USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 9
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Mitchell filled numerous town posts, selectman, assessor and 'school visitor,' and had been Bris- tol's representative to the State As-
99
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
sembly six times. In 1818 he and Bryan Hooker were delegates to Hartford to decide whether to re- place Connecticut's out-moded colo- nial code with a modern constitu- tion. In 1820 he was asked to take charge of the post office.
Bristol had obtained its first post office in 1812 during the war with Great Britain. The war was very unpopular in New England because of the injury to trade, and politics had been bitter. In Bristol, the Democrats raised a Liberty Pole in front of the Baptist Church; the Federalists 'by boring and sawing,' laid the democratic pole 'prostrate' without 'the fear of God or the law before their noses.'
Again men drilled on Federal Grecn, and when the British made raids on New Haven and burned Washington, every soul flamed with indignation. Elisha Manross and other Bristolites greatly distin- guished themselves in the brief but unhappy war.
Faced by such disasters, feeling the need of tying the country to- gether better, the Federal authori- ties set up many new post offices.
Mail for Bristol came on Thurs- days by postrider, who also brought the staunch Federalist Hartford Courant and the Mercury, a new Jeffersonian paper. He always ate at Carlos Lewis's house on the North side. Postage was collected on delivery, for a letter of one sheet,
according to distance, 64, 12/2, 18%, 25 or 3712 cents.
The first postmaster was Lott Newell, grandson of the early Con- gregational pastor. Lott had dis- graced himself by printing wildcat bank notes without proper financial backing, and in 1819 he was ousted. By then the mail was being carried through daily in the four-horse stagecoach.
Because of so much new business in Bristol, a reliable postmaster was needed.
"We have to get George Mitch- ell," one selectman said. "He's a man you can count on."
A few south-siders staged protest demonstrations against moving the post office to Mitchell's North side store, but most people were well pleased for it was across the street from the Gaylord tavern where the three stage lines changed horses.
Mitchell's store, built by Abel Lewis, sold cloth goods, hardware, groceries and drugs. On the second floor were kept supplies to outfit peddlers, who went to every part of the country to sell Bristol tinware, clocks, leather and wooden goods, furniture, hard cider, brushes, woven goods, mirrors, wood uten- sils and tools, even a hardwood ball bearing which made some Southern crackers, mistaking them for nut- megs, wrathful about Yankee shrewdness.
100
THE GREAT CANAL
One early peddler, Amos Bron- son Alcott from Wolcott, walked out of George's place with a fifty- pound tin truck of wares on his back, which he took all the way to Virginia. "No wonder he became a Transcendentalist," remarked one wag.
Alcott had been tcaching at the West Street school, but some folk found his free opinions too novel. Saying philosophically he guessed the world would muddle through without his sensible ideas as it had through all the ages, Alcott moved on to Massachusetts and greater things.
A more successful peddler was Albert B. Wilcox, who traveled through New England and down to the Carolinas, selling mirrors and, later, clocks made by Mitchell and Sherman Treat. As a clock seller he made over $300 a month.
In order to get enough supplies for his peddlers, Mitchell helped start many people in business. He and associates bought the old Bur- lington Mcetinghouse and moved it back of North Main Street, install- ing looms for a cotton mill. When clothmaking was given up, he set Ira Ives to work there making 'fas- sinets,' dressing combs, and sand- boxes, used to dry ink. Ira was a fine craftsman. "That's handsome work," Mitchell told him, highly pleased, the day he brought his first batch of work to the store.
When George marricd Polly At- kins in 1818, he put up the money for her brothers, Irenus and Rollin, to install machinery in a wood-turn- ing shop on the Pequabuck at the cast end of Divinity Street, wherc they, too, made combs and 'fassi- nets.' They put in a dam for power, and the enterprise proved very suc- cessful.
By the time George took over the post office, Bristol was moving ahead in other ways, too. At George's suggestion, nine school districts had been set up. On Fed- eral Hill there was an academy for young ladies. The town had three libraries, two clergymen and two physicians.
