The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I, Part 73

Author: Trumbull, J. Hammond (James Hammond), 1821-1897
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Boston, E. L. Osgood
Number of Pages: 870

USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I > Part 73

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Let us compare with these descriptions of the town, two of the more simple but no less contented life of the suburbs. The first is from an account in Brillat-Savarin's "Physiologie du Goût," of an expedition after wild turkeys made while in Hartford in 1794 :-

"Accordingly one fine day Mr. King and I set out, mounted on two hacks, with the hope of arriving towards evening at the farm of Mr. Bulow [Barlow ?] situate about five mortal leagues from Hartford, in Connecticut.

"About two hours were spent in looking over the farm and its dependencies. I should willingly describe it all, but I prefer to show the reader the four buxom daughters of Mr. Bulow, for whom our arrival was a great event.

"Their age was from sixteen to twenty ; they were radiant with freshness and health, and they were altogether so simple, lithe, and easy that the most or- dinary action seemed to lend them a thousand charms. . .

" The four sisters were fully equipped with fresh dresses, new sashes, pretty hats, and dainty boots, and it was evident that they had taken some pains on our account. I had, for my part, the intention of making myself agreeable to one of the young ladies, who took my arm as naturally as if she had been my wife.

" During the intervals of conversation Mr. Bulow would from time to time ask his eldest daughter, Maria, to give us a song. And she sang without being pressed, and with charming hesitation, the national air 'Yankee Doodle,' the ' Lament of Queen Mary,' and one on Major Andre, which are all very popular in this country. Maria had taken some lessons in singing, and in this solitary place was considered quite a 'cantatrice ;' but the great merit of her song was, above all, the quality of her voice, which was at the same time sweet, fresh, and unaffected.

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"As they were getting the horses ready, Mr. Bulow took me aside and said the following remarkable words : 'You behold in me, my dear sir, a happy man, if there is one on earth ; everything you see around you and what you have seen at my house is produced on my farm. These stockings have been knitted by my daughters, my shoes and my clothes come from my herds ; they with my garden and my farm-yard supply me with plain and substantial food. The greatest praise of our government is that in Connecticut there are thousands of farmers quite as content as myself, and whose doors like mine are never locked.'" 1

The second consists of some recollections of Rocky Hill in 1816. The grown people had sedate parties, to which the ladies took their knitting, and were served with apples, walnuts, and cider. The chief amusement of the men on Thanksgiving afternoon was turkey and goose shooting. Whenever a strolling fiddler came around, the young people got up dances, " with nothing to eat," at their own houses, or on the sanded floor of Governor Wolcott's ball-room at Cherry Farm. " Bombazette " and " calico " balls were popular ; and if more elegance was required, the girls could wear their mother's gold beads and silk dresses. Huskings shortened many an otherwise monotonous evening; and once, in Richard Seymour's kitchen, pumpkins were rolled in, cut up, stewed, made into pies, baked in the presence of the huskers, and eaten before the company went home. "Did we sing? Oh, yes ; always, when we were spinning; and such lovely minor tunes !"

" We no longer 'go in,' we 'enter,' " says one who looks backward and laments. "The hearty 'thank you' has gone out of fashion ; we do not talk of books or the one party of the year; the excitement of the day is the arrival of our neighbor's coal." How thorough is the degeneracy of the times is still better proved by the remark of an aged lady who upbraided her nephew for keeping so many cats. "But, Aunt Peggy," was the answer, " you have always told us that you had eleven !" "Ah, yes ; but cats are not what they used to be !"

I henry Baldwin

1 Brillat-Savarin on this expedition killed a wild turkey with which he feasted his friends on his return to Hartford, together with wings of the partridge he had shot, served en papillote, and gray squirrels, which were stewed in Madeira.

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SECTION XIII.

THE PRESS.

NEWSPAPERS, PUBLISHING HOUSES, ETC.

BY CHARLES HOPKINS CLARK.

