USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Hamden > The history of Hamden, Connecticut, 1786-1959 > Part 24
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When Frederick D. Grave lived in a wooden house on the corner of Davis Street and Lovers' Lane, he moored near the bridge a dark green pleasure boat let- tered on the end Leonora. He also kept two beautiful deer in a long runway under the heavy foliage on the bank overlooking the lake. In spring, the Country Club bank was literally covered with thick pink laurel. In winter, tobogganists flew down the double hills and skimmed over the lake, and skaters came from the boat- house up to the Whitney Avenue bridge.
THE TOWN'S BUSINESS
A town meeting held in 1890, disturbed at the com- paratively large sum ($ 1,406.44) which had been drawn from the treasury by the selectmen in the previous year, named a committee of three-John T. Henry, Henry
LAKE WHITNEY
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Showing Day's Store and Boathouse, and the Old Icehouses
Gift of Arnold G. Dana
Gift of James J. McGuire
St. John the Baptist's First Meetinghouse
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Tuttle, and Samuel Crafts-to make an investigation. The committee published their findings in a ten-page report. As to roads, Mr. Crafts said that dirt was scraped into a pile in the center, to be washed back again into the gutter, and that in some places the gutters were higher than the road bed. "You cannot build a good road under water," he said, adding, "there is nothing that discredits a town like bad roads, or helps it like good ones." For a ten-hour day, $4.50 seemed to him to be too much. Though work was supposed to be car- ried on only from March to September, there had been a charge for every month in the year. "Ten hours' work done in December and January must some of it be done by faith and not by sight."
Mr. Tuttle pointed out that one of the selectmen had sold the town 10,988 feet of plank and timber, a con- siderable portion of which was of inferior quality, not worth over half the price paid nor fit for use in bridges. He had also sold the town grain and feed at 10 to 30 cents a bag over the market price. In criticizing the management of the town farm, he said, "Many believe it would cost less to board the inmates at a first class hotel."
Mr. Henry stressed the improper disbursement of funds. Some bills had been submitted to the town on ragged dirty pieces of paper, and some in illegible pen- cil marks. Most of these were "without form and void." One bill did not even state to whom the town owed the money. Notes amounting to $3,700 had been paid but not canceled. A local politician collected for bills marked "To Shovellers" and "Town of Hamden to Italian help and others, Dr." In commenting on this one Mr. Henry indignantly declared, "this bill is just as incomprehensible to your committee as it would be were
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it to read as follows, 'Town of Hamden to Turks and Infidels, Dr.'" Contrasting the amount paid to Ham- den's selectmen with the payments made by Bethany, Cheshire, North Haven, and Wallingford (ranging from $229 to $682), he urgently recommended that the town publish each year a report of expenditures.
Another committee investigated "the doings of the Justices of the Peace, with power to call for persons and papers." They reported that a justice had failed for a whole year to submit his quarterly reports to the town treasurer. One man had been sent to jail twice and the justice had collected $25.66 for costs when he had no jurisdiction, and the warrants did not show that the man was ever arrested or brought before him for trial. On one occasion a bond of $200 was forfeited; the justice settled with the attorney for $50 instead of the full amount, took $46 as costs, and the town got $4. "The state prison bird escaped from justice." After this re- port was submitted, the justice resigned.
HEALTH
Dr. Edwin Swift made his last health report in 1890, after he had been a practitioner in the town for nearly fifty years. In it he said,
The epidemic which during the last fall swept over Europe with such fearful fatality, appeared among us and continued with unabated violence until Febru- ary, during which time it is believed scarcely a house- hold escaped its influence, causing more deaths among us as well as elsewhere, than any epidemic of modern times. Its subsidence left many of its victims weak and diseased, some of whom have, after weeks or months of suffering, been obliged to succumb to the fell de- stroyer.
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Dr. George Joslin, who came to Mount Carmel from Vermont in 1889 and succeeded Dr. Swift as health officer two years later, said that there were from three hundred to four hundred cases of the ague, and that malaria was so common that New Haven people had a saying, "Go to Hamden if you want to die." The New Haven Water Company bought property along the lakeside and cleaned it up in an effort to deal with the mosquitoes, thus greatly lessening the prevalence of malaria.
ROADS, BRIDGES, AND ANOTHER NEGATIVE VOTE
Travel on some of the roads of the town was ham- pered by bushes and branches along the sides, and in 1891 the selectmen were instructed to clear the roads on both sides for a distance of twelve feet from the center of the road.
