Percival’s Suicide Attempt

The following story recently appeared in The Tin Horn, the newsletter for the Berlin Historical Society. I have been a proud member of the Historical Society since 2015. About a year ago I read in the newsletter that they were looking for stories about the town. Now clearly they meant stories from people who grew up there or folks who have lived there a long time who could share tales of how the town used to be. I can’t claim to be either, since I didn’t grow up there, nor have I ever lived there. But, I’d been sitting on this story I had written about one of Berlin’s biggest celebrities, the poet James Gates Percival. So I submitted the story, which is quite long for a newsletter, and to my surprise they replied that they would include it in four parts this year (Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, 2018). I am truly honored that the story appeared in their newsletter and now take the liberty of posting it here in it’s entirety, with a few edits and a footnote.

-spellmanjr 28 Nov 2018

James G Percival — Photograph of a portrait of James G. Percival painted by Edwin Percival

I’ll live no more, I know the world too well. I’ll trust no longer to it’s soothing voice. Let those who choose, in pain and sorrow dwell. Death is my fondest, death is my only choice.

-James Gates Percival “The Suicide”

The poet James Gates Percival’s home is located in Kensington on the street that bears his family’s name, just southwest of the Kensington Congregational Church. It’s not the house he was born in but the home he grew up in, his father, Dr. James Percival having built it in 1789 when Percival was about 3 years old. It’s also where the poet finished his first book of poems, which was published in New Haven in 1821. The house and the village of Kensington were also the setting of Percival’s alleged suicide attempt in the summer of 1820. The poem, The Suicide, which he started writing in 1816 and completed in 1820, appears in Percival’s first book.

Besides being a poet, James G. Percival was a geologist, botanist, linguist and Medical Doctor. But though he excelled at many different things, living in the real world doesn’t seem to have been one of them. He suffered from depression, as did his mother, Elizabeth (Hart) Percival. He was painfully shy and lived in a self-imposed isolation for most of his adult life. This solitude and the comfort he found in it can be felt in his poetry.

Percival House, Kensington, Connecticut. May, 2016.

The artist Nelson Augustus Moore, who knew the Percival family personally, once wrote of James and his brothers, Edwin and Oswin, “all three never seemed to belong to this world, extremely sensitive in their natures, of an organization of the finest nerves, they could not bear the rough contact of the world”.

The author Samuel G. Goodrich (aka Peter Parley), whose family lived in Berlin and was a friend of Percival’s, also wrote of him, “His mother was by nature of a susceptible and delicate organization, and she seems to have imparted to her son these qualities, with a tendency to excessive mental development.”

Percival’s life was altered dramatically when he was 11 years old with the death of his father and his sister, Harriet, who died within a month of each other. The elder Dr. Percival was a very successful local physician, businessman and land owner, and he left a considerable amount of property to his three minor sons.

James and his brother, Edwin were sent to Hempstead, Long Island to live with their maternal uncle, Reverend Seth Hart. Described as an, “amiable man of a cheerful an almost jovial temperament”, Reverend Hart’s personality was in sharp contrast to his melancholy nephew. Uncle Seth tried to get young James to break out of his shell and Percival hated him for it. Portions of “The Suicide” were directed towards his uncle, including the verse:

Ye who abused, neglected, rent, and stained that heart, when pure and tender, come and dwell. On these dark ruins, and, by Heaven arraigned, feel, as you look, the scorpion stings of hell.

When he was 16 years old Percival entered Yale College, using some of his inheritance to pay his tuition. As he usually did, he excelled in his studies but struggled socially. He graduated in 1815 second in his class. He would have been first but didn’t wish to be Valedictorian because he wasn’t a good speaker. He was unable to choose a career and took a couple of jobs as a tutor. His mother was now married to Samuel Porter, a local farmer, and James worked on his stepfather’s farm. Unfulfilled, he reentered Yale, this time to follow in the footstep’s of his father and become a physician.

It was around this time that he fell in love with Mary Ann Goodrich, the sister of the aforementioned Samuel Goodrich and Charles A. Goodrich, also an author and the Worthington Parish pastor. James and Mary spent time walking together and reading poetry. But when he admitted his love to her, she announced that she had been promised to another. Mary married Nathaniel B. Smith in 1819.

