USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Hamden > The history of Hamden, Connecticut, 1786-1936 > Part 17
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One of the oldest notations with regard to learning in Hamden was written by Dr. Samuel Bradley, who came when he was four years old to live with his grand- father Joel Bradley in Mount Carmel. He remembered that "Parson" Ives, the Episcopal minister in Cheshire who often came to preach in Hamden, taught him his letters from the prayerbook.
In Javin Woodin's school record, the following appears for 1801:
At a school meeting held at the schoolhouse voted that the public free money which has not been expended the winter past, shall be paid out this summer in a free school to begin the 5th of May and to be kept by Miss Esther Gibbs, provided that the public money which has been drawn this winter past be laid out in such a manner that every scholar in the district that has been to school the winter past shall have an equal part of it.
They voted that the master be boarded at the discre- tion of the committee, and that the committeeman "find the wood for $3 a month." They decided in February to invite Mr. Bryant Law "to teach for two months to
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The History of Hamden
come, and give him $10 per month." In 1807 Jared Ives was paid $ 16.50 a month.
Female teachers in 1803 were paid 75c. a week. Par- ents had to sign up at the beginning of the school term, and unless they did so their children might not attend; nor could they send more children than they had signed for. The most frequent entry, and often the only one for school committee meetings, was that "two-thirds of the public money be spent for winter school, and one-third for a summer school."
The amount of money expended on the Mount Car- mel schools shows a surprising decline beginning in 1804, when it was $280.94; in 1805, it was $212.59; in 1812, $157.64; and in 1813, $140.83.
Interest in education was definitely at a low ebb in the early 1800's, the towns felt scarcely any responsi- bility, and they allowed schools to be run, no matter how poorly, by committeemen often utterly unqualified for the task. Sometimes the state funds were meagerly supplemented with tuition charges. Hamden used the Town Deposit Fund interest from 1837.
In 1825, the Mount Carmel South District voted "to erect a schoolhouse by taxing ourselves on the List of 1824, not exceeding $200." They sold the old school house at "publick" auction to Javin Woodin for $16.50, "likewise 40 lbs. 3 oz. of old iron to Russell Leek for 37/2c. per pound ($1.31), a pair of bellows to Jesse Goodyear 16/100."
Schoolhouses were designed with economy and not convenience in mind. The desks were nailed to the wall around the room, with stationary benches over which the children were forced to climb. The small children had a long low bench without a back upon
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which they were expected to sit quietly for six hours a day.
The long-hand school committee records of Mount Carmel District 6 (later known as Mix District) were kept in 1843 by no less than nine members of the Good- year family: Jesse, Chauncey, Simeon, Andrew, Sey- mour, Lewis, Horace, Marcus, and Albert.
The school register of the original first schoolhouse in Mount Carmel, kept by the teacher, Caroline A. Dickerman, showed no foreign names; some of them were:
Anderson
Ives (five of them)
Barber
Mathews
Bassett
Miller
Bradley
Peck
Grannis
Root
Hubbell
Todd
and not surprisingly, nine Dickermans.
One of Deacon Ezra's bright sons, Watson Dickerman -who later became President of the New York stock exchange-was a pupil there, and the story is told of the day on which he first presented himself at the school. The teacher asked him his age, and he replied, "I'm ten, but I'm smart enough for eleven,"-and so he proved to be.
In 1838 the East Plains schools had an average at- tendance as follows: Southwest, 25; Northwest, 33; Middle, 35; Mill, 41; Southeast, 28. The pupils were taught reading, arithmetic, geography, grammar, and history. The school visitors reported the Middle and Mill schools as being in "bad" condition, and the other three as "Medium." By 1841, the Society was begin-
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The History of Hamden
ning to feel uneasy about these unsatisfactory conditions. They voted "that the meeting recommend a public ex- amination of the several schools in this Society near the close of this winter term of schooling."
Reverend Austin Putnam, writing as a school visitor in 1842, said among other things:
Schools are not visited at all by parents. The majority of the parents are in favor of cheap schools :- they are in favor of long ones, however, especially in summer, as they like to get the little children out of the way. There are five districts in this Society (East Plains). Three of the schoolhouses are nearly new. These are what would be called very pretty houses, but they are very imperfect. They are too small, some of the seats have no backs, nor very easily ventilated, etc. The other two schoolhouses are very old and very poor. The location of our schoolhouses is very injudicious. Without exception, they are almost in the road, exposed to all the noise and dust of the public highway. One is on the bank of the Canal, another very near the railroad. Want of thoroughness in teaching is noticed. The visitors favor graded schools, but the moment any such thing is proposed, some will begin to think of the expense, and will say perhaps, that the schools as they are, are good enough for their children, and if any wish for better schools, they may pay for them.