THE first press in Hartford was set up in 1764 by Thomas Green.1 On the 29th of October in that year he published, as an experiment, the first number of " The Connecticut Courant." This was so well received that on the 3d of December he began its regular weekly publication. From that time to the present it has continued, without a break in its record or a change in its name, so that long ago it became the oldest newspaper in the country. The very few that might otherwise dispute the claim have undergone change of name or of location, or have been abandoned for a time and then revived. The "Courant " has gone on without interruption for more than one hundred and twenty-one years. From the quaint and crude beginning of " No. 00" of Oct. 29, 1764, it has developed into the fully equipped modern newspaper.

During its long career the " Courant " has benefited not a little by the efforts and experiences, not always primarily successful, of others than its owners. Between 1764 and 1868 not less than one hundred different periodical publications were undertaken in Hartford. Scarcely half a dozen of these survive here to-day. In the majority of cases the successive experiments, one often being merged in another, have ter- minated in the absorption by the "Courant " of their good-will and subscription lists. In the last instance, however, when, in 1867, the " Evening Press " was merged in the " Courant," the name of the latter was retained, but the personal force and spirit of the "Press " took control of the older journal.

A study of the files of the " Courant " is alike a study of the growth of the State and country and of the development of newspaper-making. In the early years, indeed far down toward modern times, such an ele- ment as local news had no place in a journal. It seems to have been the theory of the editor that everybody, as a matter of course, knew what had happened at home, and so almost all of that was passed by without recording. There was a far greater proportion of essay-writing and serious discussion than there is in the modern journal ; and a great deal of early American literature made its first appearance in newspaper columns and notably in those of the " Courant." This journal published the first sketch of Trumbull's "McFingal," and later, when literary pirates stole and reprinted that "Epic" to his loss and that of his authorized publishers, the "Courant " began agitation which led to the

1 Thomas Green was a great-great-grandson of Samuel Green, Sr., who in 1649 was the printer at Cambridge, Mass. There were three Samuels and three Timothys, besides others of the surname, who were printers at Cambridge, New London, New Haven, or Hartford.

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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.

State copyright law, and that was the basis of the national law which followed.

In the "Courant " of the 10th of June, 1765, a mournful correspon- dent asks : -

" Who without the most melancholy Apprehension can behold in this poor colony a thousand ladies, each of whom costs not less than 30/ per Annum in Board, Cloathing, and Attendance, Half of which she does not earn ? Here is a clear annual loss of more than 15,0004, which, together with the ill example of above 1000 pairs of idle hands, gives us a too sure Presage of speedily obtaining the Appellation of a bankrupt Colony."

The writer could hardly have dreamed that in about five years the " Courant " would be managed by a woman.

The files of the " Courant " have been eagerly studied by historians, and are a running picture of the times from before the Stamp Act. This journal has been acknowledged as one of the forces that led to the separation of the colonies. Its founding has been attributed to the spirit of unrest prevailing at that time. Its columns have always been open to correspondents, and its contributors have included the leading men of the day for almost a century and a quarter. Its long and pros- perous career, unbroken by one failure, is in itself ample evidence of its hold upon the people of the colony and State. The " Courant " dis- cussed the oppressions by Great Britain, the question of independence, the Declaration, the Revolution, the Constitution, and all the stirring events of the country's existence. In the twenty-five presidential elec- tions the " Courant " has on ten occasions, besides Washington's undis- puted candidacy, favored the successful candidate, and twelve times it has favored the defeated candidate ; but its own State has been carried only four times against the candidate urged by the "Courant." The first time was in 1836, when Van Buren had a plurality of scarcely five hundred votes, and the other times were 1852 Pierce, 1876 Tilden, and 1884 Cleveland.