Though Bristol had only 1,423 inhabitants, half the people werc engaged in manufacturing or me- chanical pursuits. There were only five large tin shops left, but there were many clock factories now, but- ton factories, two carding establish- ments, woolen and cotton mills, eight gristmills and sawmills, eight cider distilleries, six tanneries, three large merchandising stores and numbers of smaller ones. Many woodjoiners, blacksmiths and metal workers were busy all the time. Half a dozen good-sized inns were scattered about town.
Two Connecticut gazetteers, pass- ing through Bristol at this time, re- marked, "If discriminations are to be made, where the general charac-
101
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
teristics of the inhabitants are marked with such uniformity as is the case in this state, those of Bristol deserve to be noticed for their enter- prise and industry."
Now, this gala Friday, June 20, 1828, George and his wife Polly were setting out with the Bristol delegation for the launching of the first boat on the new Farmington Canal, which had been cut through for sixty miles from New Haven. The church bells on Federal Hill were ringing, and presently they heard the lively fife-and-drum corps on the flag- and flower-draped float at the head of a long file of carriages and horsemen.
They passed Thomas Barnes Jun- ior and his wife Rosanna Lewis - direct descendants of the first settlers. George, as a boy, had clerked at the Barnes South Street store. As he had promoted the turnpikes and stages, Thomas Jun- ior had taken a big interest in get- ting the canal started. Besides his transportation business, he now ran several clock companies and had become Bristol's leading private money-lender to promote new en- terprises.
Millowner Samuel Deming was also in the procession. He was an- other prime mover in the canal business and was on the board of directors. He intended to put up another mill on the Great Plains,
as Plainville was then called, near the waterway.
More than anyone else in Bristol, George Mitchell had been active in promoting this new needed means of travel and transportation. He stood to profit greatly for it would be helpful for the countrywide peddling organization he had built up, getting goods in and out more easily and cheaply. The haul over the mountains to Hartford or Mid- dletown was expensive. It would be a short level pull to the canal at Plainville. With Barnes and Dem- ing, George had attended the origi- nal 1822 meeting in Farmington at General Solomon Cowles's tavern to get a company organized and raise money, and had gone with the dele- gation to obtain the charter from the General Assembly. He had worked hard on the project with the grand old 'Sachem' of New Haven, James Hillhouse, who had stood by Eli Whitney in his efforts to manu- facture guns with interchangeable parts. Hillhouse had organized the New Haven Mechanics Bank which put in $200,000 of the $2,000,000 re- quired to dig the canal.
In 1825 Governor Oliver Wolcott turned the first spade of dirt in a gala celebration at Salmon Creek in Granby. All along the canal route, farmers with horse and ox- carts were hired. Mostly the work had been done by sturdy Irishmen who were brought from Erin, with
102
79
NEW HAVEN AND NORTHAMPTON DAILY CANAL BOAT LINE.
AND STEAMBOAT TO CHEAPSIDE.
The Ven Hasen and Northampton Canal Transportation Line
Be this arrangement Good- shipped from Albany and Boston by du Western Hasroad via W. sfeld Hegot, and Inas Von York and the South via New Haven, will arrive at Cinapande with water, and regularity in the last deck Canal Boats.
The Strumbont Franklin will lease Northampton for Cheapsido *** ** ****** ********* *** * ******* Returning. lesse ( Drapene
**** * ****** * * Housing Have the box fork, chepy Tl END!) and
Au 10 Mouth www. Ven loch ot of + ++ B* *** ** Haven, or of the Captain on
Freight from Boston and Albany will be delivered daily at the Brick Dopar We stu ld and tranchappel waslemt klay in the ruanl busts for Northampton and thenpoule lundis, war toernicht, and is correction with
BEECHER'S DAILY LINE FROM HAVEN,
the present arrangeras stond fas tuos and disgrauh huhesta unenjoyed. The rates of freight generally huse been reduced, and Flour from
barrel, and from . Piwny to theaysuis Bandiag for themis For further particolar- inquire at the store hunter west side of the
HENRY BEKCHER. New *** * * * ***** * ** *** New York or of the suberiber at Northampton.
