USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Meriden > Years of Meriden 150: published in connection with the observance of the city's sesquicentennial, June 17-23, 1956 > Part 4
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"Horse wagons were nearly all of the lumber box order, with wood axletrees. The back chair seat was often supported on a wooden spring; the forward seats were plain flat boards resting on the upright sides. It was considered a luxury to have cushions or blankets on them to alleviate the jolting over stone. When elliptic springs were first introduced, they were considered a marvel, and set the body of the wagon up so high that some feared danger of toppling over .... "
He describes the stages as "uniformly built in egg or oval body form, capable of seating from six to ten inside, and with additional
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seats outside up back of the driver and on top." A large leather boot was built on behind to carry trunks and baggage, and also another in front to protect the driver. The whole was set on strong leather side straps called "thorough braces," suspended from elevated points front and rear, each resting firmly on the heavy four-wheeled running gear, and gave "an easy, rollicking motion to passengers when driven rapidly over rough places." The wide- awake drivers were "well skilled in handling their four lines and cracking their long lash stage whips over the backs of their forward span of galloping steeds. On approaching their stopping place they blew their shrill tin horn to notify hostlers to have fresh horses harnessed ready for exchange. There was one stage a day each way from New Haven and Hartford, a distance of thirty-six miles, running time four hours."
When George W. Perkins describes travel in the earliest days, a century before the above, he says: " ... you see a traveller starting from Hartford, on his way to New Haven. He is on horseback, with heavy saddle-bags depending from the saddle, and perhaps with pistols at his saddle-bow. After passing Wethers- field, he drives into the forest, where there is only a 'bridle path' cut through the trees. Slowly picking his way among stumps and swamps, with now and then some trepidation as an Indian crosses his path, he reaches toward nightfall the old stone house called Meriden, and is glad to find that its stout doors and shutters can resist all hostile attacks. The next morning, at early dawn, he commences another hard day's journey, and has hardly gone beyond the tavern door, when he spies a troop of gaunt wolves upon Mount Lamentation."
One of the historical papers, written in 1893 by Albert H. Wilcox, adds this about the stone house: "As the journey between Hartford and New Haven formerly occupied 'two good days' the Belcher Tavern and another tavern in Wallingford became very notorious resorts especially during the French and Revolu- tionary wars. Afterwards a wooden addition was built which was kept as a tavern until the opening of the turnpike in 1799." He also speaks of Bartlett's "Hotel Belcher" being built in the 1820's near the old tavern and its adjoining forts.
Perkins describes how the horseman, in prestagecoach days, was almost bemired in passing the swamp and unbridged stream at Pilgrim's Harbor. It was no wonder the regular horseback
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trail from Hartford swung by way of Wethersfield rather than along the shorter route later taken by the railroad. As A. B. Squire describes that route it is obvious how much swampy ground had to be reclaimed. He speaks of the railroad passing by "Old Fly" and "Beaver Pond" through meadows called "Green Swamp" into Kensington parish and thence to its termination on Main Street in Hartford.
The first step in progress from Indian trail to airplane came with the advent of freight wagons and stagecoaches. The pack- horse business had been profitable since it was the only means by which to transmit mail and goods. So owners of the pack-horse business were opposed to the "new-fangled" freight system which called for the building of roads, just as later the stagecoach companies opposed the coming of railroads, and railroads in turn look askance at trucking on highways.
New highways passable for stagecoaches cost considerable in money and effort. Neither state nor towns could keep them up although some stretches were entrusted to the good offices of settlers receiving land usage or other benefits in payment. So the stage lines obtained charters from the state allowing them to establish turnpikes, either by taking over and improving existing roads, or by building their own with necessary bridges.
The first turnpike through Meriden was completed in 1799, a big event in our history. Its building was the opening of what is known as Broad Street. It necessitated the filling in of a deep ravine which people called Nabb's Folly since a man of that name had tried to build a road across it and failed. According to Mrs. William Mackensie in a paper prepared some 30 years ago for the D. A. R., it was "an uncommonly deep chasm, through which ran a rapid, narrow stream of water." In her younger school days she says it was known as the "Gulf."
