USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 15
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The Bristol Copper and Silver Mining Company - the copper mine was in operation again - had a big
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
wagon with miners in work clothes, lit hat-lamps, picks and sledge ham- mers.
One day after school Arthur went over to the mine, made profitable again by the rise in the price of cop- per and cheaper processing meth- ods. Burton S. Cowles, foreman of the paper-box factory, E. J. Hubbell, curator of the Pittsfield Museum, and several others had organized the company with $500,000 capital and were pumping out the old diggings, repairing the dam and raceway and installing new machinery.
The greenish water that had filled up the two abandoned shafts had enough copper content to pay pumping costs. One shaft still had its timbers intact, so it and a new shaft were driven down to about 400 feet. The best ore at 338 feet assayed 73.41 per cent copper, 23 ounces of silver to the ton, fabu- lously rich, but unfortunately spotty.
Far down the shafts, Arthur could see the lights in the miners' caps, gleaming as from an inverted sky.
One Sunday a school friend in- vited Arthur to a special affair at the Methodist Mount Hope Chapel on Chippins Hill, which had already become quite famous. This was a Sunday School, originally started in the Chippins Hill Schoolhouse in 1884 by the teacher, Hattie O. Utter. When she left, it was kept going
with the assistance of William E. Sessions, the foundry man. He soon came to take a deep interest in it and installed a reed organ in the school.
Attendance soon outgrew the ca- pacity of the schoolroom and Mr. Sessions raised money to erect the chapel, and secured enough to add a steeple and bell. George C. Arms cut the cornerstone. The edifice was dedicated on October 23, 1889, with hymn-singing, a sermon, an address by Sessions, and a familiar song by Nellie Sessions, ‘There is a Green Hill Far Away.' The carpets and desk were donated by Mr. Ses- sions' mother, and a thirty-day clock was donated by George W. Mitch- ell. For many years thereafter, Ses- sions personally gave his time and money to keep the work going and improve the chapel.
After school and on Saturdays, Arthur always hurried on to Forest- ville to his father's hairspring fac- tory where he had his own bench.
As a young man, his father, Fred- erick Newton Manross, had worked for S. E. Root making clock dials, then for thirteen years was a clock contractor for Welch. In his free time he made hairsprings for clocks and fine instruments in his kitchen.
He devised an entirely new proc- ess of drawing and rolling wire that cut costs 95 per cent. This de- pended on uniform steel. The best he could get in the United States
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THE HORSELESS BUGGY
was a scratch-brush steel, but he soon imported the best European grades. His product found such ac- ceptance, he set up a small factory. It had only 300 square feet of floor space, but by 1890 he had increased this to 2,000 square feet.
On a fine May day in 1895 Ar- thur's father called him from his workbench to drive to Bristol. They picked up Arthur's mother, Sylvia.
Pine Street was badly torn up be- cause the Bristol and Plainville Tramway Company, organized two years ago, was laying down tracks. Charles S. Treadway and J. H. Ses- sions were among the chief backers.
Arthur wanted to be an electri- cian but wondered if it would not be more fun to be a motorman. This was such an honor that each director of the new streetcar company had reserved the privilege of naming one motorman and one conductor - just as senators name West Point cadets.
They turned up toward Lake Compounce where two miles of track had already been laid down. A controversy had developed over the best kind of poles. Along Lake Avenue, they were round, but oc- tagonal poles would be used as far as Muzzy Corner.
"The cars will be running by Au- gust," remarked Frederick Newton. "That will be a big thing for Lake Compounce. Everybody can get
there." One of Frederick's aunts was related to Gad Norton who had built up Compounce Lake.
The view of the calm blue-green expanse of the lake nestled in the forest-clad slopes was as splendid as when Elias Roberts and his bride Susanna Ives had ridden over the old trail - and thereby Bristol had become the clock center of the world. At the bogs near here, Ar- thur's earliest ancestors had come as boys with young Steve Barnes to gather cranberries.
The contractor, F. L. Burr, a rela- tive of the husband of Frederick's sister, Mary Lanette, was building a big new casino. It was to have a kitchen annex, and a big veranda on three sides. Uncle Burr explained that the first floor would be used for a dining room and refreshments. The dance hall and dressing rooms would be on the second floor.
"The way the Crocodile Club is growing, it won't be any too big," said Frederick Manross.
The Crocodile Club had been formed about ten years before this to celebrate Gad Norton's success in having Compounce Lake set off from Southington as part of Bristol, a large thumb of land sticking down into the neighboring town not part of the original 1721 survey.
