2010 inductee
Robert Treat
Robert Treat of Milford was one of Connecticut’s great unsung heroes. Only brief sketches published in the early 20th century or before exist but Connecticut’s public records are replete with the name of Robert Treat, an early settler of Milford, deputy governor and governor of Connecticut, and officer of the colony’s military.
Fifth child of Richard and Alice (Gaylord) Treat, Robert was christened on February 25, 1625 (NS) in Pitminster, Somerset, England. Treat’s family was one of the founding settlers of Wethersfield, Connecticut’s first town.
Lambert’s History of New Haven Colony states he was Milford’s first Town Clerk from 1640 to 1648. This may be in dispute. Other sources say he arrived with Rev. Prudden from Wethersfield at age 16 or 17. That would have been after 1641 in our Gregorian (“NS”) calendar. Dating of most colonial events up until 1751 were under the Julian (OS or “Old Style”) calendar with a New Years Day of March 25 (not January 1st). Confusion in dating is often problematic. It is possible a literate young man in a society of young men could have taken the post at age 15 or 16 in 1640 (OS), or, being ambitious, he may have just overstated his age.
He was, nonetheless, a figure of influence in the nascent village including laying out much of the town as an early surveyor, acting as attorney, as an individual magistrate or as judge of local disputes in concert with other local luminaries such as Benjamin Fenn, and gaining appointment as an officer in the town militia, as lieutenant of the Train Band in 1654 and later as its captain.
He served as a deputy to the General Court at New Haven (combination legislature and court where all business of colonial government took place) in 1653 and each year thereafter until he was elected magistrate from 1659 serving until 1664 when he declined reelection due to opposition to the union of New Haven and Connecticut Colonies under the Charter of 1662. At that time great discontent prevailed over the proposed union. Milford declined to send any representatives to the General Court at all. Treat was one of the local leaders most resistant to the new government - one that would permit the unregenerate to vote in civil as well as ecclesiastical matters. In protest, he resigned as a magistrate but was lured into playing a compromising role of helping the integration of the two colonies’ governments, much to his later regret.
The religious liberalism of Connecticut Colony so rankled him that in 1667 he led a group of similarly disgruntled Milfordites, New Haven area families, and most of the populace of the Village of Branford to found a new town that he insisted also be named Milford. The equally religious flock from Branford, led by Rev. Abraham Pierson, had the named changed to “New Ark,” later, Newark, N.J. Throughout, Treat played an influential organizational, military and political role there, including that of City Clerk.
In 1672, leaving property and two sons in Newark, Treat returned to Milford just as a Dutch threat to New England waterborne commerce and rumors of a land invasion brought hasty military preparations to Connecticut and Massachusetts. Founded in 1608, “New Amsterdam” had been turned over to England in 1664 but the Dutch regained control in 1673. Connecticut and much mightier Massachusetts organized sea and land forces. Treat was commissioned a Major and appointed second in command in 1673. He formed a committee of safety.
The threat soon dissipated as English control of New York resumed in 1674, but his military prominence earned Treat appointment by the Connecticut General Assembly to commander in chief in charge of the four companies of the Connecticut colony’s forces during “King Philip’s War” of 1675. “King Philip,” seeing the threat to the Indian way of life, embarked on a war of extermination to drive out the colonists. A Wampanoag Sachem actually named Metacom, he was called “King Philip” by whites who had honored him like “Philip of Macedonia.” (His brother Wamsutta, who died in 1662, was “King Alexander”). “Kings Alexander and Philip” were, ironically, sons of Massasoit, the great sachem who had befriended the Pilgrims at Plymouth during the terrible winter of 1620 allowing the very survival of the English on this part of the continent.
“Philip” led a coalition of Indian tribes that devastated several New England settlements. Many formerly feuding Indians joined the cause (not including Wepawaugs of Milford). Treat conducted himself with military distinction, successfully fending off and defeating the Indians in several engagements including victory in the "Swamp Fight." Upon his triumphant return he was commissioned Colonel of the militia of New Haven County. The next year (1676) he was elected deputy governor and in 1683 the eighth governor making him one of the first Americans to rise from a successful military career to high political office.