The turnpike builders filled in the ravine enough to allow a narrow road across it, although people had previously thought it could never be filled and made safe. That sort of hazard was many times multiplied before Connecticut villages were finally connected by their network of turnpikes, now replaced by one of the finest and most comprehensive road systems in the nation.
The north-south turnpike was soon traversed by an east-west route to the further advantage of the old Central Tavern as a convenient stopping place. Returning to Mr. Benham's paper we
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find a description of the toll turnpikes where gates across the pike forced travelers to stop to pay their fee before they could continue. Generally the gates were of the high fence type that swung, some were pivoted on a pole, and others were raised by pulleys and weights from a high roof overhead. There were gatekeepers who took the toll to fill the coffers of the turnpike companies so they could maintain the system in at least passable condition.
According to Mills in his Story of Connecticut the usual toll was from 25 cents for a four-wheeled pleasure carriage down to four cents for a rider on horseback. But people going to and from churches on Sunday were allowed to pass free, as were voters on their way to town meeting or farmers enroute to mills. Funerals were always free. Mr. Benham places one toll gate on the north-south turnpike on South Broad Street midway between Meriden and Yalesville and another north of the Berlin woods midway between Meriden center and Berlin. On the east-west turnpike he says one gate was about a "mile west at the old notch road corners just beyond the Parker foundry."
The turnpike companies also erected milestones along these post roads. Some that once stood in the vicinity of Meriden are still preserved although not in their original locations. The Century of Silver recounts the recent story of two such markers. One was on Colony Street in front of the house occupied until her death by Miss Sally Collins, and since torn down to make way for new construction. Only a few feet south of the Post Office, this stone indicating 19 miles from New Haven was dear to "Miss Sally's" heart. To her horror one day she looked out just in time to see a steam shovel scoop the stone up in its gnawing way preparing for a new street surface job.
Tearfully Miss Sally told the workmen of her shock. They were sympathetic and toted the chipped relic to land behind her house. Later she gave the stone to Roy C. Wilcox who subsequently located milestone 20 far out North Colony Street in front of what was Judge Dunn's house, the old Norton place. Mr. Wilcox, possessed of respect for Meriden's historical relics, has the two milestones flanking the doorway of his present residence on Allen Hill.
Such stone markers have proved more durable than some of the many markings used in the early 1700's. Land records and
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those covering space reserved for roads commonly use such terminals as "a heap of stones in the corner of the fence west of the Path" and a "walnut bush marked with stones" or a "white oak tree" to the "large chestnut stump."
A trail ran from New Haven to Hartford down in the bottom of the valley through swampy land for a century before the turn- pike was built. This was developed into a road sometime after the turnpike came into being, roughly along the line of the present Colony Street. The sandstone hill on which the center of old Meriden grew, and its connecting ridges made far better terrain for the first full-fledged highway. John Warner Barber notes in his Connecticut Historical Collections that a road was constructed in the northwestern part of Meriden to Berlin sometime in the second decade of the 1800's. He says it went through "a narrow and romantic glen, between two ridges of the Blue Mountains; this pass, which is more than a mile in extent, is called Cat Hole."
In some parts of the glen, continues Mr. Barber, there was barely room for a path because angular fragments of rock protruded at a forty-five-degree angle. He says the rocks were beaten down and covered with earth brought in for the purpose in order to make what might be called a road. He also calls attention to the elevated perpendicular rock on one side of the road which once resembled the profile of a human face, some saying it looked just like George Washington. Today one's imagination has to be pretty good to see what may have been far more sharply defined 150 years ago. But the Washington legend lingers. 1588924
Stagecoaches took four days to go from New York to Boston. The second day out of New York meant the passengers and drivers had their noon meal in Meriden. This is why the Central Tavern became in reality the heart of the town, shifting the center from its former location at the junction of Curtis and Ann Streets. A Hartford newspaper dated May 31, 1838, carries the story of the fastest trip ever made from New York to Hartford as eight hours and five minutes, actual time by steamboat and stage. And the time consumed by stage from New Haven to Hartford was four hours and ten minutes, including stops for changes of horses and rest periods for passengers. The coming of the railroad changed everything. For a century and a half before it, communication between Meriden and the outer world
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was a slow process.
