USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Naugatuck > History of Naugatuck, Connecticut > Part 20
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Not only did citizens rally to the jobs of community pro- tection, they staunchly shouldered the less dramatic tasks. Of the vitally important but wholly prosaic jobs none was more effectively organized than the food conservation pro- gram. Victory gardens sprang up along the roadsides, on the Town Farm, on lawns and on land ordinarily unused. At the public library the borough War Gardens Committee as- sembled books and pamphlets to help the inexperienced amateur, and agricultural specialists were brought to Nau- gatuck to speak at gardeners' meetings. School children, en- couraged to start their own gardens, had special plots set aside for them, and many children as well as adults joined the Land Army to give much needed aid to farmers of the vicinity. As the borough's farm and garden project developed into a large-scale undertaking, canning food grown at home became another major job. Scores of women and girls spent long hours over hot stoves in the high school domestic science room preserving the vegetables and fruits grown in the Victory gardens. As a result Naugatuck never lacked ample food supplies.
Humanitarian activities also assumed large proportions. While work of the Production Corps of the local Red Cross had never wholly stopped since the first World War, after 1939 Naugatuck women worked with new zeal to produce thousands of garments for destitute people in Europe. Week in and week out 270 women made so many clothes and surgi- cal dressings that more storage space was needed, and in 1942 the work rooms were moved from the chapter house to the more roomy Y.M.C.A. In every humanitarian service the chapter had a share, whether in training women for home- nursing, for emergency mass care in some thirty-seven shel-
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HISTORY OF NAUGATUCK
ters in the borough, or in conducting the blood bank. Fifteen men and women in Naugatuck earned membership in the Gallon Club for donating eight pints of blood.
When servicemen left Naugatuck many groups joined together to lighten the occasion as much as possible; a clergy- man was always present; the Red Cross canteen served coffee; the Rotary Club gave each man a gift and had a club member on hand at farewell ceremonies. The Elks, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Columbus, the Masons, the Woodmen of the World, in fact every fraternal organization, sent presents to men overseas and at home carried on programs for their benefit. The Salvation Army unostentatiously also contrib- uted to the peace of mind and physical comfort of needy people in the borough.
The emotional stress and material discomfort inevitable in a community caught up in the currents of war greatly magnified the problem of protecting children as much as possible from all the turmoil of the adult world about them. By intelligent planning teachers and parents succeeded in sharing with schoolchildren the responsibility for commu- nity welfare without overburdening them with a sense of their own youthful inadequacies. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Junior Red Cross members, church groups of young people, each learned what particular services it could assume, and all groups worked unflaggingly. Boy Scouts collected waste- paper and tin. Girl Scouts canned food. Junior Red Crossers campaigned for books, for clothes, for funds, and gave clerical assistance and hours of work to making articles for both wounded and able-bodied soldiers and sailors. Older girls and boys frequently had part-time jobs in local factories, thus gaining the double advantage of adding to the family income and simultaneously furthering war production. The Day Nursery continued to function for children of working mothers, although to meet requirements of the state Com- mission the local Board had to accept funds from the state and subject the Naugatuck nursery to state rulings. Whether
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THE IMPACT OF WAR
cared for at home or in part at the Day Nursery, most chil- dren in Naugatuck came through these years rather matured than stunted by the demands of war.
Below the high school level there were no changes in school curriculum. For senior high school boys soon to be drafted some additional courses were offered in mathematics and physics useful for aviation. But most innovations were for the benefit of the night school students whose ambitions were pricked by the new opportunities opening to anyone possessed of some technical knowledge. Nearly 650 students enrolled in the evening school in 1940-41, two thirds of them in the general high school courses; but 257 foreign- born elected classes in English and citizenship. In 1944-45, 217 people obtained American citizenship papers as a result of their studies in the adult education courses.
Though the peak of high school enrollment was reached before the war and by 1944 had dropped to the 1931 level, cost of schooling in the borough rose each year. In hopes of maintaining a teaching staff in competition with all the well-paying industrial jobs open to people in the valley, the Board of Education in 1942 increased teachers' salaries by 10 per cent as a cost of living bonus. This placed the budget at a new high, and, price ceilings notwithstanding, the greater cost of all items brought expenditures for education to $253,599 in 1944.
