USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 16
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The plant was so designed that raw materials for production were advanced smoothly through the
foundry - the buffing, plating, as- sembling and finishing departments on to the storerooms and ship- ping room - 'from raw metal to the clear, ringing tones of the com- pleted article.' "Here," Editor Riggs commented poetically, "thirty-two styles of high grade bicycle bells, trademarked 'Corbin bells,' known and appreciated wherever the silent steed rolls," could be made "with the utmost economy, convenience and facility."
The U. S. battleship Maine was blown up and the Spanish-American War was on. Sessions Foundry Company began making cartridges and shell cases. The Bristol Brass Company provided the metal for them. Even so, in 1899 the brass company went into the red for the first time since 1860, but the 'spoon shop,' as the American Silver Com- pany was then called, made big profits by bringing out trick sou- venir spoons of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, to be given away as premiums by flour, cereal and soap companies. A long-standing
1S7
The Old Downs Milli Bristolat
OLD DOWNS MILL ON THE PEQUABUCK (top) (Vault, Bristol Public Library); LIBERTY BELL SHOP - NEW DEPAR- TURE MFG. Co. (bottom) (Permission New Departure Div., GMC)
MEG. CO.
THE NEW CENTURY
fad was started all over the country.
Few Bristol volunteers saw fight- ing in the Spanish War of 1898, though some had to go into the rugged war to pacify the Philip- pines, wanting independence. Ex- cept for new-found pride in victory over a European power, 'the little war' scarcely ruffled the smooth on- going of American life and industry. There was little inflation.
In 1899 the Tredwells could pur- chase an oyster stew at Peck Broth- ers White House Cafe for fifteen cents. Ham and eggs cost ten cents, sandwiches - ham, Switzer, cream cheese, frankfurter or Trilby - cost five cents. S. T. Cooke's New Eng- land Home Restaurant at 37 North Main served a whole dinner for twenty-five cents. Railroad fare to New York was $2.28.
Industry grew. Roads improved for automobile use. Many people believed that Bristol, with its small carriage factories, metal industries and experience in making bicycle parts, was the ideal place to manu- facture autos.
Herbert N. Gale tore his first and second steamers to pieces and re- built them. Dr. J. H. Desmarais and his brother worked on a noise- less, valveless gas engine. Joel Case, the water-wheel man, in- stalled his compact rotary steam en- gine in a carriage and made a suc- cessful road test.
Frederick and Arthur Manross worked out a model and new type gas engine which they exhibited at the Hickory Park grounds. The Electric Vehicle Company of Hart- ford bought it, and Arthur, who had been working at the Winton auto- mobile factory in Cleveland, went over to Hartford to help them pro- duce it. This became the Law Motor Car.
In 1902 at Epaphroditus Peck's law office, Frederick launched the Bristol Motor Car Company to manufacture the well known "Bris- tol Car" he had developed, at Ever- ett Horton's Oak Street shop. It was later taken over by the Corbin people of New Britain and renamed the Corbin car. Arthur helped them produce it and during the next few years designed nearly every car which the Corbin Company sold. He also developed its first water- cooling system.
New Departure was at this pe- riod still concerned with bicycles. Albert Rockwell, who had kept on at the original plant, was reach- ing out in new directions, and when Harry Townsend invented a coaster brake to do away with clumsy hand brake pressure on front tires, Rock- well saw that it would 'bring the bicycle back.' During 1898 and part of 1899, he had it produced by the Corbin Company, then tooled up to make it in Bristol.
Yale student Charles Terry Tread-
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
way, son of the banker, had a Town- send brake put into his new $150 Columbia bicycle on which he rode to Sachem's Head in Guilford dur- ing the summer. The brake created a sensation everywhere, and it soon became standard equipment for all bicycles.
After graduating in 1900, Charles got a job as office boy at the New Departure Company, where his fa- ther held a large interest. Later he became company treasurer. There were then 165 employees housed in a small building on North Main Street. Over the next thirteen years - as Treadway puts it - the concern "hopped from crisis to crisis," but all the time it kept on growing.
In 1904 Rockwell built a branch plant near Berlin, Germany, to pro- tect the company's patents in that country, and sent John F. Wade, son of a Georgia farmer, who had clerked for him in Florida, over to run it.
The bicycle and bell industry continued to be a great boon for Carlyle F. Barnes at the Wallace Barnes Company, which was facing tough competition. 'Bet-you-a-mil- lion-Gates' had organized the great American Steel and Wire Corpora- tion and was making springs. As this corporation controlled steel pro- duction, it often quoted springs cheaper than Carlyle could buy ma- terials.