All travelers were of interest to Meriden townspeople. Some- times very important figures came this way. According to Mills in his Story of Connecticut, George Washington traveled from New Haven to Hartford on his way from Philadelphia to Cam- bridge in 1775, presumably on the route we call Colony Street. Again in 1789 he made a tour from New York and through New Haven and Hartford on his way to Springfield and Boston. One legend, entirely without authentication in any record, says that Washington stopped overnight on one of these tours in a house on North Colony Road that has long since disappeared from our landscape.
Mr. Benham tells in the historical society collection of papers of the visit to Meriden of a later President. He writes:
"I recall with interest the memorable occasion in about 1829 when General Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, made his tour through New England, and in going from New Haven to Hartford by carriage he stopped off uptown and gave an open air public reception from the stone steps of the Center church. He was greeted by quite a concourse of people, intro- duced by General Walter Booth, and shook hands with a large number of prominent men, passing one by one in line. He had bright eyes, his gray hair stood up above his forehead, and as a venerable, brave looking man he appeared worthy of his high position. After this brief patriotic reception he and his honorable escorts, including Martin Van Buren, re-entered their carriages and proceeded to Hartford. Dr. Isaac I. Hough was then landlord of the old Center hotel where the New Haven and Waterbury stages always stopped."
The stage drivers were colorful figures themselves. It took considerable skill to manage the job. In addition the personality of the driver had much to do with making stagecoach travel popular. All sorts of legends surround those figures of stagecoach days, so imposing in their great coats and tall beaver hats. Quite naturally the drivers were "treated" by passengers at their stops at way stations. The story is that sometimes the drivers were sharp businessmen who arranged with innkeepers to get a cut on profits. In a sort of version of the "wooden nutmeg" legend it is said that it was a common custom for the innkeeper to serve the driver colored water when giving his treater the usual rum
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or whiskey. Thereafter he and the driver could split the profit made on the harmless substitute.
One of the famous stagecoach drivers lived in Meriden, Silas Lawrence, whose home was on Broad Street. Since the Central Tavern was a logical place for changing horses, there was a large barn nearby for housing them. That building was still standing until the second decade of this century. It was used for many years before by John Holmes' tinsmith shop.
The stagecoach business was but a part of the turnpike's importance. Much freight was carried over the road, particularly in the winter months when the Connecticut River was closed to navigation by ice. The freight teamsters customarily made the Central Tavern an overnight stop. Freight was carried usually in long heavy wagons with high board sides and arched canvas tops, drawn by from four to ten horses according to the weight of the load and the depth of the season's mud. These wagons gradually disappeared from this area as new transportation methods devel- oped. They went westward and were later known as "prairie schooners" when figuring in the vast settlement projects that opened our continent. When we remember that Fulton's steamer made its trial trip in 1807, we can realize how essential stagecoach and freight wagon were to the economy of this part of the country well into the third and fourth decades of the 1800's.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
Early Schools
AS EARLY as 1650 the General Court of Connecticut established a code of laws which ordered that every township within its jurisdiction comprising as many as fifty householders, should appoint a schoolmaster to teach the children to read and write. Thus, the school and the church took root together, and sprang up almost with the first log cabins in the forest. Although a school of sorts had evidently existed previously, the first allusion to schools in the town records of Wallingford was in 1678. At that time they voted "to allow for the encouragement of such a school master as the select men shall approve of, ten pounds a year in general, and three pence a week for all scholars, from six to sixteen, as long as they shall go to school." Apparently, a room was hired for this purpose, because it was not until 1702 that the town voted to build a schoolhouse. By 1722 it became necessary to have several schools, and so appeared the beginning of school districts.
