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Coton of Hitcijfielb, Connecticut 1720-1920
COMPILED FOR THE
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oflhe
tlToton of Hitcttieto, Connecticut 1720-1920
COMPILED FOR THE LITCHFIELD HISTORICAL SOCIETY
BY
Alain C. White
LITCHnELD, CONN.
ENQUIRED PRINT *^
To
GEORGE MORRIS WOODRUFF,
who, as a citizen of Litchfield
and as President of the Historical Society,
preserves the interest
in the traditions of the Town
begun by his great-great-uncle,
JAMES MORRIS,
and continued by his father,
GEORGE CATLIN WOODRUFF,
this book is dedicated
with admiration and esteem.
preface
At a meeting of the Litchfield Historical Society, held on October 6, 1919, Miss Cornelia B. Smith, Miss Esther H. Thompson and Miss Florence E. Ennis were appointed a Committee to prepare a History of Litchfield in connection with the Bi-Centennial celebration planned for Aug^ust, 1920. On November 10, this Committee asked me to undertake the work for them ; and it was found necessary to have the manuscript ready for the printer to begin work in January. At first it appeared that it would be a serious handicap to endeavor to prepare a book of this character in so short a time ; but as the work progressed it has proved in some ways a distinct advantage.
In the first place, the nature of the book has more or less shaped itself. There were clearly several things which the time-limit precluded the possi- bility of attempting ; but which otherwise would have required consideration. It was not practicable to undertake what might be called a biographical history. Litchfield has been fortunate in having had, in proportion to its population, a large percentage of men and women, many still living, whose biographies would be of general interest. To collect and classify these was clearly impracticable. It will be found, therefore, that many of our important names, past and present, are mentioned only casually, and in some cases not at all. Consequently, by the necessities of the case, this book is strictly the story of the township, and not the story of the individual inhabitants.
Again, it was impossible to attempt more than a compilation from sources readily at hand. These sources, fortunately, were numerous, taken together astonishingly complete, and» what is especially important, in the main admir- ably written. Many chapters have written themselves by the simple process of quotation, and the temptation to rewrite such parts, which would have been no gain to the reader, has been removed by the pressure of the work.
The task, therefore, was to compile the story of the town on the founda- tion afforded by the earlier Histories of George C. Woodruff, 1845, and Payne Kenyon Kilbourne, 1859, with such elaboration as suggested itself, bringing the book more nearly to date. These two Histories are quoted throughout, the name: Woodruff or Kilbourne, followed by the page num- ber, being a sufficient reference. The Statistical Account of Several Towns in the County of Litchfield, by James Morris, while much shorter in its contents, is also of extreme importance because of its early date. It forms pages 85 to 124 of a book called : A Statistical Account of the Towns and Parishes in the State of Connecticut, published by the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Volume i, Number i. New Haven, 181 1. It appears, however, that Morris' section was not written until between 1812 and 1814, and that probably it was bound into the volume in 1815, the earlier date being retained on the title page. This little work must always remain the starting point for the historian of Litchfield. Morris, Woodruff and Kil-
viii PREFACE
bourne laid little stress on the period after the Revolution, which to us now is one of the most interesting parts of the story. Fortunately other writers have supplemented this deficiency.
The work of Dwight C. Kilbourn on the Bench and Bar, 191 1, with the many lights it throws upon the Litchfield Law School, and the Chronicles of a Pioneer School by E. N. Vanderpoel (Mrs. John A. Vanderpoel)i 1903, with its fascinating picture of the life of Litchfield in the days of Miss Pierce's Academy as revealed in the diaries and letters which she has col- lected; the many graphic little sketches and anecdotes compiled by Rev. George C. Boswell in his Book of Days, 1899 ; Miss Alice T. Bulkeley's His- toric Litchfield; two works important for tracing Litchfield genealogies, George C. Woodruff's Residents of Litchfield, written in 1845, but not published till 1900, and Charles T. Payne's Litchfield and Morris Inscriptions, 1905; the many volumes dealing with single families or individuals^ such as the splendid Wolcott Memorial, 1881, the two editions of the Memoirs of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, 1858 and 1902, and the Lyman Beecher Auto- biography, 1866; the records of exercises on particular occasions, including the County Centennial of 1851, and the Presentation of the Litchfield Law School to the Historical Society in 191 1 ; the War literature, comprising the Litchfield County Honor Roll of the Revolution, published in 1912 by the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, D. A. R., and the two Histories of the Litchfield County Regiment in the Civil War, by Theodore F. Vaill, 186&, and Dudley Landon Vaill, 1908; the published Sermons, especially those of a memorial nature; the several works on the County; the publications of the Litchfield County University Club; the books dealing only in part with Litchfield, HoUister's History of Connecticut, 1858, on the one hand, or the Personal Memories of E. D. Mansfield, 1879, on the other; the collections of County or State Biographies, such as Payne K. Kilbourne's Litch- field Biographies, 1851, and the Leading Citizens of Litchfield County, 1896; the files of the newspapers which have been published in Litch- field, and of the Morris Herald and the Northfield Parish Paper ; the files of the Litchfield Historical Society, embracing the manuscripts of lectures, bound and unbound selections of letters, scrap-books and other collections, such as the Record Book of the Seth F. Plumb Post. No. 80, G. A. R., and the box of Civil War papers left by Dwight C. Kilbourn : — all these and others make up a body of material as rich as the most omnivorous lover of Litchfield's history could desire. There are even novels with their scenes laid in Litchfield and their incidents based on the history of the town and the character of its people, notably Harriet Beecher Stowe's Poganuc People and Jennie Gould Lincoln's An Unwilling Maid.
This book, then, is only a digest of so much of this material as time has permitted the sifting of, supplemented by contributions from, and the help of, many members of the Litchfield Historical Society and other persons.
I have been fortunate in securing the collaboration, throughout the preparation of the work, of Miss Dorothy Bull, who in particular has writ- ten the chapters on the Revolutionary War and on Modern Litchfield; and the assistance of Miss Florence Elizabeth Ennis and Miss Ethel M. Smith. Miss Ennis has written the chapter on the World War and has compiled
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PREFACE IX
five sections of the Appendix. Miss Smith has prepared the two other sections of the Appendix, and has rendered valuable and constant assist- ance in seeing the book through the press. To Miss Elizabeth Kenyon Coit, also, are due hearty thanks for aid in preparing a part of the manuscript. Help in matters of detail has been given by so many persons, that it is impossible to acknowledge all. I wish, however, to thank in particular Hon. George M. Woodruff, President, and Mrs. John A. Vanderpoel, Vice- President and Curator, of the Litchfield Historical Society, for their con- stant help, encouragement and suggestions in the work; Dr. Arthur E. Bostwick for the contribution of the original reminiscences forming Chapter 22; Mr. Albert M. Turner, Mr. Herman Foster, Miss Edith L. Dickinson, and Mrs. Henry C. Alvord, for materials relating respectively to Northfield, Bantam, Milton, and Morris; Mrs. John Laidlaw Buel (Elizabeth C. Barney Buel), for the loan of three manuscript lectures; Professor Henry S. Munroe and Miss Mary Perkins Quincy, for the use of their Lectures on the Trees of Litchfield; Mr. Frederick K. Morris, for an account of the geological history of the region; Professor James Kip Finch, for information regard- ing the local topography; Miss Anna W. Richards, for material relating to the Congregational Church; Miss Esther H. Thompson, for reminiscences of former days; Mrs. Dwight C. Kilbourn, for access to her husband's Library; Mr. R. Henry W. Dwight, for an account of the early Mission movement in, the County; Miss Cornelia Buxton Smith, Rev. William J. Brewster, Hon. Thomas F. Ryan, Mr. Travis A. Ganung, Mr. George H. Hunt, Mr. Frederick Deming, Mr. George C. Woodruff and the Wolcott and Litchfield Circulating Library Association, for the loan of books and manuscripts; Miss Clarisse C. Deming, Miss Mabel Bishop, Mrs. L. P. Bissell, Mr. Cornelius R. Duffie, and Mrs. George McNeill, for the loan of photographs; the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, D. A. R., for per- mission to quote from the Honor Roll of Litchfield County; Mr. Howard W. Carter, Secretary of the Litchfield County University Club, for permis- sion to quote from the publications of the Club; and Miss Mary Alice Hutchins, Assistant Curator of the Litchfield Historical Society, for much help and many valuable suggestions during my researches at the room of the Society. Finally I am indebted to the courtesy of the Litchfield Enquirer, and in particular to the energy and unflagging interest of its superintendent. Mr. S. Carl Fischer, for preparing the work in the limited time available, and to Mr. George C. Woodruff, editor and proprietor, for much assistance in proof-reading.
In quoting directly from older textsv the original spelling has been pre- served, no matter how incongruous to the modern eye. The punctuation has, however, sometimes been modified.
Absolute accuracy in a work so hastily compiled is improbable, and notification of any errors that are discovered will be much appreciated. Supplemental material relating to the history of the Town will always be welcomed by the Litchfield Historical Society and all contributions of such material will be filed for future use. As the history of a community is embodied not only in books but in the objects that have played a part in the life of the community, the reader is urged to visit the rooms of the
X PREFACE
Society, if this volume awakes in him a desire to understand more fully the spirit of the two centuries here described. Contributions of new objects of historic or scientific interest are always valued and are assured a permanent place in the collections of the Society.
A. C. W. Litchfield, Conn., May 17, 1920.
XTable of Contents
1. lutroductorj' 1
2. The Settlement of Litchfield 7
3. The Indians --------- 16
4. The Church on the Green - - 27
5. Colonial Days 38
6. The Age of Homespun, hy Horace Bushnell - - - 50
7. Litchfield in the Kevolution, by Dorothy Bull - - - 65
8. The Golden Age 92
9. The Litchfield Law School 98
10. Miss Pierce's School 110
11. Amusements 121
12. Industries and Merchants; Newspapers . - . - 128
13. The Wolcott Family 141
14. Slavery - 151
15. The Temperance Movement 156
16. Federalists and Demlocrats 162
17. Trees and Parks ; Domestic and Wild Animals - - - 168
18. South Farms; the Morris Academy; Northfield; Milton;
Bantam 178
19. The Churches: the Third and Fourth Congregational
Churches ; the Episcopal Church ; the Methodist Church ; the Baptist Church; the Roman Catholic Church; the
Cemeteries 195
20. The Old Order Changes 204
21. The Civil War --------- 217
22. Impressions and Post-Impressions, by Dr. A. E. Bosttvick 230
23. The World AVar, by Florence E. Ennis - - - - 245
24. Modern Litchfield, by Dorothy Bull 263
APPENDIX— 5^ Florence E. Ennis and Ethel M. Smith - 277
Xist of miustrations
1. Plan of the Village of Litchfield, 1720-25 - - - Frontispiece
2. The Rev. Storrs O. Seymour, D.D., late President, 1893-1918;
and the Hon. George M. Woodruff, President, 1918- , of
the Litchfield Historical Society _ _ . _ . viii
3. Captain Edgar Beach Van Winklei, late Treasurer, the Litchfield
Historical Society, 1895-1920 ------ ix
4. Mrs. John A. Vanderpoel, Vice-President and Curator, the Litch-
Historical Society, 1898- , Portrait by W. J. L. Foster - xvi
5. The Bronson Store, 1819; First Home of the Litchfield His-
torical Society, 1893-1 901 ; now occupied by the Sanctum Club, 1906 _-._ I
6. The Litchfield Hills, from Chestnut Hill; Photograph by Wil-
liam H. Sanford ________ 4
7. Bantam Lake from the North; Photograph by Wm. H. Sanford 5
8. North Street -.._._-. -.14
9. South Street; Photograph by W. H. Sanford - - - - 15
10. Primeval Oak, still standing West of the Gould House on North
Street; Photograph by W. H. Sanford - - - - 24
11. Litchfield from Chestnut Hill; from Barber's Historical Collec-
tions, 1836 -_--_----- 25
12. The Second Congregational Church, 176a, from a sketch by Miss
Mary Ann Lewis, copied by E. N. Vanderpoel ; from Chroni- cles of a Pioneer School. (The building in right of picture is the Mansion House!) - - - - - - - 32
13. The Rev. Lyman Beechen, Pastor of the Congregational Church,
1810-1826 ---------- 33
14. Ebenezer Marsh House, 1759. Site of the Wolcott and Litch-
field Circulating Librarj^ -_---_. 48
15. Samuel Seymour House, 1784. Now St. Michael's Rectory - 49
16. The First Episcopal Church, formerly situated a Mile west of
the Center. 1749. From a drawing by Chas. T. Payne - 58
17. The Rev. Truman Marsh. Rector of St. Michael's, 1799-1829 - 59
18. Governor Oliver Wolcott), Signer of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. Portrait by Ralph Earle, 1782 ; From the Wol- cott Memorial ---------68
19. Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, (Laura Collins). From the Wolcott
Memorial. Painted by Enis, 1782. ----- 69
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
20. Major Moses Seymour. From a Portrait by Ralph Earle, in the
collection of Hon. Morris W. Seyroour - - - - 78
21 .The Moses Seymour House, 1735. Site of Residence of Hon.
George M. Woodruff -------- 7^
22. Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge; from a Portrait by Ralph Earle, in
the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society - - 86
23. Mrs. Benjamin Tallmadge. (Mary Floyd, after whom was named
the Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, D. A. R.) From a Por- trait by Ralph Earle, in the collection of the Litchfield His- torical Society ---------87
24. The Tallmadge House, 1775. Residence of Mrs. John A. Vanderpoel 92
25. Milestone erected near Elm Ridge by Jedediah Strong, 1787 - 93
26. View of the Center about i860, showing Mansion House, 1800,
and the Second Court House, 1798 ----- 96
27. Preparing the Winter's Woodpile for the Mansion House - 97
28. Chief Justice Tapping Reeve, from an Engraving by George Catlin 100
29. Moving the Reeve Law School from its original location on
South Street to West Street in 1846 lOi
30. Judge James Gould. Portrait by Waldo. From Hollister's
History of Connecticut ------- 104
31. The Gould Law School, after it was removed one mile west of
the Center on the Bantam Road and used as a Tenement.
It has since been destroyed by fire ----- 105
32. The Tapping Reeve House, 1774; later owned by Hon. Lewis
B. Woodruff, and now the Residence of his grandson, Lewis
B. Woodruff (Jr). - - 108
33. The James Gould House, built in 1760 by Elisha Sheldon; later
the Sheldon Tavern, where Ge ^ral Wasiiington visited; afterwards owned by Senator Uriah Tracy, son-in-law of Judge Gould ; Professor James M. Hoppin of Yale bought the house in 187 1 from Judge Gould's daughter. It is now owned by Hon. John P. Elton, and it has recently been rented as a summer home by Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Sothern (Julia Marlowe) .____--- 109
34. Miss Sally Pierce - - - - - - - - -H2
35. The Litchfield Academy, 1827 - - - - - - - 113
36. Miss Lucy Sheldon (Mrs. Theron Beach). From a Miniature by
Anson Dickinson, born in Milton, 1779, afterwards a dis- tinguished miniaturist in New York City - -1 - - 116
37. Miss Lucretia Deming. From a Miniature by Anson Dickinson 117
38. The United States Hotel. Formerly and now again known as
Phelps' Tavern ---------122
39. Dr. Daniel Sheldon ---------123
40. Julius Deming Esq. - - - - - - - - -136
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
41. The Lindens, built by Julius Deming in 1793; later occupied by
his daughter, Miss Lucretia Deming;, and afterwards by his grandson, Hon. J. Deming Perkins ; now the Residence of the Misses Kingsbury -------- 137
42. George C. Woodruff (Jr.), Editor of the Litchfield Enquirer - 140
43. Frederick Wolcott Esq. Portrait by Waldo, 1835. From the
Wolcott Memorial -_._-_-_ 141
44. The Wolcott Housev built in 1753, by Governor Oliver Wolcott
Senior; later enlarged by his son, Frederick Wolcott, now
the Residence of Miss Alice Wolcott. From an old Print. - 150
45. The Wolcott House, from a modern Photograph in the Book
of Days --_.-.---- 151
46. The First National Bank, showing the Drug Store taken down in
1914 and replaced by the Annex occupied by the Litchfield Savings Society - - - - - - - - -166
47. Governor Oliver Wolcott Jr. From a Crayon Sketch by Rem-
brandt Peale. From the Wolcott Memorial - - _ 167
48. The Beecher Elm, marking the approximate location of the
Beecher House, which is no longer standing - - - 170
49. The Whipping-Post Elm and Litchfield County House and Jail,
erected 1812 and added to 1896 ------ 171
50. Morris Woodruff. From a Portrait by Anson Dickinson - - 178
51. Maplehurst, the Residence of Horatio Benton in South Farms,
later the South Farms Inn, demolished 1917 - - - i79
52. The old Marsh House, Northfield Hill 184
53. The Major David Welch House, Milton, 1745 _ - - - 185
54. The Third Congregational Church, 1827-29; removed to the Tor-
rington Road in 1873, and known as Armory Hall; now
Colonial Hall -___ 194
55. The Fourth (Present) Congregational Church, 1873 - - - 195
56. The Third (Present) St. Michael's Episcopal Church, 1851 - 198
57. The Fallen Steeple at St. Michael's Church, April 11, 1894 - 199
58. The Second (Present) Methodist Church, 1885 - - - - 200
59. Interior of the Second (Present) St. Anthony's Roman Catholic
Church, 1888 ---------- 201
60. The Blizzard of March 12, 1888, showing the Snowdrift near the
House of Dr. Henry W. Buel ------ 206
61. South Street after the Ice Storm of February 20, 1898 - - 207
62. Hon. George C. Woodruff - - - - - - - -210
63. The Centennial Celebration of Litchfield County, 1751 ; from an
old Print - - - - - - - - - -211
64. Chief Justice Origen Storrs Seymour - - _ _ . 214
65. Judge Lewis B. Woodruff - - - -- - - -215
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
66. Dwight C. Kilbourn _--------220
67. Presentation of Colors to the Nineteenth Connecticut Infantry,
by Hon. William Curtis Noyes, September 10, 1862 - - 221
68. Charge of the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery at the Battle
of Cold Harbor, June i, 1864. From an old Print in D.
