USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Hamden > The history of Hamden, Connecticut, 1786-1936 > Part 9
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In 1797 Justus Cooper was the proprietor of the Old Red Tavern on the Old Cheshire Road (Dixwell Av- enue) in Hamden Plains. He was probably there in 1780. Innkeepers were highly respected, important leaders in their communities; they had to be property owners, and the rules which they were expected to en- force in the conduct of their business required them to
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be of exemplary character. The use of spirituous liquor was common in every walk of life, even in the churches. George L. Clark, in his History of New Haven County, says: "Ordinations, church dedications, donation par- ties and pastoral calls were scarcely sacred without the 'beloved flip' in the 1790's." Account books which recorded the cost of erecting church buildings contained as many items for liquor as for lumber and nails. At the time of the invasion of New Haven by the British in 1779, John Lothrop of New Haven presented a bill to the state as follows:
Dr, State of Connecticut to John Lothrop
1779 To 20 gallons of Rum delivered to the Troops under command of Col. Hezk. Sabin on the day of the late incursion of the Enemy into this Town. The Troops greatly fatigued, and by desire of Sabin 180.00 . of old Chease 20.00
New Haven, August 30, 1779. 200.00
Colonel Hezekiah Sabin approved the bill, saying that the troops had received "rum and refreshments."
Javin Woodin's account book is interspersed indis- criminately with notations about his care of the poor, school meetings, and charges in the store which he kept. One of the latter read:
Mother Blakesly, Dr. Quart. of rum o/1/6, one quarter tea, brown sugar, wheat flour. To gin, cod- fish and molasses, o/5/47/2. To quart rum, to two fowls.
JERRY ALLING
Liquor was the coin paid to Jerry Alling (who lived near the Old Cheshire Road at Hamden Plains, on
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The History of Hamden
what is now Putnam Avenue) for the elm tree which became famous as the "Franklin Elm." Henry Peck, in his History of the State House, New Haven, Conn., says:
The elm tree, corner of Church and Chapel Sts., was set out the day that Benjamin Franklin died: April 17, 1790. The tree was purchased by Mr. Thaddeus Beecher for one quart of St. Croix rum, of Jerry Alling of Hamden, who brought it into town on his shoulder and planted it where it now flourishes in its lovely age. The man was known sometimes as Apple Alling, because he peddled fruit to the College stu- dents. In 1887, this Franklin Elm, as it is sometimes called, measured sixteen feet around its trunk, two feet above the ground, and it is still growing, although some of its limbs have been lost. On one side it has become injured by the wheels of passing carts, and about 30 years ago, Mr. Gad Day inserted in its side a thick board about three feet long, to keep out the weather. The bark has since so grown over the board that only about two feet of its length and eight inches of its width can be seen. The tree has increased a foot and a half in diameter since this bit of surgery. A few years before the war between the North and the South, Philip Pinkerman raised by subscription about sixty dollars, and this money, with a small appropriation by the city, was used to pay for the wrought-iron fence which at present protects the tree, but which should now be enlarged.
The Connecticut Quarterly spoke of the tree and its beautiful shade for the old town pump, and of Jerry Alling as a "poet and pedagogue." The tree was not felled until 1904.
Henry T. Blake, in speaking of elm tree planting on the New Haven Green in 1784, said: "This row of trees along what is now Temple Street was the first
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New Roots in Old Soil
planting inside the Green, and was the precursor of the more extensive tree planting between that date and 1796 by Mr. James Hillhouse."
George P. Allen's genealogy of the Allings of New Haven says this of Jerry Alling:
He was a schoolteacher as well as a poet, and kept a daily record of the weather, 25 years of which he pub- lished, beginning with April 1, 1785, entitled, “A Register of the Weather, or an Account of the Several Rains, Snow Storms, Depth of Snow, Hail and Thun- der, with Some Account of the Weather Each Day, and Some Other Worthy Events of Notice for the Last 25 Years Ending March 3, 1810. From Obser- vations Taken Most of the Time in Hamden, Near New Haven in Connecticut., lat. 41.23 N., long. 73.11 W. by Jeremiah Alling. New Haven. Press of Oliver, Steel & Co., 1810.
