USA > Connecticut > New London County > Norwich > History of Norwich, Connecticut: from its possession by the Indians, to the year 1866 > Part 34
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
dependencies, had the appearance of a small hamlet. The name-Lov- ett's bridge-has since given place to that of Eagleville, a manufacturing establishment which has taken possession of the neighborhood, occupying, like most of our inland mills, a choice position in the midst of romantic scenery.
The first bridge near the mouth of the Shetucket, uniting Chelsea Land- ing with Preston, was built by Capt. William Whiting,* who, for this pur- pose, in 1737, obtained a loan of £80 from the town treasury. It was designed to be a free bridge, and in order to enable the contractor to meet the payment of the loan, in December, 1737, a subscription was opened in town meeting. and the sum of £85 15s. pledged for his use. The number of contributors was eighty-three, and the sums varied from 5s. to £5. The highest on the list were Joshua Huntington, John Williams, Samuel and John Story, Isaac Clarke, and Samuel Backus, probably the men doing the most business at the time.
Subsequent subscriptions raised the amount to £130, but the contractor stating that the bridge had cost £350, he was permitted to remunerate himself by a toll upon travelers.
In 1744, after six years wear, Whiting's bridge having sagged so much as to be pronounced unsafe, was blocked up for a short period, and then repaired by Lieut. John Edgerton, who was recompensed by the toll for the space of three years. It continued in use till 1748, when it was again condemned.
In 1751, after discussion of the subject in town meeting,
" Voted, that the town will join with Mr. John Edgerton in a memorial to the Gen- eral Assembly to grant a lottery for the making of a Great Bridge over the mouth of Shoutuckett, toll free." Joseph Tracy was appointed agent.
The lottery was granted, and Edgerton's bridge built. It was 200 feet long, cost £4,000, old tenor, and notwithstanding its charter that it should be free, permission to take toll was granted by the General Assembly. It was swept away by the freshets of 1762.
* Three persons of the name of Whiting, residents of Norwich, were bridge-builders. Capt. William Whiting, who built the Shetucket bridge in 1737, was a son of the Rev. Samuel Whiting of Windham, and a resident in the north-west part of Norwich, now Bozrah. He was afterwards distinguished for his gallantry in the French wars upon the frontier. Dr. Dwight, in his travels, (Vol. 1, p. 497,) observes that the bridge at West Boston, erected in 1793, at a cost of $76,000, was built under the direction of "Major Whiting of Norwich." This was Ebenezer Whiting, father of the late Capt. Edward Whiting of Norwich, and a descendant of Col. William Whiting, an early inhabitant of Hartford, who was brother of the Rev. Samuel of Windham.
Zenas Whiting of Norwich was known extensively as a bridge-builder. In 1794 he went to New Hampshire with a gang of twenty men, and built a bridge over the Pis- cataqua river.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
The next bridge at this place is sufficiently described in the following newspaper article :
June 20, 1764. "Leffingwell's Bridge over Shetucket river at Norwich Landing is completed. It is 124 feet in length, and 28 feet above the water. Nothing is placed between the abutments, but the bridge is supported by Geometry work above and cal- culated to bear a weight of 500 tons. The work is by Mr. John Bliss, one of the most curious mechanics of the age. The bridge was raised in two days and no one hurt. The former bridge was 28 days in raising."
This bridge retained its position, and the proprietor was allowed a por - tion of the toll for fourteen years. But in 1777 it was much injured by floods, and the town having purchased Leffingwell's remaining interest, united with Preston in petitioning the Legislature (May session, 1778,) for leave to raise money by lottery for the erection of a new bridge. The petition was granted.
The managers of the lottery were Christopher Leffingwell, Jacob De Witt, William and Benjamin Coit, Jeremiah Halsey, and Roger Sterry- the two last, of Preston. Their advertisement states the lottery to have been granted in order "to prevent the incumbrance of a toll bridge, or a dangerous ferry, with one or other of which the public have been ham- pered for near a century past." The lottery was drawn the first Monday in March, 1779.