Fortunately not all items of borough administration grew proportionately, and most other departments kept their costs below their allotments. Particularly cheering was the decline in public welfare expense, although some critics questioned whether economies were not limiting needed services in the community. Between 1941 and 1944 the budget for poor re- lief was dropped from $60,000 to $35,000, and actual ex- penses declined from $40,517 to $31,220. Here was testimony to the immediate benefits of full employment in the town.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in spite of the anxieties and heaviness of heart born by many citizens whose sons and
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HISTORY OF NAUGATUCK
husbands were far from home undergoing discomfort, dan- ger, and hardship, Naugatuck as a whole faced the future with confidence. The doldrums of the 1930's were past and the borough could well feel that as a community it had learned some useful lessons. Experience had shown that the borough must make the well-being of its citizens its first con- sideration. Health, public works, housing, education, fire protection could never again be neglected in order to save taxation in any particular year. Public planning and sharing of public responsibility by all freemen of the borough prom- ised to attain a new high level. Differences of opinion about methods of achieving the desired goals of course continued; labor unions and factory managers, teachers in the schools and parents of school children, borough employees and borough administrators would not always agree upon the measures to be taken. But a new spirit of unity of purpose and hopefulness pervaded all Naugatuck. The prospects of peaceable, permanently constructive adjustments to a post- war regime were bright.
Proof of the stoutness of heart with which the town met the anxious days of 1944 and looked courageously to what the future might bring may be seen in the celebration carried out to mark the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of Naugatuck as an independent town. Nine days after D-day in Europe the whole community dedicated itself to staging a dignified commemoration of the day a hundred years before when the village green had been the scene of the first town meeting. The contrast in circumstance was poignant: the quiet of the New England village of 1844, staid townspeople lining up on either side of the moderator's stand under the recently-planted elm trees to vote by voice for the first officers to watch over the public affairs of 3,000 people, their horses stabled in the horse-sheds nearby until, the meeting con- cluded, farmers, shopowners, shop hands and village store- keepers should harness up and drive off over the dirt roads to light the lamps at home and eat their hearty New England
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THE IMPACT OF WAR
suppers; and in 1944 the throngs of over 10,000 people all involved in the griefs of a war-ridden world, the hum of fac- tory machinery still running on twenty-four-hour schedule, automobiles parked along the electric-lighted pavements, a huge marquee stretched out over the heavily-shaded lawn of the Tuttle homestead where the centennial pageant was per- formed by hundreds of participants. A citizens' committee undertook painstaking research to produce a script for the pageant which portrayed accurately scenes from the town's early years. So history was called upon to remind citizens of 1944 of how the present had been built out of the past by the hard work, the faith, and the goodwill of generations gone by. No one could doubt that years to come could pro- duce achievements equally great as long as every dweller in Naugatuck devoted himself with selflessness to the task.
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Notes on Old Houses
ALTHOUGH the development of town and borough has brought about the demolition of most of the old homesteads and fire has cost the loss of others, there are several eighteenth or early nine- teenth century houses still standing in Naugatuck, chiefly in the Pond Hill vicinity and near Fulling Mill brook.
West of the river where industrial growth has made heaviest inroads upon the landmarks of the past, eighteenth-century houses that remain have been so remodelled and modernized as to make them of scant architectural interest. The one notable ex- ception is the John Lewis house on Spencer Street, long known as the "Old Hard House" now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Lorin Schoene. Built about 1735 and given to his son by the first Joseph Lewis, the house is the oldest in the borough. Externally its antiq- uity is not immediately apparent, but many features of the in- terior reveal its early eighteenth century origins-heavy hand- hewn oak beams, wide oak floor boards, the oak clapboarding still visible in the attic, the foundation walls of field stone laid dry without mortar, and the fireplaces, one with a Dutch oven in the old wainscot-panelled kitchen or "keeping-room." Throughout the framing is oak, the massive beams fitted together with tusk-tenon-and-mortise joints. The great house and three barns standing on the 150 acre farm remained in the Lewis family until 1846 when William B. Lewis sold it. In Millville probably the oldest house is Jobamah Gunn's, erected in 1791 and now in the possession of the Anderson family.
