USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 20
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The period reflected in The Era is about the same time which Mr. H. G. Benedict has pictured in his many reminiscences published in The Advertiser. From these two sources as well as from the memo- ries of some of our older residents, we can form some idea of what New Canaanites were doing and thinking about in the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, who, assisted by the support of Editor Weed and his newspaper, was elected in the fall of 1868.
NEW WORLD CONTACTS
In the first place there were new contacts wtih countries abroad - contacts unknown in the earlier years, and prophetic of the world
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we know, contracted as it is by modern transportation and communi- cation.
The Franco-Prussian War became real to the townsmen of the Rev. James S. Hoyt when he had to cut short his European trip and return to New Canaan in August of 1870, when the weather was so hot that "even horses refused to run away." Hundreds, even thou- sands of Americans were "in the same fix." How like the beginning of the great conflagration of an August 44 years later!
Another item reminds us how much more remote the ends of the earth seemed 60 years ago than they do today. A lecture called "Outward Bound," delivered by one Captain Shufeldt, gave a vivid and picturesque description of a voyage from New York to Japan, "a country every year becoming more and more interesting to Ameri- cans, as our commerce is extending in that hitherto mysterious region."
"THE LYCEUM" FORMED
We catch further echoes of the thought of the time on public matters from the subjects that came up for discussion in the newly formed Lyceum. This had been organized by a number of "promi- nent citizens" meeting at the office of L. M. Monroe whose name is constantly recurring as an instigator of all sorts of progressive activi- ties. A letter to The Era speaks with considerable asperity of The Norwalk Gazette's mentioning one "attempt" to organize a debating club. "We are happy to inform The Gazette," says the writer, "that like all other attempts for the good of the community, in New Canaan, it was successful. And unlike some of the institutions of Norwalk, the Y. M. C. A., for instance, which shuts its doors against a noble woman speaking words of earnest eloquence in a noble cause, it is organized on a liberal basis, knowing no sex, creed, party, or color, but inviting all to partake in its discussions."
In accordance with this declaration of liberty, we find "lady readers" invited to "speak their minds" on the subject "Ought Suf- frage to be Extended to Women?" when a lively time and a "spicey" discussion were anticipated.
WAR JUSTIFIED
A debate on the question "Resolved: that War is Sometimes Justifiable" was inevitably in 1868 decided in the affirmative. Chair-
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man Noah W. Hoyt, Esq., "made a few convincing and appropriate remarks on the subject." That such a question could even be dis- cussed indicates that a step had already been taken toward the millen- nium. It would be interesting to know whether there was anyone progressive and courageous enough to believe in the negative proposi- tion which he was upholding.
One theological question seems to have demanded much attention: "Does Reason and Revelation Teach the Doctrine of Endless Punish- ment?" It was being thrashed out simultaneously in Stamford, with ministers and laymen on both sides. We have recorded how on one occasion it had to be "left undecided" but in 1869, "The Lyceum," we are told, "on Tuesday evening finished the discussion of endless punishment." It seems hard to bear that we should be left in ignorance of the answer, but apparently this was not decisive, for nine years later, as reported in The Messenger, the question was once more up for discussion. After reporting, however, on suffrage, the immortality of the soul, and whether barbarism is preferable to civilization, The Era remarks, "These vexed questions being settled, the world ought to be able to get along now."
MENTAL IMPROVEMENT
These intellectual exercises were not the only events by which our townsmen sought to combine mental improvement with social festivity. Professor Samuel St. John had organized in 1869 a free class in chemistry in the Y. M. C. A. reading rooms, an opportunity to which nearly 50 responded. Groups in rhetoric, geology and astronomy were added, and the free classes were continued for several winters by this eminent scholar, so generous of his time and strength for the benefit of his village. This is an interesting forerunner in spirit and method of the recently organized New Canaan Education and Recreation Center, particularly as it met in nearly the same spot - the Y. M. C. A. rooms being in the upper floor of the building on the corner of Main Street and Railroad Avenue. We hear also of lectures by Professor St. John on "The Atmosphere" delivered in the Center School, and on "The Eye" and "Astronomy," at twenty- five cents admission for the benefit of the Hook and Ladder Company.