Most famously, Robert Treat was governor when in the 1680s King James II attempted to consolidate his northern American colonies into the dominion of New England extending from Maine to New Jersey. He sent Sir Edmund Andros to be his governor. Andros, called the “tyrant of New England,” believed that they must, among other things, gain physical possession all the royal colonial charters. The General Court of Connecticut had formally received its royal Charter on October 9, 1662, from King Charles II mostly through the diplomacy of Gov. John Winthrop. Andros soon had all but one. Andros in Boston demanded Connecticut surrender its Charter. Governor Treat demurred and stonewalled for the better part of a year. In 1687, a frustrated Andros marched with an armed unit to the General Assembly at Hartford. Treat diplomatically presided over the discussion over a table holding the Charter well into the night. Suddenly all lights were extinguished. When relit, the Charter was gone. Captain Joseph Wadsworth is credited with secreting the Charter in the majestic “charter oak” on the Wyllys estate. Andros, returned to Boston empty-handed and thereafter Connecticut would be called the “Constitution State.”
As governor, Treat negotiated in 1683 Connecticut’s long standing western boundary with New York, giving away claims to Rye and the “Oblong” (a 1.8 mile wide swath parallel to today’s border from above Stamford at the Ridgefield bight to the Mass. border), with Connecticut retaining the “panhandle:” Greenwich and Stamford. Nevertheless, the border dispute would still fester for nearly two centuries before finally being resolved in 1879 on essentially the same terms. Treat served as governor until 1698 when local political events favored Fitz-John Winthrop. Treat continued as deputy governor until he retired in 1708 at the age of eighty-two. He died two years later on July 12, 1710. He was dutiful husband to Jane Tapp. They left many descendants, many of whom are still in the Milford area.
Few men have sustained a fairer character or rendered the public greater service. He was exceedingly beloved by his community. It was said he could often be found, Cincinnatus like, with his farmer’s hands upon the plow only to be called over to his roadside stone wall to consult or sign important papers. He was honored by contemporaries as the “beau-ideal of a gentleman.”
The Rev. Samuel Andrew
wore many hats; ‘exemplarily; holy,’ he also fathered 10 children
Samuel Andrew (1656-1738), born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 29, 1656, died at Milford, Connecticut, January 24, 1738, was a man of several hats: A distinguished scholar, college trustee and president, educator, clergyman and son-in-law of the governor of the Connecticut Colony. He also was the father of 10 children.
Andrew was perhaps the most distinguished trustee of a major university. Four years after his graduation from Harvard in 1675 at age 19, the university named him a fellow and tutor. He held that post for five years. During the temporary absences of Harvard Presidents Uriah Oakes and John Rogers, Andrew was named interim president of the Cambridge, Mass. School. This was considered to be a remarkable feat since he was in his 20s at the time. Three other individuals who had studied under Andrew at Harvard, James Pierpoint, Noadish Russell and Joseph Webb, would later join him as trustees of the new Collegiate School (Yale College).
On Nov. 18, 1685, Andrew was ordained as the third pastor of the First Congregational Church in Milford as the successor to Roger Newton and Peter Prudden. Shortly after his ordination he was married to Abigail Treat, daughter of Robert Treat, eighth governor of Connecticut. For more than half a century Andrew remained in Milford, becoming one of the most prominent and respected members of the clergy in all of the Connecticut Colony. A noted scholar, Andrew rarely left his study. Visiting the ill, counseling the poor, or officiating at weddings or funerals, therefore, always were left to the elders and deacons of the church. Andrew did, however, take an active role in the founding of Yale and agreed to serve as one of its trustees of the school. Andrew also accepted the post of rector pro tempore, taking charge of the senior class that moved to Milford.
While a trustee, Andrew saw the new school enter a period of decline that would last 10 years. He faced series of problems with which he did not or could not deal while the trustees became divided on almost all of the issues. Among them were mounting financial difficulties and a drained Connecticut treasury which made it difficult to provide funds upon which it depended to continue to function. Meanwhile, the split campuses at Milford and Saybrook contributed to disunity among students Moreover, students were dissatisfied since the lodgings in Saybrook were far from adequate and they were dissatisfied with their tutors. By 1710, only three students were graduated. As a consequence, although Andrew was recognized as a distinguished scholar and a good teacher, he gained a dubious reputation for being a poor administrator.
The most noteworthy event of Andrew’s administration occurred when 12 ministers, including nine college trustees, and four lay persons met in 1708 to formulate the Saybrook Platform that provided that every officer of the Collegiate School had to publicly accept the confession of the faith adopted by the Saybrook Synod. The orthodox Calvinist faith, therefore, became the officially adopted creed of the school and was strictly taught to its students. During Andrew’s administration and for some time afterward, most graduates went into the ministry.
Although the new college had accumulated one of the most extensive book collections in New England, mainly from Jeremiah Dummer, a Harvard graduate and the Massachusetts Bay Colony's and later Connecticut's agent in London, many problems remained unresolved. Students were growing increasingly unhappy with what they considered to be poor quality of their instructors and factionalism festered among the staff and the various educational locales. Meanwhile, the Rev. Andrew appeared to do little to resolve the issues and rarely ventured away from Milford. He made no secret, in fact, of his interest of being relieved of his position within the school.
