USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Hamden > The history of Hamden, Connecticut, 1786-1959 > Part 10
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The impetus which Whitney's invention gave to the raising of cotton, and indirectly to the institution of slavery, made the South very prosperous. Not only did the South enjoy great benefit and wealth, but the whole world gained the use of cheap and comfortable cotton clothing, and the commerce of the United States was immensely changed. In 1784, it was doubted in Eng- land whether eight bales of cotton found on one Ameri- can vessel had all come from the United States, and in 1791 the entire cotton crop in this country was no more than 2 million pounds; but by 1809 it had risen to 18 million pounds, and by 1845 to a billion pounds, which was then more than seven eighths of the world's supply.
Thomas Macaulay said of Whitney: "What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney's
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invention of the cotton gin has more than equaled in its relation to the progress and power of the United States." This was praise indeed from an Englishman!
The original model of the cotton gin is preserved in New Haven by the New Haven Colony Historical Society. President Ezra Stiles had continued his inter- est in Whitney, and a notation in his diary at the time that Whitney came back to New Haven reads:
Mr. Whitney brot to my house and shewed us his machine by him invented for cleaning cotton of its seeds. He shewed us the model, which he has finished to lodge at Philadelphia in the Sec'y of State's office when he takes out his patent. This miniature model is perfect. It will clean 100 cwt. a day. A curious and very ingenious piece of mechanism.
The last ungrateful indignity which Whitney suf- fered from the acts of the Southern States was the re- fusal of Congress, under their pressure in 1812, to renew his patent.
Just at the time when Whitney was convinced that he could expect no further profit from the promotion of his cotton gin, action was being taken in the National Congress to supply the need for firearms, by under- taking their manufacture in this country. Whitney heard of this action, and characteristically determined to try another field of endeavor, a field with which he was utterly unfamiliar, but in which his keen mind was already inventively active. He wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott, an acquaintance who was a native of Connecticut, and also a graduate of Yale of the Class of 1778, son of a governor of Connecticut by the same name, and himself also governor directly after he presided over the State Constitutional Conven- tion of 1817. Whitney's letter to him follows:
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New Haven, May 1, 1798.
To Oliver Wolcott, Esq.
Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.
Sir: By the debate in Congress, I observe that they are about making some appropriations for procuring arms, etc., for the United States.
Should an actual war take place or the communica- tion between the United States and the West India Islands continue to be hazardous and precarious as it now is, my business of making the Patent Machines for Cleansing Cotton must, in the meantime, be post- poned. I have a number of workmen and apprentices whom I have instructed in working in wood and met- als, and whom I wish to keep employed. These cir- cumstances induced me to address you and ask the privilege of having an opportunity of contracting for the supply of some of the articles which the United States may want. I should like to undertake to manu- facture ten or fifteen thousand stand of arms.
I am persuaded that machinery moved by water adapted to this business, would greatly diminish the labor and facilitate the manufacture of this article; Machines for forging, rolling, floating, boreing, grind- ing, polishing, etc., may all be made use of to advan- tage.
Cartridge or cartouche box is an article which I can manufacture. I have a machine for boring wood of my own invention, which is admirably adapted for this purpose.
The making of swords, hangers, pistols, etc., I could perform.
There is a good fall of water in the vicinity of this town (New Haven) which I can procure, and could have works erected in a short time. It would not an- swer, however, to go to the expense of erecting works for this purpose unless I could contract to make a con- siderable number.
The contracting for the above articles will not, I suppose, belong to the Department of the Treasury;
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but if you will take the trouble to mention me to the Secretary of War, I shall consider it as a particular favor.
I shall be able to procure sufficient bonds for the ful- fillment of a contract of the sum above mentioned, and will come forward to Philadelphia immediately, in case there is an opportunity for me to make proposals.
With the highest respect, I am, sir,
Your obedient servant,
ELI WHITNEY.
