NEW CANAAN
The 1850 New Canaan census had given it a population of 2,600, an increase of
324 in a decade, making it almost twice the size of Darien, on the Post Road and
on the railroad’s main line, and almost a third larger than Wilton, on the Danbury
Turnpike. (Norwalk had grown to 4,651, while Stamford had reached 5,003, both
as a result of fast-growing industrialization.)
Trade Street, as Main Street was then called, could boast two large general
stores, two jewelers, a druggist, and an oyster dealer. In the village lived five
clergymen, four physicians, six schoolteachers, a dentist, and a man calling
himself an artist.
Of New Canaan’s work force of 729 males over 16 years of age, 355 worked in
shoemaking (including ten tanners) and only 231 farmed. The old cottage
industries were dying out. The fulling mills had disappeared and only two
weavers and four coopers were listed in 1850. Instead, the census had recorded
forty-two men in the building trade, five carriage or wagon makers, and six grist
millers. Of the one hundred seventeen persons providing services, six were
tailors, five were butchers, five were hatters, and ninety-five of them were female
servants (fifty-six of these were Irish girls.)
New Canaan recorded 113 Irish-born residents (a bit more than 4%). Other
foreign born residents came from England, Scotland, Canada, France, Germany,
Portugal, and Spain. Twenty-four residents were black.
SHOEMAKING IN NEW CANAAN
1801-1825
New Canaan was once a shoemaking center. Niles Register for 1818 credited
the town with an annual output of 50,000 pairs of shoes, and the shoe business
was to grow and grow. In 1820, when Connecticut had a population of 275,248,
New Canaan’s population was 1,689 of which 271 men were “in agriculture” and
193 in manufacturing, though not all 193 of these were making shoes.
By 1820, New Canaan’s shoe business was dominated by two families---the
Benedicts and the Ayres. In a series of one-story buildings that made a factory
100 feet long, Caleb Benedict and his cutters readied work to be given out to
journeymen, while in his house, besides his fifteen children, he boarded the
young men who were his apprentices. The Ayres family ran a successful shoe
manufactory, a tannery, and a general store. The Ayres family built their
business on quality shoes, while the Benedicts developed a large trade in rough,
pegged shoes, which were made for workmen. The pegged shoes stood up well
under extremely hard wear, and the Benedicts soon built a profitable market in
Georgia where plantation owners bought them for their slaves.
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Early New Canaan shoemakers followed medieval guild practices, whereby the
few men who were “master shoemakers” taught their trade to boys, who served a
seven-year apprenticeship for which their fathers paid. At the end of this period,.
a young man was considered a qualified journeyman who eventually might rise to
be a boss on his own. (Not all young men took to learning a trade, whether it
was shoemaking, blacksmithing, or carriage making, and ads appeared regularly
in the Norwalk Gazette for runaway apprentices.)
The system apparently worked well for years for New Canaan shoemakers, and
40-50 journeymen were employed by the Ayres and the Benedicts, some coming
from nearby towns to pick up sacks of cut shoes to take home for finishing.
Others worked for the smaller shoe manufactories scattered throughout the town.
New Canaan developed a reputation for skilled journeymen.
SHOEMAKING BOOM IN THE 1830s
By 1830, New Canaan’s shoemaking boom was under way. More and more
people were working at shoes, and those who did not have a separate shop in
their front yards turned over a corner room, upstairs or down, to the making of
shoes which they brought home from the manufactories’ cutting rooms. About
this time, women were employed at “closing” – meaning preparing shoe tops for
lasting--- or at stitching cloth gaiters. In either case, they worked with a needle
and not with a shoemaker’s awl.
The old system was changing radically. No longer did a boss shoemaker teach
his apprentices over seven long years. Instead, young men were being trained in
just certain shoemaking operations.
Orders came from all over the country for New Canaan’s handmade shoes, both
turned and welted, so that in an 1839 newspaper, a boss advertised for one
hundred thirty journeymen: fifty to work on women’s welts, fifty more on ladies’
gaiters, and ten each on fudge halfboots, brogans, and women’s turnabouts.
The larger New Canaan firms also received requests for special items that they
were asked to create to order.