"In front of the casino," Uncle Burr continued to explain, "there will be an electric fountain that changes color like the rainbow."
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ZURSTOL
B & P.T Co.
I
FIRST TROLLEY CAR AT LAKE COMPOUNCE (Vault, Bristol Public Library)
THE HORSELESS BUGGY
Returning, the Manrosses crossed the bridge near the old Barnes- Pierce tavern and the Bristol Brass and Clock Company, and rolled along Water Street, past the long white wooden bridge beside the old Downs mill, now the Ivory and Bone Shop.
Beyond the fancy red iron-grilled bridge on East Street, or Hooker Court, they passed the Stockinet, the old Bristol Manufacturing Com- pany where a hundred and fifty em- ployees in three large three-story brick factories, made underwear. Improved machinery to cleanse and 'lap' the raw cotton had just been in- stalled. The concern was now headed by Julius R. Mitchell - son of George and Polly - who had married Drusilla Welch, Elisha's sister. Julius and his son, George W. Mitchell, owned the biggest men's furnishing store on Main Street near Muzzy's.
At the next corner, iron pipe was stacked up to be used to carry Bris- tol's new sewer under the river. The sewer, long overdue, was going to mean much for public health.
A new borough government had been set up for the central square mile of the town where business, in- dustry and population were concen- trated, to handle this and other costly civic improvements and to or- ganize an adequate police depart- ment. Dr. Edward Prind.e Wood- ward was made Warden; Charles S.
Treadway became the Treasurer.
Pipes were being laid down rap- idly everywhere. High Street, where Albert Sessions's house was being remodeled, was badly torn up. Elm Street was a slow difficult job of drilling into hard ledge.
Prospect Street was being wid- ened and improved. All over the city concrete sidewalks were being laid down, a great improvement, putting an end to the old mudholes. Much new civic improvement was being spurred on by the Board of Trade, organized on February 7, 1889, with Epaphroditus Peck as its president.
The Manrosses passed the new high school at Summer and Center Streets, which Arthur was attending - he would graduate next year. A $35,000 building had been author- ized at the 1888 Town Meeting. After delays due to condemnation proceedings, the work was finished in time for the 1891 Fall term, a large red brick edifice with the com- plicated façade of the period. Man- ual training was added to the cur- riculum in 1893.
Bristol now had a public library on the upstairs floor of the Ebers Building at 11 North Main Street. The reading rooms were always crowded.
In August 1891, Mrs. Parthenia T. Norton of New York, widow of Henry G. Norton, 'a native of Bris-
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FIRST HIGH SCHOOL, NOW FRESHMAN BUILDING (Vault, Bristol Public Library)
THE HORSELESS BUGGY
tol, and direct descendant of Ed- ward Gaylord, one of the founders of said town,' willed to it $5,000, the family library of 991 volumes and the library furniture. The Y.M.C.A. was about to disband, and by town-meeting vote in Octo- ber that year, its 2,528 volumes were bought for $500 and a three- quarter mill tax levied. The new quarters were opened to the public January 1, 1892. Other acquisitions brought the collection up to 3,825 volumes. That first year total circu- lation was 11,179.
Edward B. Dunbar was named chairman of the board, and Epa- phroditus Peck, the historian, be- came secretary.
Thomas H. Patterson, principal of the Federal Hill School, served as librarian until Charles L. Wooding could take over later in the year. Thereafter Wooding devoted fifty- two years of faithful service to the institution.
Another bequest of $5,000 was re- ceived from Julia M. Tompkins of Chicago, whose husband had lived in Bristol when a young man, and the Library Board was now nego- tiating to buy a wooden house at Main and High Streets until a proper building could be erected.
The Manrosses passed by there on their drive and stopped at 24 Sum- mer Street where Joel Case was building a new wheel and mill fac- tory. A big stone retaining wall had
been put up, and a roadway graded to the top of the ledge above the old Indian pottery.
At the bottom of the hill, the rail- road tracks which now ran on to Plymouth curved north in a big loop. To the right could be seen the Edward Ingraham clock plant, now employing nearly six hundred workers. Since Elias's death in 1885 it had been headed by his son and grandsons.
Further on was the H. C. Thomp- son Clock Company which had bought the Ives-Pomeroy plant in 1878. Thompson, who at first made a small nickel-lever clock was also devoting most of his energies, not to clocks but to special movements and devices, particularly the famous Western Union clocks, wound every hour and electrically controlled for accuracy by a direct wire to the U. S. Naval observatory. These clocks were rarely sold, but were rented to be used in large office buildings and railroad stations as a master clock to control any number of secondary pieces. Part of the Thompson floor space was now be- ing used by a concern making bells - the New Departure Bell Company.
