USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. II > Part 60
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The old academy building, built mostly by subscription in 1798, stood on the green at the north end of Broad Street. It was here that some who have become prominent men in the country received their early education. Janitors in those days were not known. The schol- ars " took turn " in building the fire and sweeping the school-room. In 1802 it was " voted, that the committee be empowered to exclude any scholar that shall not carry his share of wood for use of the said school."
The present academy building, or Union school-house, was built in 1853. At that time Mr. Henry Halsey (committee) solicited subscrip- tions from those early associated with this school, and the following
anno C. Looming
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names of those who responded will show the prominent positions of its graduates : The Ilon. E. D. Morgan, of New York ; General F. E. Mather, of New York ; HI. B. Loomis, Esq., of New York ; the Hon. James Hooker, of Poughkeepsie, New York ; the sons of the late Levi Hayden, of Charleston, S. C., and New York ; the Hon. James C. Loomis, of Bridgeport, Conn .; General William S. Pierson, then of Sandusky, Ohio ; R. G. & F. A. Drake, of Hartford, and Columbia, S. C.
The present Union school fund amounts to $2,080, derived in part from a legacy of John Fitch in 1675, and from Abraham Phelps in 1728, but chiefly from the gift of Captain Benoni Bissell in 1761, whose monument bears the inscription : "Erected by the First Society of Windsor in Grateful Remembrance of his generous Gift for the support of their School."
There are at this time one high school and ten school districts in the town, and fourteen school departments. There are 695 children enumerated between the ages of four and sixteen years. The annual appropriation from town treasury in 1884 was $5,000 ; from school fund and State appropriations, $1,563.75; from town deposit fund, $199.90 ; from Union school fund, $124.80, - making a total of $6,888.45. The total receipts from all sources, including district taxes, were $10,261.61, and the total expenditures, $9,949.72.
The Young Ladies' Institute is a private enterprise established in 1867 by the Hon. H. Sidney Hayden. It consists of two buildings, - a large house on Broad Street for the boarding pupils and teachers, and also a building on Maple Avenue containing the school-room proper and the Seminary Hall. It has been conducted from its first establishment by Miss Julia S. Williams as principal, and Miss Elizabeth Francis as assistant, with an efficient corps of teachers. The average number of scholars is about sixty.
In 1874 James C. Loomis, Hezekiah B. Loomis, Osbert B. Loomis, H. Sidney Hayden and his wife, and John Mason Loomis were consti- tuted a corporate body by the name of the Loomis Institute. This Institute is designed for the gratuitous education of persons of the age of twelve years and upwards, and is to be located on the original home- stead of Joseph Loomis on the Island, near the place of the original settlement of Windsor.
This homestead is situated on elevated ground on the west bank of the Connecticut River, and commands an uncommonly fine view of the river and valley. Since the death of Joseph Loomis this site has always been in the possession of some one of his lineal descendants to the present time. It is the design of the corporators to do what they can to endow this institution ; and in this they look for the co-operation of all the Loomis family, that the institution may become a lasting monu- ment to the memory of Joseph Loomis.
The subject of a ferry across the Connecticut was agitated in 1641; but the first positive action appears in the contract made by the General Court in January, 1648-9, when " John Bissell undertakes to keep and carefully to attend the Ferry 1 over the Great River at Windsor for the full term of seven years," after which the lease was renewed by himself
1 Colonial Records, vol. i. p. 174 ; Stiles, p. 462.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
and his successors of the Bissell family down to 1677. The ferry soon after that reverted to the town. The Rivulet ferry so frequently men- tioned in the town records was continued until 1749, when the first bridge (made free) was built across the Tunxis. In 1762, when it be- came necessary to rebuild the Rivulet bridge, it was done by a lottery of £250 authorized by the Assembly. This bridge was half destroyed by a freshet in 1767, and entirely carried away in 1782. A bridge and causeway were erected in 1794, and another bridge in 1833, which was destroyed by the freshet of 1854. Then the present bridge was erected.