Such conditions in the public schools led inevitably to the founding of a number of private schools, where bet- ter educational advantages might be obtained.
THE RECTORY SCHOOL
Reverend Charles W. Everest, the rector of Grace Church, decided in 1843 to establish in Centerville a boarding school for boys, a project which he might not have undertaken but for the necessity of augmenting
..
School
Play House
Cabin
House The Rectory School, Centerville Hamden, Conn. Rev. C. W. Everest Rector.
The Rectory School, Centerville
Gift of Arnold G. Dana
4:311134tttt
The Mount Carmel Young Ladies' Female Seminary
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Wheels Begin to Turn
his meager salary. With a nucleus of four boys in his home just above the crossroads, he began the Rectory School. He soon found it necessary to provide larger quarters and purchased the Deacon Hart place, south of the crossroads and on the west side of the turnpike. He enlarged the house, and added several other build- ings, as the school rapidly gained popularity. Ponies were kept for the use of the boys, there was a large skating pond in the rear, and a boathouse was main- tained on Mill River. A staff of assistant teachers taught academic subjects, and oddly enough for an institution headed by a churchman, Major James Quinn and Colo- nel John Arnold were employed as instructors of mili- tary tactics, the boys wearing uniforms of "West Point gray." The school was one of the first in the country to include military drill in the curriculum. In the school's most prosperous years, a maximum number of sixty-five boys were accepted, ranging from ten to six- teen years of age. Hundreds of the graduates entered the learned professions, the Army and Navy, and busi- ness life, and more than one entered Congress.
The School really supported the church, and mem- ories of Mrs. Mary Wooding, who was one hundred years old on Christmas Day, 1941, included many about the Rectory School, beside which she lived for many years. She said that the long line of uniformed boys was impressive, as they marched in strict order to Sunday services at the church. A student, a doctor's son, was soundly whipped by Mr. Everest, but after suffering the chastisement the boy remarked, "Mr. Everest didn't seem to care how many things I broke while he was whipping me-but I guess the licking did me good." She remembered the excitement of the fire at the school, set by a boy who thought that burning
1
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The History of Hamden
down the establishment would release him from further classes. The barn, with its six ponies, was destroyed, and parts of the other school buildings went with it. Mr. Everest had a black Newfoundland dog named "Lion," so intelligent and companionable that the boys idolized him. When the dog died, they begged for the privilege of holding funeral rights for him. They buried him in what is now Dr. Lay's front lawn, paying from their pocket money for the iron replica of the "Lion of Lucerne" set up over his grave, and mourn- ing him as deeply as if he had been a human friend.
Speaking of Mr. Everest, Mrs. Wooding said that in spite of a stern and unsmiling aspect, he was warm- hearted and he loved and understood boys. At Christ- mas time he gave each child in the Sunday School a present of a candy cane, an orange, a cornucopia of can- dies, and a box of popcorn. There always seemed to be many more children in Sunday School at Christmas time, and he would look them over and say, "Well! I didn't know that we had such a big Sunday School!"
A prospectus of the school contained such informa- tion as the following:
Location,-the school is in a picturesque part of the State, sufficiently retired, yet easy of access. It is situat- ed five miles north of New Haven, on the line of the New Haven and Northampton Railroad, and is thus removed from those temptations to vice and idleness incident to larger towns and cities.
SCHOOL PLAN AND PRINCIPLES
Every boy is looked upon as a member of the Rector's family, and expected to conform cheerfully to the nat- ural duties and requirements of such a relation. Thor- ough daily routine is maintained, leading naturally to habits of prompt obedience, manly deportment and
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punctuality. The discipline is mild but firm. A boy of bad habits or insubordinate bearing will not knowing- ly be received, and if entered will be returned to his parents when his character becomes known. No effort will be spared to implant in each pupil's mind a true sense of right and wrong, and to develop the purest principles.
Hampers and boxes containing eatables, confectionery and the like are not approved.
