USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Norwalk > The romance of Norwalk > Part 21
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NORWALK IN 1850
CHAPTER XXIV
Population of Norwalk in Mid Century, 4651; Thriving Pot- tery Trade on Half Mile Island-Shipbuilding Industry at Dorlon's Point-County Courthouse Squabble Involves Norwalk, Fairfield, Bridgeport.
WITH prosperity an honored guest and with no more than the average number of trifling troubles to cloud her hori- zon, Norwalk faced the second half of the 19th century. A pretty town was Norwalk if one is to believe the flowery comments of the times. A friendly, compact settlement of tiny cottages, most of them white with green shutters, sketched a town nucleus at the head of the river in Norwalk and on the shores of the river, in South Norwalk. To the north, where the hills of New Canaan, Ridgefield and Wil- ton begin, could be found larger farm houses with acreages of grain and vegetables, orchards, and fields for cattle and horses. The blue water of the harbor was usually decorated with the white of snowy sails, while occasionally the dark line of smoke from a Sound steamer spotted the skyline.
The wharfs and the railroad station were busy cen- ters. When the boats from the West Indies or from the American coast ports came into harbor, large crowds flocked to the water's edge to watch the cargoes being unloaded. The same crowds flocked to the railroad station, every time a train was due, unable to satiate their curiosity of the "black bellied hissing monster." Long lines of carriages of all sorts took the place at the station, of the automobiles and taxis of modern times. What a different picture from today, did the Norwalk of 1850 present. Mud lanes there were, where now lie concrete roads; wooden cottages, where now stand
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NORWALK IN 1850
stone buildings; lazy horses where now crowd countless trucks and passenger cars.
THRIVING COMMUNITY
The city was in the midst of a prosperous era. Her 465,1 inhabitants in 1850, were for the most part engaged in profit- able occupations and found little cause for complaint. In 1850 there were in Norwalk, 774 dwelling houses occupied by 961 families. The village boasted 485 school pupils in- structed by ten teachers; a first Congregational church seat- ing 100; a second Congregational church seating 500; a Baptist church seating 600; a Methodist church seating 600 and an Episcopal church seating 800, and a fire engine com- pany which had its own permanent quarters. Wages were very good, although to the workers of 1929, they would appear little short of pitiful. Farmhands were paid $13 a month with board. Day laborers might earn $.62 12 a day with board or $.8712 a day without board. Carpenters were among the aristocracy, rating $1.371/2 per day. The poor female domestics didn't make out so well for one dol- lar a week with board was considered plenty and sufficient for them.
Of factories and mills there was an encouraging number. The boot and shoe industry, which employed nearly 500 men and women, was the largest manufacturing interest in the village at the time. The smallest was a shovel, spade, fork and hoe factory, which employed but two people and was capitalized at just $100. In addition there was a comb factory with three employees; a cotton mill with 16; a screw factory, 7 employees; metal button, five workers; tanneries, seven laborers; "Snuff, Tobacco and Segars," II employees. A tiny watch making establishment employed two people, and a saddle, trunk and harness factory found the same number of workers quite sufficient for its needs. The manu- facture of hats and caps, another large industry, employed 83 persons. Other articles made in Norwalk at the time included : coaches, wagons, sleighs, tallow candles, chairs
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and cabinets, tin articles, felt cloth, stone and earthen-ware articles, confectionery, and marble monuments.
POTTERY TRADE
The making of stone and earthen-ware articles, a flourish- ing industry in Norwalk in 1850, has an interesting history. Absalom Day of Old Well village (South Norwalk) was supposed to have been the first to establish himself. In- volved in the story of the growth of pottery, is the tale of Half Mile Island, which, because of its historic interest, must here be given. Half Mile Island, off the shores of East Norwalk, was once the scene of a thriving pottery trade. The island, which is no longer known, was divided from Campfield or Canfield island, which has also passed into oblivion, by just a creek. Canfield island is now a part of Shorehaven, East Norwalk, connected to the mainland by a bridge on its eastern end. Part of the western end is now included in the home of William D. Crawford of Shore- haven.
