USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Hamden > The history of Hamden, Connecticut, 1786-1936 > Part 14
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men are now living who will live to see it a great and busy thoroughfare. Then the last great labor of him who, for more than half a century was the unwearied servant of his fellowcitizens, will be acknowledged with gratitude.
Another tribute to Mr. Hillhouse was in these words:
It was by his indomitable determination that an under- taking perhaps too great to be carried on by a single city of no greater population than New Haven, was prosecuted, through almost unparalleled obstacles and difficulties, to a result which, if not perfectly success- ful, was of great importance.
There were still unflagging hopes for the canal's suc- cess, only slightly marred by the appearance of a pamph- let signed "A Stockholder" setting forth the argument that the construction of canals was the proper task of "the sovereign power, and should never be committed to private corporations." It said that the Company's charter was radically wrong, that it granted to the Com- pany powers which it could not exercise without violat- ing the first principles of the government. The pamph- let claimed that while great benefits had been antici- pated for all parties concerned, in reality most of the persons whose lands had been taken had suffered se- verely without prospect of relief, and stockholders and contractors too had suffered losses. The pamphlet charged that the only ones who had profited were the draughtsmen of the charter, the professional advocates of its adoption, the commissioners, the lawyers, the courts, the appraisers, the engineers, and the numerous board of directors!
The Hampshire and Hampden Company had stopped all work on the canal in 1831 for lack of funds.
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The City Bank of New Haven was organized, conve- niently at this time, and subscribed for $ 100,000 in canal stock. The New Haven County Bank paid for its charter with an immediate subscription of $2,000, and another $1,000 annually for three years. The city of New Haven guaranteed $100,000, taking a mort- gage on the canal. Bonds amounting to $20,000 were issued, but then New Haven repudiated its agreement. Simeon Baldwin effected the adjustment in 1840, in which New Haven canceled the $20,000 indebtedness, releasing the mortgage, and agreeing to pay $3,000 a year for thirty years. The city often found the canal water convenient for fire-fighting purposes.
In 1831, the following agreement of interest to Ham- den, for Russell Leek was a typical and active citizen, was signed:
It is hereby agreed by and between the president, di- rectors and company of the Farmington Canal and Russell Leek of Hamden. That the said Leek shall take the charge of Lock No. 19, of said Canal situated in the Town of Hamden for the term of twelve months from and after the first day of April 1831, and that during said term he shall faithfully perform all the duties and services of a tender of said Lock, according to such orders and instructions as shall from time to time be given him. It shall be his duty to watch said Lock and the Canal for the distance of one mile above and half a mile below said Lock by night and by day, and to prevent all damage or injury to them, as far as his best watchfullness, care and efforts can do it.
The Company leased to Russell Leek their dwelling house standing near Lock 19, and agreed to pay him $8.50 a month during navigation on said Canal.
Signed Hervey Sanford for the Company.
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The eighteenth lock was known as the Goodyear lock, on Jesse Goodyear's property in Centerville.
In 1833 and 1834 the canal carried heavy traffic as far as Westfield, Massachusetts. There had been delay and heavy expense in rebuilding the Salmon Brook arch, and a bad drought in 1832. But the spirits of the promoters were still hopeful.
Mayor Henry Peck of New Haven, said, in speak- ing of the busy years,
Very pleasant in the summer nights sounded the music of the boatman's horn as it was heard on the long level above the Hillhouse Ave. bridge; and one musical fellow summoned the lock-keeper by a melodious tune played on a brass instrument with keys. Sometimes there would pass through the Canal a boat on which the Canal men were singing.
The long-expected opening of the canal at its full length to the Connecticut River at Northampton was finally celebrated on July 29, 1835. The New Haven delegation stopped overnight at Westfield, where their arrival was greeted with peals of artillery, ringing of bells, and cheers of the citizens. Following a trium- phant procession to the coffee-house of Mr. Parsons, addresses of welcome were delivered. The next morn- ing they started for Northampton, accompanied by gen- tlemen from Westfield. The Westfield Democratic Herald said in part:
It was expected the boat would reach Northampton at 10 A.M., but some mean, low-spirited puppy, having nothing of manhood about him except intelligence enough to guide his malice, had let off the water from a half-mile level. This obstacle being overcome by waiting the arrival of the water, the boat with its cabin filled and its decks covered with passengers, and
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drawn by five horses, passed through Easthampton, was met by a boat at the south basin in Northampton, when an address was made by Mr. Bancroft.
