The S. B. Church Memorial Town Hall was built with funds from a bequest
from Stephen B. Church, the founder of the Stephen B. Church Co, drillers
of deep driven wells, and furnishers of water systems for towns. Information
on S. B. Church, below, is from the 1960 History of Oxford:
Stephen Betts Church, founder of the company was born August 15,
1866, son of John and Sarah M. Whiting Church. When he came to manhood, the
farmers were turning to the use of power in their farming operations to save
hand labor. As early as 1886, Mr. Church provided and installed horse driven
forks which lifted hay from wagon to haymow. Later he became interested in
the early gasoline engines, exhibiting the first to be shown at the Danbury
Fair. He soon was selling them in quantities, with a store in Boston and
salesmen traveling throughout New England.
Mr. Church soon sensed the need of the farmers for running water,
and began the building and erection of wells operated by windpower, which
pumped water from wells, springs or brooks to tanks on towers, thereby providing
the necessary pressure. But as these windmills were decidedly limited both
in capacity and steady power, he began drilling deep driven wells (often
spoken of as "artesian wells"). Soon he was installing the present residential
water supply systems consisting of a driven well pumped by an electric motor
pump into a closed tank inside the house, thus providing air pressure to
force the water into kitchens, bathrooms, and barns. .
By about 1923, demand came from factories for water in quantities
not procurable from driven wells, and geologists pointed out that there were
glacial deposits of sand and gravel in some places in New England which contained
large quantities of water.
The Church Co. devised special equipment for testing for the presence
of underground water and a method of sinking large caissons and constructing
"gravel packed wells". These were packed with gravel inside of a circular
screen made of highly corrosion resistant me'tal to filter out the sand.
This type of well has also been furnished by the Church Co. to towns and
cities for municipal water supplies, at a cost far below that of dams and
storage reservoirs. It has come to form a large part of the business of the
Church Co., serving factories, office buildings, and municipalities. In 1919,
Mr. Church was visited by a young man who was selling farm machinery. This
was Mr.Hubert E. Stoddard, who within a month entered the employ of the Church
Co. as Engineer.
In July 1951, Mr. Church died and the control of the company passed
to Mr. Stoddard who incorporated the business in 1952. Mr. Stoddard is retired
and Mr. Wm S. Duncan is President and General Manager.
Much new equipment has been obtained, and special well development
processes have been worked out, resulting in substantial water supplies for
entire communities, some of them with several hundred houses. Further geological
studies have revealed new sources of water supply, some of them at depths
of from 500 to 800 feet. This water is very cold and is highly desirable
for large air-conditioning installations as well as for municipal supplies.
A few years ago, a water company in Fairfield county proposed
building a dam across Eight Mile Brook in Quaker Farms to create a reservoir
of water, which would have flooded a large portion of that district. Much
opposition to this scheme arose in Oxford, Middlebury, and Waterbury, some
four hundred people appearing at the hearing before the Legislature Committee
in Hartford. On the recommendation of the Church Co., test work was done
for the water company on the Fairfield side of the Housatonic River. This
resulted in the installation of several large diameter wells from which yields
of over seven million gallons per day were obtained.
From the History of Oxford, Connecticut, Litchfield
and Hoyt, 1960 (Available for sale by the Oxford Historical Society, Inc.,
at the Oxford Town Clerk's Office.)