Growing Up in Clinton

By Arnold Davis

   On March 2, 1946 my parents purchased a large house that sat on a 40 acre tract of land in Clinton, Connecticut.  I am not sure how old this home was, but it had very wide wood floor boards, fastened with square nails.  There were no modern conveniences, but we were very happy to have our first family home.  With no indoor plumbing, we used the privy that was about thirty feet in back of the house.  There was a coal fired furnace that kept the house warm.  Refrigerators could not be purchased yet so we used an ice box that was kept supplied with ice by the local ice man.  There was a corn crib and a large barn filled with old farm implements.  My favorite was a huge one cylinder gas engine that I loved to hand crank to get it started and run it for hours.  It was an extremely slow running monster engine that made a terrific noise as it did not have a muffler.

 

   This 1946 photo shows my mother and me in our back yard of our Clinton farm.

   My parents set to the task of remodeling the house.  Walls came down in one place and were built in another.  We did most of the work ourselves including refinishing the floors and wallpapering.  They hired contractors to rewire the home, install a modern bathroom and kitchen with new appliances.  A new oil fired, steam heat system was installed throughout the house. 

   One of the interesting surprises I remember was in back of a wall I was told to tear out.  I was busy removing the old plaster and lath from the wall and found a large stone fireplace behind the wall.  In the fireplace was a crane with a cast iron pot hanging from it.  The andirons were still in the fireplace.  There also was a baking oven built into the wall beside the fireplace.  This room had been scheduled to be the kitchen, but after this discovery my parents made it into the dinning room. 

 

   This Christmas dinner picture shows the dinning room with the discovered fireplace. 

 

   In the spring of 1946 I was enrolled in 6th grade at the Clinton Grammar School.  A busy summer of mowing laws and picking strawberries to make money was supplemented by doing chores around the farm.  I took care of the chickens and helped in our very large garden.  I did not like farming, but looking back on that summer I now realize that I learned a lot.

 

   In the fall of 1946 I returned to Clinton Grammar School and the newspaper, The New Haven Evening Register, printed the above picture in the October 4, 1946 edition.  I am in the last row, second from the right.  The 4-H Club Fair was a really big deal and I entered two midget watermelons that I had grown.  They won a blue ribbon and I was very proud of my accomplishment.  One of the persons attending the Fair offered me fifty cents for the two watermelons.  We dickered over the price I wound up getting one dollar for the two watermelons.  I still had my blue ribbon and had made a dollar.  Life was good … until my parents heard of my deal.  They had wanted to eat the watermelons and make watermelon pickles from the rind.  To this day I can remember how disappointed they were.

 

   These 1947 pictures show me marching (far side middle row) with the Boy Scouts in a parade.  I enjoyed Scouting and eventually made star scout.

   One of the Scout projects I did was construct and fly a kite.  My mother went to the library and found plans for a tailless kite and helped me build it.  The painting of the Boy Scout emblem was the finishing touch.  I entered the kite in a contest and won the prize for the highest flying kite.  My friend in the picture on the right kept finding me more string.

 

   The prize was a wrist compass that you can see conspicuously displayed. 

   In 1947 I was determined to make enough money to buy a new bike.  I established a paper route delivering The New Haven Register after school.  I would work in Cooper’s Drug Store until the truck dropped off the papers for me.

 

These 1948 pictures were taken in our back yard.  I was very proud to finally make enough money to buy a new Columbia bike with a front and rear lights and a horn built into the crossbar tank.  The extra sturdy basket was already bent in this picture from carrying to many newspapers in it.  The white wall tires were the finishing touch.

 

    I am now 14 in this 1949 picture of me and my dad taken in front of our house.

 

          

   In 1949 I was experiencing a dramatic growth spurt as seen in these two pictures.  On the left you can see my suit is too tight.  It was time to get a new suit and of course take a picture of me in my new suit.

   Pictures seem to be staged at the front door of our home as shown on the left or in the back yard.  The picture on the right was taken in our backyard and shows a huge crab apple tree in the background.  The area under the tree had a hedge around it with a formal entrance.  There was a bench swing attached to the tree.  This was the place that my parents used for entertaining with picnics.

    I was now in Morgan School and set my goal of being 6 feet tall and sixteen years old.  I was the youngest in my class during all of high school so this meant I was dependent on my friends to take me places until I was old enough to drive.  I gave up my paper route and worked every day after school and full days on weekends.  I became a “soda jerk” and general sales person in Cooper’s Drug Store that became Clinton Pharmacy.  I enjoyed selling the merchandise and was putting money away for the day I could buy my own car.

 

   In this picture  my friend Tim Donahue and I ham it up with the boxing gloves.  In the upper right hand corner of this picture is the privy that we no longer used. 

