The Era of Shipbuilding and Sea Captains
1850-1860 SHIPBUILDING AT BLACK ROCK WHARVES
After Middle Wharf activity ceased in 1845 and shipping and trading moved to Bridgeport, Black Rock turned to shipbuilding. In 1850, Capt. Daniel Wilson had a new wharf built near the intersection of today's Seabright Avenue and Seaview Terrace. By the end of that year, four shipyards were operating along lower Brewster Street, owned by Capt. John Brittin, Verdine Ellsworth, Sturges & Clearman, and Elizabeth Wilson. In 1856, Capt. William Hall bought all four shipyards and turned the village into one of Connecticut’s most important shipbuilding centers. His shipyard was later purchased by Hilliard & Rew, later becoming the Rew & Walker Shipyard of Eliphalet Walker.
1856 The Charles Cooper built in Black Rock
The Charles Cooper, a wooden, deep-water, square-rigged merchant ship, was built in Black Rock Harbor in 1856 – the largest and last ship built at the Black Rock Wharves. Built by Capt. William Hall for New York’s South Street packet trade -- when vessels ran to a fixed schedule instead of sailing only when full -- the Cooper sailed between New York and Antwerp until 1860, and could carry more than 250 passengers and 3,500 barrels of cargo. In her prime, her cargoes included tobacco, flour, cotton, lard, codfish, beeswax, mahogany, nails and barrel staves. The Cooper also transported gunpowder to the north during the Civil War, and European immigrants to America. Sold in 1860, she began runs between New York and New Orleans, and later to England and India, even circumnavigating the globe, including stops in Australia, India and Guam. In 1866 she set sail from Philadelphia bound for San Francisco but ran into trouble near Cape Horn, and limped into port in the Falkland Islands where authorities discovered an irreparable leak to the hull. Deemed unseaworthy, the Cooper spent the next hundred years lashed to a pier in Port Stanley as a floating warehouse. Her remains were removed from the harbor in 2003 and preservation work carried out; Port Stanley's Historic Dockyard Museum hopes to display the Charles Cooper eventually as an artifact from the grand days of sail.
Another of the many ships built in Black Rock was the bark Edna, built in 1856 by H. Hawkins and part-owned by Thomas Burr Bartram, shipmaster, son of the Black Rock merchant and ship captain Thomas Bartram. The Bartram family was active in the early 19th century West Indies trade, as well as in numerous village enterprises. The Edna crisscrossed the globe under Capt. Israel Bibbins as master. Bartram also owned a coastal trader, the Stamper that traveled from Boston to Black Rock to New York.
1850s HOMES BUILT BY CAPTAINS & SHIPYARD OWNERS
In 1856 the Charles Cooper's builder, Capt. William Hall, constructed an Italianate-Gothic style mansion on Ellsworth Street. Built atop a rise to afford a view of his shipyards, it remains one of the finest 19th century homes of Black Rock. Eliphalet Walker, owner of the Rew-Walker Shipyards -- located on the site of Capt. Ichabod Wheeler’s first 17th century shipyard -- lived in another Ellsworth Street home, which had been built in 1855 by Olive Walker. Its copper beech tree is well over 300 years old. Capt. Charles Allen also built on Ellsworth Street. All three of these historical ship captain’s homes (Editor: all three shown on Graham's panel 7 mock-up) still exist today.
****1861 CIVIL WAR BEGINS
---Black Rock played no important role in the war other than to furnish soldiers----
1865 NEW BLACK ROCK SCHOOLHOUSE BUILT
Villagers erected Black Rock's second school building at the intersection of today's Grovers Avenue and Brewster Street. Eight grades attended classes In this brown, two-story building, complete with belfry. It was later used for special education when the new Black Rock School was built in 1905. According to Dr. Ivan Justinius, author of The History of Black Rock, the original school bell was given to the Fayerweather Yacht Club when the building was demolished.
1868 CHILDREN’S ASYLUM FOUNDED
A Protestant children’s asylum was founded by the Ladies Relief Society at the end of the Civil War era. The society -- still active today as Lifebridge of Bridgeport -- used its remaining war treasury to benefit destitute children.The orphanage was built on Fairfield Avenue, across from the Burrough’s Center.
KATE MOORE HIGHLIGHT:
KATE MOORE APPOINTED OFFICIAL LIGHTKEEPER
“Sometimes there were more than two hundred sailing vessels in here at night, and some nights there were as many as three or four wrecks, so you may judge how essential it was that they should see our light.” Lighthouse keeper Kate Moore quoted by the New York Sunday World in 1889.
1870 (or 1871?) After half a century of tending the Fayerweather Lighthouse for her ailing lightkeeper father, Kathleen "Kate" Moore was appointed official Keeper of the Fayerweather Light in 1870 (or 1871?). Kate was credited with saving 21 lives during her decades of service on Fayerweather Island, where she helped trim the wicks on the lighthouse's oil-fed lamps by the age of 12. Before her tenure, all lighthouse keepers were former privateers, captains or military men under the service of the Customs Officer, as harbor security was deemed of the utmost importance. Kate ultimately made a fortune leasing oysters beds in Long Island Sound, and later retired to the foot of Brewster Street with a fine view of the sea and across the harbor to the narrow island where she had spent most of her life. She remained a well loved fixture in the village for years. In 2014 the U.S. Coast Guard named a Sentinel-class fast response cutter the Kathleen Moore, one of the first 14 lifesaving heroes so honored by the Coast Guard.