In the earliest days there was no mention of any subject but reading, writing, and spelling. It is quite probable that for a long time nothing else was taught except occasionally the rudiments of arithmetic. The books used in the schools were limited, both in number and scope. The New England Primer, the Psalter, Dilworth's Spelling Book, and Dilworth's Schoolmaster's Assist- ant for arithmetic were the only ones in use. The teaching of manners and respect for elders, particularly the dignitaries, was greatly stressed. And once a month the minister catechised the children in the meeting house, accompanying that catechism with many a stern reproof.
The first schoolhouse in Meriden was a little low, red hut with four small windows, which stood at first near Ann Street, but was later moved to the slope between Gale Avenue and Holt Hill bridge. Another one, just as red and just as small, was built a few years after on the "old road," now Colony Street. Each one had a fireplace "for the alternate freezing and roasting process which the scholars underwent during the cold weather." Here
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the children learned the alphabet and were taught to call "Z" "izzard." The Primer for the younger pupils, and the New Testament for the older were the school reading books in the seventeen seventies. The first edition of this primer was strictly religious in its axioms. Thus: "In Adam's fall we sinned all." The woodcut was of an apple tree, beneath which were two figures having a remote likeness to humanity, one of them offering the other a big apple.
Even as early as 1773 the town records show that Meriden was separated into school districts, because the taxes for school purposes were then divided proportionately between the districts. And by 1820 several schoolhouses had been built. In the western part of town there was a particularly substantial one, known as the Stone Schoolhouse. The uptown section had grown so populous by 1832 that there was difficulty in deciding the loca- tion of the Center School, and the question was settled by divid- ing the area into the north and south centers. The south center acquired for its school a small workshop at the northwest corner of the Broad Street Cemetery, on a lane which is now Charles Street. The North Center School was at a junction of Broad and Wall Streets. In 1835 a district was set off at the Corner, and a school was opened in a tiny building which stood just where the Main Street railroad crossing now is. This school was moved a few years later into the Lyceum building which was built on what is now Church Street.
Our frequently quoted Mrs. Breckenridge attended the North Center School during the winter of 1834. Here is her descrip- tion of it: "The dimensions were probably twenty by twenty- five feet. A large butternut tree grew at the northwest corner of the building. Beneath this tree was the wood pile of logs to be cut for fuel as wanted. This was by no means as often as needed for warmth and comfort. Before the two doors, which gave entrance to the house, lay flat stones, which served as door steps. The doors gave access to two lobbies, where four or five children could stand at once if they stood close. In the lobbies or entries, as we called them, were kept the outer garments, the dinner pails and other possessions of the scholars. In the middle of the room a raised hearth or platform, about three feet square, made of brick and the thickness of a brick in height, supported a box stove. The room had four windows, two on a side. Around
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the room on three sides was a sloping counter which served as a desk, on which were kept, in more or less orderly fashion, the books and slates of the larger scholars. In front of this counter, on three sides, was a bench made of slabs, the flat side being uppermost. In front of these were low seats, with an apology for a back. On these the younger scholars and the very little ones were seated. The windows were shadeless; neither blind nor curtain tempered the glare. They were never washed, unless in summer some young woman teacher ... essayed, with the help of the girls, a little housekeeping on her own account. The room was swept once a week by the girls in turn.
"Oftener than not three dollars a week for a man teacher and one dollar and a half for a woman, for six days' teaching, was thought 'pretty easy.' An acceptable candidate for the winter school must be able to teach reading, writing (for this he must 'set copies') and Daboll's arithmetic, so far as or including the rule of three; to make a quill pen, and to 'govern' the large boys.
"At nine in the morning those who loitered outside were called in by a vigorous thumping on the window sash with a ruler or ferule. This instrument was utilized as a timekeeper, to line copy books, and as a means of castigation whenever energetic disciplinary measures were in order. The pupils rushed in with all the racket and clatter that vigorous youth, shod in heavy cowhide boots and shoes, are capable of creating. The boys who entered later perpetrated a curious side-long jerk of the head, and the girls a perpendicular dip of the person, both contortions being supposed to indicate 'manners.' When fairly seated, Testaments were produced and school opened by the first and second classes reading two verses as it came the turn of each scholar.
