Howard L. Stanton (1854-1935)
Howard L. Stanton was born in Norwich on July 17, 1854. He was a member of the Norwich Fire Department for more than 58 years (1871-1929) and was the Chief of the department for 28 years (1901-1929).
He began his affiliation with the Norwich Fire Department as a runner with the Neptune Steam Fire Engine Company Number 2 in 1871. Over the years, as respect from his fellow fire fighters grew, he rose through the ranks from 2nd Assistant Foreman, to Engine Stoker, to Captain, to Second Assistant, and finally to Chief Engineer of the Department.
The history of his connection with the fire department is practically a history of the department. He accompanied the department to the Great Boston Fire of November, 1872, which he declared was the most instructive trip in that line he had ever taken.
Chief Stanton was very involved in the community. In 1913, he wrote an article aimed at educating school age children, “How to Interest School Children“. The article stressed the importance of teaching fire safety.
Under his masterful administration and enthusiasm for the improving the Norwich Fire Department, Chief Stanton introduced many changes. Beginning with the creation of a volunteer department, he also introduced horses to the force, hired 6 permanent firemen, added 14 additional fire alarm boxes, added a complete fire alarm telegraph, and mainly through his efforts convinced Norwich to build a new central fire station, which opened on December 3, 1904.
In July 1875 Mr. Stanton became a toolmaker at the newly organized, Norwich Pistol Company factory. However, after a short time, he accepted a more lucrative position with the Bacon Arms Company. He worked at the gun factory for more than five years.
Mr. Stanton also served three years on the Town Board of Education, six years as a member of the Board of Education of the West Chelsea School District, two years of which time he was also clerk of the district. He was also a trustee of the Chelsea Savings Bank.
Throughout the many years of Stanton’s service countless fire alarms were answered and dealt with by himself and his department. One of the worst fires that they combated was on August 29, 1912, when the Central Wharf in Norwich burned. Chief Stanton estimated the damage at $171,000 ($4,600,000 in today’s dollars).
The flames started on the Central Wharf and burned over an area of 800 feet long by 350 feet wide. The burned buildings had been used as storehouses for lumber and coal and the partition walls were constructed of both brick and wood. The fire was discovered at 11:50 pm by a locomotive engineer, and it is believed to have been started by vagrants who were accustomed to sleeping in the sheds. The body of one man was found in the ruins.
Howard L. Stanton married Fannie L. Hotchkiss on October 22, 1874. They had two daughters, Amy Louisa in 1878 and Georgie Coit in 1879. The Stanton family lived in a charming home on Fairmount Street. Six years after his wife Fannie died in 1899, Howard married Katherine K. Kind in 1905.
Howard L. Stanton died in 1935. He and his first wife, Fannie, are buried in the Yantic Cemetery.
Acknowledgements
“Genealogical and Biographical Record of New London County, Connecticut”, (1905), pp 632-633, by J.H. Beers
“The Norwich Fire Department“, (1906), by Fire and Water Engineering, Volume 39, pp 92-93
by Bob Dees, Published on findagrave.com
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “Howard L. Stanton” in the SEARCH box.
William A. Slater (1857-1919)
William A. Slater was born in 1857 in Norwich. His wealth had been established generations earlier in the textile industry in both Rhode Island and Connecticut. William A. Slater skillfully increased his family’s fortune. He was educated in one of the first classes at the Norwich Free Academy and at Harvard, graduating in 1881. He was the son of the industrialist and philanthropist John Fox Slater.
In addition to being well educated and successful, William A. Slater appreciated travel, theater, music and art. He and his wife, Ellen, purchased contemporary art during their frequent visits to France. He sponsored the construction of Norwich’s “Broadway Theater” and numerous performances in it. At the same time, his philanthropy provided for the expansion of educational opportunities and affordable access to the arts for Norwich’s citizens. His generosity touched every resident of the city in someway.
In 1884 William A. Slater offered to memorialize his deceased father, John Fox Slater, with a new building at the Norwich Free Academy. He chose noted Worcester, Massachusetts architect, Stephen C. Earle, to create a distinctive design. The Slater Memorial Hall was, and remains, one of Earle’s finest works.
Eight years after he spent $100,000 to build Norwich Free Academy’s Slater Memorial Building to house a museum in honor of his father, William paid $300,000 (more than $8.2 million in 2020 dollars) for a yacht he named after his daughter, the ‘Eleanor‘.
Slater and his wife Ellen, then in their late 30s, planned a 17-month round-the-world tour, traveling with their children Eleanor, age 9, and William, age 5, other family, friends, and various attendants, numbering nearly a dozen in all. They planned to stop in the Azores, France, Italy, proceed through the Suez Canal to Egypt, Bombay, Hong Kong, and Japan. Their trip is chronicled beautifully in Info Source 1.
In 1900 Slater sold the village of Slatersville, Rhode Island and the mill within it to James Hooper. Slater died in 1919 and was survived by his wife Ellen, and two children William A. Slater, Jr. of Norwich and Eleanor Halsey Malone of New York. After his death, Slater’s family sold the remaining Jewett City Mills.
He is buried in Yantic Cemetery.
Acknowledgements
“The Slaters Go Round the World”, by Vivian F. Zoë
Public Domain
“Eleanor : The Maltese Port”, by Vincenzo D’Esposito
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “William A. Slater” in the SEARCH box.
Edith Carow Roosevelt (1861-1948)
Edith Kermit Carow was born in Norwich on August 6, 1861. She was born in her maternal parent’s mansion, 130 Washington Street. Her middle name was the surname of a paternal great-uncle Robert Kermit.