Southeast, beyond the factories on Meadow and Laurel Streets and the Pequabuck, ribbon-like Wolcott Street snaked west toward Fall Mountain. The Manrosses did not know that nearly a century ago, a pretty romantic girl named Candace
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FACTORY OF HIRAM THOMPSON - now lower Federal Street (Vault, Bristol Public Library)
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THE HORSELESS BUGGY
Roberts, daughter of the clock- maker, had walked along that street, her shawl slanted jauntily across her shoulders, or sometimes started out on horseback to work in the big Eli- jah Manross tinshop in Forestville.
This factory on Summer Street was Case's third one. In 1881 he had rented the old Ives brothers' Eureka factory to manufacture sin- gle and double vertical grinding mills he had invented and which the Bristol Press called 'unequaled in the world for simplicity, capacity and durability.' In 1888 he took back the rights to his patented waterwheel from the National Wa- ter Wheel Company and organized the Case Wheel and Mill Company to make both products. The follow- ing year a fine brick building, with deep-piling concrete foundations and braced triple floors to carry heavy machinery, was erected south of the spoon factory. Now, only six years later, Case was putting up this larger building here atop the Summer Street ledge.
Recently Joel had devised a new carriage spring and had invented an engine that would revolutionize steam power. This was a simplified. mobile ten-horse power engine, only half a cubic foot, that one man could make in a week. It was automati- cally oiled and had only two mov- ing parts. New Britain capitalists had organized a company to manu-
facture it, giving Case $50,000 cash and $75,000 in stock.
Bristol, with fifty manufacturing plants employing 3,000 hands, was really busy these days. New stores were going up on Main Street, and carriages and wagons crossing the red iron bridge over the Pequabuck became quite a tangle at busy hours. Some stores now had electric clocks connected by direct wire with the Yale Observatory. A new opera house was being built. New homes were being erected. Case, active in this line also, put up fifty-six houses, many on Spring Street which he opened up. The fanciful touches to his architecture caused the Bristol Press to remark that he had 'a pro- clivity for house-building as com- mendable as it is remarkable.' By 1895 there were nearly twice as many houses in town as a decade earlier.
Many new concerns were started: clock-case, clock-dial and toy and novelty factories, a number of hard- ware concerns, various tinshops. Besides big Bristol Brass, several smaller brass companies were mak- ing specialized castings.
William L. Barrett, general fore- man for the S. G. Monce Co. left that concern in 1893, rented a por- tion of the Root shop at Main and School Streets and put on the mar- ket a complete line of steel wheel
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
glass cutters. From time to time other products such as can-openers and glaziers' tools were added.
The most notable new industry was the New Departure Bell Com- pany, started seven years ago by two remarkable Florida hardware men, Albert F. and Edward Rock- well.
Albert Rockwell had invented a mechanical door bell with springs and a clock mechanism that did away with cumbersome wet storage batteries, but gave the effect of an electric bell. That was why - be- sides the Florida yellow-fever epi- demic - that the two brothers had come to Bristol, the home of springs and clocks.
"The advance guard of New De- parture Company," remarked Al- bert Rockwell, "arrived in Bristol in November 1888 with a few debts, no money, but a wonderful inven- tory of hopes." H. C. Thompson with "his little water wheel" at the old Ives Eureka Shop, "took us in because we didn't look like bur- glars," and Charley Michael at the Commercial House "grubstaked us for eight weeks' board." Thompson made the type of time-pieces the Rockwells were looking for to put in their bells.
But the 'little water wheel they shared provided only two horsc- power. Their square turning shaft ran too slow or fast, the wedges on
the wooden pulleys were always coming out, and the polishing wheel took all the power forcing other equipment to stop.
They soon moved across the way to the Jones plant, just vacated by lockmakers Plumb and Allen and the Ingraham Company, where they had more space and a few more horsepower.
Charles S. Treadway, the banker, always quick to take hold of any promising invention, encouraged Rockwell brothers, and on June 27, 1889, the New Departure Bell Com- pany was incorporated with $50,000 capital. $30,000 consisted of pat- ents and good will.
The Rockwells peddled their first doorbells on wheelbarrows from house to house, but within a year forty-one workers were employed, and the factory was also making bells for trolleys and cable cars, fire apparatus and clocks; tea bells, office bells, alarm bells. Bicycle bells turned out to be their most profitable venture.
