USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Hamden > The history of Hamden, Connecticut, 1786-1959 > Part 20
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storms, to rot and rust, are advised not to buy any of these implements, or any other of any practical value, except a spade or hoe."
NEW BUSINESSES
Centerville had several obscure businesses, one of which was indicated by William Hill's deeding as se- curity for a loan to Andrew T. Andrews (proprietor at Temperance Hall) a match machine and frames "used by me in my factory in said Town of Hamden, for the purpose of making friction matches."
A similar paper, made out in 1855, shows Joseph Bromley to have been owner of a stone-dressing ma- chine.
BEERS'S FLOUR MILL
On Mill River in Centerville, directly north of the Candee factory, Philos Beers in 1860 acquired the site of a little-known business of making wooden knobs, which had been conducted by a Mr. Hart. Under the firm name of Beers and Fenn, he manufactured wheels and spokes for a very short time, and when the building burned he built a grist and flour mill for grinding flour, feed, bones, and plaster. The place later was owned by Andrew J. Doolittle, and then by Ira Beers, the son of Philos.
PRUNING SHEARS
In a small brick building beside the Beers mill, John T. Henry began in 1859 to make pruning shears, sheep shears, and garden implements. The manufacture of pruning shears was suggested to him by Reverend
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Charles W. Everest, the rector of Grace Church and founder of the Rectory School, who came to him with a bleeding finger which he had injured in using an ordi- nary pair of shears. "John," said the rector, "I think you could make a better pair." Mr. Henry took the suggestion and successfully invented an implement which featured a movable curved blade cutting against a curved jaw. He erected a better building when his business expanded, and he sold his shears in South America and in Europe, as well as in the South where they were extensively used by orange growers. Mr. Henry's son Rene joined him in the business, and con- ducted it after his death.
SHARES BRICKS
When Horace P. Shares began his own brick business on State Street in 1856, he made 1,000,000 bricks a year. Before that time, he had been in charge of the Warner, Mansfield, and Stiles Brick Company in North Haven. Prospecting in the Quinnipiac Valley in search of a superior quality of clay, he found it in almost in- exhaustible quantities. Mr. Shares was the son-in-law of Alfred Ives, whose son Loyal became a partner in the business. Brick manufacture has been a success in this locality for generations, and the name of Shares is still always associated with it.
WEBBING
In 1863, Leverett Candee removed his rubber manu- facture business to New Haven, and leased the Hamden factory to Bela Mann, Ward Coe, and Joseph Leaven- worth, for the New Haven Web Company. In a few
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years this company bought the factory, and following a disastrous fire, rebuilt it in brick. Using rubber thread, cotton yarns, and silk floss, they made elastic and non- elastic webbing, such as is used for suspenders, braid, and women's underwear. Starting with a single loom and a capital stock of $25,000, the plant soon had over 100 looms and capital of $60,000.
NEEDLES
Andrew H. Smith, who had made needles at Pros- pect, came to Hamden in 1864. With his brothers, Ira and Julius, who had been associated with Joseph Gran- niss at Mount Carmel in making small carriage mal- leable parts, he began the local manufacture of needles in a building across Mill River from the Ives and Gran- niss Brass Works, and continued the business there for twenty-one years. Another small needle factory was later set up in Centerville, near the Beers mill.
ICE
Samuel Perry and the Townshend brothers began in 1865 to harvest and store ice from Lake Whitney, a short distance above the dam and north of William Day's boathouses. When the icehouses burned, their business was moved up the lake, almost to the covered bridge on Davis Street. Starting with a capital of $7,500 and a 500-ton annual cutting of ice, their business grew in size and profit for many years. Every winter, when the ice was thick enough, teams of horses were driven up and down and back and forth on its surface, pulling the ice cutters that marked off the huge dominoes which were later guided by the workmen into the open water
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that ran like a long black ribbon to the houses, where they were drawn in and stored in sawdust for use through the summer.
Norris Mix purchased a farm at the corner of Dix- well and Shepard Avenues in 1863, and for many years conducted an ice business from what is now known as Mix's Pond. Mr. Mix was first selectman of the town in 1865 and 1866, and again from 1876 to 1879. Sam- uel Flight sold ice from his pond in Dunbar, and other familiar names connected with selling ice in subsequent years were O'Connell, Sanford, Neal, and Nolan.
BELLS
In 1867, R. S. Clark and H. D. Smith began in Hamden the manufacture of sleigh bells and other small bells, for clocks, doors, and schools. Space was at first rented in the factory of Ives and Granniss, but later, under Mr. Clark's sole ownership, the business was conducted farther north, at what is now known as Clark's Pond.