In the meantime the two towns could not agree upon the place where the bridge should stand. Committees were appointed, one after another, - but they came to no decision. In 1780 the matter was referred to three well-known citizens, mutually respected and honored by the towns, viz., Hon. Benjamin Huntington, Capt. Ebenezer Baldwin, and Elijah Lathrop, Esq., who reported that in their opinion the best and only convenient place for a bridge was where the late one stood, that is, below the ferry and near the mouth of the river. Whereupon it was ordered that the bridge should be forthwith erected at that place. The building committee ap- pointed were John McLarran Breed, John Bliss, and Stephen Culver.
The bridge, however, does not appear to have been built, and the select- men were charged to keep the ferry over the Shetucket under proper reg- ulation for the public convenience. In May, 1783, the town petitioned the Legislature for another lottery to raise £450, on the same plea as the former, "for building a bridge at the mouth of Shetucket river." The lottery was granted, and the bridge built in 1784.
From the above data we are led to the conclusion that a bridge at this place was all the time being projected or being built, and lotteries were in progress to pay for it from 1777 to 1784,-or that two bridges were built in seven years, and the first swept away by some sudden, unrecorded calamity. It is most probable that there was but one bridge built.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
The abutments of the bridge were much injured by the freshet of 1788, but after being repaired and strengthened, it continued to perform accept- able service till 1793, when it was again thoroughly repaired by Capt. Stephen Culver, who contracted to keep it in repair for four years. At the end of this period it was condemned.
The stone bridge over Swallow-all brook in East Chelsea was rebuilt in 1795. Destroyed by the freshet of 1807, it was again reconstructed, and now lies beneath the street.
In October, 1797, a joint committee of Norwich and Preston reported concerning a new bridge over the Shetucket. They had examined differ- ent positions in order to ascertain the most eligible place, and estimated the cost, if built near what was called the riding-way,* at $3,083 ; if built near Rufus Roath's, at $3,833; if near the mouth, where the bridge now stands, not more than $2,000. The bridge was built on the site of the former, and the expense liquidated by the avails of a lottery. This fifth bridge stood for twelve or thirteen years.
In 1815, the town records allude to the "enormous expenses" to which the town had been for many years subject for the support of bridges.
In 1813, a committee that had been appointed to decide whether "the Geometry Bridge at Chelsea" could be repaired, or a new one must be built, reported that the decay of the old structure rendered an entirely new bridge a matter of necessity. This led the way to a change of ope- rations. A petition was presented to the General Assembly for liberty to open a new highway and span the river in a more convenient and safe situation. To accomplish this purpose, the Norwich and Preston Bridge Company was incorporated in 1816, and the next year a toll-bridge erected nearly half a mile above the mouth of the river. A road leading to it-East Main st .- was opened in 1817, and the public travel took this direction. The contractor for the bridge was Capt. John Lathrop of Windham, and the expense $10,000. It was supported by heavy stone piers, and withstood the rush of the spring floods for six years, but was not proof against the destructive freshet of March 6, 1823. All the upper works were then carried away, but the company rebuilt on the same foundation at an expense of $5,000. In 1858 this bridge was sold by the company to the towns of Norwich and Preston for $7,500.
Giddings' Bridge. This was a structure built in 1757, which crossed the Shetucket below the old riding-way, and about a mile from the mouth of the river. The undertakers were Nathaniel Giddings of Preston and Nathaniel Backus, Jr., of Norwich, who contracted to build "a cart bridge
* There were two fords or riding-ways over the Shetucket. In 1780, one is called "the upper riding-way in Doctor Perkins's intervale."
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
over the river near the dwelling-house of Samnel Roath." The town voted to pay for the plank on condition that no toll should be demanded of the inhabitants of Norwich. These early bridges, being supported mainly by heaps of stones, and studs driven into the bed of the river, could offer but slight resistance to the crushing piles of ice that came down with the released waters in the time of floods. Giddings' bridge had a brief existence, and there is no record found of any other con- structed at that point in the river.
Laurel Hill Bridge. In the year 1853, John W. Stedman, Thomas Robinson, John A. Rockwell, Henry Bill, Amos Davis, and others who had become interested in the purchase and settlement of Laurel Hill, subscribed among themselves for the erection of a free bridge over the Shetucket, and obtained an act of incorporation for that purpose. The bridge was built the same year, at an expense of $4,000. It spans the river at the old place,-the precise spot chosen by Whiting in 1737, and occupied by five successive bridges in former times.
