USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 18
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CENTER SCHOOL
Mr. H. G. Benedict contributes some reminiscences of this hall of learning: "As a young lad I attended District School Number I on Maple Street and South Avenue, - no names to the streets then. The principal was James Young, a handsome man and a fine teacher, who lived on East Avenue near the old mill." The Primary Depart- ment was presided over by Miss Slawson, "a prim old maid, tall, big- faced and stern." The next principal, Mr. Sturges, was in charge at the time Fort Donaldson was taken during the Civil War, and the school children rang the bell to celebrate. About 1867 the District
Committee, finding it difficult to get a principal, engaged "an old superannuated Scotchman," who was none other than our friend of the black strap which had once struck terror to the hearts in the little red schoolhouse. John Lyall was about 75 years old, but had evidently not mellowed with the years, for he is described as "tall, spare, and grim, the epitome of Dickens' Squeers."
The School Committee were treated on one occasion to a taste of what the boys and girls had to encounter daily from their peppery principal. It was the custom for the committee to visit the school and put questions to the pupils on examination day. We can picture the scene: boys and girls thrilled at the thought of the precious single month of vacation, but oppressed by their best clothes on this torrid day in late July, and by the dignified row of Committeemen ready to probe them with terrible questions. On this occasion, however, discomfiture was to descend upon the ranks of the enemy. A question put by one Mr. Purdy of the Committee as to why Connecticut and Rhode Island had two capitals precipitated an argument between him and the principal of such heat that it ended with Mr. Lyall's exclaim- ing, "You know no more about it than a Guinea Nagur!"
SCHOOL MEETINGS STORMY
The school meetings too were sometimes stormy affairs. In the old New Canaan Era, in an issue of February 1869, regret is expressed
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at the scene at the last school session, which "is said to have almost equalled Ben Butler's riot in Congress."
The work of the public schools was supplemented by several private schools after the first New Canaan Academy was discon- tinued in 1833. The next year Silas Davenport acquired for twenty- five hundred dollars the property just north of the Meeting House where Elisha Silliman, grandson of Rev. Robert Silliman, had origi- nally erected a dwelling house. Now in an effort to revive the old Academy Mr. Davenport enlarged this into a fine building, or rather, group of buildings, conducting school in the Old Academy (on the present Community parking grounds) until the completion in 1835 of the new structure, the main part of which is now the Congrega- tional parsonage. This institution was a boys' boarding school in which served four successive masters, each for a shorter period. The first of these was Dr. Buddington, who was for many years in after times the pastor of the Clinton Avenue Congregational Church in Brooklyn. Of this church Silas Davenport was an original member, having moved to Brooklyn to live when he went into business in New York. For in 1837 he sold his property for six thousand dollars to David S. Rockwell, who thus became principal of the "New Canaan Seminary," again a boarding school for boys. This institution, which was continued by Mr. Rockwell for 24 years, - right up to Civil War times - is what most New Canaanites have in mind when "the Old Academy" is mentioned, but its function in the community was quite different. Whereas the first Academy, on the present Community School grounds, was a day school where girls and boys could study together and students could prepare for Yale, Church Hill Institute was primarily a boarding school for boys from out of town who were not aspirants for college. This explains why we find the Rev. Theophilus Smith about 1814 teaching his own children and some others, and fitting several boys for college entrance.
