The Press., 1909-12-01
WELLINGTON.
"Reminiscences of WiIIinston. Conn.,, by Native
 of the Town.-No. {.

In writing of the Glass Factory, or No 8 district, little of traditional
 history may be of interest. In the early settIement of the country Springfield and Hartford were the two points settled on the Great, or Con- ueoticut, river. Our Merrick ances. tor. Esq John Merrick. came from Springfield about 171S. some 80 years after the settlement of Hartford and Springfield.
 To give a more direct communica- tion between Hartford and Boston. and after Connecticut became nfore settled, there was survey made for road almost direct from Hartford to Boston, k 1own as the Wolcott road, laid robably in the time of Governor Wolcott Tradition says that the rad was laid 40 rods wide, account fig for the nice brtad commons in several of the towns through which it passed. and giving the town of I0l- land their Ina common, where. nj t ae early days of the Holland County Agricultural society, they held thsir annual fairs ard could lay cut lialfA mile trotting course.
 In passing through Wilmington it passed directly up the hill short dis tanoe south of the Capt Elijah Nye place, and some distance south of the Glass Factory that was built many years later.
 The builde IS of Wilmington respected the boundaries of the highway and gave it it's beautiful broad common on the hill In the early settlement of Wilmington one Samuel Farley built the only house on the Wolcott road in the west part of the town. It was quite pretentious house, two stories high, and in my boyhood it was the home of James McFarlane, with his five younger children. They had two sons living in Boston
 Tradition said that Farley was the biggest liar in all that section, i. @. would always beat the neighborhood in telling yarns.
 Some time in the twcnties of the last century there was organized in Wilmington and North Coventry a company for the manufacture of glass bottle under the firm name of Gilbert. Turner 6 Oo. Some of the members of the firm: MT. Gilbert of North Coventry, Dea. John Turner and his son in law, Rufus B. Chamberlain of Coventry, Elisha Brigham and others of Wilmington.
 They built two factories, one in North Coventry and one in Willing ton. The one in WilliDgton is the one that has to do with this history. The company was also interested in another glass works in Ellenville, N. Y., where few years later they de- oided to concentrate their work, and out of that grew the Wilmington Glass Go.
 The factory consisted of a large square building in which was the furnace containing the melting pots, or cruoibles, as I suppose they would now be called, either four or six in number, but think only four, as one of the pots would accommodate two or three of the blowers of the bottles. On two or three sides of the furnace building were long, low shsds for the annealing ovens. the drying ovens for the wood, which had to be thorough ly kiln dried, and the mixing oven, where the material was mixed and heated to a red heat before being carried to the pits in the furnace. The pots as recall them would hold from 40 to 50 gallons of melted glass, which had to be renewed every night and meant lots of hard work, and in the long winter evenings was a niue warm place for the boys of the neigh borhood to gather to watch the pro- cess of the making of the glass.
 The material used in the manu- faoture of the glass was two kinds of sand, the fine sand from Esq. Daniel Glazier's gold mine in his pasture at the foot of the hill, just across the meadow east of James and Timothy Holt's, that being the only sand pit in the town suitable for any kind of mason work. Esq. Glazier always charged good price, and the glass company used large quantities of it every year. The ooarser red sand was obtained from the sand hills in the east part of Vernon, which had to be drawn by team.
 The other principal ingredients were wood ashes unleached and salt. The ashes were gathered usually in the spring, when the farmers had a good supply and were willing to sell them. Many of the farmers, like my father, refused to sell them, consider ing them worth more as a fertilizer for their land.
 While wood was the only fuel in use ashes could be readily obtained, but many years later, after coal came to be used. the company had to cover a much larger territory to obtain their supply.
 AAO UA@WAuS O1 bH0 Hh0u 1IOm Vernon and tue gathering of their supply of ashes gave employment to two or three good teams nearly all of the time. The glass company kept very good general country store such as their business and employees de- manded, and 1t made a very good market for the farmers.
 The wood used for the furnace was of the best of body chestnut, cut thirty inches long. and on account of the small openings. nothing over three and one- half inches could enter the furn- ace, the wood had to be split very fine. so all of the wood used was cut the same length. and all wood for