Vaill's The County Regiment 224
69. The Triumphal Arch on East Street, August i, 1865 - - - 225 Hon. J. Deming Perkins -------- 232
Dr. Henry W. Buel - - - 233
Judge Edward W. Seymour ------- 238
Mrs. Edward W. Seymour (Mary Floyd Tallmadge) - - 239
74. Mrs. John Laidlaw Buel (Elizabeth C. Barney Buel), State
Regent, Daughters of the American Revolution - - - 248
75. Charles H. Coit, Chairman, Liberty Loan Campaigns - - - 249
76. Dr. John Laidlaw Buel, Chairman, American Red Cross Home
Service Bureau --- 260
Tj. The Morgan-Weir Post, American Legion : Front row, standing left to right: Eugenio Cucchi, Gino Valmoretti, Frank B. Weir, William L. Herbert, T. Joseph Kelly, James H. Catlin, Clarence E. Perkins, Colombano Sassi, William Mooney, Albert W. Clock, William F. Slawson, William M. Foord; Second row, standing left to right : Thomas F. Weir, Charles H. Turkington, James E. Conroy, Charles I. Page Jr., Clif- ford H. Danielson, Sutherland A. Beckwith, Macklin Cun- ningham, William D. Roberg, Alexis Doster, E. Carroll Johnson, James L. Kirwin, Philip W. Hunt, Arthur D. Deacon, Archibald A. MacDonald, John F. Barrett, Thomas Carr, James W. Drury, Edward J. Brahen, Frederick Noz- zioli, Clarence F. Ganung, Edward A. Brennan, Edwin B. Perkins, Thomas J. Knox, Timothy F. Higgins. James F. Burke, Albert S. Fabbri -------261
78. Frederick Deming Esq. --------266
79. The Ruins of the Mansion House and Business Block, after the
Fire of June II, 1886 -------- 267
80. John Arent Vanderpoel -------- 270
81. The Noyes Memorial Building, showing the Sign-Post Elm.
Built in 1901, enlarged in 1906. Home of the Wolcott and Litchfield Circulating Library, and of the Litchfield His- torical Society --------- 271
82. Rear-Admiral George Partridge Colvocoresses - - - - 272
83. Colvocoresses Day, November la, 1899. Presentation of Sword 273
84. Hon. Morris Woodruff Seymour ------ 274
85. The Ozias Seymour House, 1807. Later occupied by Chief
Justice Origen S. Seymour; now residence of Hon. Morris
xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
W. Seymour ---------- 275
86. Hon. James P. Woodruff, Judge of Court of Common Pleas, 1920 300
87. Philip P. Hubbard, Town Treasurer, and Hon. John T. Hub-
bard, Judge of Probate, 1920 ------ 301
88. Miss Cornelia Buxton Smith, Clerical Assistant to the Clerk of
the Superior Court, 1920 ------- 304
89. Frank H. Turkington, Sheriff, 1920 - 305
90. John H. Lancaster, County Commissioner, 1920 - - - - 306
91. Board of Selectmen^ 1920. Seated : H. M. Richards, P. C. Burke,
H. T. Weeks ; standing : C. L. Dudley, W. M. Murphy - - 307
92. George H. Hunt, Town Clerk, 1920 ------ 308
93. Hon. Thomas F. Ryan, Postmaster, 1920 ----- 309
94. Parade of the Litchfield Fire Company, July 4, 1892 - - - 334
95. Picnic of the Sanctum Club, 1910 : Front Row, seated : J. C.
Barnard, R. C Swayze, Dr. J. E. Keller, Dr. J. L. Buel, William H. Sanf ord ; Second Row, seated : S. L. Husted Jr., Rev. S. O. Seymour, D.D., William G. Wallbridge, Seymour Cunningham, William Ray, H. R. Towne, L. A. Ripley, Rev. John Hutchins, A. R. Gallatin ; Third Row, seated : J. H. Bronson, Col. A. E. Lamb; standing: B. S. Clark, John Lindley, William Colgate, G. M. Woodruflf, Frank Blake, E. D. Curtis, J. P. Elton, C. H. Coit, A. A. Kirkham, C. R. Duffie, C. T. Payne, Abbott Foster, H. B. Lewis - 335
96. Floyd L. Vanderpoel, President, Trumbull-Vanderpoel Company 340
97. William T. Marsh, Presidenft. Litchfield Water Company - - 341
98. Hon. Winfield Scott Rogers, Chairman, Bantam Ball Bearing
Company ----__-__- 342
99. Miss Nellie M. Scott, President, Bantam Ball Bearing Company 343
100. View of the Center, about i860 ------- 350
loi. View of the Center, 1920 -------- 351
102. Country Road in Winter, Litchfield. Photograph by William
H. Sanford ---------- 360
Mrs. John A. Vandkrpoki., Cihiator. Litchfield Historical Society
J
u.
CHAPTEB I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The town of Litchfield is the coimty-seat of Litchfield County, Connecticut, and is situated among the Litchfield Hills, which form the south-eastern foothills of the Berkshires. The Soldiers' Monu- ment in the Center Park stands in Latitude 41° 44' 48" North, Longi- tude 73° 11' 25" West of Greenwich. The exact elevation of the Center above sea-level has, strangely enough, not been accurately determined. The Government survey in 1889 gave an approximate elevation of 1,080 feet, while a later private survey showed 1,113 feet; but as other points on the Government map are decidedly too high, and some on the private map somewhat too low, the dis- crepancy is still unexplained. It would be a simple matter to determine, as the Engineering classes at Camp Columbia, the sum- mer school of Columbia University, which is located at the southern end of Bantam Lake, have brought a series of very accurate measurements as far as the north end of the Lake.
The highest point in the township is the summit of Mount Tom, with an actual elevation of 1,291 feet; the figure 1,325, given in the Government's topographical map of 1889, is therefore not at all exact.
The original area of the township, which included the present town of Morris, and also a large tract of land set off to the Town of Torrington in 1866, was 71.9 square miles. The present area is 48.6 square miles.
The largest natural sheet of water in Connecticut, Bantam Lake, lies in part in the township. Before the separation of Morris, 1859, it lay entirely in the town limits. The Lake varies about seven feet in surface elevation between low water and flood, namely between 892.5 and 899.7 feet above sea level. At a surface elevation of 893.5 feet, the students of Camp Columbia have determined its area to be 916 acres, its maximum length 2% miles and its maximum width % miles, the length of the shore line 91^ miles, the average depth 16.1 feet, and the capacity 4,800,000,000 gallons.
The name, Litchfield, is supposed without reasonable doubt to be derived from Lichfield, the Cathedral city of Staffordshire, England; but no tradition is preserved as to why the name was given. Much ink has been spent, to little purpose, to explain why the letter T has been added in the name of our town. Usually its insertion is laid to an inaccurate clerk at Hartford; but it is not at all necessary to suppose such an explanation. We shall see, in our quotations from the early records, how variable all spelling
2 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
was until after 1750, and this was the case in England as much or nearly as much as in New England. In the English records of the early Seventeenth Century, Lichfield is spelled Litchfield very fre- quently; and there is still a small village of Litchfield in the north- ern part of the county of Hampshire. In Windsor, where so many of our first settlers came from, we find resident about 1700 a certain John Wichfield, whose name was also often spelled Witch- field and gradually took this form exclusively. On the whole it appears that a simple philological cause would explain the change as plausibly as any other. Be that as it may, all the other later towns of the same name in the United States have adopted our spelling, as well as several families of the name.
The Indian name of the region was Bantam, a name whose deri- vation will be discussed elsewhere. The first explorers called the region by several different names. Sometimes it was the New Plantation, sometimes it was the Western Lands, sometimes the Western Wilderness, and sometimes the Greenwoods. The last name, derived from the great tracts of both pitch-pine and white- pine which were native, is particularly pleasing and Ave must regret its disappearance locally. The country around New Hart- ford is still spoken of infrequently by this name, and a trace of the old Greenwoods Turnpike from Hartford to Canaan, through Nor- folk, is still preserved in the designation of one of the Norfolk streets.
The geologic history of Litchfield is extremely interesting, as is that of every region where some of its varied pages can still be read by those qualified to do so. We are, however, concerned so urgently with the story of the last two-hundred years, that the hundreds of millions of years preceding must be dismissed in the remainder of this brief introductory chapter. The details given are summarized from an admirable account of this geologic history specially pre- pared by Frederick K. Morris, of the Department of Geology of Columbia University.
The oldest type of rocks around Litchfield may be that called the Becket Gneiss, which covers a large area to the north, notably in Torrington, Winchester, Norfolk and Colebrook, and to the south- west, west of Mount Tom, into Warren and New Milford. These rocks tell of an old sea into which, in the modern way, rivers poured their muddy waters. This sea covered all the parts where this Gneiss is now found, and doubtless stretched on elsewhere, so that all of our town would have been fine sailing. For untold years mud was deposited by the rivers, and limestone was forming too; but whether the limy matter was made by live organisms or was simply a chemical precipitate cannot be determined. The muds and limes cemented into rock, in level-lying, orderly strata, layer hardening upon layer.
Then began a very slow thrusting and folding and lifting of the earth's crust, which with succeeding ages modified the shore line of
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 3
our sea and built up mountains possibly as high as the Rockies now are. No trace of these mountains survives in the shapes of our Litchfield HUls, which shapes are of infinitely more recent origin, as we shall see. The importance to us of these older, vastly greater mountains lies in the fact that their formation, thrusting great masses of rock away from the center of the world, released the pressure which heretofore had kept more or less rigid the deep, hot interior of the earth. This rich material from within, the molten sources of our present granites, together with the eager gases and vapors we associate with volcanoes, came pushing towards the surface ever more insistantly and searchingly as the pressure was more and more relieved. They filled the natural crevices between the upthrust rocks, until perhaps some great mass of this upthrust, stratified rock was completely surrounded by the molten matter from below. With nothing to support it, the mass would sink engulfed into the underlying liquid depths, and, for aught now known, the liquids and gases may have reached the surface and built noble volcanoes.
The chief work of the dissolved vapors from within, in the Litchfield region, was not however volcanic. The most volatile substances, water, fluorine, boron, and the rest, were concentrating in the upper chambers of the molten realms below, with an outward pressure quite beyond our conception. Eeaching at last the old sedimentary bottom of our ancient sea, now upthrust into moun- tains, they soaked into the rock as into a sponge, between its beds and its mica flakes, in large and small streaks, until the bedded rock and the molten visitors were blended so inextricably, that to-day one's hand, in many places, may cover a dozen alternations of rock type ; while elsewhere long streaks of large-crystaled, glitter- ing rock may be found cutting through the native rock for hundreds or thousands of feet. Such streaks are called Pegmatites, and bring many of the rarer minerals from great depths to within our reach long after their formation.
The so-called Becket Gneiss, then, is a compound of the old sediment first described and of the various igneous or molten infil- trations and saturations to which it was subjected- Rare traces of the original sediment are still found. According to the Con- necticut State Geological Survey's Report, 1906, the oldest clear sediment consists of what is called the "Poughquag Quartzite and Schist", which is mapped by Prof. Rice and Dr. Loughlan as sur- rounding Bantam Lake, except on the West and North-west. There are exposures of it also on the road toward Mount Tom.
Litchfield itself lies upon the next rock to be described. This is the Hartland Schist, which was originally undoubtedly a sediment, partly limestone, partly sandstone, but mostly clay shale. It, too, has undergone profound burial, great heating, and complex injection by igneous fluids. It is more markedly modified than the Poughquag Schist. It is a light colored mica-schist, silvery smooth when fine-grained, crystalline and glittering when the mica
4 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
flakes are large. It is full of garnets, none of which are of gem- quality, but many are decidedly handsome. Blue and white blade- like crystals of Kyanite, three inches long, and brown, double-ended crystals of Staurolite, an inch long, are common.
Among the oldest invaders in these original sediments are the dark igneous rocks that once were black masses of basalt or trap. These quite possibly date from an igneous invasion even older than the one described for the Becket Gneiss, an invasion characterized by dark molten rocks instead of by light ones. These black rocks were changed by the squeezing of the earth's crust during the moun- tain making into the sheeted, streaked, dark, pepper-and-salt rocks now called Amphibolite Gneiss or Schist. Mount Tom and Little Mount Tom are made of it, and there is a patch of it west of the road from Litchfield to East Morris.
North of Mount Prospect lies another great belt of yet another schist, the Berkshire Schist, probably younger than the Becket Gneiss. The problem of the relative ages of the schists is indeed a profoundly difficult one, still far from satisfactory settlement. All the tentative tables that have been published, such as those of the Connecticut State Geological Survey, are liable to revision at any time. All we can say with certainty is that it all happened very long ago, and that the present complex folding and thrusting of these oldest rocks are evidence that the mountains they tell of formed, at one time or at different times, a great area of many ranges. Beyond the old sea which preceded these mountains we are powerless to look.
Now followed a third great series of events, the shifting of shallower seas over the land, the patient downwear of the first great mountains, the later sinkings and re-elevations of the land. The changes came so gradually that perhaps the world from century to century seemed not much less stable then than it does to us to-day. The changes, too, involved so vast an area than no one region con- tains more than a fraction of its record- The rocky mass of Mount Prospect is possibly a witness of this period. It is a dome of molten rock, of a different and, it would appear, a much later type than its neighbors. The hill contains many varieties of igneous rocks, some light, some dark in color, among which are found the half melted fragments of those earlier rocks already described, which the uprising liquid masses broke off and engulfed. Here are the oldest limestones, too, but wholly changed by the hot juices that have attacked them. Here, finally, are the ores which caused so much excitement about I860; these were among the last ingredients to crystalize and were brought last of all to their present resting places by the molten energies from within. All this may have happened at about the time that the Appalachians were being folded and uplifted, the time also when the leisurely dinosaurs were about to start on their upward evolution.
The next period lies almost wholly outside of the Western High- land. It includes the making of the red sandstones and the red
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD s
and dark shales of the Connecticut Valley Lowland. It was the time when the dinosaurs were becoming numerous and large. But for Litchfield the importance of the age lies in the occurrence of a renewed and extended volcanic activity, the last outburst of vol- canism known anywhere between New England and the Kocky Mountains. Dark lavas, rich in iron-bearing minerals, were injected into the earth's crust and poured liberally upon its surface from Nova Scotia to Virginia; and some found their way through the crust in our township, a part of this last crop of igneous rocks.
In the following age arose a new series of mountains, of a shape and structure like the present mountains of Utah and Nevada, which must not be confused with those earlier mountains when the schists were made. This renewed splitting and tilting of the earth's crust necessarily left many cracks and zones of crushed stone called faults, into which, as well as into the less frequent earlier cracks, we bore hopefidly for artesian water.
