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Higley Copper Coins: Connecticut’s Rare, Exciting and Historic Penny

According to the legend of the Higley copper, a Connecticut doctor with a powerful thirst and a copper mine minted the colony’s first copper coins.

Dr. Samuel Higley frequently patronized the local tavern, where a drink cost threepence. So Dr. Higley, who happened to own a copper mine, struck his own three-penny coins. One version of them bore the words, “VALUE ME AS YOU PLEASE.”

The story may be apocryphal, but Dr. Higley did exist. He and his family mined copper, which grew into a major Connecticut industry. And coin collectors believe the homemade Higley copper circulated fairly wildly.

In 2014, a coin collector bought a Higley copper for a half-million dollars.

19th-century drawing of a Higley copper

The Higley Copper

Dr. Samuel Higley, born around 1687 in Simsbury, Conn., attended Yale College for two years and trained as a doctor. He also learned blacksmithing and picked up metallurgical and mining skills. Before his marriage to Abigail Bement in 1719 he taught school.

He is credited with making the first steel in the U.S. colonies. In 1728, he told the Connecticut General Court he had ‘with great pains and cost’ discovered a ‘curious art’ by which he could transmute iron into good steel. Two blacksmiths testified that Higley had come into their shop, asked for a pound or two of iron and said he’d make it into steel. Several days later he brought it back, and the blacksmiths found it ‘good steel,’ the first they’d ever seen.

So the Connecticut General Court gave Higley a 10-year monopoly on steelmaking.

That same year he bought a tract of 143 acres in what is now East Granby and began mining the land. People said the mine had such rich copper that Dr. Higley could walk into it with a pick and simply stab a lump of pure metal. He’d then take it home and strike coins from it.

Connecticut Copper

The Connecticut copper industry, which lasted about two centuries, began in Copper Hill in Simsbury around 1707 and ended in Bristol in 1953. Mines stretched up and down the Connecticut Valley and dotted the surrounding hills. They gave a start to U.S. brass manufacturing, which centered in Waterbury, Conn., the world’s leader in brass production.

Today, little remains of the once-thriving industry. In 1776, revolutionaries turned the mine into a POW camp, and later the state made it into a prison called Newgate. Prisoners nicknamed it Hell. Today, the state operates the Old Newgate Prison as a museum.

Old Newgate Prison, 1910 postcard

Back in the 1730s, copper mines were small-scale operations, and much of the metal ended up in England.

Samuel Higley undoubtedly had help mining his copper. And it isn’t clear if he himself made the steel dies or struck the coins from them.

Making your own coins, as you might suspect, violated the law in the 1730s. John Hull had minted coins in Massachusetts Bay Colony until English authorities shut him down in 1682. But the colonists suffered a shortage of small coins, and the British authorities couldn’t always enforce the law.

The Coins

One version of the Higley copper legend has it that Simsbury’s local tavernkeeper stopped accepting Higley’s threepence after he’d accumulated quite a few of them. Another story says people started complaining the coin wasn’t worth two-and-a-half cents more than the British halfpennies then circulating.

Whatever the story, Higley struck a version of the coin that said, “VALUE ME AS YOU PLEASE,” on one side, and “I AM GOOD COPPER” on the other.

Coin collectors, though, say his local prominence as a businessman and landowner helped establish the value of the Higley coppers. Thousands, mostly dated 1737, circulated in the region.

“It is likely that a large number and a variety of sellers accepted Higley Coppers in transactions for goods and services,” wrote Greg Reynolds in Coin Week. They probably had more stable value than colonial paper money, he wrote.

What Goes ‘Round

All except one have a deer and the numeral three on the tails side. One bears the image of a broad axe with the words, “I CUT MY WAY THROUGH.” Another has the spokes of a wheel and the legend, “THE WHEEL GOES ROUND.”

Four kinds of Higley copper have a hammer on the back, while three have an ax. Some date to 1738 and 1739, after Samuel Higley died at sea while taking a shipment of copper to England. His family may have continued making coins after he died.

Five varieties of the Higley copper are on display at the Connecticut State Library, the Simsbury Historical Society and Connecticut Historical Society. Coin collectors identified two other varieties, and consider them among the rarest and most exciting early American coins.

They have sold for tens of thousands of dollars. Even replicas of the Higley coppers go for far more than their original value: One sold for $646.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Civilian Conservation Corps, a Young Man’s Adventure

During the depths of the Great Depression, a 17-year-old boy from Warren, R.I., enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

He did it to help support his family, but his time in the Civilian Conservation Corps turned into the adventure of a lifetime.