Still another love was a young woman that he tutored while living in Philadelphia. One day during their studies her hand accidentally touched his. Without saying a word, he not only left her home, but also the city and returned to New Haven. He later wrote her admitting his feelings. She had a family member respond for her that she was not interested. After these two rejections Percival is said to have given up on love forever.

The Life and Letters of James G. Percival was written by Julius H. Ward and published in 1866, ten years after Percival’s death. In recounting Percival’s early days Ward, who had never met the poet, relied on Percival’s family and friends, such as his brother, Oswin, Reverend Royal Robbins and his lifelong friend and neighbor Sheldon Moore to tell his story. It’s important to mention that these men were older by this time and were being asked to remember events that had happened forty or fifty years earlier. It seems that some of the details of these events may have been confused or embellished by the storytellers, or may have been just made up by Ward.

For instance, after graduating from Yale again, this time with a Medical Doctorate, Percival returned to Kensington and began practicing medicine. Ward claims that soon after, Dr. Percival was called to a local family’s home to tend for their children, seven in all, who had contracted a malignant fever that had been ravaging the region. He was unable to check the disease and five of the family’s sons, ages 2 to 12, all died within days of each other. Percival was now unable to bear the responsibility of being a doctor and gave up his practice. But there doesn’t seem to be any record of a family in Berlin, or even the State, losing five children at that time.

Even more questionable are the details of Percival’s suicide attempt in 1820. Ward wrote that Reverend Robbins was walking with Percival when he suddenly began running across a field and ran head first into a wall. Oswin Percival told Ward that James had tried to overdose on Opium. Others had seen him hitting his head on trees or trying to crush his own skull with a large cobblestone. Percival had supposedly considered going to the shore and drowning himself. Finally he decided to go to Middletown and get a gun to shoot himself in the head. He began making his way there when, as Ward writes, “all at once the disease left him; the pressure at his head was gone…and turning about, he went home a sane man”. So, the question is, is this story believable or is it just a tall tale?

Luckily, a firsthand account does exist and is contained in a letter from Oliver Moore to his brother, Sheldon, at that time teaching in Sharon, Connecticut. In the letter, dated July 14, 1820, Oliver wrote that Percival had for some time been telling anyone that would listen, that he just couldn’t live in this world and planned on killing himself. Oliver went on to say, that Percival had decided a week earlier that he would commit suicide after his mother visited him, but that day had come and gone and Oliver hadn’t heard anything else about it.

There were several theories going around Kensington as to why this highly educated man would want to end his own life. Oliver Moore believed that Percival had studied too hard. One Jabez Cowles thought that he hadn’t matured into a man and now was unprepared to function in society. Others believed that Percival, who had spent the remainder of his inheritance to go back to school, just couldn’t bear the thought of being poor. And a few thought that this was a ploy to scare Oswin into giving him some of his property. Ward wrote that the rejections in love and the failure of his medical practice had lead to his decision to commit suicide.

In his memoirs, Recollections of a Lifetime, Samuel Goodrich wrote that Percival had only contemplated suicide during this period of his life, but that his mother (Goodrich’s) had talked him out of it.

It’s unknown if he ever contemplated suicide again. But Edwin Percival is believed to have starved himself to death in Troy, New York in 1848.

James lived out his life as a bachelor, as did both his brothers. Sheldon Moore would later say that he viewed him as a “sinless being”.

Though he made money in his many endeavors he never had any, and he lived in near poverty until his death. After spending a small fortune on his education he later spent another small fortune on his vast personal library, which was comprised of about seven thousand volumes when his executors sold it off in 1860. Oswin was also not good at handling money, and his cousin, Benjamin Hart was forced to declare him incompetent and take over his finances.

Percival himself remains silent on an actual suicide attempt. In the preface of his first book of poems he wrote, “Perhaps some apology may be demanded for ‘The Suicide’. I can only say, it is intended as a picture of the horror and wretchedness of a youth ruined by early perversion, and the causes of that perversion. It is not without moral to those who can see it. I wish to impress on the minds of all who read it, the great dangers of indulging the evil propensities, or tampering with the feelings of children. This is a truth, which I have felt in the deepest recesses of thought and feeling, and I would, if possible, lift my voice against the noxious arts, which are daily polluting the stream of life, and sinking Man lower and lower in degradation”.

