Recollections of a New England town

Introduction

'T^HE interest that attached to the articles on old-time Meriden by "Faith" (Mrs. Frances A. Breckenridge), as printed originally in The Meriden Daily Journal, led to the belief that published in book form they would prove entertaining, not only to present and former Meriden people, but to the readers of New England generally; for Meriden as described in "Faith's" quaint way in the following chapters, is typical of the New England villages of the first and second quarters of the century.

To the newspaper articles have been added many chapters on subjects that cannot fail to engage the pleasant attention of all who would like to know what rural New England was like half a century and more ago.

One great value that the work has is the absolutely correct historical information that it contains. What is told here is authenticated by carefully preserved family records, and personal knowledge of the author.

The character of the men and women who lived here two generations since will surely be better understood and appreciated when one has seen them through the eyes of " Faith."

Thos. L. Reilly.

CHAPTE'R I.

THE EARLIER TRADITIONS.

'T^HE southwestern part of Meriden, says Rev. Geo.

■*■ W. Perkins, in his "Sketches," and Dr. Chas H. S. Davis in his " History of Meriden," was claimed by a small tribe of Indians, ' ' The Mattabesitts. " Mr. Daniel Parker, who was born and lived all his long life at the homestead and farm, lying on the eastern slope of the hill west of Hanover Village, told the writer that his grandfather, from whom he inherited his property, knew and had told him the names of certain large rocks at the southern bank of the Quinnipiac River. These rocks were prominent features of the river side until the raising of the dam at the cutlery works set back the water and changed the aforetime rapid river into a broad and placid lake, and thus submerged the rocks. These rocks may be even now identified at low water.

Unfortunately, Mr. Parker could not recall their Indian names. There is still a flint arrow head in the keeping of an elderly person that was picked up in 1848 near the "Copper Mines" at the Walnut Grove Cemetery.

It has been pretty definitely conceded that Meriden was named from a parent town in England. The names of Wallingford and Cheshire were thus derived.

When the very sparse number of settlers and the dangers and diiBculties which beset the traveler at that early date are taken into consideration, the idea of ' ' Merry Den " revelries hardly seems consistent. There was no " Public " to speak of, and the few who traversed the country went for business, and were far more likely to be a grave, sedate and watchful people than to be given to wild and noisy merry-making.

By 1725 the name was identified with all the tract lying between the steep, rocky fells on the east, north and west.

About that year a meeting house was built near the foot of what is at present known as Buckwheat Hill ; a burying ground was also set off near the summit of the hill.

Tradition has it that the location was disputed and quarreled over, a method of settling vexed questions not altogether unheard of at this era.

Those whose farms lay at the west of the Old Colony Road, and those whose farms lay close to the eastern hills, and those at the " Plains," each and all of them miles from each other, severally wanted the new meeting house near as possible to themselves.

The east side people seemed to be the most determined, for they drew the lumber in the night over the hill to some spot selected by them.

Somehow, those who carried away the materials at night were made to bring them back by day, and there seems after that to have been no more difficulty.

A cold, bare and comfortless place must that meeting house have been in winter. In summer things would be better.

Those who attended public worship rode on horses, with saddles and "pillions," carrying double, for there was not then or for years after anything with wheels, except the most primitive ox carts, anywhere within miles. The Sunday nooning by the spring (never known to be dry from that far-off day to the present), must have had something the aspect of a sedate and solemn picnic.

But, oh, the dreary winter funerals! Nothing of softness or grace or beauty was allowed to mitigate the gloom of the Shadow of Death.

It would have been thought indecorous to lay a flower upon the coffin made to order by the nearest carpenter, and outlining as nearly as possible the form of the body it enclosed, sometimes clumsily lined, oftener not, sometimes stained and varnished, often left the color of the elmwood boards, but sometimes painted acrude blue color.

In those days the term "bearers " had a meaning of its own, and the coffin with its burden was carried on men's shoulders up the steep slope to the roughly dug grave.

The words of the prayer and the benediction were fairly blown away by the wind as it swept across the bleak enclosure, bare of either tree or shrub or creeping vine.

Before the year 1779 the meeting house had vanished, but the foundation stones were there for many years after.

Many of the old brown headstones were still to be seen in the cemetery until late in the forties. One by one they had been broken down, or had been built into the surrounding wall.

Some years ago, chiefly through the efforts of the Hon. Dexter R. Wright, then a lawyer in Meriden, a monument was raised on "Burying Ground Hill." This monument records a few names of those buried there.