A small weekly allowance of pocket money to be dis- bursed by the Rector, is recommended.
All books or papers brought to the School or received by pupils must have the Rector's approval.
Correspondence should be limited to the home circle.
The use of Tobacco in any form is absolutely prohib- ited.
The borrowing and lending of Money, clothing, or any articles of value is forbidden.
The order of the day included family prayers twice a day, and on Sunday there were two church services, a Bible lesson, and a "letter hour." Special holidays were Thanksgiving Day, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Ascension Day.
The school enjoyed Mr. Everest's management until 1870, and was thereafter conducted by his two sons. During the period in which private schools experienced their greatest popularity, his school held a place of national importance.
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The History of Hamden THE MOUNT CARMEL YOUNG LADIES FEMALE SEMINARY
Three Dickerman sisters-Elizabeth, Abbie, and Fannie-daughters of Deacon Ezra Dickerman, estab- lished the Mount Carmel Young Ladies Female Sem- inary in 1849. Elizabeth had been sent in 1847 to the Seward Institute in Florida, New York, and Abbie went there the following year. Boarding schools for girls were a rarity, and the three sisters, recognizing the need of higher education for girls, overemphasized their feel- ing in this respect, in the redundancy of the school's name. Pupils were easily obtained, and soon a suitable building was erected at the top of the hill on the west side of the turnpike in Mount Carmel, a few rods north of Ives Street. At one time there were as many as forty to fifty girls enrolled, and some boys. In a few years, Elizabeth took charge of a similar school in Plymouth, Connecticut, but she was very frail, as were her sisters, and all of them died before they were twenty-five.
It was a period of many revivals, and the pastor of the Mount Carmel Congregational Church, Reverend Israel Warren, was moved to write a book about these girls, The Sisters, published by the American Tract Society of Boston in 1859. The volume contained noth- ing but religious material, long quotations from letters and diaries, showing the concern which the girls felt about their souls and those of their friends. A recurrent phrase throughout the doleful story was, "I have given myself anew to Christ." The following quotation is from the opening page:
It might be expected that persons educated as these young girls were, would have, even in childhood, sea- sons of marked religious impressions. Such was espe- cially the case with Abbie, when she was scarcely seven
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years old. As the family were sitting by the fireside, she began to weep, and on being questioned as to the cause, she said it was because she felt herself to be a sinner. . . . Ever after this, she and Elizabeth mani- fested much delight in spiritual things. . . . In 1840 the Church in Mount Carmel enjoyed a season of re- vival, . . . she strove to secure the presence of young companions and frequently expressed the most ardent desire for the conversion of souls.
She was more distressed in view of her guilt and dan- ger as a sinner, and begged her mother's advice and prayers. .
In October, 1846, Elizabeth wrote,
"Resolved that from this time forth with divine assist- ance, I will renounce the pleasures of the world and seek to glorify God." She knelt with this resolution before her, and there solemnly and deliberately adopted it as the one great purpose of her future life, giving herself up to God and beseeching pardon and accept- ance through the blood of the Redeemer.
Harrowing details of death and last words make up the burden of the story, which obviously was written as a proselyting book.
It was an evangelizing period, and at this time Rus- sell Leek received a letter from his brother Horace, which said in part:
I received a letter from Dana the 22nd of October and one from Enos Woodin last spring,-letters of the greatest importance as they called it; it was all about Christ and Religion or Self-Righteousness. . . . I am not troubled about the world being burnt up; I had as leave the Milen [sic ]ium would come one time as another, for we all have to die, and we might as well go in a mass.
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The History of Hamden
Though Horace was not concerned, apparently there were plenty of Hamden men who were-having come under the influence of the Millerite or millennial teach- ing. Horace's letter shows that he had strong political opinions, too: "Tell me about all matters and things, except Whigism,-I know enough about that now."
THE FIRST CENTERVILLE MILLS
Mill River, already turning the wheels of industry in Whitneyville and Mount Carmel, was also the logi- cal location for manufacturing establishments in the other villages through which it ran. The earliest ones in Centerville were set up on the stream, just south of the crossroads. The firm of Law & Bennett had a small building where they manufactured silk in 1838. Beside them to the south soon after, Galpin & Robin- son set up a business of manufacturing carpets and other materials in what was called "a spinning factory." Its inventoried assets were: "Three sets of carding ma- chines, 2 reels, one picker, one waste cleaner, one emery, 2000 pounds of wool, 2000 pounds of undyed filling, 2 stoves, 100 empty sacks, one barrel of sperm oil, one barrel of refined oil, 6 empty casks, and one regulator."