The " Courant " has experienced comparatively few changes of own- ership. In 1767 or 1768 Green went to New Haven,1 having taken Ebene- zer Watson into partnership, leaving him to manage the "Courant." Watson died in 1777, and until 1778 " the widow Watson " conducted it, - perhaps the first woman editor in America. In 1778 she took George Goodwin into partnership, and in 1779 she married Barzillai Hudson. The firm then became Hudson & Goodwin. In 1815 George Goodwin & Sons bought the paper, and they held it until 1836, when they sold it to John L. Boswell. He established in 1837 the "Daily Courant." In 1850 he took William Faxon into partnership, but in 1854 the firm dis- solved at the death of Mr. Boswell. Thomas M. Day, Esq., bought the " Courant" then, and in 1857 he took into partnership Mr. A. N. Clark, who had been Mr. Boswell's book-keeper, and the firm became Day & Clark, and later, A. N. Clark & Co. In 1867, upon consolidation with the " Press," the firm Hawley, Goodrich, & Co. was organized, consist- ing of General Joseph R. Hawley, Charles Dudley Warner,2 and Stephen A. Hubbard, the editors who had edited the "Press," and Wm. H. Goodrich, the business manager, who had been with the "Courant."

1 His Hartford house, "lately occupied" by him, is advertised to rent, Feb. 8, 1768.

2 See page 170.

Cortecucut

18 80

Courant

CHOS S

THE "COURANT" BUILDING. ON STATE STREET, FACING THE POST-OFFICE.

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They are still the owners of the paper. The "Courant" was first a Federal paper, then Whig, and finally Republican; but it received a more vigorous republicanism from the " Press," which was the organ of the new party.

The " Press " was established in 1856, but its antecedents ran far back of that day. In 1836 the Connecticut Antislavery Society,1 which had been organized here soon after the Garrison agitation began, estab- lished the " Christian Freeman," an avowedly Antislavery journal. It was edited by William H. Burleigh.2 In 1845 it was merged in the " Charter Oak," also edited by Burleigh, which was a most outspoken advocate. Burleigh's office in the old Mitchell building3 on State Street was mobbed during the Mexican War because of his opposition, which was the prevailing sentiment of the Abolitionists.

The " Charter Oak " was merged in the " Republican," which Bur- leigh established. When he left Hartford it was sold to J. D. Baldwin, who afterward became the editor and owner of the " Worcester Spy." In 1852 Mr. Baldwin sold out to M. II. Bartlett & Co., and D. W. Bart- lett and Joseph R. Hawley were its editors until 1856, when it was absorbed in the " Evening Press." By this time the Republican party had become a sufficient power to desire an "organ," after the manner of the day. One hundred men, inchiding Gideon Welles, John M. Niles, D. F. Robinson, James M. Bunce, Calvin Day, Thomas T. Fisher, Jona- than F. Morris, and Mark Howard subscribed one hundred dollars apiece for this object, and the "Press" was undertaken by Faxon & Pierce. Mr. Faxon had formerly been connected with the "Courant" and was afterward chief clerk of the Navy Department under Mr. Welles. After the war he returned to Hartford and was State bank commissioner for some years and then president of the Hartford Trust Company, holding the office until his death in September, 1883. He was universally re- spected for his integrity and good judgment. Joseph R. Hawley took Mr. Pierce's place as partner of Mr. Faxon in 1857.

