USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Oxford > History of the town of Oxford, Connecticut > Part 9
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In the Oxford land records, reference is made to the mill in a deed dated Aug. 26, 1799 from Joseph Wooster to Benjamin Loveland, as being" a sawmill and grist mill known as the Burrell Mills." A simi- lar reference is made to the Burrel's saw and grist mill.
The saw mill was operated for some twenty years around 1868 by H. E. Bidwell in connection with his screw factory. About 1926, Mr. Robert Z. Hawkins of Quaker Farms bought the sawmill and operated it until 1932 when he sold the property to the Ansonia Water Works.
Another saw mill on Eight Mile Brook was located at its junction with the Housatonic River in the section known as "Punkups" in the valley of the Housatonic River from Five Mile Brook to some distance above Zoar Bridge, which was at one time a prosperous neighborhood.
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Further up Eight Mile Brook, at Hurley Road, just off Route 188, the 1868 map of Oxford shows a saw mill marked "R.B.L. & Bro." It seems probable that "R.B.L." was Robert Bruce Limburner who had come to Southford in 1863. He had two brothers, John Jr. and Wallace, the latter of whom moved to South Norwalk, so probably it was John Jr. who was the partner of Robert Bruce Limburner in this saw mill. Robert Bruce Limburner is known to have made paper board, in Southford. He retired in 1870.
For some years after that the mill belonged to a family named Bostwick and the pond was known in the late 80's as "Bostwick Pond".
Still further up Eight Mile Brook, there was a saw mill a short distance northeast of Hurley Rd.
These seem to be all of the saw mills and grist mills on Eight Mile Brook, at one time or another, but which of them is the oldest is uncer- tain.
In the Quaker Farms section there was another saw mill, this one on the south branch of the Kettletown Brook. It was built by Abraham Wooster who bought the land in 1722 and is on record as having built "a mansion house and a saw mill". The mill was located a little northeast of Good Hill Road.
Still another on the west side of town is shown on the 1868 Oxford map, on Hull's Hill, it being designated as "Old Mill," and on "Old Mill Race" from Kettletown Brook where the race joins the Housatonic River. It was owned in 1868 by E. and H. Wheeler.
On the east side of town, the following were the saw mills and grist mills on Little River:
1. At Hogs Back Road a saw mill which Sharpe says was there "from time immemorial"
2. Just below Oxford Center and just south of where Towantic Brook flows into the Little River, just before where the river now crosses Route 67. It is mentioned in a deed given in 1823 by Ruth Terrell to St. Peters Church, as "the saw mill place belonging to Joel Perry, and Samuel Riggs on the Turnpike Road". It was apparent- ly a family partnership for Samuel Rigg's sister, Betsy Riggs married Joel Perry Sep. 17, 1790. As Joel Perry was born in 1769, he was therefore twenty one years old when he married, and he and Riggs may have built the mill some time after 1790. It is shown on the 1868 map of Oxford as a sawmill owned by Samuel Perry. Sharpe, writing in 1910, says "there remain the abutments of the dam and the walls on which stood a saw mill, long owned by Joel Perry."
3. On Little River at Towantic Brook. It is shown on the 1868 map as owned by E. A. Carley. The dam was located just south of where Towantic Brook flows into Little River and just before the river again crosses Route 67. Ruth Terrell's deed to St. Peter's Church in 1823 mentions it as "the mill seat of French and Porter."
Sharpe says of it "Next below (Joel Perry) a Mr. French had a
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grist mill, owned later by Eli Carley, then by S. P. Sanford, and in 1910 by Llewellyn Andrew. A cider mill and distillery was also run in connection with it in the Fall Season, but the distillery part of the business was abandoned long before 1910.
4. Just below Seth Den Road where the outlet from Swan Lake flows into Little River, there was a saw mill built in 1852 by Sheldon Church, who owned nearly a square mile of land on which was sufficient timber to keep the mill supplied during the season of available water power without using more than the annual growth of the trees would amount to. This later was owned (in 1890) by S. P. Sanford.
5. The saw mill furthest south within the limits of the town was that built by Capt. John Wooster, at Park Road at least as early as 1747 when there is a record of a mill property sold there in that year. It was operated later by William and Sheldon Church about 1890 and still later by Mark Lounsbury, by whom it was leased to Edward L. Hoadley. It is still operated by Joseph Montriski. The grist mill at this site was discontinued.