Near by, on the Palisado Green, was the centre of trade in Windsor's early days, and the merchants of that time carried on extensive trade with English ports and the West Indies. Before the bridge was built across the Connecticut at Hartford, the Farmington Rivulet here was alive with shipping; half a dozen coasting-vessels at a time and an occasional English or West India ship were seen. The principal mer- chants were Henry and Josiah Wolcott, Michael Humphrey, Captain Newberry, George Griswold, Matthew Grant, and in later days the widely known firm of Hooker & Chaffee, and that of Captain Nathaniel Howard and Major William Howard. In the north part of the town, near Hayden Station, was Matson's store, doing a large business. Half a mile below was Master John Hayden's ship-yard, and there was another ship-yard at the Rivulet ferry.
The village inn was a noted institution of the olden time, when the old stage-coach rolled along between Hartford and Boston. There was the old Loomis Tavern, on the west side of Broad Street, and the Hayden Tavern, kept by Sergeant Samuel Hayden at the house now occupied by the family of the late Levi Hayden. At the latter place still stands an ancient oak, under the shade of whose widespread- ing branches Chief Justice Ellsworth is said to have whiled away his leisure hours with the men of his time. Near the chief justice's house itself there stood a few years ago an old cedar-tree, said to have been one of the original forest trees, noted as the huntsmen's rallying-place. This tree was blown down in November, 1877, and many much-prized mementos have been manufactured from its fragrant wood.
Pickett's Tavern, also near Hayden station, and the oak known as the Old Smoking-Tree, cut down by some vandal hand, are associated with the cheer of ancient time. The stately elms on Broad Street Green were set out in 1755.1
The Old Mill, owned by the late Colonel James Loomis, on the site where Mr. Charles F. Lewis's mill now stands, was one of the oldest institutions, and is said to have been the first grist-mill in Connecticut People resorted to it from all the towns about, even as far as from Middletown. It is called sometimes the Old Warham Mill, as Mr. Warham was undoubtedly its first owner.
The population of Windsor, according to the last census, is 3,056. In the whole town, embracing Poquonnock and Rainbow, there are two
1 These were set out by one who afterward fell from his respectable position in society, and was twice publicly whipped at two of his own trees, which he afterward cut down. When in- toxicated he often threatened to destroy the rest, but was always "bought off by old Squire Allyn with a cord of wood and some cider." The date of erection, inscribed on a small iron plate, is placed on one of the trees opposite the residence of the Hon. H. Sidney Hayden.
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Residence of Judge II. Sidney Hayden,
Grace (Episcopal) Church.
VIEW OF BROAD STREET.
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town-halls, two grist-mills and saw-mills, three blacksmith's shops, ten stores, seven churches, twelve school buildings, and two hotels. In the Centre are the Best Manufacturing Company, making cigars and tobacco, and the Spencer Arms Company. The latter, in a building two hundred feet long by fifty feet wide, makes the noted Spencer gun. Windsor continues to be mostly an agricultural community, though there are several residents who do business in Hartford. Within a compara- tively recent period streets and avenues have been laid ont, and about thirty new buildings erected. The Hon. Judge II. Sidney Hayden has succeeded in the enterprise of supplying the village with the purest of water from the Crystal Springs, which are ou a high elevation west of the centre, and have a running capacity of fifteen thousand gallons a day. They have never failed during the severest drought. He has also laid separate pipes from the large factory pond, which is abundant for manufacturing purposes, and furnishes an unfailing supply in case of conflagration. This individual enterprise resulting successfully in so great a public benefit, and paying but a low rate of interest to the pro- jector, is duly appreciated. Ice-houses have been erected near the pond, and individuals who formerly stored their own ice now prefer the con- venient supply furnished by the ice-men. Windsor is but twelve min- utes' ride by railroad from Hartford, and there are fourteen or sixteen trains stopping here each day.
The portion of the town of Windsor now known as Poquonnock was probably settled about the year 1649, as at that date we find 1 that Thomas Holcomb, Jolin Bartlett, Edward, Francis, and George Gris- wold 2 had all removed to that locality, and the Court, " taking into con- sideration the many dangers that their families are in and exposed unto by reason of their remote living from neighbors, and nearness to the Indians, in case they should all leave their families together with- out any guard," exempted " one soldier of the forementioned families from training upon every training-day, cach family aforesaid to share herein according to the number of soldiers that are in them, provided that man which tarries at home stands about the aforesaid houses upon his sentinel posture."
