Harrison family and Lake Gaillard

About 1923 The New Haven Water Company attempted to buy up land in the valley using employees pretending to purchase the land for their own use. It eventually became common knowledge that the Water Company was behind this effort. It wasn’t long before farmers and residents realized that The Water Company was beginning an effort to take properties by eminent domain and if they did not cooperate soon they might be forced to accept a proposal less favorable than what was currently being offered.

It seems that most individuals accepted the Water Company’s offer but others protested and took the Water Company to court. John and Royal Harrison took part in that lawsuit They lost!
Members of The Harrison family owned more than 600 acres in the valley..
Below is a copy of an 1983 interview with Clifford Harrison and his wife Lucy concerning this affair. Clifford is the son of Albert Harrison who lost his land and the father of Dudley Harrison who some of us knew fairly well. Clifford and Dudley lived at 95 North Street on land acquired from the Water Company after the court case.

Interview with Clifford Harrison

Conducted by John Oscherwitz

Research Assistant
South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority
August 18, 1983

Transcribed
By
Theodore Groom, Ph. D.
Totoket Historical, Society
January, 2020

Question.   Tell me when you were born and about the house you were born in?

December 8, 1907, the house was about 2 miles from here and when the lake is full, they tell me we would have been under 30 feet of water where the hole is stood. When they took our place, they really took it for the land under the lake. We had about 300 acres of our own and uncle and father owned another 300.

Question.  What was your father’s name?

Albert. I’ve got a picture of my mother and father. These are all the ones that were up there. This is my father and mother. This is my uncle Roy Harrison. They live just below where we lived. This is my grandmother. This is Louis Harrison. They lived in North Guilford. This is John Harrison. You know where the ice house is? That was his place. And uncle Ernie, they lived in New Haven.

Question. Was your whole family in the lumber business?

John and Roy were both in the lumber business. Ours was more wood and farm products. We had a few cows. We didn't make milk. We fatted calves. Those days that was about the only thing you could do.

Question.  You said that you had 300 acres. How much was forested and how much was cleared?

Quite a bit was cleared when the water company took over the they put in pines and spruce on the upland. I don't know what the acreage was because we didn't separate any of it from one to the other. Quite a bit was in what they call the basin.

Question.  Do you remember what kinds of trees we’re up there?

There was oak, hickory, beech and birch, maples. On one section we had a beautiful maple grove. It wasn't too much at that time - the trees were small, not of the sugar taking size.

Lucy:  you made quite a bit of syrup.

Clifford:  We did from the upland. Other than this piece I talk of, this piece is down in the basin, the trees we had were on the upland. We had big maples there.

My brother had a house and my brother-in-law. And then there was ours and uncle Roy’s and uncle John’s.  When we left up there, there was a couple of Polish families in between.

Both sides were cleared. Between places we had a big mow lot it was all mixed up. There were no particular lines or anything.  A lot of the land was down below the watermark.

Question. I understand the Harrison’s have been in the area for quite a long time. Did your grandfather live on the property?

My father was born down at John Harrison’s place. They live there, as far as I know, they always live there. That was beyond any time, but that was about the way things went.

Clifford: what was the year that we had the twister?

Lucy: the summer of 1920, I think.

Clifford: we were right smack in the middle of the twister.

Question.  A hurricane?

No, a tornado. At that time they called it a twister and it really twisted. You never saw such a mess in in your life. It took trees like this if it didn’t uproot them, it wound the limbs right around. Up on Griswold's place there was a whole roll of them, I've forgotten how many but out of the whole business, there was one tree left and it had just the top of it. The wind ripped the limbs right off. It took the top right out of one of the trees in front of the house and the rest of them it didn't touch. And a couple hundred feet the other way, it took one of the biggest trees that was up there and just twisted the limbs right off it. It really killed it.

Question.  Did you have to cut down the trees after?

Oh yes, we had to chop down a lot of them. That kind of put a crimp in the maple business too. People tell about it today, but I think we have seen some of the sort storm.

Question.  After the storm the water company began buying a property in the area do you remember when the water company came in?

That was in the early 20s.

Lucy: you moved down to here in ‘25 or ’26.

Clifford:  the dam was started. When we came down, I know Mr. Minor, he was the president at that time, was out there one morning and we asked him something about when we would have to get out "Well," he says, “When you see the water coming up, I think you will want to get out.” I guess he was right. When they took everything, we had no choice, but we came down. The water company bought this place and then we bought the place back from them. They kept a portion of it up there. That is about the way the thing wound up.

Question.  Your family was one of the last to sell. Why do you think what some of the other people sold much earlier?

Some of them did. There was property owned by some Rose. They owned a great big area down in the middle and they bought that. Some of that was up at Beach Corner by the Beech Corner school. They owned that in there. And then the Cowles, they were just above the dam, they sold out. I was told that after the company had gotten a certain amount that they could go ahead and come down and take the land anyway. The Rose place was really the biggest property that they needed. Then there was Gilbert up here and then over to the other side, it was Sheppy and Aronson.

Lucy:  it was Fred and John that held out.

Clifford:  The Harrison Barker place, that was over on the other side. That was another big one in the basin. There was a few of them that took it to court, but we didn't. I have always gotten along with the water company ever since.

Question.  Did most of those people think that the water company was giving them a fair price?

For those days. Now it wouldn’t have been a drop in the bucket. I have always said I wished they had gone somewhere else and built the lake.

Question. You were telling me before about your own plans for the area. What had you hoped to do with that land?

The maple trees. I had a little flock of sheep and as I say, we kept a few cows and had a few chickens. When you live on a farm you figure you might stay there at least. So, those were some of the projects that I had in mind.

Question. When your family moved to this house, did they keep up with the timber business and farming.

Oh yes, my dad was selectmen for 11 years. Those days he worked the road with four horses and a road grader. I got stuck finally running the road grader and later on we had a tractor with a grader on it. I used to go all over town, up through Northford and the whole business for a number of years. Time would get away. By the time we got that done and the work we had to do, it was a full-time job. Of course, in those days nobody would want to work for the price that you would get on the road. The road job was something that you put somebody on that was out of work or poor. My dad never refused anybody a job. There was always wood to cut. Those days people would come along and he would say you could work for so much or you can cut wood.

Question. What was your job?

I worked for my dad all the time. Up until I was married, I had $21 and my board. I had chores to do both ends of the day on top of that.

Question.  Since the Harrison’s lived in the area for such a long time, was there a family cemetery on your property or was everyone buried in the town cemetery?

Down in the town cemetery.

Question.  Were most local people buried there?

I don't think there was any private ones this way at all as far as I know. My folks are up at Bare Plain.

Question Did you know Alden Hill and Clifford Morton?

Oh yes.

Question. At what point do you remember meeting them?

Alden hill? He and Clifford Morton did some of the buying up of land for the water company. Alden Hill had quite a bit to do with the land purchase at one time or another. I don't know how much really. At that time my dad was selectmen and then Alden Hill got it.

Question Did you know most of the people in the area?

Oh yes.

Question. Did people know he was working for the water company when he bought their property?

I don't know. They worked back-and-forth. I know they were together quite a bit.

Question.  Did you see much of the construction of the dam and the tunnels?