"Mr. Bancroft" was none other than the famous his- torian George Bancroft, then but thirty-five years old, and the first volume of his History of the United States had appeared only the year before. The boat did not pass into the river until the following day, when a large crowd of people, escorted by the military, sat down to a fine "collation" (or banquet) at which many toasts were offered. The editor of the Northampton Gazette, who was a rabid prohibitionist, was so incensed at the drinking that he refused to print anything about the exercises. Then the Northampton passed through the locks into the river ..
At last the boat which had left Hillhouse Basin on Monday floated on the bosom of the Connecticut. The scene was one of joy and gladness. . . . A salute was fired, the air echoed with cheering, the band played its liveliest tunes in its happiest manner; the waters of the Sound were poured into our river; the union between New Haven Harbor and the upper Connecticut was declared to be perpetual. May it be productive of the happiest results !
In spite of the growing volume of traffic on the now completed canal, financial difficulties were many, and very shortly after the opening both companies went into bankruptcy. However, after some negotiation, the Honorable Nathan Smith of New Haven effected an adjustment, and a new corporation, the New Haven and Northampton Company, was chartered in 1836. Cred- itors of the old company got something, while the stock- holders sustained the total loss of their investment. The
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loss occasioned by this new arrangement was about $ 1,000,000.
The banner years for the canal were 1836-38, and the communities along the way prospered, but not the Company, for the damages sustained from freshets were very heavy.
Old bills of Russell Leek's show that he was paid in 1836 by the Canal Company for:
six days work with team 15.00
shooling [shoveling] .50
blacksmith work .50
stick of timber .50
five and a half days work scraping
13.75
whitch is in full demand to date June 25, 1836.
While Mr. Leek was employed in the early days of building the canal in 1826, he had paid a bill to Hull & Smith Company for:
mending a chane
repairing a scraper
setting cart tire
sharpening a share
shoeing a ox
sharpening a pick.
The first boats in use on the canal were designed for carrying freight and were of not more than twenty-five tons; but by 1838 a gay line of packet boats sailed daily from New Haven to Northampton. Among these were the Gold Hunter and the Paragon. The Sachem was named for James Hillhouse; he bore that affectionate title because of his Indianlike features. The trip over the whole length of the Canal required twenty-four hours and cost $3.75, with meals. The boats were gaily painted and invariably were drawn by big gray horses,
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ridden by boys dressed in white. Some of the boats had knifelike projections mounted on the bow, with which they cut the towline of any slow-moving craft which they wished to pass. A newspaper account discrimin- ated sharply between the comforts of "the passenger boats, which are elegantly furnished, and meals are served up on board by the owners," and "the line boats, only used for the transportation of freights, and passengers who find themselves." Even in the boom years there were never more than sixteen or seventeen boats on the canal in a single day.
In 1836, Captain George Rowland built a grist mill on the canal, near Wooster Street, New Haven, con- tracting with the Canal Company for his water power. There was great disappointment over the failure of other manufacturers to do the same. But the canal's financial future was too uncertain and the supply of water, through continual breaks along the canal's banks, not to be depended upon.
In 1841 there was continuous operation of business, in which thousands of tons of goods were carried. At the New Haven end, a special harbor, the Canal Basin, was constructed. Here ships from all parts of the world lay at anchor at Long Wharf, while exchanging cargoes with the canal boats.
The romantic story of Long Wharf, which extended 3,480 feet into the harbor, begins in 1644 when New Haven colonists began to talk of digging a channel be- cause the harbor was too shallow for any kind of ship- ping business. This was the place where Captain Kidd was purported to have buried his treasure, and the very spot where the British invaders in 1779 fired upon New Haven. The project of making the harbor more con- venient for shipping was by 1800 concentrated upon
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building the wharf rather than deepening the channel. Everybody gave to help it along, and into it went stone from Gibraltar and Malta, and Dublin, and nearly all the West Indies islands. When vessels arrived from the West Indies, the boys flocked to the wharf for free oranges, coconuts, and samplings of sugar and molasses were to be had. Long Wharf was in its prime in the canal days, having taken almost two centuries to com- plete, and becoming the longest wharf in the country, and possibly in the world.