After pneumatic tires were in- vented, the bicycle craze swept the country and Hartford became a great producer. The rotary thumb- lever Rockwell bells were in great demand. The polished tops were embossed with dog, Indian and black white-cyed horses' heads.
New Departure soon made other bicycle accessories and set up a sub- sidiary to manufacture bicycle
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THE HORSELESS BUGGY
lamps with a British-owned patent.
An effort to manufacture brass faucets turned out badly, and the equipment had to be bargain- counter sold for $10,000. But other side lines - cyclometers, trolley harps (the strong harp-shaped springs holding trolleys to the wire), trouser guards, even medals, did well.
Clayton Brothers and other con- cerns soon began making so many kinds of bells that Bristol became known as the 'Bell City.' In 1893 William Clayton's shears factory - the old Drum Shop on Union Street - burned down, but his sons, Hora- tio and Americus put up a new large plant. They made steel and cast iron shears, tinner snips and hard- ware, and did nickel-plating, and their new line of doorbells proved profitable.
Bells, since they used springs, were a godsend to the Dunbar and Wallace Barnes companies. Wal- lace prospered and soon put money into numbers of new enterprises. He invested in shore property at the new West Haven Savin Rock amuse- ment resort and sold 'Oklahoma' building lots at Martha's Vineyard, where he put up a hotel. For both amusement and profit, he bred prize Jerseys and prize hunting dogs.
He was also a good technician who knew the ins and outs of spring making and invented several basic
new processes. But he died in 1893, on the eve of the depression, leav- ing his multiple affairs in poor finan- cial shape. For two years the spring business was run by the estate, then was managed by his son. Carlyle Fuller Barnes.
After getting out of college, Car- lyle had worked as bookkeeper for Hartford steel merchants, then at the Cheney silk mills, but in 1877 had thrown up his job to go to Eu- rope and study music under the great German masters.
At Wallace's urgent request, Car- lyle came back reluctantly in the summer of 1880 to help his brother run the Irenus Atkins clock factory, given up when 'priest' Irenus went blind.
Barnes Brothers, specializing in office clocks, lasted only three years. Harry kept on, with Wyllys C. Ladd, a brother-in-law, bookkeeper for the National Water Wheel Company, as manager, making cathedral gongs, cast-iron nuts, lantern holders and light hardware.
Carlyle continued his great love for music, and on the second-floor auditorium of the Odeon Building, which Wallace had built near the Muzzy store, he organized Bristol's first cornet band - the Trio Club - and headed the orchestra. Public recitals were given there or at Town Hall, with combined local and New York talent. On February 12, 1884 Carlyle appeared on the program as
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
solo flautist. Admission was fifteen cents. October 1, 1885 he married Lena H. Forbes, who had studied at the Cincinnati College of Music and was giving piano and organ lessons, and they staged more concerts and put on the operettas, 'The Mikado' and 'The Frogs of Windham.'
Harry Barnes died and, with Wal- lace's death, Carlyle had to step in and take over sole management of the big Barnes spring plant.
The biggest new development on the horizon was the new Sessions Foundry, and Frederick Newton Manross, driving with his wife and son this May day of 1895, headed for there. They passed the new German Lutheran Church. On Farmington Avenue, the brick walls and round gray stone façade of the foundry soon came into view.
The original works, which John H. Sessions, the trunk hardware man and banker, had bought in 1879, after the founder, Andrew Terry, died, had been located on Laurel Street. John Humphrey Sessions had put his son, William E. Sessions in charge to make malleable castings for trunk clamps and trim. Em- ployment soon jumped from eight- een to a hundred and seventy-five.
After a time, gray castings were produced for the general trade, and many new buildings made the Lau- rel Street site too cramped. By spe- cial act of the General Assembly of
Connecticut, the concern was incor- porated for $200,000 (later $500,000) and the new plant constructed on Farmington Avenue on an ample thirty-acre tract.
At the time of the Manross visit, two powerful Harris-Corliss en- gincs, four electric generators, mo- tors, and three 135 horse-power safety boilers were being installed. They visited the cupolas, the slag tumbling barrel room, the core and molding shops.
"We are going to make this the finest foundry in the industry with the best conditions for workers," William E. Sessions told Manross. "It's going to be the safest, the most sanitary and healthful, with proper ventilation and heat, pure water and good light. There won't be a trace of gloom in the entire plant."
