In 1890 the Babcock saltbox was nearly one hundred years old and deep into a slide into disrepair. Despite its historical significance there was not much discussion about preserving it. It was, simply, an old house in a neighborhood that was making way for newer, fancier homes, including a yellow mansion that had sat at the northeast corner of the Babcock plot since the 1820s. That mansion was home to several generations of Trinity (first called Washington College) presidents and faculty members.
In 1896, with little fanfare, the Babcock house was torn down to make room for a gracious new house for the widow of a state Republican Party scion.39 What had been the Babcock’s one-hundred-acre farm was carved up for yards, and the name of Babcock was consigned to the history books—and to a street in the Frog Hollow neighborhood.
2. An Opportunity for Each
COLONEL POPE COMES TO TOWN AND HELPS BUILD AN INDUSTRIAL POWERHOUSE
One cool spring day in 1878, a Boston train pulled in to Hartford’s Italianate station with a spindly, top-heavy bicycle that would change manufacturing forever. The year had already seen incredible mechanical advances. A commercial telephone exchange built with carriage bolts and teapot handles had opened in New Haven.1 Thomas Edison had applied for a patent for his cylinder phonograph after testing it by recording the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”2 John Philip Holland had launched a submarine in New Jersey.3 Modernity was being birthed down a canal of wires and plugs. It was simply looking for the proper delivery room.
In 1850 Hartford’s population was 13,555. By 1870 the population had more than doubled to nearly 38,000; by 1890, to 53,230. The town by 1900 boasted nearly 80,000 residents—an increase of six times over—and the town’s boundary bulged west.
What had happened? Industry. Manufacturing came to Frog Hollow, and with it, innovators, planners, immigrants, and farmers anxious to step away from their plows and work at a job where their fortunes were not ruled by the weather.4
Starting in the 1850s and for a little over a half century, Frog Hollow was the center of a stunning array of factories that helped give birth to a modern age. Bicycles were manufactured there. Sewing machines. Tools. Cars. People moved from near and far to live in Perfect Sixes that were built within walking distance of factories where jobs were plentiful. The city laid trolley tracks and then added more and more tracks to accommodate the boom.
Colonel Albert Pope.
Hartford’s Population, 1850–1900
| YEAR | POPULATION OF HARTFORD |
| 1850 | 13,555 |
| 1860 | 29,152 |
| 1870 | 37,743 |
| 1880 | 42,551 |
| 1890 | 53,230 |
| 1900 | 79,850 |
Starting with a colonial grist mill, like begat like.
The man accompanying that bike on the train, Albert Pope, was a restless Civil War veteran and an industrialist who was as skilled at promoting innovation as he was at manufacturing it. He was bringing his baby to Hartford because that’s where the innovators of the day were changing manufacturing forever.
When Pope’s train stopped in Hartford, he hopped onto his fifty-six-inch Duplex Excelsior, a relatively unsafe mechanism with a large front wheel, a small back one, and a penchant for pitching riders over the handlebars. Pope asked for directions and then headed off for the Weed Sewing Machine Company a mile away.5 What better way to convince a manufacturer to take on a new product, Pope thought, than to demonstrate that product in person?
A bike was an unusual sight in Hartford streets, and on his ride Pope attracted the attention of laughing, wide-eyed children, who fell in behind him. By the time he arrived at the brick factory on Capitol Avenue, he was followed by scores of children—and a few energetic adults eager for excitement.
Pope was pedaling to see George A. Fairfield, a talented machinist who met him at the Weed factory door and rather quickly caught Pope’s enthusiasm for the bike’s potential. Fairfield’s employees had been churning out sewing machines. With a few modifications, Fairfield believed they could use similar methods for drop-forging bicycle hubs and steering wheels.6
This was one of many partnerships that turned the Connecticut River Valley, writes Bruce D. Epperson in Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry, into the nineteenth century’s version of Silicon Valley. The best and brightest minds were drawn to opportunities for cash and creativity in the lower Connecticut Valley—most specifically Hartford, and in particular, Frog Hollow.7
1898 Pope Columbia “Standard of the World” ad.
If Frog Hollow was Silicon Valley, then George Fairfield was Steve Wozniak. Fairfield wasn’t as concerned with the finished product as he was with the production process. To Fairfield, every article produced in Frog Hollow was a manufacturing puzzle to be solved, and the factories that lined Capitol Avenue created a complex and robust economy with ample opportunity for problem-solving. In addition to Sharps rifles, Frog Hollow factories turned out Weed sewing machines and, eventually, Pope’s bicycles and electric- and gas-powered automobiles, as well as a wide array of tools.
With the help of Christopher M. Spencer, an inventor, the Weed company (and later the Hartford Machine Screw Co.) set the standard for efficiency and innovation. For a while, Weed’s factory was larger than the better-known Colt’s Armory.8 For a few years, announcements about the latest technology ran in the Courant nearly daily in a regular column, “Manufacturing Notes.” On just one day in 1878, the column announced that Weed was developing a “twin needle” sewing machine for use in shoe and harness work. Down the street, the workers at Billings & Spencer were perfecting a device that could be used for clipping horses—or shearing sheep. The device allowed the clipper to finish clipping a horse in an hour or less.9 How long it took to clip a horse without benefit of Billings & Spencer’s new device is lost history, but if the breathless Courant column is any indication, an hour was a big deal.
For Pope, the bicycle was only his latest obsession. While visiting the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Pope saw a two-wheeled velocipede with an enormous front wheel and a smaller, solid rubber tire in the back. The contraption had been around for centuries, but the 1870s public disdained it. Horses were frightened by it, and municipal ordinances banned it from parks and avenues.
“Pope Manufacturing Co.” Haines Photo Co. Copyright Claimant. Pope Mfg. Co. #2, Hartford, Conn. c. 1909. Retrieved from Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2007662033