We used to look at it once in a while. I never had anything to do with it. It got so that we couldn't even go up there, they dug so deep. They went down some with that. A lot of people say, “Aren't you afraid of living under that?" And I said "no, I don't think so.?” Nothing short of earthquake could knock that thing out. It was pretty well built.

Question. I heard that the laborers who were working on the construction site lived up there. Do you remember them at all?

Yes, they had what they called commissary up there. They had quite a lot of men working there all told. I knew they had some living in uncle John’s house before that was torn down. They stayed there. I've forgotten just how long a time it was building this. It was quite a while.

Question. Did they live in houses that the water company purchased or did the water company build shacks for the men?

Lucy: They had barracks up there, didn’t they?

Clifford: they called it commissary at the time. It was just up here.

Lucy: They used to come down and get eggs and milk.

Clifford: That was after they took over. I mean we was out. We had come down here at that time.

Question. Did you try to keep a close eye on what was going on to see what happened to your old property?

We tried to. After they had bought everything up, then they started cleaning up. They used to send out to New Haven the regular crew and they would go through and cut all the trees down and trim them out. We had the wood. They had no use for it. That was in the agreement that we had the wood. They went ahead and cut it and burned the brush and cleaned it all out.

Question. What did they do with the tree stumps?

A certain amount on the high watermark they took out. They had a regular crew come up here with tractors fixed just so they could throw a line on this stump and over there and pull them right out. The great big ones they blasted. I’ll always remember when I was up there one time and they were blasting quite a ways away, but I could see the guy going out and he began to look around and I thought it he was going to fire. It seemed that he had gone just a few steps and all of a sudden boom! The whole thing went up. I thought I guess they know what they are doing, I hope so.

Question. It sounds like it was quite a big job to get that place cleaned up.

Oh yes. That was a big project. I suppose the stumps under there where the water doesn’t go off, I suppose they don’t do any hurt anyway.

Question. What happened to most of the houses that the water company bought?

The Rose house, that was an old big saltbox and that was on the crossroad between this road and great Hill Street. I was told that they took that down and at the time they said they were going to ship it off to Texas. Whether they ever did or not I don't know. I know they took it down and shipped it somewhere piece for piece. The rest of them they knocked the roof and touch a match to them. I'll always remember we were working on the road that across the valley here at the Harrison Barker Place. As we went up through we had four horses on the grader we went by the barn and some of the men were burning brush right out in front of it I told my dad, I said “ boy, if they keep burning there, that whole place is going to go up.” I don’t believe we went any distance at all and we heard somebody hollering. We turned around and there was a cloud of smoke. That building was a big place that covered a lot of shed, nothing but a tarpaper roof. That thing went up in a hurry. We went back, but there was nothing we could do. They didn't care anyway. They were going to have to get rid of it. The house went too. That was before we had any fire equipment. They had come up from Branford. I don't know how they got the call down there. One of the men said there was money in that house, so off they went. They went over there and it wasn't very long before the blaze came out of the roof. The chief went over and called them off.

Question.  I heard that one house was moved across the lake.

That house was my brother’s. They moved that on the ice as I take it. It is over here on Sea Hill Road. I think it is the second house from Beach Corner School. It was a brown shingled house. It was not a very big house. It was a good building.

Question. Did you go to the Beech Corner School?

What little I went. One room and 8 grades. There were about 20 or 30 students. Most of them were just down the street. That is as far as I got was Beech Corner.

Question. I was told that there was a road that went from Beach Corner School over to Northford, does that sound possible?

There was two crossroads between here and Great Hill Street. There was one just under the dam up here. There was one where the Rose House stood. That was halfway between, I guess, right in the lake area. That went from not too far this side of Beech Corner School. The road came down from Beech Corner School and then come in by John's and down the hill to Gilbert’s. And that was where it would have cross. From Beach Corner straight across, well you could walk across or cut cross lots but there was no real road.

Question. Was the rest of North Branford farmland at that time?

Quite a bit. Most of the places that they bought all around the lake were. Some were in the lake and some were on the other side. They couldn't say you are on high ground you can stay. It was a clean sweep right around. Nobody had any choice. When they sold, they sold.

Question. Did most of the people stay in North Branford?

Uncle John went to Bantam. Uncle Roy went to Branford. My brother built a house here. My brother-in-law built the white house over here. We sort of stayed together. Another brother was over in Foxon, East Haven, all around.

Question. Was everyone doing pretty much the same things that they had been doing in North Branford before they moved?

My oldest brother was in the Carpenter business. He had his own business there. My brother that came down here, he was a mechanic. He had run a garage there for a while. Another one drove trucks for John and then got a job in Middletown at Wesleyan.

Question. You were telling me about the twister of 1920. What sort of damage did it to do homes and crops?

It was what they call a bounding twister. It would take a swipe here and then it might not touch anything. It was about a quarter of a mile wide. At our house we had two big elm trees on either corner where the house stood. We had locust trees down between those trees and in back of the house there was a big ash. That went down the other way. The House didn’t receive too much damage. The ell part was almost taken off and knocked the kitchen chimney down and it separated one side from the house. That is how close it was to going. It took a big barn door off.

Our corn was like a road rover had been over it. Just flattened it right out, acres of it. At that time, we had rail fences. It even picked them up and scattered of them through the lot. There was hickory tree out in the open lot, it took that about 15 feet up and twisted it right off and put it down just like you would twist a rag. The next one didn’t give up that way so what uprooted it.

Question. Did you plant a lot of trees after this happened?

No, because where these went out it was either in pasture year or mow lots. It's a good thing we didn't, because when the water company took it, they didn't want trees anyway.

Question. When you cut down trees, did you actually replace them, or did you make more clear area?

Made a little more cleared area, that’s all.

Question. I guess the water company has been putting new trees in that areas.

They put in a lot of trees it did not seem possible that when they took the land there, there were lots that were plowed and grew crops on. Two or three years ago when the red pine beetle got in there, they cut all the red pines. They had trees that big. I just couldn’t believe that they would grow in that length of time.

Question. Has there always been a lot of red pines?

Not too much. Quite a lot of Hemlock in certain areas. But pine and spruce and fir, there weren’t any.

Question.  The water company has been planting a lot of trees that are different from those in the area.

Yes.

Question.  Does it make it look different?

When you look at this side and see the water and up here and see the trees. Quite a difference from the way it used to look. They cut new roads through.

Question.  Did they have to build new roads to construct the reservoir?

When they started, they put a siding from the Trap Rock down to where the lake is. They figured on getting their sand up there for the dam. Something happened. They had to go over to Totoket to get the sand. That was all trucked in.

Question. What sort of crops were people raising in the area?

Gilberts had hogs and cows and they raised raspberries. Colseys, they had a small milk business. The ones that were living in the Rose House, they had a small milk business. It was small farms.

Question.  Where did people sell their goods?

They sold it in Branford or New Haven dairies. They have dairies at that time to take milk. Some of them peddled out a little bit themselves. The Colseys, when, they were here, they had cows and then they bought a farm on 77 in Guilford. One of the grandsons lives out here on 127. He works for the telephone company.

Question. Did you sell your corn to New Haven and Branford?