1 The Antislavery feeling ran strong in Hartford, and many picturesque ineidents mark its history. For instance, about 1835, a negro woman, a runaway slave, who had been living in Hartford some years as a servant, met on the street and recognized the nephew of her former owner. He also recognized her in spite of her efforts to avoid him, and he spoke in the kind- est way to her. He assured her that the family had ceased to count her as their property, and that he had only friendly feeling for her. He added that he had some of her clothing at the hotel where he was stopping, and asked her to walk there with him to get it. She incautiously went with him to his room, and when once she had entered it, - it was on the third floor, - he loeked the door and had her captive. She did not hesitate an instant, but rushed to the front window and jumped out, preferring death to capture. Fortunately she fell upon an awning and her life was saved. Mr. Elisha Colt, in whose family she had served, raised a purse and bought her liberty for her. Another later incident was the case of the Rev. Dr. James Pen- nington. He had escaped from slavery when a boy and had been educated for the ministry abroad. He was a man of remarkable ability, and had received the degree of Doctor of Divin- ity from Heidelberg University. He was settled in Hartford, pastor of the Talcott Street Church, when the fugitive slave law passed, and he became fearful of his capture. Joseph R. Hawley, then a young lawyer in the office of John Hooker, visited his former owners and bought him for Mr. Hooker, obtaining a formal bill of sale. Mr. Hooker, as he has himself described it, held the deed for a day in order to enjoy the unique sensation of owning a Doctor of Divinity, and then he placed on the town records a deed giving the Rev. Dr. James Pennington his own freedom.

2 See page 166.

3 Sinee replaced by the "Courant" building, ereeted 1880. The Mitehell building was one of the oldest of brick in the city. It was for many years a centre of the printing busi- ness, and many newspapers were published there. The Hartford Fire Insurance Company's first office was there. This is the building seen on fire on page 453.

VOL. I .- 39.

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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.

HON. JOSEPH R. HAWLEY. (By permisson of Messrs. Harper & Brothers.)

Joseph R. Hawley was born in Stewartsville, North Carolina, Oet. 31, 1826, where his father, a New England minister, was settled. The family returned shortly afterward to Farmington, and Connecticut has ever since, save for a few years spent at Cazenovia, New York, been his home. He has been its governor, representative in Congress and United States Senator, and has been prominent in polities ever since the Antislavery agitation and the formation of the Republican party. He graduated at Hamilton College in 1847, and was admitted to the bar in Hartford in 1850, forming a partnership with the Hon. John Hooker. It was in Hawley's office and by his invitation that Niles, Welles, and others met, Feb. 4, 1856, and organized the Republican party of Con- necticut. In 1857, after the "Press" was established, he practically dropped the law for editorial work. When the war broke out he was the first man in Connecticut to enlist, and was made captain of Company A,

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First Regiment. Subsequently he was made lieutenant-colonel of the Seventh Connecticut, Alfred H. Terry (now General) being colonel. He was before Charleston, South Carolina, and was in the battles of Morris Island, Fort Wagner, James Island, Pocotaligo, Olustee, etc., and with the Army of the James at Richmond and Petersburg. He was made colonel in 1862, brigadier-general in 1864, and major-general by brevet in 1865. He was military governor for a while at Wilming- ton, North Carolina, and was Terry's chief of staff after the occupation of Richmond. In 1866 he was elected Governor of Connecticut and defeated in 1867. In 1868 he was a delegate to and president of the convention that nominated Grant, and on taking the chair made the speech, so often quoted, in which he declared against repudiation, that every bond must be held sacred as a soldier's grave. He was elected to Congress in 1872, to fill the vacancy caused by Mr. Strong's death, and in 1873 was re-elected. He was president of the Centennial Commission in 1876, and in 1881 was elected United States Senator.

In 1861 Hawley & Faxon were succeeded by J. R. Hawley & Co., the " company " consisting of Francis Gillette, John Hooker, and Thomas T. Fisher. Mr. Faxon had gone to the Navy Department. In 1860 Charles Dudley Warner had been called to the "Press" as assist- ant editor, and in 1861, when Hawley enlisted, Stephen A. Hubbard was called from the " Winsted Herald " to the " Press." He and E. C. Stedman, now the well-known poet, had taken that small country journal and made it one of the best known Connecticut papers. In 1863 Warner and Hubbard bought interests in the "Press," and in 1867 the con- solidation with the "Courant" took place. The little weekly paper printed on a sheet fourteen inches by eight inches has grown to a four-paged daily and weekly of which each page is thirty inches by twenty-three inches.

