Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • M10

10 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2014 THE HARTFORD COURANT 250? YEARS YOUR MOMENTS PRESIDENT THOMAS JEFFERSON, an anti-Federalist, was harshly criticized by The Courant. OLIVER ELLSWORTH, the nation's third chief justice, became a popular agriculture columnist for The Courant in 1804. JOHN MILTON NILES, a Hartford activist, founded the Hartford Weekly Times in 1817 in response to The Courant's political views. GIDEON WELLES became editor of The Courant in 1827, and championed the states' rights principles of Andrew Jackson. KENNETH R.

GOSSELIN I KGOSSELINCOURANT.COM THE HARTFORD TIMES used this Prospect Street building until it closed in 1976. The newspaper was founded in 1817 as a voice for the principles of the new Tolerationist Party, which was started to oppose the Federalist establishment supported by The Courant. the privileged and impeding social progress. Those opinions, no doubt, influenced a young Hartford activist, John M. Niles, who founded the Hartford Weekly Times on Jan.

1, 1817. The Times gave voice to the principles of the new Tolerationist Party, founded in 1816 in opposition to the severely wounded Federalist establishment. The Tolerationists advocated for expanded voting rights, then limited to male property owners, and for a constitutional separation of church and state that guaranteed religious freedom. At the time, Connecticut was the only state that still had an established church sanctioned by the government. By law, residents had to pay taxes to support the mainstream Congregational Church, even if they were not members, unless they went to great lengths to divert the tax payments to their own churches.

The state policy was unpopular with a growing number of Methodists, Baptists, Universalists, Episcopalians and other denominations. As The Times rallied to the Tolerationist cause, its circulation quickly grew. The newspaper's influence helped lead the new party to a victory in the 1818 state elections, resulting in a new state constitution that replaced Connecticut's original Colonial charter and Fundamental Orders and disestablished the Congregational Church. Niles went into a career in politics, and ownership of The Times changed several times. Gideon Welles became editor in 1827, and his newspaper became a powerful voice championing the states' rights principles of Andrew Jackson, whose election as president in 1828 gave rise to the modern Democratic Party.

At about the same time, a precocious 12 -year-old Alfred E. Burr, who idolized Andrew Jackson, started working at The Courant as a printer's apprentice. In The Courant's composing room, where he was most at home, the elder Goodwin treated young Burr like a grandson, even after their political differences became evident. As Burr excelled and proved himself indispensable, Goodwin tried to keep him at Chapter Two Continued from Page M6 anti-Jeffersonian tirades. To sharpen its bite, the paper in 1804 hired its first full-time editorial writer, Ezra Sampson, a former pastor who turned to writing when he lost his voice after 20 years of preaching fire and brimstone.

But when The Courant printed a story on April 16, 1806, accusing Jefferson of secretly shipping 60 tons of silver to France as a bribe for Napoleon to stop seizing American ships, a federal grand jury indicted The Courant on charges of libeling the president and Congress. In response, the newspaper retained impressive legal counsel Oliver Ellsworth of Windsor, the nation's third chief justice. He had retired in 1800 for health reasons and became a popular agriculture columnist for the paper in 1804. In the end, The Courant won a seminal decision in United States v. Hudson Goodwin (1812), in which the high court ruled that the U.S.

government could not bring charges under English common law; it had to cite laws enacted by Congress. As the libel case made its way through various courts, Hannah Bunce Watson Hudson died on Sept. 26, 1807, at the age of 57. Eight years later, in November 1815, Barzillai Hudson and George Goodwin amicably dissolved their partnership and split its then-considerable assets of $120,000. Goodwin, joined by his sons, retained ownership of The Courant and moved it to a three-story brick building at the southwest corner of Main and Pratt streets, its home for the next 40 years.

A Historic Rivalry Begins Under George Goodwin Sons, The Courant refined the Yankee conservatism that would inform its editorial views for much of its history. Despite the Goodwin sons' active participation, the paper was still run by the senior Goodwin, who was by then one of the wealthiest men in the city. The elder Goodwin upheld, at every opportunity, the sanctity of family values, the Congregational Church and the Federalist Party. In The Courant's pages, Goodwin extolled the merits of the Hartford Convention during the winter of 1814-15, when leading party members who opposed the War of 1812 met in the city to consider ways to assert New England's sovereignty. The convention became synonymous with treason and the political tide turned against the Federalist Party.

It never recovered. Nonetheless, Goodwin did not waver in his opinions, nor did The Courant, which became viewed, by some, as pandering to THE COURANT printed the text of the Constitution of the United States on Oct. 1, 1787. The Courant. In 1835, when Burr was just 20, Goodwin offered him ownership of the newspaper if Burr would change his political and religious affiliations.

Burr declined. Instead, four years later, Burr took over the struggling Hartford Times and turned it into one of the nation's leading Democratic newspapers. With the demise of the Federalist Party, Goodwin gravitated to the conservative Whig movement that emerged in opposition to the Jacksonian Democrats. Even as social strictures loosened, The Courant remained steadfastly conservative. Goodwin advocated for total abstinence from liquor, for example, and railed against the growing popularity of circuses.