On the Naugatuck Watershed in the eastern section of the town, the 1868 Oxford map shows a grist and saw mill on Long Meadow Brook, at Griswold Road; also a sawmill on the eastern side of Chestnut Tree Hill on the brook which empties into the Naugatuck River at Pine's Bridge. It was located southwest of the Old Pike and east of Chestnut Tree Hill Road and there was another sawmill lower down on the same brook about 1/4 mile from the Naugatuck River. All in all, there have been in the town thirteen saw mills and three grist mills operated by water power.
The 1819 "Gazeteer of Connecticut" makes no direct mention of saw mills in Oxford, but states "There is a large proportion of forests (in Oxford), the timber of which is principally oak, walnut, and chest- nut. Considerable quantities of wood and timber are annually got to market, principally to New Haven, but some of which is sent to New York." This statement of course presupposes the existence of saw mills at that date.
CHAPTER 16
SMALL FACTORIES
In 1877, Mr. F. J. Kingsbury, an elderly New Haven man writes "Prior to the War of 1812, I do not think that any branch of manu- facturing in Connecticut had met with an assured and marked suc- cess. When the war closed our ports, then, as one article after another which we had hitherto imported grew scarce, necessity, that mother of invention, drove us into supplying the deficiency, and for three years manufacturers flourished. On the Declaration of Peace in 1815 however, the ports were again opened, and for a while things were in chaos. But much machinery had been built, much experience gained and much skill acquired. Then in 1816, the Tariff bill became a law and Connecticut began to be a manu- facturing state. Mills began to multiply along the water courses, and farmers' sons and daughters left their homes in the hills and went to the mills in the valleys."
On June 1, 1812, Congress declared war against Great Britain. It however was an unpopular war, and had been opposed by virtually the entire commercial section of New England, whose merchants were in- jured more by embargoes and "non-intercourse" than they were by British cruisers. The legislatures of the New England States con- demned the war openly and refused to allow their militia to serve out- side their State.
However, a Company of artillery was formed in Humphreysville, and sent to New London and stationed at the mouth of the Thames. The writer of this statement says that the Company included a few men from Oxford, but mentions the name of only one, Chauncey Hatch. The writer was apparently unable to find records of the men in the Com- pany, but gives a list of the following few names he had obtained from inscriptions in the cemeteries, and from elderly people then living:
Col. Ira Smith, Capt. David Holbrook, Capt. Amadeus Dibble, Anson Baldwin, Jesse Baldwin, Abel Bassett, Samuel Bassett, William Bassett, James Bowman, Lewis Broadwell, Thomas Gilyard, Jesse Hartshorn, Chauncey Hatch, from Oxford.
In August of 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed and the war was officially ended. While not many of Oxford's citizens served in the war, it had a devastating effect on their lives and business. The
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Embargo Act seriously hampered their commerce; and the war, with its new embargo finally wiped it out. It can easily be imagined in what a plight the people of Oxford found themselves, with their soil badly depleted and their commerce about gone. Nothing daunted, however, they soon found themselves caught up in that tremendous growth of manufactures which occurred all through New England; the making of things that formerly they had had to buy abroad.
Here we may pause to consider some of the economic conditions in New Englant as set forth in the "Connecticut State Register of 1813" in which a complete list of Rates is given, at which "Taxable Polls and Estates are put in the Grand Levy in the State of Connecticut". Some of its most interesting features follow:
"Each man from 21 to 70 years of age had to pay a poll tax at a valuation of $60. Young men 18 to 21 had a similar tax at a valu- ation of $30. Land was held relatively cheap, ploughland being valued the highest, at $1.67 per acre, and the lowest unenclosed land, third rate, at 9d per acre."
Stallions were the most valuable animals, rated at $67. each, next oxen and bulls $10. each. Carriages of all kinds were evidently luxuries, a coach (i.e. "a four wheeled pleasure carriage drawn by two horses), was valued at $168., a chariot ( "a wheel carriage of pleasure, a half coach) $134. The chaise, made famous as "the One Horse Shay" was valued all the way from $15. up to $60 .; a "light-two wheeled pleasure carriage commonly drawn by one horse, and fur- nished with a hood or top that may be let down. A phaeton was "a fourwheel open chaise," $100. A chair was a "sort of open chaise" and valued about the same. In 1813, a dollar was equivalent to six shillings; one shilling equivalent to 16 2 /3 cents.
