The Porter House

One of Waterbury's most underappreciated buildings is the Porter house on East Main Street, across from Hamilton Park. The history of the house, from its construction to its role as a station on the Underground Railroad, make it worthy of recognition and preservation as an important historic property.

The Porter House, April 2020

Construction

The first owner of the house was Timothy Porter, who operated a business manufacturing bricks in Waterbury during the 1830s and 1840s. Every building constructed of brick during this time period was said to have used Porter's bricks. (Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Volume III, p. 679-682)

Porter's brick business started in 1829, after he purchased swamp land lying along Carrington Brook, which runs through Bouley Manor to Hamilton Park (much of it is now underground). The swamp land included a large bed of clay, which Porter used to make his bricks. The clay supply ran out in 1849 or 1850.

In 1830, Porter built a house for himself and his family out of bricks he made from the local clay; that is the house still standing today on East Main Street across from Hamilton Park. The house was later enlarged with additions on the back.


Architectural Style

The house was built in the Greek Revival style. The entrance on the east side of the house features Doric columns.

Side porch with Doric style columns and half-columns

The dentils running below the cornice are designed as blocks with circles, similar to modern-day LEGOs. In 1830, they would have reminded the viewer of ancient Greek temples.

Dentils below the cornice

The bricks on the house have been painted over, and it looks like most, if not all, of the windows have been replaced. The front entrance has also been modified.

Front entrance

Porter, the House, and the Underground Railroad

Timothy Porter (1792-1864) was an abolitionist. In 1840, he joined the newly-formed Liberty Party, which was founded to help end slavery. Porter was said to have a "strong sense of justice," "warm sympathy for the oppressed," and "independence of mind and action." (Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Volume III, p. 679-682)

Porter was a vocal opponent of slavery at a time when, even in the north, openly fighting to end slavery could lead to being ostracized by people in power, to being seen as a public disgrace.

Porter was not concerned about impressing local officials or fitting in with polite society. He believed in the cause of abolishing slavery. For many years, Porter led the local branch of the Liberty Party, which had only a dozen members.

Porter often hosted anti-slavery lecturers at his home as they traveled the lecture circuit through Connecticut. According to Anderson's history of Waterbury, the house also "served on occasion as a station for the underground railroad."

Refugees fleeing from slavery traveled along the underground railroad until they reached Canada. There were several routes through Connecticut, and no guarantee of safety. Refugees often traveled at night with the assistance of "conductors," resting during the day in barns, basements, and other hiding places owned by "station masters."

Map from Horatio Strother, Underground Railroad in Connecticut, 1962

Pro-Slavery Forces in Waterbury

Although slavery was illegal in Connecticut, federal law still mandated that escaped slaves should be captured and returned to their owners. The federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 established severe penalties for anyone convicted of feeding or harboring fugitive slaves. Professional slave catchers hunted down fugitives to collect the rewards for their capture and return. Many people in Connecticut, including some in Waterbury, supported the right to own slaves in the south.

Rev. David Root, an abolitionist, came to Waterbury in 1841 to serve as minister of the First Congregational Church. The following year, he refused to let Rev. Abner J. Leavenworth preach at the church because Leavenworth was a slave owner.  A majority of the congregation, led by Green Kendrick, formally declared that Root's decision was unsound and incorrect.

Green Kendrick was a powerful businessman and a former North Carolina slave owner who moved to Waterbury in 1829. Kendrick constantly harassed Root for the minister's anti-slavery principles until Root finally gave up and left Waterbury in 1844, saying that he was worn out by his fight with "the world, the flesh, and Green Kendrick." (Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. III, p. 592)

Racists in Connecticut were not limited to supporting southern slavery; they also opposed civil rights in Connecticut. In 1847, Connecticut proposed amending the state constitution to allow non-white men to vote. The proposal was overwhelming voted down. In Waterbury, the vote was 57 in favor of expanding voting rights, and 171 against. (The Charter Oak, 4 November 1847, p. 3)


In 1852, abolitionist Parker Pillsbury visited Waterbury and reported that "the conservatism of the people [in Waterbury] is beyond the power of language to express.... any change in manners or morals is to them 'the sin that hath never forgiveness.'"