"The reading over, all the large scholars turned their faces to the wall and addressed themselves to Daboll's arithmetic, Wood- bridge's geography or their home-made writing books. Of course, the boys could turn on the long benches easily, but the girls had to take pains to perform the gymnastic feat properly. It was done by stooping and placing the hands on each side of the skirts, then by a quick, circular movement throwing the feet over the bench. This was usually done simultaneously. When called upon for anything by the teacher the whole class whirled back again.
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"Webster's New Speller was the class book for spelling in the school. The third class having had their spelling lesson in words of two syllables set for them to study, the little ones were called up one by one to be taught their 'A, B, C's' .... It would now be time for the second class to read and spell. A whirl of feet and petticoats landed two rows of boys and girls standing on the floor facing the teacher, who gave the order, 'Manners!' and the jerking of necks and bobbing of skirts gave evidence that school etiquette was understood. The spelling came first, after- ward the reading from the same page, such things as:
'We burn oil in tin and glass lamps.' 'We can burn fish oil in lamps.'
A geography lesson, if anybody had one, mending pens, attend- ing to sums and a playtime for the boys and one for the girls brought the morning session to a close.
"The afternoon began by reading in the Columbian Orator. The National Preceptor came into use a few years later. To some of the scholars this was the best part of the day. More Daboll, a geography lesson, and more alphabet for the little ones. Poor little things! They sat patiently three hours on the hard benches, with nothing to do and nothing to look at. The one virtue re- quired of them was to keep still. More spelling by the first and second classes, and at one o'clock the school day's work was done. 'Manners' were required from each scholar on leaving the room, and the genuflection was aimed at the wall, the benches, the door or the teacher as it happened."
During this same period Meriden could boast of several private schools. The first one in town was taught by an Episcopal clergy- man, the Reverend Mr. Keeler. In 1834 Miss Julianne Eddy opened a private school in the basement of the Center Congregational Church. At that time it was only one large, cold, gloomy room, filled with benches. The next year the school was moved into the basement of the old Baptist Church on the northeast corner of the cemetery, because the room here was lighter and warmer. Some years later, after Miss Eddy's marriage, Miss Henrietta Malone started a private school in Captain Collins' old house on East Main Street near the corner of Parker Avenue. And in 1840 John D. Post established the "Academy," a boarding school in a small way, on East Main at Elm. For a time this school had a fair patronage from other towns, although there were well-
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established boarding schools for young ladies in Hartford and New Haven, and Cheshire Academy enjoyed considerable prestige.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Meriden in the Wars
THE TERRIBLE Pequot War was over before any settlement of white men took place in the Meriden area. By the time King Phillip's War was under way, Meriden was still a part of Walling- ford. The entire community set up regular guard service with a tight schedule for sentinels on duty throughout the dangerous period. There was an elaborate system for alarms, not like our present plans to warn of an atomic attack, but at least equally adequate for the times.
As has been said, the Indians in this neighborhood were friendly to the white man and as afraid of warring tribes as any settler worried for the fate of his family and property. But there was no telling when enemy propaganda might win over a neighbor Indian here and there. Those Indians knew the white man's property as well as the settler did himself. They had the run of the farms and were potentially too dangerous, in the event they should become renegades, for the peace of the white settler's mind.
In the Joseph Wadsworth papers discovered around 1900 in an old pine box in the attic of the Wadsworth home in Hartford, that man credited with hiding the Charter in Hartford's famous oak tree says of King Philip's War that "fortunately Connecticut was not called upon to make any sacrifices in this troublous time, as aside from the burning of Simsbury there was no property lost in the colony and I always believed that it would not have happened if the people had remained in their homes instead of rushing off. . . . "
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