by Kevin Murphy
Rev. Davis was ordained in 1834 and partook of the pioneer work of Universalism in Pennsylvania and Ohio. He traveled continuously, preached constantly, and helped nurture the growth of the Universalist Church.[121]
Besides his duties as a cleric, Rev. Davis was anti-slavery from his earliest days and his home in Ohio acted as a stop on the Underground Railroad. As such, he helped fleeing slaves safely negotiate the territory between the Ohio River and Canada. Rev. Davis was also active in temperance work. In 1862, Rev. Davis and his wife, Charlotte, relocated to Hartford. Mr. Davis served as state missionary of the Connecticut Universalist Convention for over twenty years.[122]
One of the members of Rev. Davis’s Church of the Redeemer was the builder Hiram Bissell who, for seventeen years, fought the earliest battles of the Hartford Water Works. Bissell also built Christ the Redeemer Church so that his fellow parishioners could leave Central Row in Statehouse Square and enjoy larger quarters on Main Street. (When the Hollisters moved to Wells Street in 1883, they had a magnificent view of the Soldiers and Sailor Memorial Arch in Bushnell Park, another of Hiram Bissell’s building projects.)[123]
When Rev. Samuel Davis married Jennie and Tom Hollister, he was sixty-eight and still active in the ministry. Davis retired in 1892, but was still far too busy to stop for death, so it kindly stopped for him on March 17, 1897. He was eighty-seven.[124]
Jennie and Tom Hollister were given their license by City Clerk John E. Higgins, who originally came from New London. He moved to Hartford after landing a job as a mechanic at Colt’s Patent Fire-Arms. A veteran of three years’ service in the Civil War, Higgins became Hartford’s city clerk and registrar in 1874. His job was an elective one, but Higgins proved so competent and well-liked that on Election Day his name appeared on both the Democratic and Republican ballots. [125]
When Jo Bullock officially became Mrs. Thomas Adams Hollister, owing to the nature of their work, nothing about their marriage found its way into the city’s newspapers. This was to be expected inasmuch as the city pretended that the demimonde didn’t exist. Many years later, when Tom Hollister died, the Courant added tastelessly in his obituary, “in 1878, he married ‘a well-known woman,’ Jane McQueeney.” During the Gilded Age, this was code for prostitute.[126]
This points up a sad fact of Jennie and Tom Hollister’s lives. They might have earned a comfortable existence and even managed a modicum of admiration or respect among certain folks in Hartford, but they lived outside the law. The everyday pleasures of ordinary people were denied them. The Hollisters didn’t often go to church and rarely attended baptisms, weddings, or funerals. What they knew of city government and politics they read in the newspapers or wrested from their educated and highly placed patrons. Beyond the company of one another, their lives were characterized by a lingering emptiness. This fact, of course, was disguised by their gorgeous home, lavish clothing, dazzling jewelry, and the fine horses and elegant carriages they maintained.
The prostitution business followed the same rules as any other business in that a proprietor catered endlessly to the regular patrons, clients, customers or whatever the end-users were called. During the 1870’s, the Hollisters watched as Hartford’s legislators outmaneuvered their counterparts in New Haven to become the sole capitol of the state.
Connecticut’s experience with capitols was tortuous. After October 1636, the state legislature met at Hartford until 1700. In October 1701, the legislators met for the first time in New Haven. From 1713 forward, the May session played out in Hartford and the October session in New Haven. During the Revolutionary war—after October 1776—the legislature stopped meeting in New Haven. With the Constitution of 1818, the October session ended and the May session alternated in a completely random fashion between Hartford and New Haven. There were times when the legislature met at Hartford three years in a row and then only went to New Haven for a single year before returning to Hartford. There simply was no logic to it at all.
After the War of the Rebellion, establishing one capitol in Connecticut became a cause célèbre. The committee responsible for the final decision chose Hartford, and in 1875, the state legislature met at New Haven for the last time. Chaos still reigned though. Even as the new capitol rose on the old Trinity College site overlooking Bushnell Park, the legislature met at Middletown in 1878. One year later, when everything except the dome was completed, the legislature began meeting at the new capitol. The old Statehouse became City Hall, with Mayor Morgan G. Bulkeley—the state’s all-time most accomplished vote-buyer—assuming the role as the first mayor to take the oath of office in those dignified chambers. Mayor Morgan G. Bulkeley took over the governor’s office in the southeast corner of the first floor.