In 1718, Harvard alumnus Cotton Mather who had become disillusioned with the liberality of his alma mater, wrote to a wealthy London merchant Elihu Yale to solicit aid for the new college in Connecticut. By the end of that year Yale was convinced to make a contribution of goods which were in turn sold in Boston for approximately £560 which remained the largest private donation made to the college for at least a century. In appreciation, trustees named the newly consolidated school building at New Haven after Yale and soon after renamed all the enterprise Yale College. In 1719, Yale trustees named Andrew’s son-in-law Timothy Cutler as Yale’s rector. Although Andrew was relieved to no longer head the college, he remained as a trustee and even officiated at commencements for several years.
Among his Collegiate School students was Ebenezer Martin. Reverend Martin would marry Susanna Plumb of Milford and father Joseph Plumb Martin, the future revolutionary warrior and chronicler and a fellow member of the Milford Hall of Fame.
Until his death on Jan. 24, 1738, Andrew continued his pursuits of scholarship and preaching with great distinction. His memorial tablet in the First Congregational Church of Milford states that he was “A man of exemplary holiness and unwearied labors, modest, courteous and beneficent.”
Andrew was predeceased by his wife Abigail and survived by many children.
George Bird Grinnell
The father of conservation
George Bird Grinnell – who is known throughout the world as an anthropologist, historian, naturalist, mineralogist, explorer, sportsman and conservationist – would have been a household name in Milford if John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated. In 1963, the superintendent of Milford schools, Joseph A. Foran, proposed that the new grammar school being planned for West Avenue across Mondo Pond from the Grinnell farm be named for him. When Kennedy was killed in November 1963, the decision was made to name the new school the John F. Kennedy Elementary School which opened in 1966. This was the end of a tradition of naming local schools after well-known residents (e.g. Fannie Beach, Jonathan Law, Simon Lake, Joseph A. Foran).
Grinnell was born in Brooklyn on September 20, 1849, then moved as a child with his family to Manhattan. Grinnell’s father, George Blake Grinnell, having made his fortune as a stock broker and investment banker, bought property at the intersection of what is now Naugatuck Avenue and Grinnell Street in Milford to start a farm. He built a grand Italianate-style estate house in 1865. According to Milford resident Joan Saloomey, who currently lives on part of the Grinnell estate, when her grandfather bought the property from Grinnell’s father in 1922, there were vegetable fields, most notably corn and potatoes, as well as cherry, peach and pear orchards, formal gardens and three large ponds. It was called Beaverbook Farm.
With the middle name of Bird, G.B. Grinnell may have been destined to become an ornithologist, among other things. He grew up in Audubon Park in Washington Heights, Manhattan, on the 20-acre estate of John James Audubon, author of Birds of America. As a boy, Grinnell was fascinated with the preserved animal and bird collections, as well as the travels of Audubon and his son, John Woodhouse Audubon.
As a child, Grinnell had enjoyed seeing the flight of passenger pigeons from his bedroom window in New York, and he watched helplessly as the entire passenger pigeon population became extinct. Motivated by his desire to prevent the demise of other bird species, Grinnell helped found the first Audubon Society in 1886. It was officially incorporated in 1905 and named in honor of John James Audubon.
Grinnell studied ornithology and paleontology at Yale, graduating with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. He worked as a graduate assistant at the Peabody Museum in New Haven. Grinnell initially specialized in zoology. In 1895, he helped found the New York Zoological Society – now the Wildlife Conservation Society based at the Bronx Zoo. But he later gained fame as an early conservationist and expert on Native Americans and the northern plains.
Grinnell spent years studying the natural history of the American West and became an expert on Native Americans, living with them for long periods of time. He wrote about the culture and destruction of the Indians, particularly the Cheyenne, Pawnee and Blackfeet Indians. He was pained by the destruction of the native tribal life by white settlers.
In 1870 he joined Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s cavalry as the official zoologist, and went on the Black Hills expedition in 1874. Luckily, he declined a similar expedition to Little Big Horn in 1876.
Grinnell lobbied Congress for the preservation of the American buffalo and conservation projects. Grinnell, a sportsman and hunter who understood the need to preserve wildlife, was friends with then President Theodore Roosevelt. They discussed the need for conservation, the preservation of American land, and laws creating and maintaining national parklands. He believed the national park system would help preserve and protect the landscapes, natural species and plants from miners, real estate moguls, hunters, loggers and tourists.