CHURCH HILL INSTITUTE
The best account of the Church Hill Institute is to be found in a book called "Rambling Recollections" by Dr. Alphonso David Rockwell, who was an elder brother of Mr. Theron Rockwell, of New Canaan, and who died last April after 93 years of rich and varied experience. He speaks of a picture very dear to his heart hanging
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over his desk in his house in Flushing, a print of "New Canaan Semi- nary" as it was in 1840. "This schoolhouse and the connecting part," he continues, "are beyond the remembrance of the present genera- tion, and I myself have but a faint recollection of the place, with its picket fence and old-fashioned coach which brought the boys of my father's school from the steamboat landing in Norwalk or Stam- ford before the days of the New Haven Railroad." In the old print the stage coach had just deposited a school boy, who with his little trunk on his back is about to be welcomed at the gate. It gives an interesting glimpse of contemporary costumes, especially in the case of the ladies, who look out from under wide round hats, but whose silhouettes from the neck down would not be far wrong in 1933. "The school as here seen was called the 'New Canaan Semi- nary.' Later my father changed it to the less high-sounding title of 'Boarding School for Boys'and later still, because of the two churches, one on either side, it arose to the dignity of 'Church Hill Institute.' What a view we had from what was termed the 'Green' in front of the school house. The trees did not at that time obstruct the vision. The Sound and the Long Island Shore were distinctly visible for a long stretch, and I remember to have heard one of our household say that, when the steamboat Lexington burned in mid-winter with such terrible loss of life, the conflagration was distinctly visible. The New Canaan of that time was not the New Canaan of today, yet the village proper was in general effect very much the same. The greatest change is in the country around. Where the boys roamed is now in many places restricted ground. So many fine homes have gone up where once were sterile farms, and smart automobiles have replaced the one-horse shay."
LAYOUT OF SCHOOL
The Church Hill Institute consisted of three parts. The dwelling house, which is now the Congregational parsonage, and the school- house, with a cupola and columns, were joined together by a long two-story connection. The print shows this connecting part as only one story in height, so the second must have been a later addition. This part of the building was moved by Dr. Willard Parker, the next owner, a few rods to the west to form the back of his lodge, which is now the Episcopal rectory, and the school building shorn
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of its cupola but retaining its columns was moved around at right angles and is still to be seen as the ell of the Congregational parsonage, now used each Sunday as the meeting place of the primary depart- ment. Here was once a large room for study and recreation, heated in winter by a big stove in the center. Dr. Rockwell remembers how "in the early morning the boys would gather around it several deep, with much pushing and shoving." The discomforts of winter were balanced with its joys. This was evidently a coasters' paradise, for in that trafficless era "sometimes with a first-class sled and a free and slippery hill, one might get to the village and beyond, if not actually to the next hill which went down to the 'big pond' " - evidently Lakeview Avenue. Such a prospect must have helped to buoy up the spirits of our chronicler, the principal's son, in that year when one of his daily chores was to get out of his warm bed long before daylight to sweep out the icy schoolroom and make the fire in the big stove. His account of graciously allowing a simple-minded school- mate to help him and even serve as substitute in this unalluring task reminds one of Tom Sawyer's devices for getting his fence painted. In the school building also was the washroom where every Saturday night an intensive job was done under the supervision of the principal, and followed up by his personal inspection.
The first floor of the long connecting portion served as a dining- room and kitchen. "Two score hungry boys" gathered about one long table, while Mr. Rockwell presided at one end and dispensed the food and Mrs. Rockwell, at the other end, poured the tea and coffee. This lady seems to have been adequate to her demanding role and to have won the affectionate respect of her successive housefuls of boys. Her son pays tribute to the faithfulness with which she "ministered to them in their hours of pain, sympathized with them in their boyish grief, and on occasion tactfully stood between them and punishment, even though deserved."
SELECT SCHOOL FOR BOYS
In 1861 Mr. Rockwell sold the Church Hill Institute to the Rev. J. L. Gilder, a relative of Richard Watson Gilder, the poet. Twenty- five years later one of the "old boys" summoned his former school- mates to a reunion dinner in New York in honor of their principal.
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Forty gathered to pay tribute to Mr. Rockwell's 24 years of service, and to revel in reminiscences of their school days.
A prospectus of the period in which the Rev. Mr. Gilder was proprietor and principal describes the Institute as "a select family school for boys"-"one of the oldest boarding schools in the country." The time given to reach the "quiet and healthy village of New Canaan" is two hours from New York; as these were the days before the New Canaan Railroad, the boys could travel only as far as Darien on the train and must make the rest of the journey by stage. Sessions began the first Monday in May and the first Monday in November, and as each session was 2 1 weeks long, the only vacation periods seem to have been the months of April and October, as in the public schools of the earlier part of the century.