The CCC started when President Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Emergency Conservation Act on March 31, 1933. His goal: to generate jobs for young men suffering from an almost 25 percent unemployment rate.

The Warren boy at first was too young to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. You had to be 18 to enlist. But in October 1935, the government lowered the age requirement to 17, and he signed up. The teenager met all the other requirements. He was unemployed, unmarried, physically fit and his family was on relief — like tens of millions of other American families.

He earned $30 per month {about $570 today), but he had to send $25 home. That beat the $21 per month that regular U. S. Army soldiers made at the time. The money the CCC boys sent home supported an estimated 12 to 15 million family members.

The Civilian Conservation Corps 141st Company. Leo Caisse is in the middle row, second from right.

Go West, Young Men

The Warren boy was sent to Fort Adams in Newport for physical conditioning and evaluation, just as all other enrollees in the nation did at their local Army depot. At the end of their two weeks of training and evaluation, he received his final physical and inoculations. For some of the boys it was the first time they saw a doctor.

The Civilian Conservation Corps assigned the Warren boy to the 141^st company posted at Burlingame in Charlestown, R.I. He was issued a blue denim work suit and a renovated Army olive drab uniform with CCC patches. (Roosevelt thought the uniforms looked shoddy and in 1938 ordered the Navy to design a spruce-green uniform.)Then he took the CCC oath.

civilian-conservation-corps-burlingame-beach-house

The Civilian Conservation Corps built this beach pavilion at Burlingame State Park.

His company, like several others, was transferred out West, which had more forest work and fewer unemployed young men than in the East. He had to get his parents’ permission because of his age.

He took a train cross country from Fort Adams to a campsite at Triangle Lake near the Town of Junction City, Ore. There they became the 2108 Company of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

In Oregon, the teenager and his company built fire guard service stations, fire lookout towers, trails and shelters. They fought forest fires when needed, a hallmark of the CCC wherever they were.

Cowboys and Mountain Lions

The young man earned a truck driving license issued by the Department of the Interior. He learned to operate a bulldozer, tractor and a jackhammer. He also learned welding, a skill he would later use in helping to build the USS Massachusetts at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Mass.

In Oregon, he served a maximum of four six-month enlistments, all that the CCC allowed and was honorably discharged on June 23, 1936.

Leo Caisse

He returned to Warren, but after a little more than a year he re-enlisted in 1937. This time was assigned to the 2130^th company in Casper, Wyo.

In Wyoming, his Civilian Conservation Corps company built bridges, roads and a dike, according to National Archives records. He fought fires, of course, and some members of his company fought coal fires. While in Wyoming, he also learned another skill: how to evade a mountain lion in the wild.

Later in the 1950s he told stories to his son about how he knew real cowboys and Indians out West. That was really intriguing because it was the heyday of cowboy shows on TV and Cowboy Town in Plainville, Mass. His name was Leo Caisse. He was my father and he passed away when I was very young.

It has been a revelation researching his adventures and it has given me a sense of pride that he and so many others benefitted from this program, which began the green movement.

Roosevelt’s Tree Army

Roosevelt’s Tree Army developed many public parks that still stand today as a living legacy to their work.

Less obvious today was the improved health and well-being of the boys who joined.

Enlistees were so undernourished due to the Depression that they gained an average of 12 pounds each. When issued their uniforms, it was the first time most of them got new shoes.

Many camps had two movies a week with state-of-the-art equipment, chaplain services, lending libraries, organized sports and vocational education. President Roosevelt mandated that all enrollees learn to read and write in the service if they hadn’t achieved literacy yet.

The Civilian Conservation Corps offered 603 different courses nationwide. They often had camp newspapers, wrote poetry, composed songs and put on plays, as well as engaged in organized sports with other camps and local teams.

A Civilian Conservation Corps pillow

The men celebrated holidays in camp, including Mother’s Day. In one instance, they invited their mothers to camp for a dinner and the boys put on a skit for them. In another, the commanding officer collected 25 cents from each man to send home a special pillow to their mothers.

The Army ran the CCC, but the state or national park service would select the projects. Since fascism was on the rise overseas, the Army was careful not to drill the Tree Army. Nor did it allow saluting or weapons training.

Still, many Civilian Conservation Corpsmen who joined the Army were automatically inducted as corporals or sergeants, depending on their leadership experience in the Corps.

Following are summaries of the Civilian Conservation Corps in each New England state.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island had eight camps, but they did not all operate continuously or simultaneously. Fort Adams served as their state headquarters.