Then came two geologic periods, during which the slow attrition of weather and time wore the mountains down again into one great level plain, upon which roamed the last of the dinosaurs. The remarkably even sky-line of our hilltops to-day marks where the level of this plain used to be, for our hilltops are all that is left of the surface of the plain.
During the next age, a slow uplift, with many and long halts, raised the whole plain, enabling the rivers and streams to cut their present deep valleys inch by inch. Our hills, as we know them, are the foundations of the ancient mountains, the remnants of the great plain in which the valleys have been carved by erosion. None of our hills are the direct result of a special upthrust. But they trend north and south exactly as did the mountains of which we see the roots.
There was only one more period in the making cf our landscape, the time of the ice-age, that most recent great event in geologic history. A sheet of ice thousands of feet thick moved out over the continent from centers in Canada. The part that crossed Western Connecticut melted upon I^ong Island. It has been asserted that it was not less than 1,500 feet thick where it passed over New Haven. Such a masterful glacier would freeze into its mass and carry along with it every particle of soil from the land it traversed; it would even attack the bed rock and tear out large and small blocks by simply freezing fast to them and ripping them out of their places as it moved gradually onward. The hills that form Long Island's backbone are the general dimiping place of whatever materials, from fine clay to huge boulders, the melting ice still retained at its journey's end.
As the ice melted back from off the country, it deposited sheets and piles of bouldery soil over all the land it had once covered. All the soil of Connecticut, except recent swamps and river bottoms, was laid down by the glacier, or by streams of melting water gush- ing from the ice, or in lakes formed and held in by dams of ice
6 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
across valley outlets. Sometimes the valley outlets were dammed by glacial drift, which remained after the ice had melted; then the lakes were permanent or gradually subsided into swamps- Most conspicuous of the glacial formations are the shoals of boulder clay formed under the ice, much as an overloaded river builds long shoals in its bed. The ice glided over these deposits, smoothing and slicking them, plastering them with fresh material and model- ing them into long, oval, gently rising hills. Such hills we call Drumlins, and they are among Nature's most gracefiQ forms. Their long axis lies in the direction in which the ice moved, just as the river-shoal is elongated parallel to the water current. There are many Drumlins about Litchfield, notably on all sides of Bantam Lake, except on the south. Signs of the glacial action are about us on every hand: the stray boulders, like the famous Medicine Kock on Chestnut Hill ; the peat swamps, like the one on the land of the Litchfield Water Company, where great deposits have been dumped; the beds of sand or gravel, deposited by the streams within the ice sheet, or as the deltas of streams rushing out of it; Bantam Lake itself, which, with its tributary ponds, covered a much larger tract than it does now, probably including South Plain, Harris Plain and the Little Plain. These and others testify to us con- stantly of the past history of Litchfield.
We must turn now to the story of the last two-hundred years, but let us not forget as we go about the roads and fields of our township that we can read, in the whale backs of our drumlin hills, in the level sky-line which was once the level plain, in the uplifted edges of bedded rock which are the roots of once mighty mountains, in the shining schists that were once sea-bottom clays and have been as it were through water and fire, and everywhere in the sheets and streaks and greater masses of molten volcanic crystalline rock, an infinitely greater story wherein the only measures of time are the thicknesses of deposited strata, the periods of mountain build- ing, the forever unknowable periods of the patient wearing down again of the mountains by the rivers and waves and weather, periods in which the pulse of years beats too rapidly to be counted and into which our whole two centuries will ultimately merge as an undistinguished instant.
CHAPTER II.
THE SETTLEMENT OF LITCHFIELD.
The following statement of the conditions prevailing before 1715 ia the region in Connecticut, in which Litchfield is situated, is from Kilbourne, pp. 17-18: "In 1630, about ten years after the landing of the pilgrims on Plymouth Eock, the whole of the territory of the present State of Connecticut was conveyed by the Plymouth Com- pany to Eobert, Earl of Warwick. On the 19th of March, 1631, the Earl executed the grant since known as the Old Patent of Connecti- cut, wherein he transferred the same tract to Viscount Say and Seal, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, John Pym, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and others. In the summer of 1635, the towns of Hartford, Wethers- field and Windsor, on the Connecticut River, first began to be settled by emigrants from the vicinity of Boston. StUl a year later, the Rev. Thomas Hooker and his congregation made their celebrated journey through the wilderness, from Cambridge, Mass., to Hartford, where they took up their permanent residence. In 1637, the Pequot War was begun and terminated, resulting in the expulsion and almost total annihilation of the most formidable tribe of Indians in the colony.
"The first Constitution adopted by the people of Connecticut bears date, January 15, 1638-9. This continued to form the basis of our colonial government until the arrival of the Charter of Charles II., in 1662, when it was nominally superceded. Alternate troubles with the Dutch and Indians kept the settlers, for many years, in a perpetual state of discipline and alarm. But while the political commotions in the old world sometimes agitated the other American colonies, the people of Connecticut had from the first felt that their civil rights were guaranteed to them beyond the reach of any contingency. The Royal Charter was but a confirmation of privileges which they had long enjoyed. No king-appointed Gov- ernor or Council annoyed them by their presence or oppressed them by their acts; but the voters were left to choose their own rulers and enact their own laws. Indeed, the influence of the crown was for a long period scarcely felt in the colony. On the accession of James II., however, in 1685, the whole aspect of affairs was changed. It was soon rumored that His Majesty had determined to revoke all the charters granted by his predecessors. The arrival of Sir Edmund Andros at Boston, in December 1686, bearing a commission as Gov- ernor of New England, was an event not calculated to allay the apprehensions of the people of Connecticut. His reputation was
8 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
that of a selfish, grasping despot, bent upon enriching himself and immediate friends at the expense of the colonists. At this time, the entire region now known as the County of Litchfield, except a solitary settlement at Woodbury, on its southern frontier, was an unexplored wilderness denominated the Western Lands. To save these lands from the control and disposal of Andros, the Legisla- ture granted them to the towns of Hartford and Windsor, at least so much of them as lay east of the Housatonic Kiver. When the usurpations of Andros were over and the Charter had found its way back from the hollow of the oak to the Secretary's office, the Colonial Assembly attempted to resume its title to these lands; but the towns referred to steadfastly resisted all such claims. The quarrel was long kept up, but no acts of hostility were committed until efforts were made to dispose of the tract. Collisions then became frequent. Explorers, agents and surveyors, of one party, were summarily arrested and expelled from the disputed territory by the contestants."
In May 1725 a mob broke open the Jail in Hartford and liberated the prisoners therein. Kilbourne and others have usually assumed that this occurred in connection with the arrests in the Western Lands; Frederick J. Kingsbury, in an address before the Litchfield Historical Society, 1909, attributed the riot to other causes, adding, however, that "while the Litchfield disturbance was not the imme- diate cause of the jail delivery, the feeling engendered by it had doubtless infused a spirit of disregard for colonial legislation which made the jail delivery more easy than it might otherwise have been."
However this may be, a compromise was presently arrived at between the colony on the one hand and the towns of Hartford and Windsor on the other, by which title to the territory of the Western Lands was divided between the claimants of both parties. The township of Litchfield was included in the share assigned to the towns of Hartford and Windsor. Meanwhile, the towns were not waiting the consent of the colony, but, as we have seen, were pro- ceeding with explorations and settlements on their own responsi- bility, and were endeavoring to substantiate their claims by pur- chases of the Indian rights to different parts of the Western Lands.
"As early as the year 1657", (Woodruff, p. 7), "I find certain Indians of the Tunxis or Farmington tribe conveyed to William Lewis and Samuel Steele of Farmington, certain privileges, as appears by the following copy of their deed:
"This witnesseth that we Kepaquamp and Querrimus and Mataneage have sould to William Leawis and Samuel Steele of ffai-mington A p sell or a tract of land called Matetucke, that js to say the hill from whence John Standley and John Andrews brought the black lead, and all the land within eight mylle of that hill on every side; to dig; and carry away what they will and to build in jt for ye use of them that labour there; and not otherwise to improve
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 9
ye land. In witness whereof wee have hereunto set our hands, and thos Jndians above mentioned must free the purchasers from all claymes by any other Indyans.
Witnes ; John Steel. William Lewis,
february ye 8th 1657. Samuel Steele.
The mark f ebru ye 8th
of Kepaquamp. 1657.
The mark f ebru ye Sth
of Querrimus. 1657.
The mark 0/ february ye 8
Mataneage. 1657."
This title was confirmed fifty seven years later, August 11, 1714, by a quit-claim deed to the same parties and their heirs by the Indians of these same tribes then living. The deed is given in full in Woodruff's History, pp. 9-11. It is extremely quaint, but not sufficiently important to the story of Litchfield to reprint here entire. It begins:
"To all christian people to whom these presents shall come, Pethuzso and Taxcronuck with Awowas and ye rest of us ye sub- scribers, Indians belonging to Tunxses or otherwise ffarmington jn theyer majesties Colony of Connecticut jn New England send greet- ing", and continues to reconvey the Hill whence the black lead came. Just where this hill known as Mattatuck was has caused a good deal of discussion. Woodruff most plausibly supposed it to be in the southern part of Harwinton, embracing that town and also some portion of Plymouth (then Mattatuck or Waterbury) and Litchfield, possibly what we now know as Northfield and Fluteville. CertaiJi it is that on the 11th of June 1718, the Farmington claimants relinquished whatever rights they held under these two deeds to Hartford and Windsor, and in lieu thereof received one-sixth of the whole township of Litchfield in fee.
Meanwhile Hartford and Windsor had been busy getting a title
10 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
of their own to the township. The affairs of the Western Lands, (Kilboume, p. 19), were "transacted by committees. In 1715, these towns took the initiatory steps towards exploring that portion of the wilderness now embraced within our corporation limits, and purchasing whatever rights the natives possessed to the soil. It would be interesting to know who was the first individual of the Anglo-Saxon race that ever visited the localities so cherished by us all. The earliest record evidence is contained in an entry in the first Book of Eecords in our Town Clerk's of&ce, which is as follows :
"The Town of Hartford, Dr.
To John Marsh, May 1715, For 5 days, man and horse, with expenses, in viewing the Land at the New Plantation, £ 2 0 0
The Town of Hartford, Dr.
Jan. 22, 1715-6, To 6 days journey to Woodbury, to treat with the Indians about the Western Lands, by Thomas JSeymour, To expenses in the journey,
The Town of Hartford, Dr.
To Thomas Seymour, Committee,
May 1716, By 2 quarts of Bum, i
Expenses at Farmington,
Expenses at Waterbury,
Paid Thomas Miner towards the Indian purchase.
Expenses at Woodbury,
Expenses for a Pilot and protection.
Fastening horse-shoes at Waterbury,
Expenses at Waterbury,
Expenses to Col. Whiting, for writing 40 deeds,
" to Capt. Cooke for acknowledging 18 deeds,
" to Ensign Seymour,
" at Arnold's,
" by sending to Windsor,
August 4, 1718.— Sold 11 lots for £
Expenses for writing 20 deeds, to Mr. Fitch,
" to Capt. Cooke for acknowledging deeds,
"for making out a way,
at Arnold's,
" to Thos. Seymour for perambulating north
line " at Arnold's,
|
£ 1 4 1 14 |
0 9 |
|
£ 2 18 |
9 |
|
0 2 |
6 |
|
4 |
9 |
|
1 |
7 |
|
7 10 |
0 |
|
2 11 |
0 |
|
1 10 |
0 |
|
2 |
0 |
|
1 |
8 |
|
1 10 |
0 |
|
IS |
0 |
|
1 0 |
0 |
|
1 0 |
7 |
|
1 |
0 |
|
49 10 |
0 |
|
10 |
0 |
|
7 |
0 |
|
2 0 |
0 |
|
11 |
0 |
|
1 6 |
4 |
|
1 0 |
4 |
|
37 17 |
9 |
|
12 |
0 |
|
3 |
0 |
|
6 |
0 |
|
7 |
0 |
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD ii
Feb. 10, 1718, — At a meeting of the Committees, then sold 16 lots reserved by Marsh for Hartford's part, At same meeting, paid by John Marsh for expenses, At same meeting, loss of money by mistake in acc't., April 14, 1719. — A meeting of the Committees, expenses April 27. — At a meeting of the Committees, expenses.
By the earliest of these entries, we learn that John Marsh was sent out from Hartford to view the lands of the New Plantation, in May 1715. He may, therefore be regarded as emphatically the pioneer explorer of this township",
Dwight C. Kilbourn, in the Connecticut Quarterly, September 1896, has given us a most pleasing account of this memorable trip, which could to-day be made in a morning's ride. "So John Marsh left his wife, Elizabeth Pitkin, and their seven small children, to spy out this land rumored to be so wonderful, and started on what seemed to him a perilous journey, for the Indian lurked behind the forest trees ready for his scalp. He had had in his Hadley birth- place too intimate an acquaintance with their methods to think lightly of their presence, and then there were bears, panthers, and other unpleasant companions likely to greet him. With his horse and flint-lock musket he started, — the first dozen miles through Farming- ton to Unionville was through a settled country, with good farms and houses, then crossing the Tunxis and entering the wilderness of Burlington, he could only follow over the hills the trails of the hunters and trappers, and wind his way from one summit to another as best he could, through the deep valleys and gorges of Harwinton. Beaching the Mattatuck he forded it a little below the present railroad station at East Litchfield, at the old fording place, and began to climb the steep ascents to Chestnut Hill, and arrived there as the sun was beginning to hide itself behind the moun- tains beyond. Before him was as beautiful a panorama as mortal eye could rest upon, — the Lakes sparkling in the sunset, and the broad meadows around them with the newly started grass, a living carpet of emerald spreading before him for miles with here and there a fringe of fresh budding trees, all inviting the weary traveler to rest and refresh himself. Descending the hill he crossed the' river near South Mill, and pitched his camp for the night near the big spring at the southern end of Litchfield Hill, where, a few years later he chose his home lot.
"All of this fair region which he had seen was called by the Indians 'Bantam', and comprises large portions of the present towns of Litchfield, Morris, Bethlehem, Washington, Warren, and Goshen; and for three days he explored the beautiful, fertile hills and plains. The Indians were friendly, the fish plenty, game abundant, and the spicy perfumes of the opening buds and wild blooming flowers wafted to his old Puritan heart a new sense that softened his soul and let him enjoy for once his natural blessings; instead of encountering dangers and tribulations, his journey had
12 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
been one of rest and pleasure. On the fifth, day he returned to Hartford. What report he made of his trip is not now known. That he made a favorable report is almost certain, for the next January Thomas Seymour was sent to Woodbury to treat with the Indians about these Western Lands, was gone six days, and suc- ceeded so well in his negotiations that John Minor, the noted magis- trate of ancient Woodbury, executed a deed of land, from eleven Indians, covering substantially the township of Litchfield as origin- ally laid out".
This deed is given herewith in full, from Woodruff's History, pp. 13-15. "To all people to whom these presents shall come — Know ye that we CHUSQUNNOAG, COEKSCKEW, QUIUMP, MAGNASH, KEHOW, SEPUNKUM, PONI, WOKPOSET, SUCK- QIIN:^fOKQUEEN, TOWEECUME, MANSUMPANSH, NOKKGNO- TONCKQtTY — Indians natives belonging to the plantation of Pota- tuck within the colony of Connecticut, for and in consideration of the sum of fifteen pounds money in hand received to our full satisfaction and contentment, have given granted bargained and sold and by these presents do fully freely and absolutely give grant bargain sell and confirm, unto Colo William Whiting, Mr. John Marsh, and Mr. Thomas Seymour, a Committee for the town of Hartford, — Mr. John Eliot, Mr, Daniel Griswold, and Mr. Samuel Kockwell, a Committee for the Town of Windsor, for themselves, and in the behalf of the rest of the Inhabitants of the Towns of Hartford and Windsor, — a certain tract of Land, situate and lying, north of Waterbury bounds, abutting southerly, partly on Waterbury and partly on Woodbury, — from Waterbury Kiver westward cross a part of Waterbury bounds, and cross at the north end of Woodbury bounds to Shepaug Eiver, and so notherly, in the middle of Shepaug River, to the sprains of Shepaug River below Mount Tom, then run- ning up the east branch of Shepaug River, to the place where the said River runs out of Shepaug Pond, from thence to the north end of said Pond, then east to Waterbury River, then southerly as the River runs, to the north end of Waterbury bounds upon the said River; which said Tract of Land thus described, To Have and to Hold, to the said Col. William Whiting, Mr. John Marsh, and Mr. Thomas Seymor, Mr. John Eliot, and Mr. Daniel Griswold, and Mr. Samuel Rockwell, Committees for the Towns of Hartford and Windsor, as aforesaid, in behalf of themselves and the rest of the Inhabitants of said Towns, to them, their heirs and assigns, to use occupy and improve, as their own proper right of Inheritance, for their comfort forever; together with all the privileges, appur- tenances and conditions to the same belonging, or in any wise appur- taining. And further, we the said Chusqunnoag, Corkscrew, Qui- ump, Magnash, Kehow, Sepunkum, Poni, Wonposet, Suckqunnok- queen, Toweecume, Mansumpansh, and Norkgnotonckquy, owners and proprietors of the above granted Land, do for ourselves and our heirs, to and with the above said William Whiting, John Marsh,
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
13
Thomas Seymor, John Eliot, Daniel Grriswold, and Samuel Kock- well, committee as aforesaid, them, their heirs and assigns, covenant and engage, that we have good right and lawful authority, to sell the above granted land, — and further, at the desire and request of the aforesaid committee, and at their own proper cost and charge, will give a more ample deed.
