USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 7
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The bars against western settle- ment were removed. The continent was wide open to every daring and ambitious soul. Men pushed across the Alleghenies with their families, their animals and their tools, in a great tide of discovery. Flat boats and keel boats, piled high with fur- niture and tools, threaded the rivers twisting up into the great forests. The covered Conestoga wagons creaked and pitched across impass- able gullies. A Connecticut man waded through the brush to survey and lay out the Northwest Territory. Johnny Appleseed, another Connec- ticut man, walked abroad with a gleam in his eye, tossing fruit seeds into every cranny.
Much as New Cambridge had been started, new houses rose in the forest; folk died from hardships and Indian arrows, but houses soon clus- tered in tiny settlements. New mills were built. The trails widened to roads all along the great rivers and the far plains. Never had so vast an area been tamed so rapidly, never had a new civilization come into being so fast. It was all part
of the stirring of new freedom.
The western settlers were too busy clearing land, building houses and putting in crops to make their own tools and many other necessi- ties. What they required, previ- ously supplied by England, was now produced by Connecticut and other eastern states. This ever-growing frontier market stirred many new industries into life.
Gideon felt the great urge of all this fresh opportunity. He was go- ing to make clocks. That was his cherished dream.
As yet only the well-to-do could afford them. In Bristol as late as 1804 only three people had brass clocks, and only forty-two had wooden clocks. But in the new rush and eagerness of America, time was becoming money. Clocks were required to pace the whir of new machinery and new effort. As more goods were produced and wages rose, everybody was going to earn enough to buy one. The challenge to make a new and better clock, within the reach of every man's purse, called to Gideon. Here was great opportunity. Soon after his return from the front he was hard at work.
His tools were a jackknife, saws, bow drills, pod auger and simple foot-powered pole lathe. Oak was used for the plates. He made the wheels from cherry-wood, stepping
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off the teeth with dividers, cutting them out with a jackknife, then a fine saw, and filing them smooth. With the lathe, he shaped arbors, pillars and barrels. For weights he filled sheet iron cans with sand. Later he used lead, and to the 'wag' or pendulum, he attached a lead weight in a trim brass shell. The hands were made of pewter, and a neighbor, Abner Bailey, made the necessary wire. Falla designed the dial - paper glued to wood - neat and severe compared to earlier or- nate faces. Gideon's product, which he continued to improve upon, was finer than previous New England clocks. The works were housed in a long sturdy polished pine case - the old-time grandfather clock - and sold for fifty dollars.
He never forgot the thrilling day when he finally finished three clocks and set out to peddle them. He put two in the saddle bags and tied one on behind and rode off through the forest toward Wolcott.
During the years that followed he made many trips, and, as a boy, Chauncey Jerome, who also became a great clockmaker, saw Gideon ride by with his cumbersome load of clocks, often bound for far-off New York. "He was an excellent me- chanic and made a good article."
1785 was another eventful year. The Pequabuck people determined to become a free town which would
include the separate villages of New Cambridge and West New Britain or Burlington. These two places in- cluded the entire area of the original 1721 survey. The consolidated town would have more than 2,000 inhabitants, with a representative in Hartford. All necessary negotia- tions were made with Farmington and the State General Assembly. The new larger community was to be called 'Bristol.'
Gideon was put on the committee to confer with Burlington on last- minute arrangements. The two groups met at the old oak tree on Peaceable Street near the village pound and the Burlington line in front of the Jacob Bartholomew tav- ern. Here in previous years many parleys had been held with the In- dians. The oak's gnarled trunk was peppered with shot. In 1781 when Lemmie Bartholomew came home from the New London campaign, he helped his brother Asa fire his mus- ket, loaded for the British, into the tree. The joint committee finished making arrangements at 'Bartemy's' tavern.
A 'duly warned' reunion of the two villages was called for nine in the morning June 13, 1785, at the Federal Hill Meetinghouse. One hundred and three persons took the freeman's oath.
Simeon Hart, the well-to-do land- holder of Burlington was 'chofen' Moderator. Joseph Byington, the
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"BARTEMY'S TAVERN" BETWEEN BRISTOL AND BURLINGTON WHERE EARLY TOWN MEETINGS WERE HELD (Vault, Bristol Public Library)
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wood joiner, who had led Farming- ton and New Cambridge forces that had forced the British out of Boston, was elected Clerk and his name headed the list of Selectmen to serve 'free of cost.'