East of the river, just north of Fulling Mill Brook and a stone's throw from the Waterbury turnpike, stands the Thomas Porter house, built about 1752. The harmonious proportions of its story- and-a-half proclaim its age. The interior has been greatly altered but some of the broad floor boards and the fireplace and Dutch oven remain to remind the visitor of the day when the house served as an inn for Revolutionary soldiers.
Further up the brook the house known today as the "Burr Johnson place" was built about 1756. William Hoadley gave the
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NOTES ON OLD HOUSES
land on a hillside above the brook to his daughter, Sarah, as a dower when she married Israel Caulkins. Sarah's father-in-law, Roswell, built the house for the couple. But they had little time to enjoy it together for Israel went off to the wars in Canada in 1757, was captured by the French, and because of a series of sub- sequent misadventures did not get back to this country until 1778. Sarah, however, lived on in the house until some time after 1800 when she sold it to Burr Johnson. Here Hubert Johnson grew up, the beloved principal of the Union Center high school for some years.
A charming old farmhouse built about 1810 on Hopkins Hill is another of the most venerable survivals in the borough. While it is called the "Hopkins house," it was built by Elias Ford of Wallingford. Squire Ford's daughter married Samuel Hopkins, later deacon of the Congregational church, and Deacon Samuel and his wife lived here for many years and their descendants after them to this day. In a large room upstairs Harmony Lodge, the first Masonic Lodge in the village, held its meetings before 1860.
The house in which Charles Goodyear lived as a boy early in the nineteenth century is also still in existence, although it is now so hemmed in by additions and other buildings that it is scarcely recognizable. Tucked in behind stores and sheds on the corner of Main and Bridge Streets it is, however, still to be viewed, still able to stir the imagination of the historically-minded by its very stark simplicity.
On the back road to Waterbury skirting the hills near the Pros- pect line there is Gideon Oscar Hotchkiss' house, built presum- ably around 1835. About the same time Hezekiah Hine erected his house where for years he made pocketbooks and later bone buttons. Neither house has distinctive architectural features.
No other homesteads of equal antiquity are known. The nu- merous substantial houses along North Church Street and the roads above it date from the 1870's and 1880's or later, when do- mestic architecture contrived comfort but not great beauty of line.
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Bibliographical Note
THE materials upon which this history has been based are of five main types: published histories of Waterbury and environs, official records, newspaper and periodical articles, private papers owned by individuals, organizations, or the Howard Whittemore Memorial Library, and word-of-mouth accounts obtained in in- terviews with townspeople exceptionally well-informed upon particular subjects. In the last category my debt is especially heavy, for every citizen qualified to speak with authority has been generous of time in providing me with data which only he or she could supply. Many residents of Naugatuck have also kindly sub- mitted photographs of the town and borough. Most of the illus- trations in this volume, however, are reproduced from the Harry A. Dalby collection in the Howard Whittemore Memorial Library.
For the chapters covering the colonial period I have relied largely upon Henry Bronson's The History of Waterbury, Con- necticut, published in 1858, and Joseph Anderson's The Town and City of Waterbury, Connecticut, 1896. Supplementing these is the volume published by the Mattatuck Historical Society, Proprietors' Records of the Town of Waterbury, Connecticut. Bronson and Anderson also were useful for information about Salem down to the date of Naugatuck's incorporation, while W. G. Lathrop's study, The Brass Industry in Connecticut, 1909, added some fragments to the story of the early button-makers of the region. The sketch map of the approximate location of dwell- ings in 1735 is based upon manuscript notes carefully prepared by William Ward of Naugatuck, 1835-1910, who, after exhaus- tive study of the books of Waterbury Deeds and Highways, trans- lated the eighteenth-century landmarks into those identifiable in the nineteenth century. William Ward's note books and papers are deposited in the Howard Whittemore Memorial Library. Here also is Ward's published history of the Early Schools of Naugatuck containing excerpts from early School District records and much interesting comment. The manuscript Town Records
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
of Waterbury supplied little usable material not contained in the published histories.