Through Mr. Wolcott's influence, and through his own acquaintance with Jefferson and others, Whitney readily obtained the contract, on June 14, 1798. It was an enormous project for a young man of thirty-three years, only six years out of college, who nevertheless had, in addition to his own self-assurance, the confidence of several New Haven men of importance who were willing to go on his bond. He agreed to manufacture 10,000 muskets within two years at $13.40 each, and was under bond of $30,000 for the faithful performance of his contract. He began with nothing but his brains and his undaunted courage; he had no factory, no ma- terials, no skilled workmen, and almost no money. But he purchased the old Todd mill site in Hamden, and constructed his own machinery, working tirelessly day and night. Eventually the milling machine which he invented became one of the most important used in ma- chine shops ever since.
Heretofore all guns had been made by hand, and whenever one needed repairing a new part had to be made especially for it. Whitney's machines took the place of hand labor, and he manufactured uniform parts which could be put into any weapon made from the same pattern. On one of his trips to Washington, he
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gave a convincing demonstration of his machine-made parts by assembling ten muskets from a pile of separate parts on the floor. He became the pioneer in the mass production of machines as well as of weapons. Quantity production, interchangeable parts, the assembly line, were the result of his labors. Cotton manufacture had expanded from his earlier invention, and now arms manufacture from his Hamden plant on Mill River.
Delays came at the very beginning of his venture, caused by a long and severe winter. His dam was frozen up, and so were the works of Forbes and Adams of Canaan, who were to supply him with iron tools ac- cording to his pattern. Forage for cattle was scarce, and oxteams were almost unprocurable for the long haul. Whitney's plan to carry on part of the manufacture in his New Haven buildings was abandoned for the more convenient one of having all the work done at one place, and new buildings had to be erected at the dam. Four thousand muskets were promised to be ready at the end of the first year, but when Whitney wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury, on May 31, 1799, only 500 were ready. He said gloomily,
I find that my personal attention is more constantly and essentially necessary to every branch of the work than I apprehended. Mankind in general are not to be de- pended on, and the best workmen I can find are in- capable of directing. Indeed there is no branch of the work that can proceed well, scarcely for a single hour, unless I am present.
He wished the work to be done well, regardless of the time that it might take. In a letter to the Secretary of War, he said, with confident assurance:
It has been my endeavor, to erect such works as would be commensurate with the undertaking, and to erect
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such machinery as appeared to me best calculated to facilitate and improve the manufacture of arms of the best quality. My system and plans of operation are, I believe, entirely new and different from those hereto- fore pursued in this or any other country.
It was the understanding and expectation of the Secretary of the Treasury with whom I contracted, that I should establish a manufactory on the principles which were then pointed out and explained to him. This system has been uniformly pursued from the be- ginning, and though it has required more time to execute this plan than I at that time contemplated, it has been successfully reduced to practice with less expense than I then apprehended would be required, and the machinery in its operation exceeds my most sanguine expectations. It not only abridges manual labor, but gives a degree of perfection to the work beyond the power of the most skillful workman in the usual method.
An extension of time was granted, but greater ad- vances from the Treasury as well as another bond to protect the Government were necessary, and ten of New Haven's leading citizens signed an indemnity bond of $ 10,000. They were Simeon Baldwin, David Daggett, Pierpont Edwards, Eneas Munson, Jr., Jeremiah Atwater, James Hillhouse, Elias Shipman, Timothy Phelps, Peleg Sanford, and Elizur Goodrich.
Whitney's ability and character were always highly appreciated at Yale. President Timothy Dwight wrote a letter in his behalf to Honorable Charles Pinckney of South Carolina in 1801, when Whitney made another journey into the South in hopes of some belated gains from his cotton gin. Said President Dwight,
Permit me, sir, as a friend of so worthy and ingenious a man as Mr. Whitney, to solicit your friendly assist- ance to him. . . . To you, Sir, it will be in the stead
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of many ordinary motives to know that your aid in this case be given to a man who is rarely, perhaps never, exceeded in ingenuity or industry, and not often in worth of every kind. Every respectable man in this region will rejoice to see him liberally rewarded for so useful an effort, and for a life of uncommon benefit to the public.
Mr. Whitney is employed in manufacturing mus- kets for the United States. In this business he has prob- ably exceeded the efforts not only of his countrymen, but the whole civilized world, by a system of machinery of his own invention, in which expedition and accuracy are united to a degree probably without example.