In 1887, Roosevelt and Grinnell founded the Boone and Crockett Club dedicated to preserving the heritage of hunting, promoting ethical hunting and supporting America’s wildlands. The club still exists today. Grinnell advocated a game management system of hunting, in which small fees from hunters would support a game warden to provide effective enforcement of game laws. His belief in hunting regulation was revolutionary at the time. Similarly, he was an advocate for timberland management.
Glaciers were another of Grinnell’s passions. He made numerous hunting trips to the St. Mary Lakes region of Montana in the 1880s and ‘90s, with James Willard Schultz, a professional guide. In 1885, they observed the glacier along the Swiftcurrent Valley that is now named for him. Grinnell was influential in legislation that led to the establishment of Glacier National Park in 1910.
Grinnell was an activist in movements to preserve wildlife and conservation in the American West. For many years, he published articles and lobbied for congressional support for the endangered American buffalo. Much like his chronicling of the Plains tribes, he also recorded the history of the buffalo and their relationship to Plains tribal culture.
With the passage of the 1894 National Park Protective Act, the remaining 200 wild buffalo in Yellowstone National Park received much needed protection. But it was almost too late for the species. Poaching continued to reduce the animal’s population, which declined to 23 in 1902. Grinnell’s efforts led to the Department of Interior finding additional animals in the wild and managing herds to supplement those in Yellowstone. This ultimately led to the survival of the species.
Grinnell was longtime owner and editor of Forest and Stream Magazine from 1876 to 1911. He was an avid writer, with more than two dozen books on Native Americans the Pawnee, the Blackfeet, hunting, duck shooting, the buffalo, the Great West, Alaska and others including a two-volume history of the Cheyenne.
Between his natural history and Native American studies and expeditions, Grinnell spent time in Milford, boating and bird watching on the Housatonic River and hunting ducks in the marshes. He also spent many months in Milford recovering from Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
For many years, the 22-room Grinnell house – at 94 Grinnell Street – was owned by Saloomey’s aunt, who wanted to divest herself of the property in the 1980s. Local efforts to preserve the house failed and in 1983 a local developer purchased it, gutted it and turned it into what is today the Audubon Manor Condominiums. According to Saloomey, the loss of the Grinnell family home was terrible. “Gone were the beautiful rooms with their own fireplaces, the beautiful millwork throughout the house, rosettes in the center of the ceilings, the wide mahogany staircase that went up all three stories and the lover’s nook under the staircase. It was a beautiful, mysterious house,” she recalled.
Most of the estate’s outbuildings are gone too, except the 4,000-sqaure-foot carriage house at 96 Grinnell Street, where Saloomey and her sister Karen live. The carriage house was built in 1910 to house horses and carriages and the farmhands who lived upstairs. Saloomey has fond memories of the Grinnell home, including sliding down the two-story banister. She remembers that her grandmother kept all the stuffed birds that were in the house and was known to say, “George Bird Grinnell would shoot anything that moved.”
George Bird Grinnell died on April 11, 1938, and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Mary Hepburn Smith
left lasting legacies to Milford
Mary Augusta Hepburn Smith was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and lived in Manhattan and Stamford before her final 28 years in Milford where she left a lasting impression.
Four significant legacies remain today after her death in 1912: the Freelove Baldwin Stow chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution of which she was a founder and Organizing Regent; Liberty Rock boulder memorial in the city’s Devon section; a Tiffany memorial window dedicated to the Hepburn family in the Taylor Library Building that currently houses the Milford Chamber of Commerce and the two block long park on North Street framing the Wepawaug River between Maple and Bridge Streets.
Born July 27, 1825, in Brooklyn, she married Edwin Porter Smith in Brooklyn at age 22 in 1847. He died in Milford in 1890. The couple had six children, two of whom lived to adulthood.
The Hepburn name in Milford goes back to when three brothers immigrated to the colonies from Scotland. Her ancestor, through whom she claimed DAR membership, was Lt. Peter Hepburn, a lieutenant during the American Revolution who died in Milford in 1815. She helped organize the local DAR chapter March 27, 1896, with 47 charter members. The first chapter house was on Broad Street on land donated by her. Today the site is the parking lot for Milford Bank. The current chapter house is on Prospect Street.