   

   I finally made it.  I was sixteen and six feet tall.  I bought this 1935 Ford and finally had my own wheels.  Our barn had become an overhaul center for all my friend’s cars.  My mother would bring us snacks and drinks while we rebuilt engines and installed accessories.  The most important accessory was a radio so you could listen to music while you were parked with your date.  My friends and I overhauled my car motor and installed oversized piston rings so it would not burn so much oil.  I guess we used rings that were too oversized because the engine would not turn over just using the starter. We had to tow it around the block several times to get it started.  The engine finally turned over and started but we had burned out the clutch plate.  Back into the barn and we installed a new clutch plate and removed the muffler and install a straight pipe.  My mother reupholstered the seats and doors with denim and red and black leatherette.  My dad told me the only thing that would make me completely happy was to get a job driving a twenty four hour taxi.  I loved to drive my car and tinker with the engine as shown in this snapshot. 

    On August 21, 1951 an F2 - F3 tornado struck our home.  The huge crab apple tree is down in this picture.  About one third of our barn was torn off and we never found it.  The roof of our house sustained damage.  Window damage to the house resulted in water damage.

   The Wooster family visited us during the 1949 Christmas holidays.  Our Christmas trees were always cut from our own property.  I am in the back with my mother.  In the foreground left to right are Charlie, Antima & Uncapa with Elta in front of her mother. 

 

Photo of  our living room with the decorated tree.

 

In 1950 my dad was teaching me how to drive.  This picture was taken at the Essex Boat Dock in Essex, Connecticut.  Our Sunday drives to boatyards and waterfronts were always a fun time and I looked forward to getting my driving time in.  This was the year that my dad bought a new Oldsmobile “Rocket 88”.  What a great car that was.  I was dating now and never missed a Sock Hop or square dance.  High school activities included class vice president, student council, Sean Shifters, coral club etc.  All this plus working kept me very busy and out of trouble.

 

 

This 1951 snapshot shows the demise of my 1935 Ford.  Like many sixteen year olds I did not make the best decisions and wrecked my car while racing against another car down US 1.  I wanted to repair it but my parents would not let me so I sold it to the junk yard.  I kept my radio and the super long “buggy whip” antenna which I installed on my next car, a 1936 Ford.  My mother reupholstered this car too.  This picture was also taken in 1951.

   After the tornado the barn was repaired and now was considerably smaller.  1951 was to be my last year in Clinton, Connecticut.  My parents put our home up for sale and went house hunting in a warmer part of the country.  They wanted a smaller house with less upkeep because they knew I would be going off to college the next year.  Many years later I asked my mother why they had chosen Florida and she told me that my dad thought it would be a good idea to move somewhere closer to my blood relatives.  They looked at several places and decided on Ocala, Florida.  Ocala was the home of my father’s sister Victoria Bell Robbins. 

   The house sold quickly and we moved to a small rental house and waited for my school Christmas vacation to start.

   

   My parents gave me the option to move with them in December of 1951 or I could stay in Clinton with a family they had made arrangements with.  If I chose to stay in Clinton I would join them in June after graduating with my thirty six Morgan School classmates.  I chose to move in December and sold my car.  In January 1952 I enrolled in Ocala High School and graduated with that class in June 1952.

When Lizzie Stevens died in 1939 at age 88 in her High Street home there was only a box of old newspaper clippings to say she had once been the Gay Nineties queen of socialites-- millionaire Lizzie Pratt of New Haven, Clinton and Old Orchard Beach.

It's surprising a woman whose private driveway was Pratt Road and whose trade mark was white evening gown with diamonds has been overlooked in the archives of Clinton's history. But in a sign of the times, it was her reprobate son, Thomas Pratt, who received the recognition.

We still likely would not know about Lizzie's glamorous past if her box of momentoes hadn't ended up in the attic of her grand nephew, the late Tom Dressing, whose wife, June Dressing is the retired Judge of Probate with the professional training, patience and determination to be a researcher extraordinaire.

It was June's objective to produce for Tom's five children a history of their millionaire ancestor. In the process, she uncovered family intrigue that Tom could never have begun to imagine. The following is a capsule account of June's research findings.

In the 1890's there were 4,500 millionaires in the nation. LIzzie Pratt was one of them, and not soley through inheritance. She had a shrewd business sense, and in one transaction refused to sell her late husband's shares of stock for a pittance, instead forming an alliance with the other women stockholders,who agreed not to sell until she gave the okay. Lizzie's negotations drove the sale price up by five times, and for her own pocketbook netted a $500,000 profit.

Lizzie came to Clinton in 1893, when she was in her 30's, and the widowed mother of two grown sons. The family's roots were in St. Louis, Missouri, where at 18 years old she married Charles Russell Pratt, son of a weathly family whose money came from holding the Kansas City Gas Works franchise. At 21 years, Lizzie's two sons had been born, at 31 years old, she was a widow.