Leverett Candee, who gave his name to the great rubber factory of later days, acquired this place in 1843. He was born in Oxford, Connecticut, in 1795. He worked in stores, on the railroad, and in the paper mill in Westville. While engaged in the manufacture of suspenders on East Street in New Haven, Mr. Candee obtained from Charles Goodyear the first license to use the Goodyear patent for making rubber shoes.
Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven in 1800, but the Goodyear's of Centerville were his relatives,
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Wheels Begin to Turn
and during his most successful years he spent much of his time in Mr. Candee's factory, supervising the use of his patent. He was a direct descendant in the fifth generation from Stephen Goodyear, who was for fifteen years Deputy Governor of New Haven Colony. When the hardware business in which Charles was associated with his father failed in 1830, he thereafter devoted his whole time and passionate attention to experiments with India rubber. He exhausted his financial resources, usually was deep in debt, and for many years of blasted hopes, heartbreaking disappointment and tireless labor, lived in the direst sort of poverty.
His discovery of the nitric-acid process which did away with the adhesiveness of rubber surfaces was only a short step in the direction toward which he was work- ing, of putting rubber to practical use. In 1839 Nathan- iel Hayward assigned him the patent for a process in which sulphur was used. This process was not complete- ly satisfactory, and Goodyear continued his experiments, which were in all ten years. Then he accidentally dropped a mixture of rubber and sulphur upon a hot stove, and found that the addition of the extreme heat completed the process. Much more, however, remained to be done before the vulcanized rubber could be put to wide use.
Through a technicality, Goodyear's patent was invali- dated in France, and it was stolen from him in Eng- land. He received a patent in this country in 1844, but was put to much expense in maintaining his rights under it, so that his profits from it were very small. At the World's Fair in London in 1851, he received the great Council medal, and the grand medal of honor at the Paris Exhibition in 1855. Daniel Webster made one of his greatest legal speeches, before the United
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The History of Hamden
States Circuit Court, in behalf of Goodyear's patent rights.
Professor Joseph Roe of Yale said of Goodyear:
He had the spirit of the inborn inventor, caring little for money, and centering his whole life on mastering an obstinate material and rendering it useful to man- kind. This objective was for him little less than a reli- gion. It has been pointed out that Whitney's cotton gin was almost the only great invention which was clearly the work of one man. Goodyear's is another but with this difference; Whitney's invention was complet- ed in a few weeks; Goodyear's took years of cruel struggle, but resulted in an equally great achievement.
Leverett Candee was loaned $3,000 by Henry and Lucius Hotchkiss with which to start his new venture of making rubber shoes. The first shoes were unfavor- ably affected by atmospheric conditions and the rubber coating quickly became discolored. But an elastic var- nish was soon developed in the Candee factory, and the difficulty was overcome. The business expanded rapidly, and by 1850, in spite of the enlarged buildings at the mill, a part of the work had to be done in New Haven; and in 1859, the site in Hamden, where 150 men were employed, was abandoned.
The Bassett family were small town capitalists of a sort in this neighborhood; as were the Goodyears. Al- fred Bassett was mortgagor to a silversmith in Cen- terville in 1841-Franklin Hall, who listed his equip- ment as,
300 lbs. of scrap German silver,
30 gross German silver spoons,
2 anvils,
2 vises,
8 hand hammers,
I small pair of Smith bellows,
1
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Wheels Begin to Turn
I set rollers, 2 polishing irons,
I press, and dies.
THE AUGER FACTORY
A mile below Centerville, Willis Churchill set up a factory on Mill River in 1843 for manufacturing bor- ing tools, chiefly augers and gimlets. Originally he had worked with the Ives brothers in their building at Mount Carmel, making brass, and town records speak of him as early as 1838. The village which clustered about the auger factory, located where Skiff Street now crosses Mill River, was known as Augerville, and the No. 7 schoolhouse on Skiff Street was called the Churchillville school.