It will be noted that sheep were "added as a penalty" at 75d each. Was this a sort of bonus to stimulate sheep-raising ? Oxford seems to have received its impetus towards manufacturing from the introduc- tion of Merino sheep into Chusetown (now Seymour) by Gen. Hum- phreys in 1802. He had been United States Minister to Spain in 1797 and was much impressed with the superiority of these sheep and de - termined to bring back some of them to Connecticut. In an essay on the subject of the improvement of sheep in the United States, addressed to the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture, we find,
"The race of Merinos, probably first imported from Barbary to Europe, are believed to have become superior to the original stock. Convinced that this race of sheep might be introduced with great benefit to the country (the United States), I contracted for one hundred, composed of twenty-five rams, and seventy-five ewes from one to two years old. On the 10th of April last (1802) they were embarked in the Tagus on board the ship "Persever- ance" of 250 tons, Caleb Coggeshall, Master. In about fifty days,
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twenty-one rams and seventy ewes were landed at Derby in Connecticut; they having been shifted at New York on board of a sloop destined to that river (Ousatonic)."
Gen. Humphreys sold a part of his flock to some of the more enter - prising farmers around Seymour for the improvement of their sheep, at one hundred dollars per head, a price, it is said, less than the cost to him. "Soon the price of a Humphreys merino buck went up to from $1500. to $2000. and that of ewes from $1000. to $1500." Oxford be- came rapidly a sheep raising and wool producing community.
Woolen goods were made originally entirely in the homes, but the raw woolen fleece had to undergo extensive preparation before it was ready for the wives and daughters of the farmers to turn it into yarn.
Fleeces had to be opened with care, and have all pitched or tarred locks, daglocks, brands and feltings cut out. The white locks were carefully tossed and separated and dyed. Blue, dyed with indigo, was the favorite color.
The next process was carding, in which after thorough greasing, the wool was drawn over a wire brush, by hand. The carding process was taken over quite early by carding mills, operated by water power, but the rest of the work of spinning into yarn and weaving into cloth was done in the home after the wool was returned from the carding mill.
A mention of such a carding mill is contained in the account about Oxford in the 1819 "Gazeteer of Connecticut", in which it is noted that there were 3 carding machines "for customers". This means that they did the carding of wool sent to the mill by farmers and later returned it to them.
After the wool was spun and woven, the cloth had to undergo a pro- cess known as "fulling" (a name, incidentally which is preserved in the name, "Fulling Mill Brook", in Naugatuck). This process con- sisted of treating the cloth with a clay, known as Fuller's Earth, which exercised a cleaning action on woolen cloth by absorbing greasy matters. This soon came to be done in mills known as fulling mills, and in which the cloth was beaten in water containing this clay, the machinery being driven by water power.
It is to be understood that Gen. Humphrey's first mill was of this sort, namely for carding and fulling only, the spinning and weaving be- ing done at the homes of the inhabitants throughout the community.
However, in 1810, Gen. Humphreys procured a charter from the legislature and bought the fulling mills at the falls of the Naugatuck and commenced the manufacture of broadcloth, the first manufacture of broadcloth in the United States. This is so stated in an "Historical Sketch of Seymour" by Dr. J. Kendall. Orcutt's "History of Derby" on the other hand says that "Gen. Humphreys in 1808 had the reputation of producing the best quality of that kind of goods in America."
Here it should be said that the "broadcloth" of that day was a heavy, expensive woolen fabric used for the finest garments, such as
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men's frockcoats, full dress evening suits etc. (In recent years the term "broadcloth" has been applied to a light cotton material used for men's shirts).
Much of the work in Gen. Humphreys' woolen mill was done by apprentice boys, and he "took great interest in their discipline and education." It is said that "seventy of these boys were indentured at the same time from the New York Almshouses, and others from the neighboring villages. He established, for these boys, evening and Sunday schools with competent teachers. "The boys were officered and drilled in military tactics and when there were visitors from abroad, the boys were marched out of the mill and made to pass in review."
We do not know whether there were any boys from Oxford that be- came Humphreys' apprentices, but we do know that two of the appren- tices, Samuel Wire and Isaac Rowe came to Oxford later as grown men and established businesses of their own.
"In 1822, Gen Humphreys' mill passed into the hands of John W. De Forest, Lewis Waln and Jeremiah Fisher Leaming, and was converted by them into a manufactory of cotton cloth."