And for a more full confirmation hereof, we have set to our hands and seals, this second day of March, in the second year of his Majesties Keign, Annoq. D. 1715.
Memorandum; before the executing of this instrument, it is be understood, that the grantors above named have reserved themselves a piece of ground sufficient for their hunting houses, near a mountain called Mount Tom.
Signed sealed and deliv ered in our presence.
Chusqunnoag clL^ his mark. [l.s.
Weroamaug UV his mark. Corkscrew ^^ his mark. [l.s.
Quiump Q^ his mark. [l.s.
Magnash / his mark. [l.s.
Kehow ^"r his mark. [l.s.
Sepunkum ff\ his mark. [l.s
Wognacug l^\ his mark.
Tonhocks •+- his mark.
John Mitchell Joseph Minor.
Poni
Wonposet
his mark, [l.s his mark. [l.s.
Suckqunnockqueen
/ his mark. [l.s. Taweeume^^^j l^is ^^ark. [l.s. Mansumpansh | his mark. [l.s.
The Indians that subscribed and sealed the above said deed, appeared personally in Woodbury, the day of the date thereof, and acknowledged the said deed to be their free and voluntary act and deed. Before me JOHN MINOK, Justice."
The Committees, named in this deed, conveyed all their interest in said Lands, to the Towns of Hartford and Windsor, by Deed dated August 29, 1716.
"The title to this Township", continues Woodruff, p. 16, "having been entirely vested in the Towns of Hartford and Windsor, and in
14 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
certain inhabitants of Farmington; in 1718, a company was formed for the settlement of the Town. The Township was divided into sixty rights or shares^ three of which were reserved for pious uses. Purchasers having been found for the remaining fifty-seven shares, on the twenty-seventh of April, 1719, deeds of conveyance of that date, were made, by committees of the Towns of Hartford and Wind- sor, and certain inhabitants of Farmington, conveying to the pur- chasers the whole plantation called Bantam. Exclusive of the three rights reserved for pious uses, the consideration paid for forty- eight of the shares was £229.10.0., in bills of public credit. That paid for seven shares was £31.4.0. The deeds of the above fifty-five shares, are recorded on our Kecords. How much was paid for the remaining two shares, which were purchased by John Marsh, does not appear. The three home lots, with the divisions belonging thereto, forming one twentieth of the whole plantation, devoted to public purposes, were, one home lot with the divisions and commons thereto pertaining, to the first minister, his heirs forever; one, to the use of the first minister and his successors; and one for the support of the school. As the Township included about 44,800 acres, the cost per acre did not exceed one penny three farthings.
"It was provided in the Deeds, that, 'the Grantees or their sons, should build a tenantable house on each home lot, or on their division, not less than 16 feet square, and personally inhabit them, by the last day of May 1721, and for three years ensuing; and do not lease or dispose of their share for five years hereafter, without consent of Inhabitants or first Planters'.
"The title thus acquired, was immediately after stUl further confirmed by Act of Assembly in May, 1719, as follows:
"At a General Assembly holden at Hartford, May, A. D. 1719: Upon the petition of Lieut. John Marsh of Hartford, and Deacon John Buel of Lebanon, with many others, praying liberty, under committees appointed by the towns of Hartford and Windsor, to settle a town westward of Farmington, at a place called Bantam:
"This Assembly do grant liberty, and full power, unto the said John Marsh and John Buel and partners settlers, being in the whole fifty-seven in number, to settle a town at said Bantam; the said town to be divided into sixty rights, three whereof to be improved for pious uses in said town. And the other fifty-seven shall be, as soon as may conveniently be, settled upon by the under- takers, or upon their failure, by others that may be admitted. Said town to be in length, east and west, eight miles three quarters and twenty eight rods, and in breadth seven miles and a half, being bounded eastward by Mattatuck Eiver, westward the bigger part upon the most western branch of the Shepaug Kiver, and south by Waterbury bounds and a west line from Waterbury corner unto Shepaug Kiver; said town to be known by the name of Litchfield, and to have the following figure for a brand for their horse kind.
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 15
viz : 9. And the same power and privileges that other towns in this Colony do enjoy, are hereby granted to said town'.
"A Patent was afterwards granted to these Proprietors, dated May 19, 1724, which may be seen in the Appendix-
"The township was originally divided into sixty home lots of fifteen acres each, as near as could conveniently be done, and any deficiency there might be, was made up to the owner of the deficient lot, elsewhere; and still farther divided from time to time, into Divisions and Pitches of 4, 20, 60, and 100 acres.
"A few individuals commenced the settlement of the town in the year 1720. In the year 1721, a considerable number, chiefly froiu the towns of Hartford, Windsor and Lebanon, moved on to the trace." Kilbourrie says, p. 28, that the first settlers who came in 1720 were Capt. Jacob Griswold, from Windsor, Ezekiel Buck, from Wethersfield, and John Peck, from Hartford.
''The choice of home-lots", continues Woodruff, p. 19, "was decided by lot. The first lot selected was about half a mile south of the Court House, and next to Middle Street or Gallows Lane". All these selections of lots are shown in Plate I, as well as the names of the old streets. The second choice was half a mile still further south; the third three quarters of a mile west of the Court House, the site of the present Elm Eidge. The eleventh choice was the lot thirty rods next west of the County Jail corner, which sub- sequently the Town voted, was not fit for building a house upon. The Library corner on South Street was the twenty-fifth choice. The County Jail corner on North Street was the thirty third choice. Ten lots were selected on Chestnut Hill, on both sides of the road.
"The home lot of the first minister, was located on the comer of North and East Streets, where now stands the house owned by Miss Edith D. Kingsbury ; and the twenty acre division appurtenant thereto, was laid adjoining on the north. The home lot and twenty acre division for the use of the first minister and his successors, adjoining on the north; and the home lot and twenty acre division for the school, adjoining the latter on the north.
"The highway from Bantam river, running westerly through the village, was laid out twenty rods wide, and called Meeting House Street, now called East and West Streets. That now called North Street, twelve rods wide, was called Town Street. That now called South Street, eight rods wide, was called Town Hill Street. That now called Gallows Lane, twenty eight rods wide, was called Middle Street. That now called Lake Street, four rods wide, was called South Griswold Street; and that now called North LEike Street or Griswold Street, eight rods wide, was called North Griswold Street. That now called Prospect Street, twenty rods wide, but soon reduced to seventeen rods, was called North Street.
"The first Church, Court House, and School House stood nearly in the center of Meeting House Street, the Court House about oppo- site the center of Town Street, the Church east, and the School House west of the Court House".
CHAPTEE III.
THE INDIANS.
According to DeForest (History of the Indians of Connecticut, 1852), Litchfield County was, before the coming of the white men into the State of Connecticut, 1630-1635, almost a desolate wilderness, so far as human habitation was concerned. He estimates that the Indians in the whole State at that time did not exceed six or seven thousand, and that these were clustered in small groups along the shores of the Sound and along the larger rivers, where the lands were best adapted for corn and where they could depend largely on fishing for their food supply. The occasional raids of the Mohawks from the Hudson Kiver were a further discouragement to the Connecticut tribes from inhabiting the western forests of the State. As the white men arrived in increasing numbers, the Indi- ans were pushed back into the western wilderness, so that probably their numbers in Litchfield County increased very much between 1630 and 1720; but their total numbers in the whole State decreased proportionately much more. Many were killed in the Pequot, Philip's, and the French and Indian wars; while those who withdrew into the western wilderness found the lands much poorer for corn and the fishing greatly inferior.
"At the time of the Litchfield settlement, therefore", says Albert M. Turner of Northfield, "the woods were not by any means full of Indians; and though Litchfield was for some years a true frontier town, the settlement became immediately too strong to fear being overcome by them. All the same the terrors of Philip's war must have been constantly present in the thoughts of the colony", and we shall see presentily something of their fears and alarms.
Cothren (History of Ancient Woodbury, 1854), gives by far the most detailed account of the Pootatuck tribe, tracing them back to 1639. Their principal encampment was near the mouth of the Pomperaug Kiver, so named by the English after their sachem, Pom- peraug, who died ten or twelve years before the arrival of the first settlers in 1673. The Wyantinucks, of New Milford, he con- siders also a branch or clan of the Pootatucks, and their sachem in 1720 was Weraumaug, whose name appears in the Litchfield deed of 1716 as a witness. At least three of the signers of that deed seem to have signed earlier grants to Woodbury settlers, though the spell- ing of the names varies somewhat. Thus Corkscrew in earlier deeds appears to have been called Cocksure.
Probably the Bantams, like the Wyantinucks, were mere out- lying fringes of the Pootatucks. The Scatacooks of Kent, who were
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 17
the last Indians in the County, did not exist as a tribe until 1735, when they were collected from various scattered remnants by Mau- wehu, himself a Pequot and a wanderer.
The chief relics of the Indians to-day are the arrow-heads, which are still turned up occasionally by the plough. Thirty years ago th^ were very common, though now they are rarely found. An admirable collection of these, from different sources, will be found in the latchfield Historical Society's rooms, embracing many differ- ent shapes and colors. Occasionally the arrow-head was grooved in such a way as to make the arrow rotate, so that its flight would be more direct and its effect on entering the body more deadly. Usually however rotation was provided for by the feathering. Occasionally larger objects, pestles and mortars, spear-heads, axes, bowls and rude knives have been found. A fine collection was unearthed in a grave or deposit by the late Amos C, Benton, when he opened the sand- pit west of his residence on the South Plain. In the autumn of 1834 a piece of 'aboriginal sculpture* was found, of which a long account is given in the Enquirer of October 2, 1834, beginning, "A discovery of a singular carved stone image, or bust, representing the head, neck and breast of a human figure, was made a few days since on the Bantam River, about forty or fifty rods above the mill-dam, half a mile east of this village". Kilbourne, p. 66, says that this curious relic is preserved in the Cabinet of Yale College. Since this was written, unfortunately, «11 trace of the image appears to have been lost. It is not in the Peabody Museum, nor is there anj record of its accession.
One other relic of the Indians survives in their signatures to the deeds of their lands. These Kilbourne omitted as being mere scrawls. We have copied them from Woodruff's History. Possibly some at least were individual marks, like a brand. Certainly in some of the Woodbury deeds, Nonnewaug's mark is quite plainly a snowshoe, and perhaps some of those on our deeds have their meaning if we could read them. At any rate, these marks, how- ever rude, were made by the red man himself, and add a distinctive touch to the deeds.
In his Centennial Address, 1851, Judge Church spoke rather bitterly of these deeds, p. 26 : "There are other monuments", he said, "to be sure, of a later race of Indians; but they are of the white man's workmanship: the Quit-claim deeds of the Indians' title to their lands! These are found in several of the Towns in the County, and upon the public records, signed with marks uncouth and names unspeakable, and executed with all the solemn mockery of legal forms. These are still referred to as evidence of fair pur- chase! Our laws have sedulously protected the minor and the married woman from the consequences of their best considered acts; but a deed from an Indian, who knew neither the value of the land he was required to relinquish, nor the amount of the consideration
1 3 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
he was to receive for it, nor the import nor effect of the paper on which he scribbled his mark, has been called a fair purchase!"
Certainly the price of fifteen pounds paid to the Indians for the township of Litchfield does not seem a munificent sum now-a-days; but it can easily be pointed out that the Indian himself had no legal title to the lands he was conveying, that the lands were of no value to him except for hunting and that he distinctly reserved for his own use the best hunting land, that on Mount Tom. Surely, when we recollect the general treatment of the American Indian by the whites, the Litchfield deeds may be considered as a model of fairness! In connection wtih the Indians' reservation of rights on Mount Tom, it should be explained that this name probably means the Indians' mountain, Tom being the generic name applied by early settlers to any Indian, just as the English soldier is called a Tommy, though for quite a different reason doubtless. Possibly, Tom was an affectionate diminutive of Tomahawk? Certainly, the expres- .sion Indian Tom is found not infrequently in old writings. Here is an anecdote from the Monitor, January 30, 1787: "The Indian tribes consider their fondness for strong liquors as a part of their character, A countryman who had dropped from his cart a keg of rum met an Indian whom he asked if he had seen his keg on the road; the Indian laughed in his face, and said: "What a fool are you to ask an Indian such a question; do not you see that I am sober? Had I met with your keg, you would have found it empty on one side of the road, and Indian Tom asleep on the other".
Of direct adventures with the Indians only two authenticated stories are preserved, both by James Morris, in his Statistical Account, pp. 96-97: "In May, Captain Jacob Gris would, being alone in a field, about one mile west of the present court-house, two Indi- ans suddenly rushed upon him from the woods, took him, pinioned his arms and carried him oflf. They travelled in a northerly direc- tion, and the same day arrived in some part of the township now called Canaan, then a wilderness. The Indians kindled a fire, and after binding their prisoner hand and foot, lay down to sleep. Gris- would fortunately disengaging his hands and his feet, while his arms were yet pinioned, seized their guns, and made his escape into the woods. After traveling a small distance, he sat down, and waited till the dawn of day; and although his arms were still pinioned, he carried both the guns. The savages awoke in the morn- ing, and finding their prisoner gone, immediately pursued him; they soon overtook him, and kept in sight of him the greater part of the day, while he was making his way homeward. When they came near, he turned and pointed one of his pieces at them: they then fell back. In this manner he travelled till near sunset; when he reached an eminence in an open field, about one mile north-west of the present court-house. He then discharged one of his guns, which immediately summoned the people to his assistance. The Indians fled, and Griswould safely returned to his family.
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 19
"The capture of Griswould made the inhabitants more cautions for awhile; but their fears soon subsided. In the month of August of the year following (1723), Joseph Harris, a respectable inhabitant, was at work in the woods alone, not far from the place where Griswould was taken; and being attacked by a party of Indians, attempted to make his escape. The Indians pursued him; and find- ing that they could not overtake him, they shot him dead, and scalped him. As Harris did not return, the inhabitants were alarmed, and some search was made for him; but the darkness of the night checked their exertions. The next morning they found his body and gave it a descent burial. Harris was killed near the north end of the plain, where the road turns towards Milton, a little east of a school house, now standing; and for a long time after this plain was called Harris Plain". It is said that the body of Harris was found at the foot of a large elm near the comer of the plain. This elm has long since disappeared; a younger tree now stands alone near the same spot, and bears a small tablet. A monument to Harris was placed in the West Cemetery in 1830 by popular subscription.
"There has been but one instance of murder in this town", wrote Morris further in 1814, p. 98, "since its first settlement, and that was perpetrated by John Jacobs, an Indian, upon another Indian, in the month of February, 1768. The murderer was executed the same year". This murder created so much excitement, that a distinguished divine from Farmington, Timothy Pitkin, was asked to preach a ser- mon to the condemned man before the execution. This remark- able discourse has been preserved in an old pamphlet, described at length by Dwight C. Kilboum, (Bench and Bar, 1909, p. 341).
In spite of the fact that the Indians did no serious damage to the inhabitants, beyond the murder of Harris, the possibility of trouble was always present. The condition of Litchfield in its very first years is well described by Kilbourne, p. 37, "Here and there, little openings had been made in the primeval forest, by the axes of the settlers. Forty or fifty log cabins were scattered over the site now occupied by this village and its immediate vicinity. A temporary palisade stood where our court-house now stands, and four others were erected in more remote parts of the town for the protection of the laborers at the clearings: all soon to give place to stronger and more permanent structures. The nearest white settle- ments were those at New Milford on the south west and at Wood- bury on the south, both some fifteen miles distant. An almost unbroken wilderness stretched westward to the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, and northward two hundred and fifty miles to the French villages in Canada. Without mail or newspapers, and with no regular means of communication with their friends in the older towns, they seemed indeed shut out from the world, and dependent on their own little circle for intdlectual and social enjoyment. Is
ao THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
it to be wondered at, that some of the first proprietors should have fled from scenes so nninyiting and hazardous, even at the risk of forfeiting the lands they had purchased?
