USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > New Haven, a book recording the varied activities of the author in his efforts over many years to promote the welfare of the city of his adoption since 1883, together with some researches into its storied past and many illustrations > Part 29
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The compiler hopes that his "Roll of Honor" may at least earn Florio's terms of approbation :-
" Since honour from the honourer proceeds, How well do they deserve, that memorize And leave in books for all posterities The names of Worthies and their virtuous deeds ; When all their glory else, like water-weeds Without their element, presently dies, And all their greatness quite forgotten lies, And when and how they flourished, no man heeds !"
G. D. S.
XXIX.
THE VERSE OF SCRIPTURE AND THE NAMES OF THE "SEVEN PILLARS" AND THE EIGHT NOTED CITIZENS CUT INTO THE STONE OF THE NEW FEDERAL BUILDING.
One generation passeth away and another generation cometh .- Ecclesiastes, i, 4.
The following excerpt from an interview given to a reporter of the New Haven Evening Register and printed August 14, 1915, explains itself :
"The names placed upon the Post Office were selected from the so-called 'Roll of Honor' that I prepared for the memorial arch erected in front of Center Church on the Green during the New Haven week celebration in September, 1912. At that time I published a brief statement of the claims of the bearers of the names, which, in my opinion entitle them to be included in the 'Roll of Honor.' Of course, there was not room for all of these names upon the new Federal Building, and a selection covering a consider- able range of interest had to be made. I hope that the architect will pro- vide a tablet to be located in the main vestibule, giving the names of all the New Haven postmasters, together with the dates during which they held office.
"As to the verse of Scripture, 'Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars' (Proverbs IX: I), I suggested it to the architect, after submitting the verse to Judge Baldwin, who approved it. It is fol- lowed by the names of the 'seven pillars,' who were Theophilus Eaton, the Governor of the Colony, the Rev. John Davenport, Mr. Robert Newman, Mr. Matthew Gilbert, Thomas Fugill, John Punderson and Jeremiah Dixon.
"The verse of scripture was the subject of the Rev. Mr. Davenport's cele- brated sermon in Newman's barn where on June 14th, 1639, the 'Free Planters' of the New Haven Colony went to lay the foundations of their ecclesiastical order and their government."
In addition to the verse of Scripture and the names of the seven pillars cut in the frieze, the following names were placed on the walls of the Court within the building :
Woolsey, 1801-1889; Hillhouse, 1754-1832; R. Sherman, 1721-1793; Baldwin, 1793-1863; Ingersoll, 1722-1781.
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These five names are placed in as many cartouches, arranged high on the west wall of the Court. On the south wall appears the name, "Whiting"; on the north wall, "Wooster," and on the east wall, "Terry." The eight names thus placed on the walls of the Court were chosen as representative New Haven names, following down from the "seven pillars" through the Civil War.
It is perhaps going too far to apply the invidious term 'interlopers" to the "seven pillars," founders and first settlers of the New Haven Colony, although they were doubtless so regarded by the aborigines whom they found here. It is, however, pertinent, though it may be also painful, to reflect that of the eight star-citizens of later years, whose names are cut in the stonework of the building, only Baldwin was "town born," and at that his was not an old New Haven family.
Theodore Dwight Woolsey, born at New York City, October 31st, 1801; citizen of New Haven from 1831 until his death in 1889; Yale's great scholar-president; writer of books on International Law.
James Hillhouse, born at Montville near New London, October 20, 1754; citizen of New Haven from 1761 until his death, 1832; patriot, planter of New Haven Elms, United States Senator, saved Connecticut School Fund ; promoter of public works; treasurer of Yale College for half a century.
Roger Sherman, born at Newton, Mass., 1721; citizen of New Haven from 1761 until his death, 1793; first Mayor of New Haven, United State Senator; statesman; framer and signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the National Constitution.
Roger Baldwin, born at New Haven, 1793; citizen of New Haven until his death, 1863; Governor of Connecticut; United State Senator; eminent jurist; defender of the captives of the Amistad, "the most famous case ever tried in Connecticut."
Jared Ingersoll, born at Milford, 1722; citizen of New Haven 1742 to 1771 and 1777 until his death in 1781 ; noted lawyer, diplomat, King's Attor- ney, 1757; agent of the Colony at the Court of Great Britain; Judge of the Court of Vice Admiralty in the Middle Colonies; first of a line of Ingersolls, to have offices facing New Haven Green for 160 years.
