Allingtown blacksmith's life brought to stage

10/22/2006

Marissa Yaremich , Register Staff

WEST HAVEN — Little did anyone know before Gertrude Hamm Meyer died years ago that she’d tucked away a historical bounty detailing the earliest feature of the Allingtown Fire Department — a single-horse-drawn fire wagon. For years, the Allingtown native squirreled away aging photographs, her German-born grandfather Charles Martin Hamm’s autobiography and, perhaps most importantly, a 1908 contract he signed promising to deliver a handmade fire wagon.

After her mother-in-law died, Alling Street extension resident Georgiana Meyer stumbled across the documentation, prompting her to research her husband’s great-grandfather. She turned over her genealogical finds in 2004 to the Ward-Heitmann House Museum in West Haven.

Impressed, the museum’s board of directors revisited the archive this year while deciding who local writer and amateur playwright Micki Balaban should feature in a play to celebrate the museum’s 10th anniversary.

To the Meyers’ delight, they chose Hamm, who will be forever immortalized as the man who helped create the Allingtown Volunteer Fire Association on Sept. 23, 1907.

Set to run at the West Haven Public Library Nov. 4 at 2 p.m. "Allingtown USA" pays tribute to the 19th- and 20th-century blacksmith’s life and immigration to America, including bringing Allingtown its first post office.

That garnered him admiration from the era’s firefighters and residents that resounds today. It is also the first play to be written about the 3.3-square-mile district that borders Orange and New Haven and its 22-man career fire department that services 15,000 people.

"I’m really happy that they’re doing this!" said Georgiana Meyer, noting that she became fixated on Hamm’s accounts about his life in Baden, Germany, where he served as an apprentice blacksmith under a Swiss volunteer fire captain, who exposed him to the variety of single-horse-drawn fire wagons at the Swiss Firemen’s Convention in the late 19th century.

Born Feb. 26, 1849, Hamm immigrated to New York City at age 17 to pursue being a blacksmith with a forte for crafting special-order carriages and wagons.

Hamm could not find a job in New Haven.

After zigzagging across the United States for about a dozen years, Hamm returned to the area in 1881 and realized his "rightful place" in Allingtown, where he set up C.M. Hamm Carriage and Wagon Building Firm in the smithy next to his Campbell Avenue home, according to Balaban’s play.

It was here, at the blacksmith’s shop, that Hamm would slip on his work gloves and work by the anvil with his son, Max, and Gertrude Meyer’s father, Max F. Hamm, who was also captain of the Allingtown volunteer firefighters. They crafted a one-horse wagon at the request of the area’s first informal firefighters, according to photos and the contract.

According to the handwritten contract, Hamm agreed with committee members Peter Wols, John Nissen and James O’Brien to handcraft a one-horse wagon equipped to carry a 1,000-foot-long and 2½-inch-wide fire hose with the "best grade steel" axles, a polished crowbar and pick-head fire ax. He also crafted a 25-foot extension ladder.

It took a bit longer than the Dec. 25, 1908, contracted date for Hamm and his son to complete the wagon, complete with an "appropriately striped" body and lettered with gold leaf. The $100-plus "truck" was finished on April 15, 1909.

Balaban said preparation for the play started in April as she tried to identify with Hamm’s past so she could cast the actors to portray his worthy contributions.

"It’s like I almost had to be connected, like with the spirit," said Balaban, a retired writing teacher.

She works at the nonprofit Village of Power in New Haven, where she teaches abused black women to use writing as a tool to regain their footing in life.

While rehearsing his role as Peter Wols this past week, resident Logan Bruneau said Balaban really captured the Hamms’ history, which he encouraged people to come learn about on Nov. 4.

"If you’re going to learn about West Haven, (Hamm) is a really good thing to learn about how it was settled and about Allingtown," Bruneau said, noting that the hardest struggle for him, though he’s acted in church and school plays since fifth grade, is conveying the appropriate expression with his lines.

First-time actor David Sylvia, 20, of Stratford, agreed with the play’s natural draw for an audience.

"To be honest, I just think it’s good to (attend) for cultural awareness," said Sylvia, who portrays Max Hamm, who is also the play’s narrator.

Allingtown Fire Commissioner and state Rep. Louis P. Esposito Jr., D-West Haven, is enthusiastic about the project.

"It’s great Mr. Hamm is being recognized for his innovative efforts in firefighting. I’m proud he was an Allingtown resident," he said.

Museum board Director Concetta "Connie" Sacco said the board is proud to honor Hamm in this artistic way, and hopes his living descendants will come to the event.

Georgiana Meyer said she and Hamm’s great-grandson and her husband, Francis Meyer, certainly intend to, and would like her children to attend if their work schedules permit. One of her children, city 911 dispatcher Frank Meyer, is a volunteer firefighter in both the Allingtown and Center districts, where he is captain of North End Hose Company 3.

Though Meyer said she never had the chance to meet the famed Hamm before he died and was buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in 1940, she said her husband has some faint memories from when he was a child.

"He remembers very little, but he remembers being wheeled around in a wagon when they had the business behind his house," she said, adding that when automobiles overtook carriages and wagons, Hamm shifted his skills to make some automobile parts.

Marissa Yaremich can be reached at myaremich@nhregister.com or 789-5742.