But he concentrated on special
items, such as bell-springs, and di- versified production to include screw parts, castings and bicycle ac- cessories. Metal trouser guards sold by hundreds of thousands, al- most as great a bonanza as hoop- skirts had been a half century earlier.
The plant had some fine crafts- men; that helped, too. Toolmaker Algernon Wilcox, who had come into the plant in 1887, developed new machinery and worked out ways of producing flat springs at a very low cost.
Soon, also, many new products were calling for springs - such as phonographs and, later on, Bendix auto starters. As millions of people began rolling over the roads, the auto industry clamored for millions upon millions of springs. Within ten years Carlyle increased capacity and business nearly eight-fold. In 1906 plant floor space was almost doubled, 227 employees were at work, and Wallace Barnes Company had become the largest flat spring producer in the country.
Further to gain independence and o be assured of a guaranteed supply of the right kind of steel, Carlyle purchased land in Forestville for a rolling mill.
The first ten years of the new cen- tury saw steady change and growth. The January 4, 1901 edition of the Bristol Press reported that the Ses-
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THE NEW CENTURY
sions Foundry Company had made large land purchases adjoining its plant and intended further building expansion. Charles G. Root, son of Joel Root of Root's Island, bought the Gridley House, 'the red brick hotel' built twenty years before, lo- cated across from the railroad tracks, at the corner of Main and North Main Streets, and prepared to remodel it. The Welch clock fac- tory, in Forestville, trying desper- ately to stage a come-back, was building a new case shop. The Bristol Brass Company was putting in new machinery. Foundations for a new foundry at the Codling plant were up. A new brick Town Hall went up on North Main Street.
In 1902 Gilbert H. Blakeslee, maker of elastic goods and Torchon lace patterns, bought part of the abandoned Sessions Foundry site on Laurel Street, and put up a new brick factory. On September 19, 1903, water was turned into mains in Forestville for the first time, giv- ing fresh impetus to manufacturing there. Bricklayers struck at a build- ing going up at the Ingraham plant.
The march of industrial progress was shown in exhibits at the Armory promoted by DeWitt Page, the up- and-coming New Departure official, who had married Rockwell's sister. The company showed its coaster brakes, cyclometers and mounted brass goods under a sign of shiny bells against black velvet.
The American Silver Company - the old Tuttle and Holmes 'Spoon Shop' - now largely independent of Bristol Brass, displayed gleaming silverware rising to a great silver punch bowl. Cutlery, a new line, was being made in a recently built two-story addition.
Clayton Brothers displayed a hundred varieties of scissors and shears, made from both cast and drop-forged steel. S. G. Monce Company and William L. Barrett, who was building a new plant on School Street, both showed lines of steel wheel glass cutters.
A third glass-cutting concern, too new to show its wares at the Ar- mory, was that of Franklin Ensign Terry (grandson of Samuel the clockmaker) and his son-in-law Fred S. Fletcher. Fred, a foreman and nephew of Monce, had devised a cutter with interchangeable wheels that permitted replacement without discarding the entire tool. They had started in a barn on Middle Street at the old Ives-Botsford homestead, with only one small en- gine which they put in one of the cow stalls, with a belt to the ma- chinery on the second floor. They also manufactured glaziers' tools, light hardware and cutting and creasing rules for the paper box and printing industries.
The all-brass cases of Sessions clocks on display at the Armory were new this year. William E.
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
Sessions of the Foundry had just taken over the bankrupt E. N. Welch plant and was preparing to make the name Sessions known in the clock world.
Handsome Ingraham clocks were set between fluted yellow-top col- umns against a white background with yellow rosettes. The H. C. Thompson Company, incorporated this same year, and with greatly ex- panded shop facilities, displayed automatic clock movements, from penny-in-the-slot chewing gum ma- chines to Western Union Standard Time movements. Among their products, or those they were soon to manufacture, were fire alarm mech- anisms, chart carrying movements for electrical recording, pressure gauges, school program movements and parts.
Visitors were excited by the new 'clock that winds itself' put out by the National Self-Winding Clock Company on Frederick Street, For- estville, a New Jersey outfit using part of Hubbell's marine clock fac- tory.
The spring companies were repre- sented, also the American Auger Bit Company; Young Brothers' screw machine work; the Booth Manufac- turing Company's garment fasten- ers; the Bristol Manufacturing Com- pany's knit underwear.