I should not have thought it necessary to speak of him in so strong terms, had I not believed that his own modesty would keep him from discovering his real character. A wish to serve a worthy name will, I am sure, be my apology to you, Sir, for this application.
Captain Decius Wadsworth, who was inspector of arms being made for the Government, came often to the Hamden factory, and he once wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury:
I have great satisfaction in being able to declare that the progress already made by him leaves no room to doubt of his eventual complete success, provided he re- ceives suitable support and encouragement from the Government. . . I entertain not a doubt that the arms he is making, more especially in that which is the most difficult part (the Lock), will not only greatly exceed in point of workmanship the best which have been fabricated for that use in this country, but even be superior to any muskets for common use ever yet fabricated in any country.
These were words of high praise from such a quarter. In the same letter, Mr. Wadsworth describes the Whit- ney system of manufacture, pointing out its radical
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and revolutionary differences from the heretofore accepted method of making each gun by hand.
It must be admitted, I believe, that Mr. Whitney at his factory unites more advantages for carrying on the manufacture of small arms upon a scale sufficiently large than the national armory at Springfield possesses; and he is capable of executing the same quantity of work with a much smaller proportion of manual labor. Where the eye of the workman is almost the only guide in fitting up the lock, not only a longer course of prac- tice is requisite to insure a tolerable degree of perfec- tion in the execution; but after all the similar parts of different locks are so far unlike that they cannot be mutually substituted in cases of accidents. But where the different parts of the lock are each formed and fashioned successively by a proper machine, and by the same hand, they will be found to differ so insensibly that the similar parts of different locks may be mutually substituted. The extending of this principle to all the parts of a musket, has been a favorite idea with Mr. Whitney from the beginning. ..
As I have had particular opportunity, by an inti- mate acquaintance, to notice the less obvious traits of his character, I hope to be excused for making the ob- servations which follow. His mechanical invention, in- genuity, and ability no one I believe at present ques- tions. . . . Patient, prudent, of mature reflection, diligent, economical, blest with sound judgment, it is rare to find a man uniting so many excellencies, free from striking defects. . . I therefore entertain a hope that an institution so highly deserving of national patronage and support will meet with the encourage- ment which it merits.
During the ten years (not two) in which Whitney manufactured the Government's requirement of 10,000 muskets, advances from the Treasury of $ 10,000 and $15,000 were successively made; in fact, in the final
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settlement at the completion of the contract, there was a balance due him of only $2,450. Throughout this period, the Government's confidence in Whitney was implicit, and the Secretary of the Treasury, after in- specting the factory, told him that the uses to which the money advanced him had been put were highly prudent and economical, and the results unbelievably gratifying.
Commendatory letters were sent to Washington by the governors of Connecticut and New York. Governor Tompkins said that he had never seen so perfect an establishment as Whitney's, and that "few persons in this country surpass Mr. Whitney in talents as a me- chanic, or in experience as a manufacturer of muskets." Governor Wolcott's closing words were a restrained understatement when he said that the improved state of manufactures was greatly indebted to Mr. Whitney's skill and exertions, that he was a man of science, indus- try, and integrity, and that "his inventions and labors have been as useful to this country as those of any other individual."
The system of interchangeable parts, which Eli Whitney first applied to the manufacture of firearms, revolutionized manufacturing industry the world over, and has made possible the cheap, accurate, and rapid mass production of other machines-typewriters, sew- ing machines, automobiles, and planes. He originated precision machine tools, gauges, and line assembly. He persuaded Eli Terry of Terryville to make clocks by machinery. His armory was the largest and best equipped in the country. Gallitius' report in 1810 on the production of arms in the country speaks of the number of such factories "of which the most perfect is that near New Haven." The Government obtained his
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willing aid in setting up armories at Springfield and Harper's Ferry.
Mr. Whitney's name appears in the Hamden town records in 1806, when he and two others, Amasa Brad- ley and John Hubbard, were appointed auditors of town accounts.
In the War of 1812 Whitney manufactured 15,000 guns for the Government, and fulfilled a similar con- tract for the State of New York. Robert Fulton ap- pealed to him in 1810 for aid in protecting his patents on the steamboat.