The other Selectmen were Dea- con Elisha Manross, son of Nehe- miah, the early settler; Zebulon Peck, the tavern keeper; Simeon Hart and Zebulon Frisbie. Though Frisbie had been a Tory, people wanted to heal old grudges and get to work at new things.
Jacob Bartholomew became first treasurer. Judah Barnes, grandson of Ebenezer, was made one of three constables and also collector of State taxes. Grandjurymen, tithing men, listers to record property and highway surveyors were named. Most of those chosen, then or during the next few years, bore the names of early settler families: Brooks, An- drews, Hungerford, Yale, Gaylord, Hickox, Lewis, Porter, Mathews, Ives, Peck, Upson. Gideon Roberts was selected to be one of the rate makers or assessors.
A special committee was elected ‘to Exchange Highways & Remove Neufances and to do it without Cost to the Town.' Except for West Street and Hill Street over Chippins Hill, the original straight wide high- ways of the 1721 survey were im- practical because of the lay of the river and hills. Other roads, some- times corresponding to winding In-
dian trails, like Queen Street snak- ing up to Indian Quarry Hill, had been followed. Often titles for these hit-or-miss streets had never been obtained. Gardens, fields, fences, sheds and houses that had encroached on highways had to be removed. Among those named for this ticklish task were Doctor Josiah Holt, David Newell, son of the first pastor, and Captain Asa Upson, his son-in-law, who had gone briefly to Wyoming and who had been so ac- tive in the Revolution.
Another task was to keep stray animals off the street. Only swine could run on 'the commons' if properly yoked and with a ring in their snouts. Royce Lewis and Zebulon Frisbie, 'Key Keepers,' cared for the animal pound north of town on Newell property. The 'Fence Viewers' - among them Luke Gridley - received so many pence for each rod of fence inspected. Owners who did not make repairs within a given time were fined.
To protect buyers, two 'Sealers of Leather' were named, who re- ceived a few pence for each hide they stamped at the tanneries. The best grade was stamped N.G. - Good Neat (cattle) Leather. N.F. stood for Faulty Leather.
Two 'Sealers of Weights' guaran- teed correct weights and measures. Jacob Hungerford was made potash inspector. Seth Wiard, former member of the Revolutionary Com-
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
mittee of Inspection, became official meat-inspector and packer; Judah Barnes, flour inspector and packer. Bristol wished all goods shipped abroad to be of high quality and properly packed, with honest weight.
For later Town or Freemen meet- ings, which alternated between Bur- lington and Federal Hill, legal no- tices were ordered posted, among other places, on the white oak near 'Bartemy' tavern. Committee meet- ings were often held there or at the tavern.
Thus on that June day of 1785 the free town of Bristol organized its first government - of the people, by the people and for the people.
On Christmas Day, 1785, Can- dace Roberts, Gideon's fourth child, the fairest of all, arrived. A true child of Bristol, she was born the same year the town was born.
In all, Falla bore thirteen chil- dren, three of whom died in infancy. The last, Ferdinand, was born in August, 1800.
During those busy years of mak- ing clocks, Gideon continued to take an active part in church and com- munity affairs: loan committees, school committees, as poll tax col- lector, highway inspector and sur- veyor. He kept on as chorister and in 1794 helped start the "Public Li- brary." The list of books acquired shows how deeply the people were
interested in history and philosophy and religion, in good government and good husbandry, how aware they were of national and interna- tional affairs, and the great ideas that have moved mankind.
After 1795 all schools were given up by the Ecclesiastical Society and thereafter were managed by the Town School Fund. Gideon took part in all these affairs. Joseph By- ington was moderator of the first civic school meeting in 1796. Noah Byington, a surveyor, and a teacher of the new school in the northwest of town, became a member of the School Committee in 1798.
In 1797 Gideon helped buy and install the first bell for the church. The blacksmith work on the yoke was done by Captain James Lee. Isaac and Noah Byington and Bryan Hooker, the owner of a new textile mill, did the actual hanging. Abel Lewis was paid £20 a year for ring- ing it on the Sabbath and every night at nine o'clock, except Satur- days in July and August, at eight o'clock. Anyone ringing it without permission was subject to a fifty cent fine. Each Sunday, Thanks- giving and fast day it was rung for ten minutes an hour before the meeting and again as soon as the minister came into sight south of Roger Lewis's house, until he en- tered the church.
After a time, Elias and his other sons helped Gideon in the clock
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shop. Gideon used apprentices too - John Rich, nephew of their old neighbor David, and a number of boys of the Ives family - Amasa, Ira, Philo, Joseph, Shaylor and Chauncey. The Ives boys also joined in Gideon's musical reunions. Several later became the most fa- mous clock manufacturers in the country.
