City of New Haven, Connecticut

Prosperity and Expansion By the time the Revolutionary War began, New Haven had evolved from a colonial village into a growing town of about 3,500 that would contribute men, financial support and arms to the revolutionary cause. At one point in the war New Haven was invaded by 3,000 British soldiers. Unlike Norwalk and Fairfield the British did not burn the city and casualties were relatively few. In 1784, New Haven was incorporated as a city and Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was elected first mayor. Shortly before the turn of the century Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate, invented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the cotton industry in the South. Later, Whitney established a gun factory along the Hamden border. New Haven's status as one of the major American arms-manufacturing centers has its roots in the Whitney Arms Company. Whitney's operation was eventually bought by the Winchester Arms Company, which became one of New Haven's largest employers. In 1839 nearly fifty African Mendi Warriors had been captured in Africa by Spanish slave traders. While off the coast of Cuba aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad they mutinied and were eventually found by a United States patrol boat. Since New Haven had a United States District Court, the Mendi and their leader, Cinque, were imprisoned and tried in the city. At the end of a three-year trial that would receive national attention, the court ruled that the Mendi had been kidnapped into slavery in violation of Spanish law. The return of the Mendi to their homeland would be remembered as a triumph of the anti-slavery movement in the North. New Haven's economy flourished during the Civil War era. The city's carriage industry became for many years one of the nation's largest. New Haven also produced rubber goods, clocks, beer, pianos and a wide range of other products. The city's population also surged after the Civil War. At the outbreak of the war, the population was 40,000; by the turn of the century it had grown to 108,000. Many of the new citizens had immigrated from abroad from such areas as Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe. By 1900, 28 percent of New Haven's population was foreign-born. Immigrant labor would help New Haven become a leading producer of clocks, plows, wagons, guns and clothing. However, after World War I anti-immigration laws drastically reduced the flow of European immigrants. African-Americans from the South and Hispanics from Puerto Rico became new sources of post-war immigration into the city.