SHOEMAKING IN THE 1850s
New Canaan in 1850 might have 355 men and an unknown number of women
working at shoes, but the number of shoe firms was dwindling. New Canaan
reported its annual income from shoes was $300,000. While some small-scale
shoemakers out in the country might have made deals with the New York or
Southern outlets, New Canaan’s three largest employers of journeyman
shoemakers were concentrated on Main Street.
Elias Howe had patented his sewing machine in 1846, and his machine had been
adapted to the sewing of shoes in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1851. New Canaan,
however, continued to make shoes, boots, and slippers by hand. This may have
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led to New Canaan’s only shoemakers’ strike which occurred in 1853. According
to the strikers, although their wages remained low, they were being pressed by
their bosses to work ever faster and to turn out ever more shoes. The strike was
settled, and as a result of the strike, prices were set for seventy-five different
kinds of shoe work.
Stating that New Canaan was a modest, thrifty town, second only to Lynn as a
shoemaking center, and not half so well-known as it should be, the New York
Times in 1856 sent a reporter to the village to write an article called “A Day
Among Cordwainers.” More interested in shoemakers than shoe manufacturers,
the man reported that a journeyman’s pay ranged from five shillings to $2.00 per
pair of shoes, depending on size, style, and quality. Although an unusual man in
an unusual week might earn $15 and the superior shoemaker, $12, the reporter
found that most journeymen averaged $7 weekly over a year, which wage, he
wrote, was sufficient to keep a man and his family in comparative comfort.
STAGECOACHES, SLOOPS, AND STEAMBOATS
Largely because of the growing importance of its shoemen, New Canaan in 1821
had been connected with New York by two stagecoach lines. In November of
that year, a Norwalk-to-New York stage was started, which made stops in
Ridgefield and New Canaan. The next month a Stamford-to-New York line
extended its route to Danbury via New Canaan and Ridgefield. The advertised
one-way fare from New Canaan to New York was $1.88 via Norwalk and $1.50
via the Stamford route.
Prior to this, New Canaan shoemakers and others going to and from New York
had traveled largely by packet sloop---a ship sailing on a schedule.
Advertisements of its sailing were posted on the town’s signboard. In season,
the sail from Norwalk, the Five Mile River, and Stamford could easily be made in
under 24 hours, though in bad weather, the sail might take up to six days. In
winter, few sloops ventured out of port, since market goods and passengers were
scarce, and as late as the 1850s, the Sound could freeze over for as long as
thirty-six days!.
A new mode of transportation became available on July 6, 1824 when a
steamship line from Norwalk to New York opened, featuring the low-pressure
steamboat, the John Marshall. In its first trip the John Marshall made the trip
from New York to Norwalk in five hours and ten minutes. By 1825, Stamford had
the Oliver Wolcott in service, so that New Canaan businessmen could schedule
their commutes to New York from either port.
Steamboats were larger and faster, but they never entirely replaced small sailing
vessels in the Sound. Until the late 1850s, Five Mile River Harbor was “New
Canaan’s port” through which produce and goods came and went.
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SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISTS
In 1774, the General Assembly passed Connecticut’s first anti-slavery law,
stating that no slave could be brought or imported into the colony “from any place
whatsoever to be disposed of, left, or sold within this Colony.” This was the first
small step toward ending slavery, but it had no effect on the slaves already in
Connecticut. According to the 1810 census, there were seven slaves in New
Canaan and twelve free blacks. By 1820, that number had decreased to four
slaves.
In 1851, six weeks before its 50th birthday, New Canaan men voted in the state
election, contested by Whig, Democratic, and Free-Soil parties. Feelings were
running high over the Fugitive Slave Law, and New Canaan had its Free-Soil
Party, which took a firm stand against slavery. Selleck St. John, a newcomer to
New Canaan, was the Free-Soil candidate for justice of the peace. He was
known to have been part of the Underground Railroad while living in Lewisboro,
New York, and he had been responsible for passing at least two escapees
through his “station” there.