Sessions had also put money into the new Codling Company. Robert B. Codling had invented an auto- matic metal-turning and polishing machine and started manufacturing in 1893 in the old Ingraham case shop. Soon it took over the Solo- mon Spring Clock plant on River- side, vacated by E. N. Welch Com- pany.
The Manrosses drove back to For- estville over Federal Hill and on down the steep street where Bill Thorpe's stagecoach had once ca- reened.
On King Street he pulled to a stop
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THE HORSELESS BUGGY
and waved his whip. "That's where Nehemiah Manross, your ancestor, the first settler along with Ebenezer Barnes, built his house to bring his wife and family from Lebanon," he told his son.
He told about Nehemiah's nota- ble descendants and Arthur's great uncle Eli Manross, who invented the compass jewel. "Compasses were sent to him from every part of the globe for repair. . . . Your grand- father Elijah, like his father Elisha, made clocks. In later years, he started a wool and fur business."
Frederick picked up the reins. "I have an idea this may be the last year we use a carriage. I want to be the first man in Bristol to own one of those new horseless buggies."
But the following year - 1896 when Arthur got his diploma at the high-school graduation ceremonies at the Congregational Parish House, Herbert N. Gale, the North Main Street photographer, came steaming up in a horseless car, the first in Bris- tol. That was also the year Bristol got its first letter carrier system.
Daniel J. Gale of Forestville, Her- bert's father, had just perfected a super-accurate simplified clock strik- ing mechanism, with a turnback, workable in any position, that elimi- nated spring and wire-lock work. It would greatly reduce costs and Welch bought it at once.
Herbert was quite an inventor too. He developed an improved
photographic plate, a trolley fork that the new street car company was going to use, a bicycle bell, all of which were taken up by Bristol companies. His greatest delight was the making of 'sterescopes' of Bristol, double pictures mounted on gray-green cardboard, a product which sold very well.
Gale fitted up his auto with a movable camera to take pictures of houses and landscapes without his getting out. His 'horseless buggy' was the wonder of the town. He had to refuel every few miles and was always having to run into houses to ask desperately for water, but the chugging thing sailed over the steep hills with wonderful ease, making a great racket that frightened horses, and throwing out a great cloud of white vapor. When it passed, every- body knew something unusual was happening in the land.
Frederick Manross was interested in a car that E. P. Clap of New Ha- ven was making. Clap worked out improvements, and in 1898 he and Manross drove from Forestville to New Haven City Hall, making the thirty-two-mile trip in one hour and fifty-one minutes without having to stop for gas or water. Convinced that a gas-motor car was the only desirable kind of automobile, Fred- erick, after a trip out to Cleveland to see it at first hand, ordered one invented by Alexander Winton. Winton brought the car East to
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
show Manross how to run it - the first gas-engine car ever to operate on Connecticut highways.
The Bristol Press reporter was duly impressed: "With its easy riding springs it glides along with- out effort and without anxiety for an over-worked horse. It brings to us a new sense of power and travel. Man . . . with a touch of inherent laziness, instinctively wants to ride. The idea of having gained mastery over nature and the ele- ments by a touch of a lever and out- rivaling the . . . fastest horse or the
bicycle rider is . . . captivating."
The following year Frederick bought a three-wheeled Knox for Sylvia, who became the first woman driver in Connecticut. They drove in the Winton to Bridgeport's first auto parade and boldly continued on to New York, making it there and back to Bristol over the terrible roads without a mishap.
As for Arthur, he was not a motor- man, but a lineman for the tramway company.
It was going to be a marvelous new century.
FREDERICK NEWTON MANROSS AND WIFE SYLVIA (Permission Arthur N. Manross)
»16
THE new century
WILLIE TREADWELL, son of superintendent C. A. Tredwell, blew the whistle at the Bristol Lib- erty Bell Company. Work had be- gun that Tuesday morning of Au- gust 1897 in Edward Rockwell's new factory on Riverside Avenue. Edward had split off from his brother Albert and the New Depar- ture Bell Company to set up his own business.
"A welcome sound," reported Editor Riggs of the Bristol Press. "Another promising industry has been added to Bristol manufactur- ing."
The new plant on the site of the 'Ivory Shop' at Downs' mill covered 12,000 square feet. A Humphrey 30-horsepower water wheel and a Knowles power pump carried water to all parts of the factory. A 30- horsepower boiler and a 20-horse- power engine furnished steam for heat and power, and a 110 light dynamo furnished illumination.
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