This book must have established a record for the length of its title! Mr. Alling was very much interested in the English language and was ambitious to publish a dictionary. He called upon the great Noah Webster and said, among other things, "Now, Mr. Webster, if I don't speak proper, you correct me." "Properly, Mr. Alling!" rejoined Mr. Webster. As was common in the colonial period, Jerry Alling was both a schoolmas- ter and a sexton, and it was to the East Plains Church in 1809 that he presented a bill "for opening and shutting and sweping the meeting house and ringing the bell one year, $8.00."
SOCIAL LIFE
This was a period in which Connecticut people tried to provide everything possible for their own needs, as they had very little money. Services were commonly
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The History of Hamden
exchanged for goods instead of cash. Javin Woodin's account book contains such items as:
Captain Stephen Dummer Dr., to about half a bushel small watermelon, for which he is to bottom and var- nish two chairs in a handsome manner.
Joseph Smith of New Haven, blacksmith, Dr., to eleven middling sized watermelon, for which he is to shoe a horse forward with good new shoes to be corked at the toe, and done whenever I call.
Mr. Wills Huston had a note against me for a cart of about ten dollars, and I have some chestnut timber of him, and we balanced all accounts and Debts by Book, Note or any other way against each other and passed receipts in full of all claims against each other at the house of Justus Cooper a few months ago.
Eber Ives kept a sort of store in Mount Carmel, in which his records show that he sold butter, flour, mo- lasses, milk pans, cotton wool, platters, sugar, rum, and potatoes. One item shows that he sold Jacob Walter "21 Bushels Potaters, 31/6,-credit by 23 Shad, 13/5, by cash 6/."
One of his orders for goods shows the kind of things he bought for himself:
Mr. Bradley, Sir, pleze to let the bearer have Six gal- ons Lisbon wine, six do. Malaga, one role of good To- baco, and
a great coat
pr scissors broch
nankeen vest
nankeen breeches
2 chests
pr, cordroy do.
scale and dividers
shirt No. 2
7 quarter casks
spotted stockings silk handkf.
7 brass corks
powder cannister
hait
tea
small looking glass
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He did not confine himself to tending store for a living-he did jobs to which many other Hamden men were accustomed; ploughing, harrowing, sowing oats, hoeing corn, mowing, cradling rye, carting loads of hay to New Haven, carting "rales" and "hooppools," mending fences, burning brush, washing sheep, “dig- ing and stoning suller."
An agreement between Amos Gilbert and Joseph Peck for the latter's similar goods and services reads:
To 2 day and a halfs work One pound and half of nails one days moing timber
7 loads of dung. October ye 26, 1782, then recnd with Amos Gilbert, and Balanst All Accounts as wit- ness our hands.
Commerce for Connecticut before 1812 was chiefly an exchange of its agricultural products and its lumber and rum for sugar, molasses, spices, tea, and silk. It is not known whether two Hamden families-the Mun- sons of Mount Carmel and that of Simeon Bristol-ob- tained their slaves in the so-called "triangular trade" which was carried on by some New Englanders who went to Africa for slaves that were sold in Jamaica, W. I., for sugar and molasses, which in turn were brought home and made into rum for further trade in Boston and New York.
HIGHWAYS, TURNPIKES
One of the first matters to receive the attention of the town was the care of roads, and in 1786 it was voted that "the selectmen for the time being be empowered
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The History of Hamden
to divide the highways into regular districts, and to set out and assign the same, to the several surveyors and the inhabitants living within the same." The town meeting also voted to provide timber and plank for a bridge over a brook near Captain Gill's house. Simeon Bristol, Samuel Atwater, and Bazel Munson were to join the selectmen in viewing "the places proposed by the inhabitants of the Plains and East Farms for the purpose of a highway, and make report thereon to the next town meeting." The boundary line between Ham- den and Woodbridge was to be settled "either by agree- ment or by submitting the same to judicious arbitrators," and both Samuel Bellamy and Jesse Gilbert acted as agents for the town of Hamden in preferring memo- rials to the General Assembly for straightening the line with New Haven so as to conform to the original peti- tion for the incorporation of the town.
In 1795, the General Assembly empowered the towns in the state to collect taxes for building and repairing highways. Throughout the colonial period roads had been extremely bad. The towns had been isolated from each other, a condition with which they were entirely content-and they were practically self-sufficient; households made for themselves almost everything they used, or they could find an artisan within their neighborhood who could. They were not sociable enough to want to travel elsewhere, nor did they par- ticularly want visitors; so they neglected the roads. As individuals and as towns, they were not interested in doing something in which there was no gain for them- selves, nor did they ever enjoy being directed or super- vised by a higher authority. As to care of the roads,
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they had always managed to avoid complying with orders from the General Assembly.