In the very beginning at least two Rhode Island companies were sent to other states: one to Rangeley, Maine and another company (about 200 men) to Vermont. Later they went to Oregon and Wyoming.

Rhode Island eventually enrolled 15,900 men out of 2.5 million men who served nationally.

civilian-conservation corps-goddard-state park

The Civilian Conservation Corps built this structure and many fireplaces at Goddard State Park in Rhode Island.

Massachusetts

Over 100,000 men served in the Massachusetts Civilian Conservation Corps, which brought together two wasted resources: young men and the land.

When the CCC began, Massachusetts had accumulated 100,000 acres, mostly inaccessible to the public. When the Emergency Conservation Act passed, Chief Forester Harold Cook immediately prepared applications for seven camps. He would eventually have 31 camps.

The first enrollees arrived at Fort Devens for medical exams and some basic training and testing to acclimate them to a military routine.

They built roads and trails, overlooks, picnic shelters and log cabins. And they engaged in timber improvement, pest control and forest fire fighting. In the end they planted 12 million trees and improved 170,000 acres of state land. The Massachusetts enrollees collectively sent an estimated $20 million home to their families.

Friends of the Upton State Forest are restoring a former CCC administration building and cottage. At least one former member – and probably many others — was so desperate for work he forged his birth certificate and joined at age 15. He learned construction skills that served him the rest of his working life.

They built the access road to the top of Mount Greylock as well as the Thunderbolt Trail. The CCC created the Savoy State Park, too, and the Elliot Tower in Milton’s Blue Hills Reservation. It still stands today and offers a panoramic view from Boston Harbor to Mount Wachusett. The Blue Hills reception center has a small CCC exhibit that includes memorabilia.

New Hampshire

Bear Brook State Park is one of the few surviving CCC camps that now serve as museums.

Over 37,000 young men served in the CCC in New Hampshire. They built state parks such as Moore Brook and Bear Brook, and ski facilities such as Waterville Valley, Cannon Mountain and the Wildcat Trail at Pinkham Notch. They also fought forest fires, planted trees and built dams, bridges, roads, camp grounds and hiking and bridle trails.

At the Bear Brook exhibit stands a statue of a shirtless Corpsman with an ax. Identical statues stand at the Freetown State Forest, a former camp, and at the Maine State Library in Augusta.

civilian-conservation-corps-acadia-shelter

The Civilian Conservation Corps built many park shelters, like this one at Arcadia State Park in Rhode Island.

Connecticut

Connecticut had a total of 17 camps, and over 30,000 men served in the CCC. Some hadn’t enlisted, but were LEMs – locally enlisted men, such as carpenters and stone masons. Along with their traditional work, the CCC also built nine lookout towers, constructed 123 bridges and developed over 1000 acres of public camping and picnic grounds.

As in all other camps, the Connecticut CCC couldn’t build roads. They did, however, build many truck roads for fighting forest fires.

When a dam broke above Hartford in 1936, it devastated the area. The CCC lent a hand by clearing out 2,950 buildings and 800 other structures.

A CCC Museum in Stafford Springs, Conn., once the administration building for Camp Conner, contains photos, displays, information and artifacts.

Maine

CCC statue in Augusta

Fort Williams in Portland Harbor administered and trained Civilian Conservation Corpsmen for both Maine and New Hampshire. At its height, Maine had 16,686 men, 1,612 supervisors and 1,136 out-of-state enrollees in 19 camps. Additionally, Rhode Island sent 144 to the Rangeley area. The camps closed by 1942, but in their heyday the CCC’s emphasis evolved from emergency relief to job training. The Maine and New Hampshire Tree Army sent home an estimated $4 million.

Their assigned work came from the Maine Forest Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey and the National Park Service. It included, much like all the other CCC work roads, trails, recreation areas, erecting buildings, and pest control.

George Dorr, superintendent of Acadia National Park, saw his chance to improve the park in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He asked Roosevelt for a camp at Acadia. Eventually some 3,000 poor boys, mostly from Maine, came to three CCC camps in Acadia. They opened new trails and improved old ones, planted thousands of trees, made fire roads, fought fires, built footbridges and constructed two campgrounds, Blackwoods and Seawall. They built Ocean Drive, which loops around the park with stunning views of the coast and opened hiking trails to Echo Lake, Long Pond and Beech Cliff.

There is a memorial dedicated to the CCC and their work in Maine in Augusta.

Vermont

Vermont was originally allocated four camps but got 30, more than any other state of its size. The reason? The highly motivated State Forester Perry Merrill, a man with great foresight who saw the potential for CCC work.