AFFAIRS OF THE TOWN
Town affairs were beginning to take a more busi- nesslike form, evidence of which could be seen in all departments.
The roads were maintained by men working out their taxes at the rate of $ I a day, and $2 for a man and team. Twice a year the selectmen settled with them, and if the labor was not considered satisfactory it need not be accepted as the equivalent of taxes, ac- cording to a town vote in 1866. Dixwell Avenue was surveyed from New Haven line to Shepherd's Brook,
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and stone bounds put at suitable distances in the man- ner used in New Haven.
The collection of the town taxes was assigned each year to the man submitting the lowest bid, the amount paid was usually between $50 and $80. A town meet- ing in 1857 voted "to tax ourselves 214c. on the dollar for the purpose of paying the county tax laid for the purpose of building a new jail."
An adjourned town meeting in 1866 voted that the selectmen cause to be put up guideposts at the follow- ing places, viz .:
Near Merrit Todd's house, pointing to New Haven.
Chauncey Ives' "
Bethany.
James Ives' store,
North Haven.
Hobart Kimberly's store,
Quinnipiac.
Charles Brockett's,
Wallingford.
Railroad crossing by
Jeremiah Leek's " Centerville.
A decided advance from the lax bookkeeping methods of the earlier days was made in the town meeting of 1868. The selectmen were "authorized and directed to procure a set of books to keep an account of their trans- actions in, and to keep an account of their doings therein, open to the inspection of the public." Vouch- ers were to be used for expenditures, and the town farm was also to keep record books. "The auditors of town accounts," it was added, "are appointed in the expecta- tion that they will perform their duties, and that office was not created solely as an office of honor, or as a sinecure, or a burlesque." All town officers were here- after to be elected by ballot.
The same town meeting voted to offer a bounty of $100 for the arrest and conviction of the person who had set Charles Mix's barn on fire, New Year's Eve
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The History of Hamden
of 1863. Another $25 was offered for the apprehen- sion of chicken thieves, and $50 for the arrest and con- viction of one who had entered William Potter's house and stolen his clothes.
The people of Hamden would take up the matter of school laws when-and not until-they were ready to do it, as the following town meeting vote indicated:
Voted that this meeting so far as the taking action on the Union School Law passed at the last session of the legislature is concerned, be adjourned without day.
During the years of the Civil War and after, a group of young men calling themselves the Sons of Freedom, held regular meetings in the same building where town meetings were held-upstairs in Chatfield's Hall. This group was presented by Congressman Woodruff who represented this district at the time, with an American flag, its stars arranged in a circle. The flag was draped at the deaths of Lincoln, Garfield, and Mckinley. In recent years, Minotte Chatfield gave this heirloom to the American Legion Post No. 88 of Hamden.
OMNIBUS TRAVEL IN THE SIXTIES
Omnibus service between Whitneyville and New Ha- ven during the Civil War was provided by E. W. Rog- ers, whose conveyance left the Chapel Street depot seven times a day between 6 A.M. and 8 P.M. On the return trips, the omnibus left the Whitney Armory beginning at 7.50 A.M. Two trips a day were made by the Centerville line, managed successively by Hale and Allen, Bradley, Bailey, and Eneas Warner.
Reverend Joseph Brewster, rector for a short time of Grace Episcopal Church, lived at Spruce Bank. One
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morning he complained to 'Neas Warner that the bus was late. 'Neas, who had great respect for the rector, replied, "I'll get you to New Haven on time if I kill the horses." He deposited a bruised and shaken pastor at his destination on time, but the passenger obviously felt that the physical cost had been too great! Reverend Mr. Brewster bought the farm at Spruce Bank which he renamed "Edgehill" in 1865, during his thirty-year pastorate at Christ Church, New Haven, at the end of which he rendered his service to Grace Church. He always delighted in the beautiful view of the near-by mountain head, and the quiet waters of Carmel Lake at the edge of his property. Three of his sons followed him in the Episcopal ministry: Right Reverend Chaun- cey B. Brewster, Bishop of Connecticut, Reverend Ben- jamin Brewster, who was at the time of his death Bishop of Maine; and Reverend William Brewster of North- ford, Connecticut.
THE HAMDEN FAIR
In 1862 Hamden held her own agricultural fair, chiefly memorable on account of an enormous pumpkin which weighed 280 pounds. The vine on which it grew yielded 1,200 pounds of pumpkins. This giant speci- men was taken to New York-though not as a Cinder- ella coach, which it might well have been! and there it won another well-deserved prize.