Sportsmen gazed at Horton's steel fishing rods and mounted fish, and A. H. Warner and Company's base-
ball bats with inlaid leather handles. Warner also manufactured electric buttons and rosettes, beadwork and ping pong sets.
Local inventiveness was shown by George A. White's Bunker Hill Gaming Board, 'an attractive con- trivance for amusement,' Wallace B. Crumb's 'new type cattle stan- chions,' and Alvin Taplin's patented 'orange-washer' being sold success- fully to far off Florida and Califor- nia citrus growers.
Historic material was shown at Town Hall - old looms, spinning wheels, a rotary crank stove, Gideon Roberts' thirty-seventh clock.
One early industry, started by the first Bristol settlers, felt the spirit of new enterprise. John A. Norton in- stalled a press to process a thousand bushels of apples and make 3,200 gallons of cider a day. Apples chuted down to the grater mill, then through a copper funnel to four 17,000 pound screw presses, oper- ated by steam power, that sent forth streams of cider 'big as a man's arm.'
The brief 1907 depression caused little set-back, though money was tight and a few companies were hard pressed. Bristol Brass, which had put in much new equipment and the previous year had earned the largest profits in its history, was stuck with an excessively big high- priced copper inventory, and dipped
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THE NEW CENTURY
dramatically $20,000 into the red.
Treasurer Treadway of the New Departure Company had to beg on bended knees in a New York bank for $15,000 to meet payrolls, but a five per cent bonus for cash orders soon swept the concern back to overtime production and 'that Christmas there were no employees without paychecks.' New Depar- ture later absorbed the hard-hit Liberty Bell plant which Edward Rockwell had started.
In spite of difficulties, great prog- ress was registered. J. H. Sessions and Son - John Humphrey, the founder, had died in 1899 - moved their baggage-hardware plant into a large new factory on Riverside Avenue. The Bristol Trust Com- pany, headed by William E. Ses- sions, was organized and opened for business July 1, 1908 in a handsome building at Main and Riverside Avenue.
November 14, 1907, the Bristol Press, managed and edited since October 1902 by Arthur S. Barnes, moved into its new building on Main Street, where all-electric ma- chinery - the last word in presses and equipment - was installed by the Bristol-Plainville Tramway Company. Three years later it be- came a semi-weeklv, as had been briefly attempted more than ten years previously, and nine years later it became a daily. Generous to accounts of early Bristol life, alert
to new developments, it was shaped to the best traditions of journalism, and continued to accumulate a per- manent record of Bristol history.
With more industry and employ- ment at better wages, more tax money became available for schools and public services. Thanks to the efforts of Henry E. Cottle, a Har- vard graduate, who had become principal of the High School in 1905, a six-room addition to double capacity was being built at the Summer and Center Street building.
Nothing was more important for the advancement of Bristol knowl- edge, education and culture than the opening, that depression year of 1907, of the new three-story Bristol Public Library building at Main and High Streets. The drive for funds had been started in 1905. Bequests of $4,000 from Mrs. Calista B. Nor- ton and $1,000 from Charles S. Treadway, plus subscriptions, to- talled $45,000. Then the death of Mary P. Root, great granddaughter of Gideon Roberts and an enthusi- astic writer on early Bristol history, provided nearly $80,000 more and started the library on its way to be- coming the well-equipped, well-ad- ministered institution it is today.
Besides the stacks on two levels and the administration offices, the building provided for reference, pe- riodical and children's rooms, work room and janitor's maintenance
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
shop. It was designed for 80,000 volumes.
The year 1910, which promised to be unusually prosperous, opened with the presentation of "A Tin Wedding" at the Opera House, supplemented by a trick violinist and Miss Josephine Sheridan sing- ing "Illustrated Songs." On June 10 Compounce Lake opened its regular vaudeville shows. In Sep- tember a lawn fete was held to benefit the Nurses' Association. In October a fair was held at St. Jo- seph's. The Muzzy Brothers store sold high school graduation dresses for $2.98 to $15.00 and J. R. Mitchell and Sons priced their suits and over- coats at $15 to $25. William Terry, Bristol's inventor, photographer, florist and scientist, and his wife Esther A. Ball celebrated their six- tieth wedding anniversary. He and B. A. Peck ran a flower shop at 289 West Street near Center, and on North Main sold organs, sewing machines, picture frames and artists' materials.