Some 40,000 men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Vermont. However, only about 11,000 came from Vermont. The other companies transferred from other states such as Rhode Island because Merrill found so much work for them to do.

A massive flood in 1927 had devastated much of the state, and the Vermont CCC boys gained recognition for their flood control activities and dam building. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the 2,000-foot Waterbury Dam along with the Wrightsville and East Barre dams.

They also built many ski slopes, including the Stowe Ski Resort and the Mount Mansfield State Park. They also built 105 miles of truck roads for forest fire fighting and 10 lookout towers.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He has also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College. Leo passed away in 2020, and we miss him very much. This story updated in 2022.

Photos, except for the Civilian Conservation Corps pillow and statue, courtesy Leo Caisse. CCC statue by By DrStew82 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59856211. This story was updated in 2021.

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The West Indies Send Sugar, Slaves and Red Sox Stars to New England

For four centuries, the West Indies have made an outsized impact on New England. In 2018, West Indian stars and a West Indian manager brought the Boston Red Sox to a World Series championship.

West Indians have come to New England as doctors, teachers, ministers, slaves, farm workers and servants, depending on when they came.

Beginning in the 17^th century, merchants like Connecticut horse jockeys, Rhode Island slavers and Boston banana importers have traded with the West Indies. Well into the 19^th century, retail shops called West India Goods Stores sold items from the Caribbean and all over the world.

And West Indians came to New England in waves – from the British and Spanish West Indies, the French Antilles and the Dutch Caribbean. Some were Afro-Caribbean, like W.E.B. Du Bois’s father, some were Euro-Caribbean, like Oscar de la Renta, Jackie Kennedy’s favorite designer.

Kevin Youkilis, Alex Cora and Dustin Pedroia.

And some came as key players for the Boston Red Sox. Rafael Devers came from the Dominican Republic. Xander Bogaerts came from Aruba. Christian Vazquez and manager Alex Cora came from Puerto Rico.

So when the Red Sox clinched the world championship in Los Angeles, Cora acknowledged a historic relationship when he said, “I can’t imagine what’s going on in Boston, I can’t imagine what’s going on on my island.”

West Indies Trade

Tragically, the first documented West Indians in New England were slaves from Barbados. European slavers bought captured Africans and took them to Barbados in the British West Indies to work on ever-larger sugar plantations.

Because the West Indian planters grew few crops other than sugar cane, New England traders seized the opportunity to sell them farm produce, livestock, salted fish and wood products. They brought back sugar, molasses and some of their slaves on the two- to five-week voyage.

Enslaved Afro-Caribbeans first came to Massachusetts in 1638 and to Connecticut in 1639. At the end of the Pequot War in 1669, the Puritans tried to force captured Indians into slavery. The Indians, though, ‘would not endure the yoke,’ so the Puritans sent them to the West Indies in exchange for captive African laborers.

On the eve of the American Revolution, Massachusetts and Connecticut each had about 5,000 black people living within their borders. Most had lived in or were born in the Caribbean.

As late as 1860, one in five black Bostonians had a Caribbean birthplace. Many West Indians were free, and some quite successful. Prince Hall from Barbados founded the Negro Masonic Order in Boston in 1775. John Brown Russwurm from Jamaica founded the first African-American newspaper after graduating from Bowdoin College in 1826.

W.E.B. Du Bois, born free to a Haitian father in Great Barrington, Mass., in 1868, rose to international prominence as a historian, sociologist and civil rights leader.

An 1855 map of the West Indies

2nd Wave from the West Indies

From 1900 to 1930, a second wave of immigrants from the West Indies arrived, mostly from the English-speaking islands. They were typically literate and skilled, and a significant number had worked as professionals and in offices. Others were dockworkers, porters, laborers and domestic servants.

They came because they suffered tremendous economic hardship due to the decline of the Caribbean sugar plantation during the late 19^th century. And they came to New England for a very specific reason: cheap steamer fares.

During the late 19^th century, a group of Boston merchants called Boston Fruit ran a steamship service between the West Indies and Boston. They imported bananas, coconuts, oranges and lemons, eventually becoming Chiquita Brands International.

Boston Fruit’s steamer also carried passengers, including West Indians coming to Boston, the first port of call. They also settled in New Haven, Cambridge, Mass., and New York. Florida, though, had the highest concentration of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in 1900, just under 22 percent..

In 1924, immigration from the West Indies all but stopped with the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. The law sharply limited immigration from countries outside of Western Europe.

Then the Great Depression came, and many immigrants returned to the West Indies, forced home by economic hardship and even more restrictive immigration policies.