Alternately, he and his sons also championed socially responsible causes that have endured to today, including construction of the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in 1821 and the Retreat for the Insane, now the Institute of Living, in 1824. Meanwhile, the newspaper industry was flourishing; the number of journals in the country grew from about 200 in 1800 to 1,200 in the early 1830s. In Hartford, The Courant continued to emphasize maritime news, daily listing incoming and outbound vessels. It reported enthusiastically on the development of steamships, which began navigating regularly between Hartford and Springfield at the start of the 1830s. By the 1840s, about 2,500 vessels a year docked in Hartford, carrying 24,000 passengers.

Now less reliant on the riders carrying mail between cities, The Courant grew to include more local news, including regular lists of marriages and deaths. Label headlines, such as "Melancholy Shipwreck," were introduced, standing out despite their small type size. But the paper was otherwise little changed. Soon, Thomas Green's apprentice, who had grown up to run a successful newspaper for 58 years, would sell it so that he and his sons could focus on their lucrative paper mills and other publishing operations. In 1836, John L.

Boswell, 26, a fellow Whig and Congregationalist, bought The Courant. He, too, had started at The Courant as a 12 -year-old apprentice in the days before child labor WE, the People of content oj" i three day. more iictfcfi I "UV Oi ler coinjiir.it tfanqiiilttv' null be nttlnjr. ill' Srt. iccore the 'he 6.

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Goodwin had one unusual condition to the sale that he be allowed to set type at no charge for as long as he was able. He died eight years later, in 1844, at the age of 87 and, according to family lore, still stopping by his old newspaper to occasionally set type. "i Mr civil each1 tJ'f authoity of thi iMilications iwttf be ob, iiitotJitr. to wta or p.iy i(i "tiicli been lvta'''- truafiii (lull not ry, bi lat mail, by and nJ i npt- when defter 4 tatcj, Mm fsoiituirci of -I, "''ount of Hi, in effic, lied hr i JC -in inliabii: in I pole Ut the fen: PpGrt'ioned re, or title of ll.nc. ye, and io rcrvi Cor i terB, vith'fti but ifnol h(i nn prince, foreign 5re7.

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of ST. The 5. i AoJ) toll, be sou mi bilhr' We l1'1- Jf "he bill. 1 i I We faall ngrec i0 'e, OV Wfc n. ea MB c-erv 0011 renrei No 0f' THE COURANT'S THIRD OWNER HANNAH B.

WATSON: A PIONEERING PATRIOT sir Three Husbands, Nine Children, One Newspaper By JOSEPH F. NUNES HANNAH B. WATSON became The Courant's third owner after the death of her husband, Ebenezer Watson. Courant's early history while at times raising under one roof five different sets of children, including half-siblings and step-siblings. When she died from the flu at age 57, her one-line death notice published Sept.

30, 1807, in The Courant, hardly befitted her significant accomplishments. It simply read: "DIED In this city, on Sunday last, MRS. HANNAH HUDSON, wife of Mr. Barzillai Hudson, senior editor of this anna Bunce Watson overcame the confined role afforded to Colonial women, and a personal life punctuated by child and the Watson children growing up together." When Ebenezer Watson died of smallpox in September 1777, his obituary noted: "He has left a melancholy widow with five young children," indicating that Eliza also had died by then. As The Courant's third owner, Hannah Watson continued her second husband's dedication to the Patriot cause through the newspaper while handling significant responsibilities at home.

She handled much of the editing and finances as printer George Goodwin focused on production duties, soon becoming her business partner. (While Hannah Watson thus became the first female publisher in Connecticut, there already had been more than a half-dozen women running newspapers elsewhere in the colonies.) Hannah was 29 when she married her next-door neighbor, 37-year-old Barzillai Hudson, on Feb. 11, 1779. Hudson, a longtime family friend and member of Second Church, was widowed with two children Sarah, and William, 9. The couple would have four children of their own, future Hartford Mayor Henry Hudson in 1780, Olive in 1781, Lavinia in 1784, and Hannah, who died three years after her birth in 1793.

Thus did Hannah Bunce Cotton Watson Hudson bridge two remarkable eras in The newspaper. "Hannah as Courant employees affectionately called her through the years, was long memorialized by a third-floor conference room early heartbreak, to lead The Connecticut Courant through one of its most critical times. Born Dec. 28, 1749, in the town of Lebanon, she was already a 21-year-old widow when she married Ebenezer Watson, The Courant's second owner, on Aug. 1, 177L Bunce had been previously married to a "Mr.

Cotton," by whom she had a daughter named Eliza, early Courant biographies noted. Watson, himself a widower, brought to the marriage two small children of his own, a baby named Elizabeth and 3-year-old James, who died soon after the nuptials. The couple had four more children from 1772 to 1777: James, Mary, Jerusha and Ebenezer. A 1909 Courant report refers to "the Cotton named for her at The Courant's home on Broad Street in Hartford. She is buried in the Old South Burying Ground in Hartford, next to the remains of Barzillai Hudson, who died in August 1823 at age 81..