Most of our corn we took to the mill to have a ground up for feed for cows and horses as time went on things changed. Here at one time we had about 50 herd of cattle. We bought a place on 139 and my brother and I went into the carpenter business and built houses. When he retired, I went to work for a contractor down in Branford.

Question.  There aren't too many farms around here now. When did that all change?

My uncle Frank Snow, he had a dairy farm and he had a big apple and peach business. Everybody just kept up with the times. Most of the older people are all gone.

Question.   When did your family stop raising cattle?

Twenty, twenty-five years ago. Things kept changing.

Question.  Did you see your uncles much once they moved out?

We used to have reunions every year until about five years ago. All the uncles and wives are gone.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Royal Harrison Anna Rose Harrison Nathan Irving Harrison John Rose Harrison lewis Strickland Harrison
Ida Gaylord Harrison Anna Jackson Harrison
Albert Eugene Harrison Emma Isabelle Rose Harrison Anna Louise Strickland Harrison Laura Rossiter Harrison

Grandma Harrison (Anna Louise Strickland Harrison) and Family
Date unknown, probably in the 1920s

This house was moved down the lake on sledges during the winter ice and placed on Beech Street.

Nathan Harrison house 2012

Original Foundation of the Nathan Harrison House Under Lake Gaillard.
Taken during low water

Albert Harrison House prior to its destruction

Albert Harrison farm prior to its destruction

Albert Harrison Farm

Probably Albert Harrison house during deconstruction

John Harrison house prior to destruction

John Harrison Barns

Royal N. Harrison Harrison's Mill on Roses Brook

Roses Brook entering Lake Gaillard

Beech Corner School 1898

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There is another interview which sheds some light on problems in the construction of The Lake Gaillard Dam

Interviews with Roger Brown
Conducted by Jan Oscherwitz
Research Assistant
South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority
July 1983

Transcribed
By
Theodore Groom. Ph. D.
Totoket Historical Society
January, 2022

Part 1
Question. Tell me about how you first got involved in the New Haven Water Company.

I graduated from Yale in 1922. I had a job up in Worcester, Mass. working for a steel company, but I really didn't care for that work too much. But I stayed up there nearly a year. I took a few days off and was going down to New York to see about getting a job in the tunnels. I stopped off in New Haven and at that time, the Civil Engineering in Department had a list of jobs open. So, I stopped in and saw that. They said why don't you go down and see A. B. Hill, he's looking for men. And I did and I started to work for him in 1923 in May. I was there and with their successive companies all the rest of my working career. I can't give you the exact dates, but Mr. A. B. Hill was the engineer all that time. He was a very prominent engineer in the waterworks field, he worked for many of the larger outfits like New Haven, Bridgeport, and Stanford and many of the smaller ones in the state.

Question. Had Hill been involved in the water works for a long time when you joined him?

You asked me how Hill’s office came to be in the water company building, I really don't know except that at one time Mr. Hill was city engineer of New Haven and when he gave up that job, I guess he set up as a consulting engineer. I think that was the time he got into the water company building which was then being built. They were there from then on. I can't tell you the exact date we left the water company building. In 1923, when I went there, Mr. Hill was an old man. Mr. Clarence Blair was really running the office. They were hiring men to start doing the survey of the North Branford project.

Question. Had they done much surveying of the North Branford area before 1923?

They had done some preliminary work out there, but the detailed survey didn’t start until the following winter 1923, 1924.

Question. When you were out at North Branford what were you doing?

When we started there, we were running a survey around the roads to get a base on which to build a map. We ran a large loop around northerly from North Madison and easterly to approximately where the tunnel was going to be. At the same time, the water company was acquiring property and we made surveys of the land.

Question. Can you describe what the area was like when you first got there?

It was hilly it's just about the same today except for the lakes. Lake Galliard is the largest one. The office was doing some other work in addition. We were running those surveys out there and in the meantime, we're getting the plans ready for the North Branford dam. We started construction on the dam in 1926, I think.

Question. Was Hill’s office looking at other sites for the water company at that time?

They were concentrating on the North Branford project.

Question. Why was North Branford and ideal site for a reservoir?

The shape of it was a natural basin and it was by far the largest in the area that was available. It had looked like an ideal place to put a damn. It didn't turn out to be as ideal as expected, because the rock was not good and hard. It was a shaley rock and then we had to go down quite a bit deeper than they anticipated to get a good foundation.

Question. So the reservoir was actually bigger than they had planned?

No, the dam was bigger and more expensive. We still kept the flow line and covered the same amount of territory. The foundations of the dam had to go down deeper into the rock.

Question. What were the houses and the roads like in the area?

There were farms there. There were rural roads. I know some of them were pretty rough.

Question. Was it pretty isolated?

No, I don’t think it was isolated. The village of North Branford was quite the lively little village at that time. There was a good road from New Haven out to North Branford. The dam is only about a half mile upstream from the center of North Branford. That was a country road and there were roads that made a loop all the way around the valley. There were several farms with people living there.

Question. Were these people living on land the water company had already purchased?

Some of them, some of them resisted to some extent. As I remember there was only one owner that really went to court about it. I guess he went to court about the amount they were going to pay him. He owned a lot of land there. He wasn't a farmer he was a lumber man, but they lived there. They owned a lot of properties there. There were two of those. There was another place in there that also belong to a lumbering person. This place was a Harrison place. That now is a little underwater. The Harrison's resisted the takeover. Of course, the Water Company had borrowed the domain, or whatever they called it. It was a matter of setting the price. There were several other places. The Rose place was right in the bottom of the reservoir. I don't know who it belonged to at the time, but there was a family that lived there who were doing farming.

Question. Could you tell me about the selectmen Hill (Alden Hill) who bought a lot of property?

He was a lumber man and he lived in North Branford. He worked for the water company, it wasn't a secret, it was common knowledge I guess. He was dealing for the water company. He knew the people. It was natural for him to be buying property if it had lumber on it and he did a lot of acquiring property.

Question. What about Clifford Morton? He was also buying property.

I didn’t know him. I knew Alden Hill very well. Later on, all the men out on the job that were working for the water company were really working for Hill. He was just passing on the cost to the water company.

Question. If everyone knew the water company was buying property in the area, why did Hill buy the property in his name rather than the water company’s?

I don’t know that he actually bought it in his name. I'm sure he did some. At that time, I think, maybe I'm not certain about this, everybody knew the water company was going to build this reservoir in North Branford, but they were also acquiring property over in North Guilford and North Madison for the future extension of that, which wasn't as common knowledge. They had, I don't know what the legal set up was, there was a Genesee Fish and Game Company buying land out in what is now the Hammonasset reservoir. Even when we were surveying out there in the North Madison area, the car we went out in was registered under the Genesee Fish and Game. I guess most of the natives all out there knew what that was all about.

Question. So, the plans for the Hammonasset were made up at the same time as the Lake Gaillard plans?

All except the actual construction plans, because that was done later. But the dam, the Menunkatuc dam, in North Branford (North Guilford), when that was built that was at the east end of the tunnel. That had to be built so that the tunnel extending farther east in the future could come in and connect.

Question. Why do you think the North Branford project was conceived of on such a large scale? Was there a definite sign of need at that time?