"The planting of cotton had started in the United States around 1789, and by 1794 Eli Whitney had received his patent on the cot- ton gin, and the price of cotton rose from 14 1/2 cts. per lb. in 1790 to 44 cents in 1799." Evidently cotton offered a better re- turn than the broadcloth.
The 1819 "The Gazeteer of Connecticut" says that the town had in that year, one Woolen Factory, two Fulling mills and three Carding Machines for customers, but does not give the names of the owners or the location of the mills.
No definite record has been found of which woolen mill was the first to operate in Oxford. It was presumably either the Tomlinson mill on Eight Mile Brook, or the Capt. Wire mill on Little River.
The Tomlinson mill was located in Quakers' Farm on Eight Mile Brook about a third of a mile north of Christ Church. It was part of the estate of David Tomlinson when he died in 1824. He had come to Oxford from Woodbury at the age of 18 or 20, (about 1780) being placed in charge of land owned by his father, Capt. Isaac Tomlinson. In 1784 he married Lorena Bacon, daughter of Jabez Bacon, said to have been the richest man in Woodbury. Capt. Isaac Tomlinson also was well-to-do, so the young couple could readily have commanded sufficient capital to build and equip the mill.
At the time of its sale in 1824, the property was described in the deed as "a woolen factory situated in Quakers' Farm, on ye eight mile brook, so called, about an hundred rods northerly from ye chapel with all ye machinery and implements belonging thereto, with all ye water privileges heretofore claimed as belonging to sd factory, also a dye
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shop with ye kettles and implements thereunto belonging, also a small dwelling house standing near said factory, with ye land on which sd buildings stand."
The buyers of this factory, Feb. 6, 1824 were Isaac Rowe Jr. and Frederick Rowe, twin sons of Isaac Rowe, Sr. who had come from Brattleboro, Vt. to work for Gen Humphreys (presumably as an apprentice) in the latter's woolen mill at Humphreysville. A few years later, Isaac sold out to his twin brother, Frederick, and in 1831 the latter sold the "woolen manufactory and dwelling house, with the water privilege and land" to Ivan Sherman and Horace Candee, the specifications showing what progress had been made in the machinery used in the manufacture of woolens, as a "patent shearing machine, spinning jenny, gigg mill for napping cloth, 1 broad loom, set press papers, roll of filleting cards, clothiers brushes, 4 shutters, 100 seazles or more."
One wonders if the word "seazle" should not be "teazle," an instru- ment used for raising the nap.
This was apparently a complete woolen mill, from the raw wool to the finished goods. Broadcloth was manufactured in this mill as early as 1824, and probably earlier, and continued for several years there- after.
In 1833, Sherman and Candee sold the property to Benjamin Hawley of Cherryfield, Maine and Mary Burrett of Southbury. William De Forest and Hine were for some years the proprietors of the mill, manufacturing satinet (a twilled cloth of cotton and wool), employing about a dozen people. The factory was closed in 1850.
The Capt. Wire Woolen Mill was located on the Little River, just north of where the southern end of Chestnut Tree Hill Road (now known as Wire Hill Road) joins Route 67.
Capt. Samuel Wire was born in 1789 and came to Humphreysville in 1802, when he was but thirteen years old to "learn the clothing business as one of Gen. Humphrey's apprentices" In 1812, age 23, he married Nancy Wooster, sister of Gen. Clark Wooster and on Nov. 7, 1814 he purchased from John W. Wooster, one half of a "factory, house, barn, dam and Waterworks, the factory being mentioned in the town records as a "clothiers' shop and fulling mill". (The word "clothier," used here does not mean a seller of suits or other garments, but merely the maker of cloth).
"Capt. Wire carried on the business for about thirty years (to 1844). The wool from sheep on the surrounding farms was brought to the mill to be carded and spun."
It should be noted that the spinning into yarn was done there as well as the carding, thus taking the spinning away from the homes, and causing a minor industrial revolution. "Many paid for these two pro- cesses and then took the yarn home to knit into stockings, mittens,
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etc., or to be woven into cloth on hand looms." As it was a fulling mill also, the cloth presumably was returned to the mill for fulling. "Much cloth was, however, manufactured at this mill, principally sati- net." "This was generally shipped to commission merchants in New York, but was also retailed to people in the vicinity of the mill."
Another Woolen Mill of a somewhat later date was that located in the Punkups section on Eight Mile Brook, a short distance from where it empties into the Housatonic River.