The proprietors also threw open a new road along the bank of the river toward Poquetannock, furnishing a drive of two or three miles with a varied and beautiful landscape spreading before the eye in its whole course. The bridge has since been repaired and covered, and was retained as private property until 1860, when the charter was relinquished and the bridge left to the public care. It was repaired in 1864.
Greeneville Bridge. In 1854, Norwich and Preston united in building a bridge over the Shetucket at Greeneville, where the river had never been spanned before. It was 375 feet long, and 30 wide. The petition for it was signed by James D. Mowry and 140 others. Greeneville then contained about 2,000 inhabitants. This bridge became conspicuously the victim of elemental fury. Shaken to pieces by the floods, and recon- structed in 1858, it was destroyed by fire July 29, 1862; damage estima- ted at $8,000.
It has been rebuilt of iron, at the joint expense of the two towns, and was completed in October, 1863. It is 370 feet long, 17 feet wide, and cost, exclusive of the abutments, $10,000. The contractor was J. E. Truesdell of Springfield.
In reviewing the history of these short-lived bridges, and observing the tendency of the smaller ones to swing aside at every flood and scatter themselves in fragments over the land, and of the larger ones to embark on desperate voyages to the ocean, hurried onward by thronging blocks of
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
ice or furious torrents, we might be tempted to think that Norwich stood pre-eminent, at the summit of misfortune in this respect. But that some of her neighbors share with her in the highest round of the ladder, may be inferred from a communication received by the selectmen of Norwich from the town of Canterbury in 1780, in which they lament the great and unequal expense which they and several towns labor under, above other towns in the State, "by being obliged to build and maintain many great bridges over large rivers;" and they request a committee of conference to be appointed to consider of some mode of relief .*
A committee was appointed, but there was no help found for the evil; every town was obliged to attend to its own bridges, and the Legislature gave no relief but by lotteries.
Wharf Bridge. The erection of a bridge over the cove, or month of the Yantic, so as to connect the point with the west side, was a project of considerable magnitude. It required a longer span than any bridge that had been built in the eastern part of Connecticut. A proposition for such a bridge was brought before the public in 1767, by Mr. Gershom Breed. He seems to have originated the plan, and at last to have made it popular by his influence and exertions. The undertakers were Gershom Breed, Eleazar Waterman, and Jonathan Lester ; the builder, Christopher Reed.
Objections were made to the erection, on the ground of danger from the high and precipitous hills on each side. The declivity on the east was particularly stony and abrupt, making the descent to the river more like a plunge than a regular progress. The natural features of the place have been so greatly altered by a long course of leveling and filling up, that we find it difficult to reproduce to the mind's eye those beetling cliffs that were here projected almost to the water's edge. It was argued also that the communication with the west side was not of sufficient importance to justify the undertaking. The town gave liberty for the bridge to be built, but, influenced by these objections, declined contributing to the expense.
The undertakers nevertheless commenced operations, and the bridge was built in 1771. A small sum for partial indemnification was raised by lottery, the managers being Daniel Lathrop, William Hubbard, and Jedi- dialı Huntington.
* It was while engaged in repairing a bridge over the Quinebaug, between Canter- bury and Plainfield, which had been partially destroyed in a severe freshet, that the first David Nevins of Connecticut lost his life. He was standing on one of the cross beams of the bridge, giving directions to the workmen, and had his watch in his hand, which he had just taken out to see the time, when, losing his balance, he fell into the swollen stream, was swept down by the current, and drowned before he could be rescued. This was in the spring of 1757.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
This bridge, though merely an experimental work, was found to be a great public convenience. A vast quantity of labor remained to be per- ' formed in the way of grading and preparing the roads that led to it. Numerous meetings were held, and plans discussed, which ended in a decision that the bridge should be enlarged, improved, strengthened against floods, and rendered passable for loaded teams. For this purpose, another lottery was granted by the Legislature in October, 1773, to raise £278 or $926 "for finishing and completing the great Wharf Bridge at Chelsea in Norwich." Managers, Joshua Lathrop, Rufus Lathrop, and Samuel Tracy. It was drawn in May, 1774 .*
The importance of this bridge has never since admitted of question. It is a thoroughfare which the public good requires to be always kept in a condition fit for service. Therefore the damages it has sustained by flood, fire, or the wear and tear of years, have always been speedily repaired, and it seems rather like one and the same bridge, than as it really is, and as all others of the town have been,-a succession of bridges.