When the " Press " was merged in the "Courant," its place as an afternoon journal was taken by the " Post," of which the following sketch is by request furnished by one of the editors: In 1858 the " Morning Post," published mornings, and the " Connecticut Post," published weekly, were established by J. M. Scofield. He sold the papers in 1865 to W. P. Fuller and E. G. Holden, afterward connected with the "Post " of Detroit. They sold in 1866 to David Clark, and he again sold to the Hon. Marshall Jewell, Ezra Hall, and H. T. Sperry. In 1868 the " Morning Post" was changed to an evening journal. Isaac H. Bromley, of the " Norwich Bulletin," was made a partner, but resigned in 1873, and the " Evening Post Association" was formed. Messrs. Jewell, Sperry, and J. A. Spalding became the owners of the stock. After Mr. Jewell's death in 1883 the surviving proprietors purchased his interest. It was started as a Douglas organ, but since Mr. Scofield's retirement it has been a Republican newspaper, and is active and influential in the affairs of the State and the city.

Turning back now a century to the next journal after the "Courant," we find the "Freeman's Chronicle," or " American Advertiser," by B. Webster, " at his office opposite the Court House," a weekly begun in September, 1783, which ran only about a year.

The " American Mercury " was established in 1784 by Joel Barlow,

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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.

who was its editor, while Elisha Babcock was its publisher.1 It continued until 1833, when it disappeared in the "Independent Press." The " Mercury " printed the " Echo," which the " Hartford wits " prepared, and was a famous journal in its day. It was an anti-Federal sheet, and at the time of the Hartford Convention (1814-1815) it abounded in ridicule of and attacks upon the members. On the first anniversary of the meeting, Dec. 15, 1815, it printed as a mark of disgrace the names of the members,2 and announced that it would do so every year. On that first anniversary, too, in Hartford the " Democrats " raised a flag, keeping it at half-mast all the morning and hauling it to the top in the afternoon. The attempt to perpetuate the celebration was a failure, and in a year or two it was abandoned. The "Mercury " passed out of Barlow's hands before his departure for Europe in 1788. Charles Bab- cock succeeded his father as publisher, and G. F. Olmsted followed him.

In 1833 the " Independent Press " was established. The first num- ber appeared July 1. This absorbed the subscription list of the " Amer- ican Mercury." Its editor was the Hon. William James Hamersley, afterward mayor of Hartford. J. Hubbard Wells was the publisher. The "Independent Press" was published about two years.

The " Hartford Gazette," semi-weekly, first appeared in January, 1794. It was published " Monday and Thursday by Beach & Storrs, opposite the Court House." The firm afterward became L. Beach & Co., and then Beach & Jones. The "Gazette" was a short-lived journal, and did not reach its second volume.3

The first number of the "Connecticut Mirror" (weekly ) was published July 10, 1809, by Charles Hosmer. The office was "fifteen rods north- east of the State House " until September, 1811, when it was removed to "the building formerly occupied by Mr. Charles Sigourney " on Main Street. In December, 1811, Mr. Hosmer formed a copartnership with Horatio G. Hale. The firm of Hale & Hosmer was dissolved Nov. 14, 1814, and for the next year Mr. Hosmer was again the sole publisher. In politics the "Mirror " was strongly Federal. During the War of 1812- 1815 it was the organ of the " extreme right " of the Federal party. Its editor was Theodore Dwight, who was secretary and afterward historian of the Hartford Convention. The secret journal of the convention was printed day by day at the " Mirror" office, Mr. Hosmer himself setting it in type and working it off at the press, without assistance, carefully distributing all the type before he left the room. On the 20th of May, 1816, with the forty-seventh number of the eighth volume, Mr. Hosmer relinquished the publication to Benjamin L. Hamlen, who had been long in the " Mirror " office, and who pledged himself that the journal should be in the future as in the past, " decidedly federal." After a year Mr. Abner Newton, Jr., became a partner, and until Ang. 24, 1818 (Vol. X. No. 11), the publishers were Hamlen & Newton. This partnership was dissolved ten days before the meeting of the Constitutional Convention of 1818. In October, 1818, William L. Stone and Solomon Lincoln

1 Vol. i. no. 1, "published by Barlow & Babcock," July 12, 1784.

2 Those from Connecticut were Chauncey Goodrich, John Treadwell, James Hillhouse, Zephaniah Swift, Nathaniel Smith, Calvin Goddard, and Roger M. Sherman.

