Technology is powerful and there is always an element of danger. From the Evansville Daily Journal, Volume 2, Number 236, 16 February 1850 — Page 2  I learned about this explosion for the first time.

On Tuesday night week the people of Greenville, near Norwich, Conn., were roused from sleep by the shock of the explosions of two great steam boilers used to cleanse rags for a paper mill. The boilers were filled with gallons of water, and bleaching powders, so that the entire weight of each boiler was about eight tons. The steam was generated in boilers situated some seventy-five feet distant, and conducted to the rag boilers by an iron pipe, so that there was no fire under or about them. The cause of the explosion is therefore inscrutable. The watchmen of the adjacent mills saw the largest boiler flying over their heads like a balloon it rose to an immense height; and then descended to the earth with a concussion that shook the solid ground. The Norwich Courier says it was found a thousand feet distant, having been carried sheer over the high factory buildings, the canal, railroad, and telegraph line beyond the railroad, and set down much in the same position as that in which it stood before commencing its aerial voyage. A portion of the bottom had “dropped out,” but in other respects it looked nearly as good as new, except that the bottom end was badly crushed by the violent manner in which it was “brought up all standing.”

Today there would probably be a video and photos taken with hundreds of phones but in 1850 words were used to tell the story of what happened and so it is only in the readers mind that we see the boilers fly over buildings and the telegraph lines before landing with a solid thump. I wonder if the boilers were returned, repaired and put back in use or if new ones were purchased and put to use.

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Residents are all atwitter about a speech Abraham Lincoln once gave in Norwich, CT but no mention has been made of how Lincoln felt about his speech or how it was perceived by others. So I thought you might like this excerpt of How President Lincoln Became an Expert Reasoner. published in the Indiana State Sentinel, May 26, 1886, on page 3. My apologies that this excerpt is so lengthy but the entire article is  longer still.

Before Mr. Lincoln was a candidate for President, he made a tour through New England and lectured in many cities and towns. Among other places he spoke in Norwich, Ct. A gentleman who heard him, and was struck with his remark about logical power, rode the next day in the cars with Mr. Lincoln to New Haven. During the ride the following conversation took place:
“Mr. Lincoln. I was delighted with your lecture last evening.”
‘”Oh, thank you, but that was not much of a lecture, I can do better than that.”
“I have no doubt of it, Mr. Lincoln, for, whoever can do so well, must inevitably be
able to do better.”
“Well, well, you are a good reasoner, aren’t you? That is cute.”
“But that reminds me,” continued the gentleman, “to ask how you acquired your wonderful logical power. I have heard that you are entirely self-educated and it is seldom that I find a self-educated man who has a good system of logic in his reasoning. How did you acquire such an acute power of analysis?”
“Well, Mr. G., I will tell you. It was my terrible discouragement which did that for me.”
“Your discouragement what do you mean?”
“You see.” said Mr. Lincoln, that when I was about eighteen years of age I went into an office to study law. Well, after a little while I saw that a lawyer’s business was largely to prove things. And I said to myself, ‘Lincoln, when is a thing proved?’ That was a poser. I could not answer the question. What constitutes proof? Not evidence,  that was not the point. There may be evidence enough, but wherein consists the proof ?

“You remember the old story of the German, who was tried for some crime, and they brought half a dozen respectable men who swore that they saw the prisoner commit the crime. ‘Well,’ he replies, ‘vat of dot? Six
men swears dot dey saw me do it. I  brings more den two tozen goot men who schwears dey did not see me do it,’
“So, wherein is the proof I I groaned over the question, and, finally said to myself, ‘Ah, Lincoln, you can’t tell.’ Then I thought, ‘What use is it for me to be in a law office, if I can’t tell when a thing is proved?’
So I gave it up, and left the office and went back home, over in Kentucky.”
“So you gave up the law?”
“Oh, Mr. G., don’t jump at your conclusions. That isn’t logical. But, really, I did give up the law and I thought I should never go back to it. This was in the fall of the year. Soon after I returned to the old log cabin, I
fell to with a copy of Euclid. I had not the slightest notion what Euclid was, and I thought I would find out. I found out but it was no easy job. I looked into the book and found out it was all about lines, angles, surfaces and solids. But I could not understand it all. I therefore began, very deliberately, at the beginning. 1 learned the
definitions and axioms. I demonstrated the first proposition. I said, that is simple enough. I went on to the next and the next- And before spring I had gone through that old Euclid’s geometry and could demonstrate every proposition like a book.
“I knew it all from beginning to end. You could not stick me on the hardest of them. Then, in the spring, when I had got through with it, I said to myself, one dav, ‘Abe, Do you know when a thing is proved?”
And I answered right out loud, ‘Yes, sir I do.’ ‘Than you may go back to the law shop.’ And I went.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lincoln, for that story.
You have answered my question. I see now where you find your logical acumen, you dug it out of that geometry.”
“Yes, I did, often by the light of pitch pine knots. But I got it. Nothing but geometry will teach you the power of abstract reasoning. Only that will tell you when a thing is proved.”
Said Mr. G., I think this a remarkable incident. How few men would have thought to ask themselves the question.
When is a thing proved? What constitutes proof? And how few men of eighteen would have been able to master the whole of Euclid in a single winter, without a teacher. And still fewer, after they had done so much, would have realized and acknowledged what geometry had done for them; that it had told them what proof was.”

My only clue to the identity of Mr. G is the name of the article’s author was “the Congregationalist.”

