Page 18 - North Haven Magazine Issue 11 Holiday 2019

C C LINTONVILLE’S
LINTONVILLE’S

by Susan A. Iverson
Card Companies

Do your kids collect Pokémon cards? Do you remember collecting base-
ball cards, post cards, or garbage pail kids cards when you were a kid?
Card collecting has been a thing for over 100 years, and this hobby origi-
nated in our town – specifically in Clintonville!

lintonville is a village in the eastern part of North Haven,
bordering Northford. Clintonville Road passes through
Cthis section of town, and Clintonville School is located
close to where Clintonville Center once was. Clintonville had
the Muddy River running through it which supplied waterpow-
er to small factories there. The nineteenth century also saw the
arrival of a railroad depot in Clintonville, giving manufacturers
a means of shipping product anywhere in the US. In 1872 Fred-
erick Clinton started a printing company there that designed and
produced friendship cards. He advertised these cards in wom-
en’s magazines and newspapers. These cards were small, flat,
very colorful cards that people would exchange and collect in
scrap books. This fad grew as people across the country ordered
them and saw how beautifully intricate and colorful they were.
Soon the Clintonville Post Office was so swamped with postal
orders for these cards that it was upgraded to First Class status
with its own Postmaster and several assistants. Clintonville was
booming!

As demand for these sentimental greetings grew, more printing
shops opened, and 200 to 300 residents of Clintonville were em-
ployed to work in them. Women were also hired to hand color
and embellish the cards, something they could do at home in
their spare time. It’s been estimated that hundreds of thousands
of friendship cards were printed here in the last decades of the
nineteenth century. Because demand remained so high for these
cards for over 20 years, none of the manufacturers foresaw them
going out of fashion – but they did. Post cards became the new
collectible shortly after the start of the twentieth century, and by
1904 friendship cards had been forgotten. Clintonville’s print
shops didn’t change with the times, and by the start of the first
World War they were all closed. Some say that if Clintonville’s
print shops had made the transition to post cards, they would
have survived and then become part of the Christmas card trend
later in the twentieth century. Clintonville might look very dif-
ferent today if that had happened!
Today only the outer shell of one of the printing businesses is
left to remind us of Clintonville’s booming business. Valentine
Hall, a condominium complex on Old Clintonville Road, was the
original printer’s shop (hence the name!) and its façade remains
just as it was in the nineteenth century. Luckily, a collection of
friendship cards from Clintonville Card and Novelty was do-
nated to the Historical Society – they can be seen whenever you
choose to visit there. Stop by and see them; they are beautiful
and tell a part of our town’s manufacturing story. The Historical
Society is located in the Cultural Center next to the library; it is
open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2 to 5 PM.

Thanks to the North Haven Historical Society Archives for pro-
viding background for this article!

18 North Haven Magazine - Holiday 2019