decorative image not visible HARTFORD "THE BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY" By MARY K. TALCOTT
AMONG the historic cities of New England, Hartford claims a foremost place. Not only was its settlement of great consequence at the time, but for historical importance and far-reaching results this colony’s claims to attention are second only to those of Plymouth and Boston. The foundation of Hartford was a further application and development of the ideas that brought the Puritans to this country, and, to quote the historian, Johnston,— “Here is the first practical assertion of the right of the people, not only to choose, but to limit the powers of their rulers, an assertion which lies at the foundation of the American system.... It is on the banks of the Connecticut, under the mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker, and in the constitution to which he gave life, if not form, that we draw the first breath of that atmosphere This constitution, first promulgated in Hartford, was the first written constitution in history which was adopted by a people and which also organized a government. John Fiske says: “The compact drawn up in the Mayflower’s cabin was not, in the strict sense, a constitution, which is a document defining and limiting the functions of government. Magna Charta partook of the nature of a written constitution as far as it went, but it did not create a government.” On the 14th of January, 1639, the freemen of the three towns, Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, assembled at Hartford, and drew up a constitution, consisting of eleven articles, which they called the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,” and under this law the people of Connecticut lived for nearly two centuries, as the Charter granted by King Charles II., in 1662, was simply a royal recognition of the government actually in operation. Another writer says: “We honor the limitations of despotism which are written in the twelve tables; the repression of monarchical power in Magna Charta, in the Bill of Rights, and in that whole undefinable creation, as invisible and intangible as the atmosphere but like it full of oxygen and electricity, which we call the British Constitution. But in our Connecticut Constitution we find no limitation upon monarchy, for monarchy is unrecognized; the limitations are upon the legislature, the courts, and executive. It is pure democracy acting through representation, and imposing organic limitations. Even the suffrage qualification of church membership, which was required by our older sister Colony of Massachusetts, was omitted. Here in a New England wilderness a few pilgrims of the pilgrims, alive to the inspirations of the common law and of the British Constitution, so full of Christianity that they felt the great throb of its heart of human brotherhood, and so full of Judaism that they believed themselves in some special sense the people of God, made a written constitution, to be a supreme and organic law for their State.” But for the immediate inspiration of this document we must look to a “lecture,” preached by Mr. Hooker on Thursday, May 21, 1638, before the legislative body of freemen. Dr. Bacon says of it: “That sermon, by Thomas Hooker, is the earliest known suggestion of a fundamental law, enacted, not by royal charter nor by concession from any previously existing government, but by the people themselves,—a primary and supreme law by which the government is constituted, and which not only provides for the free But we must know something of a people to whom such doctrines were preached—of a people capable of receiving and applying such truths. It is said that three kingdoms were sifted to furnish the men who settled New England, and it may also be said that the Massachusetts Colony was sifted to supply the Connecticut settlers. Three of the eight Massachusetts towns, Dorchester, Watertown, and Newtown (now Cambridge), were not in full agreement with the other five, especially on the fundamental feature of the Massachusetts polity, the limitation of office-holding and the voting privilege to church-members. At first the majority were unwilling to grant the minority “liberty to remove.” John Haynes was made Governor of Massachusetts in 1635, probably with the hope of retaining his friends in the Colony. But their desire to leave was too strong; small parties of emigrants made their way to the banks of the Connecticut during the year 1635, but the main body of the colonists did not leave until the spring of 1636. Dr. Benjamin Trumbull, the first “About the beginning of June Mr. Hooker, Mr. Stone, and about a hundred men, women, and children took their departure from Cambridge, and travelled more than a hundred miles thro’ a hideous and trackless wilderness to Hartford. They had no guide but their compass; made their way over mountains, thro’ swamps, thickets, and rivers, which were not passable but with great difficulty. They had no cover but the heavens, nor any lodgings but those which simple nature afforded them. They drove with them a hundred and sixty head of cattle, and by the way subsisted on the milk of their cows. Mrs. Hooker was borne through the wilderness upon a litter. The people generally carried their packs, arms, and some utensils. They were nearly a fortnight on their journey.” Trumbull adds: “This adventure was the more remarkable, as many of this company were persons of figure, who had lived in England in honor, affluence, and delicacy, and were entire strangers to fatigue and danger.” When