She moved to New Haven to enroll her sons in Hopkins Grammar School in preparation for admission to Yale University. Both, however, were not scholarly inclined, nor did they prove to have Lizzie's business acumen but in the social skills, they were experts like their mother.

The older son, Tom, spent three years in the junior class at Hopkins before dropping out. His passion was yatching, and hosting parties aboard his 100 foot yatch with its crew of nine.

His younger brother, Charles graduated from Hopkins and lasted one year at Yale. He celebrated his 21st birthday by inviting his friends to the Heublein Cafe for a stag dinner, which included 11 different wines and an 1820 brandy.

Lizzie's parties in her home were described in newspapers in terms of " most brilliant social affair of the season" and "the prettiest affair... ever witnessed." She imported the Philharmonic orchestra for music and New York chefs to prepare food, and presented guests with corsages and boutineers, and favors crafted of sterling silver and gold.

Bohemia

Lizzie built her first home on Pratt Road, calling it "Bohemia". When it burned, she rented Rose Meade Villa, later known as the Clinton Manor Inn, while the house was being rebuilt. When Tom married, she built a separate residence named "Harbor View." Both structures still stand.

Harbor View

In Clinton, Lizzie continued her elegant entertaining with whist parties, forums for educational speakers, and holiday celebrations, She once held a Christmas party for 112 local youngsters from 2 to 12 years, with Santa Claus presenting a gift to each child.

In the summer season, Lizzie and her sons travelled to Old Orchard Beach in Maine where they stayed at the Fiske Hotel and Lizzie earned the reputation of "the idolized social society leader of the Fiske." Her white gown with diamonds is invariably mentioned in newspaper coverage; one season she was recognized among the "5 wittiest women", and another, she won a bowling trophy. "Commodore" Tom, brought along his 100 foot yatch for parties and Charles earned the reputation as Fiske's star pitcher in an annual baseball contest.

When the Pratts were not hosting parties, they were in court---suing, being sued or suing each other.

During Lizzie's marriage to Charles Pratt, his paternity came under challenge when his deceased father was discovered to be a bigamist, having abandoned a wife and two children in England before moving to America. The court ruled both families to have legimate rights to the estate.

When Lizzie made her $500,000 profit from holding out for a higher stock price, she was sued by trustees for a share of the profits. They lost.

Charles' first wife sued Lizzie for alienation of affections.

Tom's first wife sued him for habitual intemperance and being in an inebriated state for the five previous years.

Lizzie sued Tom for the title to the land under her house. (He had accumulated 45 acres along Pratt Road through purchasing numerous parcels as they came up for sale.) He died before this transaction could be accomplished and Lizzie negotiated successfully with Tom's widow for 9 acres.

In a lawsuit that broke records for the length and detail of its testimony, Tom was sued by a George Audley for $5,000 in alleged unpaid back wages. Audley who lived under the Pratt roof claimed that Tom had promised him $100 a month, plus free room and board for a list of "A to Z" services that he cited as including " beer agent, coon hunter, flatterer, dancer, jester, kennel keeper, quarrel settler, umpire, yarn spinner."

Lizzie testified she thought he was a guest, and all she ever saw him do were a couple of errands, which they all did. The Court ruled Audley a freeloader.

While taking the stand and stating under oath that her name was Lizzie Pratt, it was revealed that Lizzie had married a second time to a Riverboat captain named Kennedy, whom she had never divorced.

Both Lizzie's sons had disappointing careers. Their shared investment into underwritng a Broadway show ended in a $60,000 loss, and a law suit. After working for a time in Ohio, Charles went to Peru on a mining expedition. Tom's ventures included raising poultry, and manufacturing witch hazel, soap and sea sickness pills. On the New York Show circuit, both fared better with Tom taking prizes for champion dogs and Charles cats. 

Both sons lived short lives. Charles developed an incurable illness and died in his mother's home in Clinton at 37 years old. Three years later, Tom died of a tumor in New Haven on New Year's Day.

At the Audley trial, Lizzie began a courtship with Deputy Sheriff George Stevens , which resulted in her divorcing her second husband to enter into a marriage with Stevens which lasted for 21 years until his death in 1924.

The couple lived in her Pratt Road house, taking winter vacations in Florida. They entertained often in a conventional style.

40 High Street

When Stevens' died, Lizzie built the house on High Street where her grand nephew Tom Dressing remembered visiting, in addition to the Pratt Road residence.

In the Gay Nineties, she came to Clinton as Lizzie Pratt, millionaire, social queen of New Haven and Old Orchard Beach. Forty-six years later she died as Lizzie Stevens, a member of the Clinton Grange and Priscilla Club, with a large circle of friends; and according to her obit, was characterized as "of charitable nature, her benevolences many and widespread." Her estate was valued at $6,200.

She is buried beside her sons in Indian River Cemetary.