Looking at this strictly from a business standpoint, the cross-town move of the members of the General Assembly put too much real estate between the Hollisters and their best customers. From 165 State Street, the Statehouse could be hit with a stone, but the new capitol building was almost a mile away. Whether or not to remedy the state’s shortsightedness was a vexing question for the Hollisters. They could remain on State Street or find something closer to the new capitol building. Both options had pluses and minuses.
On the plus side, there were three bordellos on State Street that were considered untouchable and they all sat on the first block east of Statehouse square. The first was Frank Russell’s saloon at 107 State Street. As one writer noted, “Who does not know this house? Many, and hilarious, have been the hack parties that some night hawk . . . has piloted to this house in return for a consideration from the proprietor.”[127] The Bange mansion at 165 State Street had the Hollister name written all over it. By settling up with the police in a timely fashion and doling out Christmas presents like Santa Claus, the Hollisters amassed the most fabulous clientele in town. Lastly, Carolyn Webster’s lavish sporting house rested invitingly at 181 State Street. When a certain director general of Connecticut died, one of Carolyn’s housekeepers murmured sadly, “In his death, the house lost its best customer.”[128] All three of these proprietors understood the game intimately and made the necessary payments without any prodding.
The location of these houses offered them a certain amount of protection too. The American Hotel sat on the east side of Statehouse Square and faced west. No surprise, the manager of the American Hotel knew how to supply needy guests with prostitutes and did it with all the élan of someone in the assignation business. Behind the American Hotel sprawled the trolley garage and livery stables of the Wethersfield and Hartford Horse Railroad Company. East of this point sat the three untouchable brothels, plus two others, on the south side of State Street, leading down to Front Street. This area was considered the heart of the tenderloin. By and large, the captains of industry, legislative nobility, and randy tourists did not want to throw fortune to the wind by traveling too far down State Street in the dark of night. Therefore, this first block of brothels—between the horse railroad garage and Front Street—were the houses that had the best chance of attracting wealthy, highbrow patrons.
On the negative side, thanks to the really depraved houses on the lower end of State Street, the tenderloin got seedier every year, irrespective of the location of any particular house. If the proper piece of real estate could be found—in a location that would offer the Hollisters some exclusivity—wouldn’t it be smart to leave State Street?
As the old Statehouse underwent the necessary remodeling to become Hartford’s new City Hall, the Hollisters finally decided to move closer to the new capitol building. The new legislative chambers sat atop a lovely hill overlooking Bushnell Park. Though some streets were clearly off limits, something in the vicinity of Bushnell Park would be ideal. However, for Jennie and Tom Hollister, the right piece of real estate wasn’t on the market. They had no choice but to wait.
As early as 1836, a beautiful forty-acre park in the center of downtown Hartford became the obsession of Rev. Horace Bushnell. As pastor of the Third Congregational Church on Main Stre
et (corner of Morgan Street), Bushnell was a force to be reckoned with when it came to the intricacies of city planning. Bushnell became a lawyer before attending Divinity School, so he wasn’t a dilettante. Also, though he waged a lifelong battle with tuberculosis, he projected the image of a man of indefatigable energy. When the idea of a central park for Hartford sprouted in Bushnell’s mind, the area he liked best was a squalid low spot in the landscape, crowded with mills, slaughterhouses, dye works, tenements, and garbage dumps. These eyesores sat on the banks of the Park (Little) River, a smelly stream that delivered a witch’s brew of nauseating waste to the Connecticut River. Truth told, the whole mess resembled a snapshot of Hades.[129]
Compounding the issue, before Union Station became the rail hub of the city (on Union Place) a single spur of tracks ran easterly through this low spot to Hartford’s railroad depot at the bottom of Mulberry Street. This small station was a block from Main Street, at the bottom of a lane filled with junk shops, tenements, and saloon-brothels. Mulberry Street seemed a complete inappropriate name, but other streets failed to meet their potential too. By 1879, hard work and solid planning turned this revolting wasteland into a verdant Eden showcasing magnificent foliage, interwoven with miles of well-groomed bridle paths, and surrounded by a much-improved Park River—with vertical stone-flagged embankments. Finally, a towering brownstone arch, memorializing the soldiers and sailors who served in the Civil War was completed in 1886.[130]
It took Jennie and Tom Hollister three years to find the right property, but eventually they struck gold. Cyprian Nichols had bought the land—on what was once Maiden Lane—from Nathaniel Patten for $500 in 1806. (By 1825, it became Wells Street, after John Wells who manufactured wooden printing presses on this lane.) During that period, the west side of this narrow street had houses and mills that drew water power from the Park (Little) River. Cyprian Nichols’s candle-making and soap-boiling business was in a small building opposite his home and a little to the south—closer to Daniels’ Mills. A good guess is that Nichols drew power from the Daniels’ Mills dam on the Park River. (The buildings on the west side of the street were razed when Bushnell Park came to completion after the War of the Rebellion.)