Footnote: On January 4, 1907, Sheldon Moore’s son, John committed suicide in Pittsburg, Kansas, where he was visiting his daughter, Anna Lemon. He shot himself in the head about a block away from his daughter’s home in front of many witnesses and died an hour later. He was said to have been depressed about his failing health. He was 74 years old.

Sources:

The Life and Letters of James Gates Percival by Julius H. Ward (1866)

James Gates Percival: An Anecdotal Sketch and Bibliography by Henry Eduard Legler (1901)

The Poetical Works of James Gates Percival with Biographical Sketch by James Gates Percival. Biographical Sketch by Erasmus D. North M.D. (1859)

Recollections of a Lifetime or Men and Things I Have Seen, Vol. 2 by Samuel G. Goodrich (1856)

Autobiography of Nelson Augustus Moore (Unpublished)

Sheldon Moore Papers Yale University Manuscript MS 992 (Letter from Oliver Moore to Sheldon Moore)

Art and Artists in Connecticut by Harry Willard French (1879) (Edwin Percival Sketch)

Wisconsin Wills and Probate Records, 1800-1987 (James G. Percival Will; Benjamin Hart letter concerning Oswin Percival)

The Records of Convocation, A.D. 1790- A.D. 1848 by Episcopal Church, Diocese of Connecticut (Seth Hart Sketch)

Ottawa Daily Republic (Ottawa, Kansas) 5 Jan 1907 (Obituary for John Moore)

ancestry.com

Picture Credits:

“James Gates Percival. From a Painting by a Brother of the Poet” from The Connecticut Magazine, Feb. 1900, Vol. VI, No. 2

“Portrait of Seth Hart Painted by his Nephew, Edwin Percival Brother of the Poet, James Gates Percival” Image courtesy of Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive

For information on the Berlin Historical Society visit their website at http://berlincthistorical.org/ or find them on Facebook.

The Courtship of Sheldon and Susan

385 — Susan L. Wife of Sheldon Moore, died Mar. 20, 1897, age 87 yrs.

Susan Langdon Dickinson was born in Kensington on November 20, 1809. She was the daughter of Jesse and Chloe (Allen) Dickinson and was named after her grandmother, Susannah (Langdon) Hooker Dickinson.

Susan’s roots in Kensington ran very deep and she is seemingly related to everyone in the area either by blood or marriage, including Sheldon’s brother in law, Charles C. Langdon, the husband of Sheldon’s sister, Eliza. Susan and Charles Langdon were distant cousins who had a mutual 3rd great grandfather, John Langdon. Susan also shared a mutual uncle and aunt with the poet, James G. Percival. Percival’s uncle being Matthew Hart, Jr. and Susan’s aunt being Urania (Hooker) Hart.

Susan’s grandfather, Moses Dickinson was born in Wethersfield but had come to Kensington before 1760. That being the year he married Lydia Cole. He owned land along, what is today, High Road and Four Rod Road. It is said that he donated the land for West Lane Cemetery and that he was the first person buried there. He died in Kensington on November 18, 1812.

018 — In Memory of Moses Dickinson, who died Nov. 18, 1812: Age 75 yrs.

Moses fought in the French and Indian War from 1759-1760 and was enlisted in General Phineas Lyman’s 1st Connecticut Regiment, Captain Whittlesey’s Company. Also serving in this regiment and company was Kensington native, Ashbel Hooker. Hooker had enlisted as a clerk in 1758 and was later promoted to a sergeant and then to ensign. He married Susannah Langdon in Berlin on January 31, 1760 and then returned to duty. Their daughter Urania was born May 11, 1760 (these dates probably mean that Susannah was already with child before they married). Ashbel Hooker died September 6, 1760 in Canada two days before the French surrendered Montreal to British forces. It is very likely he never met his daughter.

montreal — Surrender of Montreal, September 8, 1760

Moses and Lydia’s first and only child, Seth was born February 7, 1762 and it’s possible that Lydia died during childbirth (no death record found). Two years later on March 8, 1764, Moses married his fallen comrade’s widow, Susannah Hooker. Their first child, Jesse (Susan’s father) was born August 12, 1764 (again the dates don’t add up). Their next two children, Ashbel and Lydia were named in honor of their spouses. Then came Susannah, Moses, Azel and Lucy. These seven children plus Seth and Urania gave them quite a large family.