Half-Mile island, in the days when it was acknowledged, lay right next to Canfield. A portion of it now comprises part of Shorehaven filled-in land. In the beginning Half- Mile Island was owned by Stephen Beckwith, later falling into the hands of John Ruscoe the Huguenot. The finest of corn, full 14 feet high, was once grown on the fertile ridge of land which was the backbone of the island, while the best peaches and plums in the village bloomed there in summer-time. The island was mute witness in the year 1821 of the "great September gale" which sank Uriah Selleck's boat "Slow and Easy" in the Sound. A second terrific storm in 1833 shifted the sand from east to west of the island; the high tide of December, 1833, made three islands out of one; the blizzard of February, 1845, piled banks of snow, six and seven feet deep across the island.
The year 1831 found Mr. and Mrs. John Betts Gregory living on the island. Mr. Gregory bought Half Mile island
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from Samuel Hanford for the small sum of $325 and im- mediately built his kiln for pottery. He had previously established a pottery in Clinton, New York but had returned to his home town in 1831 to try his luck here. Mr. Greg- ory learned his trade under Absalom Day. He continued in business until 1840, dying in 1842. On the night of January 13, 1840, which was intensely cold, Mrs. Gregory was about to sit down to supper when she noticed bright gleams of red light across the table. Rushing to the door she peered out and there, past Mamachimons Island, now Chimons Island, she saw the reflections from the burning steamboat Lexington. What to do? It was bitter weather, so bitter that the Norwalk-New York steamboat was locked in ice at Old Well. It might have been possible to launch a boat from Half-Mile Island since the front of the island was clean of ice, but the only boat available at the time was not rigged and in winter quarters. Finding there was noth- ing at all they could do, the islanders merely watched the burning ship, until its last brilliant tongue of fire had been snuffed out beneath the crest of the waves. The boat sank just as it came abreast of "Old Field Point."
After the island slipped from the possession of the Greg- orys, it passed through the hands of Louisa Byxbee, Charles W., and William H. Hoyt, Nancy Gregory, James Mitchell and Woodbury G. Langdon who had it in 1873. John Betts Gregory was not the only Norwalker to be interested in the manufacture of pottery. The Norwalk Pottery Co., once located at Smith st., foot of Mill Hill, was established as early as 1833, by Asa E. Smith. He was succeeded in turn by Asa Smith, Hobert Smith and James Lycett.
SHIPBUILDING
In speaking of the industries of Norwalk which flourished in the year 1850, we should not pass by shipbuilding, which once held forth on Gregory's or Dorlon's Point. Mathew Campfield and John Gregory, sr., were the original holders
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of the Point which included some seven and one-half acres. The former later sold out to Gregory, from whom the Point took its name. Gregory deeded the property to his wife. Some time later it fell into the hands of John and James Benedict and was known for a time as Benedict's Point. A few years before the middle of the 19th century, Gregory's or Dorlon's Point came into the possession of one Isaac Scudder Ketcham, shipbuilder of Huntington, Long Island.
Ketcham proceeded to build a long two-story shipbuilding house on his property. On the ground floor at one end, was a square room for living purposes and for office use, accord- ing to Historian Selleck. Immediately overhead was a large room for making and storing models. Next to it was a lumber loft. Underneath, the ground floor provided plenty of space in which to work. After accomplishing all this, Ketcham suddenly gave up and left town. It appeared that his family objected to leaving Long Island. Deciding be- tween love and a career, Mr. Ketcham chose to return to Long Island. The property was idle until 185 1 when it was bought by James W. Underhill of Stockton, California, for $993.50, the property including the Point of seven acres and the house. Stockton built the first substantial dock on the Point, filling the cribs or supports of the structure with stone brought from Goose and Cockenoe Islands. After this piece of work, Stockton also gave up his plans. It is believed he returned to California for the tail-end of the gold rush. He came back to Norwalk a few years later and in 1855 sold the property to Captain John Burke for $1,500.
Burke enlarged the house and improved the dock. He kept a hotel on the Point. 1859 found the property in the hands of Philip Hardenbrook of New York, who remodeled the old house for the third or fourth time. A. A. Raymond of Long Island bought the place in 1864. Henry Guthrie, George S. Bell, C. C. St. John, Melville E. Mead and Thad- deus Bell, who comprised the "Gregory's Point Marine Rail.
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way Co.," took it over in 1868. Once more, extensive ship- building operations were commenced only to slump when in 1873, April I, the company leased the dock and hotel to George W. Hooper. October 2, 1874, the company sold the hotel, the dock, and the acreage to Philetus Dorlon of Brooklyn, New York, for a named consideration of $7,000.