In that year the New Haven County Agricultural fair was held at Hamilton Park, and one of the chief attractions was Blake's stone crusher which, according to the newspaper account in the New Haven Palladium, "has a six-horse-power engine, and can munch up 150 horse loads of stone in a day." Julius Gorham won a
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The History of Hamden
prize there for plowing an eighth of an acre in sixteen minutes.
FAIR AT CENTERVILLE TROTTING PARK
The next year the Palladium reported in detail the "Centerville Fair held on October 14 and 15, 1863, by the Hamden Agricultural and Horticultural So- ciety."
On the first day 2,500 were in attendance. There was a procession a half-mile long, composed of yoked cattle and decorated wagons. There were sixteen en- tries of cows. J. J. Webb exhibited a bull, "Empire State," weighing 2,000 pounds. The exhibits of fowls, swine, and sheep attracted attention; also mowers, horse rakes, and corn shellers. Enos Bassett exhibited doves, especially those with ruffled necks; Jared Atwater, forty varieties of apples; A. C. Doolittle, a pumpkin weighing almost 125 pounds; there were mammoth watermelons, and Samuel Hickocks displayed large white turnips. Jabez Potter showed sweet potatoes, and sugar cane stalks 14 feet high; Jared Atwater had dahlias 14 feet high. Home-made grape wine and sugar-cane sirup were also on hand. John Osborn showed his patented fruit cans. Birdsey Bradley displayed the pelt of a Rocky Mountain wolf, and two pelts of prairie wolves; Howard Sherman had a teakwood table from Burma, and T. Bassett a blanket "said to be two hundred years old."
The Cheshire Band furnished music and the cadets of the Rectory School, under the direction of their "usher" Mr. Fowler, held a drill.
The event was held on the grounds now occupied by the Masonic Temple on the east side of Whitney Av-
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enue. Charles Dickerman (who succeeded Jesse Good- year as operator of the old Centerville House) leased the grounds from Elias Ford, and then subleased it to himself, William D. Hall, and Orrin Dickerman for a half-mile trotting course.
This was a period in which horses were of paramount practical value, and they were also the chief interest of many men as an exciting pastime.
The equine events of the fair included a race for "lady riders," in which the entries were Sarah Pardee, Ellen Bradley, Hattie Collett, Ellen Hinman, Nellie Bradley, Ellen Leek, and Mrs. Nellie Hall. Each rider was given a dollar prize, and a box of blacking was awarded to Miss Pardee as the best rider. Elias Dickerman had the best roadster; Ellsworth Bradley, the best stallion; Henry Todd, the best mare; J. A. Gorham, the best family horse; and George Bradley, the best matched horses.
Although it was an agricultural exhibit, the horses attracted a large share of the attention. Mr. N. D. Sperry's "turn-out" from New Haven, a pair of blacks with "good step and carriage" (referring to the horses and not the vehicle) was much admired. There was a five-mile race, trotting, and an auction sale at the end. The track was "extemporized for the occasion, but was nevertheless good."
1864 FAIR
On the strength of the overwhelming success of the fair of 1863, the track was put in better condition for the following year, when the five-mile trot was won by C. Pickett's "Kitty" in 16.01, and the mile by Charles
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Dickerman's "Billy" in 2.53. A prize of $20 was awarded for the best roadster.
The Tenth School District entered a wagon drawn by seventeen pair of oxen, loaded with flowers and fruit and decorated with flags and ribbons. North Haven sponsored a wagon with eighteen pair of oxen. Teams and box wagons were in attendance from New Haven, North Haven, Woodbridge, and other towns.
James J. Webb showed forty cows, six of them thor- oughbred Durham. Elam Dickerman exhibited a pair of fat cattle weighing 4,000 pounds. Someone showed eight cats, each of a different color. Tobacco was a prominent display. Mr. Webb had five acres in culti- vation, and had just built a large dryhouse. S. C. Bab- cock had raised a large crop on a quarter of an acre. William Dickerman's crop that year required the con- struction of a barn fifty feet long. Charles P. Augur displayed grapes, and other fruits were exhibited by Vinus Wooding and Charles Merriman. Mrs. Augur and Mrs. Hall had exhibits of "hair work" in wreaths and imitation bouquets, such as were framed and used as wall decorations in the fashionable homes of the period.