But a large family didn’t stop Moses from enlisting again after the Revolution started. In 1776 he joined Bradley’s Battalion, Wadworth’s Brigade and eventually reached the rank of ensign. Also in this brigade was another Kensington resident, Susan’s maternal grandfather, John Allyn who rose to the rank of captain later serving under, still another Kensington resident, General Selah Hart.

So to reiterate, Susan’s family had a rich and colorful history in Kensington.

Sheldon Moore and Susan Dickinson probably met at a young age, the Dickinson land being so close to Roswell Moore’s mills in Kensington. They were engaged in 1831 (no intention found) but no date had been set. In late June of that year Susan took a trip to Alden, New York to visit her older sister, Sophia, the wife of Horace Stanley, and her nieces Virginia and Harriet. Susan’s father had died the previous summer and her mother and fiancee were home in Connecticut, and 21 year old, unescorted Susan was probably feeling a sense of independence she had never known.

On the day she arrived in Alden, her cousin Sophronia Dickinson arrived from Attica, New York. And after two weeks, Susan, Sophronia and the Stanley’s made the twenty mile trip to Attica to visit Susan’s aunt and uncle, Moses and Rebecca (Hart) Dickinson.

In a letter to Sheldon dated August 1, 1831, Susan wrote that her Uncle Moses looked very much like her father. So much so in fact that her niece Harriet kept calling him Grandpa. Susan, an avid churchgoer, was also attending a lot of church sermons, both Methodist and Presbyterian, she preferred the latter.

Susan also dropped a bombshell, telling Sheldon that she may not be returning in the fall as previously planned. Her sister really wanted her to stay through the winter. She knew her mother would not consent so she was asking for Sheldon’s consent instead.

Sheldon’s response arrived from Southington thirteen days later. He jokingly told Susan that if she didn’t return in the fall, then he would be forced to go to Alden to be with her, and he was sure that Horace Stanley didn’t want that. He was serious though when he told her that he felt her staying through the winter was unnecessary and he would not give his consent. He was also sure her mother wouldn’t either. He then gave her a couple of options on how to return by the fall. One being to return with Alpheus Woodruff, who would be in Attica visiting relatives and would be returning by September 1st. The other option was to return a little later with Sheldon’s brother, Roswell and his wife Lucy who would be in Utica. Sheldon told Susan he really wanted to see her and asked that she not give any more thought about staying past fall.

How Susan returned isn’t known, but she didn’t stay in Alden through the winter as she had hoped. Susan and Sheldon were married in Kensington on November 1, 1831.

Sources:

Ancestry.com

Fold3.com

Wikipedia.org

Rolls of Connecticut Men in the French and Indian War, 1755-1762, Vol. 2

Sheldon Moore Incoming Correspondence Connecticut Historical Society Manuscript (55335)

Sheldon Moore Papers Yale University Manuscript (MS 992)

Information that Moses Dickinson donated the land for West Lane Cemetery was provided by Sallie Caliandri from the Berlin Historical Society. She cites her source was the Kensington Congregational Church Records found in the Local History Room at the Berlin-Peck Library.

Carved in Stone

444 — West Lane Cemetery, Kensington, Connecticut

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes, write sorrow on the bosom of the Earth. Let’s choose Executors and talk of wills; And yet not so -for what can we bequeath, save our deposed bodies to the ground?

-William Shakespeare (Richard II)

West Lane Cemetery in Kensington isn’t actually on West Lane, it’s on High Road. It’s situated on the side of a hill and has only a narrow paved path to get to the top. The path isn’t really wide enough for a hearse. In March, 1990 my grandmother was buried there, and me, my brother and cousins, who were pallbearers, had to carry her casket up the relatively steep hill, almost to the top. This was twenty years before I started doing genealogy, and I had no idea at the time how important this cemetery is to my family history or how many relatives we were walking over as we made our way up the hill to my grandmother’s final resting place next to my maternal grandfather.