JOSEPH I. KINGSLEY. General ,igent.
Northampton **** * **
ADVERTISEMENT OF STEAMBOAT SERVICE ON THE FAR- MINGTON CANAL APRIL 1, 1845 (Courtesy New Haven Colony Historical Society)
THE FARMINGTON CANAL
The accompanying map shows the actual path of the Farmington Canal and that of the proposed canal to New Hartford. Note that the majority of the locks are situated between New Haven (six in the city itself) and Southington, with the route level to Granby, where six locks lift the canal to the level of Congamond Ponds. Three piers of the aqueduct across the Farmington River still stand.
FARMINGTON CANAL ROUTE ACROSS CONNECTICUT (Federal Writers' Project)
PROPOSED CANAL
MAD
NAUGATUCK
YORK
HOUSATONIC
NEW
RIVER
SCALE OF MILES
0
5
IC
1 5
20
C
MASSACHUSETTS
SCALE IN FEET
200
100 0
SALMON
POND
WEST
AST
ENFIELD
BROOK
CULVERTO WASTE WEIL
SALMON VILLAGE
GRANAT
LOCKS ITOS
40 SALMON BROOK AACH CULVERT
WINDSOR LOCKS
#
NEW/ HARTFORD
FARMINGTON
SIMSBURY |
HC
10 AUCH CULVERT
RIVER
FARMINGTON
12 AUCH ÇULVEOT
BK
NORTHINGTON
10 ARCH CULVERT
AVON
HARTFORD
CAIR OAM
UNIONVILLE
200 AQUEDUCT ZAPANI 48 KACH
PITAIN BAUM
EN FARMINGTON
WHITING FAŞ.N
· ··· TÖL BAŞIN
PLAINVILLE
PEQUABUCK
0
EIGHTMILE
EH SOUTHINGTON
RIVER
LOC# 1
LOCK .
LOCK .
WATERBURY
LOCA .
LOC. .
RIVER
LOCK 10
BEACHPORT
LOCK II
LOCK 14
1
.W A.C
·
LOCK 1
LOCK 14
. ARCH CULVERT
LOCK 19
EATON
MT CARMEL
LOC# 1
10 0
LOCA 17
LOČ* IT
. .
SHEPARDS
LOCK
12 ARCH CULVIST
77/W
LOCK 14
DERBY
LOCK 10
LOCK .
NEW HAVEN
MILL HOUSE .AJIN
LOC# # 23 TO 08
NEW
CANAL DABIN
VEN
HARSOM
THE FARMINGTON CANAL
CIRC. 1840
LONG
ISLAND
SOUND
SHOWING LOCKS, ARCHES & FEEDERS
PROFILE OF LOCKS
N
BRANCH
BRANCH
LOCKSITO.
M31VM 3011 40 73A31
RIVER
¥JAIM
₩3ANN
-
LOCK J
OvidINNIno
CHESHIRE
O
CONNECTICUT
RIVER
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
pick and shovel and wheelbarrow.
The 'raging canawl' was twenty to thirty-three feet wide and four feet deep, with a three to five-foot tow path along one side. At Conga- mond Lake the tow horses had to cross on a floating bridge. Sixty locks had been installed to lift the boats, at one point three hundred and ten feet above sea level. Big stone piers carried the canal across streams. Many catwalks had been thrown over it, and bridges, many of them drawbridges laboriously cranked by hand, had to be built at every road, and for farmers whose lands were cut in two. One woman failed to hear the warning ‘Low Bridge!' and had an ear torn off.
The canal now reached beyond 'the Great Plains.' The inland hill village of Farmington had never fancied itself a shipbuilding center, but today the first canal vessel, the James Hillhouse, built entirely of wood from the Tunxis Valley for- ests, was being launched there with appropriate ceremonies.
The carriages, heading for the canal celebration this day of the opening, moved east along the Pe- quabuck. Everywhere people were waving flags and cheering.