August 7, 1790 Gideon took over from his brother Seth a house built by Asahel Cole, a brother of Kath- erine Gaylord, on nineteen and a quarter acres adjoining the old Lyman-Mix place where Elias had had his shop. Later he purchased five more adjoining acres from his son-in-law, Thomas Smith, who married Falla. He bought the early Bradley tin shop, abandoned after the Revolution, and attached it to the front corner of his house, where he set up his permanent clock shop.
He dammed a small brook on the rear of his property in order to run his sawmills and equipment and made interchangeable parts - the start of real mass production.
When John Rich went into busi- ness for himself nearer town at the turn of Wolcott Street, he also put in a small dam and a sawmill. Later he acquired an iron foundry near the Plymouth line, where the Pe- quabuck bursts through the moun- tain at the ridge known as Devil's Backbone.
Lament Peck had started the foundry but sold it to Elijah Gay- lord in 1786. Later, Rich passed it on to Sherman Johnson but re- tained the privilege of processing a ton of iron a year for five years. Johnson put in a dam that later served several small shops in one of which Beecher Perkins made clock verges. The foundry used many tons of ore a year, at first mostly from the base of Chippins Hill. This ore was also used by a New Britain forge. Later, ore was brought from Salisbury.
The Bristol iron mine, located where long ago Stephen Barnes had seen men looking for ore, was being worked by Luke Gridley, who car- ried the ore home in his saddlebags and smelted it at his blacksmith forge.
In 1791 he petitioned the State Assembly for assistance. ‘Luke Gridley ... humbly showeth that in the said town of Bristol, there is a place where your memorialist has found a Quantity of iron ore . . in small veins between the rocks.' Repeated trials had shown 'the goodness and quality of said ore . . . the same is very rich.' It was a large deposit but expensive to get out, and he asked to be allowed to celebrate a lottery to raise £300 - a customary way those days of get- ting capital for new enterprises. Later in the year a second petition, backed up by the names of one hun-
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THIE MAKING OF BRISTOL
dred and twenty-five Bristol citi- zens, was sent in, asking for a £200 subsidy.
He was also mining copper. It had been discovered by a North Bristol farmer, Theophilus Botsford, who noticed that green water from a spring was killing all the vegeta- tion. Asa Hooker leased the land from Widow Sarah Yale and started working it, but soon turned it over to energetic Luke Gridley.
In his spare time when not in- specting town fences, or pushing the bellows at his blacksmith shop, or toting home iron or copper ore, Luke made shoe heels, lasts and other wooden goods.
Soon after 1800 Gideon turned from handmade clocks to using power, making interchangeable parts and producing in quantity. As his output increased, oxcarts strained across the hills to Wolcott Street with fine woods and metals. Soon Gideon and his assistants were mak- ing enough clocks to sell job lots to local traders such as Stephen Barnes, a descendant of the early Stephen Barnes, and George Mitchell, who was rapidly building up a country- wide peddling business to distrib- ute tinware and other Bristol prod- ucts.
Gideon's brother Seth and his son Elias went to Virginia to open an agency and a shop to make cases. Down there, clocks brought two or
three times the local price. Even- tually threc more of Gidcon's boys went South to make cases and sell. By 1813 Gideon was able to write them that he had a large number of clocks on hand and would be able to send a thousand more that winter. He had started Bristol's first mass production industry.
With a big family around him, gradually prospering, Gideon be- came one of Bristol's leading citi- zens. He was the first to buy a car- riagc, a sign of rcal distinction. By 1804 Seth and Jabish Junior also had carriages - the first people in town to own such vehicles.
Gideon continued his long selling trips. He liked best to go down to Dutchess County, New York, to the Quaker settlements - among the people so generous to him when he had gone to Wyoming. In the end, he became a Quaker, adopting their quaint speech and dress, their wide 'Penn hats' and their faith. He was disconcerting, but highly respected, as he rode up and down the tilted Bristol streets. His act probably represented the deep spirit of the man, his fine craftsmanship, his mu- sic and books, his courage and per- sistent seeking. It reflected his quiet manner, his love of service and peace, his faith in reason and under- standing.
Among their many good deeds, the Quakers had brought to the New World fine Dutch cherry trees,
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hardy enough to resist most diseases. Cherry-wood, so necessary for clock- making, had almost disappeared from the Pequabuck, and Gideon brought home seedlings and planted them on Fall Mountain. In due time they reared their tall branches high above the town.