Eruma Thurman 1946
NEW CANAAN PUBLIC LIBRARY - shows the "Indignation Elm," recently killed by blight, under which citizens met to protest the Embargo Acts preceding the War of 1812.
STAMFORD ATTRACTIONS
Now that the railroad was in operation New Canaanites could seek their social and intellectual pleasures farther afield. A Stamford con- cert or lecture by John B. Gough would attract as many as 100. What a pleasant, homogeneous party; two carfuls of friends and neighbors on pleasure and profit bent, rejoicing in this new com- modious means of travel - the open sesame to further opportunities for improving entertainment.
In its advertising columns The Era throws some illumination on commercial New Canaan of this time. Raymond and Pardee, open- ing the "Spring Campaign" of 1870, announce resumption of specie payment, with this diversified list of articles which their customers
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might have at "Gold Prices" - indicative of a program of recovery from the paper currency and high prices of the post-war era: calicoes at eight and ten cents per yard, shoes, stationery, crockery, drugs and Pratt's Astral Oil. The shoes were of course of local manufacture. No need to go to the metropolis to find the very dressiest in that line: "white kid balmorals and Polish gaiters both button and side lace; also slippers of cloth serge, morocco, and kid."
While the traditional New Canaan industry was thus still holding its own, another had just started which is almost the only manufac- ture still carried on here. Out at Deodate Waterbury's old mill at Talmadge Hill, the Jelliff Brothers began to make wire sieves. The Era comments on the setting: "We fancy it is one which an artist would delight to sketch." This fancy has now become fact: the old mill and waterfall have as permanent neighbors a studio which they serve as model, inspiration and soothing accompaniment.
MONROE'S DRUG STORE
Much of the business activity of the town, and other interests as well, seem to have centered around Mr. L. M. Monroe who kept a drug store where Mr. Cody now pursues the same calling. At any rate he figures in The Era items and to many New Canaan realtors of today he must be of interest as the local pioneer of their profession. In the fall of 1868 he opened in the rear of his store an office for the purchase and sale of real estate, stocks, bonds, etc. "This," remarks The Era, "is a novelty among us," but adds that it is one of the necessities created by the progressive activity of the town. This optimistic view, encouraged by the recent opening of the railroad, was not borne out by the census of 1870, which showed a population of only 2,500, with a decrease of over 200 in the past ten years. Nor did continued industrial efforts prevent this falling off. The Rogers Clothing factory was running at capacity where the Ferrera shop now stands, with an overflow for storage, which is still standing at the corner of Main Street and Husted Lane. Another extensive establishment, for the manufacture of underclothing, had recently been opened by S. B. Hoyt and Company. The abortive effort to establish a sewing machine factory occurred also at this time. It is evident that New Canaan had not found its destined role as a place of homes to succeed its old status as a manufacturing community.
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It is the opinion of one writer that if the railroad had not come to the rescue, the town would never have found any role at all, but would have died out entirely. This rescue had been effected, as has already been noted, in the summer of 1868, nearly 20 years after the neighboring towns of South Norwalk and Stamford had been con- nected with each other and with the rest of the world by the com- pletion of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. With Professor Samuel St. John, Dr. Willard Parker, Mr. Alexander Law, and others as original directors, a campaign had been carried through to raise the necessary funds to put New Canaan on the railroad map. Mr. Law, one of the largest individual stockholders, said - "Some took more than they could afford: others had to increase theirs. The town finally voted all her citizens could afford." Unfortunately they lost all they put into it for the New Canaan Railroad was sold 20 years later to the New York, New Haven and Hartford for a price that meant a substantial loss to all the stockholders. No shadow of future loss darkened that gala completion of their own railroad and station. There had been a "clean-up bee" with more than 100 volunteers grading the grounds at the south end of the station. The proceeds of an evening's entertainment had been used for station furniture. Voluntary subscriptions had built the extension platform, and the lamp post at the end of the platform had been contributed by further concerted efforts. Now, with Professor St. John as president and superintendent, the new venture was fairly launched with a big dinner served in the round-house in the grove, the present site of Weed and Duryea's lumber and coal yard.
The first locomotive was called "Ridgefield" but was afterwards renamed "New Canaan." The station master was, as we have noted, Editor Frank E. Weed of "The Era."