The Moore’s that my mother knew were in Southington on Andrews Street. These were her father’s maternal uncles, aunts and cousins and they visited them often when my mother was growing up. So in 2010, I was perplexed as to why my grandparents were buried in Kensington. They’re buried in a plot with my grandfather’s parents (my great grandparents), Charles and Sara (Moore) Kellogg. On a visit to West Lane with my mother that year I asked her why they were buried in Kensington and not Southington. Mom, who has a habit of answering questions she doesn’t know the answers to with simple responses, looked down the hill and scanned the landscape and replied, “I think they really liked the view”. It made sense, it really is beautiful there.

However, there was more to the story. Sara Moore was the daughter of Charles and Sarah (Horton) Moore who are also buried in West Lane. Charles Moore owned a farm and at least two houses on Andrews Street in Southington and died there in 1913. So it still didn’t make any sense why he was buried in Kensington. More research revealed that Charles was the son of Sheldon and Susan (Dickinson) Moore and he was born in Kensington in 1834 and lived there until he married in 1857. Mystery solved.

But going back another generation to Sheldon’s parents, Roswell and Lovina (Phillips) Moore, I found Roswell lived on Andrews Street in Southington, a mile north of what was later Charlie Moore’s home and farm.

Roswell and Lovina Moore are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Southington along with Roswell’s parents, Roswell and Desire (Dunham) Moore. Also buried there are Roswell and Lovina’s sons, Eli, Nelson, Charles and Lurian, and their daughters, Mrs. Dimmis Grannis and Mrs. Sarah Frisbie. Nelson and Lurian being the only two of Roswell’s twelve children not to survive to adulthood.

Roswell Moore owned R. Moore and Sons or Moore’s Mills in Kensington. Sons, John, Roswell, Jr., and Oliver were sent there to work the mills. John later removed to West Springfield, Massachusetts and is buried in Agawam Center Cemetery in Agawam. Roswell, Jr., Oliver, and later Sheldon all made Kensington their home and all three died there and are buried in West Lane Cemetery.

The first Moore buried in West Lane was Caroline (Leonard) Moore, the first wife of Oliver, who died in 1829. According to findagrave.com there are 48 Moore’s buried in West Lane, all of them related. The one exception being Pauline (Moore) Canfield who was the daughter of Walter and Adeline (Castle) Moore. Walter Moore was in no way related to these Moore’s, but when Adeline divorced him and married Roswell Allen Moore, Jr. (great grandson of Roswell Moore) sometime after 1900, Pauline Moore became Roswell Allen Moore’s stepdaughter, thus connecting her to these Moore’s. There are still others in West Lane who are also related to this line of Moore’s but don’t go by the name Moore, including my grandfather.

Sheldon Moore is buried next to his wife adjacent to the paved path near the top of the hill. His headstone fell over before 2010 and the soft earth at West Lane is slowly claiming it. I’ve visited the cemetery at least once a year for the past six years. When I do, I make sure to brush the leaves, dirt and grass off his stone, revealing his name and epitaph so that his final resting place will not be lost just yet.

384 — Sheldon Moore, died Mar. 20, 1866, age 67 yrs.

There’s a boulder in West Lane that, according to Ethelbert Allen Moore, was once in the middle of Sheldon Moore’s apple orchard. Carved into the top of it is the name, Moore. I once wondered why West Lane wasn’t called High Road Cemetery. I’m beginning to wonder why it’s not called Moore Cemetery.

Sources:

findagrave.com
ancestry.com
Hale Collection of Cemetery Inscriptions and Newspaper Notices, 1629-1934
Tenth Generation by Ethelbert Allen Moore (1950)

405

I’m a descendant of the following people buried at West Lane Cemetery:

Sheldon Moore
Susan (Dickinson) Moore
Charles Moore
Sarah (Horton) Moore
Charles S. Kellogg
Sara (Moore) Kellogg
Charles S. Kellogg, Jr.
Frances (Trottier) Kellogg
Moses Dickinson
Susannah (Langdon) Dickinson
Jesse Dickinson
Chloe (Allen) Dickinson
John Allyn
Ruth (Burnham) Allyn

Set in Cement

old double bridge — “The Double Bridge. Old Cement Mill in Distance” Courtesy of the Berlin Historical Society. Used by permission.

