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Note: the Achievements of Her People in the Making of a Commonwealth and the Founding of a Nation. Volume III:
"Eben Clark, son of Obed Tuttle, was born at Prospect, April 27, 1806. His youth was spent at home, helping his father, chopping timber, clearing land, burning and carting charcoal and working at his father's forge. His time for schooling was very limited, and his lessons were studied mostly at the bellows or in the coal hut on the mountains while tending the coal pits. At the age of twenty he went to Stratisville, Connecticut, to work at making forks. Three years later he returned to Prospect and began making solid cast steel hoes, of the "goose-neck" pattern, of which he was the inventor, and which wholly supplanted the old "eye" hoe then and previously in general use. At first his hoes were made by hand work entirely in the shop on Prospect Hill, and eight men made but twenty-five hoes a day; but afterwards machinery came into use and the product increased a hundred-fold. The first machine used by Mr. Tuttle was a crude trip-hammer, which was located five miles distant at Union City, in Naugatuck, and available for his use only at night. For several years all the hoe blanks were carted to this place, the hoes plotted during the night and carted back to Prospect the next morning. The business grew rapidly. In 1846 he removed to Union City, erected a small shop and began to make use of the water power to operate machinery. From time to time he added to his business the manufacture of other agricultural implements, such as forks. The business was at length incorporated. In 1856 the founder resigned the office of president, built a factory near the railroad station at Union City and for about two years did a large business under the name of the E. C. Tuttle Manufacturing Company, which promised to become as successful as the original concern, but in 1858 he lost the plant by fire. In 1860 he went to Oshawa, Canada, and established one of the most important industries of the country. The severe strain of clearing the ground, building dams, factories and installing machinery taxed his physical endurance and doubtless laid the foundation of the disease that caused his death. He came to Auburn, New York, 1864, organized a company under the name of E. C. Tuttle Manufacturing Company, now the Auburn 1398b 1399 Manufacturing Company, built a factory, and for four years operated a thriving industry. Then, 1868, he went to Canada again and established the well-known Welland Vale Works, in which he had the misfortune to lose the larger part of his fortune. He continued to live at St. Catherines until a short time before his death. He died, December 5, 1873, of paralysis while visiting his son at Union City, Connecticut. "His reputation as a manufacturer was almost world-wide, and when the history of the manufacturing founders of the Naugatuck Valley shall be written, his name will be among the foremost. He lived to see the business he commenced in a small way, grow to almost gigantic proportions, and the little hamlet of Union City, which, when he went there, contained scarce half a dozen houses, by his enterprise became one of the first manufacturing villages of the Naugatuck Valley." He married (first), April 27, 1829. Temperance, who died October 3, 1863, aged fifty-five, daughter of Hezekiah Beecher. He married (second) Charlotte Bentz. Children of first wife: 1. Juliette Augusta , born at Prospect , August 16, 1832; died September 23, 1835. 2. Bronson Beecher, December 28, 1835; 3. Adelbert C., born March 19, 1847; married, June 13, 1872, Margaret Carlisle, of St. Catherines, Canada."
Note: Genealogical and Family History of the State of Connecticut: A Record of
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