The canal was open for eight months in 1842, but the next year a major catastrophe, a flood, wiped out all of the fall business and cost the company $20,000 for repairs. Not one day was lost in the wonderfully busy year of 1844, but 1845 brought a serious drought from July to September, and another bad break in the bank cost $7,000 and created a long delay to traffic.
The Company struggled valiantly through all these years, but although it was earning more than normal expenses, the accumulating disasters and mounting costs, coming sometimes at the hands of angry farmers who cut the canal banks in retaliation for damages to their land occasioned by overflows, coupled with the fact that railroads were obviously going to be a serious competi- tor, led Henry Farnam and Joseph Sheffield to take the bull by the horns and decide to operate a railroad them- selves over the same route, keeping the canal open for the freight business; and in 1846 the Company ob- tained an amendment to its charter permitting it to do this.
The railroad, built largely on the towpath, was opened as far as Plainville in January, 1848. It ap- peared at once, however, that practically all of the busi- ness, both passenger and freight, was going to use the
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The History of Hamden
new means of transportation, and so the canal officially ceased operation. But for some time thereafter much of it was kept filled for such owners of canal boats as were willing to take the responsibility of using it. One writer has quite falsely said that the canal cut deeper into the prosperity of New Haven than into its soil; the fact being that the city profited enormously from the channel of business opened by the canal, business which never ceased to flow to it thereafter.
Hamden continued to use the canal; there was a manufacturing concern on each of the locks in Mount Carmel, and these concerns secured quit-claim deeds to all the Canal Company's rights in the premises. But in time near-by property owners objected to having the canal run through their land, and their complaints were so many that the factories were moved to sites on Mill River, where other enterprises soon were encouraged to begin.
Although the local farmers hated the canal for the damages it caused them and the difficulty of crossing over the high bridges with their loads of hay, children found it a wonderful place for their sports, swimming and boating and fishing in summer, skating in the win- ter. Boys could drop from a bridge to a boat deck and ride as far as they wished. Children in the school at Hamden Plains, nicknamed the Lighthouse, often en- joyed rides on the boats to and from school. The school stood close by the canal, a short distance north of the present location of the Whitney Blake factory.
Certain religious societies in New Haven used the canal for baptism, and on a Sunday afternoon large as- semblies for that purpose could be seen just above where the water ran under the Grove Street bridge. George
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Munson of Mount Carmel owns a document in which his family were granted permission to water cattle at the canal, provided care was taken not to injure the banks.
The total cost of the Farmington Canal has been estimated at $1,478,425. From this amount should be subtracted the value to the railroad of lessened dam- ages for land, grading costs, and the expense of hauling materials for railroad construction floated on the canal. Historians have contended that the undertaking was unfortunate and without benefit. It did business for twenty years, some of it extensive, and it doubtless would have been a profitable undertaking had it not been for unprecedented floods and droughts and much malicious damage.
There has been much ignorant criticism of the pro- ject, largely due to the two facts: that the financial failures of the two pioneer companies have been "mis- remembered" as applying to the entire project; and that the change-over to a railroad has been generally considered a deathblow from a competitor-when actually it was the wise recognition by the directors of the fact that the railroad was the coming method of transportation.
A rhyme commonly quoted at the time of the canal's closing was:
The only dividend known to pay,
They mowed the towpath and sold the hay.
The stockholders who mowed the hay may have been inspired by the same Yankee thrift which moved the early New Haveners to tightly fence in New Haven Green, with gates locked till haying time was over so that the hay might be cut and used.
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Another verse speaks of happier memories of the old canal:
To and fro the boats are sailing by Along the waters of the old Canal; We hear the creaking ropes, the boatman's cry, And the tread of horses on the hard towpath.