World War II

Puerto Rican men immigrating to the United States. Photo from the film ‘Puerto Rican Passages.”

In 1900 Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens, and for the next 45 years about 90,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the continental United States. Some came to work in defense plants during World War II. But it wasn’t until 1945 that the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans started, lasting until 1964.

Half a million people from the islands, 21,000 a year, came to the mainland, many as farm workers. Some stayed in Springfield, Mass., and Hartford, Conn. They were joined by Jamaican contract farm workers picking apples, tobacco, melons and blueberries.

Life was harsh for Puerto Ricans in New England’s declining industrial cities. Young Puerto Ricans rioted from Worcester to Waterbury during the late 1960s through the 1970s. Many returned to the island.

Jamaicans

The flow of West Indian immigrants slowed in 1952, when Congress enacted an immigration law, the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. It aimed to keep out black immigrants, and it worked.

But like a pendulum, immigration laws loosened up in 1968. They let in close to half a million Caribbean immigrants, mostly Cubans, to Florida. The number of Jamaicans rose eightfold, to about 75,000 in the ’60s. Then it almost doubled in the ’70s to 140,000 and rose again in the 1980s to 208,000 in the 1990s.

In New England, Jamaicans concentrated in the Hartford and Bridgeport areas of Connecticut, which has the fifth highest population of Jamaicans in the country. The Blue Hills neighborhood of Hartford, in fact, has the densest concentration of Jamaicans in the United States. Jamaicans have also settled in the Boston area and throughout New England. Jamaican musicians perform at reggae festivals all over the region. Even Brattleboro, Vt., has a Jerk Festival.

Dominicans

Big Papi, David Ortiz

Today, three New England states – Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut – have some of the densest populations of people with West Indies heritage in the country. Only Florida and New York have more.

The arrival of Dominican immigrants from the West Indies contribute heavily to the West Indian presence in New England. Beginning with the assassination of President Trujillo in 1961, a series of political and economic crises drove waves of Dominicans to the United States.

Dominicans comprise the largest Hispanic group in Rhode Island – 35,008 in 2010. They also dominate the Hispanic population in eastern Massachusetts. The Connecticut cities of Danbury, Waterbury and Bridgeport have large Dominican populations.

Only New York City has more Dominicans than Lawrence, Mass., with 30,243 as of 2010. And when Marcos Devers was appointed as Acting Mayor of Lawrence, he became the first Dominican-American mayor of a U.S. city.

Massachusetts, in fact, has the fourth largest Dominican population (103,292 in 2010) in the United States. The Bay State can also claim David Ortiz, the Red Sox legend, now an American citizen living in suburban Boston.

End Notes

Images: David Ortiz By Arturo Pardavila III from Hoboken, NJ, USA – CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52501471; Alex Cora By Eric Kilby – Three Amigos, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63535958.

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The Secret Killer of the Waterbury Radium Girls

Frances Splettscher was the first of the Waterbury radium girls to die. In 1921 at the age of 17, she had gone to work for the Waterbury Clock Co., painting watch dials with the new miracle substance, radium.

To get a nice, sharp point on her paintbrush, Frances, like the other radium girls, put the brush to her lips to get a nice, sharp point, dipped it into the paint and painted the dial. Then she did it again, over and over, for eight cents a dial.

The radium girls’ ailments mimicked a condition called phossy jaw

The radium girls didn’t think radium carried any danger. The company told them it would give them glowing health. Wasn’t radium used to cure people?

The radium girls believed their supervisors. They painted their dress buttons with it and their fingernails, and they painted rings on their fingers.

In 1925, Frances Splettscher died of radium poisoning after an agonizing illness. She developed severe anemia, and her teeth hurt. When a dentist pulled a tooth, part of her jaw came with it. Her mouth rotted until she had a hole in her check.

She was one of hundreds of young immigrant women hired to paint luminous paint onto the popular new watch dials in Connecticut – in Waterbury, Bristol, Thomaston and New Haven – and in Orange, N.J., and in Ottawa, Ill. She was also one of dozens who died from radium poisoning.

Radium Girls

In 1920, Katherine Schaub had come to train the radium girls at the Connecticut watch studios, including the Waterbury Clock Co. She had worked as a dial painter in Orange, N.J., at the United States Radium Corporation (USRC).

Katherine later contracted radium poisoning and, with four other dial painters, sued USRC. The company settled out of court, but Katharine died at the age of 30 after suffering excruciating pain.

Waterbury Clock Co.