NEW CANAAN IN 1860
When the 1860 census was taken, New Canaan’s population had grown only
slightly---to 2,770. From an 1850 total of 231, the number of farmers had risen to
264, while the number of shoemakers declined by 27 and the number of servants
fell from 95 to 41, all reflecting New Canaan’s hard times. Town meeting minutes
show a growing number of elderly women receiving home relief and the town
spending more on home assistance than for those at the poorhouse. Many
young men had taken themselves off to factory jobs in Norwalk and Stamford.
Still, the number of new occupations on the 1860 census suggests a growing
sophistication in New Canaan’s way of life, especially in the village proper.
Services now were offered by a clock repairer, a book binder, a sash and blind
maker, and a man who put up lightning rods. For the first time, New Canaan had
a hardware store, a cigar factory, and a basket making trade at which fourteen
men were employed. And, although no man listed himself as a banker, New
Canaan at last had a bank.
Comstock, Rogers, & Co. manufactured men’s clothing in conjunction with the
Comstock General Store on Main Street. There, imitating the shoemakers,
overcoats and suits were cut out to be distributed by wagon through the countryside to women who sewed at home. Finishing touches were added by tailors
when the garments were returned.
Though he appears on the census as a “confectioner,” William Edgar Raymond
had actually gone into the perfume-making business quite successfully. Tradition
says that he also made patent medicines and soap, and he became famous for
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the Bohemian glass bottles in which he packaged his wares and which were
distributed by wagon to distant markets.
THE CIVIL WAR
When the news of Fort Sumter reached New Canaan on April 13, 1861, the town
responded, as did all Connecticut, with flag raisings, church services, and a
sense of outrage. There was a rush to volunteer for the Union Army and , by
mid-May, eighteen young men from New Canaan had enlisted for three months
in Company B of the 13th Connecticut Volunteers. In October, more New
Canaan men would join Company G of the 10th Connecticut. What war might be
like was soon brought home to New Canaan, for on August 23, 1861, the first
New Canaan soldier to die succumbed to typhoid fever after being mustered out
of the Rifle Brigade of the 3rd Connecticut Infantry. His funeral at the Methodist
Church attracted an overflow gathering of mourners.
On July 3, 1862, following President Lincoln’s call for 300,000 nine-month
enlistees, Governor William A. Buckingham called on Connecticut for more
volunteers. In New Canaan, William E. Raymond was put in charge of recruiting,
and a special town meeting on August 16 voted a bounty of $50 for each
volunteer. Eighty men responded by forming Company H of the 17th Connecticut
Volunteers.
With Enos Kellogg as captain, they assembled on August 28 on Main Street in
front of the New Canaan Hotel, and amid much excitement, they climbed into
wagons that took them to the Darien train station where a train took them to
Bridgeport to be mustered in. Within a week, the 17th was building earthworks
outside Baltimore. Before the war ended, a total of ninety-one New Canaan men
enlisted in the 17th Connecticut. Company H remained “New Canaan’s
Company” throughout the Civil War. It came under fire for the first time at
Chancellorsville and ended the war at Jacksonville, Florida. Those in the 13 th
Connecticut saw service mainly in Louisiana.
The 1860 census shows that New Canaan had 232 young men between the
ages of sixteen and twenty-five; yet, when the war ended, New Canaan had sent
260 men into the Union Army. Five were killed in action, twenty-four died of
disease, sixty-eight were discharged for disabilities, and twenty-one deserted.
THE RAILROAD
Plans had long been in the making to build a railroad connection between New
Canaan and Norwalk or Stamford as the only way to save New Canaan from
insignificance and business extinction. With the end of the Civil War, Stamford
had been chosen as the terminus because, with its new canal, passengers and
freight had tidewater connections practically next door to the railroad station.
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Amid great fanfare, excursions to and from Stamford, and dinners served in the
new roundhouse, the railroad opened on July 4, 1868.
The immediate results of the railroad were rather diverse. Thanks to a federal
contract, mail now came into and left New Canaan by train. Replacing the
produce wagon that for so many years had taken the market crops first to the
Five Mile River sloops and then to the trains at Darien, a produce car was
attached to the earliest morning train. New Canaan people could either sell or
consign their cheeses, apples, cider, nuts, and the like to the car’s agent for
resale in New York. By the end of 1868, 11,000 passengers had used “the cars”
to go back and forth to Stamford, some to jobs there and some to commute to
New York City.
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