dismissing these colonists Massachusetts sent with them a governing committee, or commissioners, as they were called. At a meeting of these commissioners, held February 21, 1637, the plantation, which had been called Newtown, was named Hartford. As Governor Haynes was born in the immediate vicinity of the English Hertford, he probably had much influence in naming the new plantation. On the 11th of April, 1639, the first general meeting of the freemen under the constitution was held, and John Haynes was elected the first Governor of Connecticut. This selection shows his active sympathy and co-operation with Hooker, and we can entirely agree with Bancroft, when he says: “They who judge of men by their services to the human race will never cease to honor the memory of Hooker, and of Haynes.” But the soil of Hartford has had other occupants; not only the aboriginal owners of the soil, for when the English came they found a Dutch trading-post established on what is yet known as Dutch Point. The English claimed the territory now comprehended in the State of Connecticut by virtue of the discoveries of John and Sebastian Cabot in 1497, and more especially in 1498. This territory was included in the grant to the Plymouth Company in 1606, but that organization undertook no work of colonization. When the settlers of 1635 came they took possession of this portion of the valley of the Connecticut “In conformity to this order the General Court was convened, and an act passed sequestering the Dutch house, lands, and property of all kinds at Hartford, for the benefit of the Commonwealth; and the Court also Even after this change of rulers a few of the Dutch traders remained in Hartford, as is shown by references to them on the records, but they all finally returned to the New Netherlands. During the next thirty years the little settlement on the banks of the Connecticut continued to grow and prosper, having very little to do with the affairs of the outside world. In 1675 and 1676, King Philip’s War caused great alarm and anxiety for a time, but after this conflict was concluded by the subjugation of the Indians, peace and quietness again reigned. Soon after the accession of James II., in 1685, this quiet was however rudely disturbed by the issue of a writ of quo warranto against the Governor and Company of Connecticut, summoning them to appear before his Majesty, and show by what warrant they exercised certain powers. In reply, the Colony pleaded the Charter, granted by the King’s royal brother, made strong professions of their loyalty, and begged a continuance of their “The tradition is that Governor Treat strongly represented the great expense and hardships of the colonists in planting the country, the blood and treasure which Sir Edmund was disconcerted, but declared the government of the colony to be in his own hands, annexed Connecticut to Massachusetts and the other New England colonies, appointed officers, and returned to Boston. After the downfall of Andros, in 1689, Governor Treat resumed his position as Governor of Connecticut, and the Charter reappeared from its seclusion, and continued to be the organic law of Connecticut, although in Parliament A people that have no history are the happiest, therefore we may assume that Hartford was a happy and flourishing town during the remainder of the colonial period, and even During the colonial period there was very little literary production in America, except sermons and theological treatises, and Hartford was no exception to this rule. Her first author was one of her founders, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, “The Light of the Western John Trumbull was born in Watertown, Connecticut, then Westbury, April 24, 1750. Both on his father’s side and his mother’s he was of the pure Brahmin stock of New England, and through his mother he was related to Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, his fellow-poet, and many other writers of a later time. He exhibited marvellous precocity, and, his father being engaged in preparing a youth of seventeen for examination at Yale, the boy In the first decade of our independence the “Hartford Wits” made this little provincial capital a brilliant intellectual centre, and an David Humphreys was born in Derby, Connecticut, in 1753, served honorably during the Revolution, and had the distinction of being Washington’s aid-de-camp. He also held, after the war, the position of secretary to the commissioners—Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams—appointed to negotiate treaties of commerce with various European powers. Joel Barlow is perhaps the best known of any of the Wits, and but a small portion of his career was passed in Hartford. He took up his residence in our town in 1782, just after leaving the army. He was then engaged in writing his best known poem, the epic Vision of Columbus, but he did much other literary work, and was also the editor of a weekly newspaper, called The American Mercury, for which he wrote many essays, said to be the precursors of the modern editorial. In 1787, he completed the Vision of Columbus, and it was published by subscription and dedicated to Louis XVI., King of France. During the No political subject has ever been the theme of more gross misrepresentation or more constant reproach than the assembly of delegates from the New England States which met at Hartford in December, 1814. After the war of 1812 had continued two years, our public affairs were in a deplorable condition. The delegates were sent. On December 15, 1814, the convention, numbering