She married Theodore Roosevelt on December 2, 1886 who became the 26th President of the United States
in 1901. She served as First Lady from 1901-1909.
Edith led a very interesting life. In 1869-1871 she was schooled in the Dodsworth School for Dancing and Deportment, in New York City. In 1871-1879 she attended the Louise Comstock Private School, also in New York City. As a child, she attended private kindergarten and primary school at the Theodore Roosevelt Sr. home on Park Avenue in New York City.
She joined Theodore in many outdoor sporting activities, such as tennis, swimming long-distance, bicycling, and rowing. She also became an expert horsewoman.
She and her husband had four sons and one daughter.
Acknowledgements
National First Ladies Library
Historic Buildings of Connecticut
By Théobald Chartran
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “Edith” in the SEARCH box.
Dr. Ier J. Manwaring (1872-1958)
Dr. Ier J. Manwaring was one of Norwich’s first women medical doctors and one of the first female medical doctors to go overseas during an international conflict.
She was born in Montville but she and her parents moved to a 100-acre farm located on East Great Plain (present-day site of Three Rivers Community College) in Norwich when she was five years old. She was educated at the Broadway School, the East Greenwich Academy in Rhode Island, the Mary Baldwin College in Virginia, and the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. Upon completion of her education, she established her own medical practice in Norwich and was the physician at Connecticut College from 1916 until she left for France.
Dr. Manwaring, along with a contingent of other women doctors, was determined to serve her country after the United States entered World War I. The women doctors formed the American Women’s Hospitals Service (AWHS). It’s mission was to raise money to operate a hospital, staff it with doctors and nurses, and acquire and equip ambulances. Manwaring raised $5,000 in Connecticut.
AWHS established the first hospital in Neufmoutiers-en-Brie France in July 1918. When members of the first women’s hospital unit arrived, they could hear the thunder of artillery as the Allies in the Marne region stopped the Germans’ final offensive of the war. The women wore custom-designed khaki uniforms modeled after those of British officers.
Manwaring and 25 other doctors, nurses and drivers formed the second unit. Their destination, assigned by the French, was Luzancy on the Marne River. Residents of the area were returning to their homes from the war when the doctors opened their hospital in an old chateau — a place that the Germans had also used as a hospital.
During their service in France, the group treated more than 20,000 people in 195 villages, at an average cost of less than $1 per patient. From November 1918 to August 1919, the dispensary doctors made 8,348 house calls. They treated skin diseases, hernias, heart and kidney troubles in the old, and malnutrition in babies. They dressed abscesses and treated ulcers.
As the doctors prepared to leave Luzancy in March 1919, a ceremony was held in their honor. They were named honorary citizens of Luzancy and four of the doctors, including Manwaring, received medals, equivalent to the French Legion of Honor.
After her 14 month tour of duty she returned to Norwich to resume her medical practice.
She is buried in Maplewood Cemetery.
Acknowledgements
“Trailblazing Women Doctors Came to France’s Aid After WW I”, by Lynda Laux-Bachand, (08/05/2018)
Drexel University Library
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “Dr. Ier” in the SEARCH box.
Lefty Dugas (1907-1997)
Lefty Dugas was a Major League Baseball player who grew up in the Taftville neighborhood of Norwich. He was an outfielder who batted left-handed and threw left-handed. He played with the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1931 to 1933 then played one year with the Washington Senators. He was also a star for the minor league Montreal Royals. During his minor league career he had a .327 batting average and a .206 batting average in the major league. .
His family moved to Taftville from Quebec when he was two years old. His father worked in Ponemah Mills in Taftville. Lefty was described by Bill Stanley, a former writer and historian, as “a good man — humble, very religious, very caring”. And when Bishop Reilly first came to Norwich, he described Lefty as a “saint”.
Lefty played baseball for many teams over the years. He first signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates at the end of the 1929 season and was assigned to the Wichita Aviators of the Western League in 1930 where he had a tremendous season, hitting .349 and slugging .565 with 24 doubles, 12 triples and 26 homers in 143 games. The Pirates gave him a look late in the 1930 season and he did well, hitting .290 in 31 at-bats. In his big league debut on September 17th, he went 3 for 5 in a 12-5 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.
On September 28, 1930 he was the first player to face the St. Louis Cardinals’ Dizzy Dean in the future Hall of Famer’s big league debut, drawing a walk and scoring the Bucs’ only run of the game. The French Canadian press took notice of him at that point, and he would become a regular subject of coverage in his native province over the next two decades, even if he never became a household name in the United States.
In 1943, he was back in the International League with the Toronto Maple Leafs, where he hit .283 in 48 games. He then had to give up the game for a few years because of World War II, working those years at Hamilton Standard, a war plant manufacturing aircraft propellers in Connecticut. The Royals were reportedly interested in bringing him back as their manager in those years, but the call of Uncle Sam was stronger. When the war was over in 1946, he played a few games for the Providence Chiefs of the New England League at age 39, hitting .260, then hung up his cleats for good.
Dugas worked for a number of years as an extrusion operator for the Plastic Wire and Cable Co. in Norwich before retiring in 1972. He was a frequent visitor to Quebec in those years, including as a guest of the Montreal Expos when they began play in 1969 and again when they inaugurated Stade Olympique in 1977. The city of Norwich honored him by naming a street in the vicinity of Dodd Stadium “Lefty Dugas Drive”.
He suffered a stroke shortly after his 90th birthday and died less than a month later, on April 14, 1997. He is buried in St. Joseph Cemetery.
Acknowledgements
Baseball-Reference.com
“Norwich Was Home to Its Own Lefty”, (2009), by Bill Stanley
FindAGrave.com
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “Lefty” in the SEARCH box.