In 1925, 21 year old Idabelle Lindsley of Kensington photographed a sign near Steel Shop Pond on the Mattabassett River that read, “CEMENT MILL, Site of first cement mill in United States, 1829”. This is a rather bold and entirely untrue statement. The sign should have read, “Site of the first blue limestone, hydraulic cement mill in Connecticut, 1826”. Though even this statement is debatable.

Fact: A cement mill owned by Roswell Moore of Southington and operated by his sons, Roswell, Jr. and Oliver did exist in Kensington from at least 1826 until the 1850’s under the name R. Moore & Sons.

Fact: Hydraulic or water cement was being manufactured in New York near the Erie Canal as early as 1818.

In 1801, Roswell Moore had bought Solomon Winchell’s half of a grist and carding mill that Winchell co-owned with Dr. James Percival (father of poet James G.), and by 1817, Roswell owned the mill entirely, following the sudden death of Dr. Percival. This mill, between High Road and Glen Street, just west of the Congregational Church, was also used in the production of linseed oil. Later a saw mill was added. Just to the south another mill was built for manufacturing kiln dried meal, and it was this mill that was eventually converted into the cement mill. These mills collectively were known as “Moore’s Mills”.

But the story of the cement mill begins in Southington with Sheldon Moore and his friends, Gad Andrews (son of Luman Andrews) and Anson Merriman.

water cement — Excerpt from the *American Journal of Science and the Arts, Vol. 13 (1828)*

The Luman Andrews homestead and farm was at the corner of what is now Andrews and Woodruff Streets, not far from the Berlin line. Almost a mile north was Roswell Moore’s property and between them was Anson Merriman’s home.

Sheldon Moore had graduated from Yale in 1818 with a law degree and had worked as a teacher in Vansville, Maryland and Sharon, Connecticut. He shared a mutual interest in science with his friends Andrews and Merriman and subscribed to the American Journal of Science and the Arts, which was published by his old college professor, Benjamin Silliman. In 1825, the three men had read an article in the journal about limestone being used to make cement for the Erie Canal. In the early 1800’s the young country was very much in need of a water limestone or hydraulic cement that would harden in water to be used to construct canals, dams and bridges. Merriman remembered seeing an outcrop of a blue limestone on the Andrews property and wondered if it might be used to make cement.

Sheldon then wrote Professor Silliman asking him if this blue limestone might have the necessary properties to make hydraulic cement, when Silliman didn’t respond immediately, an anxious Anson Merriman wrote several more letters. Professor Silliman’s response to Sheldon was simple, an experiment was needed using the blue limestone. The rock would need to be burnt, then pulverized, mixed with sand and left in water to see if it would set. The experiment was a success and plans were made to begin manufacturing.

434 — Remnants of one of the Moore’s mills in Kensington on the Mattabassett River

But soon after the blue limestone was also discovered on the Moore property. It is here that the Moore and Andrews firms appear to have parted ways. Roswell Moore seems to have been a shrewd businessman. So why would he want to share the profits of this new enterprise with Luman Andrews? After all, he possessed his own supply of blue limestone, and the kilns that were needed to burn it were already being constructed just south of the Moore home. Plus, he had something that Andrews didn’t; a working mill that would be needed to grind the limestone.

Not only did Luman Andrews not have a mill, he didn’t even possess the water power necessary to power one. This was remedied in July of 1829 when they leased and later purchased land from Seth Cowles of Berlin, on what is now Carey Street in Southington, where they constructed a dam and mill.

The Moore’s also had all the key people needed to run a successful cement business. Younger brother Eli Moore handled things on the Southington side, which included quarrying the blue limestone and burning it in the kilns. The quarry being located across the road from the Moore homestead where the Wassel Reservoir is now. The limestone was then transported 3 1/2 miles away, via Carey Street between the two Hart ponds, to the mill in Kensington. Here, Roswell, Jr., an expert miller, ground the limestone. It was then put into barrels and brought to Middletown where it was shipped to agents and suppliers who sold it to customers as far away as the West Indies. Oliver Moore, the engineer of the family, was in charge of building dams, mills, and probably the kilns. Sheldon Moore acted as comptroller, accountant and handled legal affairs. And Roswell Moore was the owner and CEO, who not only used his business skills to find suppliers and customers, but also handled advertising.

028 — Wassel Reservoir, across from Roswell Moore’s house in Southington, Connecticut. Site of the Moore’s quarry.