The highway near this bridge was originally a part of Mr. Breed's house-lot. The building of this bridge led to improvements in all the avenues connected with it. The highway below the Episcopal church was widened; the road on the west side, running from the bridge to Sandy Beach, was improved ; and a new one opened from the Landing to the New London road.
Freshets. The annual breaking up of the ice in the rivers is so often attended with a destructive overflow of the waters, that it is usually con- templated prospectively with some degree of apprehension. When the rains come, and the ice begins to crack, mills and bridges perchance may be swept away, meadow lands devastated, fences destroyed, and serious losses sustained. Some parts of the town are peculiarly exposed to such ravages. The narrow and winding outlet of the Shetucket, and the high banks that restrain it on the south, naturally tend to throw the accumula- ted swell of the river over the flat part of Chelsea.
Only a few of the most remarkable spring floods can be here chronicled.
Sept. 4, 1720. " The flood raised Norwich river to a prodigious height ; stacks of hay floated down ; it carried away the bridge by the meeting house and much fence." [Hempstead's Diary.]
* This lottery had 2,000 tickets at $2.50; highest prize, $3,000. Paper bills were received and paid out promiscuously with silver. The petition for the lottery was signed by eighty of the principal citizens. In looking over the list in 1837, sixty-five years after the signing, only one of the eighty was living, viz., Capt. David Nevins. He died in January, 1838, aged 91 years.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
The Boston News-Letter notices an extraordinary flood of the She- tucket at Norwich, 28th of February, 1729. The warehouses at the Landing were much injured, but the newspaper adds the compensatory information, "there was fine bass-fishing after it,"-twenty thousand bass having been taken in the river a little below the point.
A thaw and freshet of unusual power and rapidity of action occurred Jan. 16, 1737. The Shetucket above its outlet being impeded by a solid bed of ice, the rushing flood was suddenly thrown back, and spreading over the low land, rose to twenty feet in ten minutes, sweeping off three warehouses with all their contents, and injuring several others. Blocks of ice were left in some instances on the roofs of buildings.
In the spring of 1757, a severe flood committed great havoc with the bridges and other works of man exposed to its fury.
Jan. 8, 1784, was distinguished by a yet greater and more sweeping freshet, which affected both the Yantic and the Shetucket. Several mills and bridges on the upper courses were swept away, and large quantities of lumber came floating down the streams. Happily there was but little ice in the Thames, to obstruct the downward flow, and Chelsea escaped inundation. A slaughter-house near the wharf bridge was swept off with all its contents, beef, hides, tallow, cooperage, and tools, and not a vestige left.
The freshet of February, 1788, was destructive to the smaller bridges. Lovett's was entirely demolished, and many others so much injured as to make reconstruction necessary.
The year 1789 was marked by a June freshet. For two days, the 10th and 11th of the month, the rains were continuous and flood-like, causing a rapid rise in all the streams that feed the Thames. The Shetucket and Yantic, swollen by their impetuous tributaries, sweeping aside bridges, mills and dams, deluging corn-fields, and precipitating large rocks upon the meadows, came rushing down upon Norwich Landing, and lifted the river nearly to a level with its lower tier of roofs. This flood, however, was of brief duration. The waters passed over with a furious swash, and then quietly subsided.
Jan. 29, 1797, was marked by a peculiar freshet resulting from a Jan- uary thaw. The smaller rivers were broken up, and heavy blocks of ice sweeping downwards committed great havoc in their course. The court- house bridge was so thoroughly broken up that only a heap of fragments remained. It was compared to a wreck made by thousands of hammers.
After the present century came in, the first great flood was in 1807. The rivers began to break up on Saturday night, Feb. 7th. The cracking of the vast blocks of ice was like the crash of thunder. The Shetucket rose eighteen or twenty feet. Lord's and Lathrop's bridges were swept away. On Sunday morning, fire was cried through the streets, and alarm
23
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bells were rung. For many years no such inundation had been known. The current swept over East Chelsea, and for a time gave it the appear- ance of a lake, with a few houses lifting their roofs above the waters.