One of the chapter’s first actions was to erect a flagpole with a permanent flag waving over it on a 10-foot diameter 35-ton boulder dubbed “Liberty Rock” on Bridgeport Avenue. Originally higher on the hill, it was moved to just west of today’s Exit 34 due to the construction of the I-95 ramps in the 1950s. As noted in a ceremony conducted there September 7, 1897, the spot was the highest elevation in the area and served as a lookout post and signal station during the Revolutionary War. Lookouts were able to watch the Housatonic River, then called the Stratford River, to guard against invasion by British forces. The flag on the pole was changed every year with Smith personally paying for a new one. Her daughter continued to buy flags for the site into the 1930s. In recent years the property has been maintained by the Devon Rotary Club, landscaped on a fenced-in acre of land with a flagpole next to the rock as well as a historical sign and concrete benches to serve as an outdoor classroom.
Smith also served for several years as III Vice President General of the National DAR Society in Washington D.C. and remained regent of Milford’s chapter until her death on October 30, 1912. She is buried in the Hepburn plot in Milford Cemetery.
Smith lived in the majestic Italianate style mansion at the corner of West River and Maple Streets. In the early 1900’s following a large fire in 1899 she bought abandoned properties along the Wepawaug River that had served as unsightly shops and tenements. She had the area landscaped into what has come to be called the Upper Duck Pond and donated it to the Village. Today Milford has a virtually unbroken park setting from City Hall north to the Kissing Bridge.
She was among several residents who had provided furnished alcoves, some with elaborate windows, during the construction and organization of the Taylor Memorial Library in 1893 at the corner of Broad and West River Streets. Her stained glass window made by Tiffany of New York is a memorial to the Hepburn family, showing its coat of arms.
Her life was summed up well with the inscription on her gravestone taken from the Book of Proverbs: “She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.”
Frank Julian Sprague
aided the advent of modern cities
Frank Julian Sprague, as much as anyone else in the 19th century, helped to develop the modern city, with elevators that made skyscrapers possible and electric railways for commuters.
Born in Milford on July 25, 1857, Sprague won a commission to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, graduating seventh in his class in 1878. His practical and technical nature didn't take long to emerge-- a born tinkerer, Sprague came up with the first electric call bell system on a U.S. Navy ship. During his military service Sprague also developed an inverted dynamo and sketched plans for a system to transmit pictures by wire.
Back on land, the local man went to work in Thomas A. Edison's famous Menlo Park, N.J. laboratory, as a consultant to the famed inventor. Among the projects Sprague worked on in Edson's lab were designs for a central power station and a feeder system to deliver electricity to far-flung customers.
Sprague was restless, though, and had different goals so in 1884 he left to open his own company. The firm built electric motors, including the first to run at a constant speed under different loads.
Sprague also worked to solve one of the most pressing environmental and health problems of his day. Horse-drawn "trolleys'' and hired carriages were a popular means of public transportation in big cities, but the animals left thousands of pounds of manure on the streets of New York, Boston and other urban centers.
Coal-fired locomotives deposited ash and dust all along their route, turning buildings a drab gray and impairing people's breathing and general health.
Two of his key innovations, the traction motor and the "pole and shoe'' assembly helped Sprague and his investors develop and build the first commercially successful electric railway, in Richmond, Virginia. It began service in 1888, easily handling the steep grades found on some Richmond streets.
Within a few years electric streetcars and interurban trolleys based on Sprague's designs had virtually replaced all of the older, horse-drawn, public transportation in most U.S. cities.
Edison, whose company manufactured most of Sprague's motors, bought out the Milford inventor's company in 1890. By then, 110 streetcar systems using Sprague's tractor motors and pole-and-shoe assembly were in use across the United States and in Europe.
Not only was Sprague thinking globally, but having improved horizontal transportation he thought about improvements to the vertical mode: elevators. A new venture started with partner Charles Pratt worked to make elevators more reliable, including an improved, electric-powered braking system.
The men developed safer, faster elevators that in turn made taller buildings feasible. Sprague and Pratt sold their company in 1895 to a forerunner of Otis Elevator Inc., now a division of United Technologies Corp.
A 1916 New York Times profile called Sprague "the father of modern traction.'' His contributions are well-known among his peers, the electrical engineers and transportation planners who study his designs.
A permanent exhibit at the Shoreline Trolley Museum in East Haven features one of Sprague's unique motors. The exhibit is housed in the Frank J. Sprague Memorial Hall, a gift of the inventor's family to the Branford Electric Railway Association, owners of the East Haven museum.
Many of Sprague's patents, business records and personal papers were donated by his widow to the New York Public Library. Two of Sprague's grandchildren attended the opening of the permanent exhibit of his work in 1999 at the Shoreline Trolley Museum.
Since his death on Oct. 25, 1934 though, Sprague's name has receded into history, as have the trolley systems he designed. However, every time a train glides into the downtown Metro North Station, look up. You'll see an updated version of the Milford native's pole-and-shoe drawing power from the overhead catenary lines.