Whitney was fifty-one when he married, in 1817, Henrietta Edwards, the daughter of Honorable Pier- pont Edwards and the granddaughter of Reverend Jonathan Edwards. His only son, Eli, 2d, was born in 1820. The Eli Whitney house on the site of the Gov- ernor Eaton mansion at the corner of Elm and Orange Streets in New Haven was occupied after his death by his widow; but during his life in New Haven he lived in a house at 275 Orange Street, designed in 1800 by David Hoadley.
Eli Whitney was the first in importance of many Hamden inventors, contributing to the record held by Connecticut of receiving a higher ratio of patents than any other state. Scudder says,
There have been times when contending armies have both been armed from the little state of Connecticut, and yet the state itself had furnished hardly a particle of raw material, its entire contribution being the in- genuity of its workmen and the mechanical genius of its inventors.
Freeing his inventive mind of tradition, precedent, and prejudice, Whitney looked at every problem as
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though nothing had ever been done about it, erasing from his memory what others had done, and thinking only of how the task could best be accomplished. In the manufacture of muskets he exhibited not only his inventive ability and confidence in himself, but supreme courage and daring as well. He was a man of kindli- ness and dignity, a philanthropist whose interest in his workmen prompted him to build, in 1800, a row of comfortable houses on Armory Street for the use of his workmen-Hamden's earliest model-housing project! An active citizen in his own town, he also enjoyed the acquaintance of men in high office in the state and the nation, many of whom came here to see him. In Grove Street Cemetery where he rests full equal with many of New Haven's most illustrious dead, his gravestone bears the following inscription:
ELI WHITNEY The Inventor of the Cotton Gin, Of Useful Science and Arts the Efficient Patron and Improver. In the Relations of Life a Model of Excellence. While private affection weeps at his tomb, his country honors his memory. Died Jan. 8th, 1825. Born Dec. 8th, 1765.
EARLY WHITNEYVILLE
In taking over the Todd mill and dam, Mr. Whitney also acquired much of the land by the river, in order to avoid legal complications if he should build the dam higher and cause the land to be overflowed. This fore- sight made it easier for Eli Whitney, Jr., to organize the New Haven Water Company many years later. In 1798 Mr. Whitney bought from Charles Chauncey,
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Pierpont Edwards, and James Hillhouse the grist mill and dam area, with all the rights for raising the dam and flooding the area. The linseed-oil mill had not been used for twenty years.
In the same year, 1798, Whitney bought a hundred acres from Daniel Talmadge, most of it west of the Cheshire Road, where there stood a house and barn and a blacksmith shop. From Stephen Ford he pur- chased a half acre, just south of the dam, with a "cel- lar." In 1809 he acquired from Talmadge an old house and barn, possibly the Bradley homestead, and the paper mill, which stood not far from the present loca- tion of the Whitneyville Congregational Church. This mill had been started by Daniel and Josiah Talmadge, Richard Woodhull, and Solomon Gilbert. Other hous- es were purchased from Samuel Thomas, David and Eli Potter, Nicholas Howell, and Hezekiah Johnson, on whose property was listed a "hay scale." No doubt the houses were acquired to accommodate the workmen at the armory. Besides extending up the river for some distance, the Whitney holdings touched the edge of East Rock and the top of Mill Rock, and included the land on both sides of the road from the present High- land Street in New Haven to the present Larson School in Hamden.
HEALTH AND THE HEREAFTER
In the first two years of the corporate life of Ham- den, other matters than those of health had occupied the attention of the officials-at least, nothing appears on the records until, at a town meeting held in 1788, the question was put "whether liberty shall be given to
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Drs. Aaron and Joseph Eliot to set up a hospital for the purpose of enoculation for the small pox at the dwelling of John Hubbard, Esq., under such restric- tions and regulations as shall be prescribed by the civil authorities and selectmen of this town. Voted in the negative." This unfavorable action, so difficult to un- derstand today, does not mean that small pox was not feared, for it was. There had been a local epidemic of the disease in 1773, in which many died. But the "enoculation" itself was a medical treatment not yet wholly trusted. Lydia Thompson Hitchcock, writing home to her mother, Mrs. Eber Ives at Mount Carmel, in 1792, said, "My enoculation was very light. I am broke out and have not more than twenty pox in all."