FINANCIAL DISASTER
The new railroad, whatever prosperity it may have brought to the village, resulted in financial disaster to the stockholders. Critics were of course not lacking to point out the want of foresight shown in the first instance. The disgruntled author of a letter to The Mes- senger in 1885, complains that the railroad "was finished before it was done," adding that it "cuts the sidewalks in two between the
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Noyes and Ayres" (the Guion house and the Perkins house). It should have started, maintains the critic, over in the center of the village back of the stores and "dropped down" upon the N. Y., N. H. & H. at half the cost by avoiding the expense of cutting through "rocks and gorges." If such had been the procedure "it would now be owned by the stockholders - Another link might have connected us with Danbury: as it is, its head faces nothing and it cannot make a start north."
There were some odd experiments tried out in the early years of the New Canaan-Stamford line. One "curious freak" was a com- bination passenger and baggage car and engine, the latter with its boilers "of upright make." When this hybrid vehicle was in motion the passenger end reminded one of a jumping-jack, and any New Canaan gentleman so foolhardy as to risk a top-hat on this trip braved the peril of having it telescoped down over his ears from bumping the inside roof of the car.
A STEAM VELOCIPEDE
One fertile mind, not content with the spread of the new means of transportation, early devised a railroad velocipede to make the run of eight miles in four minutes. We are not surprised to learn that this was none other than our enterprising druggist-realtor, L. M. Monroe. The Port Chester Journal, commenting on this marvel, expressed hope that the inventor would not "need his own pills or plasters as a result of his ambitious aspirations."
It was in the spring of 1869 that the first velocipede, not the rail- road variety, was exhibited in the streets of New Canaan by a Stam- ford gentleman who "put it through its paces to the great amusement of the bystanders."
Indeed the epoch of "modern improvements" seems to have been fairly ushered in by the coming of the railroad, and no one seems to have been more active in the cause of modernity than the busy Mr. Monroe. He ran an icehouse and sold ice cream and soda in the rear of his store, apparently without detriment to his real estate business. In the fall of 1869 he built a basement under his store and manufactured ice cream there. The following spring, by putting up a gasoline lamp "with a clear and good light" outside his store, he became the pioneer of street lighting. The Era recommends at least
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half a dozen similar lamps on Main Street - a suggestion not followed, however, until many years later.
This busy business man seems to have shared the popular enthu- siasm for fishing excursions and clubs with such euphonious names as Chickamacomico and Thalassokopean. About 40 of our "best citizens" would charter a sloop, and leave Five Mile River early in the morning to fish all day. One trip took the "Grampus Club" as far abroad as Nantucket for blue-fishing, where two or three demi- johns figured largely as luggage, and the "surgeon," our friend Mr. Monroe, took more and larger fish than anyone else.
REAL SOCIETY LIFE
There was a period when men alone were concerned with most outdoor sports, but in the real society life of the village women came into their own. The social dance, the surprise party, the Sunday School picnic, an occasional wedding, Thanksgiving, still the high spot of the year, and the Christmas festival, emerging at last from its Puritanical disrepute - these supplemented the more intellectual assemblages and furnished many a lively reminiscence for the chronicler of half a century later.
Mr. Benedict describes the joys of an evening dancing the quad- rille, the schottisch, the Virginia reel, and sometimes the polka and the waltz. The boys would supply the "teams" for transportation to a friend's house; also the music, consisting of Billy Offen with his violin, calling off the figures or singing instead, and Old Man Wellington of Whiskey Street with his clarinet. Refreshments were provided by the girls, of whom it is noted: "The only cuticle shown bare was face and hands."
CLANDESTINE ASSEMBLING
There was often a clandestine assembling at some preconcerted point and a descent upon some unsuspected citizen, as when a group marched with "almost military precision" to the home of Captain Purdy for dancing, cardgames, and near midnight a large supper. Postmaster Noah Hoyt was the recipient of one of these surprises. The program consisted of social conversation, games and charades, and "all were glad so good an Ark was to be found."
In the case of the minister, the surprise party took the form of a donation to eke out his slim salary. Mr. Benedict recalls marching
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in a body laden with "much food," to the house of the Rev. Joseph Swan and his wife - the Ashwell house on Park Street.