twenty-six delegates, representing Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont, met in the council chamber of the State House, now the City Hall of Hartford. Among the delegates were men of such assured position as Harrison Gray Otis, George Cabot, William Prescott, the father of the historian, and Stephen Longfellow, the father of the poet, from Massachusetts; Chauncey Goodrich, Governor John Treadwell, Roger Minot Sherman, and James Hillhouse, of Connecticut. Their deliberations continued for three weeks, and their sittings were held with closed doors, a fact which was brought up against them by their political adversaries as evidence of dark and nefarious designs. During the sessions a small body of recruits for the army, then in Hartford, were paraded in a threatening manner by the officer in command. The proceedings resulted in the adoption of a report and the passage of resolutions recommending amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Among the recommendations was one proposing that representative and direct During the last century the chief business of Hartford was the trade with the West Indies. There was also some trafficking with Ireland and with Lisbon, timber being exported to the first named, and fish to the latter. From 1750 to 1830, Hartford not only imported goods from the West Indies, but One of the most successful of these, and one in which Hartford now holds a unique position, is the insurance business. Nowhere else has the business of fire insurance reached such magnitude as in Hartford. The aggregate capital of the six fire insurance companies in the city is $10,250,000, which exceeds one quarter of the capital of all the fire companies in the country. It is supposed that the business began in marine underwriting, as Hartford formerly had such large shipping interests and so many vessels concerned in trade with the West Indies. An insurance office was opened in Wethersfield in 1777 by Barnabas Dean, presumably for shipping. Fire insurance policies were issued in 1794, and in 1795 a company was formed for the purpose of underwriting on “vessels, stock, merchandize, etc.” In 1810 the oldest of the present Hartford fire insurance companies was formed,—the Hartford, with a capital of $150,000. All the early insurance companies made the mistake Hartford possesses a number of well-known educational and philanthropic institutions,—Trinity College; the Wadsworth AthenÆum, containing the Watkinson Library of Reference First, chronologically, comes “The American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons,” the mother-school of all similar institutions in this country. In 1887, when the recurring years brought about the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, the founder of this school for the deaf, the day was celebrated by all deaf-mutes throughout the United States, and commemorated by public services and general festivities. In a building on Main Street, now constituting the southern end of the City Hotel, the American Asylum gathered its first seven pupils, April 15, 1817. The starting-point of the enterprise was the eager desire of Dr. Mason F. Cogswell to secure an education for his daughter, Alice, a deaf-mute, whose infirmity was caused by an attack of spotted fever. In 1815, several prominent gentlemen in Hartford took steps towards the organization of such a school at the instance of Dr. Cogswell, and decided to send the Rev. Another evidence of the philanthropic feeling animating the citizens of Hartford about the same date as the foundation of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, was the establishment in 1824, of the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane. At that time there were only two other institutions in the country for the exclusive care of insane persons, and the importance of restorative treatment was but little understood. Many citizens of Hartford signed the petition some eighteen acres on the slope of Rocky Hill, commanding a beautiful view in every direction, was purchased by the College. Ground was broken on Commencement Day, 1875, with impressive ceremonies, and two large buildings were ready for occupation in 1878. The erection of the Northam Gateway, in 1881, unites the buildings and completes the western side of the proposed quadrangle. The lofty towers have added greatly to the appearance of the structure. The style of architecture is secular Gothic of the early French type. The buildings of the Theological Seminary on Broad Street attract attention by their size and dignity. The institution was established in East Windsor in 1833, and was removed to Hartford in 1865, occupying the old Wadsworth house and other buildings on Prospect Street. In 1879, the present structure was occupied, and it has since been enlarged by the addition of the Case Library. The first great manufacturing enterprise in Hartford, and still perhaps the best known and most important, is the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, established by Colonel Samuel Colt in 1848. Colonel Colt planned his works on a magnificent scale, and time has proved the wisdom of his plans. To pistols, rifles, and shotguns the company has added, from time to time, the manufacture of gun machinery, Gatling guns, printing-presses, portable steam-engines, and Colt automatic guns. Aside from the output of weapons and machinery, the Colt works have been of great value as an educating force in applied mechanics, and they have turned out many men who have founded large manufacturing establishments. The