CANAL MANUFACTORIES
One of the canal locks in Mount Carmel was at the farm of Elam Ives, which was cut in two by the water- way. Mr. Ives had worked in the construction of sev- eral sections of the canal, and he had invested in the Company. He conceived the idea of setting up a fac- tory which could be run by water from the canal. The water was directed around the lock to a building on the west side of the Cheshire Turnpike, on property which is now owned by Dr. G. H. Joslin. Parsons and Jason Ives, who drove on the freight line in the War of 1812, began the manufacture of iron carriage axles here in 1833. Axles were for the first time made by machinery. The use of iron for the whole axle was an innovation. Hitherto wagons and carriages had been equipped with wooden axles, the arm being inlaid with an iron skein with a shoulder on the back and a nut or linchpin on the front end to keep the wheel in place, the hubs being lined with cast-iron boxes set in each end.
A New Britain man, Norman Warner, had been very well known as the manufacturer of wagons for peddlers to the South, on which wooden axles were used, and the Mount Carmel Axle Works had to compete actively with his popular product. The peddler business was begun in 1740 by Edward Pattison, the tinner of Ber- lin, who employed many more men in the distribution
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Canal and Railroad Near Brooksvale
Photo by Charles R. Harte
. 4
Upper Axle Works
Gift of Arnold G. Dana
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New Roots in Old Soil
of his products than in their manufacture. His tin arti- cles were made in small shops, then loaded into wagons for distant markets. President Timothy Dwight said:
Every inhabited part of the United States is visited by these men. I have seen them on the peninsula of Cape Cod and in the neighborhood of Lake Erie, distant from each other more than six hundred miles. They are in Detroit, Canada, Kentucky.
A salesman once wrote back to headquarters, "I have traversed the country from Dan to Beersheba, besides going to Albany." The trade was perhaps more regu- larly directed to the South, with terminus in Richmond, Charleston, or Savannah. The reason that Northern manufacturers found their readiest market in the South was that after Eli Whitney's cotton gin was put into use there, the enormously expanded business of grow- ing cotton absorbed the time and effort of the South- erners, who yet had money to spend for Northern goods. So it was that Hamden's first notable manu- facturer was directly responsible for much of the busi- ness opportunity given to the next after him.
The nearness of New Haven, at that time the fore- most city in the country in the manufacture of carriages, was favorable to the manufacture of axles and also of carriage hardware. The youngest of Elam Ives's thirteen children, James, began the manufacture of carriage hardware from brass, in the same building with his brothers. Willis Churchill had been there a short time before him, manufacturing brass surgical instruments. James was a skilled mechanic, and he found a ready market for his made-in-America products, since before his time only imported goods were procurable.
James Ives was only twenty when in 1835 he took the sole responsibility of making brass hardware for
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The History of Hamden
harness and carriages, having learned from Mr. Church- ill how to handle the metal. The first brass castings that he used were made by William H. Smith of New Britain and shipped on the canal from Plainville to Mount Carmel. Soon a small brass foundry was set up here, and old copper was imported from the West In- dies. One of Ives's apprentices, Lyman Todd, later became the founder of the Union Brass Company of Chicago, which at one time produced more than half of the railway car trimmings used in the United States. Mr. Ives also made brass hubcaps for public and private coaches, which effectively concealed from view the ends of the large axles then in use.
By 1842 the canal site was less desirable, due to the increase of complaints from property owners along the canal who objected to its passage through their farms. Mr. Ives moved his business to Mill River, only a short distance away, on what has become Ives Street and Broadway, into a building erected by Andrew Hall in 1835. It was a three-story wooden building on the west side of the river, and had been used by Edwin Buddington and Judah Frisbie for manufacturing car- riage springs and steps. When their tools were sold in 1838 they were listed as:
I engine lathe 8 vises
2 hand lathes 25 tons Lehigh coal
2 lever presses 12 grindstones
3 prs. hand bellows 250 lbs. of charcoal
7 anvils and a blacksmith shop
At about the same time Parsons, Jason, and Henry Ives decided to move the Axle Works to the Kimberly mills on the Joel Munson site on the river at the head of the mountain.