3 Lazarus Beach and his partner removed to Newfield, and began to publish there, in the spring of 1795, "The American Telegraph."

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became proprietors and publishers and Mr. Stone became editor. His salutatory appeared on the 19th of October. The copartnership was dissolved June, 1820, and Mr. Lincoln became sole publisher, though Mr. Stone's connection with the paper, as editor, continued until 1821, when he became one of the proprietors and editors of the "New York Daily Advertiser." For the next year or two the "Mirror " appears to have languished, but in February, 1822, it received new life. It passed into the hands of Goodsell & Wells as publishers, and John G. C. Brainard 1 left the practice of law at Middletown for the more con- genial task of editorship. Mr. Lincoln's valedictory and the salutatory of the new editor appears in the number for the 25th of February. Of Brainard's management Duyekinek says, not altogether unjustly, that he " neglected the politics of his paper, dismissing the tariff with a jest, while he displayed his ability in the literary and poetical department." The majority of his poems were written for the "Mirror" and first appeared there, many of them tossed off at a demand for " copy." Brainard published a collection of poems in 1825. In 1827 he left the paper, and in 1828 he died of consumption. Mr. Dwight left the " Mirror" in 1815, and went to Albany, but in 1835 he returned to Hartford. He frequently wrote for the " Courant " after his return.

In the spring of 1828 George D. Prentice 2 came to Hartford to edit a new paper, the " New England Weekly Review." He was then twenty- four years of age, a native of Preston, and a graduate of Brown Univer- sity ; had studied law, but was not yet admitted to the bar. Under his charge the " Review " soon became one of the most popular newspapers in New England. His wit was as bright and his sarcasm as biting in 1829 and 1830 as they were ten years later, when, in the " Louisville Journal," he had established a national reputation, and when "Prentice's Last " went weekly the rounds of the American press. It was to its literary department more than its political that Prentice's "Review " owed its popularity. "Many of the poems of the editor appeared in its columns ; and he succeeded," says Mr. Everest,3 "in drawing around him a band of correspondents whose united contributions gave it a degree of literary interest rarely equalled by a weekly newspaper." Many of these contributions were anonymous. Among those which bear the names or known signatures of the authors in 1829-1830 are poems and prose by James Otis Rockwell; Park Benjamin (" Hermion ") while a student at Washington College, and afterward ; Willis Gaylord Clark ; the Rev. Walter Colton ; Lieutenant George W. Patten (" Harp of the Isles "), then a cadet at West Point; Sumner Lincoln Fairfield and Mrs. Fairfield ; Miss S. C. Aikin ("Herida "), of Poughkeepsie; the sister of Mrs. James G. Brooks, afterward Mrs. James Hall ; Robert Morris, of Philadelphia; S. M. Clark and Miss Frances A. Whipple, of Hartford ; etc. In politics, the " Review " was anti-Federal and anti- Jackson. It supported the administration of John Quincy Adams and advocated his re-election. During Jackson's first term it was an influ- ential organ of the opposition. In the early summer of 1830 it was the first newspaper in Connecticut to nominate Henry Clay for the Presi- dency. In June of that year Prentice announced his intention of writing

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The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I, Part 73

Author: Trumbull, J. Hammond (James Hammond), 1821-1897 Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Boston, E. L. Osgood Number of Pages: 870

Author: Trumbull, J. Hammond (James Hammond), 1821-1897
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Boston, E. L. Osgood
Number of Pages: 870