Dorlon ran a hotel on the Point for a number of years. At one time a large square old-fashioned summer hotel stood where the present Norwalk Country club is located. Nearby was a merry-go-round and a dance hall. Over to one side, just about where the end of the trolley line may now be found, was the shorehouse where dinners were served. Crowds flocked to the Point over the weekend. After Dor- lon, John O'Sullivan, grandfather of the present John O'Sul- livan, now manager of Dorlon's, ran the summer hotel. About 1899 a great fire took place in the hotel, starting on a Sunday afternoon in a pile of shingles in the cellar. Mrs. O'Sullivan, mother of the present John O'Sullivan, barely escaped with her life, being rescued with a ladder. She saved only her wedding and engagement rings from the flames. Mr. O'Sullivan (grandfather) lost no time in re- building and shortly there was erected on the same site a new summer hotel, which is now the Norwalk Country Club.
In 1908, John O'Sullivan (father of the present John), purchased that piece of land on which Dorlon's shorehouse now stands. At the time the ground was rough, uneven, full of marshes and bogs and overgrown with violets. The Point was not the residential section in those years, that it is to- day. There were but two houses there, the home of Judge John Walsh and a little yellow house since torn down, oc- cupied by an Anderson family. Mr. O'Sullivan (father) persevered until he had leveled and filled in the ground and then he built the present shorehouse which has been so suc- cessful. On the death of his father, the present John O'Sul- livan took over the business. He has found it necessary dur- ing the past few years to make several additions to the build- ing to take care of the trade.
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COURTHOUSE SQUABBLE
The beginning of the second half of the nineteenth cen- tury found Norwalk embroiled in a game of put and take with Fairfield and Bridgeport, over the location of a new county courthouse. Up to this time there had been one courthouse in Danbury and another in Fairfield. . The Dan- bury building was still in good condition, but it was found necessary to replace the Fairfield courthouse, that had been built in 1794. This courthouse replaced the one built in 1720 and destroyed by the British in 1779. The state was of a mind to do one of three things: rebuild the courthouse in Fairfield, move it to Bridgeport, or move it to Norwalk. The latter proposition naturally appealed to this town which made a valiant effort to gain the courthouse only to lose the race because Bridgeport had more dollars than Norwalk.
The wrangle began in 1833. In December of that year Thaddeus Betts, Clark Bissell, Timothy Tellerwain and Charles Thomas were named a committee to get in touch with the selectmen in the towns of Fairfield county to feel them out on the subject of moving the county courthouse and gaol from Fairfield to Norwalk. In the spring of the next year the town voted against locating the county build- ings in Bridgeport and ordered the committee aforenamed to use all lawful means to secure the courthouse for Nor- walk. Every six months regularly for several years there- after, Norwalk voted against the removal of the county buildings to Bridgeport and insisted that this town offered a much more suitable location. The General Assembly at Hartford was petitioned time and again without result.
April 8, 1850, the town appointed a fresh committee com- posed of Josiah Carter, Jonathan Camp, jr., Charles Isaacs, Thomas Robinson, Stephen Smith and Orris Ferry, to apply to the General Assembly. But alas, Norwalk seemed to gain no headway in the matter and three years later on May 2, 1853 the town was still protesting and on that date voted to petition the General Assembly and ask that the mat- ter be put to vote in the county. The same year, 1853, the
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courts were removed from Fairfield to Bridgeport. The first county courthouse in Bridgeport was occupied in 1855 and was "a neat and substantial brown stone structure lo- cated on a public square which is bounded on three sides by State, Broad and Bank sts., and on its fourth side by private property." Today this same building is Bridgeport's city hall.
Naturally, for some time after the removal of the county courthouse from Fairfield to Bridgeport, the quarrel among the towns and cities in the county subsided. It was re- vived in the '80's, when it was decided the county needed a new and larger courthouse. Norwalk at once took up the sword of battle and with all her might strove to have the county courthouse and other county buildings located in this city. Her best statesmen and lawyers fought for the cause.