As the Mitchell carriage bumped down Frederick Street in Forest- ville, where half a dozen houses clustered about Elisha Manross's big wood-turning shop, they were
greeted with a cannon salute. This was an old piece from Revolution- ary days that Elisha's uncle, Theo . dore Manross, had brought up from New Haven in an impulsive all- night ride in order to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Elisha, the clockmaker, great grandson of Nehemiah the early settler from Lebanon, was a son of Colonel Elijah, for whom Candace Roberts had worked. Elisha had been a wheelwright, but in 1812 he bought a Forestville clock shop that Joseph Ives had built and with the help of a dozen apprentices began making clockcases. George bought many cases from him.
The day continued fair and warm. The Bristol procession moved into a great tangle of people and car- riages. Folk from every part of central Connecticut had converged on this spot to watch the first boat sail 'over the Connecticut hills.' Horsemen on gaily decorated steeds dashed in and out, raising clouds of dust.
Booths with awnings had been set up to sell hot oysters, small beer, Presbyterian and 'Hard Shell' Bap- tist gingerbread. Hawkers were vending candy, maple sugar, be- ribboned horsewhips, mousetraps 'with the latest improvements,' yel- low boxwood combs, toy whistles and 'Jew's-harps' that played rasp- ing airs.
For 64 cents a negro was singing
106
THE GREAT CANAL
'Jim Crow' and 'Long Tailed Blue.' - "Way down Souf, close to de moon ..
George and Polly made their way to the large flag-draped stand. A militia company was drawn up, in smart uniforms with blue, gold- braided jackets, crimson sashes, white trousers and yellow morocco- topped boots.
The band struck up. Four large gray horses, ridden by colored boys in white satin, showed up on the tow path at the edge of the woods, and the James Hillhouse, painted shiny white, floated into view, crowded with celebrants, held back from falling into the water by a strong wire, the only rail. Soon Polly and George made out the jovial face of Captain Samuel Dick- inson at the helm. The Stars and Stripes rippled at the masthead - twenty-three stars now. The smart Phoenix Band on the boat answered those on shore; bells rang, the Sims- bury Artillerymen fired their can- non, the militia fired an answering salvo.
Polly and George boarded the vessel, admired the finely furnished fore-and-aft cabins with folding berths, the dining salon and parlor. As the vessel slid smoothly through the water, the music struck up again, and they danced.
Returning from the celebration, George and Polly Mitchell saw many families they knew - the
Hotchkisses from Burlington, the Mathews, Blakeslees and Bartholo- mews.
"It looks as if all the clockmakers are out today," remarked Polly, as they spun past the carriage of Chauncey and Noble Jerome.
"They ought to be," said George. "The canal is going to do great things for every business man in Bristol. Do you know, to get ma- hogany for his clocks, Chauncey Jerome had to take a team all the way to New York and walk back in the mud?"
"What we're going to do next, is dig out a big basin at Plainville so we can build docks and warehouses. The canal will be pushed on to Northampton in Massachusetts and will tie in with a Canadian canal to reach the St. Lawrence River. Bristol will be almost a seaport."
George's hopes were not de- frauded. Regular canal service got started November 12 when the Enterprise came through with 60,000 shingles from Seneca Lake, New York. That same day the Weatogue, another packet boat built in Farmington, cleared for the South with passengers. Near Plain- ville it met the New England, com- ing north from New Haven with pas- sengers and one hundred barrels of salt. Once more the bands played, and passengers were ceremoniously exchanged for the trips home.
107
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
A wooden aqueduct, set upon massive stone pillars thirty-six feet high, carried the canal for 280 feet across the Farmington River. Soon regular freight and passenger serv- ice was maintained as far as North- ampton, in a few more years as far as Vermont.
When 'Bristol Basin' - the inland port at Plainville - was dug out, I. Hawley Whiting left Bristol to do merchandising therc. Boats un- loaded goods right into the ground Hoor of his store. Soon he erected a hotel alongside his wharf.