It always interests us moderns to contemplate the low cost of education in the days of old and to speculate on the reason why the school year has steadily shortened as the charges have increased. In the present instance "the charge for Board, Tuition in all English branches, Washing and Mending, Fuel, Light and Bedding," was one hundred dollars payable in advance, with an extra ten dollars if a pupil desired a foreign language or drawing. Among the articles that each boy was required to bring were a Bible, an umbrella, and a silver fork and spoon. The list of references includes, besides the convincing name of Professor Samuel St. John, of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, other doctors and ministers and likewise the Hon. William M. "Boss" Tweed, whose son had attended the school.
"ACADEMY JUNIOR"
For the education of the daughters of New Canaan there was, as we have seen, from the closing of the Academy in 1833, no provision other than the district schools. One father felt this lack so keenly that he started an Academy for the benefit of his own daughter, and maintained it until her education was completed. Those who have the privilege of knowing Mrs. Charles DeMerritt will not wonder that as little Emma Law, she was already revealing a mind that was obviously worthy of special advantages, which fortunately her father, Alexander Law, was able to provide.
In 1857, Mr. Law bought from School District Number I, the lot
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on Park Street (opposite the site on which the station was later built) which had been vacated shortly before by the burning of the original Center School. Here he erected a building which came to be known as the "Academy Junior" and in which were educated many of the men and women of whom New Canaan in its later years has had most reason to be proud. Under the principalship of the Rev. J. C. Wyckoff, obtained for the post by Mr. Law and Professor Samuel St. John, and later under Mr. Pease a sound training was given not only to their own children but to others whose names came to stand for the best in our village.
Some of these were: Joseph Fitch Silliman and his brother Justus, who became a professor in Lafayette College, Dr. Samuel St. John later a noted oculist of Hartford; Sarah Hoyt, the mother of Mrs. Thomas Tunney; Caroline Hoyt, who married Joseph Fitch Silli- man and became the mother of the Silliman brothers, Mrs. George E. Kellogg and Miss Caroline Silliman, of Aleppo, Syria; and Anthony Comstock, widely known as president of the Society for the Suppres- sion of Vice.
When the school had fulfilled its original purpose, it was discon- tinued. Mr. Wyckoff married and went to Elizabeth, N. J., but later returned and conducted a school in Professor Samuel St. John's observatory, where Mr. James H. Bailey's house now stands on a rocky height in St. John Place. He built the house on the same street now occupied by the Misses Rogers, and for a time kept a school in another building on the grounds. Meanwhile the deserted Academy was put to use as a shirt factory by Noah Hoyt, and afterwards as a shoe factory, until Mr. E. B. Lawrence began to make couches there. After two or three years, he bought the building and moved it to Railroad Avenue, opposite the entrance of South Avenue just west of the Murphy store where it is now occupied by two or three other stores. On the Park Street site thus vacated was erected a house now occupied by Mr. Henry Groher.
OTHER PRIVATE SCHOOLS
About 1873, regarding the public as still inadequate to their needs, a group of parents united to form yet another private school. They induced Miss Josie Whitney to start one in the present Reindel house on Railroad Avenue next to Karl's Garage. Here until about 1875
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she taught a number of children, among whom were Miss Mary Rogers, Joseph Mitchel Silliman and other well-known New Canaan- ites.
Before this school was terminated by Miss Whitney's marriage to Mortimer Rogers, another New Canaan Academy was established in 1873 in the house belonging to Mr. H. L. Scofield on Seminary Street. Of this school Mrs. E. F. Ayres was principal for 26 years, until her retirement in 1899 after 30 years of teaching. According to the New Canaan Messenger of June 17 of that year, "during her career here, Mrs. Ayres sent out into the world nearly fifty pupils who have become very successful and in several cases, prominent teachers." Two of the latter were Percy Raymond, professor of Paleontology, tutor in the division of Geology at Harvard University, and Horace Brown, professor of Mathematics at Hamilton College. Mrs. Ayres' "well-earned rest" did not terminate her teaching career. After some 20 years she returned to teach French for a time in the Community School while it was in the house (now the Perkins resi- dence) just across the street from its present location. She died in 1927.
ORIGIN OF SEMINARY ST.