The exhibits of sorghum were of interest because the war had made sugar expensive. The cider mill at Cen- terville, close to Mix's Pond, had just been turned into a sorghum mill, and proved a great convenience to the community.
Stirring music was furnished by the Centerville Band. A special stage to the fair was driven from the New Haven depot.
The success of the Hamden fairs indicated an active interest in the improvement of livestock and of vegeta- bles and fruits. The value of horses was increasing. In
The Centerville Web Shop, Where Goodyear Shoes Were First Made
Kimberly Store and Lower Axle Works
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1844 there were 197 horses in the town, assessed at an average value of $30.68 each; and by 1885, 606 horses were valued at nearly $60 each.
Although women had participated as horseback riders in the fairs, there were many of the gentler sex who were obliged from necessity to "hitch up" the family horse who nevertheless did not feel at home with horses. Mrs. Philos Dickerman of Mount Carmel, in company with a friend, had to drive a new and mettlesome horse which her husband had just bought, and put him in the barn for the first time after dark. The friend said, "Aren't you afraid?" She replied, with true New Eng- land spirit, "I don't know whether I'm afraid or not; I only know that it has to be done."
Seymour Dickerman was a great horse lover, and much admiring comment was made in 1850 on the beautiful pair of spirited sorrels that he drove briskly up the north slope of the Sleeping Giant.
"THE SLEEPING GIANT" IN A POEM
Charles Merriman, who exhibited fruit at the Ham- den fair in 1864, wrote a poem of sixty-four verses, entitled The Legend of the Sleeping Giant, which was printed in a stiff brown cover. Selected lines from the opus are these :
The ride was long, but autumn's russet tinges Were on the hills, and in the valleys spread, Wild asters lined the road with purple fringes, And stocks of corn suggested winter bread.
Then up above Mount Carmel's towering crest, We saw the autumn foliage and the pines, And far away upon the Giant's breast, We studied out his form in curving lines.
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The History of Hamden
A Sleeping Giant! lying there in state, His head is pillowed on a running stream, And laves his temples, while night's shadows wait, But noon still finds him in his quiet dream.
His dream must be of trees and sun and water, Which rest forever on his upturned face, Or of the raincloud when its brilliant daughter Curves her bright bow above his resting place.
Above his quiet form the lightning flashes, And robes him for an instant in its glare, Ere the hoarse thunder, with its startling crashes, Rebounds in echoes on his forehead bare.
Leagues off the contour of his massive head, Stands boldly out against the azure sky. He lies serenely in his rock-bound bed, While rippling streamlets pass him swiftly by.
And when the atmosphere is calm and still, His form is covered with a robe of blue,
The Giant's form is in the far horizon, Touching its dark blue to the light blue sky, While fancy pictures out the bed he lies on, Where rushing streamlets pass unheeding by.
Spread out before the eye a scene elysian Lies all before you in its calm repose.
The Giant seems a barrier in the valley, Turning the roadways past his head and feet.
He takes no heed of any life around him, Cloud shadows flit above him as he lies.
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And then perchance will come a youth and maiden, Or troops of them while merry voices ring, Shouting and laughing while their arms are laden With the first blossoms of the early spring.
He lies there like a knight encased in armor, And resting on the laurels he has won.
As we approach him, all his robe of azure Slowly dissolves, and mingles with the air ;
Through all the wild scenes of his deep seclusion And changing shadows of his dim retreat, My fancy, with a touch of strange delusion, Would bring him quickly on his Giant feet.
The Whitneyville Church built a $ 10,000 addition in 1866. Reverend Austin Putnam was a leader in the community as well as in the church, and so much a pa- triarch that many affectionately called him "Father Putnam." His doctrines were accepted faithfully by his followers, and he himself was so sure that his was the only right way that he often prayed, "Forgive our enemies and lead them to see the right."
The Mount Carmel Church, too, was remodeled soon after this, at a cost of $2,000, and a $1,200 pipe organ was installed. Throughout the years the church had provided whatever musical instruments were in cur- rent use for the accompaniment of singing, from the fiddle, double- and single-bass viol, and other stringed and wind instruments, to the melodeon, cabinet organ, and now a pipe organ.