"In the autumn of 1722, a war had broken out between the Province of Massachusetts and the Eastern Indians, and in a short time its direful influences were felt in Connecticut, some of which have already been adverted to. The savages on our borders, many of whom had previously manifested a peaceful and conciliatory spirit, gave evidence that their professions of friendship were not to be relied upon. In the spring of 1723, the Committee of War, in Hartford, sent a military corps to keep garrison at Litchfield- At this time, there were about sixty male adults in the town, a large proportion of whom had families". (See the lists of original pro- prietors and of first settlers in tlie Appendix).
"Such was the apprehension of danger from the Indians, during this period, that while one portion of the men were felling the for- ests, plowing, planting or reaping, others, with their muskets in hand, were stationed in their vicinity to keep guard". We cannot help thinking, however that the picture is a little exaggerated, when Kilboume adds, "The yells of the Indians at the war-dance, an omi- nous sound, were heard on the distant hills, and at midnight their signal-fires on Mount Tom lit up the surrounding country with their baleful gleam". Be that as it may, in August 1723 the murder of Harris made the settlers keenly alive to their danger. A meeting was held immediately "to consider of and agree upon some certain places to fortify or make Garrisons for the safety and preservation of the inhabitants". At this meeting it was resolved to build four outlying Forts, to supplement the one on the site of the present court-house. Nearly two years later, at a Town meeting, May ID, 1725, "it was voted and agreed, that there shall forthwith be erected one good and substantial Mount, or place convenient for sentinels to stand in for the better discovering of the enemy and for the safety of said sentinels when upon their watch or ward; that is to say, one Mount at each of the four Forts that were first agreed upon and are already built in said Town, which Mounts shall be built at the Town's cost, by order and at the discretion of such men as the Town shall appoint to oversee and carry on the above said work. At the same meeting, Voted, that Joseph KUbourn shall take the care of build- ing the Mount at the North Fort, and Samuel Culver shall take the care of building the Mount at the East Fort, and Jacob Griswold at the West Fort, and Joseph Bird at the South Fort".
A letter from John Marsh to Governor Talcott written at this time has happily been preserved. It will be noted that an exchange of letters between Litchfield and Hartford once in twenty months was taken as a matter of course at this time:
"Litchfield, June ye 1, 1725. To ye Hon'ble John Talcott, Gov'r. Sir: Knowing full well ye interest that you, our lawful governor, dothe feel and hath often exprest about our little settlement in this
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD zi
wilderness, I am moved to write you about our affairs once more., Since I was honored by writing to you aboute twentie months ago, our four fourts or Garresons have been built, all but some mountes for the convenience of Sentinnels. The Garreson at the west our townes men have named fourte Griswold, and the north one fourt Kilbourn because of the godly men who helped most to bild them. The other fourts one at the south end of the town and on Chestnut Hill. These Garresons have done our settlers great good in quiet- ting their fears from the wild Ingians that live in the great woods.
"But we have been so long preserved by God, from much harm, and we praise his nam for it, and take hope for the time to come. Many of our people morne for there old home on the Great Biver, but they are agread not to go back.
"About the moundes at the fourtes. I am enstructed by ye select men to make known to you their desires that the CoUony shall pay for them.
"With many and true wishes that God will preserve you and his CoUony for the working out of his good pleasure, I am yours inost truly, John Marsh, Town Clerk".
Of these forts, Morris wrote , p. 94, "Between the years 1720 and 1730, five houses were surrounded with palisadoes. One of these stood on the ground near the present court-house; another about half a mile south; one east, and one west of the centre; and one in South Farms. Soldiers were then stationed here, to guard the inhabitants, both while they were at work in the field, and while they were attending public worship on the Sabbath".
These forts, however, were not considered adequate to protect the settlement during these critical years. "On the 1st of April, 1724", Kilbourne, p. 39, "John Marsh was chosen agent of the town 'to represent their state to the General Assembly concerning the settlement and continuing of their inhabitants in times of war and danger'.
"In May, the subject of the Indian disturbances in this quarter occupied much of the time and attention of the Council of War and of the Legislature. The Indians on the western lands were ordered to repair immediately to their respective places of residence, and not to go into the woofts without Englishmen in company with them, 'nor to be seen, contrary to this order, anywhere north of the road leading from Hartford to Farmington, Waterbury, and so on to New Milford'. They were warned to submit to this order on pain of being looked upon as enemies, and treated accordingly. Two hun- dred men from Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor, were directed to hold themselves in readiness to march at the shortest notice; and sixty more from each of the comities of New Haven, Fairfield and New London, with their proper officers, were called for to supply the garrisons at Litchfield and New Milford, when the soldiers then at those posts should be withdrawn. Friendly Indians were to be
^ THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
employed in scouting with the English, and twenty pounds each were to be paid for the scalps of the enemy Indians. An effective scout was to be kept marching in the woods north of Litchfield between Sims- bury, Westfleld and Sackett's Farm, (Sharon). The thirty two men, sent on to scout from Litchfield were directed to be drawn off in ten dayB'^ During the Legislative Session of May 1725, Nathaniel Watson, of Windsor, and Matthew Woodruff, of Farmington, each presented a petition for a bounty for having shot an Indian during the preceding summer, while in the King's service at Litchfield.
Among the papers on file in the office of the Secretary of State is the following memorandum made by Governor Talcott (Kil- bourne, p. 41).
"A brief account of the minutes of the Council of War Book, of men sent into the service this summer, from May 24, to October 6, 1724 :
After the Assembly rose, ten men were sent to Litchfield, till June 24.
June 25 — Four men sent to Litchfield from Hartford.
June 30 — Major Burr sent ten men, and Major Eles ten men, to New Milford and Litchfield.
July 27 — Six men sent from Woodbury to keep garrison at Shepaug twenty days.
August 18 — Fifteen men were improved in scouts under the command of Sergt. Joseph Churchill, at Litchfield and New Milford; have orders sent to the sth instant of October to draw off and disband.
October, 1724. JOSEPH TALCOTT."
At the General Assembly, in May 1725, Joseph Churchill, of Wethersfield, mentioned in tie preceding paragraph, presented a Memorial, stating that he had served for fifteen weeks at Litchfield, but had received no pay for Sundays. He therefore aaked pay for fif- teen Sundays. This was granted in the Lower House, but lost in the Council
"By our Town Records it appears", (Kilbourne, p. 42), "that on the 151ii of October, 1724, a Memorial to the General Assembly was agreed upon and ordered to be signed by John Marsh, in the name of the town, and sent to New Haven by lie hand of Timothy Collins, to be delivered to the Court. This Memorial is not on record in Litch- field, but is fortunately preserved among the files in the Secretary's office in Hartford. It is an impressive and interesting document, and eloquently details the trials and perils encountered by our fathers :
"A Memorial of the distressed state of the inhabitants of the Town of Litchfield, which we humbly lay before the Honorable General Assembly now sitting in New Haven :
May it please your Honors to hear us in a few things. Inasmuch as there was a prospect of the war's moving into these parts the last year, the Governor and Council — moved with paternal regards for our safety — ordered Garrisons forthwith to be erected in this town. In obedience thereto, laying
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 23
aside all other business, we engaged in that work, and built our fortifications without any assistance from abroad, whereby our seed-time in some measure was lost, and consequently our harvest this year small The seat of the war in this colony (in the whole course of the concluding summer), being in this town, notwithstanding the special care taken of us by the Honorable Committee of War, and the great expense the colony has been at for our security^ yet the circumstances of our town remain very di£Ficult in several respects. The danger and charge of laboring abroad is so great, that a considerable part of our improvable lands remote from the town lie unim- proved, whereby we are greatly impoverished, so that many of our inhabitants are rendered incapable of pajnng their taxes which have been granted for the settling and maintaining of our ministry and building a meeting-house, which we are yet destitute of, whereby that great work seems to be imder a fatal necessity of being neglected.
Many of our Inhabitants are drawn off, which renders us very weak and unable to defend ourselves from the common enemy, and the duties of Watching and Warding are become very heavy.
By reason of the late war, our lands are become of little value, so that they who are desirous of selling, to subsist their families and defray public charges which necessarily arise in a new place, are unable to do it. Your humble petitioners therefore pray this Honorable Court would be pleased to take thought of our difficult circumstances, and spread the gar- ment of pity over our present distress, which moves us to beg relief in several respects :
1. That our deserting proprietors, who do not personally inhabit, may be ordered to settle themselves or others upon their Rights, which will not only be an encouragement to those that tarry, and render our burden more tolerable, but prevent much charge to the colony.
2. That our Inhabitants may be under some wages, that they may be capable of subsisting in the town, and not labor under the difficulty of war and famine together.
3. That some addition be made to the price of billeting soldiers, especi- ally for this town, where the provision, at least a greater part of it, hath been fetched near twenty miles for the billeting of soldiers this year.
4. That some act be made concerning Fortified Houses, that the peo- ple may have free liberty of the use of said Houses as there is occasion-
5. That there may be an explanation of the Act of the Governor and Council made the last summer, which obliges every proprietor of a home lot to attend the military, by himself or some other person in his room, as the law directs, in case a person hath fifty pounds in the public list; for many of our deserters have put off their home lots and some of their lands, so that many of them have not a whole Right or a home lot in this place, and so escape execution upon that act.
As to the Indians himting in our woods, we submit to your Honors' ordering that affair as in your wisdom you shall think best for us.
All of which we humbly recommend to the consideration of this Honor- able Assembly, and ourselves your servants desiring Heaven's blessing to rest upon you, and that God Almighty may be with you, to direct in all
24 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
weighty affairs which are before you, and make you rich blessings in your day and generation, your humble petitioners shall, as in duty bound, ever, pray.
JOHN MARSH,
In the name and by desire of the rest".
Another petition wa« presented by John Marsh and others at the next Legislative Session, May 1725; this and the Resolutions adopted as a result by the General Assembly are given at length by Ejlboume, pp. 4346. It will be sufficient to reprint here the follow- ing Resolutions, passed by the General Assembly at the spring ses- sion of 1725.
"This Assembly, taking into consideration the difficulties of the Town of Litchfield in this time of trouble with the Indians, and that sundry per- sons claiming Rights in said Town are not resident in the same, have there- fore Resolved :
1. That each person claiming a Right or Rights in said Town, that shall not be constantly residing in said Town, shall pay and forfeit, towards defraying the public charges in defending the same, the sum of thirty pounds per annum for each Right he claims, and so pro rata for any time he shall be absent without allowance from Capt. Marsh, John Buel and Nathaniel Hosford, or any two of them ; and by the same rule of propor- tion for part Rights. And if any such claimer shall neglect payment of the said forfeiture at the time and to the Committee hereafter appointed in this Act, the said Committee are hereby fully empowered to sell so much of the lands in Litchfield claimed by such non-resident person, as will answer the sum so forfeited ; and all sales and alienations made of such Lands by the Committee, shall be good for the holding the same to the grantees and their heirs forever. And this Assembly appoint Major Roger Wolcott, Capt. Nathaniel Stanley, Esq., and Mr. Thomas Seymour, a Committee to take account of all forfeitures that shall arise by force of this act, and upon the non-payment of the same, to make sale of the Lands as aforesaid.
And it is further ordered, That all such forfeitures shall be paid to the said Committee at the State House in Hartford, on the first Monday in June, which will be in the year 1726; and the said Committee are to deliver all such sum or sums as they shall receive by force of this Act, unto the Treasurer of this Colony, taking his receipt for the same — the said Com- mittee to make their accounts with the Assembly in October, provided never- theless that the Right of Joseph Harris is saved from any forfeiture by force of this Act And it is further provided, that if any such claimer shall keep an able-bodied soldier in said Litchfield, who shall attend duty as the Inhabitants do, such claimer shall be excused for his non-residence during such time.
2. And it is further enacted, That all houses that are fortified in said Town, shall be free for the use of the people and soldiers in the garrison.
3. That the Inhabitants of said Town shall be allowed five shillings and sixpence per week for billeting soldiers.
4. That Mounts shall be built in the Forts that are already made in said Town, at the public cost of the Colony. ...
Primf.val Oak
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 25
5. That all able-bodied young men that are dwellers in said Town and are eighteen years old and upwards, and have no right to any Lands in. said Town, and shall constantly reside therein until October next, and do duty with the Inhabitants, shall be allowed three shillings per wedc out af the Public Treasury, until October next, unless the Committee for the War in Hartford shall order to the contrary for part of said time.
6. That every able-bodied man that is fit for service to the acceptance of the commissioned officers, that hath a Right in said Town, and shall constantly reside therein and do his duty according to the command of the captain until October next, shall be allowed out of the Treasury eighteen pence per week, unless the Committee for the War shall order to the con- trary for part of the time".
There was another side of the matter, which affected the incon- venience of the men drafted to help in the garrisoning of Litchfield, as we find from another petition submitted to Governor Talcott in May 1725:
"To the Honorable Joseph Talcott, Governor of His Majesty's Colony of Connecticut — Whereas, When your humble Petitioners were impressed to come up to Litchfield to keep garrison, we were encouraged by our offi- cers to come, because it was but for a little while we should be continued here, just till the Inhabitants could get their seed into the ground. That business being over, and our necessity to be at home being very great, we humbly pray your Honor to dismiss or exchange us by the beginning of June ; whereby your Honor will greatly oblige your Humble Petitioners.
JOSEPH ROSE, Litchfield, May 23, 1725. In behalf of the rest".
"During the summer of 1725", (Kilbourne, p. 47), "the war with the Eastern Indians still continued, though it does not appear that the people of Litchfield suffered in consequence, except in being kept in a state of suspense and anxiety.
"It is not until a year later, October 1726, that the records give indication that any immediate danger was again apprehended by the people of this Town. At this date, 'upon news that the Indian €nemy were coming down upon our frontier*, it was resolved 'that there be forthwith thirty effective men raised in the towns of New Haven and Wallingford to march to Litchfield, to be under the direction and command of Capt. John Marsh, of Litchfield, for the defense of said town — twenty of whom shall be raised in New Haven, and ten in Wallingford; and that a Sargeant march with them directly from each of said towns; and that the Major of the County make out his orders to the Captain in said town accord- ingly'.
"Twenty effective men were at the same time ordered immediately to be raised in Milford, and marched to New Milford, to be under the command of Capt Stephen Nobles, for the defence of that town. Cap- tains John Marsh and Stephen Nobles were directed at once to *send forth small scouts, to call and in the name of the Assembly to com-
a6 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
mand all the friendly Indians to retire to their respective towns or plac^ where they belong, and not to be seen in the woods except with English men'. The friendly Indians were to be employed for the defense of the frontiers and for scouting, and were to be paid eighteen pence per day while engaged in the latter service and twelve pence per day for warding and keeping garrison in towns. Five men were directed to be sent from Woodbury for the defense of Shepaug until the danger should be over".
This was the last serious alarm caused by the Indians, but (Kilbourne, p. 68), "Other Memorials, of a later date than those given, complain of the difficulties which the settlers still encountered, and asked for legislative interference in their behalf. Indeed for more than thirty years after the Garrisons were erected, they were resorted to with more or less frequency, by individuals and families, on account of apprehended danger. One of these Garrisons stood on Chestnut Hill and was remembered by Elisha Mason, who died in Litchfield on May Ist, 1858".
OHAPTEB IV.
THE CHURCH ON THE GREEN.
The earliest records of the town of Litchfield are found in the Becord Book of the Proprietors in Hartford and of the Town Meet- ings in Litchfield. This old manuscript covers all the ground from 1715 to 1803. The long narrow pages are often difficult to decipher from age and from the unusual characters of the ancient caligra- phy. It is without doubt the most valuable and curious single volume in our town. Through the wise forethought of our Town- Clerk, George H. Hunt, these old pages have been faced with trans- parent silk and strongly bound, and may be consulted by those inter- ested at the Court House. They should be examined by all who are curious about old Litchfield history.