There had been no stagecoaches in the state until after the Revolution, with the notable exception of Cap- tain John Munson's public wagon in 1717. The first line of stages was established between New Haven, Hartford, and Boston in 1783. As the stagecoach came into greater use, the bad roads were widely complained of. The companies operating the stage lines had ob- tained from the state charters allowing them to build their own roads and bridges, or to take over those al- ready existing. Ezra Stiles's diary points to the increase in stage travel:
March 8, 1795, Eight years ago, encouragement was given for two stages and 12 horses on the great road between Boston and New Haven, a distance of 170 miles. Whereas at this time, there are upwards of 100 horses and 20 carriages employed. Eight years ago there were but 3.
While in colonial days travel and trade had been mostly by water routes, due in large part to England's monopoly of trade with the Colonies and to her delib- erate discouragement of trade among them, now at the beginning of the nineteenth century the need for good highways was an immediate and all-important problem. Towns like Hamden could not afford, even had they been willing to bear it, the expense of maintaining inter- city highways. But groups of individuals saw the possi- bilities of good investment profits from the formation of turnpike companies. It was apparent that such groups could not acquire old roads or good locations for new, nor have the power to collect tolls, nor could they afford
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The History of Hamden
the risk of damage suits for possible defects in the road. It was necessary to obtain such rights and immunities from the state, which also furnished a safeguard to the interests of the traveling public.
In exchange for relieving the towns of the care of these highways, the turnpike companies were granted the right of "eminent domain," by which they might take over, after suitable compensation had been given, the lands of stubborn proprietors. Toll gates were set up, and gatekeepers collected toll from those who used the road, at rates including twenty-five cents for a four- wheeled pleasure carriage and four cents for a man on horseback.
Exempted from payment of toll were churchgoers on Sunday, those on the way to funerals, voters on the way to town meeting, militiamen on the way to and from training, and farmers on the way to and from the mill. Investment in the turnpike companies seemed perfectly safe to people who could not imagine a future without stagecoach travel, and franchises were granted without termination date-the only provision being that the road should revert to the public after the investors had been paid back their capital with 12 per cent inter- est. Not a single Connecticut turnpike made anywhere near the amount which the investors expected.
HARTFORD TURNPIKE
The Hartford and New Haven Turnpike was laid out in 1798. James Hillhouse of New Haven was the president of the company. The road ran an almost straight course between the two cities, from Grove
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New Roots in Old Soil
Street in New Haven out Whitney Avenue to where the present Lake Whitney dam is located, then across Mill River through the southeast part of Hamden, the westerly part of Wallingford, the center of Meriden, the easterly part of Berlin, the southeast corner of New- ington, and the northwest part of Wethersfield, into Hartford. A Hamden town meeting was opposed to the turnpike in 1798, and voted that "all reasonable and probable means by way of remonstrance before the Gen- eral Assembly . . . be made use of to prevent the road lately laid out from New Haven to Hartford, so far as respects this town." Josiah Root was named agent for the town, "to oppose the aforesaid road as it relates to this town, with or without counsel, as he shall judge most conducive to the benefit and general good of the same."
A report of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, in 1808, said of the turnpikes:
The most expensive is that from New Haven to Hart- ford, which has cost $79,261, or, the distance being 34 3/5 miles, at the rate of $2,280 a mile; but about $18,000 of the capital has been expended in the pur- chase of the land through which the road is carried.
The amount paid in Hamden for land was $1,332.98, to families bearing the names of Gilbert, Potter, Ford, Bassett, Ball, Mansfield, Doolittle, Humiston, Thomas, Hubbard, Gill, Peckham, and Talmadge. The 800 shares of stock were taken in a month's time, and many who sought to buy were disappointed. There was a "half toll gate" in Hamden, and the story is told of two ladies in a buggy who inquired the amount of the toll. The gatekeeper named the charge for a man and a
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The History of Hamden
horse, whereupon the lady who held the reins whipped up the animal, saying, as she passed the astonished gate- keeper, "Then we needn't pay, as we are two women and a mare!"