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With so many new versions of old tales being told and made into movies I thought I would share some of the animal tales of Norwich, CT. From the Indianapolis journal, 30 December 1888 the following story illustrates how raucous mice love their tails:

In Norwich, Conn., the other night a young lady set a mouse trap in her parlor. The trap was like a diminutive railroad round-bouse, with arched doorways, and with a delicate little loop of steel under each  doorsill until a treat was eaten by mouse by the muzzle.

The steel nooses snapped busily shut during the night resulting in mice clinging in five of the inhospitable door ways, and, a bit of a mystery to her as well. Three long mouse tails were hanging from the three other entrances.

She puzzled her head long over the inscrutable problem. Why did three mice visit her trap at night and deliberately leave their tails behind them? But there was no answer to it. Tho a very bright idea, however, came into her mind, and she set her trap again. Verily, the three tailless mice came back to recover their tails, and in the gray dawn of the following day the young lady found three tailless mice dangling from the trap.

A horse in a small town near Norwich, Conn., is disposed to swallow anything that comes within its reach, and recently bolted a large ball of wrapping twine. The ball rolled in easily, but a knob at the end of the cord anchored itself windward between the animal’s front teeth, and the knob and the visible piece of twine served as a key to the situation. When the young  groomswoman visited the stable and inspected her steed. There was a somewhat troubled look on the horses face as he stood with feet braced, ears lopped, mouth open and in eyes was a mute appeal that bespoke a growing suspicion that probably the case was hopeless.  The young lady unloosed the knot, wound six inches of the cord around her hand and began to unravel the mystery. The horse kept his mouth open, looked wise, and seemed perfectly to understand what was going on; and out yard after yard, fathom by fathom, the animal compliantly stood, and on neither side of the manger was a comment uttered, except that now and then the grateful beast emitted a sigh, as he observed the external ball swelling in magnitude and felt the internal one steadily diminishing. Finally the last yard of the cord was removed out of the horse, wound up, and the ball was taken into the house, where the animal couldn’t get at it again.

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Soon Norwich residents will be encouraged to observe fish at the Occum Fish Ladder and to watch the stocking of the various rivers so that Norwich can then brag what a great place it is to fish. But once it was reported in the Marshall County Republican, Volume 12, Number 20, 26 March 1868 — Page 3 that “At a place on the river Thames, about two and a half miles below Norwich, Conn., a party of 7 men recently hauled in a net with 6,000 pounds of perch, and eighty-three large bass the whole making about three tons of fish, valued at $700.

But these stories also caught my eye and I could not help myself but to share them with you.

The Plymouth weekly Democrat, Volume 14, Number 45, 15 July 1869 — Page 4 reported – A submarine diver who has been operating in the Thames river, at Norwich, Conn, says there is a cave under the banks of considerable size, the hidden properties  and strange formations of which, could the water be drawn off so as to make it accessible, would form one of the wonders of the world. I wonder where he was.

According  to the Marshall County Republican, Volume 14, Number 2, 18 November 1869 — Page 1 There is a gold mine in Norwich Ct., on Wawecus Hill, which is worked by a company, which held its annual meeting on the 28th end elected officers. The mine yields gold, silver and nickel, and some rich ore has been taken out this year. Do the houses on Goldmine Road come with mineral rights? Do you have a memory of panning for gold in Goldmine Brook?

The Plymouth Democrat, Volume 15, Number 13, 2 December 1869 — Page 1 Tells the story of Emma Harding, who for a few years palmed herself off on the citizens of Norwich as the widow of a soldier, and sold them fictitious autographs of Washington and other celebrities, and has recently been committed to jail, and turns out to be a man.

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Norwich really did have some spectacular moments in its history. But moments are not forever and things do change but I hope these blasts from the past lighten your day as they were shared before video cameras, tweets, twitters, television and even radio.

From the Vevay Times and Switzerland County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 41, 17 September 1840 — Page 2 “Awful Hard Times.— The Hartford Times says, the manufacturing establishments at Norwich, in that State, employ two sets of hands, and keep their works in operation night and day.”

Per the Indiana State sentinel, Volume 11, Number 10, 7 August 1851 — Page 2 shoppers learned to “Look Out for Fresh Counterfeits. A spurious five dollar bill of the Thames Bank, Norwich, Connecticut, of which the vignette is a female reclining and pointing to a rainbow over a ship, has been put in circulation recently. No such bill has been issued by that Bank.”

Fashions were important and sometimes served more than one purpose according to the Evansville Daily Journal, Volume 9, Number 217, 9 April 1857 — Page 2. Virtue in Hoops. As the steamer Commonwealth came alongside the wharf at New London, Conn., on Friday night, on the passage from Norwich to New York, a lady walked overboard and would have been drowned but for the hoops, in her skirt, which rendered the same somewhat balloonish, and answered the purpose of a more common personal life-preserver. The  night was very dark, and it was nearly half an hour before she could be extricated from her perilous situation, during which time the hoops were sufficiently strong to buoy her up and prevent her from sinking.’ ‘It was important to be able to laugh at yourself as well as others and the precarious events that happened. The Plymouth weekly Democrat, Volume 9, Number 16, 19 November 1863 — Page 1printed “An awkward, bashful man, who was getting into a stage at Norwich, a few days ago pushed his foot through the hoop skirt of a lady passenger. In the course of trying to extricate himself,  only succeeded in putting his other foot  through the hoop  of another lady. Calling out in seeming despair, he shouted: “Hullo driver! I thought I was getting into a rig, but I find myself in a coopers shop.”

Norwich was in fact the place to go shopping from the Plymouth Democrat, Volume 15, Number 18, 6 January 1870 — Page 4 “An old lady bought a shroud  for her husband in Norwich, Conn, the other day, remarking that he was not dead yet, or particularly ailing, but she “didn’t think she would ever be able to buy it so cheap again.”

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