The area was growing and they needed a large supply because they were on the verge of not having enough to take care of them in dry years. If you look back in the reports, the yearly consumption was going up all the time. The other supplies weren't able to take care of it.

Question. Between the time North Branford was started and when it was completed was is there a threat of lack of water?

I can’t really answer that. You could probably get more about that from Minor’s reports. I don't remember that they had any serious shortage.

Question. Who was working at the North Branford development in terms of laborers? I had heard that there were a lot of immigrants.

That type of running construction jobs was quite prevalent at the time. I think that the North Branford was one of the last ones. There was an outfit in New Haven that made a specialty of it. Their business was importing laborers and then bringing them over here and sort of taking care of them and letting them out. They did a lot of work for Blakeslee who at that time was a very large contractor in the whole eastern area. In North Branford they had something like 100 or more men, I don't know what the actual number was. They lived out there in a camp. I don't know about the pay, but these contractors, labor contractors, took care of the men, fed them and kept the Blakeslee company supplied with the labor.

Question. Did they work all year round?

Yes and no. It’s sort of slowed down in the wintertime, because a certain amount of that work you couldn’t do in the winter.
There were several interesting aspects to that job. There is a picture somewhere of that big labor camp, I guess it was in some of Mr. Blair’s books I had here that showed the camp where the men and ate and slept. The other thing about that particular job was it was just about the last job where most of the hauling was done by horses. It wasn't until towards the end of the job that they had many trucks. Of course, they had steam shovels.

Question. How did they make provisions to guarantee the watershed wouldn’t be damaged?
The men lived just below the dam site. There was a big camp there, rather rough buildings where the men ate and slept and the contractors office. They had a resident doctor out there who was working for Travelers Insurance. It was quite a little town in those days.
Question. How was security maintained?

We had a bunch of State Police, but they were being maintained by the water company.

Question. Were they on horses?

They were on horseback. I forget if they had a car also or not. I remember they had horses. I've forgotten how many were there, four or five, maybe. They had their headquarters down there at the dam. At the time, we were building the dam the construction activities were pretty much localized.

Question. How many hours a day where the laborers working on the dam?

Quite often it ran over time because when they got pouring concrete on a big section of the dam, they continued until that particular pour was done.

Question. Was there work going on pretty much all day?

It was a busy place. There were actually two dams there. One was a little shallow wall and then the main dam. It was an interesting job because the Blakeslee outfit at that time owned the quarry. There was a huge quarry in operation and Blakeslee had a railroad line, narrow gauge railroad that ran from the quarry to the village of North Branford and down to a place on the shore, an orchard where they could load their trap rock on the barges and ship it by water. So, when Blakeslee had a contract for building the dam, they extended the branch line from the railroad up to the dam. All the crushed stone. cement and the explosives and all that stuff came in by rail. The beginning of the dam we were taking sand which was required for the concrete out of the basin and had a railroad spur going down there so that they pulled in the sand, the sand got so we couldn't use it, it was getting bad and getting dirty and they abandoned that. That was when they got the first fleet of trucks on the job to bring in from outside sand pits.

Question. Did they have to build new roads for the trucks?

No, the roads were already built.

Question. What were you doing after you finished the initial surveying?

When they started building the dam, I was the engineer on the job, aligning grade, some inspection. The water company had an inspector who was on the job all the time. And then Mr. Blair, who was my boss from A. B. Hills Office, wasn’t there all the time, but I was out there every day with a man, sometimes two men, giving them the line and grade and seeing it was built according to the plans.

Question. What was the relationship between the chief engineer of the water company and the engineers of Hill’s office?

Mr. Minor, he was a graduate of Hill’s office. He had started working there before he went to work for the water company. He used to come out regularly but not every day. Mr. Blair was there most every day. Mr. Minor came out twice a week. He had to deal through Blair, who was the engineer in charge.

Question. Did you know Mr. Minor? People at the water company consider him the man who really got the North Branford project going.

I’m sure he was instrumental. I think Mr. Hill, I don't know, of course, that was all before my time, but Mr. Hill did a lot of the thinking work and planning work, but Mr. Minor was very much on the job at that time. He kept pretty close tabs on what we were doing there. Of course, we were actually Mr. Hill's gang, we were working for the water company and Mr. Minor. He really had charge of the job, but he relied on us to do the daily work.

Question. Did Mr. Gaillard go out there at all?

I won’t say he didn’t go out there at all. He went out on formal occasions. He wasn't out there very much.

Question. And Mr. Whitney?

I have seen Mr. Whitney but not out on any of the jobs. He wasn't active in the office after I was there. You say he was president until 1924. I don't think he showed up down there very much. I remember seeing him a few times over in the water company garage when I was over there to get a car. Sometimes he would be there when he had been down to some special meeting or something. As far as I know at that time, he was not daily down in the office.

Question. What is the relationship between the water company, Blakeslee, and Hill? Blakeslee did a lot of the construction for the company.

Blakeslee actually was a large stockholder or some of the Blakeslees were. I say large, but I don't know how large, but they were wealthy people and they had a lot of stock in the water company. The project was let out to contract. Blakeslee were the low bidders. They had the advantage of owning the quarry and being able to run that line. They were very large contractors. They did
work out on the New York water supply. They did a great deal of work in New Haven. They were a big outfit.

Question. Was the North Branford project a lot bigger than projects of other companies at that time?

No, there were some, Bridgeport Hydraulic Company, well not at that time, they built their big reservoir a little bit later for which Mr. Hill was also the engineer. And of course, Hartford has built some big ones around that time or later and Stamford built one just before we built North Branford. Mr. Hill was engineer on that. One of our men was down there all the time. Right at that time, I guess that was the biggest one going on. Waterbury had built a lot of tunnels and a small dam and one of their men came out and worked on the tunnels of North Branford.

Question. How many people were working at North Branford at the peak of construction?

There were three different camps of laborers who were working on the tunnels. That didn’t happen until after the dam was built.

Question. When was construction finished on the tunnels as well as the dam?

I don’t know exactly. I wasn't out there after 1933 or 1934. That should be a matter of record somewhere when the tunnels were finished, but I do know that when they had the huge hurricane and storm that we had here in 1938, that was the first time the North Branford reservoir was actually full and running over, because Mr. Minor sent me out to see how the dam, how the overflow was working. So, it was sometime after that. I don’t know just when the dam was completed.

Question. When you were involved with the company, were they looking to make the Mill River system larger?

No, that was almost impossible. Shortly after that they built the Mill Rock reservoir, the twin thing that is up on Mill Rock, because one of the men from our office was up there. That was just to increase the pressure.

Question. Were they looking at all into ground water supplies?

They really haven't done much of that that I know about right at that time. That came a little bit later. They started off up in the Mount Carmel area.

Question. Were you involved with that at all?

No, we weren't so much for that time because they were using the New York outfit, Malcolm Pirnie, they were doing the well jobs for them. There was an item that might be interesting if you haven't heard about it. In the tunnels and also in the dam they found a lot of dinosaur footprints. There was an article about it by a professor at Yale who used to be out there checking up on these. It was remarkable to me that in places in the Sugar Loaf, some places that we might be three- or 400-feet underground, then you find a print where a dinosaur had been.