CHESHIRE TURNPIKE
In the following year, 1799, the General Assembly was petitioned for the establishment of the Cheshire Turnpike. The petitioners alleged that the road down from Farmington through Southington and Cheshire was "much out of repair, in many places circuiting on bad grounds." Among them were Samuel Bellamy, John Munson, and Joel Root of Hamden, and Burrage Beach of Cheshire. Hamden took no official action with regard to this road, but in Cheshire, "on motion whether this town will do anything respecting the Turnpike Road. It was voted in the Negative." On April 23, 1800, the Cheshire Turnpike Company was incorporated, and there were 400 shares of stock.
The road began with Grove and Temple Streets, and coincided with the Hartford Turnpike as far as the latter's turn across Mill River, the upkeep and expense of that section being equally shared by the two com- panies. The Cheshire Turnpike continued northerly, for some distance lying in what later was the bed of the artificial Lake Whitney.
Among the property owners affected by the road appear the names of Ford, Potter, Talmadge, Gilbert, Bassett, Humiston, Bradley, Cooper, Ives, Dickerman, Todd, Bristol, and Pierpont.
The rates in effect on the Cheshire Turnpike out of New Haven were:
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New Roots in Old Soil
Cents
Mills
For each person and horse
4
O
For each chaire, sulkey or chair
with one horse driver and passenger
12
5
Each four-wheel pleasure carriage, driver and passenger
25
0
Each stage, driver and passenger
25
0
Each two-horse pleasure sleigh, driver and passenger
12
5
Each one-horse pleasure sleigh, driver and passenger
6
3
Each loaded cart, sled, sleigh or waggon and driver
12
5
Each empty cart, sled, sleigh, waggon and driver
6
3
Each single horse cart loaded and driver
6
3
Each single empty horse cart and driver
4
O
Horses, cattle and mules, each
2
O
Sheep and swine, each
O
5
The first half-toll gate which operated in Hamden was located near Hezekiah Dickerman's house (later the Kenyon place). Those who lived within a mile of the toll house did not have to pay toll if they went no farther than one mile beyond it, and those living above it might go about their business within the town toll- free; but they did not have the privilege of going on into New Haven by way of the Old Cheshire Road (Dixwell Avenue). Farmers living in the south end of the town were permitted to go up to their woodlots north of the gate and fetch wood back to their homes past the toll house without charge. There was no way of enforcing such rules. In practice many of these loads merely halted before the farmer's house, and then im-
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The History of Hamden
mediately continued on their way to a New Haven market.
Within a very short time, the town of Hamden be- came bitterly opposed to the turnpike gate. Indignant town meetings sent requests and threats to the turnpike company to remove it, and the selectmen were instructed "to proceed immediately and clear and keep cleared the old road of the fence erected by the Cheshire Turnpike Company near Hezekiah Dickerman's, so far as the said fence is not in the four rods granted to said turnpike company by the [General] Assembly." These actions being of no avail, the town petitioned the General As- sembly, "praying a removal of the Cheshire Turnpike gate established in this town, so that the inhabitants have the use of their old roads free of toll, or relief in some other manner, and the selectmen are hereby direct- ed to draw said petition and to subscribe it in the name and behalf of the town." Futile as such protests proved to be, Hamden was not willing to be outdone, and in a matter of years Shepard Avenue was laid out for the express purpose of avoiding the toll gate, which, with a small tollhouse, was then a short distance north of the Mount Carmel church. This specially built new road was called the "Shunpike." Sterling Bradley, whose home was located a short distance above Shepard Avenue's junction with Whitney Avenue, was the sole proprietor in the last days of toll collecting. He main- tained at his home a profitable tavern where passenger and mail coaches stopped for refreshment and a relay change of horses at this thirteen-mile distance from New Haven. Inns and blacksmith shops were paying businesses along the turnpikes in their day, a day that was over within fifty years.
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New Roots in Old Soil
ELI WHITNEY
Connecticut people were beginning to relax the early concentration on religion, and to give more attention to worldly affairs; they were not now so much wrapped up in the life after death, as in what could be done in this one. The emigration westward of so many Connec- ticut men opened a wider market to those left at home who had to replace them in the labor shortage thus created on the farms and in the mills of New England. Pease & Niles Gazeteer of 1819 said of this westward emigration, "within the last 30 years it has swelled to a torrent." The reason for it may have been land hun- ger or pursuit of trade, but in any case, it was evident to these departing men that they could never raise enough surplus raw materials on Connecticut soil to make a living in trade.