Nathan Whiting, born at Windham, 1724; citizen of New Haven from 1740 until his death, 1771; in the expeditions against Cape Breton and Crown Point, and at the sieges of Louisburg and Ticonderoga; promoted colonel in 1756; the "knightly soldier" of his time.
David Wooster, born at Stratford, 1710; citizen of New Haven from 1724 until his death, 1777; distinguished soldier; at the capture of Louisburg;
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succeeded General Richard Montgomery, in command at Quebec; first Major General of Connecticut militia, 1776; mortally wounded at Ridgefield during "Tryon's Invasion." (The State Capitol Commission on Sculpture, of which I am a member, has commissioned Mr. Hermon McNeill, the eminent sculptor, to execute a statue of Major General Wooster to be placed on the North front of the Capitol.)
Alfred H. Terry, born at Hartford, 1827; citizen of New Haven from boyhood until his death, December 16, 1890. Martial hero of New Haven during the Civil War, Major General of Volunteers; won great fame for his conduct at the capture of Fort Fisher.
NOTE: My recollection is that I furnished Mr. James Gamble Rogers, the architect, several more names for which he found no place or which at least were not chosen-I was asked to submit names; the final choice lay elsewhere.
XXX.
A NEGLECTED SON OF NEW HAVEN.
"To attend to the neglected, and to remember the forgotten."-Burke.
To the Editor of the Forum, New Haven Journal-Courier :
I was greatly interested in your admirable editorial, pub- lished in this morning's Journal-Courier, on the subject of a statue in New Haven to Charles Goodyear, in whom I have long been interested as one of New Haven's most distin- guished, but entirely neglected, sons. Last July when plans for the New Haven week celebration were being shaped, I strongly urged the committee on floats to adopt a plan which should project New Haven in the field of invention and art. This, I thought, would be eminently appropriate, as the cele- bration was primarily of an industrial, rather than of an histor- ical, character. I thought, moreover, such a plan would have the merit of novelty. So far as I am aware nothing of the kind has ever been attempted. I outlined a series of floats, projecting the inventions and creations of Charles Goodyear, Eli Whitney, Eli Whitney Blake, Noah Webster, Professor S. F. B. Morse, Chauncey Jerome, Oliver Winchester, Amos Doolittle, Hezekiah Augur, etc.
In connection with the proposition, I compiled a brief account of the persons named, and I venture to append here what I had to say about Charles Goodyear, including a suggestion that we should have in New Haven a statue to Goodyear. My view of Goodyear is taken from a somewhat different angle from that presented in your editorial, and I think it may be of some interest to your readers. I hope you will use the columns of your paper to urge this project of a statue to Goodyear. I may mention, in conclusion, that I placed him at the head of my list. My suggestions were not adopted by the committee on floats, who decided upon floats of an historical character. Sometime I hope that New Haven
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may in someway see fit to recognize, as she has not yet done, her inventors and artists. I now quote from the plan I out- lined at that time :
"First Float-Charles Goodyear inventing the vulcanization of rubber.
"Goodyear's invention easily ranks as one of the foremost inventions of modern times. I venture to say that there are few places in the world where rubber, vulcanized in accordance with his invention, is not in use in some form or other.
"Charles Goodyear, a descendant of the historical New Haven family of the name, was born here December 29, 1800. His father, Amasa, was also an inventor, and a pioneer in the manufacture of wooden hardware in America. When Charles was a small boy, the family removed to Naugatuck, and there in the late "twenties," he addressed himself to the solution of the problem of treating India rubber so that it could be made into merchantable articles that could stand extremes of heat and cold. To the solution of this problem Goodyear devoted the next ten years of his life, during which he was reduced to distressing poverty and suffered imprisonment for debt, being subjected also to every sort of ridicule. But with indomitable persistence and high courage, he kept at it, and finally, at Woburn, Mass., in 1839, he accidentally discovered the secret of vulcanizing rubber, by dropping on a hot kitchen stove some of the material mixed with sulphur. To that discovery the world owes what we know to-day as vulcanized rubber, without which the modern world could hardly do business, and without which the automobile would be virtually useless. Goodyear perfected and patented his process, but his patents were infringed and he derived but little profit from his invention. To-day his name is all but forgotten as one of New Haven's great sons. He died in New York, July Ist, 1860. During all of his trials, Goodyear was supported and encouraged by the devotion of his wife.
"Daniel Webster made one of his greatest forensic efforts in behalf of Goodyear, in an argument made in March, 1852, in the suit brought by Goodyear in the circuit court of the United
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States for the infringement of his patents granted in 1839 and 1849.