The last burial on this hill took place more than a century and a half ago.

By far the larger number sleep there unknown and unremembered— " Nameless here for evermore."

Chapter II. First Factories

TN 1833 Meriden was considered to contain between two and three thousand people within the town limits.

This population, if so many there were, was mostlydistributed in groups. These were known as "the Center and the Corner" in the middle of the town, and Clarksville, Prattsville, Webbsville and Hanover in the outskirts.

These divisions were at some distance apart — three or four miles in some instances.

Very prominently to the memory comes the picture of the vividly red building at the head of Prattsville Pond on the east side, with "Clock Factory " painted in brilliant white letters three feet long on the side next the turnpike, and so placed that the attention of the stage passengers might be attracted thereto.

A very striking piece of color the building made, standing so near the stream that sometimes the shadow beneath the water was nearly as distinct as the substance above it, shaded by the hickory, oak, chestnut, maple and butternut trees of the first growth that grew on the east side of the stream, with an undergrowth of birch, sassafras, sweet osier and dog-wood — for all these grew there, each with its own peculiar tint of green.

Doubtless the impression was deepened and the retrospect retained from the fact that one pair of beholding eyes were fresh from the sand-barrens of South Carolina, where one could dig an inch or two into the sand and find smooth, yellow clay, and cut into it as one might cut into a n'^w cheese, and fashion from it dolls, marbles and even doll's furniture, which could be hardened in the sun.

True, at the South, the yellow jasmine hung from the trees, and the sweet shrub, which was not a shrub at all, but looked like a little red-leaved weed, perfuming the air with its fragrance at the slightest stir, and the trailing arbutus, larger and more fragrant than it grows at the North, could be found in February wherever there was a grove of trees other than pines.

All these were very well if one had nothing better, but they were as nothing to the lovely green turf of the North and splendid dandelions, the swaying windflowers, the liverworts, the white bloodroots, the blue violets, and not least, the lovely but, as one soon found out, despised houstonia.

All these beautiful and, to the young, unaccustomed eyes, rare blooms were to be found around Prattsville Pond.

Although even the tradition of a manufactory of clocks in that locality has nearly been lost from the annals of the town, yet it was in its day, and for that period, an extensive business interest, having a branch in Montreal and another in Nashville.

All the movements of these clocks were made of wood. Some of the cases were elaborately carved, really hand carved, not pressed into different forms.

The upper part of the clock doors were of plain glass of course, but the lower part would be decorated in oil, with landscapes and brief truisms, such as

" Time Flies" or "Time is Money" (the latter not so true after all).

But more often were depicted the smiling and amiable aspect of a young woman, with her hair dressed to kill, as was the mode of the day.

Right here one may be permitted to wonder how under the sun those wonderful braids, puffs and immense bows of hair were constructed, that were the fashion at that time.

False hair was only permitted to elderly ladies, who wore "fronts" of aggressive blackness and falseness. The very blackest and falsest being always the Sunday one.

These clock faces, if they had been preserved, would be far more accurate exponents of the costumes of the period, than any of the fashion plates of that era.

The brothers Benjamin, Ira and Hiram Twiss were the business firm.

Ira was the manager at Montreal, Hiram at Nashville, Tenn., and Benjamin divided his time between Meriden and Montreal.

Like most of the enterprises of that day, this one sought the market by sending out "peddlers," who were not in the least disconcerted by the appellation, the term being simply the equivalent of the " salesman " of a later day.

The factory itself, although one of the most imposing at the time, would now be considered a very small affair indeed. All the decorating was done by two or three young women in a shop no larger than an ordinary pantry, located back of the dwelling house at the southwest corner of North Broad and Britannia streets.

After a good many prosperous years the firm failed, owing, it was said, to the mismanagement of one of the partners.

The property once owned and occupied by the firm in Montreal is said to be, in the year of 1898, worth more than a million dollars.

After the failure of the clock business, Ira Couch started in the same building, early in the forties, the weaving of webbing.

There was nothing significant about that, except that Edwin Curtis invested some money in the concern.

Those who were familiar with Mr. Curtis and his peculiar traits of character would know this to be very remarkable.

There was every reason for expecting a profitable result, but Mr. Couch contracted typhoid fever, which terminated fatally. He was the lasit of three brothers, who died in early manhood of the same disease. Mr. Curtis could not be induced to go on with the venture, although urged to do so, therefore the business was at once ended.

Although it is not, perhaps, exactly germane to the subject, it seems impossible not to pay a tribute to the courage and energy of Mrs. Couch.