An examination of Ithiel Town's covered bridge in 1886 had appeared to satisfy the town authorities that its timbers were firm and sound and good for fifty years more with proper care of roof and foundations. Never- theless repairs made in 1890 were not satisfactory, and an appropriation of $5,500 was authorized for an iron structure "of sufficient width and strength for loaded teams to pass each other, with 6 foot sidewalks, suit- able railings, etc."
Once again, Hamden was given the opportunity to take advantage of the state law of 1866 permitting the formation of a single school district for the town, and the motion to do so was defeated, 60 to 137, indicating decisively that the townspeople were still content with the district committeemen and the board of school visit- ors.
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The Hamden Manufacturing Company, organized by Horace Shares and Charles and Jared Benham in 1889, took over the Auger Shop, and employed about sixty men.
Mr. Witte was making straw board boxes in Mount Carmel to be used by local manufacturers as containers for small hardware and other goods.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which had just absorbed the Whitney Arms Company, was permitted to build eight magazines for the storage of gunpowder, each to hold not more than 250 kegs, with 25 pounds in each keg, and not nearer to the street than 800 feet, in a wooded area between Putnam Avenue and what is now Treadwell Street, a road which the company constructed as the north boundary of their land. In 1890 this street was designated as "the high- way from Old Piney Road northeast to Pine Swamp."
John Dickerman sold 60,000 hickory hoops of 7 foot length, to be used on barrels of ingot copper. The coopers came to Mount Carmel from New York in 1890, and made the hoops near where the poles were cut. Poles were not again in demand, and the trees were allowed to grow for cord wood.
In the 1880's, a three-story building had been erected in front of the Mount Carmel depot by John Andrews and Cecil Burleigh on the Bellamy tavern site. It had a grist mill and saw mill, and Mr. Andrews conducted a business in flour, feed, coal, and wood. The upper part of the building, used for public meetings and enter- tainments, was known as Andrews Hall. Here John Andrews' son George, who later succeeded Ellsworth Cooper as town clerk, conducted a general store.
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George Andrews kept a diary, and its notations give a graphic, colorful picture of this decade, showing the life of a typical Connecticut small-town farmer. It may have been a simple life, but it was busy and excit- ing. One January the entries ran:
Sleigh goes well on the snow. Rain heavy enough to overflow Todd's bridge. Bazil Munson died. School meeting, am chosen committee. Let team to Chauncey Ives for Pinafore, $2. Sereno Cook bought a new horse. I bought carpet and three new chairs for the parlor. Thermometer at Mr. Hitchcock's store 22 be- low o. Had the cow butchered. Couple broke through the ice at Clark's Pond. Carted manure to young or- chard. Measured wood in Tom Swamp for Wales Dickerman. Go to church annual meeting in evening. Had horse sharpened. Center lamp in the church fell down. In a.m. go to Meriden and buy lamps for church, $28. Strawride to Charles Allen's.
In October, 1891, Mr. Andrews did not mean that he "fixed" the election, when he wrote, "Annual town meeting. I am moderator. Result Republican."
In 1892, he recorded the burning of the town-farm barn at 2 A.M. The school committee sold the old No. 3 schoolhouse at auction to Sereno Cook for $60. In one day he attended the funerals of three well-known men-Lucius Ives, Dudley Waite, and Charles Dick- erman. He noted that Reverend George Sherwood Dickerman, who was raised in the Mount Carmel Church, filled the pulpit there in the summer of 1892.
The year 1893 was marked throughout by violent storms. George Andrews said in May: "Hard rain. Part of Ives and Miller dam carried away. Washout near Brooksvale." In July the icehouses in Whitney-
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ville were struck by lightning and burned, and Arthur Woodruff's house was struck; in August, "very severe rain and wind storm. Trees uprooted and blown down."
In the following year, a telephone was installed in the Andrews store, one of the earliest in the town. It was attached to the wall, had a wet battery, and a crank on the side to turn in making calls. Mr. Andrews trad- ed bicycles with Joe Maley, went to Prospect with the children for blackberries, drove to see the gypsies, went fishing on Bantam Lake, to the cider mill, and the tem- perance concert. His wife Mary went to sewing society at Mrs. H. G. Dickerman's for the afternoon and eve- ning. The church held a fair, and Mary's Sunday School class presented her with a Bible.
ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST CHURCH
Catholic families in the southwestern part of town found attendance at St. Mary's in Mount Carmel a great inconvenience. In 1893 services were held in the home of James Cashman on Alstrum Street. A small barnlike building nearby, originally a bicycle clubhouse used by the Star Cycle Club and later the property of Constable Malachi Shannahan, was purchased from him by Willis Benham and given to the church group, along with a cash present of $100. One of the parishioners, when asked how the gift happened to be made, replied, "Well, Malachi was a Catholic and a Democrat, and Mr. Benham was a prominent Protestant and a Repub- lican, but"-gesturing with his first and second fingers crossed-"they were just like that!" When the parish outgrew these quarters, an imposing church was built in 1919, just over the boundary line in New Haven.
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TRANSPORTATION
The stage lines had continued to run in competition with the horsecars, and apparently they had suffered little loss of patronage to the railroad; but the advent of electric trolleys proved too competitive. Brainard Ives's Mount Carmel stage ran until 1896, but then yielded to the faster and cheaper method of travel. In 1893 the selectmen appointed a committee to protect the town's interest in reference to the building of electric railways along the highways. On Dixwell and Whit- ney Avenues the trolleys followed the same course that the horsecars had used. The State Street line was es- tablished in 1894, and in 1896 the Whitney Avenue line reached Whitneyville center.
One of the elegant modes of travel in this period was still horse-drawn-the tallyho, sometimes tandem and sometimes four-horse. James H. Webb drove one, and it was a popular means of getting to ball games.
SCHOOLS
The acting school visitors in 1894, Elias Dickerman and Father Winters-reported that regular teachers' meetings had been held, in which papers were read by members of the group, on topics taught in the schools. One of them dealt with normal-school methods, and it aroused the visitors' enthusiastic interest. But the ob- vious need of special training for all teachers in the town alike, and in the district system the probability that a trained teacher would be followed by one who was not, made the board despair of a progressive change in teaching methods. At this time the total expense of the schools was $6,327.12, about one third of which was
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paid by the state, leaving the town's share at $4,270.63. This was not much better than in 1887, when the town paid $3,869 for the same number of schools, manned by sixteen teachers. Apparently town sentiment re- sponded favorably to the reports on the normal-school methods; for the next town meeting voted at long last, by the close margin of 183 to 177, for the consolidation of the school districts.
In the annual town report of 1895 appears the first official report of the newly elected nine-member school committee. It deplored the congestion in District No. 13 (Highwood), where 173 pupils were accommodated in two rooms. It was estimated that $9,000 would be needed for the following year. The nineteen teachers were being paid at the rate of $8 a week. The mem- bers of the first school board were: John Winters, Ar- thur Woodruff, John Hindinger, William J. Brewster, Henry Stadtmiller, Charles F. Clarke, Hervey Potter, Sereno Cook, and Cullen B. Foote.
THE WHITNEYVILLE CHURCH
The one hundredth anniversary of the Whitneyville Church was celebrated in 1895. The pastor, Charles F. Clarke, delivered the historical address; Deacon James Payne read a historical poem; and Nathan Gorham, aged seventeen, a descendant of the first pastor, Abra- ham Alling, recited an original verse. Judge S. E. Mun- son, representing United Church on New Haven Green, spoke on "Our Lineage" and pointed out that the original members of the East Plains congregation came from United Church's predecessor, the Fair Haven Church. Reverend Charles A. Dinsmore, the only liv- ing ex-pastor, spoke on Some Distinctive Characteristics
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of the Whitneyville Church. Reverend George Dusin- berre spoke in his capacity as pastor of the Hamden Plains Methodist Church, as "your successor on Ham- den Plains." Another original poem was read by Charles Merriman. A display of historical relics was shown in the old parsonage on the church property. A new parsonage, a short distance down Whitney Avenue, had been built in 1889. There was a note of sadness at the Centennial, caused by the death of Eli Whitney, 2d, who was to have been one of the speakers.
The Boys' Brigade flourished at this time. Sponsored by the church, its activities, reminiscent of the Rectory School, were of both a religious and a military flavor. A church leaflet, Whitneyville Tidings, dated February, 1897, speaks of the organization in these words:
The Boys' Brigade have elected officers for three months, Pres., Burton A. Davis, Secretary, Fred Cook, Treasurer, H. Truman Moulton. The company was visited on a recent evening by Brigadier General Per- rigo, Captain Todd, and others, and upon their invi- tation joined with Co. H, of the Epworth Church, in attendance at the regimental drill at the armory. They were praised for the excellence of their drill.