In 1923, U.S. Public Health Service said radium workers should take precautions. The radium girls in Waterbury knew nothing of it. A company doctor named Frederick Flinn examined them and reassured them they were fine.

What they didn’t know was that Flinn was a fraud who found a career covering up for companies that killed their workers with radium poisoning. He hadn’t gone to medical school; he had just acquired a PhD. That didn’t stop him from taking blood, reading x-rays and ordering medical treatment.

Frederick Flinn helped USRC fight the charges brought by Katherine Schaub and the other radium girls. He also worked with Waterbury Clock to sweep the radium poisoning under the rug.

Frederick Flinn

Radium girls at work.

Flinn had approached Waterbury Clock Co. offering to examine the dial painters for free. By 1925, the year Frances Splettscher died, the company hired him.

That same year Elizabeth Dunn tripped slightly on a dance floor and suffered a spontaneous fracture of her leg. The radium had eaten into her bones, riddling them with holes. She developed the same jaw necrosis that felled Frances Splettscher. Elizabeth Dunn died in 1927.

At least by then Waterbury Clock Co. had warned the radium girls not to put their paintbrushes into their mouths.

Under the Rug

By the summer of 1926, Frederick Flinn found two cases of radium poisoning at Waterbury Clock. He continued to tell the radium girls they were perfectly healthy. He told Katherine Moore eight times she didn’t have a trace of radium in her body. She died from radium poisoning.

A radium dial.

In December 1926, Flinn published an article in a medical journal concluding, ‘An industrial hazard does not exist in the painting of luminous dials.’

Not until 1928 did Frederick Flinn find five girls who might have radium poisoning.

Flinn pretended concern. He convinced the radium girls to accept company settlements that freed it from further liability. With no lawyers representing them, the young, unsophisticated radium girls had no hope of justice.

Between 1926 and 1936, Waterbury Clock quietly paid out $90,000 for settlement, support and medical costs for 16 radium girls. One family received a paltry $43.75 as compensation for the death of their radium girl.

USRC

Meanwhile, radium girls were getting sick and dying in New Jersey. Five of them, including Katherinie Schaub, brought suit against USRC. Their lawyer tried to prove their horrific diseases resulted from occupational hazards associated with radium dial painting.

Alice Hamilton

A Harvard professor named Alice Hamilton tried to help. She had identified the occupational dangers of the Danbury hat factories, and she heard about the Waterbury girls. She told the New Jersey lawyer to look into the Waterbury Clock Co. cases.

In 1927 the lawyer wrote to the workmen’s comp commission in Connecticut. They hadn’t heard anything about it. “No claims have been filed with me. I have heard a number of rumors such as you have, but know nothing about them,“ wrote the commissioner.

USRC argued in court that no other cases of radium poisoning existed.

Aftermath

The New Jersey radium girls did win a settlement, but USRC managed to wriggle out of further liability. Waterbury Clock also wangled a change in Connecticut’s workmen’s compensation law, shortening the statute of limitations to three years from five.

In 2014, May Keane, the last of the radium girls, died in Middlebury, Conn., at 107. She had only worked as a dial painter at Waterbury Clock for a few months, which probably extended her life. However she lost all her teeth and suffered from colon cancer and breast cancer.

If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about child labor here. With thanks to The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore. This story was updated in 2023.

Images: Waterbury Clock by By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68158102. Radium dial by By Arma95 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9502836.

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The Ben Franklin Statue That Ran Away From Home

Two hundred years after Ben Franklin started writing for his brother’s newspaper, a Ben Franklin statue followed the route he took when he ran away from home.

The Ben Franklin statue

Only instead of ending up in Philadelphia, the Ben Franklin statue ended up in Waterbury, Conn.

A renowned sculptor, Paul Bartlett, received a commission to create the statue of Franklin in 1921. He had completed his masterwork, the pediment to the U.S. Capitol, five years earlier. When Bartlett finished his Ben Franklin statue, someone had the bright idea of putting it on the road before settling in Waterbury.

Why Waterbury?

The Ben Franklin Statue was a gift to the city from Elisha Leavenworth, a Waterbury industrialist who died childless in 1911.

The Waterbury Republican took out an ad to explain why Waterbury needed a Ben Franklin statue: “Waterbury loves the memory and respects the character of Franklin, and will furnish the proper atmosphere for a statue of the Revolutionary philosopher and statesman,” the ad said.

In a burst of boosterism, the ad extolled the virtues of Waterbury: studious, thrifty, prosperous and beautiful.

Ben Franklin Statue Runs Away

Ben Franklin described the route he took to Philadelphia in his autobiography.