Question. Did you find any?

We used to see them. We didn’t see a lot of them. The people from Yale we're out there regularly. If we saw anything special, we let them know. It was sort of a hassle. If you saw a print, you tried to call the geologist or the footprint men to come out, so that they didn't interrupt the schedule of drilling. Tunnel work has to be very precise. The drillers go in there and work so many hours and then have to get it loaded and shot and the muckers have to get it cleaned out so the drillers can come again. In order to keep the chain going, they work on a pretty tight schedule. The guys over in the tunnel didn't like to have the footprint men from Yale fussing around there trying to cut down a print. Whatever we could get out there was not an actual footprint, it was the cast, because if you blew out the tunnel the rock was in horizontal layers and you blew down the print and the layer at the top showed a cast of the print. They have some of them at Peabody. There were a lot of little ones, almost like rat tracks. They were the farthest south.

Question. Earlier you were speaking of other systems, West River, for instance.

Most of that was before me. Sometimes, I don’t remember the exact dates we worked up there rebuilding Dawson Dam, the spillway and various smaller jobs. I noticed in those albums of Mr. Blair's photographs, the bigger one up there in Lake Watrous was built in 1914. He had some pictures of that. Mr. Blair was working on some of them Maltby Lakes projects. They built some tunnels out there. They used mules to haul the carts and stuff out of the tunnels.

Question. After North Branford did you do much work for the water company?

Yes, I did a lot of work but not the large projects. We worked on several of the standpipes that they put up around a lot of the pumping stations. It was after North Branford. I worked on the big pumping station out on Armory Street. It used to have those enormous steam engines that were as big as this room and went chunk, chunk. And we took all that out and put in electrical motors and new piping. I was out there for a while and I did the same thing at Saltonstall, the old pumping station that was a huge brick structure. The big old steam engines required two or three men to run them all the time. The big steam boiler and the pump, they were all torn down. The pumps had big reciprocating pumps. The electrical pumps didn't require any attention though there was usually a man just sitting around.

Question. Mr. Navarro told me that when he came back from the war, he was the person in the office who handled most of the water company work.

To go back some, Mr. Hill, I can’t tell you just the date he died, but I would guess 1926, or 27, or 28 perhaps, and then the firm was Blair and Marchant. Then Marchant died and it was C. M. Blair. Then Blair died and it was Blair Associates of which I was President. I had two partners, Beech and Regany, but Joe, he worked in that outfit for a while then he went in the war and was down in Puerto Rico. When he came back, he wanted back in the firm again and he was, but he was only there a short time. Then he went down to take the job that Mr. Minor had had.

Question. How long was Hill associated with the water company? When did Malcomb Pirnie start doing most of their consulting work?

After Navarro went downstairs, he had sort of a tie-in with Pirnie and they were having some big jobs and had Pirnie do them instead of us. At that time, we were quite active with the Stanford Water company. They wanted us to get out of the office, out of the building. They wanted that space for something. So, we moved up on Whitney Avenue. The outfit that took over after I quit and the other two partners passed away, they are still going on under the name and of course they still have most of the records, stuff that we have done, not that we have done for the water company because they kept that in the water company.

Question. Earlier you were telling me that the North Branford project was more complicated than they had anticipated because of the shaley rock. Were there other changes in the plans?

No, that was the only one. As you dug down to get a firm foundation to the dam, the material that was so shaley rock would disintegrate a little bit if you left it open to the air, so they had to keep digging and had to go deeper on both sides, especially in the side ells to get firm rock. After the dam was completed, we did a lot of grouting. We forced wet cement down into the rock under heavy pressure into the foundation to tighten it up.

Question. A lot of the work must've been done during the depression. Did they keep a full schedule at that time?

Yes, a lot of it was during the depression, 1929, 1930 and they were still working on the tunnels. In the early 30s we finished up the tunnels. The extension of the tunnel, the Genesee Tunnel that goes east over to Hammonasset that was done later. The Pirnie outfit drew the plans and were charged with the job, but our men were doing the daily line. In tunnel work you have to have a surveying crew that goes in there every day to line the thing up. When we did the long tunnel in the days when I was on one end of it and Mr. Beech on the other, we met within 2 inches. That was a relief

Part 2

Question. Can you describe the tunnels? I have been told they were very hot and 300 feet underground.

It is true that they were down deep in some cases. The Sugarloaf Tunnel which goes from North Branford reservoir over east and the Gulf Tunnel are what we call grade tunnels. They were not pressure tunnels; they are on a grade so the water flows by gravity down through them. And that being so, why, once you start it in, it had to be on grade. In the Sugarloaf Tunnel particularly we got three or 400 feet below the surface of the ground at places. Around where the North Guilford churches are up on the hill, well, where we went through was a little bit north of those churches. We were three or 400 feet below the surface at that point. What intrigued me was at some of those places we found dinosaur footprints, so you know the formation had changed quite a bit during the years. The first tunnel that we worked on which comes under the North Branford Quarry is a pressure tunnel. It brings the water on the pressure equal to the top of the North Branford reservoir. There really wasn't any difference, except the difference in material.

Question.You said you had heard they were hot; they were only hot when the drills were going.

They had to shoot a bunch of holes and they drilled 10 or 12 feet in for every shot. After the drilling was completed, they loaded them up and fired them. They had something that has to be worked out on a very precise time schedule, because, if possible, they had to get a shot or two every day. It takes so long to drill it and so long to load it. Then you blow it and wait to clear it out. They had big fans. They had big pipes that went along the tunnels to change the air. You had to get that air out of there because all of those explosives going off gave off poisonous vapor I guess.

Question. Were there other particular safety problems being down that far?

No, we didn’t have any trouble. Some places in tunnels, they do have trouble with the roof caving in. When they suspected something like that, they braced it up with timber, put up a vertical on each side of the tunnel and a cross piece and tightened it up against the roof to be sure that the roof wouldn't fall. Once you went by that place then you had to keep going by until you met the other end. You mentioned heat, I don't think it was particularly hot, but it was warmer than the surface. It was a constant temperature. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but it was warm enough so it was comfortable and if you were working hard, it was uncomfortable down there after you got in a ways from the entrance. On that Sugarloaf Tunnel, which was the longest one, we had a shaft halfway. That was 90 feet, I think, at that point down to the tunnel. From that point they worked both ways, they worked from both ends. They had four headings as they call them going at once.

Question. Were there any particular dangers in lightning storms?

No, but there was a man killed. It wasn't at the dam. It was in the tunnels. He was a foreman. The foreman had to go in first after the thing was shot, exploded. He had to pick up the wires and see that everything was all right before we let the men in to clear that up the thing. Someway or other, the wires got crossed up or something hadn't gone off. He went in and picked up a wire apparently and was pretty much blown to pieces. That was the only fatality that I know of. That wasn’t any secret.

Question. Were there other types of accidents in the tunnels?

I don’t remember any.

Question. You mentioned before that horses were doing most of the hauling. Do you have any idea what size the horse population was at that dam site?

No, there were a lot of horses, but I don't know how many. I think I had in mind 100, but I am not sure that that is correct. To me that sounds a little large.