Norwalk saw victory within reach in the year 1886, as the result of a fine idea which suddenly came to the town fathers. This idea involved presenting the Le Grand Lock- wood property, now known as the Mathews estate, on West ave., opposite the Norwalk high school and the Armory, to the county of Fairfield, provided the new county court house and jail were placed in Norwalk on the property. Two ex- clamation marks were placed in the town records after this last "provided" statement, showing that Norwalk meant business and wasn't going to be fooled. One hundred thou- sand dollars was voted by the selectmen for "the construc- tion of a county courthouse and other county buildings and in procuring a site for the same within the town of Nor- walk." In spite of this very generous offer, Norwalk lost and Bridgeport won, and the reason was said to have been because the latter city was able to offer more money than could Norwalk. The new courthouse was built in Bridge- port on Golden hill in 1888.
HATTING
CHAPTER XXV
:
Ebenezer Church Pioneer in Norwalk Hatting-Progress of Industry-Organization of Crofut and Knapp Co .- How Hats are Made-Strike of 1884-85-Factory Blown Up-Strike of 1909-Present Hat Companies.
THE backbone of Norwalk industries may be said to be divided between the oyster fisheries and hatting. The lat- ter came into prominence in this community with the found- ing of the Crofut and Knapp company in Norwalk in 1858. Hatting was now a virile trade in the community. Every year was another year of progress. True, there were set- backs: the strike of 1884-85 and the strike of 1909 left indelible marks on the industry. At the same time, these strikes signify definite steps of advancement in the raising of the trade to the prosperous status it enjoys today.
The Crofut and Knapp company stands as a sort of nu- cleus around which a certain portion of Norwalk's history has evolved, the company being not only part and parcel of that history, but to a large extent, the moving factor in it. Down through the years it has become more or less of an institution in Norwalk. Today, it employs more than 1,500 who annually turn out some $10,000,000 worth of hats. The Crofut and Knapp Co. may be the largest of its kind in the city but it was not the first. As a matter of fact, hatting gained a firm foothold in Norwalk before the War of the Revolution.
EARLY HATTERS
Ebenezer Church is the only pioneer hatter in Norwalk of which we have record and the preservation of his history
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is due in great measure to the efforts of the Norwalk Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which chapter is now the proud possessor of the quaint bullet holed sign, which once hung over Mr. Church's emporium. The Norwalk hatter was born in 17.19 and died in 1799. He came to this town but a lad of 16 and immediately commenced study of the hat trade in a small shop on the Green. The fact that he studied the trade under someone else after his arrival in Norwalk leads one to believe that the hatting industry must have been pretty well established in this community before he came. At any rate, Church applied himself diligently to study and so far progressed that in 1745 he felt able to strike out for himself. In that year he pur- chased the land which borders on the Westport road and "Worth Brook," and immediately constructed a small house and a shop, the sign of which now hangs in the D. A. R. quarters on Mill Hill. According to the D. A. R., the site of the shop may be located on the road from Norwalk to Westport on the left hand side of the road at the corner of the first road to the left of the Fairfield County Chil- dren's Home on the Post road. It is added that the lilacs which were in the original garden may still be seen. Church's shop, which escaped destruction during the Revolutionary War, was honored as a refuge place for Mrs. Thomas Fitch, wife of the governor of Connecticut, who fled from her home on East ave., when the "redcoats" took possession of the town.
Mr. Church sold three kinds of hats: beavers at 38 shil- lings; casters at 28; and work hats at six shillings. They were shipped to Long Island, to the Hudson river towns and through western Connecticut. In dull seasons, the re- sourceful hatter sold pork, butter, shoes, cider, plums, to- bacco, potatoes, stockings and deer skins. The Church hat- ter sign which hung for some time outside the D. A. R. house on Mill hill and is now on the inside of the building, came into the possession of the chapter in 1924.
Eleven hat and cap factories employing a total of 83
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persons were recorded in the Norwalk statistics of 1845. These factories had a total output of 36,000 articles value $71,840. Capital to the extent of $27,500 was invested in the companies. On Edwin Hall's map of 1847, four hat shops are plainly marked; one on the corner of Webster st. and West ave .; a second, "Mallory and Hanford's Hat Shop" on the east side of Garner st. almost to West ave., a third on Cedar st., in the middle of the road, opposite the present home of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Terris, 3 Cedar st. and a fourth on the Green, corner of Park st., and North ave. Undoubtedly the rest of the hat companies of the year are marked on the map either merely as "shops" or under the owner's name without qualification.