The Sunday School picnic of the time was a colorful event. We see the members of St. Mark's Sunday School marching to the strains of the Red, White and Blue, played by the village band, down Main Street and along the street with the proud new name of Railroad Avenue. They then pile into the train for Springdale where in a grove they disport themselves with swings, walks, croquet, and where material refreshments are supplemented by the intellectual treat afforded by Professor St. John's compound miscroscope.
In winter there were merry sleigh rides in a lumber-box body on a couple of bob runners to some friend's house in the outskirts for an evening of dancing, or there was skating at Lake Wampanaw (the old Mill Pond) where the Rev. F. L. Gilder, head of Church Hill Institute, fell through one day when he was executing some fancy figures.
THE WEDDING "SHIVAREE"
The odd custom known as the "Shivaree" in some localities and now happily become a curiosity of social history is recalled in the account of the wedding of James W. Burtis, who kept a grocery and paint store at the corner of Main Street and Elm Street (Railroad Avenue), to Miss Meade of Greenwich on an October evening in 1868. The next evening the bridal couple were the "recipients of a serenade from the Irrepressible Calithumpians - The performer on the cowbell deserves especial mention, while he of the fishhorn should not be slighted. Too much sweetness, however, spoils the palate, and so Mr. Burtis was glad to get rid of his visitors by standing treat at the hotel."
A contrasting picture is the account of the beautiful church wed- ding in New York of the gifted daughter of Alexander Law, for whom primarily Mr. Wyckoff's Acadamy had been organized. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Demeritt celebrated in December their 64th anniversary of that event.
CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION
The celebration of Christmas was no longer, as in the earlier days of the parish, regarded with disapproval; the Congregational Rev. Mr. Swan had already in the early sixties inaugurated the custom of
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Christmas entertainments. The observance of Good Friday must also have reflected the influence of the Episcopal portion of the commu- nity. On that day, according to Mr. Benedict, a church service was held, and all work suspended. The sacred day was further observed by a fast, only one meal being served, that one consisting entirely of fritters made of chopped hard-shell clams.
Thanksgiving was still the outstanding festival of the year, and it seems to have retained much of its original character. Our chronicler recalls a 20 pound turkey, helped out by a roast pork rack "about a yard long" and a roast of beef, cooked on a long wooden shovel or peel in a "hades of heat created in the old oven by a fire of dry hickory wood." A light supper was followed by an evening of family music and games - Sister at the melodeon, Father leading the singing, ending with "Coronation,""we kids in another room playing 'button- button,' 'post office' and 'hide the slipper.'"
The Sabbath was still observed with decorum by the more serious part of the community. Mr. Benedict's records: "If you were a good boy you were promised a visit to the graveyard in the afternoon." From no farther away than Greenwich, however, came the reports of more lively diversions in a letter to The Era from an irate observer: "Talk about a New England Sabbath! Come over here some Sunday and I will show you sights that outrage all ideas of the sanctity of the Sabbath. I will show you boys and young men playing football in the public highway. I will show you wine openly sold, and the ribald shouts and curses of drunkards desecrating the Sabbath air." The problem here seems to belong rather to the liquor question, which will demand a chapter by itself later in our chronicle.
As to our own village, a complacent writer in 1869 notes that instead of three distilleries of earlier times there was now only one place besides the hotel where liquor could be sold. As contrasting influences he mentions the Y. M. C. A., the Lyceum, the temperance societies, and adds, "Few of the inhabitants can be called wealthy, but all of them have good homes (the best sites were worth eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars an acre) and for the most part they are well educated. One will see as fine a lot of school children here as anywhere in the country and most of them have cleaner faces than is usually the case."
The streets as well as the children's faces come in for a share of
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civic pride in an item in The Era which declares: "New Canaan has heretofore enjoyed the distinction of having better roads than any other town in the state." Either the rest of Connecticut was in a lamentable condition, or our own roads had received considerable attention since the preceding year, when complaints about the bad condition of Main Street were accompanied by a protest against driving cows along the sidewalks (a term to be taken literally, not as meaning pavements). The aggrieved writer goes on: "A horned animal is not just the thing for pedestrians to meet on a narrow side- walk, nor does it add anything to the pleasure of such rencontres when the beast makes a bow in passing."