In March, this notice appeared:
Interest in the Boys' Brigade is growing. Dr. H. H. Smith has been appointed commandant, and Mr. W. F. Smith Captain. The former has charge of the Bible Class work and the religious interests of the or- ganization, and the latter is at the head of the company as a military organization. The boys show an increased sense of responsibility. All boys between 12 and 21 are wanted.
It was the time-honored custom in this church for one of the deacons to preach whenever the pastor was on
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The History of Hamden
his vacation. One of Eli Whitney's daughters was mar- ried in the church in 1898.
The Ecclesiastical Society instituted a radical change in their method of raising funds by abandoning the pew-rent system and substituting for it a system of pledges with weekly offerings. It was boasted that "this society has a habit of keeping its deficits promptly cleared up and carrying no debts over." The year 1897 marked the end of the Society, when it voted unani- mously to transfer its property to the church and to dis- solve its own organization. By an amendment to the church's constitution, three trustees assumed some of the duties which the Society had had. The Mount Car- mel Ecclesiastical Society did not transfer its property and responsibilities to its church until twenty years later.
THE HAMDEN GRANGE
George Andrews' diary tells of many Grange meet- ings and of the rehearsals for the degrees. The Grange was a flourishing organization in Hamden in the 1890's, owning its own building on Dixwell Avenue, Center- ville, to the west of the Grace Church rectory. Its ritual had particular appeal to farmers, with its personification of Pomona, Flora, and Ceres. The active membership included the well-known names of Munson, Wooding, Dickerman, Peck, Caldwell, Beers, Beardsley, Andrews, Clark, Cook, and Mathews.
The members held debates, exhibits, box festivals, cake auctions, and fairs. They once presented a play called "Limb of the Law" in the town hall; and another called "Darkey Wood Dealer," both proving so popu- lar that they were performed in Wallingford and
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Woodbridge as well. There was much friendly visit- ing of Hamden Grange with the Granges of neighbor- ing towns, including Orange, East Haven, North Ha- ven, Cheshire, and Stratford. Hamden members once went in a body to the cattle show at Mad River. When the group visited Woodbridge, "all go, including chil- dren."
They had a turkey supper for "ladies' night," and ice cream as a treat for "overseer's night"; they gave a din- ner set to the Andrewses and a chair to the Tuttles, and all in all furnished a medium for happy, friendly good times in their own and neighboring towns.
George Andrews attended many auctions and cattle shows in this period. His father sold the store to Bur- ton Hoskins. He traded horses with 'Neas Warner- "my white horse for his black mare." He butchered two pigs; grafted apple trees; Charley the hired man was arrested again; there were trips to the woods for arbutus; and other activities were plowing, fence mend- ing, housecleaning, and beating carpets at the church. "Went spearing with Chauncey, only caught 3 small suckers and a pickerel." "Jury Common Pleas in morn- ing. Prayer meeting in evening [where the pleas were perhaps uncommon ]." "Box of Larkin soap came, with 4 chairs, brush and comb, and flag." Also, he took a bicycle trip with Al Deane to Branford and Guilford.
MACADAMIZED STREETS
A survey of Dixwell Avenue from the New Haven line out to the Jared Bassett place had been accepted, and the town voted to improve it "for such distance as may be possible by State and County appropriations together with $880 from the town treasury." A legis-
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lative act of 1897 brought state aid for the three arterial roads of Hamden-Dixwell, Whitney, and State Street. No sooner had Dixwell Avenue been macadamized than residents along Whitney Avenue demanded the same; and in spite of the efforts of the west side of the town to defeat the appropriation toward it, they were no match in voting strength for united Whitney- ville, Centerville, and Mount Carmel. When the vic- tory for Whitney Avenue was won in a noisy town meeting, Bela Mann had the Web Company's whistle blown loud and long in celebration. For years there- after, whenever Highwood or Hamden Plains people promoted a sectional scheme for their corner of the town, someone would jokingly say, "Bela Mann will blow his whistle on you again."
A special town meeting accepted the offer of Robert Dickerman and others to raise $3,200 by subscription toward hardening Circular Avenue, and the selectmen were authorized to borrow enough to complete the work. To safeguard the town's interest, the meeting voted that no contract be let and no work done until the full amount subscribed had been paid into the town treasury. This road was a great benefit to farmers and market gardeners in the Dunbar section.