Gravestones of the period reflect a doleful resigna- tion to death and suffering. In the Central Burying Ground the stone over the wife of Captain Samuel At- water reads:
Death is a debt to nature due, which I have paid and so must you.
Mrs. Jacob Atwater's stone bears these words:
Life uncertain, death is sure, Sin the wound, Christ the cure.
In the correspondence of the Thompson family (chil- dren of Mrs. Eber Ives by an earlier marriage), typical feelings and conditions of the times are shown, especial- ly about poor health and the expectation of dying. Lydia's husband was a sailor and in his long absences she left her home in St. Johns to come to Mount Car- mel. Her brother Timothy was also a sailor. He re- ceived a letter from his brother Joseph in 1794:
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Brothers and sisters and all friends, i here that thiss town has been very sickley we here of great numbers of young and olde people . . great numbers are gone long to the grave ware all must go there sooner or later too but let us be prepared for Deth. Let us be prepared for that great chang as Deth then we shant be afraid to die for oure rest will in heven. I hent no more at present about these things. Deth is oure last ende. Onley be prepared for it.
A letter from the Mount Carmel home to Lydia Hitch- cock reads:
February 3, 1796
I have some bad news to write and that is Mother Ives is dead. She died Very Suding on the 21 of Janu- ary. May God grant us grase to make a wise Improve- ment of this and all the Deths that we hear of may we meditate mutch on Deth and in such a way that we may prepare for our own Desulution.
Referring to the long absences of her husband from home, Lydia wrote to her sister:
All the happiness I ever expect to teake is when I leave this frail body. . . . I have reason to hope for happiness hereafter.
The "cost of dying" was not great in those days. When Captain Caleb Alling died in 1823, Alfred Coop- er was paid $1.50 for going to New Haven for the coffin and attending the funeral with the hearse. The coffin and trimmings, bought from James English, cost $10; Asa Gilbert received 50c. for ringing the bell; Javin Woodin, for unspecified services, received $1.50; and the gravestone bought from Jabesh Morehouse cost $17.
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In 1810, Niles & Pease Gazeteer listed two physi- cians in Hamden. But in 1821, a town meeting voted a request for a doctor to settle among them.
THE SALT MEADOWS
The salt meadows of the Quinnipiac River, part of which lie in North Haven and part in Hamden, were on two occasions the subject of petitions addressed to the General Assembly. Although the meadows have always been a favorite haunt of wild ducks, pigeons too have frequented them. In 1786, Nazareth Hill of New Ha- ven and David Atwater of Hamden, with 132 others from both towns, set forth in their petition that pigeons had regularly been captured in nets in the salt meadows and sold for 6 d. a dozen, but in that year they were bringing 2 s. a dozen because the practice of shooting them from trees and stages and in flocks frightened so many away that the netters were not able to use their nets profitably. The legislature denied the plea of the petitioners for a ban on shooting "in flocks, on trees or Stages."
A favorable decision was given, however, in 1802, when Hamden and North Haven petitioned jointly for the construction of a huge "dyck," beginning at Benjamin Brockett's house on the east shore and ex- tending across the river and salt meadows to the Ham- den side, dividing the fresh from the salt meadows. The "dyck" was constructed at great expense, enclosing some 1,500 acres, but it became evident in a few years that the business of harvesting the hay within the en- closure was not profitable. Planned at a time when there were few cleared open fields suitable for growing
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hay, the salt meadows became less and less needed as farmlands were extended. The tall rounded stacks of hay dotting the broad brown meadows used to make a picturesque scene among the twisting blue curves of the river.
THE FIRST LIBRARY
Books and library facilities were not a chief concern of the town authorities in 1800, and thus it was that the first library was established by two public-spirited fami- lies, the Bradleys and the Tuttles. It was set up in the house of Horace Bradley, son of Amasa Bradley, on the turnpike north of the Sleeping Giant .* Here were made available to neighbors and friends the following fifty- eight books which, though doubtless informative, might not prove in all cases to be entertaining.
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