On the deck of one of his canal vessels, he freighted up an eighteen- foot boat for two Plainville citizens, who outfitted it as an excursion ves- sel with an awning. A tow horse was hired for 25 cents a day and a boy driver for 122 cents. Passengers were charged 3 cents a trip, and fifty persons could be carried.
This boat soon became known as the 'Meeting Boat.' Every Sunday it carried folk to Farmington Church. The singers gathered in the bow to practice 'psalms.' Young men and 'maidens' assembled 'amid- ship.' At the stern, urchins some- times 'trolled' on the sly for shiners with bent hook and string. As the tow horse plodded along the grassy bank, sacred songs floated across the meadows and rooftops - such was 'the going up to the house of the Lord.'
The canal was a great pleasure
for young people. There they went skating or sledding. In summer they sailed their small boats or went swimming, trapped muskrats or shot bullfrogs. Picnics were held on its shaded banks. Sometimes boys dropped from the overhead bridges onto canal vessels to get free rides.
Another big merchandising busi- ness appeared at Bristol Basin. Harmanus M. Welch - who, as a boy, had clerked at Thomas Barnes's South Street store - supplied cof- fee, tea, molasses, dry goods and hardware and shipped out Bristol wares, Barnes's liquors, the pewter and brass buttons made by Foot and Treat, Ira Ives's tinderboxes, the Mitchell and Manross clocks and wood ware and furniture, Bryan Hooker's woolen fabrics, Ira Lewis's tinware, Fall Mountain cider and Chippins Hill beef and chestnuts. On one occasion, Eli Terry Junior of Plymouth wrote Harmanus to send 'by next boat' to a customer in Decatur, Georgia, thirty pairs of ten-pound clock weights which had been omitted from a clock shipment 'by our mistake.' It was a great sight, all the teams from back country, many of them oxen, lined up at the docks and warehouses to get goods. No outfit was more fa- mous than the three oxen old man Wilcox hitched to his 'lumber wagon.'
108
THE GREAT CANAL
Welch, ticket and freight agent for various concerns plying the canal, soon owned boats of his own. In time, sixteen boats a week cleared out of New Haven, loaded with goods from other parts of the coun- try, the West Indies and overseas - boats with such fine names as Flora and Venus, Ceres and Mars. An- other packet line called its boats the Stag, Hart, Faun and Doe.
One day a strange spectacle rode up the canal - a stern-wheeler. Its tall collapsible smoke stack had to be pulled down at every bridge. It churned so much water out of the canal that it was some time before traffic could be resumed, and the stern-wheeler was not allowed to re- turn, so it had to be dismantled and carted back to sea overland.
Though the tolls charged failed to meet the costly upkeep because of leakage and drouths, the waterway brought Bristol Basin within twelve-
hours travel time of New Haven, and it provided an outlet for isolated hill villages. Factories, needing its water and facilities, sprang up along its banks. A big feeder dam built at Unionville provided power for cotton, woolen and iron shops. For twenty years, before railroads be- came available, the canal, more than anything else, pushed ahead the de- velopment of all central Connecti- cut. Local products found wider markets. Goods from outside be- came available at cheaper prices. John Cooke's tavern daybook re- veals that after the canal was built, a hundred pound barrel of flour was selling for only $2.00. The canal helped bring the price of Western wheat flour down so it ceased to be a luxury. For the first time wheat bread appeared regularly on every table in Bristol. More than ever, Bristol became part of the nation, part of America.
109
TEAMSTER HAULING BRASS (From Bristol Fashion, by permission Bristol Brass Corp.)
»11
keeping time WITH progress
IT was always a problem, even with the canal which helped so much, for Bristol manufacturers to get in supplies and ship out prod- ucts. Each tin and clock manufac- turer kept twenty to forty teams going all the time; and many inde- pendent teamsters, among them sev- eral grandsons of Josiah Lewis, built up a steady business with their springless 'lumber boxes.' Even the turnpikes had awful sloughs, other roads were worse, and heavily loaded wagons often bogged down. In bad winters superhuman efforts were made to move supplies and products by sled.
