The 19th Century

With the advance of the nineteenth century, the face of America changed, and the Eastern seaboard became industrialized and populous.

To meet the demand for better transportation, the Post Road underwent continuing change and improvement. Widened, graveled and finally paved, it stretched from Maine to Florida as U.S. Route 1.

Driving along the Main Street in Stamford today, you can still see the waterfall on Mill River, though it does not look quite as it did to the eyes of George Washington.

America is a nation of immigrants, and Stamford is America in microcosm. With roots in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the city of Stamford has been molded and modified by many cultural influences during the years from 1848 to the present time.

With the opening of the railroad in 1848, Stamford became accessible to outsiders. By 1850 the population had grown to 5,000 people, by 1880 it had reached 11,000.

The first wave of new residents were mainly from Ireland, and many found jobs in the mills; some worked as day laborers, gardeners, and coachmen. As would happen with later immigrant groups in similar circumstances, the Irish lived among themselves, mainly in an area near the railroad tracks called Dublin.

The new residents were often aggressive and spirited, but, as might be expected, such positive qualities were not always warmly welcomed.

Prejudice, along with fear that “papists” would have mixed loyalties, prompted antagonism. Men like Pat Hanrahan and Patrick Boyle arrived from Ireland in the mid 1840's, took whatever jobs there were, and set out to build a new life. These men made it in Stamford, but we can't assume that success in the melting pot was only a matter of time, toil and temperament.

Fear, loneliness and homesickness were often unbearable for many immigrants, and the pain of adjusting to the ways of the New World was common to all of them.

In the 1880's political and economic upheavals in Europe brought about a new wave of immigrants. A considerable number of Germans settled in Stamford and like their earlier Irish counterparts, they took whatever employment was available.

By the last decade of the nineteenth century, Stamford was rapidly becoming industrialized. It was the availability of cheap foreign born labor that enabled many local companies to prosper and expand. The Stamford Manufacturing Company, formerly the old Cove Mills, and the St. John Woodworking Company, later known as Getman and Judd, were dependable employers of immigrant labor.

The most influential local business firm of the era, the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company, employed nearly 1000 people by 1892, roughly six percent of the total population of Stamford.

Assimilation can seem a simple matter to those born into the dominant culture, but to the immigrant settlers, there were two distinct worlds, the place where one lived and the place where one worked, and each upheld separate standards of behavior.

Next Chapter: Here's how segregation of living worked in Stamford: Revonah Manor
Assimilation can seem a simple matter to those born into the dominant culture, but to the immigrant settlers, there were two distinct worlds, the place where one lived and the place where one worked, and each upheld separate standards of behavior.