[Illustration: _State Capitol, Hartford, Conn._]
The celebrated Charter Oak is the great memory of Hartford. In 1856 the old tree was blown down in a storm, and a marble slab marks where it stood. The remains of the tree were fashioned into many precious relics, and our friend of humorous memory, Mark Twain, who lives in Hartford, says he has seen all conceivable articles made out of this precious timber, there being, among others, "a walking-stick, dog-collar, needle-case, three-legged stool, bootjack, dinner-table, tenpin alley, toothpick, and enough Charter Oak to build a plank-road from Hartford to Great Salt Lake City." This ancient tree concealed the royal charter of the Connecticut colony, granted by the King, when, in 1687, the tyrannical Governor Andros came to Hartford with his troops and demanded its surrender. While the subject was being discussed in the Legislature, the lights were suddenly put out, and in the darkness a bold colonist seized the precious document, and running out, concealed it in the hollow of the oak. The fine statue surmounting the Capitol dome and overlooking the city is now, with extended arm, crowning the municipality with a wreath of Charter Oak leaves, and the oak leaf is repeated in many ways in the decoration of the Capitol and of many other buildings in the city. The Charter Oak Bank and Life Insurance Company are also flourishing institutions. In proportion to population, Hartford is regarded as the wealthiest city in America, and it is financially great, particularly in Life and Fire Insurance Companies, whose business is wide-spread. It has many charitable foundations, book-publishing houses, banks, manufacturing establishments and educational institutions, the most noted of the latter being Trinity College, in the southern part of the city, its brownstone Early English buildings having a grand view across the intervening valley to the hills of Farmington and Talcott Mountain, nine miles westward.
Picturesque suburbs adorned by magnificent villas environ the built-up parts of Hartford, making a splendid semi-rural residential section, where arching elms embower the lawn-bordered avenues, many localities being adorned by superb hedges. There is a fine artistic and historical collection in the Wadsworth Atheneum, where, among other precious relics, are kept General Putnam's sword and the Indian King Philip's club. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Sigourney, the poetess, were long residents of Hartford. The citizen whom it holds in steadfast memory, however, is Colonel Samuel Colt, who invented the revolving pistol. He was born in Hartford, and his remains rest under a fine monument in Cedar Hill Cemetery. His widow built as his memorial a beautiful little brownstone chapel, the Church of the Good Shepherd, which is not far away from the huge works of the Colt Arms Company, the chief industrial establishment of the city. Colt, when a boy, ran away from home and went to sea, and is said to have there conceived the idea of his great invention. He sought vainly during several years to establish a factory to make it, but did not prosper until 1852, when he started in Hartford; and with the great demand for small-arms then stimulated by the opening of the California gold mines and the exploration of the Western plains, afterwards expanded by the Civil War, his factory grew enormously. The heraldic "colt rampant" adopted by the inventor is stamped on all the arms and reproduced in all the decorations of these vast works. Among other large factories is also the Pope bicycle works. A short distance west of Hartford is New Britain, where there are twenty thousand people engaged in making hardware, locks and jewelry, its noted resident having been Elihu Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith," who was born there in 1810 and died in 1879.