"James Dawson, in company with a man by the name of Lees, father of Robert Lees, began business there about 1825, and manu- factured broadcloth and cassimeres". (Cassimeres was a thin twilled woolen cloth. ) "
Dawson was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1800, and was therefore about 25 when he began business at Punkup. Some years later he sold out to Ira Bradley and William Guthrie of Southbury, who sold the property to James and Samuel Radcliffe of Bristol, Conn., July 1, 1853.
A mortgage deed given by Dawson in 1851 gives some details of the machinery; "four carding machines, three broad power looms, a spin- ning jack, two shearing machines, a gig, a brushing machine, two frames for twisting and spooling stocking yarn, and sundry articles not herein enumerated." This mill seems to have continued in opera- tion somewhat longer that the others in Oxford.
From the foregoing it is clear that Oxford, from about 1800 to 1850, besides being a farming region, was a prosperous sheep growing dis- trict, with a considerable woolen industry.
With the exception of the saw mills and grist mills, these three woolen mills appear to have been the only factories operated by machinery in Oxford in the first half of the nineteenth century, the power being furnished by water wheels.
The Hat Factory
At the same time, in Oxford Center "the manufacture of hats was a leading industry carried on in shops a few rods north of the hotel on the Oxford-Southbury Road (Route 67). Sharpe says it was carried on for nearly fifty years, but neglects to say when it started or when it ended. The Oxford map of 1868 does not show them or make mention of them in the list of town industries. They probably died about 1850 when most of the other small industries went out of existence, and fifty years back of that would make the hat industry start about 1800, which seems likely, as the Connecticut Gazeteer of 1819 says that "the town has one large Hat Factory." J. W. Barber in his "Historical Collections" published in 1838 says "there is an extensive hat manu- factory owned by Hunt and Crosby." Sharpe does not say who were the original proprietors, but says that "About 1830, and for some time
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thereafter, Seth Crosby was the proprietor, said to have employed at one time about seventy-five men. Four partners succeeded him, Garry Riggs, George Fuller, Charles Ranson and Agar Cable. Henry Dunham followed, keeping a general store in addition to managing the hat busi- ness. He usually found a ready sale in New York City for all the hats the men could make, or rather what the men would make, for the hat- ters were a very jolly, independent sort of men, and although they mostly worked "by the piece", and the more hats they made, the bigger their pay, they had a sort of chapel arrangement, and what the "chapel" ordered was, to a great extent, the law of the shop."
These hats were probably made of felt, although in the earlier days they may have been of beaver. A writer in 1856 says, "The materials used in making hats are the furs of hares and rabbits (felt), and also wool and beaver. The beaver is reserved for the finer hats."
The hats were made, apparently, by hand, without the assistance of machinery, inasmuch as there was no water power available at this location.
The Daguerreotype Case Factory
Somewhat north of the hat factory, in Red City, on the Southbury Road (Route 67), David Scott, about 1855, manufactured cases for daguerreotypes and ambrotypes. The daguerreotype was the earliest form of photograph. Instead of the modern film, or the earlier glass plate of photography, Daguerre, the Frenchman who invented the pro- cess, used surfaces of pure silver, plated on copper. The ambrotype, a later development, used a film of collodion coated on a glass plate "the lights of which were formed by a bright surface of reduced silver, and the shadows by a black background showing through the transparent portions of the plate." Both the daguerreotype and the ambrotype faded if exposed to daylight, and so were always enclosed in folding cases made of leather or guttapercha. These cases usually had decorations on the outside, made in the casting, and on the inside, a mat made of brass or copper foil. The pictures had a delicate beauty which is worth preserving, by keeping them shut in their cases.
The Screw Factory on Eight Mile Brook
For about twenty years, around 1868, H. E. Bidwell carried on the manufacture of metal wood screws in the mill on Eight Mile Brook, at "Old Mill Road," (now Barry Rd.). This was in the old saw mill on the west side of the brook which we have already described, and in which the "up and down" saw was located in the upper storey. Bidwell came from Amherst, Mass., bought the mill and fitted up the lower floor for making small screws. These were the old fashioned blunt- end screw, which required the user to bore a hole in the wood with a gimlet before inserting the screw. It is said that the invention of the
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modern gimlet-pointed screw put Bidwell out of business. He sold these screws to hardware dealers throughout this state and to some in Massachusetts and New York State. He also made "auger screws" for manufacturers of augers in Seymour and Westville, and "shear screws" for manufacturers of shears in South Britain and Naugatuck.
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