Question. Where they kept at the dam site?

Yes.

Question. I have heard that men were hired to pull tree stumps, because no one in the area had the facilities to remove the tree stumps. They had to bring in a group of men who specialize in pulling tree stumps. Do you recall these men?

I can’t remember the name of the outfit, but I remember the man. That was handled by our office, a contract directly between the water company and this stump puller. There was some sort of a discussion about it after a while. None of our engineers nor the water company had been involved in that sort of operation. The contract they had signed became a little too favorable for the contractor. He finally revised the contract somewhat. I've forgotten his name but I remember him very well. I think he came from Washington D.C. He had been clearing for golf courses and that sort of thing. He had a lot of specialized equipment. They did a very good job, but it turned out to be, I think, a lot more stumps that he got paid for than we had anticipated. Some of them were pretty small and not much trouble to snatch out. They don’t do that anymore. I think that was the last big reservoir where they cleared all the stumps, but at that time it was being done. Now they just leave them in there and if they cause any difficulty with the quality of water they treat the water rather than pull the stumps.

Question. I was told that the crew pulling stumps was made up of very large black men.

I don’t know whether that was true or not. One of the tunnel gangs was entirely black, the foreman, the bosses and everything. They worked on Gulf Tunnel that comes in from Northford. They had their own camp up there. But I can't say about the stump men. It could have been, I don't remember. He brought in largely his own gang, because they were used to that kind of work.

Question. Were the men who stayed in the camps living in houses that we’re already built?

No, they were, I shouldn't say shacks, but they were really construction shacks. They were warm enough and comfortable enough.

Question . I was told that the Harrison house was used in the construction. Do you have any recollection of that house or how it was used?

No. There were several Harrisons and there are still several Harrisons, one is still alive, Clifford who lives right below the dam. His father had one place up in what is now pretty much the bottom of the reservoir. There were three Harrison's who all had different places up there. One of them, who's house was not below the flow line, was one of the people that resisted. He took it to court on the monetary settlement. Two of those Harrison's brothers who were at the time middle-aged men, they were quite large number operators. The other one that lived up in the reservoir area was partly in the lumber business but was also operating a farm up there. I don't remember people living in any of those houses.

Question. The laborers who were on the site almost all the time what did they do for recreation?

I don’t know. Don’t know that they had any.

Question. I heard they played a lot of baseball.

Could be. Of course, I wasn’t out there on days when they would be having recreation very much. Although we had to work sometimes Sundays in the tunnels, not so much on the dam. But on the tunnels, they worked right through continuously. Sometimes we had to go out and give them line.

Question. I have been told that the Sheppy house which was on one side of the lake was moved to the other side of the lake across the ice.

Yes, they moved one house. Alden Hill did that with his gang. I can’t tell now which house it was or where it ended up. I would doubt that it was moved across the lake. It did come down on the ice. My remembrance of the thing was that it was a house that was up toward the north end of the reservoir and they moved it down toward the south end to get it off the watershed. I don't remember they crossed the lake with that, but I do remember them bringing it down on the ice.

Question. How did they get it across the ice?

They just got it down from wherever it was on the to the ice and then they pulled it with horses I would imagine. I don't really remember but I know they moved it, shook pretty much all to pieces. They had to do a lot of repair to that house.

Question. Billy Ryan was the superintendent on the job for the contractor. I have heard him described as being a rather tough man.

He was tough in a way, but he was also a very clever man, I think. And a very good superintendent, but he was tough as far as talking to the laborers. I'm not going to get any into the stories of some of the things he did. He was a very religious man in a way. He had a daughter who was a sister (nun). I heard the story that one time he fainted and somebody tried to give him a drink of liquor. He'd rather die than take a drink. He was in some of those pictures that I had. He was a little short man. He could be very nice, but he could be pretty tough. But he had been a superintendent for Blakeslee for a long time.

Question. You had said before that many of the workers had been hired by Alden Hill. How did Blakeslee and Hill get along?

They were in different fields. The water company had men out there to do things that weren't in the dam contract, like moving that house and other jobs that they had around. Hill had this gang, some of the time, perhaps they were working for Hill only, but they did the water company work. They weren't doing anything that would cause any difficulty with Blakeslee. They did some things like cutting out roads and moving this house and then some of the inspectors they had out on the job on various things, they were working through Hill. He was paying them from the water company somehow or other. I don't know how that worked out.

Question. Some of the construction was done during the time that the CIO was being organized. Were there any union man out on the job?

Just some of the machinery operators. I don't know about the tunnel people but I don't think they were union at all. I'm not sure about that. The steam shovel operators and the hoist operators, crane operators were union.

Question. Did this affect work schedules?

I don’t know. I shouldn't say this, but I don't believe there was any laborers union on that job at that time. Can’t say that for a fact but they did not stop work at a particular time. I think I said before on the dam, if you started pouring a big section of concrete and got everything organized, why they would keep going even if it took most of the night to get where they wanted to go on that particular pour. And that involves quite a few people all along the line getting the material up there. They had a tower to handle the concrete, this thing went up and then there was the trestle that was up at elevation above what was going to be the top of the dam. And the concrete was mixed and fed by gravity, then the shippers dumped it into a bucket which was hoisted up about 100 feet. Then it was dumped out onto the ( ) that went along this way or sometimes if it wasn’t possible to do that, it was dumped into a bucket and transferred around in cranes. It was quite a different operation than it would have been today. The whole point was that once they got a section ready to go, got everything set, they kept going even if it took until midnight or later. One of the workmen on the job was a union man, I am sure, working for Blakeslee, he ran a small hoist that lifted the concrete up that ran the scale bucket whenever they wanted more. He was a young fellow them. He is still living in East Haven. I know he belonged to the union because he put in all sorts of hours out there. Got himself a lot of money in those days. He is the only man that I know that is part of that group, who is still around.

Question. I heard that they hired some local people for the tunnel work.

Well, I don’t know. I wouldn't have thought that was true, because tunnel work if you are actually a labor or a tunnel worker, is a little specialized. Everybody doesn't want to work down there, because it has an element of danger. Working conditions are not too good. It was an eerie feeling. On one or two occasions they would lose the power. They were getting electric power all the way from New Haven and I was down in Sugarloaf Tunnel one time, 100 feet or more below surface and the power went off. Something happened. Kind of eerie feeling to be stuck down there. You can't get out, because at that point we were near the shaft. We had gone down in the hoist. Of course, the hoist wasn’t working. And the pumps weren't working and the lights weren't working. You were there in total darkness down there. It wasn’t really too serious, because you knew that they could get you out one way or another. It was a little eerie for a while.

Question. How did they finally get you out?

They found out where the trouble was on the line, and that was somewhere between New Haven and North Branford and they got that repaired. The lights went on, the pumps one on, the hoist went on.

Question. What was the communication system between the people above ground and the people in the tunnel?