On a personal level, this venture was exactly what Sheldon needed to redeem himself with his father. Roswell Moore, who had paid Sheldon’s tuition at Yale, had viewed his son’s education as a kind of investment. An investment that up to this point, that had not paid off. The cement business became R. Moore & Sons most profitable enterprises.

One of the first customers, of what was still Moore & Andrews, was the Farmington Canal Company. The Farmington Canal operated from 1828-1848 and ran from Northampton, Massachusetts to New Haven, Connecticut. Cement from Southington was used to build bridges, locks, piers, abutments and culverts and a stone dam that crossed the Farmington River. Farmington Canal Company began purchasing cement from Moore & Andrews as early as 1826. The canal became obsolete with the coming of the railroad, which in many sections, ran adjacent to the canal. Today the railroad is also gone and has been replaced by the Farmington Rail Trail, a bike path.

200 — Sign on the Farmington Rail Trail in Simsbury, Connecticut

By 1828, there was another competitor from Southington in the cement business, the firm of Barnes & Bradley which was operated by Liva Barnes and Jason Bradley. Their quarry was located south of the Andrews homestead and they built their mill on the property of David Sloper. The new competition drove the price of cement down, but in spite of this, the Moore’s cement business continued to turn a profit for the next three decades.

However, what was once considered an inexhaustible supply of blue limestone in Southington was beginning to dwindle by the early 1850’s. Barnes & Bradley had already run out and the Moore and Andrews firms were running low. Roswell Moore and Luman Andrews were now dead and what was left of the cement businesses was being run by Eli Moore and Bennett J. Andrews (son of Luman), who resurrected the original firm of Moore & Andrews.

By the late 1850’s the manufacturing of cement by Moore & Andrews had ceased completely. A few years prior, Roswell, Jr. retired from milling and became deacon of the Congregational Church in Kensington. Oliver Moore converted the cement mill into a shop that manufactured steelyards and gardening tools. And Gad Andrews had also retired, turning his attention to genealogy.

The next generation of Moore’s and Andrews’ both tried to take credit for being the first to manufacture hydraulic cement. In his unpublished autobiography, Nelson Augustus Moore (son of Roswell, Jr.) claimed that R. Moore & Sons had been the first to successfully market hydraulic cement and that Anson Merriman’s attempts to market the cement had failed. In his book, Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Connecticut published in 1875, Heman R. Timlow also claimed that Gad Andrews and Merriman’s cement business had actually failed. Although Anson Merrimans role in the cement industry is unknown it’s certainly not true that the Andrews firm had failed.

In 1924, Frank D. Andrews (son of Bennett J.) wrote a privately published and incredibly informative book called, History of the Discovery of Water-Limestone and Early Manufacture of Cement at Southington, Connecticut in which he doesn’t claim, but certainly implies that the Andrews family were the first in the State to manufacture cement.

In his aforementioned autobiography, N. A. Moore vividly describes the mills in Kensington, including the trees and foliage surrounding the streams and ponds near the mills and the day to day operation of the mills. Moore also sketched and painted several pictures of the mills in Kensington. Around 1865, he briefly reopened the cement mill in order to produce enough cement to build his house on High Road, next door to his father’s home, that he called “Stonehouse”.

Nelson Augustus Moore’s “Stonehouse” in Kensington, Connecticut

Sources:

Early Cement Manufacture in Connecticut by Clarence N. Wiley, presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers, Hartford, Connecticut, Feb. 22, 1933

History of New Britain with Sketches of Farmington and Berlin by David N. Camp (1889)

History of the Discovery of Water-Limestone and Early Manufacture of Cement at Southington, Connecticut by Frank D. Andrews (1924)

Autobiography of Nelson Augustus Moore of Kensington, Connecticut

Sheldon Moore Papers Yale University Manuscript (MS 992)

Connecticut Mill Sign, Berlin photographed by Idabelle Lindsley Tatro (1925) Connecticut Historical Society Object Number 1977.92.297

For more information please read Addendum to “Set in Cement”