After the establishment of the first woolen mills in this region at Hartford in 1788, waterpower rapidly became the means of turning the wheels of industry. It had turned the wheels of colonial grist mills, and now it made possible Connecticut's importance as an indus- trial state-an importance which its comparatively poor agricultural facilities would never have brought it. Hamden was endowed by nature with a swift-flowing stream invitingly suitable for the establishment of fac- tories. At the very point where Captain Fowler had built New Haven's first grist mill in 1640, Eli Whitney began in 1798 to set up his arms factory, through which, next to the invention of the cotton gin, came his place in history.
Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765, of parents whose direct ancestry was English. His father was a farmer, with an uncommonly
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The History of Hamden
good supply of tools in his workshop, including a lathe, and his spare time in the winter evenings was spent in turning out wheels and chairs.
The boy attended a district school three fourths of a mile from his home, and in winter he made his own path across lots through the snow. From the time he was eleven, his day began with feeding and watering sixty head of cattle before starting to school. Like his father, he loved to tinker in the workshop. He made a violin when he was twelve, and after that, his neigh- bors brought him their musical instruments for repairs. Following the Revolutionary War there was a great shortage of nails, which at that time were forged on the anvil by hand. Eli persuaded his father to supply the necessary tools, and went into the business.
At the age of sixteen the boy wished to attend college, and his father who previously had recommended college to him, now began to doubt its advisability. Meanwhile the neighboring town of Grafton advertised in the news- paper for a schoolmaster, and though he had no appar- ent qualifications for teaching, Eli rode over and per- suaded the selectmen to employ him, at a salary of $7 a month and board. He resurrected his old textbooks and refreshed his mind of their contents, and with only this preparation did a creditable job of teaching. He taught for five winters in succession at Grafton, West- boro, Northboro, and Paxton, and the income thus gained made possible his attendance at the summer ses- sions of Leicester Academy. In 1789, at twenty-three, he entered Yale. His neighbors, knowing his skill with tools, shook their heads (as neighbors will), and ad- vised him against college, predicting that there he would be wasting his talents. With the thousand dol-
Tollgate House on the Cheshire Turnpike
Photo by Carl J. Jensen
-
-
Eli Whitney
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New Roots in Old Soil
lars given him by his father, by means of the proverbial mortgage on the farm, and his earnings as he went along, he finished college.
Reverend Ezra Stiles was president then. A strong restraining hand was needed to discipline the students in their postwar exuberance, and President Stiles was eminently equal to the task. Strict and unyielding as he was, he thoroughly knew the boys in his care, and he was aware of Eli's exceptional mechanical genius. But even he was astounded, as were others of the faculty, when a complicated instrument used in the study of astronomy broke, and the only possible way of repairing it seemed to be sending it abroad to experts-Eli tried his hand at fixing it, with immediate success.
Upon his graduation from college, and with his money all spent, he turned aside from a contemplated career at law to become tutor in a South Carolina family at 80 guineas a year. As he was preparing to leave New Haven, President Stiles introduced him to the widow of General Nathaniel Greene, who had been traveling through the North with her children and their tutor, Phineas Miller, whom she afterwards married. They were pleasant traveling companions on the trip south, and Whitney was easily persuaded to visit them at beau- tiful Mulberry Grove in Savannah, Georgia. His skill at making and mending tools became known to the planters, who told him ruefully of the difficulty they had in raising any profitable crop there. They described a green-seeded cotton which would grow well, but be- cause the seed clung so tightly to the fiber, endless time was consumed in separating them. It was a good day's work to clean a single pound. In the evening after sup-
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The History of Hamden
per the slaves would sit in a circle to clean the cotton picked in the day, even the children helping.
Whitney's facile wits were challenged by the need of a machine which would perform this work, and al- though he knew nothing about the cotton plant, he set to work making his own tools. The form of the instru- ment was suggested to him when he saw a kitten dart its paw between two fence pickets to claw a few feathers from a chicken. He began to make a model, and felt sure that he could construct a machine, if he only had the time to complete it. But the tutoring job stood in the way, and he reluctantly terminated his visit, presenting himself to his prospective employer, just over the South Carolina state line. Here he learned that on account of the poor crops his salary would be only 40 guineas. He promptly declined the position, and hastened back to his friends at Savannah. Although he was without funds, he was cordially urged to spend the winter with them.
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