It has been generally believed that Mrs. Ayres' school was respon- sible for the change of the street from "Brook" to "Seminary." Miss Mary Louise Hall, however, in an article on street names in the Gazette, August 1, 1933, has shown this to be an error. The present name is found earlier than 1873, the date of the beginning of this school, which, moreover, was called an "Academy" like its predeces- sors. The name "Seminary Street" evidently owes its origin to the old red school-house on the corner of Park Street.
Pioneers in private teaching of little children were: Mary Elizabeth Hoyt and Julia Carter Hoyt, daughters of Benjamin Hoyt, who conducted their classes upstairs over the living room of the old Hoyt house on Main Street. This little school flourished and grew so that Mr. Hoyt found it necessary to build a two-story school- house, which was in later years moved out to the end of the green- house. Here Charles Benedict and Emma Lockwood attended school in their childhood.
Mr. Benedict himself speaks of a boys' school on the corner of
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Richmond Hill Road, which he attended in 1865. This was a build- ing in which another Benedict, Roswell by name, had previously made shoes. It is occupied at the present by Jerry Philipcik. The school was taught by Mrs. Fox, and for a time by Mr. Wyckoff.
So through the century, as in its opening years, New Canaan sup- plemented the public school training by additional facilities for the education of its sons and daughters.
TO NEW YORK BY BOAT
The industrial development of New Canaan following upon the first quarter-century was of course largely dependent upon improved methods of transportation. By 1830 it was possible to ship from Stamford to New York by steamboat, the "Oliver Wolcott" making three trips a week. How much this meant to merchants and passengers may be imagined by thinking back only a few years to young Clarissa Davenport's long week in the sloop journeying from New York up to Norwalk, wholly dependent upon wind and weather.
We have a picture of mercantile New Canaan of somewhat later years from the pen of John Reid, "an old adopted son who loves Old Canaan more than the new." At the time of which he writes, somewhere about the middle of the century, the village boasted "two of the best all-round country stores in the country," Seymour Com- stock's, and one run by the Raymond brothers, Charles, Thomas, and Edgar, which had belonged to their father before them. The long hay-wagons of Peter Smith and others would roll through the village enroute to Norwalk, whence the baled hay would be shipped to New York. Then the empty wagons would stop back at the stores for supplies to take home. Also great loads of charcoal came in by the "Dantown Davises, who murdered the King's English so that it was like reading a comic almanac to hear them talk."
NO DEBTS, NO PANICS
"Old Canaan," adds one devotee of the past, "was prosperous, had no dragging debts, no panics, always busy and happy. No licensed rum shops or modern drug stores. .. . We had Almandurus Brower with his large stage coach and four-in-hand, landing passengers to the boat (in Norwalk) on time always. It was a delightful ride all the year round with plenty of good social passengers to add to the pleasure of the ride. Ho! for Brower's stage coach."
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John Reid is writing in the anniversary year, 1901, and looking about half-way back through the century. His companions are all in favor of the days of long ago. Hear him on the liquor question: "There were not in the village at that time two saloons for each man that thought that he must have a little (?) rum for haying time. There was no use for saloons or modern drug stores. Those who must have the stuff brought two brown jugs to the village and L. M. Monroe, clerk for the three Raymonds, filled one jug with molasses, and the smaller one with New England rum, enough for the season." Our writer does not here mention that this same L. M. Monroe later included in his various activities the management of the first of New Canaan's "modern drug stores" for which Mr. Reid seems to have had such an aversion.
$400,000 SHOE BUSINESS
In manufactures New Canaan continued through the century to specialize in footwear, the yearly volume of the shoe and leather business having reached in 1837 the figure of four hundred thousand dollars. In this calling the name of Benedict continued preeminent. The descendant of the pioneer shoemaker on Brushy Ridge, James Benedict carried on the business almost to the present time. Caleb S. Benedict, oldest of "Boss" Caleb's fifteen children, started a shoe business in the building on the corner of Main Street and the present Railroad Avenue, later conducted by John and T. W. Benedict. The shoe factory built by Amos Ayres in 1824 on Main Street, where the parking place is now, became the "Big Shop" under the Benedict management. Just above, in the house still standing on the corner of Husted Lane, Edson Bradley had made shoes near his own home, the southern colonial house just above, later the home of Albert Comstock and at present owned by Mr. Albert Bensen. We find the names of Bradley and Hall associated with that of Benedict in suc- cessive stages of the business. Smaller concerns also continued to function in these years before the era of intense competition and absorption of small industries by the large.