422

424

432

438

Sheldon Moore Place

032 — Sheldon Moore’s Home in Kensington

Beneath a broad crowned oak, on a sloping hill o’erlooking wide the lovely region round. On a soft thick turf I lay; the air was still- distinctly heard was each remotest sound. The clacking wheel in a cornfield, at the mill the circling ‘plash, and far the faint rebound of low and bleat from mountain side, the stir of insect swarms, the drone bee’s hum and swirr. -James Gates Percival “The Dream of a Day”

This house was originally built by Mathew Hart in 1759. Hart served during the Revolutionary War as a Private in Captain Selah Hart’s Company, Colonel Wolcott’s Regiment, and later as a Corporal in Captain James Stoddard’s Company, Colonel Moseley’s Regiment. He further contributed to the war effort by producing bullets for the Continental Army made from the lead from the nearby mine. He was also the maternal grandfather of the poet, James Gates Percival.

Around 1800, Hart removed to De Ruyter, New York and the house was sold to Norman Winchell. In 1813, Winchell sold it to Oswin Percival (brother of James G). And in 1824, Percival sold it to Sheldon Moore’s father, Roswell.

Sheldon’s brothers, Oliver and Roswell, Jr. and their respective families shared the house from 1824, until Roswell, Jr. built his own home on nearby High Road and Oliver temporarily left Kensington, going first to West Springfield, Massachusetts, and later Miller’s Falls, a section of the towns of Erving and Montague originally known as Grout’s Corner. Oliver’s daughter, Nancy, and Roswell’s son, Nelson Augustus (the artist), were both born in this house on August 2, 1824.

On August 13, 1831, Sheldon Moore wrote his fiancee’, Susan L. Dickinson and told her that his brother Oliver was moving to Massachusetts and leaving the house to them. They occupied the house until Sheldon’s death in 1866.

After Sheldon’s death, Susan L. Moore lived with her children until her own death in 1897.

From at least 1900-1939 the house was owned by Oliver Moore’s granddaughter, Alice and her husband Isaac Porter.

Sources:

“Tenth Generation” by Ethelbert Allen Moore (1950)
“Autobiography of Nelson Augustus Moore of Kensington, Connecticut” (Unpublished)
“Sheldon Moore Papers” Yale University Manuscript (MS 992)
“Sheldon Moore Place” Photograph by Nelson Augustus Moore, Connecticut Historical Society Object 2006.65.2. Inscription: ‘Sheldon Moore Place. Where I was born and in the same day Nancy Moore (my cousin) daughter of Oliver Moore she died at Millers Falls Mass aged 15 years and was buried in West Lane Burying Ground-N.A.M.’

Picture Sources:

“Mathew Hart Place” The Connecticut Magazine, Volume 6 (1900) Illustration by Isaac Porter
“Berlin Historical Building 024” WPA Architectural Survey 1935-1942, from the Connecticut State Library Digital Archives
“Sheldon Moore’s Home in Kensington” and “The small barn on the property” by spellmanjr October 31, 2014

Berlin_historic_building_024 — Circa 1936

About

Source: About

Welcome to my blog about my great-great-great grandfather, Sheldon Moore. I’m an amateur genealogist and wannabe historian and I’ve been building my family tree on ancestry.com since March 2010. I have become fascinated with the Moore branch of my family and have devoted an enormous amount of time researching Sheldon Moore and his wife, children, siblings, in-laws, nieces, nephews, neighbors, friends and acquaintances. Not to mention his hometown of Southington, Connecticut and his home of over 30 years in the Kensington section of Berlin, Connecticut.

I’ve been amazed at how much information I’ve been able to find on this one man. I’ve discovered a paper trail of documents and personal letters in the library at

016 — Sheldon Moore’s headstone in West Lane Cemetery, Kensington, CT

Yale University (his Alma Mater), the Connecticut Historical Society and the University of Michigan. His name appears in books, newspaper articles and other periodicals on subjects concerning cement manufacturing, horticulture, sundial manufacturing and teaching, just to name a few.

So, 150 years and 7 days following his death I dedicate this blog to telling the story of Sheldon Moore’s life, his accomplishments, his failures, his relationships with his family and friends, and his legacy.

-spellmanjr 27 Mar 2016

Sheldon Moore

of Kensington, Connecticut 1798-1866

Tag: Kensington CT

Percival’s Suicide Attempt

The Courtship of Sheldon and Susan

Carved in Stone

Set in Cement

Sheldon Moore Place

About