I don’t think there was any communication. There certainly wasn't any telephone communication. We did something by ringing the bell’s, but that had mostly to do with the hoist, I am thinking about over there at the shaft. There was a bell system. So many bells would get a certain answer. Of course, the hoist was very busy at that place, because all the muck, the debris that they shot out had to be hoisted up out of there and all the explosives, the drills and everything. (end of tape) They had in those tunnels what they call a mucking machine which has to be not very big, maybe four or 5 feet high. This was on a smaller gauge railroad that ran in on the center. The shovel itself had to go in and pick up the stuff in the heading after it was blown down. You have this big bunch of broken rock there and this little shovel had to pick it up and put it back into cars. Then the locomotive would take the cars back onto a siding and going back-and-forth and back-and-forth. When they got a train load of it, they take that back to the shaft and it was taken up the shaft one car at a time. Then they would take it out and dump it. So that I would imagine that any equipment that was down there, when they finally took it out, had to be taken apart to some extent.

Question. I had heard that among the things the water company had to move when it acquired the property in the North Branford, Madison, Guilford area was some cemeteries.

I don’t remember any in North Branford and I'm pretty sure there wasn't any in North Guilford in that reservoir, because it is relatively small. I'm not sure about over in Hammonassett, because that was later and I wasn't active with the water company when that was built. To my knowledge, there wasn't any cemetery involved. They have that problem whenever they build big reservoirs usually.

Question. Was there a convent near the water company property in the North Branford project area?

Yes, it is still there. At the time it was not a convent.

It was a private dwelling. It was not a convent when we were building the Menunkatuc reservoir, but it was during the second job. The convent is quite a bit below the tunnel site. I’d say it’s about a mile and a half, maybe 2 miles away from the Menunkatuc dam.
We used to at one time go by there every day when we were going out on a survey. It is an old abandoned road that took us out to the site of the tunnel and the extension of the tunnel.

Question. You had told me before that lake Gaillard was full before 1938, because you went out to check the spillway after the hurricane in 1938. Do you think it served as flood control at that time?

Yes, I would think so. That was the first time it had gone over the spillway. Of course at that hurricane we had an awful lot of rainfall. That was one thing that made the hurricane so devastating. It had rained a very unusual amount of rain for about a week or several days. The trees were very vulnerable in that they were soaked and went over more easily than they otherwise would have. That was the first time that North Branford was full enough to run over and a lot of water ran over. It runs down and crosses that road that goes to the overflow. I've forgotten whether it washed out that or not. I remember Minor asking me to go out there and see how the spillway tower was working and it was okay.

Question. I was looking through some annual reports, and I came across some references to a pretty severe drought in 1930, which was during the time that North Branford was being built. Do you have any recollection of the drought and the conditions of the water company supply at that time?

No, I know there was a drought at that time, but I don’t think the water company was in any serious trouble at that time.

Question. Didn't the Milford system experience some problems with supply, and didn't they have to make a connection with the Housatonic to get through the drought?

Milford had quite a lot of trouble. Now they have a well and they have increased the capacity of sending water from New Haven down there. The old surface supply they do not use anymore. When I was there, we rebuilt that dam. I worked out there. They have abandoned that now, because it is so small and heavily populated. I do remember now that you speak about it that there was some plans, I don't think that we did anything, but we made some plans to connect with Bridgeport. We were going to lay a line under the river.

Question. The problem had abated before that was necessary?

I think so. That is my remembrance.

Question. Was the system interconnected once North Branford was completed?

Yes, which we laid a lot of pipe. Of course, as the dam was being completed they laid a pipeline up all the way from the dam into New Haven, 48 in. pipeline. Most of the way it got in city limits. That included crossing under the Quinnipiac River, an underwater crossing. We had to lay out a cross-town pipeline. It picked up from over there and went all the way through the city and tied into some of the big mains going down to West Haven and that area. A lot of the pipeline which was laid was an expensive long proposition, was really part of the North Branford project.

Question. Was Lake Saltonstall pumped to capacity after North Branford was developed?

I worked there when we change over the pumping station from steam to electrical. Of course, it is all changed there now, but we had changed it somewhat in those days.

Question. When you were working out at Saltonstall was fishing allowed out there?

Not much, it was very restricted in those days. I don't think they allowed fishing on the reservoir. They allowed fishing in the lower part along the side of the road.

Question. They weren’t fishing from boat’s then?

I don't think they were ever allowed to fish in boats. That is only being allowed now that they have that filter plant.

Question. I have heard that during the depression the water company was forced to cut the salaries of its employees. Did that affect the subcontracted employees?

I don’t know.

Question. Did it affect you?

I don’t know what the water company did. In those days as far as we were concerned in Mr. Blair's office we didn't get much salary anyway. It was never cut down on account of that.

Question. Did any of the local people who were watching the construction get a chance to enter a tunnel?

I don’t believe so. Tunneling was such a tight operation on such a tight schedule that they didn’t care about having strangers down there. I think they had some on the dam. They had some meetings, maybe engineer’s meetings or something. But they preferred not to have outsiders in the tunnels.

Question. Do you remember outsiders, school children watching the construction?

I don’t know about school children, but they used to have places where observers could stand and look at the operations on the dam. I don’t really remember any organized groups being there.

Question. Was there a lot of sophisticated machinery on the job that might have been all of interest to townspeople?

I wouldn’t think so. Maybe in the tunnels. As far as the dam was concerned, that was the normal type of machinery for that kind of job at the time. They didn't have anything special on the dam, except that it was sort of an elaborate layout. The method they had of distributing the concrete wasn't anything strange, but it was large and impressive to see in operation. Especially at night.

Question. How did they work that?

They had lights.

Question. Was is it a problem to see even with the lights?

I don’t think so. Of course, you had to have lights for the hoist operator to see what he was doing and there were lights around the mixer. It did not take too many floodlights down in the place where they were pouring to light it all up. I wasn't out there too much at night.

Question. Were there people supervising at night?

The water company had a couple of inspectors there, Harry Stokes. He was the chief water company inspector. He would have one man at the mixer to see that the proper amount of cement went in. So that was all of the personnel that the water company would have out there.

Question. When Mr. Minor went out there what did he do?

He just looked around. Quite often, Minor and Blair would come out together. Minor was quite apt to make some criticism of what was going on.

Question. Did you change what you were doing after his criticism?

He was the boss. If he objected to something that we were doing, we had to go to Blair and let them settle the difference. Minor was a very able man, but he was also very quick to criticize. Sometimes he wasn’t sure of his ground. He had worked in our office and he had been headman under Mr. Hill for a few years before he went to the water company.

Question. Did you ever hear stories about why he left Hill’s office to join the water company?

I guess he thought that it was a better job. I don’t know exactly when that took place. It was in the early part of the 1900s, because I think he had been with the water company quite a while when I went there and 1923. He started out then in what they called over in the yard the supply yard, where he was general manager. Then he was chief engineer. You said he was described as stern, I never had trouble. He was very helpful to us, after Mr. Mr. Blair died and we were starting out. He was very helpful and encouraging to us. But he could be very quick. He came out there one day when we were pouring at the very bottom of the damn and at the bottom of the dam were two big pipes that go through. They were 42 inches or some huge pipe. The way they had poured the concrete if you had stood up on top it looked as if the pipe was hump backed halfway through the dam. I had already seen that and checked it. I knew that the pipe was not humped. Minor came up and stood on the top “Send out a call for me, Brown what is going on down there. The pipe is floating, I can tell.” What can I say? I said ”I checked it.” “Well check it again.” That was the way he operated. He was very good to us and helpful when we took over after Mr. Blair died. He gave us a lot of work.