The method of settlement left her with exactly ten dollars. After recovering from the suddenness of the blow, she set herself to the work of providing a home and livelihood for herself and three young children, the youngest a baby boy about two years old.

Being a woman of superior taste, she settled herself into a fashionable millinery business, brought up her three children excellently, and having long before bought the present site of the Winthrop Hotel for a few hundred dollars, sold it for as many thousands.

Mrs. Couch died at an advanced age, much beloved lO RECOLLECTIONS OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN.

and respected by those who had known her as a practical exponent of woman's ability, let the "rights and equality " be where they may.

The old clock factory was finally burned down, and there is nothing now to indicate that any structure of the kind ever stood on that spot.

The trees fell long ago, and a railroad track stretches along the bank where their shadows once darkened the stream.

The wintergreen and arbutus, the yellow and the white violets that were plentiful on the eastern bank of the pond, have been cultivated out of existence for a lifetime. All of it is now " but a picture that hangs on memory's wall."

A low dam of logs, with luxuriant ferns growing out of the crevices, retained the water which formed the small reservoir of Prattsville Pond.

This was the water power for the ivory comb works, if the little shop at the south end of the dam could be dignified by the title.

Sometime in those years the dam above at Baldwin's mills gave way, and the pressure of the escaping water carried the Prattsville dam with it.

A higher and more substantial dam of stone was built, which, although repaired from time to time, is practically the present one.

The dam at Baldwin's mills was rebuilt, but was made much more secure at a later period.

The ivory comb business must have been started in the twenties, for in 1833 it was well established.

At that time the relations between the employed and the employer were essentially democratic. The former usually found a home in the family of the latter, with a full welcome to all social privileges.

If for any reason this was not practicable, the employes were located in some family of known respectability and religious character, and a strict watch was kept upon their morals and manners.

Ten o'clock was the regulation hour for retiring for the night, and to be absent from the house after that time was a matter for minute investigation.

Indeed, so exact and strict was this rule, that when Mr. Pratt's oldest son gave what was at that day called "a wedding party," which was held at his father's house, his father insisted that the guests should leave at ten o'clock, and they did.

The character of an applicant for employment was inquired into and sifted before a favorable answer was given, and a church member had the preference. The result being, as might have been expected, a literal indorsement of St. Paul's dictum — that faith without works is dead.

Although the social methods of dealing with those employed were democratic, the hours of labor were despotic, fourteen and fifteen hours being the general rule.

In the summer the hours were from sunrise to sunset, with intervals of three-quarters of an hour for breakfast and half an hour for dinner.

During the shorter winter days breakfast was at six (or before), and work began at half past six. Four days in the week the working hours were from half past six in the morning until nine at night, with an interval of half an hour for dinner and another half hour for supper.

As Saturday night was religiously kept, the comb factories shut down at a quarter to five.

Wages averaged from $1.25 to $2.00 per day for men.

Women scarcely earned more than fifty cents per day. Board for men averaged perhaps $2.00 per week. Women paid seldom more than $1.25, often not so much.

It must have been about 1833 that the eleven-hour movement was started in Boston, if one does not mistake. Strange as it may seem now, it was bitterly opposed, but finally triumphed by its innate righteousness.

The three ivory comb factories in town in the early thirties were each of them painted light blue, with white trimmings. Why such colors should have been considered the proper insignia of the ivory comb business is a conundrum without an answer.

The largest one, in Prattsville, bore on its front the sign, " Howard, Pratt & Co."

The second in importance was owned and conducted by Walter Webb at Webbsville. This was afterwards partially rebuilt and known as Parker & Whipple, Much enlarged, it is now, in 1898, the Parker Clock Co., with Theodore F. Breese as manager.

The third, and the smallest of the comb factoriesi was located in the village of Hanover, just below the present dam, which was then only about as high as an ordinary chair. This one was owned and managed by Philo Pratt, and was short-lived.

The methods of comb making were the same in all three of the factories.

The factory in Prattsville stood directly at the south end of the dam. The buildings, one supposes, must be spoken of as two stories in front, but the windows in each story were only of half length. At the back it was one story, and the only entrance was on that side. The "office " was a wooden desk fastened to the wall opposite the door in the main work room. Here Mr. Julius Pratt sat on a three-legged stool, and here he received visitors, transacted business and arrived at conclusions.

The machinery used was very primitive. No concern, however small or insignificant, would in these later days even look at any appliances as crude as were those, then thought quite progressive.