First he sailed to New York City. A friend persuaded the captain of a sloop that the teen-aged Franklin had ‘got a naughty girl with child.’ He said Franklin needed to leave secretly because her friends would make him marry her.

Benjamin Franklin

“So I sold some of my books to raise a little money,” he wrote, “was taken on board privately, and as we had a fair wind, in three days I found myself in New York, near three hundred miles from home.”

Franklin tried to get a job with a printer, who told him to go to Philadelphia because his son, also a printer, had lost his helper. Franklin boarded a ship for Philadelphia, but a squall sent the vessel off course. He disembarked in Perth Amboy and walked 50 miles to Burlington, N.J.

In Burlington he realized people thought he had run away. He immediately caught a boat to Philadelphia. Franklin arrived in the city dirty, tired and hungry. He had only a Dutch dollar and a copper shilling in his pocket.

The Ben Franklin Statue

The Ben Franklin statue got a bigger celebration than the real Ben Franklin ever did, at least as a runaway. The 22 cities it visited gave “large-scale patriotic demonstrations” on its arrival, according to the Boston Globe.

Paul Bartlett around 1890 by Charles Sprague Pearce

Printers, electricians and opticians took charge of the statue along the route, which started in Philadelphia. It stopped in the New Jersey towns of Bordentown, Burlington and Perth Amboy on the way to New York.

The Ben Franklin statue then sailed to Boston, where it arrived at Charlestown Navy Yard. It was “securely strapped to the deck of the Naval tug Lykens, forward of the pilot house and accompanied by two sea scouts,” according to the Boston Globe.

The statue paraded through the streets of Boston, got reviewed by the governor and paused in front of Franklin’s birthplace on Milk Street. People placed memorial wreaths on Franklin’s parents’ graves in the Old Granary Burying Ground.

Then the statue was exhibited on Boston Common for two days with an honor guard of sea scouts, soldiers and Boy Scouts.

It moved on to Providence, New London and New Haven, the birthplace of the sculptor. Finally, the statue made one more stop in Bridgeport.

And then it rested in Waterbury, where it was unveiled June 4, 1921.

The statue still sits in Library Plaza today.

Image: By Amphictyon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46419672. This story last updated in 2023.

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Small Bells of Connecticut: One Town Made Sounds That Rang in Millions of Ears

The small bells rung by Salvation Army soldiers during the Christmas holidays are all made in Connecticut.

A Salvation Army bell ringer.

So is the small bell that rings when Clarence the angel gets his wing in the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life..

And every business day, the New York Stock Exchange opens to the ringing of a small bell made in Connecticut.

They were all made by Bevin Brothers of East Hampton, Conn., the oldest maker of small bells in the United States.

Bevin Brothers is also the last surviving bell maker in Connecticut. The state that produced the Frisbee, the lollipop, the can opener, the box clock and the Mickey Mouse watch also once made nearly every small bell in the United States and Canada.

The Bevin Brothers Bell Shop.

During the 19^th century, nine out of 10 small bells were made in Connecticut, and most of them were made in East Hampton.

Why East Hampton?

It all started in 1808, when a soldier’s son and his indentured servants moved to East Hampton.

Small bells had been made in Connecticut since the colonial era. Initially, blacksmiths made iron cow and hand bells for farm and other purposes before specialists—mainly in sleigh bells—emerged in the early 19th century.

Sleigh bell production may have started with Capt. William Barton in the 1770s in Wintonbury (now Bloomfield), Conn. By 1800 James North, Jr., and Joseph Shipman had formed a partnership in New Britain to make sleigh bells. In 1803 Seth North, a brother of James, Jr., became sole owner and operated the foundry until 1840.

East Hampton in 1905

In 1808 William Barton, the son of the captain, moved to East Hampton (Chatham until 1915) and began making hand and crotal (sleigh) bells. His main achievement was to rediscover a sand-core casting process for a one-piece bronze bell with the pellet (rattle) inside instead of using a well-known two-piece soldering method that took more time to complete. His sleigh bells, ranging in size from one to four inches in diameter, could have various finishes, often had his initials and were sold by weight or by their amount and quality.

Barton left East Hampton for Cairo, N.Y., around 1826 to again cast bronze sleigh bells, stayed about 20 years, and then retired back in East Hampton. Several descendants carried on the bell business there until 1888, when the last Barton-connected company moved to Indiana. Notably, Jason Barton, a son of William, developed a cost-effective alternative to polishing each bell on a lathe by tumbling them in barrels of sand.