The Proprietors' meetings occupy one end of the book and the Town meetings the other. Apparently the first entry of a town meeting is undated. "Deacon John ^uel and Nathaniel Smith were appointed a Committee to hire a minister, and to 'make and gather a rate* to pay him for his services among us*. This Committee employed Mr. Timothy Collins, of Guilford, a young licentiate who had graduated at Yale College in 1718. At the next Meeting, held Kovember 6, 1721, it was voted, 'that Mr. Collins be forthwith called to a settlement in this place in the work of the ministry'; and it was stipulated that he should receive fifty-seven pounds per year for four years, and thereafter, as follows: 'the fifth year, sixty pounds; the sixth year, seventy pounds ; the seventh year, eighty pounds ; and so to continue at eighty pounds per year* so long as he should remain in the pastoral office. It was also agreed to pay him one hundred pounds previous to the 1st day of July, 1722, and to furnish him with firewood". (Kilboume, p. 28).
"The amount of his firewood for a series of years was by vote to be eighty cords per annum. This provision, very liberal for the times, was accepted by Mr. Collins on December 12, 1721 ; he entered upon his labors, was ordained on June 19, 1723, and continued to be the minister of the Congregational Society till the 15th of November 1752, when he was dismissed. He afterwards continued here, acting as a Justice of the Peace, and in the practice of Medicine, and died in 1776". (Woodruff, p. 21).
Timothy Collins is referred to ajs eccentric, but we shall never know what his peculiarities were. On the whole he does not appear to have been the right man to start the new colony. Dissension arose, first over pecuniary, and then apparently over personal, mat-
28 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
ters. His salary was liberal, as Woodruff says, but doubtless Ms expenditures were considerable also. He claimed that it was insuf- ficient; and a long and bitter discussion arose, which lasted for the greater part of his stay. Naturally the population did not want higher rates, and they were already burdened with many charges. The foundation of an Episcopal Society as early as 1745 was probably due in part at least to disafifection with Mr. Collins. It is at least noteworthy that in December of that year a Committee was appointed "to eject Mr. Collins from the Parsonage Eight". The year before this, 1744, the Town voted "not to make any rate for Mr. Collins under present difficulties", and at the same time a Committee was appointed to treat with him respecting his salary and "absence from the work of the ministry". On two occasions, 1751 and in 1753, after his withdrawal from the ministerial oflBce, charges were brought against him before the Consociation and in Town Meeting, for unfaithfulness in his office. Both were protested against, but the pecuniary troubles lasted for a few years longer. Mr. Collins had his supporters, as well as his detractors, as is shown by his subse- quent election to various civil offices, such as Lister and Selectman; and it should be noted that the only lawsuit brought against him was decided in his favor. In 1755, he was appointed Surgeon of one of the Connecticut Regiments in the Expedition against Crown Point.
"In April 1723, the inhabitants voted to build their first Church ; and the house was finished within three years. It was built in a plain manner and without a steeple. Its dimensions were 45 feet
in length and 35 in breadth At the raising, all the adult males in
the whole township, being present, sate on the sills at once. In the year 1760, the inhabitants agreed to build their second church; and completed it in 1762. Some time after a bell was procured". (Morris, p. 96).
As George C. Woodruff says, p. 26, it was probably in view of the construction of the first Meeting House, that the town voted, December 9, 1723, that "whos6ever shall sell or tranceport any pine boards out of the Town, shall forfit ten shillings per thousand".
The first church stood in Meeting-House Street, a little to the north of its center, and nearly opposite the northern extremity of Town Hill Street (South Street), as it now runs.
The second church was near the same site, and was 63 feet long and 42 feet wide. After its completion, the old church was sold at auction in November 1762.
This second church was the most justly celebrated of any of the two dozen or more church edifices that have been erected within our town limits. Here were enacted the most stirring home scenes of the Revolution; here Judah Champion preached for nearly fifty years; and here Lyman Beecher thundered against intemperanca Here the law students and the girls of the Litchfield Academy wor-
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD at)
shipped; here were the pews of all the distinguished families of the town.
Inside, it was not at all a church such as we would recognise to-day. Of it Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote: "To my childish eye, our old meeting-house was an awe-inspiring thing. To me it seemed fashioned very nearly on the model of Noah's Ark and Solo- mon's Temple . . . Its double row of windows ; its doors, with great wooden quirls over them; its belfry, projecting out at the east [west?] end; its steeple and bell; all inspired as much sense of the sublime in me as Strasbourg Cathedral itself; and the inside was not a whit less imposing. How magnificent, to my eye, seemed the turnip-like canopy that hung over the minister's head, hooked by a long iron rod to the wall above! and how apprehensively did I con- sider the question what would become of him if it should fall! How^ did I wonder at the panels on either side of the pulpit, in each of which was carved and painted a flaming red tulip, with its leaves projecting out at right angles, and then at the grape-vine, in bas-relief, on the front, with exactly triangular bunches of grapes alternating at exact intervals with exactly triangular leaves. The area of the house was divided into large square pews, boxed up with a kind of baluster work, which I supposed to be provided for the special accommodation of us youngsters, being the loophole of retreat through which we gazed on the remarkabilia of the scena . . . But the glory of our meeting-house was its singers' seat, that empyrean of those who rejoiced in the mysterious art of fa-sol-la-ing. There they sat in the gallery that lined three sides of the house, treble, counter, tenor and bass, each with its appropriate leader and supporters. There were generally seated the bloom of our young people, sparkling, modest and blushing girls on one side, with their ribbons and finery, making the place as blooming and lively as a flower-garden, and fiery, forward, confident young men on the other". (Autobiography, VoL I., p. 211).
The pews opened onto two aisles, which ran up and down the diurch, the seats occupied the other three sides of each pew, so that when the pews were full one-third of the congregation were seated with their backs to the pulpit.
The first church was never heated, though individual members of the congregation would bring their own foot-stoves in very cold weather. No stove was introduced into the second church until 1816, when there occurred the great Stove War, about which much has been written. Kilboume, p. 165, quotes the account of the editor of the Hartford Courant, who claims to have been a pro- tagonist in this famous struggle: "Violent opposition had been made to the introduction of a stove into the old meeting-house, and an attempt made in vain to induce the Society to purchase one. The writer was one of seven young men who finally purchased a stove, and requested permission to put it up in the meeting-house on trial. After much difficulty, the Committee consented. It was all arranged «n Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday we took our seats in the
30 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
Bass, rather earlier than usual, to see the fun. It was a warm November Sunday, in which the sun shone cheerfully and warmly on the old south steps and into the naked windows. The stove stood in the middle aisle, rather in front of the Tenor Gallery. People came in and stared. Good old Deacon Trowbridge, one of the most simple-hearted and worthy men of that generation, had been induced to give up his opposition. He shook his head, however, as he felt the heat reflected from it, and gathered up the skirts of his great-coat as he passed up the broad aisle to the Deacons* Seat. Old Uncle Noah Stone, a wealthy farmer of the West End, who sat near, scowled and muttered at the effects of the heat, but waited until noon, to utter his maledictions over his nut-cakes and cheese at the intermission. There had in fact been no fire in the stove, the day being too warm. We were too much upon the broad grin to be very devotional, and smiled rather loudly at the funny things we saw. But when the editor of the village paper, Mr. Bunce, came in, who was a believer in stoves for churches, and with a most satisfied air warmed his hands by the stove, keeping the skirts of his great-coat carefully between his knees, we could stand it no longer, but dropped invisible behind the breastwork. But the climax of the whole was when Mrs. Peck went out in the midst of the service! It was, however, the means of reconciling the whole society; for, after that first day, we heard of no more opposition to the warm stove in the meeting-house".
Once they became accustomed to the stove, even the opponents to its introduction must have appreciated its warmth in the very cold weather. The services were very long, and were continued in the afternoons. The congregation went home for a meal between the two services, but those from out-of-town had to rely on the hospitality of those near the church, or on the convenience of the Sabbath-day Houses, Sabbaday Houses, as they were colloquially called.
"At a town meeting, December 1753, liberty was voted to Isaac Hosford and others 'to erect a house for their convenience on Sab- bath Days, east of the meeting-house'. In January 1759, liberty was granted to John Farnham to 'set up a Sabbath-Day House in the highway a little north of the School House'. Capt. Edward Phelps erected a similar house in the middle of East Street nearly opposite the present Congregational church; and still another was remembered by the late Elisha Mason, which stood on the south side of East Street, near the present Hinsdale house. , . . These houses generally consisted of two rooms, each about twelve feet square, with a chimney between them and a fire-place in each room; and in such cases were erected at the expense of two or more families. If the cold was extreme the hired man or one of the sons might be sent forward in advance of the family, to get the room well warmed before their arrival. The family, after filling the ample saddle-bags with refreshments, took an early start for the sanctuary. Calling first at their Sabbath-Day House, they
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 31
deposited their luncheon. At noon, they returned to their room, with perhaps a few friends. The fire was re-kindled, the saddle- bags were brought forth and their contents placed upon a prophet's table, of which all partook. The patriarch of the household then drew from his pocket the notes he had taken of the morning ser- mon, which were fully reviewed, all enjoying the utmost freedom in their remarks. All then returned to the church. Before start- ing for home at the close of the afternoon service, they once more repaired to their Sabbath House, gathered up the saddle-bags, saw that the fire was left safe, and in due time all were snugly seated in the sleigh, and bound homeward". (Kilboume, p. 74).
"The subject of seating the meeting-house often came up for action in town meeting and produced not a little commotion. Vari- ous standards were used in other towns to secure a fair seating list, such as. Long public service, Dignity of descent. Rank in the Grand List, Age, and Piety. In December 1735, a Committee was appointed in Town Meeting to proceed as follows: 'Every man's list for four years past shall be added together, and every man's age be reckoned at twenty shillings per year, to be added to his list; and for them that have not four lists, they shall be seated by the last list, or according to the discretion of the committee'. The Committee pro- ceeded according to these instructions, but the result did not suit. Their doings were ordered to be set aside; on April 12, 1736, a new committee was appointed, with no other instructions than to act in accordance with their best judgment. Their action, for a won- der, was acquiesced in", (Kilboume, p. 58).
"All ecclesiastical as well as school affairs were transacted in town meeting until the year 1768. The Second Ecclesiastical Society having been incorporated in South Farms in 1767, the First Society met for the first time. May 9, 1768. There was little done at these Society's meetings, from year to year, except to appoint officers, Committees and Choristers. Now and then we find an entry of a different character. Thus, December 1772, measures were 'taken for coloring the meeting-house and putting up Electrical Rods'. At the same meeting, the Society's Committee were directed 'not to let the Town's stock of Powder and Ball to be stored in said house'." (Kilboume, p. 173). To this Miss Esther H. Thompson (Water- bury American, March 8, 1906) has added the following reflections: "This measure may have been taken because some of the more con- servative men were not quite sure whether increasing safety or danger might be the result of the other vote to provide Electrical Ro<l8 for the church! When we remember the comparative isola- tion of our town and the slowness with which changes of any kind were then effected we are surprised at the intelligence and enterprise of our former townspeople as shown by this record of December 1772, only 20 years after Benjamin Franklin, far away in Phila- delphia, was flying his first kite to bring down lightning from the skies, and only 17 years after his invention of the lightning rod! Ninety years later, when in the Avinter of 1861-2, the Third Con-
32 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
gregational church was struck by lightning it is curious that dam- age should have been caused by a defective lightning conductor, possibly the identical rod of heavy links that had served on the ol«i church !"
After Mr. Collins had left the church, in February 1753, the Town voted to call the Rev. Judah Champion, of East Haddam^ a graduate of Yale 1751, and to offer him two thousand pounds in old tenor money for his settlement, and a yearly salary of eight hundred pounds, old tenor money.
Mr. Champion accepted the call, was ordained July 4, 1753, and continued in the ministry till 1798. His salary was continued till his decease in 1810, in his 82nd year. For the purpose of paying the settlement of Mr. Champion, it was voted, on June 14, 1753, to lease to him so much of the Parsonage Right as should be necessary for that purpose, for the term of 999 years. And on January 15, 1754, a lease of the home ^ot and twenty acre division adjoining^ was given to Mr. Champion, in consideration of said settlement. This land was known later as the glebe land, and the title is pre- served in the name of the house owned by Mrs. W. W. Rockhill, which is called The Glebe.
In personal appearance, Judah Champion is described as shorty erect, with an elastic gait; hp had a frank, open countenance, that bespoke his sincerity and fearlessness. He exercised unbounded influence over his parish. As a preacher, he was ardent and elo- quent, though he is said to have lacked somewhat of 'discrimination in his theology'. This was so severe a fault in those days, that Dr. Bellamy, the great theologian of Bethlehem, once jocosely said that *he would like to have brother Champion made over again'. During his pastorate, 1753 to 1798, 280 persons were added to the church upon the profession of their faith; he officiated at 2,142 baptisms, 658 marriages, and 1,530 funerals.
The subject of the minister's salary still gave continued trouble, owing to the fluctuating currency- Judah Champion was so uni- versally beloved, however, that the matter was never allowed to make the personal difficulty which it had caused with Timothy Col- lins. In 1779, the Society, in an endeavor to stabilize his salary, voted to pay him seventy-five pounds sixteen shillings, as a year's salary, "in the following articles at the prices affixed. Wheat at four shillings per bushel; Rye at three shillings; Indian Corn at three shillings; Flax at sixpence per pound; Pork at twenty-five shillings per hundredweight; Beef at twenty shillings per hundred- weight; Tried Tallow at sixpence per pound; Lard at fivepence; Oats at one shilling per bushel".
Mr. Champion's successor was the Rev. Dan Huntington, a tutor at Yale College. He was ordained in October, 1798. "During his ministry, a remarkable religious awakening overspread this and the adjacent parishes, resulting in the conversion of about three hundred persons among the different denominations of Litchfield.
rr^^U „, lib?,. Ja^Ct-nAolvn ij, Ij^y
Thf. Secoxo Cuxgr^xatioxai. Church, 1762
From a Sketcli l:v Miss M:irv Ann I.ewis
Rev. Lyman Beecher
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 33
'This town*, says Mr. Huntington, 'was originally among the num- ber of those decidedly opposed to the movements of former revival- ists; and went so far, in a regular church meeting called expressly for the purpose under the ministry of Mr. Ck)llins, as to let them know, by a unanimous vote, that they did not wish to see them. The effect was, they did not come. The report circulated, that Litchfield had 'voted Christ out oi their borders'. It was noticed by some of the older people, that the death of the last person then a member of the church, was a short time before the commencement of our revival'." (Kilboume, p. 174).
Again the difficulties of salary arose, and finally in 1810, Mr. Huntington decided to leave, though with much mutual regret. In March, 1810, the Society voted a unanimous call to the Rev. Lyman Beecher, which was accepted, and he was installed on May 30, 1810. Litchfield was so fearful that the salary might be inadequate to a preacher of the reputation which Lyman Beecher had already estab- lished at East Hampton, that it awaited his arrival with some trepidation. Happily all turned out for the best, and the sixteen years of Beecher's pastorate were memorable ones for the town.
He has left us his own first impressions of his reception. (Auto- biography, Vol. I., p. 185) : "I found the people of Litchfield impatient for my arrival, and determined to be pleased, if possible, but somewhat fearful that they shall not be able to persuade me to stay. The house yesterday was full, and the conference in the evening, and , so far as I have heard, the people felt as I have told you they intended to. Had the people in New York been thus pre- disposed, I think I should not have failed to give them satisfaction. My health is good, and I enjoy good spirits some time past; am treated with great attention and politeness, and am becoming acquainted with agreeable people".
The following notice of Lyman Beecher is abbreviated from Morgan's Connecticut as a Colony and as a State, Vol. IV., pp. 285- 286 : "... Lyman Beecher, great father of great children, who, on the bleak Litchfield hills and in the seething discussions of Boston, brought up his children in such fashion that they became a power for good in their generation.
"Possibly his life did not seem to him successful; it was at least full of struggla Descended from one of the original settlers of New Haven, he was graduated from Y'ale in 1797, and after a brief settlement in Easthampton, Long Island, went to Litchfield, where he remained for sixteen years. Dr. Beecher was a preacher of powerful sermons, rather than a writer of monumental works. . . Removing to Boston as the pastor of the Hanover Street Church, he encountered the Unitarian movement in its aggressive stage; and so strong was the feeling against such rebutting influences as his that when his church burned down, the firemen refused to put out the fir& Again at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, he struggled for twenty years to found a Western institution, only to be defeated at
34 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
last by the triumpliant pro-slavery party. Here, all unknown, were influences that were shaping the future Uncle Tom's Cabin. Dr. Beechers sermon on Duelling at the time of Hamilton's death at the hands of Aaron Burr, was verj' impressive; and his Views on Theology, and Political Atheism were read with much attention, Dying in 1863, he sleeps in New Haven, the place of his birth".