No doubt the town fathers, responsible for cleanliness and order outdoors, would have done well to enlist the support of the town mothers, who in their own departments were efficiently putting through the spring house-cleaning with its attendant horrors in an age of tacked down carpets, massive furniture and all-enswathing draperies. The Era offers this comment: "We understand there is to be a new book on the miseries of house-cleaning, which will deline- ate the trials and sufferings of two afflicted husbands not a thousand miles from the new gas light, who have been heard to exclaim, "Oh my G- will it never end?"
SUMMER VISITORS
It is significant to find in The Era of 1870 a mention of "Summer visitors to our beautiful village," and among them "quite a number of stylish and handsome young ladies from New York." Did some of these "birds of passage" who liked to resort to the Post Office to "air their brilliant plumage" help to set the tide toward New Canaan as a summer resort? One who came from Philadelphia "de- parted bearing with her as trophies the hearts of a score of our ingenuous and sentimental young men." She could now leave to the favored ones something to remember her by, a likeness taken in the daguerreotype gallery which Samuel Raymond had erected the year before when the itinerant photographer moved out of town with his "stage" or gallery on wheels. Mr. Raymond's establishment was next to his house in Cherry Street, but the following year he moved the business, building and all, around to Main Street.
We have followed our sketch of New Canaan of the first quarter-
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century by tracing its history in certain aspects down the years. Then, finding the period just before the Civil War particularly rich with interest, we have attempted to picture the New Canaan of 1870 in its religious and intellectual phases, its industrial pursuits, and especially in the many little interests of everyday living.
Some institutions essential to the present life of the town deserve further notice, and for adequate recording of these we must go back to a time many years before the period we are considering.
FIRST POST OFFICE
The Post Office, for instance, had its humble beginning when the century was young. One small box in Postmaster St. John's house on Park Street was adequate to receive the semi-weekly mail coming in on horseback. We have seen the single horse superseded by the four-horse stage-coach, but further progress in methods of carrying seems to have been very slow. It is amusing to read as late as 1885, from a former resident who signs himself "Sherwood," a complaint that the mail wallows in the mud in a common wagon with a used- up horse, employing an hour and 20 minutes to come - he does not say from where, but adds: "Your townsmen carry the mail now, or have it carried, as they did when I left in 1831."
Meanwhile the accommodations for the mail in town were being gradually improved. We know that in 1860 there was a post office ten feet square in the clothing store of Henry B. Hoyt just below Monroe's (the present Cody's) drugstore, and that Mr. Hoyt, who was also postmaster, received the mail in a very small bag once a day by wagon from Darien. With the inauguration of Lincoln, the Republican Noah Hoyt succeeded to the job, and moved the office to his building on Main Street, (later C. F. Meade's store now the First National) where he was assisted by his daughters in dispensing the mail. Noah Hoyt was engaged in the shirt business and had a large factory for many years in the old Town Hall building and later in what was known as the armory building which still stands at the head of East Avenue, behind Franco's Grocery Store and Wolfel Plumbing Company.
NEW CANAAN'S POSTMISTRESS
Noah Hoyt died in office and his wife, Mrs. Cornelia Hoyt, filled out the three years of his unexpired term, the only officially appoint-
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ed postmistress New Canaan has ever known. In 1883 Selleck St. John became postmaster followed in 1886 by Lucius M. Monroe, the enterprising druggist who owned the building where the Post Office was located. He, too, served for three years.
During the term of Stephen B. Hoyt, the post office was moved to new quarters in the Raymond Building which had just been com- pleted, occupying the space where Chester Wood's Electrical Store and the Amelia Shop are now. Albert Comstock, trustee of the Ray- mond estate, had made arrangements with Mr. Hoyt and the build- ing was planned to house the Post Office. Mr. Hoyt died in office and his daughter, Miss Martha L. Hoyt, filled out his term but only as acting postmaster. In 192 1 when Henry Kelley was postmaster, the Post Office was moved to the Rogers building (where Ferrera's Gift Shop and the Joy Beauty Shop are now located). After ten years it was at last moved to quarters sufficiently dignified and aesthetic for such an important and national institution.
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