Apprentices

William Barton did not patent his method of making small bells. He believed that his knowledge of the craft should be shared with his many apprentices. Among them were William and Abner Bevin, who were indentured to Barton in the late 1820s.

The Bevin brothers, now including Chauncey and later Philo in 1838, established their bell factory in 1832 in East Hampton. The brothers made mostly sleigh bells that, over time, came to include more than twenty different sizes of mainly round-shaped or globe bells and, to a lesser extent, bevel or band bells that usually had only one slit (“throat”). They also produced cow bells, kettles and coffee mills.

New Kinds of Small Bells

As roads steadily improved and became more crowded with sleighs throughout the 19th century, the demand for sleigh bells increased. More than ever, they were needed as a warning for approaching pedestrians and other vehicles. Concomitantly, more competitors entered the market for small bells, especially in East Hampton.

Sleigh Ride by Currier and Ives.

Sleigh bell production concentrated in East Hampton as it offered several advantages for the new makers of small bells: inexpensive waterpower; access to roads, waterways and railroads for obtaining raw materials and distributing the bells; shared knowledge of production methods and marketing strategies—especially in the early decades. The new bell makers also had a readiness to develop newer types of small bells. An estimated 30 firms operated at some time during the century and by 1900 had made, perhaps, 90 percent of all small bells in the U.S. and Canada.

East Hampton, Conn., had so many foundries making small bells that it earned the nickname BellTown.

Competition

Nevertheless, competitive conditions had intensified in the last decades of the century, which forced many firms to close. By 1906 only six longtime firms remained: Bevin Brothers, East Hampton Bell Co. (started in 1851), D.W. Watrous (1865), Gong Bell Manufacturing Co. (1866), Starr Brothers Bell Co. (1882), and the N.N. Hill Brass Co. (1889).

Other sleigh bell makers also operated outside of East Hampton. These firms included: the Taylor Manufacturing Co. of New Britain (started around 1872), known for its Russian sleigh bells; the American Ring Co. of Waterbury, whose single and multiple-slitted stamped sleigh bells of Maj. George W. Tucker were probably produced around 1872; and the Chapman Manufacturing Co. of Meriden (1881), which made chime sleigh bells. The American Ring Co. became part of the Plume & Atwood Manufacturing Co. of Waterbury in 1894. The Chapman Co. suspended business in 1900 and the fate of the Taylor Co. is unclear.

Cars and Wars

The advent of the automobile in the late 19th and early 20th centuries drastically reduced demand for sleigh bells. The competing firms responded through innovations in production techniques and their product lines in an effort to stay in business.

N.N. Hill revolutionized production by stamping sleigh bells from sheet metal around 1885, as an alternative to the old casting process, which significantly lowered its costs.

After 1900, hydraulically operated forging machines became common in bell making, especially for toys. The Gong Bell firm started by producing a doorbell based on a gong, but became the first company in 1872 to make bell toys with its initial product—‘revolving chimes’ on cast iron wheels. In the early 1900s it created a foot-operated automobile bell, a precursor of the horn. The Watrous firm, starting in the early 1900s, also began making bell toys that often used cast iron figures to strike a bell or chime. The Gong Bell Company acquired Watrous in 1923, but dissolved it in 1927.

Over the next several decades the East Hampton firms had to contend with the Great Depression and metal restrictions during World War II and the Korean Conflict. They also dealt with foreign competition—especially from Germany and Japan. All of them, with one exception, finally succumbed to economic pressures.

Bevin Bells

The East Hampton Bell Co., which had become a subsidiary of Bevin Brothers, dissolved in 1943. The Starr Brothers firm went bankrupt in 1954. N. N. Hill could no longer compete by 1960, followed by the Gong Bell Company a year later. Gong Bell, which also had become a subsidiary of Bevin Brothers, had long been successful with its line of toy telephones that it initially invented in 1921. However, it failed to convert production from metal and wood to plastic.

Bevin Brothers still makes hand bells.

Since 1961 Bevin Brothers has remained—despite a devastating fire on May 27, 2012—the oldest small bell producer in America. Before the fire the company produced over one million small bells a year in more than 100 varieties, including its claim of the first bicycle bells. Currently, it still produces its traditional sleigh, cow and hand bells, but custom imprinting of small bells for businesses, schools, clubs, and athletic events represents the largest share of its activity.

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About the author: Edward T. Howe is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, of Siena College near Albany, N.Y He has written academic articles about the bell industry in New York, incorporated villages in New York and Vermont, and nationwide taxation of the electric utility industry. This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Bevin Brothers Bell Shop by By Unknown author – Historic American Engineering Record, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40743178.

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