The Second Society of Windsor, usually called Poquonnock,3 is an important manufacturing village situated on the Farmington River, which in early times was navigable up to this point. The graceful bend of this river has been named Rainbow, and at that place the Rain- bow Mills are situated. Here we touch an incident in the life of the
1 Stiles, p. 52.
2 "On the list of the names of the settlers of Windsor appear those of Edward Griswold, Humphrey Pinney, and Thomas Holcomb, who probably were among those who accompanied Mr. Warham from Exeter to Nantasket in 1630. They were the ancestors of the Griswold, Pinney, and Holcomb families who afterwards removed from Windsor to Simsbury, and whose descendants are still living in that and the adjacent towns. The Edward Griswold whose name appears on the town records of Windsor in 1640 may have been a son of Bishop Gris- wold's aneestor from England, Matthew Griswold ; and if so, it becomes even probable that this ancestor was one of the company who came over from Exeter with Mr. Warham in 1630." - Dr. STONE's Life of Bishop Griswold, p. 18.
3 " The Indian name Poquonnoek, varionsly spelled, denotes 'cleared land,' that is, a tract from which the trees or bushes had been cleared, to fit it for cultivation. See J. H. Trum- bull's ' Indian Names in Connecticut' (1881), p. 54. In 1882 Mr. C. B. Tourtelle, postmaster of Poquonnock, made a list of forty different ways of spelling the name on letters received at his office in the past twelve months." - Hartford Daily Times, Feb. 20, 1882.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
eminent Bishop Griswold,1 who suffered pecuniary embarrassments growing out of the operations of his brother Roger, who about the year 1803 conceived the scheme of building at the bend of the Farmington River what he termed the Rainbow Mills. This scheme, which seems to have been a family enterprise, was advised against by the Bishop, but at last his consent was obtained. Roger was a man of much mechani- cal ingenuity, and was sanguine as to the result. "The dam was con- structed ; the mills were built, and operations were commenced. But a great freshet on the river occurred soon after, which did much damage to the works, swept away the embankment, carried off a large quantity of kiln-dried grain, and thus put Mr. Griswold to serious loss." 2 This water-power has since been improved, to the advantage of manufac- turers. Here are the two paper-mills of Messrs. Hodge & Co.
Here is the property which has for years been called the Congress Mills. The main buildings are two stories high and forty-five feet by two hundred feet upon the ground. These were first erected in 1838, and rebuilt in 1866. The business firm name is the Springfield Paper Company, of which William L. Bidwell is treasurer. The capi- tal stock is $50,000. It manufactures white and colored printing- papers, and special goods of that description, having a working capacity of three thousand pounds per day. The weight of materials handled each year is about two thousand tons.
Rainbow has one church of the Baptist denomination, a neat Gothic structure built of wood, with slate roof.
A fine town-hall has recently been constructed at Poquonnock at a cost of about ten thousand dollars.
The mills of the Hartford Paper Company are at Rainbow and Poquonnock. The capital stock is $150,000. The hands employed number forty-eight men and thirty-five women ; total, eighty-three. They manufacture paper of various kinds. The capacity of the mills is nine thousand pounds of these papers per day ; and if confined to book-papers, it would be eleven thousand pounds per day. The Rain- bow mill was erected about thirty years ago, and the Poquonnock mill in 1870-1871. The property has cost the company $180,000.
In 1873 Austin Dunham & Sons, of Hartford, started the business of manufacturing worsted yarn in the old stone mill called the Tunxis Mill, at Poquonnock. It is a building seventy-five feet by forty feet, with four stories. In the summer of 1875 they found it necessary to erect a brick building one hundred and fifty feet by thirty-five feet, and four stories high. This sufficed until the year 1880, when their business had in- creased to such an extent that they found it necessary to take in the Poquonnock mill. The latter had been used up to this time as a woollen mill, and was erected in 1865, - the main mill one hundred feet long by forty-one wide, and four stories, with an ell eighty-four feet long by thirty-two wide, and five stories.
The Tunxis Worsted Company, which comprises these interests to-day, was formed July 1, 1880, with a capital of $162,000. Its object is to manufacture all kinds of worsted yarns, and prepare and sell
1 " Edward and Matthew Griswold (brothers) came to Windsor with the Rev. Mr. Huit, 1639. Edward removed to Hammonasset (Killingworth), but left sons at Poquonnock. Matthew settled at Lyme." - JABEZ H. HAYDEN.