Practically every city in America had a soap-grease man, whose horse and wagon trundled up and down the narrow, dirt lanes as he yelled “Soap-grease! Soap-grease!” Cyprian Nichols was a soap-grease man. That said, Cyprian Nichols could trace his roots back to the founders of the city. Beyond that, he was a justice of the peace, an estate administrator, a grocer, a real estate speculator, and a director of the Phoenix Bank. Though Nichols may have had helpers driving wagons from house to house, he kept a small shop in Statehouse Square—“20 rods west of Messrs. Hudson & Goodwin’s Printing Office [66 State Street].” Later he rented a shop on Main Street—“First door south of the brick Meeting House [corner of Central Row].” Nichols sold candles and soap, and he was constantly purchasing “for cash, tallow, ashes, grease, damaged butter, or lard.” He made “mould and dipped candles, yellow bar soap, white soap for woolen manufacturers, shaving soap, and soft soap.”[131]
Lemuel Humphrey learned the business from Cyprian Nichols and a few years later the men formed a partnership—Nichols & Humphrey. In 1822, Cyprian Nichols sold his home on the east side of Maiden Lane, with a “dwelling house and other buildings thereon standing,” to Lemuel Humphrey for $3,000. Nichols & Humphrey continued to thrive, shipping large quantities of soap and candles to New York and Richmond, Virginia, where they had networks of agents to sell their products. When Cyprian Nichols died in 1853, Humphrey teamed up with the Seyms brothers to form Humphrey, Seyms & Co. A decade later, Lemuel Humphrey retired to his new home and gardens at 61 Lafayette Street and rented the Wells Street property. While settling his father’s estate in April 1882, Henry Humphrey, Lemuel’s only son and a businessman from Philadelphia, sold the property for $7,000 to George Richardson, an agent from Boston.[132]
Two months later, on June 2, 1882, Jennie and Tom Hollister bought 76 Wells Street from George Richardson for $7,000. (Richardson’s commission obviously was paid out of closing.) Since they had to invest so much money in improvements—including a huge new addition on the back of the main house and steam heat throughout—the Hollisters only put down $500 and arranged a $6,500 mortgage with Society for Savings. Old city maps show the Hollisters’ finished home as markedly different from Lemuel Humphrey’s dwelling house. The old building was almost completely demolished in order to build a house specifically designed as a house of ill fame. The old foundation could be used to support the new structure, but little else had any value.
The finished product at 76 Wells Street was a 6,000 square foot, seventeen-room, white clapboard home with a mansard roof of deep gray Pennsylvania slate. Atop the building sat towering red brick chimneys—almost phallic in nature—and the whole incomparable pile of finery and fashion sat embarrassingly close to the new state capitol. Architects categorized the Hollisters’ new place as Second French Empire. No matter, the average person just stared at it in awe. This jewel—directly across Wells Street from where the old rail depot once sat—rested on land close to everything, isolated to just the right degree, and with coveted views of Bushnell Park. In time, 76 Wells Street became the best-kept secret in Hartford, as men of rank and privilege, men of the highest station in life, ventured there for some sport.[133]
Jennie Hollister acted as madame, though sometimes old patrons still referred to her as Jo Bullock. As one reporter noted more than a decade later, “Jo Bullock is past the beautiful period of her life, but is still considered to be a good-looking woman.”[134]
Tom Hollister was a huge asset to the business because he was “well known to almost every senator and representative that ever visited Hartford.”[135] The brilliant white clapboard house was cavernous—close to 6,000 square feet on three floors—and had a long, white wooden porch on the south side, with a matching trellised entryway at the front door. The third-floor gabled windows that gracefully leaned out from the mansard roof were white and the windows of the first and second floors were trimmed with red shutters. A black wrought-iron fence encircled the 20,000-square-foot property, which boasted 200-year-old trees, earthbound phyla, and every kind of hedge plant and flowering shrub that New England could support.