Certain young persons used to watch with breathless awe the wonderful man who entered the open shed called the wheel-house, and passing over the narrow plank above the water, with his own marvelous hands threw on or off the leather belt which caused the wheel (about as large in diameter as a small tub) to revolve or become stationary, and thus controlled the rush of a cataract that one did not doubt resembled, if it did not rival, Niagara Falls in splendor.

The great ivory tusks, too, had been carried over the hot sands of Africa, and had sailed over leagues of ocean before being finally deposited on the floor of a New England factory.

Often it would happen that the conveying ship would fail of a full cargo of ivory. When this was the case the failure was supplemented by a balance of dates and coffee. Whenever this happened those interested were expected to take each a certain proportion of the latter commodities (and pay for them).

Thus it came to pass that pure Mocha coffee in bags, sewed together with fibre from the date palm by dusky hands in the far eastern country, and not opened until they reached a New England kitchen, was a common beverage. These coffee berries looked like small dried peas. They were improved by keeping.

Dates also were used and eaten in such quantities that if there is anything in the food theory they ought to have made chronologists of the whole village.

One proof of the futility of that theory may be adduced from the fact that among the most diligent devourers of the sticky fruit, was one individual who could never be perfectly certain in what year Columbus discovered America, or the precise date of the Puritanic debut on Plymouth Rock.

The ivory tusks, always four or five feet long, sometimes six or seven, in rare instances, nine or ten feet, were sawed into blocks or lengths in the lower room facing the road.

The one upper room was reserved, except the office corner, for the finishing processes.

The ivory blocks were again sawed into slices or plates, as they were called. The plates were put into a leather-cased wooden block held in the left hand, while the roughness left by the sawing was removed by a sharp knife or "scraper."

The tooth cutting was done by fastening the ivory plate into a small, vice-like machine, and the cutting accomplished by a movable saw.

The polishing and cleansing the interstices or brushing was done by machinery, but the "setting" or straightening the teeth, which were apt to be crooked after the sawing, v/as done by a small steel tool in the hands of an expert, who thus straightened even the finest teeth one by one.

The finished combs, of varied degrees of fineness, were of substantial thickness, for at this early period ivory was comparatively cheap, and the life of the material was not then kiln-dried and bleached out of it.

Chapter III. The "sabba'-day" House

COME years before the turnpike road between New York and Boston brought in a new era. A Con. gregational meeting house had been built on the spot where the Center church now stands. Larger than the first one on "Meeting House Hill" (for this was the name of the hill until sometime in the thirties), it was very likely a better built house, but almost equally as bare of interior comfort.

An ancient lady born in Meriden in 1779, from whose lips most of these reminiscent odds and ends were taken, perfectly well remembered the old " Sabba'-day " house that stood just south of the church. Part of the foundation and cellar wall were there as late as 1838. This " Sabba'-day " house was a sort of joint stock concern owned by some of the church members who lived too far from the church to go home and return within the hour-long (or short) noon intermission.

The one room had a fireplace, and the fuel and a barrel of cider were provided by " joining."

It must have taken some constancy of purpose to leave the warm fireside for the frigid atmosphere of the meeting house from the present point of view. It seems likely enough that a sense of duty might compel some of the party to stay and see the fire properly taken care of.

This property (the land) was owned by the Rev. Mr. Hall. It was afterwards bought by John Butler, and his son, Lyman Butler, built a house very nearly where the old " Sabba'-day " house stood.

This house (in 1899) is owned and occupied by Mrs. Lyman Butler and her daughters. Here also was, and is still, a well of delicious water flowing from a spring never known yet to run dry. This spring supplies the house, and also furnishes the adjacent factories of Chas. Parker with drinking water.

In this second church there were no more means for warmth than there had been in the first one. The seats could not have been much better than mere benches, for it was told of an elderly woman, now living, that when a restless child she slipped from the seat and made her way under the benches, on all fours, to the door, till finally she was captured by her dismayed pursuers on the last step.

Something there must have been in the hearts and minds of those bretliren and sisters of that former time differing from ours, this later day, to sit as they did, Sunday after Sunday, in the carpetless, cushionless, fireless, comfortless room, and listen devoutly through the hour of the long prayer which the minister might not curtail, to the singing keyed from the pitch pipe of the two or three tunes which were never changed from one year's end to another. And then to the hour-long sermon, which might not be shortened, although it might be, and often was lengthened.