The first person Pillsbury spoke to upon arrival declared that in Waterbury "I don't believe there is one among them all who would not aid in the return of a fugitive slave." Pillsbury's conversations with others in town reinforced this belief, that fugitive slaves found in Waterbury would be imprisoned and returned to slavery. ("Letter from Parker Pillsbury," The Liberator, 26 March 1852)


The Columbian Register newspaper declared on December 10, 1859 that Waterbury was a "conservative, and patriotic town" whose people, for the most part, "are not the ones to advocate anti-slavery revivals, or the Harper's Ferry stamp, or to countenance traitors" in a brief article about an apparently disastrous visit to Waterbury by anti-slavery lecturer Joshua R. Giddings.

The chairman at Connecticut's Democratic State Convention held on February 12, 1862 gave a speech declaring that abolitionism was a form of fanaticism which had "buried the country in civil war." Green Kendrick also spoke at the convention and repeated the claim that abolitionists were dangerous fanatics who had ruined the country. (Connecticut Courant, 15 February 1862)



Waterbury Abolitionists

Although Waterbury was staunchly conservative and had some vocal supporters of slavery, there were also a number of dedicated abolitionists in addition to Timothy Porter. I have been able to identify only a few so far.


Samuel Southmayd DeForest (1811-1838)

A Waterbury-based branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized in July 1836 with sixteen members, growing to 57 members in less than a year (Fourth Annual Report of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837, p. 130). The chapter's secretary was Samuel S. DeForest, one of the founders of the Benedict & Burnham manufacturing company. Although active in Waterbury, DeForest lived in Watertown.



Elizur Warner Keeler (1808-1879) 

Elizur Keeler moved to Waterbury from New York in 1852 and became a deacon of the Second Congregational Church in 1855. Keeler was an abolitionist "in early manhood" (Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. II, p. 254).



Samuel Wheeler Upson (1798-1890)

Wheeler Upson was the Waterbury agent for The Charter Oak newspaper during the mid-1840s. The newspaper was dedicated to the abolition of slavery. Upson was also a temperance man, abstaining from alcohol throughout his adult life; at the age of seventy, he boasted that "not a drop of [hard] cider had passed his lips for sixty years." (The Upson Family in America, 1940, p. 178)



John Miles Stocking (1811-1873)

John M. Stocking raised his children on anti-slavery literature. Uncle Tom's Cabin was read aloud to the whole family every week while it was being published as a serial in 1851 and 1852. His son William would later write that John Stocking was "one of a small group of earnest anti-slavery workers" in Waterbury.

The family attended anti-slavery sermons preached by traveling lecturers and at churches in other towns. Stocking’s son William later wrote that abolitionists such as John M. Stocking “considered the whole slavery system an iniquity and the fugitive slave law especially as wrong in principle and harsh and cruel in its execution. If a man... knew of a fugitive concealed or running away he did not consider it his duty to inform the United States marshal of that fact, but would rather aid the runaway.” (William Stocking, "The New England Churches and the Fugitive Slave Law," Detroit Historical Monthly, March 1923, p. 8-9)

The Stocking family took pride in knowing that every male relative of military age, including John Stocking’s nephews, served in the Union army during the Civil War—one of Stocking’s sons, Gilbert Miles Stocking, died from disease during his service.

John Stocking assisted several fugitive slaves on their way to freedom in Canada, using his barn as a station on the Underground Railroad. The location of the barn is uncertain. Until 1853, Stocking lived on South Main Street, approximately where I-84 is today. Stocking built a new home for himself and his wife on State Street in 1853. The barn may have been on South Main Street, further from the center of town and further from notice than State Street.


Preserve Wood Carter (1798-1859)

P. W. Carter grew up on a farm in Wolcott before moving to Waterbury. He was a deacon in the First Church and worked for Brown & Elton and the American Pin Company. A long-time "anti-slavery man", Carter subscribed to the abolitionist newspaper The National Era and gathered his family together to read and discuss Uncle Tom's Cabin as each installment was published in the Era. (Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. 2, p. 330-331)