"New Haven may well be proud of Goodyear, but the fact that he was born here is scarcely remembered, notwithstanding his paramount claim to remembrance as one of the greatest benefactors of mankind. It would be a handsome thing if the New Haven Automobile Club would undertake to raise a fund from the automobilists of America to erect a fitting monument to Goodyear in New Haven.
"As for this float, it could, with propriety, be given a dra- matic character by representing Goodyear in the very act of making his discovery,-accidentally dropping rubber and sul- phur upon the kitchen stove. The float could be set to repre- sent an old-fashioned kitchen with primitive furniture, intermingled with the belongings of a chemical laboratory."
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR.
New Haven, October 31, 1912.
NOTE: Goodyear was a descendant of Stephen Goodyear, an enterprising merchant who lived on the Southeast corner of Chapel and Temple Streets. A small marble tablet affixed to the back of Center Church bears this inscrip- tion : "IN MEMORY OF STEPHEN GOODYEAR FIRST DEPUTY GOVERNOR OF THE COLONY OF NEW HAVEN AND ONE OF THE EARLIEST MEMBERS OF THIS CHURCH. DIED IN LONDON ENGLAND 1658."
Affixed to the back of the Church, opposite the Goodyear tablet, is a still smaller tablet inscribed: "IN MEMORIAM THEOPHILUS EATON FIRST GOV- ERNOR OF THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. DIED JAN. 7, 1657, AND LIES BURIED NEAR THIS SPOT." Eaton has no suitable memorial (see p. 218) though, happily, he lies near the center of the Green which we probably owe to his foresight. But no man could have a finer memorial than our Green. I wish his altar tomb, or so much as is left of it, might be brought back from the Grove Street Cemetery and re-erected back of the Church, where "gentle and simple" might read and ponder its famous, quaint inscription : "EATON SO FAIMED, SO WISE, SO JUST. THE PHOENIX OF OUR WORLD HERE HIDES HIS DUST, THIS NAME FORGET, N. ENGLAND NEVER MUST."
XXXI.
LIST OF "MONUMENTS, TABLETS, STATUES," FURNISHED THE NEW HAVEN COUNCIL OF BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, HERE PRINTED AS A TRIBUTE TO GILBERT N. JEROME, SCOUT EXECUTIVE, WHO GAVE HIS LIFE IN THE WORLD WAR.
New Haven, Conn., November 5, 1915.
MR. GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR,
129 Church St., New Haven, Ct.
DEAR SIR :
At the suggestion of Ex-Governor Baldwin, I am planning to arrange some system by which the local Boy Scouts will periodically inspect the various monuments, tablets, statutes, and similar works of art around New Haven, with a view to protect them from vandalism. My tentative plan is to assign to each troop of scouts a certain list of monuments, etc. in their vicinity, towards which they would have responsibility, and concerning the condition of which they would report at stated intervals. The benefits of such a scheme appear to be two-fold; first, the public announcement that the scouts were exercising this kind of vigilance would tend to discourage depredations, and second, such guardianship would cultivate a feeling of civic pride and responsibility among the boys.
It occurred to me that you might be able to furnish, or tell me where I can obtain, a complete list of such monuments, tablets, etc., as would lend themselves to this sort of protection. Awaiting your reply, I am,
Cordially yours,
GILBERT N. JEROME, Scout Executive.
New Haven, Conn., Nov. 29, 1915.
MR. GILBERT N. JEROME,
Scout Executive,
New Haven Council Boy Scouts of America, 818 Chapel St., New Haven, Conn.
MY DEAR SIR :-
I have deferred answering your letter of November 5th in the hope of being able to find a book which I thought would be of assistance in the
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LIST OF MONUMENTS, TABLETS, ETC.
matter ; but failing to find it, I will answer your letter as well as I can, though it seems to me that either Judge Baldwin or Mr. Henry T. Blake could furnish you a completer list than I can, of "monuments, tablets, statues," etc., in and about New Haven for the Boy Scouts to protect. The following list will furnish a beginning, at least.
I. The headstone of, and marble monument to John Dixwell, the Regi- cide, back of Center Church.
2. The Lincoln Oak, the Theophilus Eaton Oak, and the Davenport Oak on the Green.
3. The Bennett Fountain on the Green.
4. The Defenders' Monument.
5. 1 The Memorial to Campbell, the British soldier who was killed at Allingtown at the time of the invasion of New Haven in 1779.
6. The Bushnell Memorial in Bushnell Park.
The Soldiers Monument on East Rock Park. 7.