KIMBERLY'S
The Kimberly store at Mount Carmel, which had been acquired by Ezra Kimberly in 1795, was conducted
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The History of Hamden
in the eighteen twenties by his son Roderick, who was first selectman in 1830. One of his business advertise- ments in a New Haven newspaper in 1836 announced that he was agent for a popular patent medicine. The third generation to run the store was Hobart Kimberly. Before Hobart's brother Burton departed for Califor- nia during the gold rush, the brothers, with their father, bought a cargo of coarse salt, which came to them by ship to New Haven and thence to their grist mill via the Northampton Railroad. They ground the salt fine for family use, packaged it in small bags, and marketed it in New Haven. Hobart Kimberly wore a straw hat, linen duster, and carpet slippers summer and winter, and boasted that he had not been out of sight of the store for twenty years. Of him George S. Dickerman said:
I knew the store at the Steps in 1850. Hobart Kim- berly was then the storekeeper, and the business seems to have come down to him in continuous succession from the trade started with the building of Munson's mills in 1734. Kimberly's ways were about as primitive as the store. It used to be said that he had not been in New Haven for twenty years. Some farmer from up the road, going to town with his load of produce, would stop at the store and take orders for any stock that might be needed, and on the way back would stop again and leave what had been bought. Kimberly's manner of keeping his accounts was equally simple. If a buyer did not want to pay the cash down, he wrote the cus- tomer's name with the amount purchased on a bit of wrapping paper and dropped it into a drawer under the counter. When it came to settling up, the case was not so simple, and the buyer sometimes had trouble in find- ing out exactly how much he did owe. If a boy came asking for the bill, Kimberly was likely to say, "What's the hurry about it?" and let him go home without any bill.
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In spite of this casual bookkeeping, Hobart left an estate of considerable value, which was divided among thirty- three heirs.
Many of Hamden's businessmen were typically shrewd, and the story is told of one who warned his sons when they were old enough to go into business for themselves, "If I make you a present, I give it to you; but if I do business with you, I'll cheat you the same as I would anybody else."
HORSECARS TO CENTERVILLE
The New Haven and Centerville Horse Railroad Company received its charter from the General Assem- bly in 1865. The petitioners for the charter were Stephen Pardee, Simeon Baldwin, John Bassett, An- drew J. Doolittle, Chauncey Goodyear, Noyes Mix, Russell Leek, Jared Bassett, Charles Dickerman, Jesse Cooper, James Ives, Henry Munson, and others. They received permission to construct a railroad of not more than two tracks, through Broadway and Dixwell Av- enue in New Haven to the northerly city line, and from there to a point in Centerville near the hotel occupied by Charles Dickerman. The capital stock was $ 50,000, but this amount was soon doubled. The fare authorized was six cents in New Haven and fifteen cents in Hamden. In 1868 the printed schedule showed that cars left the Pavilion near Goodrich Street, Ham- den, for York Street and Broadway every twenty min- utes from 6.20 A.M. to 9.30 P.M., but service never went farther north than Goodrich Street. Nor did it go far- ther into New Haven than Pierpont's Market at Broad- way and York Street, for Mr. Pierpont owned the con- trolling interest in the railroad, and he would not allow
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it to pass beyond his store and thereby carry prospective business elsewhere!
WILLIAM J. LINTON, MASTER ENGRAVER
In 1867 William J. Linton sold his English home, "Brentwood," to John Ruskin, and came to live in Hamden. He purchased the Mather homestead on State Street near Davis Street, said to have been built in 1750. This home he named "Appledore," in appro- priate recognition of the lovely apple orchard on the hillside of East Rock, overlooking the peaceful Quinni- piac meadows. Linton had gained fame in England as an author and engraver in wood, and at one time had been chief illustrator for the Illustrated London News. His intimate friends included Tennyson, Carlyle, Rob- ert Browning, Longfellow, Whittier, and Bret Harte. He was close to Garibaldi through his interest in the Italian liberal movement, and actually came to this country for the purpose of winning support for it. In England he had been a liberal, an ardent Chartist, a staunch defender of the rights of workmen. Many of his illustrations appeared in American magazines.
One of his best known books, The Masters of Wood Engraving, was printed on a little hand press in his Hamden home. He lived such a completely retired life that he was practically unknown to the community dur- ing his thirty years residence here. It is reasonable to assume that he found conditions in this country so satis- factory as regards the working class, that he no longer had a militant interest in politics, such as he had felt in England. The "Appledore" press lay forgotten in the basement of Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor in New
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Haven until recent years, when it was discovered and presented to the Hamden Historical Society.
THE ATWATER FUND
In 1867, the will of George Atwater greatly bene- fited the insane poor of the town. The sum of nearly $22,000 was left in trust to the trustees of the Hospital for the Insane located at Middletown, the income to be spent for the insane poor of the State, "giving prefer- ence to the indigent insane persons, if such there may be, belonging and having legal residence in my native town of Hamden."
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