Question. Was he closer to a contemporary of Mr. Hill?

No, he was in between. I can't remember just when he got out of school. Hill’s office in those days was regarded as a sort of postgraduate place for Yale engineering. A lot of people went through there. I know of a fellow who used to work for us, came back to work there and I know that he was in the class of 03 and he used to tell me about being out on survey work with Minor. He had a lot of stories about Mr. Minor. So Minor was working in A. B. Hill’s office back then. That is as near as I can tie it down.

Question. Can you tell me about Mr. Hill and his background?

I don’t know too much about his background. I know that he was born and brought up in Redding I think, and he came up here to Yale. Hill was an old man when I came to work there. He was a bachelor, very tall, and he had a goatee. As I said before he was very prominent, particularly in the waterworks business. At that time he was working for Bridgeport, New Haven, and Ansonia and later on when Blair had it, we worked for Wallingford and a lot of the water outfits in the state. Mr. Hill had a lot of business down in the Stanford area, Port Chester and Greenwich, which are having so much trouble with the bridge now. He worked for practically all of the (CT.) water companies and some of the municipal companies.

Question. Can you give me some background information on Mr. Blair?

When I want to work in the outfit in 1923 Blair was running the office. Mr. Hill was there every day and he was consulted, I suppose. At least I know he was consulted on the plans and all that, but he did not have much contact with the men. With Blair and Marchant, well I can’t say Marchant was the brains, he was the real designer. He did most of the design work or supervised it. They had and been classmates at Yale. They were in it together after Mr. Hill died… well, he was a gentleman of the old school.

Question. Can you describe what you mean by that?

He was tall and stately and strict. I remember one time when I was first there. He had me figuring something, very involved financial business that nowadays you would run through on a computer, it took a lot of figuring. He was figuring out a tunnel down in Bridgeport, figuring the proper grade for it. I was fooling around figuring on the thing and I was whistling up there and we had a fairly good size room and there was a smallish (?) part of the offers where he always sat. He came out and said, "We don't whistle in this office.” So I stopped. But I didn't have much contact directly with Mr. Hill in the time that we overlapped there.

Question. And was Mr. Blair also from the old school?

Of course, he was quite a bit later than Mr. Hill. I don't know if he was of the old school, he was a very proper sort of man. Wouldn't smoke or drink or curse or any of those things.

Question. I have never seen a picture of Mr. Minor. Can you describe him?

There are no pictures? He was a normal sized man. He was not particularly tall. He was very quick in his movements, very decisive. He was not afraid to say what he felt to almost anybody. He was quite interested in the forestry end of the water company. In those days we had a lot of contact with Professor Hawley of the Yale Forestry School, who was a brother in law of Mr. Minor’s. They had Hawley operating the plantings in the forestry department. I think it was quite well known in the industry that New Haven was one of the leaders in that type of work on their watersheds. Minor was very interested in that, but he used to keep up. He used to read the journals. He was very prominent. Everybody in the waterworks industry in the state thought a great deal of Mr. Minor. There was a Connecticut Water Works Association and he used to go to those meetings, and I am sure his opinions was valued. He knew various people. The headman in the Hartford supply and the head man in the Bridgeport Supply were friends of his, acquaintances.

Question. What was the extent of Mr. Gaillard’s knowledge of the waterworks industry?

His position there was as an executive, not as an engineer. I think he depended on Mr. Minor to a great extent. (phone interruption)
We used to be able to eat lunch in the dining hall there, but the workmen didn't. They had to carry their lunch. I remember we would go in there in the morning sometimes for a cup of coffee or something and the fellow that ran the dining
hall, Joe, he had one of the long tables set up with slices of bread over the whole table. And he would have a bucket full of some kind of oil and he would paint them up with a paintbrush, making up lunches for the workmen. They used to rustle up some good lunches for us and some of the camps, over at the shaft in North Guilford, they had an excellent chef. We used to try to arrange it to over there at lunch. We had to go in the tunnels and whenever it was the time to go in, regardless of what it was. A lot of times we would come out and eat lunch, two, three, four o'clock in the afternoon. He would make up something special.

Question. On the nights when the pourings were late, did you end up staying over?

No, I never stayed out there in the night pours, because Harry Stokes, the chief inspector, always stayed until the pour was done so he took care of hanging around and seeing that everything was okay.

Question. Can you give me more of a description of the camps? Why were there three, was it due to size?

They had one at North Branford and then up in what is now flooded just north of that, is the West Portal of the Sugarloaf Tunnel, and then at the shaft over in North Guilford, there was a camp and then there was another one over at Menunkatuc dam. So, there were three on the tunnels and one on the dam and the Gulf Tunnel had one camp on the reservoir ends. That was the one with the colored boys - all colored. The buildings were all tar covered and long.

Question. What about in the wintertime, were they warm enough?

Oh yes, we worked right through the wintertime.

Question. What did they do for facilities?

I don’t know, they had to be taken care of. I don't remember if they had anything special in the way of lime treatment. I don't think they carted all the waste away. It must've been approved by the state board of health.

Question. Did the Brantford River run through that area?
Well, it wasn't actually the Branford River. It was somebody’s brook. It was a tributary to the Branford. It wasn't a very big stream. And that is the reason that you had to do the tunnels, because although it was a favorable dam site in what looked like a relatively easy dam to back up an awful lot of water. There wasn't the contributing watershed enough to make it pay unless you had these tunnels to bring in the other water. The Sugarloaf Tunnel was planned to extend all the way over to Hammonasset and to pick up pretty much all the watershed in between, the Hammonasset River and two or three little streams on the way which are diverted into the tunnel. And going the other way over to Northford, can you pick up the upper end of the Farm River. So at Farm River
we take water out of it twice, we take it out up there and there is a tunnel down here that brings water from Farm River into Lake Saltonstall.

Question. Is the reservoir in the center of North Branford? How does it relate to the rest of the county?

Pretty much in the center of the town I would think. Maybe not the exact center north - south but I think it is east - west. In historic times, there was a highway that led right up through by where the reservoir is and went over the mountain on very much the same line as the Gulf Tunnel goes under the mountain over into the Northford area, Tommy's Path, it is still a path. I remember when we were doing the Gulf Tunnel the road that goes from North Branford to Northford on this side of the quarry and the mountain, was so miserable to drive over that I used to have one of the water company boys drive the truck. At that time we were using a truck of some kind. He would drive the truck around and I would walk over the mountain rather than ride all the way down. It was more comfortable than bouncing around in the truck. That was before they had done the improved road from Northford down.

Question. Can you tell me more about Mr. Alden Hill?

He, as I said before, bought quite a bit or some of the property and he took me around a lot of the property when we were surveying. Sometimes I was hunting him up and delivering messages to him.

Question. You said he knew a lot of the people in the area.

He was born there and had always lived there. He had been active in the lumber in business. He was very congenial type. He got around and he knew everybody.

Question. Do you have any idea about how he ended up getting connected with the water company?

I don’t know how that developed, because it was going on when I got in the picture.