8. The bust of Mayor Lewis in East Rock Park.
9. The Bowers Drinking Fountain in East Rock Park.
IO. The Fisher Memorial Seat at the corner of the Hillhouse Place and Edwards Street.
II. Judges' Cave in West Rock Park.
I2. The Soldiers Memorial Gateway in Westville.
13. The memorial tablet and boulder placed by the D. A. R. near the Whalley Avenue entrance to Edgewood Park.
14. The Old Morris Homestead, Morris Cove.
15. The Memorial Cannon at Lighthouse Point.
16. The Old Stone Lighthouse, Lighthouse Point.
17. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument in front of Christ Church.
18. The Columbus Monument on the lower Green.
I9. The Memorial tablet on the Hotel Taft erected by the D. A. R.
20. The Roger Sherman Tablet on the Union League Club House.
21. The Memorial Tablet on Osborn Hall.
22. The Memorial Tablet marking the site of John Davenport's first sermon, on the side of a building near the corner of George and College Streets.
For many years the marks of a celebrated broad jump made by Captain Nathan Hale when a Yale student (1769-1773), were preserved on the Green. The location of this jump is now not known, but I judge it to have been on the upper Green, across the way from where Osborn Hall now stands, since in Hale's time Yale students utilized the upper portion of the Green as a playground. It is unfortunate that some record of the feat no longer remains, since it would be interesting to all the Boy Scouts, who are, of course, familiar with the history of our youthful national hero, who has become the American symbol of patriotism.
Very truly yours,
GEO. DUDLEY SEYMOUR.
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SKETCH OF LIEUT. JEROME BY THE REV. DR. ORVILLE A.
PETTY, CAPTAIN A. E. F.
Gilbert Nelson Jerome, the first Boy Scout and later the first Scout Executive in New Haven, was descended on his mother's side from old New England stock. Matthew Gil- bert of the New Haven Colony was an ancestor. Jerome graduated from the New Haven High School with honors in 1907, and from Yale (Sheff.) 1910 at the age of nineteen. During his Freshman year in Yale he won the first prize in French.
He graduated from the Y. M. C. A. College at Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1914, and spent a year in boys' work in New York City, returning to New Haven in 1915 to lead the Boy Scout Movement of his native city.
During his High School course he contributed an article to one of the school papers bearing the title, "The Battle of the Air Ships." When the United States entered the Great War, he at once volunteered for the Flying Service. He sailed for France September 8th, 1917, where he studied in aviation schools at Tours, Issoudun and Cazaux. He was commis- sioned as a First Lieutenant February 14, 1918, in the Aviation Section, Signal Officers Reserve Corps, U. S. A. Assigned to Lafayette Escadrille-a French Fighting Squadron-he was on patrol duty as a fighting pilot at the front, where he was killed in action over the German lines near Blamont on July II, 1918. Driving a single-seater pursuit plane, he and a French flier were attacked by four German planes, which they were able to shake off, and were returning when Jerome's Spad was hit by a shell from the ground. In August, 1921, his remains were brought home and interred in New Haven.
XXXII.
THE MITCHELL MEMORIAL BOOK-PLATE.
. (Reprinted from the Saturday Chronicle of July 12, 1913.)
Although Donald G. Mitchell died less than five years ago, his familiar figure and benevolent countenance already seem to belong to a vanishing past. He properly belonged to an earlier and quite different New Haven, when the university was by everyone spoken of as "the college," and when the Green was still adorned with its magnificent investiture of elms. Many of us can remember Mr. Mitchell, not alone as we saw him sit- ting "of an afternoon" in the vine-covered porch of his house of Edgewood, but also as driving in his easy-going and picturesque old carriage through the elm-embowered streets of the city, which, in his time, still retained much of that air of "refinement and repose" which "Nat" Willis wrote about with such enthusiasm, in the fore part of the last century.
Mr. Mitchell has now taken a place among the immortals; his books are ranked among the American classics, and his home of Edgewood has become one of the chief of American literary shrines.
It was natural and fitting that soon after Mr. Mitchell's death his friends and neighbors in Westville should take steps to create some memorial there of their distinguished fellow- townsman. Various projects, including those of a statue and of a drinking fountain, were discussed, but someone had the happy thought of having the memorial take the form of a library, since the greater part of Mr. Mitchell's own life was spent among books. The plan for a memorial library was finally carried out, under the direction of the Edgewood Civic Association, of which Mr. Mitchell was an honorary member.
