Samuel Colt (1814-1862)

 

What makes Sam Colt so fascinating is his perplexing character. Both saint and sinner - Colt was an aggressive dynamo who swept Hartford off its feet and altered its character and purpose like no individual before or since. He was Hartford's greatest champions and one of its greatest critics - whose visionary bequest to found America’s first technical college - was revoked in an act of anger and frustration with City government. That said, Colt had champions of his own in government and business. In 1855 Mayor Henry Deming wrote that Sam Colt “has dared to execute what no man but himself, dared conceive . . . enterprise of this magnitude carried through by one man is without parallel in this country.” Another described Colt as “a patent pistol - always loaded and ready for action.” His enterprise “converts labor into pistols, pistols into dollars, dollars into dykes and dykes into benefits both local and general.” 1854 was the year Colt announced his plan for a “new city” - the South Meadows section of Hartford known as Coltsville. That year he also addressed House of Commons in England on the superiority of the American system of manufacturing; Prince Albert visited his London factory that year and he hosted fireworks on the grounds of his new South Meadows development for 20,000. The city’s Democratic newspaper wrote that “one such man in a community is worth 1000 drones who hoard their money, invest it abroad and vote against everything like an improvement, calculated to push the city ahead.” In a life filled with accomplishment, Sam Colt was most proud of the factory village now known as Coltsville, a city within the city that exhibited the utopian hallmarks of its age. Coltsville, or the “South Meadows Improvements,” as he described it, was prolifically idealistic, almost delusional in its aspirations and highly refined and symbolic in its execution - with institutions and amenities that paid homage to the past by blending the old and new and the agrarian with industrial. Coltsville was also a relatively successful and boldly innovative attempt at what would become 20th century America=s greatest challenge - the triumph of American values over race, religion and ethnicity. Although the exact demographics of Colt=s work force has never been fully studied, we know that Catholics, Protestants and at least some Jews - worked side by side and that African-Americans and women were also employed there at a time when racial prejudice was rampant. For many, Coltsville was a first port of entry for their life here in America and it changed the face of Hartford more surely than any business or enterprise up to that time. In 1856, Colt built a hundred foot long 4 story brick community center at the north end of Coltsville which he named Charter Oak Hall. It was “devoted to purposes of moral, intellectual, and artistic culture” founded to “marry the forge and workshop to the Reading Room and Dancing Hall.” Colt lined the streets of his factory village with American elms, opened for quasi public an architect designed Park adjacent to his Armsmear estate, he created a Potsdam Village for the German workman and a neighborhood school, church, marching band, community gardens and riverside promenade complete with a Dutch windmill.Despite a reputation for selling arms to opposing sides in various wars, Sam Colt was a moralist who invested tremendous amounts of money and effort to prevent the War between the States that made him rich. I believe that in the end the nervous breakdown that foreshadowed his death at the age of 48, was, in part, the result of stress related to the failure of this cause. Coltsville was, by most measures, a resounding achievement that put Hartford on the map internationally and did more to stimulate economic development than anything since the rise of the insurance industry. In 1854, Sam Colt was the poster child of the industrial age and its most famous ambassador throughout Europe. Born and buried in Hartford - he lived in and loved the city of his ancestors and was driven to proof his worth in the world and to carry the reputation of his city to the ends of the earth. As we will see, his wife redefined leadership in a way that was every bit as profound and in many particulars, more lasting, Elizabeth Hart Colt (1826-1905)Elizabeth Colt=s unlikely emergence as a public figure and civic leader was partially the result of her husband=s premature death, when she was just 35 years old. Although women like Catherine Beecher and Lydia Sigourney had already blazed trails in writing and education - Elizabeth Colt found herself in a unique situation for which she was prepared by family circumstances involving wealth, adversity and unusual responsibilities at a young age. By all appearances the Colts had a remarkable relationship. Shunned and abandoned by members of his own biological family, Sam Colt embraced his wife’s parents and siblings and made unusual provisions in his will that left Elizabeth in complete control of the estate and Colt Manufacturing Company which she guided through her brother Richard and trusted aids, for 40 years. For years she was Hartford=s largest taxpayer and one of the Queens of Newport Society. But what=s most important - is she discovered a quality of leadership that involved an unusual capacity for fostering unity and cooperation among dissenting factions. Elizabeth Colt was a devout Christian who peppered her speech with scriptural citations and, had she been born male, would almost certainly have followed her father and family into the ministry. She was a peacemaker and champion of widows and the poor whose philanthropic gifts and acts have never been matched or surpassed in the history of a city famous for philanthropists with names like Wadsworth, Morgan, Avery, Watkinson, Helen & Harry Gray. Her obituary ran on page one of the Hartford Courant where it was noted that “What she has done for this community is incalculable . . . She was the First Woman of Connecticut whose every business undertaking was controlled by loyalty to the memory of her husband and children.” One of my favorite Elizabeth Colt stories involves her convening the heads of all the city=s charities and inducing them to adopt a coordinated system of almsgiving and charity. In October 1878, 50 ladies & gentlemen met at Armsmear to strategize about alms giving, prevent fraud and systematize charity by, among other things, requiring labor of those given assistance. She sought to unite all existing charities into one and “to move them by pulpit, press & by public meetings” to influence all classes and creeds to become members. In attendance was the Mayor, chief of police, judges, selectmen, catholic and protestant ministers, professors, heads of the Missionary Society, the YMCA, the Women=s Temperance Society, and more. She was the founding President of the Soldier’s Aid Society during the Civil War, The Union for Home Work- a pioneering social service agency, the Hartford Arts Society which played a major role in saving and transforming Wadsworth Atheneum into the museum of art we know today, and the Connecticut Society of Colonial Dames. She also saved thousands of jobs when she chose to rebuilt and carry on after the Colt=s Armory building was destroyed by arsonists in 1864. Her patronage of art and architecture literally reshaped the city creating some of its most enduring monuments and an art collection that is one of the keystones of the Wadsworth Atheneum. All of this she did with a remarkable quality of executive leadership and force of vision built on a foundation of faith and gratitude. In the end she left Hartford a city Park, a church, a community center, a retirement home, a social service agency and an art museum - all still functioning 100 years after her death.