2 Dr. Stone's Memoir of Bishop Griswold, pp. 95, 96.
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combed wool, for worsted-spinners. Their production last year (1881) was : worsted yarns made, 291,295 pounds ; combed wools sold, 148,749 pounds. The company employs about two hundred and sixty hands.
The raising of fish has become a work of great public importance, and the works of the Fenton Trout Breeding Company and State Fish Hatcheries are located at Poquonnock. Henry J. Fenton is superin- tendent. Mr. Fenton made his first efforts at fish-breeding in 1872, and, though baffled by many difficulties and losses, succeeded at last, by following the Seth Green principle of hatching, in placing his busi- ness upon a secure and lucrative basis. In June, 1879, by order of the fish commissioners of the State of Connecticut, there were hatched and distributed at this place various kinds of fish, and in the fall of that year salmon-eggs were received, which were hatched very successfully and distributed. At the request of Professor Thacher, of Yale College, Mr. Fenton tried the experiment of hatching lamprey cels. For two years his labor was unsuccessful ; but in the spring of 1880, the third year, he succeeded in this hitherto doubtful experiment. The company in 1881 hatched six hundred thousand salmon for the State, and fur- nished two hundred and seventy-seven thousand brook-tront fry. It has now three hatching-houses, with a capacity of two million eggs.
Roger Wolcott, Governor of Connecticut, was born in Windsor, Jan. 4, 1679. He was one of the most noted men of his time. At the age of twenty- Logan Wolcott one he established himself on the east side of the Connecticut River, and biographical notices of the Wolcott family will be found under the head of East Windsor.
Henry Wolcott, the emigrant, came to Windsor with Mr. Warham's company in 1635, and his name stands first on the list of the carly inhabitants. He was elected a magistrate or assistant in 1643, and thenceforward during life was annually re-elected to that office. In 1640 he made a visit to England. His life was one of great usefulness and honor. He died May 30, 1655. In the cemetery at Windsor his monument may still be seen. It is of brown stone, arched, and was made by his son-in-law, Matthew Griswold. The inscriptions concerning himself and wife are on opposite sides, as follows : -
" Here vnder lyeth the body of Henry Wolcot sometimes a Maiestrate of this Ivrisdiction who dyed ye 30th day of May
Anno S salvtis 1655. atatis 77."
" Here vnder lyeth the body of Elizabeth Wolcot who dyed ye 7th day of Ivly
§ salvtis 1655. Anno 3 ætatis 73."
Roger Ludlow was one of the principal men of Connecticut, and his name often occurs in our early history. He has been honorably styled the "Father of Connecticut Jurisprudence." He was a lawyer by profession, of a good family, who resided in Dorchester, England.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
He was a brother-in-law of Endicott,1 whom he is said to have rivalled in ardor of temperament. He was remarkable for his talent, and also for his ambition and impetuosity. At the last General Court of the company in England, Feb. 10, 1630, he was chosen as assistant in the place of . Samuel Sharp, who had the year before come to Salem. He was one of the founders of Dorchester, and was selected as most suitable to join that colony, that his counsel and judgment might aid in preserving order, and founding the social structure upon the surest basis. He embarked with Mr. Warham and his company at Plymouth on the 20th of March, 1630, and after his arrival in Amer- ica entered upon his duties as a member of the Court of Assistants. This office he held for four years following. One trait of his charac- ter becomes prominent in the following incident, which occurred at a meeting of the governor and assistants in Boston, May 1, 1632: -
" After dinner, the governour told them that he had heard, that the people intended, at the next General Court, to desire that the assistants might be chosen anew every year, and that the governour might be chosen by the whole court, and not by the assistants only. Upon this, Mr. Ludlow grew into a pas- sion, and said, that then we should have no government, but there would be an interim, wherein every man might do what he pleased, etc. This was answered and cleared in the judgment of the rest of the assistants, but he continued stiff in his opinion, and protested he would then return back into England." 2
The governor and assistants were chosen anew, however, at the next meeting of the General Court, and Mr. Ludlow was re-elected among the rest ; he was chosen again the next year. In 1634 he was elected deputy-governor, and also made overseer of the fortifications on Castle Island, and one of the auditors to adjust the accounts of Gov- ernor Winthrop's administration. By natural rotation he should have been chosen governor in 1635. But his complaints had injured him in popular estimation. He protested that the election of Governor Haynes was void, because the election was arranged and managed by the deputies, who had previously to the meeting agreed upon the candi- date. This caucus arrangement he regarded as nullifying a free election. His views, however, were not entertained, and he received the rebuke of being left out of the magistracy altogether. A few weeks after this event he joined the company through the wilderness to Wind- sor, and for nineteen years thereafter Connecticut had the benefit of his talent, activity, and usefulness. Massachusetts still continued to value his merits ; for, six months after his departure, he was named in the commission for Connecticut, and placed at the head of the mag- istracy constituted by that instrument. He was almost always present at the meetings of the commissioners, and took important part in the proceedings. Necessity compelled him to be at home when the expe- dition started against the Pequots ; yet afterward we find him in the pursuit, when they were routed, through Menunketuck and Quinnipiac to Sasco, or the Pequot Swamp. He was elected magistrate when the government was reorganized in May, 1637, and re-elected in 1638. A principal framer of the constitution of 1639, he was the first who was elected deputy-governor under that instrument. He was also