There is something pathetic in the thought of those hard-working men and women sitting patiently, hour after hour, on the hard benches, looking intently up to the high pulpit, trying to obtain some spiritual rest and refreshment, while from that altitude the " doctrines " were expounded. Predestination, foreordination and election were argued over and over to the confusion and utter bewilderment of the hearers, and one suspects, maybe, of the preacher also.

The merciful love, the everlasting patience of the Divine Fatherhood had no place in that austere system of opinions.

■ CHAPTER IV.

ANECDOTE OF THE REVOLUTION.

T)Y 1 79 1 the turnpike road from Boston to New York had been projected, disputed, quarreled over and built.

The completed work was held to be a most wonderful achievement, quite as great for that time as its successful rival, the railroad, fifty years later.

From Hartford to New Haven the old turnpike runs almost directly north and south. The contractor, one Mr. Peck of New Haven, affirmed his determination to make a straight road between the two cities if (as he profanely declared) it took him through hell.

Wherever the low, swampy ground required filling in willows were planted thickly by the roadside. Where the grade of the road was raised and the ground dry, Lombardy poplars were planted equally thick.

The turnpike stock was eagerly taken, and was valuable for many years. The elder Dr. Hough invested largely in it, and the earnings made a fair income for many years for those of his family who inherited it. After the railroad was built it became valueless. No modern failure of stocks has brought with it more consternation than did that turnpike stock failure bring to one family when it was decided that it must be entirely thrown away or sold for a few cents a share.

But that came to pass later. I am a little premature. Before the growth of the town had begun, while yet all citizens, except the minister, doctor and the storekeeper, were scattered on isolated farms, there was not wanting what at this distance of time seems like romantic incident, but probably most commonplace enough to those most nearly concerned.

Deacon Ezekiel Rice would often tell, his aged eyes filling with tears, at the recollection of seeing, when peace was declared after the Revolution, the women running from house to house waving their aprons and crying for joy. For life had been hard for them in those years of trying to be a nation and to have a country.

On the other hand, an ancient maiden lady used to get rampantly indignant while rehearsing to her partly scared, partly amused and partly sympathizing listener the story of how her " honored father " was not allowed to pass the limits of his own farm in the western part of the town, he being a rabid Tory and thus liable to be shot.

A story told of at least one other town in New England was certainly told the writer, of a family who lived at the eastern side of Meriden, how the summons for joining the army having come suddenly, suitable clothing had to be provided, and that at once, only having twenty -four hours to do it all. So they sheared a white sheep and a black one, mixed the wool, carded it, spun it and wove it, and then made the mixed black and white into a suit of clothes, which the soldier wore when he left home. The women sat up all night to do it. This story has been told of more than one New England family, and was doubtless true of more than one, for the daughters of Eve are resourceful.

Another local story belonging to the days of the Revolution could never at least in after years be impartially judged.

A Meriden man, a Tory, carried his principles so far that he went to Canada and joined the British army.

While absent from Meriden he married an English woman of good family, a daughter of an English officer- When the war was over he came home. While on the way two infant daughters were born. His wife the mother of one, the elder, by a few days, a servant girl the mother of the younger ; the man the father of both. The penalty of such a crime, if proved, was then of extreme rigor; even death in extreme cases, and this one, taken up as it was by the thinly scattered but severely moral public, was considered a most heinous affair.

Arrest and a trial followed. Then the woman and wife arose, and having, as she afterwards said, "taken gunpowder and rum to give her courage," she took oath that both babes were "bone of her bone," and "flesh of her flesh," justifying her act by saying that she and her husband were one. The same woman insisted that all her new-born children should be immediately plunged -into cold water. The wife of Dr. Hough, when

told of this, observed that " Mrs. ought to be put

into a tub of cold water herself." This remark was

never forgiven by Mrs. as long as she lived. She

used to wither by its repetition an unlucky great-granddaughter of Mrs. Hough whenever an opportunity was given.

The two sisters, while young, were called twins, but after the death of the wife and mother this was repudiated by the elder. The two lived to be very old. The elder died at home, but the younger, who outlived all the family, died at last at a great age at the town farm. The forsaken body rested for one night in St. Andrew's church, and thence was borne to its nameless grave, thus ending a story that began more than a hundred years ago.

Chapter V. Some Of The Older Families

T TNTIL about 1785 the real center of the town was ^-^^ the corner of Curtis and Ann streets. On the spot now known as Ann street stood a low, rambling red house. A tragic interest was connected with the place, for in it a little boy had shot and killed his sister. She was buried in the old Broad street cemetery, and it is said this was the first burial there. Nothing more than this is known of the family.