The first hats in the American colonies were made in Connecticut, it being believed that Danbury was the first town in the country to offer a finished hat for sale. Nor- walk early delved into the mysteries of hatting and at least one of the eight families which left the community in 1684 to found Danbury boasted an experienced hatter. The first hat shops were small rooms where the men gathered about a kettle heated by a wood fire and pulled or hauled the bodies of coarse fur with their own hands at the rate of one an hour. In the early days, the beaver hat was really made of beaver and was a tall, bell shaped affair with a heavily rolled brim. A good beaver hat was the mark of gentility, lasted a lifetime and was commonly passed on from father to son.
The process of hatting in the early days in this district differed materially from the hatting process of today. The fur was cut from the pelts and the long hairs separated from the soft fur mat with patient fingers. Then came the "bow- ing." This involved snapping the catgut string of a bow again and again on a pile of loose fur until the foreign sub- stances were freed and it was matted into what finally be- came the fur fabric of the hat. The fur mat was then shaped into a large cone and alternately dipped into boiling water and rolled until it had shrunk to one quarter of the
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original size. This product was then fashioned into the semblance of a hat. The last process was in the hands of the women who plucked out with tweezers, those hairs which still remained sticking in the nap. Few hats were sold finished. Most of them were delivered in the rough to New York firms where they were finished and trimmed. -
PROGRESS OF HATTING
The progress of the hatting industry here during the last century, might be summarized briefly as follows: 1803- Fashionable hats were six inches deep with two inch brims; 1812-Machine was invented for blowing fur. It consisted of a wire drum in which fur was placed, the machine being cranked by hand; 1818-Machine for bowing hats was in- vented. It was of wood, dish shaped and somewhat after the pattern of an old fashioned fanning mill and it took in enough for two "bats" at a time. This invention did not prove very satisfactory; 1821, or a little before,-a ma- chine for forming wool hat bodies with a vibrating and re- volving cone, was placed on the market; 1822-New man- ner of coloring hats is recorded. Up to this time it had been customary to place the hats, two or three dozen at a time in a great kettle from which they were taken by hand every half hour until the operation was completed, about 20 hours. The new method in 1822 invented by Joel Taylor of Danbury, called for the placing of six dozen hats on a large wheel with pins and turned by a crank. The dye stuff was contained in a copper kettle shaped like a half moon, underneath. The hats on one half the wheel were in the liquor receiving color while those on the other half were out cooling. When the colorman wished to reverse this he had only to turn the crank; 1830-A Chinaman gave birth to the idea of a high silk hat.
It so happened that M. Botta, scholar and traveler, while living in Canton, China during the year 1830, discovered that his European beaver hat had become very shabby. He
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applied to a Chinese hatter, giving him all sorts of direc- tions for the making of a new one. In a few days the Chinese hatter brought a hat of the required shape not of beaver but of some soft, glossy stuff. M. Botta, on his return to France, preserved the hat. Wishing to have it repaired, he gave it to a French hatter. The latter ex- amined the fabrication with the greatest of interest and very shortly, in came the fashion for silk hats. Alvin Hurd of Danbury learned the art of silk hat making from two Englishmen in New York city and in 1835 introduced its manufacture into Danbury.
Financial panic, 1837, which sadly affected the hat indus- try took place, closing numerous factories and throwing hun- dreds out of employment; 1841, wool hatting was firmly es- tablished in Danbury following the going out of fashion of napped hats; 1843 and 1845, machines for forming fur hat bodies were invented; 1846 and 1847 were hard times for the hatters. Many were thrown out of employment and hired themselves out to the farmers.
Baron Kossuth, 1849, introduced the soft felt hat into America and it shortly became very popular; 1850, by this time new inventions had so increased production that a hat could be turned out every minute. In the early days, three hats a day was the quota. Hats were now bell crowned, about nine inches deep with one and one half inch brims.
The cash system was introduced in 1850, into the hat- ting business. Up to this time all business had been carried on with a trade basis; 1853, James Taylor of Danbury patented machines for felting and sizing hats; 1858, Crofut and Knapp Co. came into being in Norwalk.
CROFUT AND KNAPP CO.
The foundation of the Crofut and Knapp industry was laid by James H. Knapp in 1858. Mr. Knapp had formerly been associated with Gillam, French and Knapp and also Knapp and French. When he started in his new business
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