish renaissance structure, was to take its place between it and the Phoenix Fire in 1920,
ORIENT FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY, HARTFORD
THE ROSSIA INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA, HARTFORD
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while the Connecticut Mutual was forsaking its long-time home on Main and Pearl streets for its grandly colonial home on a large plot on Garden and Myrtle streets. The Aetna Fire was beginning to build on the former Goodwin estate at the corner of Asylum Avenue and Woodland Street and the Aetna Life had acquired the old Dixon estate and adjoining property on Farm- ington Avenue for a group of buildings.
If diversification was a large element in bringing Hart- ford its industrial prosperity when there were periods of stress elsewhere, so too was new diversification promoting the develop- ment of the standard insurance companies. There was need for it and so the companies saw to it that there should be coverage for all sorts of things upon which man relies and likewise protec- tion for whatever is essential to material progress. For picnic, ball game or convention there must be coverage; from rain, hail and tempest there must be protection, as much as from fire, burg- lar or accident. Not till there was wide territory and a vast num- ber of demands could such things be thought of, but they were thought of instantly the requirement was expressed. The old- time boundaries between life and accident insurance had been defied; the once almost sacred dividing line between life and fire insurance was being challenged. The Hartford Fire took up accident and indemnity of a sort appropriate to its livestock and transportation lines. The Aetna Life wrote accident and lia- bility, and such was the pressure of automobile insurance that it seemed necessary to include fire, to which end the Automobile Insurance Company was incorporated and added to the company group while a Residence Fire Department was organized at the home office, and in 1916 ocean and inland marine insurance. It was becoming not uncustomary among large companies to encour- age their field men with a variety called "multiple lines."
The Aetna (fire), which had been writing automobile insur- ance since 1909, raised its authorized capital to $10,000,000 in 1911. The distinguished grandson of Joseph Morgan, keeper of the fashionable tavern where the company was started, had died in 1913 and had been succeeded by his son, J. Pierpont Morgan, Jr.
The First Reinsurance Company of Hartford was organized for life business in 1913 as a subsidiary of the Munich Reinsur- ance Company. When the war came the alien-property custodian
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named directors who elected Herbert H. Stryker president in place of Carl Schreiner. The American interests bought the con- trol after the war; merger was made with the Rossia group, the life portion of the business going to the Sun Life of Canada.
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Strong men whose labors had made it seem as though their places could never be filled, as in each decade, were passing on, but also, as in each decade, strong men were coming forward to stand the test-and a test that soon was to be greater than any could have suspected. The stories of many of the men depart- ing is woven into the story these pages have set forth, not always with their names. Conspicuous among those who have been named is James J. Goodwin. He died in 1917. For many years prominent in the great incidents that have been noted, one of his last acts (in 1914) was an illustration of the humbler acts which, he knew, would yield blessings no less worthy. It was the giving of a large plot on Mather Street for the Babies' Hospital which Dr. Walter G. Murphy with the aid of organizations of young women and a long list of physicians, laymen and clergy was build- ing up. So successful was the effect upon producers, dealers and public authorities of this seeing to it that the children of the poor had pure and germless milk that the stations established in River- side Park and other places could finally be discontinued because of general appreciation, law and system.
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