The selectmen named all the streets branching from the three main highways, and signs were erected at the corners. Coming down Whitney Avenue, street names which derived from prominent families are noticeable: Tuttle, Todd, Sherman, Woodruff, and Ives in Mount Carmel; Treadwell, Putnam, Augur, and Blake in Whitneyville, and Davis in honor of John H. Davis who was at that time first selectman. Main Street, in the extreme western part of the town, is not a main street and never was-it is a typical narrow country
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road profusely bordered in summer with pink wild roses, and in autumn with tall brilliant purple asters.
Babcock Hill in Whitneyville was cut down, and hills on the Hartford Turnpike were graded. Watering troughs were set up in Whitneyville and Ivesville. The tax rate at this time was 15 mills. The Hamden town court was founded in 1897, with Fred Tuttle of Center- ville as its layman judge.
THE SPANISH WAR
The Spanish War drew some Hamden men into en- listment. Several officers of the Connecticut Second Regiment and many men went to other cities to get into regiments that were going to the front. No list of Hamden men who were in the war is available. The names of several who were living at the time of the sesquicentennial were Frank Blake, George Brundage, Joseph Breton, Marion Holmes, Alex Langtry, Jacob Moehl, William Reader, and Joseph Webb.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
Republican control in Hamden was so consistent that a Democratic victory in 1899 was a distinct shock to many. George Andrews probably did not mean to link the two events when he wrote, "Democratic victory, Charles Warner, Pat Nolan-Republican ticket all thrown out. First heavy frost." Nevertheless, it was a frost for the Republicans! The vote for representative was a tie, and a special election was called for the fol- lowing day, when Dwight Mix, the brother of Norris Mix, won by a single vote. Jared Benham, the defeated candidate, was "bedfast with pneumonia," and could not
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canvass the town to whip up votes. Mr. Mix's support- ers used a great number of horses and buggies to get in the back-country vote.
While these exciting events were taking place about him, George Andrews was getting a load of leaves for the barn, attending a husking bee, whitewashing the kitchen, and cleaning the well. He set 110 of Uncle William's duck eggs, and 13 brown leghorns. He sat up with his sick father. He found a calf with the yellow cow in the pasture, and brought them home. He traded cows with Will Goodsell, and the Goodsell cow he sold to Lorenzo Peck for $ 19. He drew off the vinegar. A new pastor was selected for the Mount Carmel Church, Reverend Howard Mudie, at a salary of $700 and parsonage. There came "a snow and blow, about as hard a storm as we have had since '88. Drifted 5 feet high in front of barn and the shed full. Shovel snow most of the day. Go to C. Clark's on horseback."
Dr. Henry H. Smith became health officer in 1899, and his first report expressed regret that there was no supervision of the many dairies in the town. He said:
Hamden furnishes a large quantity of milk which is generally of excellent quality, but a regular inspection of the stables, the herds and the care of the milk, by someone who possessed the requisite knowledge and had authority to act, would undoubtedly result in im- proving its healthfulness and safety as a food for infants and children.
Milk was delivered in horse-drawn wagons. From a large can beside him, the driver would ladle out the amount requested into pitchers left on the front steps. An extra charge was made if the milk pitcher was cov- ered.
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In 1900, when President Mckinley and Theodore Roosevelt were elected, Hamden was once more in- volved in a local tussle over a representative to the leg- islature. Sam Flight had secured the Republican nom- ination, but at the polls he was defeated by Edwin Pot- ter, Democrat, who had a margin of 162 votes. This was, after the loss of the town election in the previous year, another stinging setback to the party which nor- mally showed a majority of 300. Mr. Flight was a large market gardener in the Hamden Plains section, and owner of many acres of Hamden property. He once said that when he lived in the old house near the Brooks school, he could look in all directions and see no land but his own. He and Andrew Ure of the same locality were active in political and civic life, and both were market gardeners on a large scale. Each of them cultivated as much as twenty to twenty-five acres in strawberries alone. In the middle of June each em- ployed a hundred pickers, many of them women, whose working hours were from seven in the morning to six- thirty in the evening. It was a common occurrence for them to send two carloads at a time to Boston. Many a local strawberry festival enjoyed unlimited quantities of delicious berries from their fields.
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