In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Grove Street in Glastonbury was the home to a diverse immigrant community that included Germans, Poles and Ukrainians. Many residents worked nearby at the Williams Brothers Silver Company. A German Lutheran Church, built on Grove Street in 1902, became St. John The Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1925. The area was redeveloped in the 1970s and the church was in the path of a new road linking Main Street and the New London Turnpike. In 1973, developer David MacClain was given approval for a residential project to be built across from his Glen Lochen Marketplace (completed 1975). His proposal included providing a new home for the church at the corner of a new Grove Street. He only charged the church for moving fees that were within the $45,000 the Redevelopment Agency had paid for the building. The church was moved to its current address at 26 New London Turnpike early in 1974.
Sources: “Ukrainian Church, a Landmark, Seen Surviving Redevelopment,” by George Graves (Hartford Courant, August 19, 1973); “Redevelopment Agency Vows To Keep Church,” by George Graves (Hartford Courant, September 28, 1973); “Ukrainian Church Expected To Be Relocated This Week,” (Hartford Courant, February 10, 1974).
The house at 1559 Main Street in Glastonbury was the home of William Welles, a prominent citizen of the town. Welles was a tutor at Yale. During the Revolutionary War, when students were dispersed away from New Haven, Yale classes were held in the house (May 1777 to June 1778). Welles left Glastonbury c. 1798 and the house was acquired by Joseph Stephens, who operated a forge behind the house near the river. Originally having a saltbox form, the house was later expanded and updated in the Georgian style. It also has a later Greek Revival front doorway.
The sign on the house at 534-536 Naubuc Avenue in Glastonbury indicates that it was built c. 1820 by George Wrisley. The Commemorative Biographical Record of Hartford County, Connecticut (1901) mentions a George Wrisley who built a house later occupied by his son, George Smith Wrisley, and grandson, Ransom Wrisley, but that house must have been built earlier than 1820 if it was built by George, Sr. The 1855 map of Hartford county indicates an “H. Risley” living about where the house is located.
In 1798 Ebenezer Hale (1771-1843) of Glastonbury married Sarah Cornwall of Portland. The couple shared the house at 1381 Main Street in Glastonbury with Ebenezer’s brother Gideon Hale, Jr., who married Anna Case in 1803. Eventually the house became too small for two families and Ebenezer Hale built his own house at 1378 Main Street in 1806. Ebenezer’s grandsons, George and John Howard Hale, started a peach orchard in 1866. The farm paymaster would pay the orchard workers at the long window on the north side of the house. John H. Hale developed peach trees that could better withstand the northern climate. The first to grade their fruit, the brothers developed their business on a national scale with 1200 acres in Connecticut and Georgia by 1915. As related inA Handbook of New England (second edition, 1917):
It was J. H. Hale, the ‘Peach King,’ who more than any other man in its history put Glastonbury on the map. He began in a small way with upland farms worth $10 an acre, and on this “barren” land proved that peaches could be produced, unequaled in flavor, which would bring the highest prices in the nearby New England markets. Wealth has poured in upon him and is utilized in developing at Fort Valley in Georgia the greatest peach-growing industry of the world.
I had occasion to speak to a gentleman this morning about the Hon. J. H. Hale, of South Glastonbury, Conn. We call him the “Peach King.” When he began the production of peaches in Connecticut, he at once sought to specialize his work and to send forth “Hale’s” peaches as the best product in the market, and he has made a great reputation simply by the peach itself. He had each peach carefully wrapped and on each wrapper it was advertised that it was a “Hale” peach, and in putting up packages, he was careful that every peach should be the same, from the top to the bottom of the package. In doing that, he said he found great difficulty, because he even had to discharge men who insisted upon putting nicer peaches at the top. He said, “I had to discharge my men and employ girls, because the girls are more honest than the men.” After that he had no trouble whatever. But when he put these peaches in the great markets of the east, he found that the commission merchants rather discouraged the idea, they didn’t care to bother with them. He demanded a better price, and he just asked the privilege of putting them in that people might know what Hale’s peaches really were, and it was but a short time before he had them coming for his peaches; letters were being sent to him from different parts of the country, saying, “Send on your peaches, our customers want them,” and from that little beginning he now has 2,300 acres of peaches in a bearing condition, and last year he shipped 210 large refrigerator cars from his Georgia orchard to the markets of the north and had a ready market for all he could produce. He made that market by judicious advertising of the article itself.
Bear in mind, it is the man on the farm that will make the success just as surely as it is the man behind the gun that will win the victory.