Dunbar Brothers and New De- parture put up three-story additions. Everett Horton was now making clock machinery, dies, punches, cut wheels, and steel pins. Giddings kept on making wagons on North Main.
Another indication of growing prosperity was the new 1910 home of William E. Sessions on Bellevue
Avenue, a block from the public library. It was built of Kibbe brownstone, and the Georgian por- tico was surmounted by a white marble cornice and balustrade. Mr. Sessions' love of music dominated the architectural arrangement. The two-story music room was the show place of the establishment. Its carved and perforated rosettes served for ventilation and 'to echo' the three-manual electric pipe or- gan. The electric lights in the din- ing room, finished in Circassian walnut and furnished with Charles II furniture upholstered in old rose, were synchronized with the musical effects of the organ. Such was 'Beleden,' the last word in modern conveniences and reflecting the ex- uberant taste of the times. Over the years its carved woods deepened to beauty and its spaciousness echoed the spirit of the man who had started with a small, crowded foundry, but had put up the first 'modern' factory in Bristol, and then had moved on to the clock industry and to banking.
A new effort to produce automo- biles was made by Albert Rockwell. In 1904 he had built a fifteen-horse- power car that finally emerged as an 85-horsepower Haupt-Rockwell pleasure car with the world's first engine cast in a single block.
In 1908 he organized the Bristol Engineering Company as a New
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HAUPT-ROCKWELL AUTOMOBILE (top) FIRST YELLOW TAXICAB (bottom) (both, permission New Departure Div., GMC)
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
Departure subsidiary to make taxi- cabs for the American Taximeter Cab Company and revamped a large Valley Street factory. The C. G. Garrigus Machine Company on Riverside Avenue, largely con- trolled by Rockwell, increased its capital $50,000 to build a factory to do the necessary machine work.
At the suggestion of Rockwell's second wife, the cabs were painted yellow with a fancy 'R' on the door. Thus the first yellow taxicabs of America - 'the Pullman Palace of the city streets' - darted through New York traffic.
As President of the Yellow Taxi- cab Company, Rockwell tried to corner the entire New York taxi business and kept draining large sums out of New Departure, until the other directors clamped on the brakes. When second-mortgage holders moved in on Rock;vell's New York enterprise, they found only five cents in the till. New De- parture had to absorb most of the losses. By 1913 Treasurer Tread- way had personally endorsed notes totalling $1,500,000.
In 1913, to bring about a change in management policies, the direc- tors voted in DeWitt Page as Presi- dent and General Manager.
But Rockwell's unsuccessful ef- fort to make automobiles in Bristol pointed to the true direction for New Departure's future expansion. The making of Rockwell cars put the company into the ball bearing business. The momentous decision of the directors to go into this field on a large scale coincided with star- tling new technical developments that were soon to make ball bearings one of the most crucial and impor- tant products of all industry. Thus Bristol was to become the ball bear- ing capital of the world.
Before Rockwell's automobile ventures had failed, Bristol was celebrating its first aviation show, one of the first in Connecticut. That, too, heralded a great new industry that was going to need the finest, most precise ball bearings yet pro- duced. In this new realm of rapid motion Bristol was preparing to play a significant role.
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ยป17 THE new city
IN 1911 Bristol came of age. Not only did it hold its first airplane show; it set up city government.
The Bristol Mechanic's Guild ar- ranged with Nels Nelson, 'the youngest professional aviator in the world' to give a series of flights in his biplane at the golf grounds in East Bristol on Saturday, June 17. As the Bristol Press put it more poetically, Bristol was to have the opportunity to see the twentieth century marvelous man bird.'
His 30-horsepower Curtiss ma- chine, 'one of the safest, fastest and most approved of modern airplanes' held the world's speed record of 46 miles per hour. Its wing-spread was all of twenty-six feet, its weight five hundred pounds, and it was worth $5,000.
After each flight the plane was brought in front of the grandstand, and its operations explained by Vic- tor W. Page, author of the first American book on aviation. For the first time, Bristol citizens heard such expressions as 'alighting gear' and 'aileron.'
By the 1910 census, Bristol had 13,502 inhabitants, and its overlap- ping town and borough govern- ments, set up in 1785 and 1893, had become outmoded and cumber- some. On August 17, 1911, by nearly ten-to-one vote, a city gov- ernment charter was adopted.