We hear of Sim's shoe industry on the top of Clapboard Hill; of George Lockwood, who made shoes on the corner of East Avenue and Summer Street; of James Patterson, whose little shop stood in what is now Dr. Tunney's garden (on Cherry Street); of Abraham
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Crissey, the "social, witty shoe man" who lived near Justus Hoyt, the blind miller.
GENTEEL BOOTMAKER
Then there was David Law, who had bought and enlarged in 182 5 the house of Trowbridge Benedict, the silversmith and clockmaker of "White Oak Shade Ridge" (Park Street). He "made as genteel boots as have ever been made since," shipped them to his place of business in New Orleans "all dressed and treed out," then went all the way down there and sold them in the winter and came back in the spring with plenty of money and pecan nuts for all the boys and girls." After 35 years his son, Alexander Law, (father of Mrs. Demeritt) improved this house still further. It is at present the Ardsley Inn.
A pair of beautiful slippers, made about 1845, which you may see behind glass in the Historical Society room, shows the skillful work- manship which made New Canaan famous for its women's shoes. These flat-soled slippers of soft black kid have toes a bit modified from the angular squareness of a neighborhood pair of white satin, 20 years older. The black slippers have red satin insets surrounded with an intricate pattern of fine silk stitching and are finished over the instep with a dainty narrow pleating of red silk. These were a gift to Hannah Carter St. John from Mr. Roswell Benedict, so they were probably fashioned in that shop on Richmond Hill (Mrs. B. P. Mead's garden) where Charles Benedict later went to school to Mrs. Fox.
SHIRTS MADE HERE
Other clothing besides shoes was made in New Canaan. Seymour Comstock had sold his general store to his son, A. S. Comstock, and Henry Rogers. This firm began to manufacture clothing in the building erected by Mr. Law for the "Academy Junior," which had now been discontinued; the business was moved after a while to the present Ferrera building, with the house on the Corner of Husted Lane, where Edson Bradley had previously made shoes, as an annex for storage.
About the middle of the century we find the making of shirts given out to workers in the country round about after the earlier manner of the shoes industry. One woman who lived well into the
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present century told how she used to start out, knitting in hand, and walk five miles to town, tie the bundle of unmade shirts to her shoul- ders and trudge back five miles home, knitting stockings "every step of the way." The day she went to town she gathered in news of the village and the world which had to last her until her bundle of shirts was finished: no need to sit by the radio as her grandchildren do, to hear last minute reports from New York and abroad.
Headquarters for shirt making seems to have been the establish- ment of Noah Hoyt, also town postmaster, which like Comstock and Rogers clothing factory was located for a time in the building no longer needed for Mr. Wyckoff's school on Park Street. The Hoyt Manufacturing Company, a partnership of Noah W. and Stephen B. Hoyt, later operated in the Tracey factory back of Wolfel's, known as "the Armory." Here the finest linen for men was fabricated and even found its way into the wardrobe of southern gentlemen at as high a price as $1 12 per dozen shirts.
BENEDICT CLOCKMAKER
It has been recorded that David Law bought the original part of the present Ardsley Inn from one, Trowbridge Benedict, who in spite of his name, actually made clocks instead of shoes. An anony- mous letter many years later asks: "What true Yankee town was not able to boast of this industry?" This craftsman about 1810 would make fine mahogony eight-day clocks for 60 dollars. There were some of his masterpieces still running when the manuscript in question was written and perhaps their brass works keep time to this day, striking the hours recording the day of the month and the age of the moon. When Trowbridge Benedict sold his home and shop to David Law, he seems to have moved out toward Wilton, for Mr. P. S. Bartow recalls his working in that district and adds: "I think my grandfather let him have eighteen silver dollars from which he hammered out a set of six large teaspoons."
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