The beautifully preserved records of the First Church of Christ in Salem are deposited in the Connecticut State Library in Hartford, but photostated bound volumes of the church rec- ords, 1783-1903, are in possession of the clerk of the church. These, together with the less detailed records of St. Michael's church in the keeping of the vestrymen of St. Michael's, offer the most complete picture available of the daily life of Judd's Mead- ows and Salem. Miscellaneous contracts and notes relating chiefly to Milo Lewis and the warp mill, papers owned by Earl Barnum of Naugatuck, a few letters of John Hull dating from 1831 to 1842, and an account book of Nicholas Scoville's store in Gunntown, 1797-1802, furnish the only other pertinent primary sources for the period before 1844.
Fortunately after the town was incorporated primary sources multiply. The Town Records themselves are informing, while Assessors' Records of the Union City district for 1855, owned by Mr. Harold W. Brown of Naugatuck, give clues to the industrial life of the Fulling Mill brook region of that period. The single most important source for the industrial history of Naugatuck from 1850 to 1880, however, is the manuscript Enumerators' schedules of the federal census reports, 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880. These manuscripts, preserved in the State Library in Hartford, are a mine of rewardingly detailed information. The correspond- ing data for 1890 have been lost by fire and from 1900 on are still rated as confidential and not available to the public.
Town directories, particularly the first and second prepared by a local citizen in 1877 and 1883, are of considerable value, though these diminish in significance when combined with the Water- bury directories after 1886. An interesting collection of papers relating to the development of rubber manufacture in Nauga- tuck is owned by the United States Rubber Company. Excerpts from these were published at the time of the centennial of rubber making here in 1943, in Nauganotes and 100 Years, issued by the company. The story of the growth of the iron foundry cannot be so well documented. Deeds and partnership agreements are in the possession of Donald Tuttle of Middlebury and Nauga- tuck, grandson of one of the founders. The rest of that history was
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HISTORY OF NAUGATUCK
put into a typescript in 1920 by John Hayes, an employee of the corporation from 1903 on. Careful interviewing of people still living in 1920 supplied Mr. Hayes with fairly complete data, so that his pamphlet may be ranked virtually as a primary source. Useful original papers of other business enterprises have not come to light, and the diaries of local businessmen deal only with personal or social affairs.
Though a locally published newspaper first appeared in 1877, only two single copies of any Naugatuck newspaper have ap- parently survived until the files of the Naugatuck Valley Advo- cate begin in 1893. A sheaf of clippings of articles written by Henry Baldwin in 1885 and published in the Review have been kept and are housed in the town library. Baldwin's reminiscences of his boyhood in the 1850's give vivid glimpses of many aspects of the life of the community. For a view of Naugatuck's social life, second in value only to these are the address of Bishop Edwin S. Lines, Personal Recollections of Naugatuck, 1926, a paper read at the fiftieth anniversary of the consecration of St. Michael's church, and Charles S. Sherman's Memorial Discourse in Com- memoration of the National Centennial delivered in the Congre- gational Church, Naugatuck, Connecticut, July 9, 1876. Similar though briefer articles by other people, notably Eliza Ward Barnum writing in 1921 of her childhood memories of the Civil War days and later, add color but few specific facts. Even Fred Engelhardt's small volume, Fulling Mill Brook, published in 1937, is more personal reminiscence than documented history, though the author painstakingly interviewed any survivors who could be expected to know anything of the history of the region. In 1895 the Naugatuck Citizen published the Citizen Souvenir, in part a "booster's" brochure, but still a well-illustrated, inter- esting booklet describing the new borough and its past. J. L. Rockey's History of New Haven County, published in 1892, con- tains somewhat similar data.
When the Daily News files begin in March 1896, the greatest stumbling block to obtaining knowledge of daily life in the borough is removed. Moreover, special issues dedicated to par- ticular local events, such as the fiftieth anniversary of the News itself, the Goodyear Rubber centennial in 1943, and the 1944 centennial of Naugatuck, have brought together a mass of scat-
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
tered facts otherwise difficult to locate. In a special issue of 1935, for example, appeared a long account of the rise of Peter Paul and an authoritative article written by the factory manager of the Chemical Company giving an expert's version of the spec- tacular scientific achievements and the history of that company. Especially valuable is the News of August 1, 1946, given over wholly to a summary of Naugatuck's efforts and accomplishments during the war. Feature articles about Naugatuck are also to be found from time to time in the Waterbury American and the Waterbury Sunday Republican. Not only the rubber company but other local corporations in the twentieth century have turned out booklets giving historical as well as current information about their businesses. Annual reports of the Board of Warden and Burgesses are published complete, and before 1921 the re- port of the Board of Education. Later reports of the Board of Education are kept in manuscript form in the office of the Super- intendent of Schools.