When the New Cambridge So- ciety was organized in 1742 and 1744, Nehemiah Manross usually acted as Moderator. When the town first organized in 1785, in the days of Gideon Roberts, Nehemiah's grandson Elijah Manross was a se- lectman. When town government was given up in 1911, Frederick N. Manross, Elijah's great grandson, was First Selectman.
The 1911 city charter was consid- ered more democratic and progres- sive than any previously adopted in Connecticut. To avoid old style machine politics, the names of par- ties were not used on the ballot. Members to a single council were elected not by wards and ward- heelers but by the entire city. Re- call of officials who should prove
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
unworthy was provided for. If 5 per cent of the voters objected, no tax change, appropriation or salary increase could go into effect until approved by majority vote.
The big issue in the first election was municipal ownership of the water system. Shortly before this, the water company - headed by Albert L. Sessions - had done away with minimum monthly rates and had installed meters. Although the company claimed this reduced rates for ordinary users, a big hue and cry arose. Trying to forestall the clamor for public ownership, Charles Terry Treadway, whose father had done more than anyone else to give Bristol its water system, persuaded the Sessions family to sell its inter- est, and he moved in as president, with C. L. Wooding, a bank direc- tor and popular public librarian, as secretary and manager.
The advocate for municipal own- ership was youthful candidate for mayor, George W. Hull, a Socialist, running against three other candi- dates, one of whom was C. L. Wood- ing. Hull was the son of the Main Street doctor who in late years had been the city's health officer. Hull led in the primary but was defeated in the October 5 run-off by a ten- vote margin. John F. Wade of New Departure, a Democrat, became mayor. However, the city voted to take over the water system at a cost of nearly half a million dollars. Un-
der city management, Wooding was retained in his post.
The new city government kept on using the old town hall, but an im- pressive, conveniently located post office was built on Main Street in 1913. It is too bad it was not planned as part of an adequate civic center for the new city, but not until 1920 did Bristol become concerned about city planning.
In 1914 Albert Rockwell donated eighty acres adjoining Brightwood, and $5,000 if the city would spend $15,000 improving the tract as a park and would guarantee annually $3,000 for upkeep for eight years. This handsome needed improve- ment proved increasingly beneficial as the population grew more con- centrated in the center of the city. In 1920 Rockwell donated fifteen acres more on the south side of the Pequabuck, which were developed as playgrounds.
Bristol - "The City" - was soon called to face great international events. In 1916, Company D of the First Regiment of the Connecticut National Guard was sent to the Mexican border 'to get Pancho Villa dead or alive' - such were the or- ders given General John Joseph Pershing. Villa, a disorderly Mexi- can revolutionary leader, had raided into Texas towns to show his rancor at American policies.
In March 1917 Bristol's military
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THE NEW CITY
unit was called up again to go over- seas in World War I. By late Sep- tember Company D sailed from Montreal, and was among the first troops, other than the regular Army, to reach France. The first Bristol man to get to the fighting front was Corporal John G. Skelsky. He was decorated in person by Pershing and the French generals, but shortly after the Armistice died in a Ger- man prison camp.
The Bristol men found themselves in a muddy tent camp near Neuf Chateau in the Vosges Mountains. The rain came down steadily all winter, and many fell sick. The first Bristol boy to die there, I. H. Hinchey, perished from spinal men- ingitis.
Several wrote home that the 'camouflaged' Y.M.C.A. tent, where boxing matches, lectures and ser- mons were held, was their only pleasant refuge, though the tent leaked and the wind lifted the sides. That tent had 'an ingenious will of its own' wrote Chaplain Reverend E. L. Wismer, the Congregational minister of Bristol, who did much to help all the Bristol boys in France and communicated constantly with their families. He had just painted a sign announcing 'a rousing' Sun- day sermon and singing by hospital nurses, when a strong wind swept away the entire tent, and he was hit by a canteen cupboard. Sunday he was in the hospital, and the nurses,
instead of singing, helped 'rivet' his broken collar bone.
At home Bristol citizens did their part in the Home Guard, for the Red Cross, Liberty Loans and War Savings. Mrs. Arthur S. Brackett headed up the food-saving commit- tee. Charles L. Wooding, directing the Public Library, collected 6,300 books and a like number of maga- zines to send overseas in response to the steady cry for reading matter from the forces.
The first Bristol Red Cross chap- ter, organized June 10, 1917, with Charles T. Treadway as president, raised $28,000. It enlisted women to come to the basement of the Pub- lic Library and to schools to make bandages and knit sweaters and socks, and it helped families keep in touch with their boys at the front or in prison camps.
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