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New Roots in Old Soil
When on the canal, the Axle Works and the brass fac- tory had bought coal in the lump and broken it at the factory, but when they removed to the river they began to purchase coal by the cargo. It was delivered in New Haven at the newly completed Belle Dock, and Lucius Ives carted it to Mount Carmel for both firms for a dollar a net ton with a two-horse team. He carried two tons at a time and made two trips a day. One of his trips to New Haven would be with a load of the manu- factured articles for shipment by steamboat. It was diffi- cult travel for the road was not paved, either in New Haven or in Hamden.
At the second canal lock in Mount Carmel, Charles Brockett had utilized the canal waters for the manufac- ture of carriage springs, somewhat north of the Ives place on the Arba Dickerman farm; he, too, moved his business over to the river, above the Steps and the Mun- son dam. He conducted water from the canal through a large pipe under the highway to supply additional power for his factory.
Other manufacturing enterprises of this early period were the Marine Clock Company on the Eli Whitney property above the dam, and a workshop on Henry Peck's place for the making and repair of shoes. When Mr. Peck bought the place in 1826 it was a tannery. Ives Andrews learned the trade from him, and with his partner, Albert Hitchcock, turned out more than seven hundred pairs of shoes in a year. The boot and shoe industry was common among the small towns of Con- necticut, families working together at it in the home. The Benham family of Hamden Plains were three generations of shoemakers. Isaac Benham, born in 1791, was taught by his father, who had been both a tanner and a shoemaker. Isaac's sons, William and
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Jared, assisted him in their home on what is now Ben- ham Street. Besides supplying the home market, they sent fifty pairs at a time to New Haven for shipment to a Southern market, where there was a particularly active demand for foot covering for the slaves.
Bricks were made on Wilmot's Brook in Hamden Plains about a mile north of the meetinghouse. Alfonzo Johnson's father began their manufacture before 1800, and he himself by 1821; and the house which stands at the corner of Circular Avenue and Gilbert Avenue was built of brick from their yards about 1860. Javin Woodin was connected with these yards. His account- book diary showed the following entry in 1803:
Fri. Carted load of brick to town with the old oxen and Mr. Booth's mare. . While I was absent from the brickyard, bought 3 iron shovels for the use of the brickyard at 6/6. Sat. Cloudy morning, all hands at brickyard in forenoon. Woodin and Miles worked at home in the afternoon plowing. Seymour went to town in the afternoon with the old oxen with a load of brick. Leverett went with my team, carried 550 brick.
No trace remains of their location, the pits having long been covered with tall meadow grass.
On the eastern border of the town, the brick indus- try has been continuous from John Benham's discovery of good clay there in 1641. By 1836 the yards, which were partly in North Haven, were making 4,500,000 bricks a year.
PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON IN HAMDEN
In June, 1833, President Andrew Jackson arrived in New Haven on his trip through New England. He arrived at noon on the steamboat Splendid, greeted by
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the boom of guns from a United States cutter in New Haven Harbor, a signal to a fieldpiece on the landing and a cannon on the Green to echo the news that the President of the United States was a visitor among them. Crowds lined the streets to see him on a handsome white horse. He doffed his hat in acknowledgment of their cheers, and his thick white hair was strikingly noticeable. He was addressed in the State House by the governor and the mayor, attended services in Trin- ity Church, and visited two industrial plants in New Haven. A reporter for the Albany Journal said after- ward that the behavior of Vice-President Martin Van Buren in the church was so indecorous that he ought to have been disciplined by the tythingman, but this was indignantly denied by many who had attended the ser- vices. Some greatly admired General Jackson, and one Timothy Potter of Hamden is said to have run around the State House three times attempting to shake his hand; but others openly showed their dislike, and Sam- uel Miles, a tailor, spent the day in West Haven so that he would not have to see him.
On the following day President Jackson left for Hartford, coming first to Hamden to visit Eli Whit- ney's armory, perhaps the most distinguished of all those who came to see it.
THE SHOWER OF METEORS
On November 12-13 of 1833 occurred an unusual display of so-called falling stars, in reality meteors, bits of stone or metal projected from outside into the solar system. At certain times of the year the earth runs into swarms of them, creating what looks like showers of lovely stars, some of them having brilliant
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