I am privileged to be one of the two co-historians of the Pierpont
Family Association. Recently, my distant cousin and co-historian gave me an
author-signed copy of the book “The Mill on Mad River,” a historical fiction
that takes place in Waterbury, CT and which centers around the beginnings of
what later became Scovill Mfg. Co., the company for which my father, grandfather,
and great-grandfather worked for a combined 100+ years (*1). It has been
fascinating reading, especially knowing that many of the facts in the book are true.
In the back of the book was inserted a few pages from the Scovill
Bulletin (an employee publication) from September 1948 showing the author
signing a copy of the book for the then Scovill president, Leavenworth Porter
Sperry. It noted that President Sperry and his brother, Vice-president Mark
Leavenworth Sperry are descendants of Dr. Fred Leavenworth, of the original
firm of Leavenworth, Hayden & Scovill Company. I have previously documented
how Mr. Sperry and I are related (*2), but I thought that I’d see if the other
individuals in the original Scovill history are also related to me. Here is
what I found.
The original company was called Abel Porter’s button shop and was
started around 1802. Abel’s grandmother was Mary [Hooker] Hart and she was the grand-daughter
of Samuel Hooker from Farmington. But Mary’s aunt, also named Mary, was married
to Rev. James Pierpont, the progenitor of the Pierpont family and the founder
of Yale University. This means that Abel Porter is my 3rd cousin (6
times removed) as Ezra Pierpont, who was living in Waterbury at the time this
book takes place, was Abel’s 3rd cousin.
Abel’s button company was bought out by Dr. Frederick Leavenworth,
Daniel Hayden, and James Mitchell Lamson Scovill (called Lampson Scovill in the
book). I’ve already documented my relationship to the Leavenworth/Sperry
family. And I have not found any connection to Daniel Hayden, who had come to
the area from Attleboro, MA and who left Waterbury not too many years later. But
is there a connection to Lampson Scovill?
During the period that the book covers, Lampson was not married and he
ran the general store in Waterbury. But he did eventually marry a woman named
Sarah Ann Merriman. The Merriman family had been in the Waterbury area for
several generations, in fact when my wife and I were first married we lived on
Merriman Lane in the nearby town of Prospect. Sarah Ann’s great*3 grandfather
was Caleb Merriman. But through a series of females beginning with Caleb’s
daughter, Lydia, another of Caleb’s great*3 granddaughters was Sally Beecher.
Sally married Austin Pierpont, making Austin Lampson’s 4th cousin.
As a descendant of Austin, that means that Lampson Scovill is my 4th
cousin (5 times removed).
There are other relatives of mine mentioned in this book. When the
primary (fictional) character in the book travels to Litchfield to get strips
of brass annealed, the preacher in the Litchfield church is Lyman Beecher and
his daughter Harriet is also mentioned in the story. But I’ve already told the
story of how Lyman and Harriet are distant cousins of Sally Beecher and thus
they are distant cousins of mine as well (*3). In Litchfield, the book also
mentions Judge [James] Gould who ran the Litchfield Law School as well as Sally
Pierce who ran the Litchfield Female Academy. These were both real people.
Judge Gould took over running the Litchfield Law School after the death of
Tapping Reeve who founded it. I’ve written about my relationship to him earlier
(*4).
Many of the other family names mentioned in the book are real families
from Waterbury history (Hotchkiss, Payne, Farrell, etc.), but the specific
individuals who have parts in this book are fictional. However, Captain
[Samuel] Judd, who is in his 90s when he appears in the book, is a real
individual. I am related to the Judd family through my Upson ancestors who were
some of the earliest settlers in Wolcott (*5).
While this book is fictional, the basis of it is in the real history of
Waterbury and particularly the founding of Scovill.
Because it contains so many references to real individuals who are my
ancestors, I really enjoyed reading it. You can find copies of the book through
places like Amazon.com. You can also read many of the details about this
history of Waterbury in the book that Mr. Clark used as a basis for his (*6).
Notes:
I keep losing my comment posts! So I'll summarize what they tried to say:
ReplyDelete1. Thanks, Alan, for your detailed review. I wondered how much verifiable history lay behind the novel.
2. My dad, Howard Russell Kraft worked all his life at Scovill, which helps explain why he had an autographed copy of the book.
3. I spent a couple of summers helping run the day camp sponsored by the Scovill Employees Recreation Association (SERA) at the lake in Woodtick, where the Pierpont Reunion was held (as you noted in an earlier post) when my parents were reunion officers.
4. I attended elementary school at the "new" Woodtick school (through 3rd grade) and the "old" one (4th and 5th) which was revived and pressed into service during WWII and is now a museum. I considered adding a picture here, but lost the original post in the process. Thanks again! Bob Kraft.