Subscriptions came in from friends and admirers in New Haven, New York, Chicago and elsewhere throughout the country, as well as from Westville, whose citizens responded handsomely. Indeed, from the beginning they have shown a determination to create and maintain the Mitchell Memorial
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Library to the full extent of their resources, though the memo- rial should obviously not be local, and was not intended to be so. The Beecher property in the center of Westville was pur- chased, and on December 17, 1910, the library was opened. Its success has already exceeded all expectations. Nothing would have pleased Mr. Mitchell more. The present building, the old Beecher mansion, has been found to answer admirably the present requirements. Of course, it is expected that the building will ultimately be replaced by a permanent structure designed to provide all of the practical facilities of a modern circulating library, as well as to afford fireproof protection to choice books and memorabilia.
In order that all of the books of the library might be asso- ciated with Mr. Mitchell, it was determined to secure a fitting book-plate. The designing of this plate was entrusted, after careful investigation, to Mr. Frederick Spencerly of New York, one of the foremost designers of ex libris in this country. Mr. Spencerly forthwith came to New Haven and visited "Edgewood" and Westville, to put himself in touch with his subject. After duly considering the material collected at that time, the artist chose as the central feature of his design, a highly characteristic photograph of Mr. Mitchell, standing cane in hand, just within the porch of his now historic home, so well known to us all here, and so familiar to all readers of his works under the name of "Edgewood." There, in this porch covered with its tracery of vines, Mr. Mitchell might often be seen by those who drove through Forest Street to see the beautiful grounds of his place, laid out and largely planted with his own hands.
The photograph, taken by Miss Isabel Blake, happily met just the requirements for the central feature of the plate. It preserved Mr. Mitchell in a characteristic attitude, as well as a portion of the rambling, home-like house, which he designed and built not long after he bought the estate of Edgewood. Mr. Spencerly placed this picture in a classical frame of the Ionic order, bearing upon its base the inscription :
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THE MITCHELL MEMORIAL BOOK-PLATE
"Donald G. Mitchell Memorial Library." Upon the entabla- ture is written, "Ik Marvel, 1822-1908." Upon a ribbon below the entablature are inscribed : "Reveries of a Bachelor 1850; Dream Life 1851." On a ribbon applied to the base at a point directly below the figure is inscribed : "My Farm of Edgewood, 1863." The entire design is executed in line on copper, and even apart from its association, is a distinct contri- bution to American ex libris.
Some objection was made to the design as first submitted by Mr. Spencerly, on the ground that there was an incongruity between a Gothic porch and a classical frame, but Mr. Spencerly insisted that, as Mr. Mitchell had been assigned a place among the classical writers of the country, the plate should be given a classical character. His reasoning was accepted, and it is agreed that he solved his difficult problem with such success that no one would now wish that he had used a Gothic frame for his central motif, or that he had abandoned the use of so characteristic and charming a motif as was provided by Miss Blake's photograph. In executing the design, Mr. Spencerly has achieved a real triumph in his repre- sentation of the veil-like tracery of vines overhanging the porch. It is rarely that a book-plate is so thoroughly charac- teristic and dignified as this work of Mr. Spencerly's.
Prints made by hand directly from the original copper will be placed in the choicest of the books in the library, while process reproductions will be placed in the books designed for circulation.
It may be pressing the point of suggestiveness too far, but the porch, with the door opening into the long, wide central hallway of the house will recall to many its charming interior and the old-time hospitality of its occupants. Mr. Mitchell was himself connected with some of the oldest of our Connecti- cut families. Mrs. Mitchell belonged to one of the most his- toric families of South Carolina, and spent her girlhood in the famous Bull-Pringle house in Charleston. These rich ances- tral traditions were represented at Edgewood in an unusual
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number of early portraits, rare pieces of furniture, plate, pictures and other objects of interest. Here also the literary memorials of a lifetime. Everything combined to produce a scene of elegance and unfading charm. No New Haven house of to-day presents quite such a picture, and none probably ever will again.
The family and immediate personal friends of Mr. Mitchell were pleased to have his memorial take the form of a public library at Westville, where he lived so many years and was so much beloved. They gave the project their cordial endorse- ment and assistance.
Following a suggestion made to the directors when the library was first opened, an effort is being made to collect memorials of Mr. Mitchell in the form of manuscripts, first editions of his works, pictures of himself and his contem- poraries, and of his different homes. As time goes on, it is believed that a collection of great interest and importance may be made, which will give the library a distinctive historic, as well as literary character, and attract many visitors from all over the state and country.
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