The flood rose so rapidly that several families were taken by surprise and imprisoned in their houses. They retreated to the upper stories, but when the water came within a few inches of the second floors, it was con- sidered unsafe for them to remain, and they were brought away in boats, into which they dropped from the windows .* From hill to hill, all Frank- lin and East Main street was an expanse of water.
At the intersection of the streets, from the corner where now stands the Wauregan hotel to the opposite corner, a temporary embankment was raised with great celerity and good effect. It was composed of timbers, spars, rails, and wood, secured by heavy stones, and filled in with hay, straw, canvas, and any thing that would resist leakage; and though the waters slightly trickled over this breastwork, it kept off the great volume of water until the river subsided, which was in the course of a few hours.
From subsequent town acts and accounts, we obtain the result of bridge damage from this freshet. The stone bridge over Swallow-all brook, and Lathrop's bridge, were rebuilt; Lovett's repaired; Geometry bridge, abutments replaced ; Wharf bridge, Court-house and Quarter bridges repaired.
In September, 1815, at the equinox, a most destructive gale of wind was experienced on the coast of New England. At Chelsea the tide rose to an unprecedented height. Several stores on the wharves were swept entirely away, and others injured. On the wharf bridge the depth of water was five or six feet ; beating over it with such fury as to carry off the market and a store adjoining. The market drifted up the river and lodged on the east side of the cove, thirty or forty yards above the bridge. The brig Mary and several sloops and schooners were driven ashore, knocking in the sides of stores, and lodging almost in the streets.
A remarkable freshet occurred on the 6th of March, 1823, which was caused by a rain of twenty four hours continuance falling upon a deep snow. Six bridges over the Yantie were carried away, viz., three in Norwich, two in Bozrah, [at Col. Fitch's iron-works and Bozrahville,] and one in Franklin. The oil-mill at Bean Hill was swept off, and the oil-mill and machine-shop near the Falls much injured. On the wharf bridge some of the buildings were shifted in their position, or partly turned round, and the Methodist chapel, which stood on the bridge, was swept away entire, moving off majestically like a ship from her moorings,
* Capt. Rockwell's family was removed in this way. By the gradual filling in of the street, the site of the ancient Rockwell house is several feet higher than formerly.
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bowing to the waves and righting herself again, floating a mile down the river before any part of it was broken, and the frame keeping together, according to report, until it passed into the Sound. It had been decorated with evergreens for some previous festive occasion, and these ornaments had not been removed when it sailed so gallantly away. This incident of the wrecked church gave rise to many exaggerative and fanciful stories. The newspapers alleged that it bore off both pastor and flock, and that they were heard singing as they passed New London. They reported also that it had landed whole on one of the islands, and that services would be performed there in future. A schooner from Providence, then in the Sound, asserted that it came driving by them in the night with lights in it .*
So great was the force of the water brought down by this flood, that the Yantic was considerably deepened in some places by the removal of large stones. One that weighed more than a ton, and which had been placed in the bed of the river many years before, to support a foot-bridge, was raised, carried up into a meadow, and thrown against a large tree. An oil-mill was swept off, with a considerable quantity of flax-seed in it. By the middle of May, several meadows adjoining the river were covered with young flax.
March 11, 1835, ushered in a freshet similar to that of 1823, the water rising twelve or fifteen feet. The walls, sheds, and small buildings along the banks of the Shetucket were swept away like chaff. Lathrop's bridge was broken up; a shanty used by workmen on the Norwich and Worces- +er Railroad was carried past the city without breaking; another building in which some persons were collected was submerged nearly to the roof, and the occupants were taken from it by boats. Two horses which were carried away and were seen passing down the river, helplessly tossed about in the torrent, formed an impressive feature of the scene.
Feb. 8, 1854, most of the wharves were submerged by the breaking up of the ice, and the basements of buildings near the river filled with water. Central wharf and the Junction railway were overflowed. At the freight depot of the New London and Norwich Railroad, the rails were covered to the depth of eighteen inches.
On the 30th of April, the same year, a violent storm caused another inundation ; the currents of the Yantie and Shetucket struggling together, threw the water back, and the wharf bridge was partially destroyed.
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