Iron was hauled down from Salis- bury, for the Bristol supply had proved small and difficult to work. Coal, till the canal was built, was barged up the Connecticut River, then had to be hauled across the mountains. Brass was obtained from the Scovill and Holmes plants in Waterbury and Wolcottville, as
Torrington was called. Nails, screws, wire, glass and glue were bought from Hartford merchants, where Charles Sigourney always was well stocked. German looking glasses, used on many clocks, came from across the sea, faces and quick- silver protected by layers of green felt which Bristol housewives found fine for braiding fireplace rugs. Mahogany logs, varnishes, oil and turpentine were purchased in New York. Pine and other woods, once so plentiful in Bristol, now had to be shipped in from Maine and Can- ada, or hauled overland from Al- bany.
Bristol was a big clock center now, with ever better tools and power; mass production was on the upswing, bringing prices down steadily, within reach of every citi- zen.
Before his death in 1813, Gideon Roberts had one thousand clock movements in the works. John Rich
111
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
was turning them out in hundred lots. Levi Lewis, at work between 1809 and 1811 on Wolcott Street, had fifteen hundred in process at one time. People said he was crazy, he would never be able to sell so many.
As early as 1810, Dr. Titus Merri- man started a company with Butler Dunbar, a skillful meehanie who owned a blacksmith shop, to make tall thirty-hour wooden eloeks. But- ler was a nephew of the ill-fated Moses. The following year he joined with Chauncey Boardman in Forestville on the Pequabuck. Boardman bought Dunbar out in 1812 and kept on successfully alone in a Stafford shop near the turnpike. It grew into a great factory. Very early, Amasa and Chauncey Ives set up a eoneern on Ivy Brook; Joseph Ives built in Forestville. From 1816 to 1824, Charles Grandison Ives, who married Parthenia Rieh, made cloeks on Peaceable Street, then sold out to Orrin Hart.
The year 1818 saw a remarkable new development. Thomas Barnes backed Joseph Ives to mass-produce cast metal cloeks with iron plates and brass wheels. This was the first American cloek to use mirrors regu- larly, and the world's first serious effort to produce an all metal clock in quantity. They turned out 2,000 elocks that year. The movement was elumsy and heavy and had to be given up, but it heralded the day
when wooden clocks would be driven off the market. Joseph Ives went into the new Merriman, Birge and Company, with whom Levi Lewis was connected, to turn out a mirror clock he had patented.
Thomas Barnes Junior and Com- pany, formed with William Johnson, Wyllys Roberts (son of Gideon), and Lott Newell, took over the old Gid- eon Roberts waterworks and leased the Ives shop on Ivy Brook. Then about the time the canal opened, Thomas Barnes went in with Eli Bartholomew and his nephew, George Bartholomew, to start an- other cloek factory in North Bristol, south of the Yale sawmill and grist- mill.
Many other Bristol companies were formed, but few men, those early clock days, did more to pro- mote new discoveries and enter- prises than did Thomas Barnes Jun- ior. He was associated with ten different cloek partnerships, and he loaned money to various other con- eerns. The colossal structure of the mass production of eloeks is greatly indebted to his ability to provide the capital at erueial moments - even during bad depressions.
Neither Barnes nor George Mitch- ell eould get enough clocks to sup- ply the ever-growing demand. George also made clocks and was always on the lookout to induce good craftsmen to settle in Bristol. Among others, he brought in Wil-
112
KEEPING TIME WITH PROGRESS
liam Lewis Gilbert, a Winsted schoolteacher, who had dabbled in clockmaking, as an apprentice, then encouraged him to strike out for himself. With $200 capital, Gilbert started up at 76 South Street, and two years later - 1830 - with his brother-in-law, George Marsh, started a second concern in Farm- ington. Gilbert became one of the most prosperous clockmakers in America.
One of Mitchell's most rewarding efforts was to persuade Chauncey Jerome, a Plymouth man making clockcases for Eli Terry, to come to Bristol to turn out cases and clocks. In 1821 he sold Chauncey a house, barn and seventeen acres on the Pc- quabuck in return for 214 finished Eli Terry pillar-and-scroll clocks.
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