armory grounds now include two memorial buildings, the Church of the Good Shepherd, built in 1868 by Mrs. Colt, in memory of her husband, and a companion to this, built in 1896, a parish house, in memory of Commodore Caldwell H. Colt, a structure complete and satisfying in all The Messrs. Keney have left another memorial of themselves in the Keney Park, a fine addition to the Hartford park system. The beauty of Hartford and its desirability as a residence have both been much increased by the munificence of individual citizens, and the wise policy of the city government in creating a system of public parks. The first of these, Bushnell Park, the city owes to the wise forethought of Dr. Horace Bushnell, one of her most distinguished citizens. Laid out in 1859, it is, probably, after Central Park in New York, the oldest public city park in the country, and it was obtained in the face of much opposition by a man possessed of great intellect and foresight—for whom it was named in 1876. The building of the Capitol on the brow of the hill overlooking the Park, and the construction of the Soldiers’ Memorial Arch in 1886, have added much to its beauty and completeness Very soon afterwards, by the will of Charles M. Pond, the city became possessed of a valuable tract of land on Prospect Hill, the former residence of Mr. Pond. This he desired should be called Elizabeth Park in memory of his wife. Now the Pope, Elizabeth, Keney, and Riverside Parks, the latter on the north meadows After the brilliant galaxy of the “Hartford Wits” disappeared, a graver class of literary men took their places: Noah Webster, with his spelling-book and dictionary (he was born in Hartford, West Division, Oct. 16, 1758); Samuel G. Goodrich (Peter Parley); Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, who obtained the title of “the American Hemans,” an almost lifelong resident of Hartford, where her first volume of poems was published in 1815; George Denison Prentice and John Greenleaf Whittier both lived in Hartford for a time, doing editorial work, when they were yet young and unknown men; Henry Barnard, LL.D., distinguished for his labors in the cause of education, was born in Hartford in 1811, and is still enjoying an honored old age in his native city. But the man of highest genius in Hartford’s list of authors during the first half of this century was Horace Bushnell. He came to the city in 1833, as pastor of the North Church, and remained until his death, in 1876. His sermons and essays all show great imagination and beauty of style, as well as great power of thought. In 1864, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had once before lived in Hartford as a teacher in the famous school of her sister, Miss Catharine Beecher, again took up her residence in the city, and continued to live here until her death, in 1896. During this period a number of her later works were written. Of living authors, Charles Dudley Warner and Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) have a world-wide reputation. Mr. Warner came to Hartford in 1860, as one of the editors of the Press, and subsequently became one of the owners and editors of the Courant, with which paper he is still associated. His Summer in a Garden, which first brought him into notice, appeared in the columns of his newspaper in 1870, and since that time he has written many essays, novels, and books of travel. Mr. Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, November 30, 1835, has lived in Hartford since 1871, and all his books which have appeared since 1872 have been written in our city, except his latest, Following the Equator. John Fiske, the historian and essayist, was born in Hartford in 1842, but he left the city at an early age, and his reputation has been won elsewhere. The same can be said of Edmund Clarence Stedman, the poet and critic, who was born in Hartford in 1833. James Hammond Trumbull, LL.D., born in Stonington in 1821, but almost a lifelong resident of Hartford, dying there in 1897, was one of the most distinguished philologists and antiquarians in the country, and his great familiarity with the Indian tongues made him an authority on that subject. Dr. Trumbull’s brother, Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, D.D., of Philadelphia, since 1875 editor of the Sunday School Times, was a resident of our city from the year 1851 to 1875, and during that period he published some of his religious and biographical works. Two other members of the same family, a sister and daughter of Dr. J. H. Trumbull, Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, and Miss Annie Eliot Trumbull, have distinguished themselves in literature, by their novels and short stories, some being character studies of New England life. In this line also another Hartford writer excelled, Mrs. Rose Terry Cooke, who was born in Hartford in 1827, and died in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1892. Hartford citizens have borne their part in the councils of the nation. Gideon Welles was Secretary of the Navy under President Lincoln during the Civil War, and until 1869. Isaac Toucey held the same office under President Hartford has increased largely in population during the last decade, and the numerous trolley lines that have been built, running like the spokes of a wheel into the surrounding country, have contributed much to the prosperity of the city. Many handsome residences have been built, new streets have been laid out, and our city appears to have entered upon a career that promises increased wealth and success. |