The Chamber of Commerce has a considerable body of statisti- cal material collected year by year since 1921 when the organiza- tion was formed. Through the courtesy of the Board of Directors the figures on employment, housing, and special projects have been put at my disposal. Otherwise no confidential business data of local enterprises have been available. Concerns now vanished have left no books and companies still operating are naturally loath to open their records for a history to be published and cir- culated locally. Serious a handicap though lack of such materials has been, the readiness of business executives and labor leaders, of citizens of every political complexion and of every walk of life to review the past, to discuss the situation of the present, and suggest the probable developments of the future have partly compensated for the lack of private written records.
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Appendix I
Location of First Allotments
THE location of each man's holding in Judd's Meadows, as as- signed in 1679, was sufficiently explicit to make it still identi- fiable. Beginning at the mouth of Hop brook the land was laid out in a "Great lot," reserved for the minister and in time duly given to Reverend John Southmayd. Next came the lot of Abra- ham Andrews, including the site of the present Union City rail- road station. John Carrington, Benjamin Barnes, and John Welton also had their lots on Hop brook. William Judd's lot, the "Deacons meadow," began below the point where the Great hill meets the river, where the J. H. Whittemore house now stands, and extended below the present Maple Street bridge over the river. Next below the Deacon's meadow came the lots of John Judd, William Higginson and David Carpenter, the last lot lying on either side of Towantic or Long Meadow brook. No allotment was made on the hill "against the canoe place." Below this were the five lots of Joseph Gaylord, John Scoville, Edward Scott, Thomas Richason, and John Langton, respectively. The souther- most meadow lay at Strait's mountain. On the east side of the river beginning at Beacon Hill brook, John Newell had the first lot. Then came Benjamin Jones, Samuel Hickox, John Warner, Samuel Judd, Daniel Warner, Timothy Standley, Benjamin Judd, Thomas Warner, and Daniel Porter. The last lot ended a little south of Fulling Mill brook at the edge of the lands previ- ously allotted.
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Appendix II
Ministers of the Salem Church
THE pastors of the Salem Church were:
Mr. Abraham Fowler, January 12, 1785 to March 13, 1799
Mr. Jabez Chadwick, December 2, 1800 to March 1803
Reverend Stephen Dodd, 1811 to April 1817
Reverend Amos Pettengill, January 1823; died August 19, 1830
Reverend Seth Sackett, October 1834 to January 1838
Reverend Chauncey G. Lee, January 1838 to November 1840
The deacons were:
Samuel Lewis, 1783; died 1788
Gideon Hotchkiss, 1783; died 1807
Elisha Stevens, 1788; died 1813
Calvin Spencer, 1791; died 1846
Truman Porter, 1813; died 1838
Thaddeus Scott, 1813; died 1832
Lucian F. Lewis, 1834; removed 1853
Deacon Calvin Spencer, Deacon Elisha Stevens and Mr. Israel Terrill were on March 27, 1803, appointed ruling elders.
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Appendix III
The Records of the Church of Christ in Salem Anno Domini 1783
The Confession of Faith:
ist We believe there is only one living and true God one in Essence in three distinct Persons the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost.
2ndly That God hath made all things of Nothing by the Word of his Power and Extends his Providence over all his Creatures ruling them for his own Glory.
grdly That the Scriptures of the old and new Testament contain in them everything necessary to be believed by Us.
4thly That God created Man after his own Likeness, in knowl- edge and Holiness and consequently in a State of Inno- cence and Happiness (but in a mutable state) under a Covenant of Work and therefore liable to fall.
5th That Man continued not in that state, but our first Parents, We, and all Mankind, in together and with them fell from that Estate by sinning against God, and are by Nature children of Wrath & liable to the Pains of Hell forever.
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