1 Savage's Winthrop, vol. i. p. 28, note 2.
2 Ibid., p. 74.
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deputy-governor in 1642 and in 1648; and during the intervening years he was annually chosen magistrate. In the years 1648-1651, and 1653, he was one of the commissioners from Connecticut to the United Colonies. In April, 1646, he was desired by the General Court "to take some paynes in drawing forth a body of Lawes for the government of this Common welth, & present them to the next General Court." This important work was not completed before 1650, when, at the May Court, " the country orders " - since called " Mr. Ludlow's code " or " the code of 1650" - were " concluded and established." ]
He resided in Windsor abont five years, and afterward removed to Fairfield. There he remained until the spring of 1654, when he re- moved with his family to Virginia. He was led to take this step because the colony of New Haven having refused to furnish troops for the defence of Stamford and Fairfield, these towns raised troops for their own defence, and appointed Roger Ludlow commander-in-chief. Their conduct was regarded as reprehensible and seditious. Robert Basset and John Chapman were charged with "fomenting insurrec- tions," and were treated as leaders of the enterprise. Ludlow regarded these accusations as aimed against him, for he was the principal man in that region. Rather than make concessions, he preferred to leave the colony whose displeasure he had incurred. The citizens of Fair- field had no seditious intent, and their arming themselves was simply an act of self-preservation ; and the proud and sensitive spirit of Lud- low could not endure the public censure. On the 26th of April, 1654, he embarked at New Haven, with his family and effects, for Virginia, where he may have passed the remainder of his days in obscurity, or fulfilled the intention, hastily expressed on a former occasion, of " returning back to England."
John Mason, the renowned conqueror of the Pequots, major of the forces of the Connecticut colony, was the most celebrated military man of his time. He was born in England in the year 1600. Bred to arms in the Netherlands under Sir Thomas Fairfax, he had attracted the favorable notice of that general by his abilities and courage during his service as a volunteer. He was of the original company who came over with Mr. Warham to Dorchester in 1630, and among the first who removed to Connecticut in 1635 and aided in founding the town of Windsor. After the Pequot War he removed to Saybrook, at the request of its settlers, for the defence of the colony, and thence he removed to Norwich in 1659. For more than thirty years he was major of the colonial forces, and between 1660 and 1670 he was deputy-governor of Connecticut. He was also a magistrate from 1642 to 1668. His account of the Pequot War, prepared at the request of the General Court of Connecticut, was published by Increase Mather in 1677, and more accurately, with an introduction and notes, by the Rev. Thomas Prince, Boston, 1736. In person he was tall and large in form, "full of martial bravery and vigor," of a stern, energetic, but not headlong disposition, of a moral and religious character. "His life and conversation were of the Puritan stamp, without ostentation, and above reproach." He died in Norwich in 1672.
1 Colonial Records, vol. i. p. 509, note.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
Oliver Ellsworth, LL.D., son of William and Mary Ellsworth, an eminent statesman and jurist, was born in Windsor, March 24, 1746-7. He graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1766. He was admitted to the bar in 1771, and soon became one of the most eminent legal practitioners of the colony. In 1777 he was chosen a delegate to the Continental Congress, and he was a member of the council of his native State from 1780 to 1784, when he was appointed a judge of the Superior
OLIVER ELLSWORTH AND WIFE.
(After the Painting by R. Earle, 1792.)
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