COLT REVOLVERS AT THE WHITNEY FACTORY
Eli Whitney Blake came to Hamden in 1816 to as- sist his uncle Mr. Whitney at the Armory, and after Mr. Whitney's death in 1825, he and his brother Philos ran the business until Eli Whitney, 2d, became of age. Samuel Colt, inventor of the revolver, took out a patent at Hartford in 1835 for a revolving firearm, and later obtained others from England and France. In 1836 he set up a factory at Paterson, New Jersey, but the public was not interested in his invention, and the plant failed. Some of the weapons had been used in the Seminole War, where the Indians became disheartened fighting against men who could fire six times without reloading; and the Texas Rangers used them in the War with Mexico, Captain Sam Walker of the Rangers getting the Government to order one thousand revolvers.
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The History of Hamden
The Mexican War in 1846 found Connecticut as greatly out of sympathy as she had been with the War of 1812. This time the President did not make the mistake of calling out the militia, but asked for volun- teers instead.
In 1847, Mr. Colt came to Eli Whitney, 2d, who had assumed charge of the Whitneyville Armory in 1842, and persuaded him to take over the contract for the Government. The model was known as the Whit- ney-Walker Colt, and collectors now consider it the rarest and most highly prized of the Colt firearms.
Eli Whitney, 2d, completed many foreign and do- mestic contracts for rifles. The Harper's Ferry rifles were the first model to discard flintlocks and use per- cussion caps in their stead. Mr. Whitney introduced the steel barrel to replace the iron one, and constructed the machinery to drill it more accurately. During the war with Mexico, Colonel Jefferson Davis, leading a regiment from Mississippi, called upon the Ordnance Department at Washington for the best rifles that could be had, and was sent some of the Whitney rifles, which he declared to be the finest he had ever seen, saying that at Vera Cruz the men of one regiment refused to advance until they were equipped with them. About 8,000 guns were supplied to the Government then, and the number had arisen to 30,000 by 1856.
Kit Carson was quoted as saying that the Whitney Rifle was "just the thing for those setting out to cross the Plains."
In 1852 the Armory employed 500 men and was one of the largest in the United States. At the World's Exhibition at London in 1851, the interchangeable parts of the Whitney rifles excited much attention, and the British Government sent over a staff of officers to
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Wheels Begin to Turn
study their manufacture. Their report caused many American milling machines to be sent to England.
ELI WHITNEY BLAKE
Eli Whitney Blake left the Whitney Armory when his cousin took it over, and he and his brother manufac- tured in Westville doorlocks and latches of their own invention. He had invented the mortice lock in 1836. In 1852 he was appointed on a committee to supervise the macadamizing of Whalley Avenue in New Haven, and soon realized the need for a machine which would break the stone into pieces of uniform size. He invented the stone breaker in 1858, a machine which revolution- ized road building and mining.
One of Mr. Blake's twelve children, Henry Taylor Blake, who was born in Hamden, graduated from Yale in 1848, became a lawyer, and in much of his legal practice defended his father's infringed patent rights. Eli W. Blake wrote many valuable papers for scientific journals, some of which were collected into a small vol- ume entitled Original Solutions of Several Problems in Aerodynamics. He received the degree of LL.D. from Yale in 1879. He was founder of the Connecticut Acad- emy of Arts and Sciences, and was once its president. His brother, Elihu Blake, married Nancy the daughter of Jonathan Mix, and in 1836 built the second Cherry Hill house in Hamden.
HALL'S FERTILIZERS
When William D. Hall and a few of his farmer neighbors pooled $5,000 in .1850, they established a business which made use of waste from slaughterhouses.
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The History of Hamden
One of their products was neat's-foot oil, and this lubri- cant was supplied regularly to the Mount Carmel Axle Works. But by experiment they came upon a more valuable product. Menhaden fish were very plentiful that season and Mr. Hall, heading the Quinnipiac Company, as they were called, experimented with a method of extracting the oil from the fish. He discard- ed the older method of boiling them in kettles and used steam in tanks instead. By this means the separation was readily accomplished, the oil rising to the top and offal sinking to the bottom. Mr. Hall found that the solid matter, minus the oil, was of inestimable value as farm fertilizer, much needed by the depleted New Eng- land soil. Heretofore farmers had supposed that land which had been under cultivation for an extended pe- riod would have to be abandoned for farming purposes, unless it were renewed with guano from South America, which was expensive. Mr. Hall's company sold a yearly average of 500 tons of his product.
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