E. D. Mansfield wrote of him, (Personal Memories, p. 138) : "His house was just across the street from Mrs. Lord's, where I boarded, and as my window was on that side of the house I used often to see him and hear his violin, of which he was very fond, sending forth merry tunes. It is said that he would return from a funeral and send forth the quickest airs from his fiddle. He was of the most cheerful temperament. . . . He was called the 'great gun of Cal- vinism', and it seemed to me the very irony of fate to see him tried ten years after by the Presbytery of Cincinnati for heresy in Cal- vlnistic Theology".
Theodore Parker once said that Lyman Beecher was the father of more brains than any other man in America. Little can be said here of these children, as only their childhood was spent in Litchfield. The lives of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Isabel Beecher Hooker, the pioneer of women's rights, Thomas Beecher, and the rest belong elsewhere. We may at least give an anecdote of each of the first two during their lives in Litch- field.
It was while a pupil at Miss Pierce's Academy that Harriet Beecher first distinguished herself in the literary line. At a public exhibition of the school, three of the best compositions of the year were read aloud by the teacher. "When my turn came", she wrote in after life, "I noticed that my father, who was sitting on high by Mr. Brace, brightened and looked interested, and at the close I heard him ask, 'Who wrote that composition?' 'Your daughter. Sir,' Avas the answer. It was the proudest moment of mj^ life". The subject of this essay by so young a child is perhaps the most remarkable part of the story. It was: 'Can the Immortality of the Soul be proved by the light of Nature?'
Clarence Deming had many stories of the Beechers. which he collected from David C. Bulkley and William Norton. He has described the Henry Ward Beecher of Litchfield as a stout, florid youngster of the stocky type, running around in short jacket, with a fresh and rather moonish face, fair hair, pretty closely cropped above, but with one of those curls plastered before the ear which our ancestors used to style 'soap-locks', from the chief agent used in their construction.
"A little way back from their school", Mr. Deming used to tell, ''was an old barn with full hay mow, where the boys played during recess. On the crest of the mow, Henry built himself a ridge of hay into the rough likeness of his father's pulpit. By making a hole l)ehind it, he lowered himself so as to bring the pulpit's edge
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 35
to his chest; in some way he got hold of an immense pair of blue goggleg. which gave him a most whimsical air. Then he would mount his airy perch, and begin his sermon to his school mates; he used no articulate words, but a jargon of word-sounds, with rising and falling inflections, wonderfully mimicking those of his father. The rotund phrasing, the sudden fall to solemnity, the sweeping paternal gesture, the upbrushing of the hair, were all imitated perfectly by the son. At the end of this novel service, by way of benediction, he would take off the goggles, dash away the front of the pulpit, double himself up and roll down the slope of the hay mow into the midst of his merry congregation".
Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, June 14, 1811, and Henry "Ward Beecher, June 24, 1813. The Beecher house was the scene of many happy days with all the chOdren. Here too occurred some of those famous showers, of which the minister's home was the recipient in those generous old days. Catherine Beecher has left us an account of one of these, in the Beecher Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 325: "The most remarkable and unique of these (demon- strations of the affection of his parishioners after his wife's death) was what in Ncav England is called the minister's wood-spell, when, by previous notice, on some bright winter day, every person in the parish who chooses to do so sends a sled load of wood as a present to the pastor. On this occasion Ave were previously notified that the accustomed treat of doughnuts, and loaf-cake, cider and flip, must be on a much larger scale than common.. . .When the auspicious day arrived, the snow was thick, smooth, and well packed for the occasion; the sun shone through a sharp, drj' and frosty air; and the whole town was astir. Toward the middle of the afternoon, runners arrived with news of the gathering of the squadrons. Mount Tom was coming with all its farmers; Bradley- ville also; Chestnut Hill, and the North and South settlements; while the Town Hill gentry Avere on the qui vive to hunt up every sled and yoke of oxen not employed by their owners. Before sun- down the yard, and the lower rooms of our house Avere swarming with cheerful faces. Father Avas ready with his cordial greetings, adroit in detecting and admiring the special merits of every load as it arrived. The kind farmers Avanted to see all the children, and we Avere busy as bees in waiting on them. The boys heated the flip-irons, and passed around the cider and flip, while Aunt Esther and the daughters were busy in serAdng the doughnuts, cake and cheese. And siich a mountainous wood-pile as rose in our yard never before Avas seen in ministerial domains!"
In this connection Ave Avill reprint the foUoAving account of a shower to the second minister at South Farms, from the columns of the Litchfield Monitor, May 16, 1798. It has already been (luoted by Elizabeth C. Barney Buel, (Mrs. John L. Buel), in her admirable essay. The Spinning- Wheel, 1903: "On Wednesday the second instant, A'isited at the house of the Rev. Amos Chase about <>0 of his female friends parishioners, who made the A-ery acceptable
36 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
presentation of seventy run of Yarn to his family. In the course of the decent and cordial socialities of the afternoon, the ladies were entertained by their pastor with a sermon adapted to the occasion, — from these words, Gen. XXXI. 43, 'What can I do, this day, unto these my daughters?'"
Clarence Deming has told many anecdotes of the elder Beecher, as well as of his children. Several have to do with two of his chief characteristics, his absent-mindedness and his love of fishing, and one combines both; sometimes when the hour for a week-day service came, he would still be down on the Little Pond, a mile away, in his boat, the Yellow Perch. Then would follow the hasty dash up the hill behind his pastoral nag. At the end of one of the hasty returns, it is related that a small fish dropped from his coat tail pocket as he mounted the pulpit stairs.
Lyman Beeclier's sermons were never inferior; but they were long, as was the wont of the day, and Mansfield has told us that they were also sometimes dull, but always likely to become inspired again with a fresh burst of eloquence. "The long, closely argumenta- tive discourses of 100 years ago", says Miss Esther H. Thompson, in the Water bury American, 1906, "while drilling the hearers to be close listeners and deeply logical thinkers, most certainly were wearisome. An old friend remembered the time when on warm summer afternoons frequently men took off their coats in church and sat in their shirt-sleeves. One of our own earliest memories is that of a good old neighbor, who, following the custom of long ago, often walked by to church with no coat, only a vest and the whitest of shirt-sleeves. Farmers, wearied with the week's unceas- ing toil, found their best clothes and cramped position on hard seats all too trying for them easily to keep awake. As sleep threatened to overpower them, one and another man would arise, shake his cramped and tired legs, stretch well his arms above his head, then fold them over the top of the pew door, while he stood for a little time before settling down again in his seat, refreshed to endure the remainder of the service. All was so decorously and solemnly done, and the occurrence so common, that no one thought of smil ing or criticising. Nor was it unusual for many a wearied woman to take her handkerchief, a corner of her shawl, anything, to cushion the hard rest for her head on the seat back in front of her, and soothe eyes and brain by a change of position. The much rldi- clued carrying of dried orange peel, 'meetin' seed' (fennel and carro- way) to be frugally distributed among the family and munched during service time, was almost an act of devotion, a visible struggle to keep awake and receive the benefits of the exercises. In still earlier times the same end was accomplished through the services of a Tithing man, who with long pole, spiked at one end, and with knot or squirrel tail at the other, would prick or tickle into wake fullness the sleepy or punch into submission the disorderly. Tithing men continued to be appointed for all the churches in town till after 1815".
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
37
Lyman Beecher was very much liked and admired throughout his stay. CJoL Tallmadge, especially, was always endeavoring to do something to give him satisfaction. In the last years of Rev. Dan Huntington's ministry, he was instrumental in obtaining the Christening Bowl for the church, and in 1825 he and Julius Deming purchased the Communion service which is still in use.
With the departure of Lyman Beecher, the old Church on the Green was taken down, and the third church erected on the site of the present Congregational church. We have lingered on the old churches for several reasons. In the first place their ministers, especially Judah Champion and Lyman Beecher, were very remark- able men; but further than this, the early Congregational church in New England was typical of the whole population. It was the established church, so far as there has ever been any such in our country. The church affairs were voted upon in town meetings, the rate to maintain the church was laid alike on all citizens until the first steps in toleration began to be taken, and politics even found their way into the pulpit. The North and South Consociations, which included all the parishes in the County, were reputed to have a great power in the nominations for local and state officials. And finally the customs of this church were the customs of all the people. They gave the early settlers of Litchfield much of their character.
To quote the explanation of Arthur Goodenough, made in a like case: in The Clergy of Litchfield County, published by the Litch- field County University Club, 1909, p. idii, "From my own point of view I excuse myself in part for the lack of proportion in treatment by assuming that the Congregational ministry was a part of the indigenous element which made Litchfield County to differ from the rest of the world, and so to be worthy of special mention, while those of other name represent the invasion of a cosmic influence that is making us like other people".
The great changes which were to take place in Litchfield in the thirties were foreshadowed by nothing more strongly than by the passing of the church from the individual position it held in the Green to its humbler setting on the street, where houses and stores could command positions on an equal footing. As though loath to go, the old spire, which had been considered unsafe, showed an unexpected strength. Even after half of its timbers were ont and ropes had been attached to it and carried long distances in all directions, a line of a hundred men and boys and two yoke of oxen could not move it at all. Then the remaining great timbers, one by one, were sawed, till the last support was gone, and the graceful spire trembled, tottered, then suddenly sprang forward, turning a somersault, and fell burying its point deep in the ground close by the large west door.
CHAPTER V.
COLONIAL DAYS.
The first meeting of the inhabitants of Litchfield for the elec- tion of Town Officers was held on December 12, 1721, and resultet! as follows:
John Marsh, Town Clerk.
John Buel, Nathaniel Hosford, John Marsh, Selectmen.
John Collins, (Caulkins?), Grand Jure.
William Goodrich, Constable and Collector.
Benjamin Gibbs, Thomas Lee, Surveyors.
Eleazer Strong, Samuel Root, Fence Viewers.
Daniel Culver, Hay ward.
Joseph Bird, Collector of Minister's Rate.
The only other business done at this meeting was to admit an inhabitant, Joseph Kilbourn, of Wethersfield, who had recently pur- chased two Rights, one-thirtieth of the whole township, from two of the original proprietors, who had evidently been discouraged from coming to Litchfield to take up their own Rights. It is interesting to notice that newcomers had to be passed upon. As Woodruff has pointed out, p. 27, "the first inhabitants were peculiarly careful that none but persons of good character should be permitted to settle among them. If a stranger made a purchase in the planta- tion, a proviso was sometimes inserted in the deed, that the Inhabit- ants should accept of the purchaser, and that he should run 'the risk of trouble from the Grand Committee'. On the 1st of April, 1724, it was voted that 'the Commite of hartford and Windsor Chouce Inhabitance, In Cace any new are brought into town, and the town judg them not holsome, then to be Judged by indifrant men, and by them Judged Good inhabitance, the cost to be paid by Litch- field, if not the cost to be paid by the Commite that made Choice of said Inhabitantse'."
This vote was a wise one, as it insured the growth of the settle- ment through the accession of a fine group of pioneers. Henry Ward Beecher bore testimony later to the character of these men, in a passage quoted by Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, (Mrs. John A. Vanderpoel), Chronicles of a Pioneer School, p. 29: "The early settlers were men of broad and liberal mould, and began their work upon this hilltop in a characteristic fashion. They laid out their streets and staked off the village common, with such generous breadth that they remain the delight of residents and the admira-
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 39
tion of strangers to this day. They made such liberal provision for education and religion that the settlement soon became noted for the excellence of its schools and the commanding influence of its pulpit".
It is probable, as stated elsewhere, that the wide streets were planned more for the convenience of the cattle than the delight of the residents and strangers ; but the result to us is the sama In the early days, the streets were considerably wider even than they now are, as may be seen by pacing off the measurements given in a pre- vious chapter. The hill was very swampy, from the hardpan sub- soil, so that when the trees had been cleared alders grew up rapidly in the streets. Part of the hill, at least, was said to be an alder swamp even at the time of the arrival of the settlers. Just how far this was so cannot now be determined. There is a legend that part of the swamp, about where Crutch's Drug-Store now is, or a little to the north, was so boggy that the line of South Street, Town Hill Street as it was then called, was laid out to the east to avoid it, so that North Street and South Street to-day are not a continu- ous line. There is another tale of a very large oak, somewhere in the area of our present Center Park, so beautiful, that the settlers laid out North Street, Town Street as they called it, to the west, to avoid having to cut it. Neither of these stories is entirely con- vincing. The line of the streets at first had no resemblance what- soever to their course at the present day. Their width was so broad, that the present Library Building would have encroached materially into the theoretical roadway. Through this wide expanse of alders and grass and hummocks wound along at first nothing more than a footpath, then came a variety of footpaths, one on either side of the tract and others crossing it where convenient. Gradually regular roads were developed, not much more than wheel tracks going up and down the tract, with a wide green belt of grass between. This double driveway extended along both North and South Streets, it is said, while oddly enough, on East and West Streets, which then constituted Meeting House Street and which to-day is divided by the parks into two streets, one by the stores and one bj the County House, was then just one Street, running past the Meeting House, the School House and later the Court House. The story of the big oak is further rendered improbable by the settlers' hard struggles with the forest in general. Their only use for trees was to cut them down. The probable explanation of the discontinuity of the two streets running north and south is simi)ly that it was most convenient to follow the natural crest of the hill in a more or less winding fashion, and that when later on the actual driveway was straightened out it would not adjust itself into one continuous line. As the line was broken anyway by the buildings then in the Green, this did not matter very much at the time.
It is difficult to think of our beautiful streets as still so unkempt in the period of the Kevolution, that little Mary Pierce, a younger
40 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
half-sister of Miss Pierce who kept the Academy, got lost in the alder bushes when sent across the street on an errand to a neigh- bor's house.
The streets have been narrowed from their great early width by repeated town votes, granting strips of land to the abutting house-owners for the purposes of front yards. The earliest houses were built right on the road. As new strips of land have been given up by the town some of the newer houses have been built out onto this sometimes restricted land. A case in point is the house now owned by Miss Thurston on North Street. When this property was last transferred, it was found that a part of the dwelling was on restricted land, so that the town could have insisted on its being moved back. The matter was, however, arranged more simply by a release of the restriction.
The widest of all the streets was the present Gallows Lane, which was then called Middle Street and as we have seen was laid out 28 rods wide. The present name was not given until after May 8, 1780, when Barnet Davenport, a young man from Washing- ton, who had committed several murders, was executed there.
Boads outside of the immediate center were also laid out gradu- ally, though it would appear that there was no established con- nection for two years between what really constituted two separate settlements, one on Litchfield Hill and one on Chestnut Hill. On December 26, 1722, it was voted to lay out a highway from Bantam River to the Chestnut Hill home lots, "in the range where the foot- path now is". This vote was so popular that another town meet- ing was held the next day, December 27, 1722, at which it was voted "to lay out a highway from John Marsh's home lot to the south bounds; and the highway by Mr. Collins house to be continued to the north bounds; and the highway running east to be extended to the east bounds; and west, or south-west, from Thomas Pier's, according to the best skill of the Committee; and the highway run- ning north from Pier's, to be continued to the north bounds".
The holding of town meetings on two consecutive days, as in the case just mentioned, was due sometimes to the rule requiring the adjournment of these meetings at the coming of evening, "No act of the town should stand in force", so ran the vote, "that was passed after day-light failed to record it". This regulation lasted for a long time; the only reference found to its abrogation is at a Town meeting of January 3, 1782, when it was voted that "the Selectmen bring in candles so that further business may be done this evening".
Sometimes the convenience found in this singular regulation has a slightly ironical flavor, as when, on April 14, 1731, it was "Voted, after dark, that Mr. Collins have the choice of pews for himself and family". Taking into account the many difficulties encountered in seating the meeting-house and the debatable popularity of Timothy
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 41
Collins, it looks as though the meeting was reserving to itself a loophole of escape if the minister took an advantage of this vote which was not to the general liking!
Many of these early votes are quaint to our eyes. Sometimes the spelling appears grotesque to us: "Voted to ajurn this meeting to to morah Sun half an hour High at Night"; "Voted that ye owners of schoolers sent to school for time to come shal find fire wood for ye schooll". Sometimes it is the character of the business trans- acted that constitutes the quaintness: "Voted liberty to Mr. Collins, to erect a Blacksmith's Shop joining to his fence the backside of the meeting-house"; "Voted that James Morris and Nathaniel (Joodwin be added to the Nuisance Committee"; "Voted a Committee to assist the Clerk in perusing the town votes and to conclude what shall be transcribed into the town book, and what not"; "Voted unanimously to grant permission for the Small Pox to be com- municated and carried on by Innoculation on Gillets Folly so called, it being a Peninsula or neck of land belonging to Stephen Baldwin in the Northern part of the Great Pond".