Just as the cherry trees spread their lofty foliage over Bristol, so did the spirit of the man who planted them. For Bristol and its freedom he worked and fought. He helped create the new free town, its church, the Green on the hill, its schools, and its town government. His hard work and sturdy artistry, his manufacturing and business tal-
ents, his shipping of his wares far across the land, the men he trained: his sons, John Rich, the Ives broth- ers, one of whom became the greatest inventive genius in the his- tory of American clockmaking - these things, too, were to shape the Bristol of the next century and make it the clock capital of the world. The clock industry that he started was a powerful magnet that drew to the Pequabuck those other indus- tries which made possible the town's industrial growth and strength and prosperity. So the great and coura- geous spirit of Gideon Roberts - his industry and his talents - live on in the living city of today.
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1
TIN PEDDLER (Illustration from A Century in Connecticut, re- produced by permission of G. Fox & Co. in Hartford)
twenty
candace roberts: girl OF THE new century
IN APRIL 1801, fifteen-year-old Candace Roberts started to work out. She washed and scrubbed and ironed, carded wool and cotton, spun and knit and sewed at home and at her neighbors. She started at Marcus Gaylord's house up the street, where Lydia Gaylord was one of her close friends, and the first entry in the Diary she began keeping was, 'Mr. Gaylord in the evening had company.' Her Diary was a little sleek brown calf-bound book with fine rag linen paper, and stamped 'Town Book' for it was one left over when Gideon was town assessor.
At other times, Candace sewed for the tailor or worked at her Uncle Seth's store and other business places. On Sunday she went to Meeting to hear Reverend Daniel Wildman at the Baptists or Rever- end G. H. Cowles, the ardent Cal- vinist revivalist who had taken Rev- erend Newell's place when the latter
died after fifty years of service.
On Sundays, Candace also did her ciphering and geography lessons or read the light romantic novels of the day, or Mrs. Rowe's earnest moral essays, which she picked up in the big Cowles store in Farmington. She broadened her knowledge with the Encyclopedia and more serious volumes that Gideon brought home from the 'Public Library' or the later Philosophical Library, of which he was also a charter member.
The Sabbath or Holy Day ended at sundown; the evening was given over to visiting, courting, singing, playing games. Older people sat close to the fire playing checkers. It was a rare Sunday evening that the Gideon Roberts house was with- out good company and music, al- ways music.
The Roberts home was spacious, with a severe facade and over-hang- ing second story. All her life Can- dace had lived on this tilted Wol-
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
cott Street. Here was the center of her world; near here were her neigh- bors and the friends she knew best - the 'folk of the mountain.' Across the street lived Aaron Norton, brother of Joel, the tavern keeper high up at the Plymouth line, who had been strung up on Federal Hill as a Tory, and Abner Bailey, the wiremaker. Candace was very fond of him, and once nursed him when he was sick. He married her older sister Cathy, and his sister Olive married Gideon Junior.
In a little red house behind a huge granite boulder, lived Joel Trues- dell, the shoemaker, a crotchetv young man who read too much. Candace had always been fasci- nated by his three-legged stool with its double candles in a movable spindle. He would hammer away at the leather, and occasionally shift the candle light to see better. He also made tubs and pails from the cedars of the big swamp.
Farther up the street, beyond Peck's Cave, where Samuel Peck lived, Wolcott Road branched off, climbed South Mountain swiftly, past the cider mill of Luke Adams, one of the valiant heroes of the In- dependence struggle, and Samuel Gaylord's house opposite Indian Rock. It skirted the eastern side of Cedar Swamp and went on over the crest into the village Green of Wol- cott.
The Alcotts in Wolcott were de- 84
scendants of prosperous John Alcok who had come in 1731. Two years before Candace started working out, the family of Amos Bronson Alcott, the father of famous Louisa May Alcott, moved into a new house built by Darius Wiard on a winding country road west of town.
Beyond the Wolcott Road fork were the Four Corners and the new district schoolhouse. The Fall Mountain district had been set off in 1798, and a small square building had been built with the usual smoothed half-logs for benches. There Candace learned to cipher and spell and 'speak pieces.'
Northwest, Fall Mountain Road branched off to Indian Heaven, a cup-like pass at the top, and went on to Plymouth. Candace often rode that way to visit friends. There lived a colony of Baptists who cele- brated services in their houses and barns. Nathan Tuttle, who had started out making wooden combs, turned his house into a store, and in his kitchen, mounted on the joiner's bench, Elder Wildman, hired for £50 a year, preached the faith.