In front of the house—on the other side of Wells Street—flowed the Park River, on the eastern edge of the park. After the eye takes in the long expanse of Bushnell Park, it lifts skyward to capture the towering majesty of the lovely new State Capitol building—granite spires, curious gargoyles, white flagpoles everywhere, and a shimmering gold dome as big as the Ritz! In short, the Hollisters’ house of ill repute on Wells Street had a location nonpareil.
It staggers the imagination to think that the Hollisters spent such a huge sum of money on the most beautiful bordello in Connecticut—but a place that could be shut down at any time by the police. Jennie and Tom
Hollister must have had unassailable feelings that Hartford’s bishops would allow prostitution to continue unabated. This one fact fleshes out the Gilded Age in a way that future generations might never completely understand. In any event, thanks to Jennie and Tom Hollisters’ attention to detail and a steady flow of high-testosterone aristocratic patrons, they were able to burn the mortgage in 1885.[136]
By 1886, Jennie and Tom Hollister had been in their new quarters at 76 Wells Street for four years and were doing extremely well. Probably with some nudging from Jennie, Tom Hollister bought an old farmhouse on the New Britain road near Cedar Mountain. It wasn’t much to look at, but was located in the southwestern part of the city, far enough from the downtown tenderloin that a couple might be able to make a decent living and stay out of trouble.
Angeline and Joe Start rebuilt this old place into the Cedar Mountain House, a restaurant-saloon-brothel, and soon enough were doing a comfortable business. When Jennie and Tom Hollister bought this old farmhouse to get Angeline and Joe Start on their feet in Hartford in
the 1880s, they had a double agenda. On the one hand, Jennie was paying back Angeline for the older woman’s help when Jennie was only eighteen and just getting into the business. Beyond that, Jennie was also bringing her best friend to Hartford, where the two could see each other regularly and perhaps even travel some. No matter how successful a couple might be, the prostitution business could be lonely. Having a close business pal nearby might even be seen as an act of self-preservation.
Tom Hollister leased this place to the Starts. As the Cedar Mountain House, it was a comfortable step above the old farmhouse that it had been, and Angeline and Joe Start delighted in their new business in Hartford. Unfortunately, about 7:15 on Saturday night, November 27, 1886, the Start’s roadhouse caught fire. Apparently, the light of what was a considerable fire quickly lit up the southwestern part of the city, but the alarm wasn’t called in until 7:35 from a call box on the corner of Retreat Avenue and Washington Street. The fire broke out while Joe Start and some friends were at supper and it got out of control quickly. When fire-fighting units arrived at the blaze, the men splashed the contents of an old cistern on the fire, but with negligible results. The building was a total loss. The damage estimate of the Cedar Mountain House fire came to $3,000.[137]
The Starts never rebuilt the Cedar Mountain House, perhaps because the authorities now knew the true nature of the place. The Starts moved back to Warwick, Rhode Island. About eight months before his death in 1894, Tom Hollister sold this property to Ludwig Forrester.
Angeline Start always claimed that Jennie “stayed with them [Angeline and Billy Prentice] in their place on the New Britain road” when Jennie Hollister was first starting in the business. Some might suspect that this property on the New Britain road was in some way connected to the earlier roadhouse where Angie and Jennie worked in the early 1860s, but the two places were in no way linked. Upon Angeline and Joe Start’s return to Rhode Island, they ran the Hillside Hotel—with a backroom operation—in Warwick for decades.[138]