But this year of 1801 Wildman had taken over his father's land in the village on the Pequabuck · at West Street, a mile or so northeast of the Roberts house near the Fris- bie tannery. There in 1802 the Bap- tists built the first Baptist Church where Candace attended service. In the end she took her 'sousing' - as
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, BUILT IN 1802 (Vault, Bristol Public Library)
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
she put it - in a brook in Water- bury, to become a true Baptist.
At Indian Heaven, near Joel Nor- ton's tavern, were small shops for making wood ware, butter paddles and vinegar kegs, furniture and chests; and Arthur Sheldon's black- smith shop for shoeing oxen and mules. A few forges made metal tools, and Lucas Lane put up a shingle mill.
Due west from Four Corners, Allentown Road went straight over the mountain top. The southern fork was Witches Rock Road. There, at a grotesque jumble of rocks, Granby Orcutt of Wolcott was supposed to hobnob at night with other witches who did prank- ish things to every team that skirted the west side of the Great Swamp.
Such was the magic mountain world south of the Roberts house.
Northeast of Gideon's home lay the town proper, where Candace went to the stores or to work, her muslin 'Van Dyke' shawl slanted across her shoulders. On holidays she wore her 'best' out of the laven- der chest. Work days she had on a linen dress, indrawn sharply at the waist, with a scanty short skirt and a small pinched bonnet.
Wolcott Street dipped down to West and South Streets, a junction called Goose Corner because Ro- land Andrews had a great flock of
geese who fussed and feathered at every passing horseman.
Raising geese was profitable. A good feather bed, according to the old wills, was worth as much as a cow or a fine horse, hence was a symbol of good living and pros- perity.
Andrews' geese went to one of the Pequabuck dams to swim. This so annoyed a Peck landholder on Divinity Street, he shot several in the lane beside his house. All Bris- tol split into two angry factions, which went about armed, but the only casualties were the geese.
Goose Corner was a budding business center. Near here were the Peck tavern, Philip Gaylord's cloth- ing store, John Collins' tailor shop and other places where Candace sometimes worked. Here was the old cloth and fulling mill started by the young Scotch immigrant, Wil- liam Mitchell, just before the Revo- lution. For a time, after serving in the army, he had made saltpeter for powder to carry on the fight against the British. He now had a store and tin shop also, and his ambitious son George, after clerking for Thomas Barnes, started his own store and tavern on the North Side.
Candace was a good friend of the large Mitchell family and was par- ticularly fond of Almira, two years younger than herself. Often she worked at their house, the stores or the tin shop.
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CANDACE ROBERTS: GIRL OF THE NEW CENTURY
Due east from Goose Corner, South Street went past the homes and businesses of various members of the influential Barnes family. Thomas Barnes, grandson of Eben- ezer and a Revolutionary War hero, and his sons, Stephen, Thomas Jun- ior and Daniel, all had homes and businesses there, a store, distillery, grog shop, tin shop and a small but- ton factory. They were beginning to ship Bristol goods all over the country, and imported wares from other states, the West Indies and Europe.
Daniel married Sally Jerome; a brother married Esther Peck; one sister married Abel Frisbie of the tanner's family; another, Nathaniel Bishop, and a third Ira Hooker of the weaver's family. All were friends of Candace, who was invited to several of the weddings.
On a big tract, from East Street down to South Street and beyond, Bryan Hooker, son of Asa who had started the copper mine, set up an- other fulling mill, put in looms and opened a clothing store. Along with Mitchell, he was one of America's first successful woolen manufactur- ers. On the slope above, he built one of the finest homes in town.
At the corner where a road slanted down from Compounce Lake, was Uncle Seth's store and just beyond, the original Jabish Roberts tannery near where Thad- deus Rich made shoes. A Baptist
from Waterbury named Foot was making pewter buttons, turning them on a foot lathe. Below the gristmill and the burying ground was the schoolhouse where Can- dace's father had taught briefly and where she sometimes spoke her pieces. It burned down a few years after she began her Diary, and classes were held in the fine old house of Schoolmaster Colonel Thomas Botsford until a new red brick school could be put up. His property - which included the Brown-Mathews homestead and a house put up by William Barnes, son of Ebenezer - had been bought in 1753 by Elnathan Ives. Can- dace's cousins, Reuben and Josiah Ives, had lived there till Botsford bought it. Higher up on East Road lived one of the Hungerfords.
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