This last vote is from the town meeting of March 11, 1783, and takes us back to the terrible Small-pox scare that passed over the whole country during and at the close of the Revolution. For a time the columns of the Monitor were filled with notices of physici- ans offering to inoculate in different parts of the county, though it would appear that the practise of inoculation in our town was care- fully restricted and supervised during the whole period of twenty years that Pest-houses were continued.
Several applications for new establishments, if they deserved so high-sounding a name, are found in the votes of the Town.
April 7, 1783: "A Petition of sundry Inhabitants of South Farms praying for Liberty to set up Inoculation for the Small Pox on Marsh's Point being read and considered was negatived".
October 15, 1798: "Uriah Tracy was chosen Moderator. At which Meeting there was a written request exhibited by several Gentlemen of said Town of Litchfield, praying for the establish- ment of two or more Pest Houses in the Western part of the said Town for the greater convenience of inoculation to the people resid- ing in the Western part of the South Farms Society and so in the Society of Milton. Voted not to add to the number of Houses already assigned by said Town for said purpose".
The most elaborate description in the records of the conduct of these houses is contained in another vote, which may be quoted at some length, as showing the nature of such an early Hospital, and the fear of contagion which surrounded it:
March 20, 1797: "Voted that permission be, and the same is, hereby granted to the civil Authority and Selectmen of the Town to give liberty for the Small Pox to be communicated by inoculation at the house of Daniel Lord, standing on Chestnut Hill, purchased by him of the heirs of Michael Dickinson, also the house of Ros-
42 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
well Harrison, lately the property of Thomas Harrison: Places in the Town and at no other Place; and the Hospitals so to be opened shall be governed by the following rules and regulations and such others as the Civil Authorities and the Selectmen shall from time to time adopt, to wit:
"First, that limits be proscribed over which the Person infected shall not be suffered to go.
"Second, that the limits thus proscribed do not extend within forty rods of any public road except those necessary to be improved for said Purpose on which signals shall be placed at least the afore- said number of rods from each side of said Hospital by which Per- sons may acquaint themselves of the Business.
"Third, that Captain William Bull and James Morris, Esqr., be and the same are hereby appointed Overseers to appoint or approve of the Nurses or Tenders necessary to be employed, to give orders respecting the Time the Persons infected, their Nurses and Tenders, shall continue in the aforesaid Hospital, and also respect- ing their changing and coming out, and such other order and direc- tion as shall be judged most expedient (for) preserving the inhabit- ants from taking the Infection, for which service a recompense shall be paid by those concerned.
"Fourth, that no Person thus infected be suffered to depart with- out first obtaining from said Committee or some Physician by them appointed a Certificate giving his or their Approbation.
"Fifth, and that each Person before inoculation do procure good and sufficient Bonds to answer the Penalty of the Statute in such case made and provided: that he or they will strictly comply with all and singular the foregoing Rules and Regulations and such others as the Civil Authority and Selectmen shall adopt, which Bonds shall be taken by the aforesaid Overseers.
"Sixth, that the several Physicians shall also procure Bonds for security against spreading the infection through their means and not to inoculate anyone who shall not procure a Certificate from one or more said Overseers.
"Seventh, that the Nurses and Tenders shall also procure Bonds not to admit any Person in said Hospital without the consent of the Overseers and to use all due attention to prevent the spreading the same through their means or neglect".
We have no record of any casualties in Litchfield from the Inoculation, fortunately, but may of the people were infected. The beautiful and sprightly Mariann Wolcott, about whom we shall write more presently, was one of these, as we learn from a letter from her father, Gov. Oliver Wolcott Sr., to Mrs. Wolcott, March 22, 1777: "I have this instant rec'd a Letter from Dr. Smith, of the 12th. wherein he tells me that you and the children have been inoculated for the Small Pox, and that he apprehended you was so far thro' it as to be out of Danger, casualties excepted, — News which is very agreeable to me, as I have for some time been much concerned lest you should take the infection of that distressing Disease unpre-
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 43
pared. I perceive that Mariana has had it bad; he writes, 'very hard'. I am heartily sorry for what the little child has suffered and very much want to see her. If she has by this lost some of her Beauty, which I hope she has not, yet I well know she might spare much of it and still retain as much as most of her sex possess". • (Wolcott Memorial, p. 168).
In another letter from Dr. Reuben Smith to Oliver Wolcott Sr., dated April 17, 1777, is preserved an account of the origin of the scare:
"Some soldiers having brought home the small pox, I found a number had ventured upon innoculation without making proper pro- vision that it might not spread in the town. The people were much divided; some warmly engaged for innoculation, others as warmly opposed. Unhappily for me, I was chosen one of the Selectmen this year and was therefore under a necessity of interposing in the matter; and thought best, as it was against law, neither to encour- age or oppose, but endeavor to bring it under a proper regulation, in which, however, I failed of the wished for success, our counsels being very much divided. Several having taken in the natural way from those that were inoculated. Captain Marsh was engaged to crush innoculation wholly ; and some people have been so unreason- able as to say Mr. Strong was both for and against it. Be that as it may, it served as a game. Both had like to have been losers." No accurate record has been preserved as to who was the last survivor of the original settlers of Litchfield. Supply Strong, the father of Jedediah Strong, lived to the age of 90, and died in 1786; but it is possible that others lived to a later date. Among the children whom the settlers brought with them into the wilderness, should be mentioned Zebulon Gibbs, who was only nine years old when his father, Benjamin Gibbs, came to Litchfield in 1720. He died in 1803, at the ripe age of 92 years. It so happened that the first male child born in the settlement was his younger brother, Gershom Gibbs, born July 28, 1721. We recognize in the latter's name the old Puritan knowledge of the Bible; for in Exodus, 11.22, it is written: "And she bare (Moses) a son, and he called his name Gershom : for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land". In the Revolution, Gershom Gibbs, was taken a prisoner by the English at Fort Washington, and died in prison. The first white child born in Litchfield was Eunice, the daughter of Jacob Griswold; she was born on March 21, 1721, and was afterwards the wife of Captain Solomon Buel.
Certainly the two most prominent of this gallant band of men were John Marsh and John Buel, of whom we will quote the follow- ing accounts from Kilbourne, p. 70:
".John Marsh had long been a prominent citizen of Hartford before he interested himself in the Western Lands; and from the time when he came out to 'view the new plantation' in May, 1715, till about the year 1738, his name was intimately associated with
44 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
the history of Litchfield. He served this town in the various offices within her gift during the entire period of his residence here. While an inhabitant of Hartford, he was often a Representative in the Legislature, a Justice of the Peace, an Associate Judge of the County Court, and a member of the Council of War. He returned to Hartford from Litchfield in his old age, and died there. He was interred in the old Burying Ground back of the Center Church. His children remained in this town, and his descendants here and else- where are very numerous.
"John Buel was about fifty years of age when he became a resident of this town, and had previously filled the office of Deacon of the church in Lebanon. He was repeatedly elected to almost every office within the gift of his fellow citizens, besides being appointed on nearly all the most important Committees. As a Deacon in the Church, Captain of the Militia, Selectman, Treasurer, Representa- tive, and Justice of the Peace, he discharged his duties efficiently and faithfully. A brief anecdote, as given by Mr. Powers, in his Cen- tennial Address at Goshen, will serve to illustrate the benevolence of his character: In the winter of 1740-41, a man came from Com wall to purchase some grain for himself and family, who were in great need, and was directed to Deacon Buel. The stranger soon called, and made known his errand. The Deacon asked him if he liad the money to pay for the grain. He answered affirmatively. "Weir, said the Deacon. 'I can show you where you can procure it'. Going with the stranger to the door, he pointed out a certain house to him saying, 'There lives a man who will let you have grain for your money. I have some to spare, but I must keep it for those who have no money'. Deacon Buel died April 6, 1746, aged 75 years. His wife survived him 22 years. Both were interred in the West Burying Gi'ound".
These two leaders of Litchfield were associated in every move- ment for the progress of the town. On the 6th of February 1722, the use of the stream of Bantam River and thirty acres of land was voted to them, on condition that they would erect a Grist Mill and keep the same in order. And it was they again who were directed to petition the General Assembly the same year "for liberty to set up a church and society in Litchfield".
They were also among those appointed to negotiate a settlement of the Iwundary line between Litchfield and Waterbury. The sev- eral boundaries of the township continued to be a cause of dispute for over fifty years, but as the bounds as finally adjusted appear to be satisfactory to-day, and wholly a matter of course, it is not neces- sary to review all the transactions that took place in detail. The bounds on the east and west being formed by the Naugatuck and Housantonic Rivers, there was little question as to their where- abouts. But on the north and south, the various white oak trees and trees with stones about them which are mentioned in the Town Patent were naturally open to increasing variety of interpretation as the years passed. The North line was run by Roger Sherman,
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 45
afterwards a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He lived in New Milford, and was appointed Ck)unty Surveyor of the then new County of Litchfield in 1754, and his manuscript account of our northern boundary is still preserved- The determination of the southern bounds was a more disputatious business and no one of such distinction was involved in its settlement. After the settle- ment of the Waterbury boundary in 1722, the Woodbury boundary remained in dispute for some twenty years. A committee of Litch- field men 'perambulated' this part of the wilderness in 1727 with a committee from Woodbury. In 1728, two Agents were chosen to act in the 'controversy'. In 1731, they were re-appointed to enquire "what light can be had concerning our line". Taxes were laid in the same year and again in 1742, to defray the expenses involved in all this perambulating and searching. As no one could know where such a line did run, there never having been any carefully defined line anyway, the matter dragged on, and apparently adjusted itself in the end, for no definite record of the settlement has sur- vived, though the line is now happily established somehow. When Old Judea was set off from the town of Woodbury in 1779, under its present name of Washington, the boundary came up once more, the inhabitants of the new township arbitrarily changing the line in their petition for an incorporation so as to include Avithin their limits all of Davies' Hollow and the adjoining sections of Mount Tom. At first the Litchflelders, in great excitement, resolved to defend their claim before the General Assembly, appointing Andrew Adams to appear for them. Finally, perhaps because of the strong Episcopalian sentiment in that region, which was not considered any too desirable at a period when the Church of England and the tories were always linked together, it was decided not to oppose the change in the line, and Colonel Adams was again appointe<l. this time to appear before the General Assembly with a petition that Washington be allowed to "regulate the line of the town" iu its own way.
The boundaries of South Farms were established and definetl in 1767; those of Northfield in 1794; and those of Milton in 1795, when each of those separate parishes was organized. Much later, in 1859, South Farms was set off as a distinct township under the name of Morris.
"It is an interesting fact", (Kilbourne, p. 61), "that the town of Goshen was organized at the house of Deacon John Buel in West Street. On September 27, 1738, the proprietors of Goshen, then called New^ Bantam, met there, and again on the following day, when the organization of the town was completed. Dating from this day, the Centennial anniversary of Goshen was celebrated on September 28, 1838, on which occasion an interesting historical discourse was delivered by the Rev. Grant Powers. Several of the original proprietors of Goshen were residents of Litchfield". A fuller account of the meetings held in Deacon Buel's house is givou in Rev. A. G. Hibbard's History of Goshen, 1897, pp. 31-35.
46 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
Kivalry between Woodbury and Litchfield again developed in connection with the establishment of the new County, and this time Goshen was also a rival, not to speak of Canaan and Cornwall. The rivalry was over the location of the County Seat, which was established finally in Litchfield, and the County was called Litch- field County. Woodbury had of course no chance to be made the County Seat, because of its remote position, but it took the oppor- tunity to try to organize a separate County, or to be re-annexed to Fairfield County. These and later attempts of the same kind were not successful. The claims of Goshen to be the County Seat were much more considerable, chiefly because of its central position in the territory. Several families who were coming into these parts at that time moved to Goshen in the expectation that its claims to leadership would be successful; among those who did so, and who came to Litchfield when, in 1751, the matter was finally decided, was Oliver Wolcott, who was appointed the first High Sheriff, The County Treasurer was John Catlin; the County Clerk was Isaac Baldwin; one of the Associate Judges was Ebenezer Marsh; all of Litchfield; the remaining County officers and Judges were from other parts of the County.
The formation of the County was a most important event for the prosperity of Litchfield; legally, commercially, socially, and indirectly educationally, much of the success and prestige of Litch- field dates from this time. All the Courts for the County met in Litchfield, including the Supreme Court of Errors, and the Superior and County Courts. These Courts all continued to meet in Litch- field and not elsewhere in the County until 1873, In that year thirteen of the towns in the County, but not including Litchfield, were constituted a Judicial District, known as the District Court for the First District of Litchfield, with sessions at Winchester (the Courts sitting at Winsted), Canaan (the Courts sitting at Falls Village), and New Milford. This Court was abolished in 1883 and the Court of Common Pleas for Litchfield County consti- tuted with, sessions at Litchfield and the three towns just named. In 1881 the District Court of Waterbury was given jurisdiction over several towns in this County. In the same year Litchfield County was included with Hartford, Tolland, Middlesex and Wind- ham Counties in the first judicial District of the Supreme Court of Errors with sessions only at Hartford. In 1897 an act was passed providing for sessions of the Superior Court at Litchfield. New Milford and Winchester. These changes have greatly reduced the importance of Litchfield as a judicial center in the last fifty years.
The importance which the formation of the new County gave to Litchfield led to a singular contrast, for we find Litchfield in the position of a County Seat, with its courts and other business, yet with no newspaper, no mail-service, no means for passenger travel !
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 47
It was a life that centered witliin itself to a degree that we cim with difficulty picture to-day. The condition of the roads, so far as there were any roads, prevented travel except on horseback, save when the snow made sleighing a possibility. Kilboume says, p. 166; 'Horses were trained to carry double; and it was not an uncommon thing to see father, mother and at least one child mounted on the same horse. Long journeys were sometimes taken with this triple load. For years after the Old Forge, in the western part of the town, was erected, the ore for its use was brought from the iron- mines of Kent in bags slung across the backs of horses; and the bar-iron manufactured there, was bent in the form of ox-bows and carried to market on horseback. Ox-carts and ox-sleds were com- mon, and journeys of hundreds of miles were not infrequently made in these tedious vehicles. Many of the ambitious and hardy young men of this town, who emigrated to Vermont, to the Genesee Country, and to New Connecticut, went on foot, each carrying a pack, in which was enclosed, as an indispensable part of his outfit, a new nxo. Some who thus went, became men of wealth and distinction.
"There was no public conveyance between Litchfield and the neighboring or more remote towns, for a period of nearly seventy years after the settlement of the place commenced. As early as 1766, it is true, William Stanton was a post-rider between Litch- field and Hartford; but as it is said that his journeys were per- formed on horseback, the inference is that he did not make a practice of carrying passengers! Indeed, during the Revolution, all regular communication between the interior towns was suspended, even where it had before existed; but expresses were sent hither and tliither, as the exigencies of the hour might demand. Litchfield Avas on the great inland route from Boston to New York, as well as on that from Hartford to Westpoint, so that the travel through the tow^n was very great.
"Tlie establishment of a weekly paper in this village, in 1784, sseemed to call for some method of obtaining and circulating the news. Tliere was not a Post-Office or a Mail Koute in the County of Litchfield; and how the subscribers contrived to get their papers may well be regarded as a mystery by the publishers of our day. In 1789, Jehiel Saxton, a post-rider between New Haven and Lenox, passed through this town on his route, at stated intervals. In 1790. another of this interesting class of primitive k-tter-carriers and errand-men, commenced his long and lonely rides over the almost interminable succession of hills, between the Litchfield Court-House and the city of New York, leaving each place once a fortnight. That was a proud day for Litchfield — perhaps for New Y'ork also!" (Kilbourne, p. 167).
It is readily conceived that in such a state of isolation, the early settlers of Litchfield were more immediately concerned with laying out the Little Plain, where the West Cemetery now is. and with draining the adjacent swamps along the river into four acre meadows for the use of those who M^ere working up their herds, than with the
48 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
great concerns of the outer world. Kilbourne notes that the First French War, 1744-1748, came and went without leaving a trace on our minute book of the town meetings. The matter of the new County, which was just then coming up, was a business of vastly greater importance to the town than how a war which was in pro- gress at such a distance should be decided.
When the Last French War, 1755-1763, began, Litchfield had developed so rapidly as to be ready to do its share from the begin- ning. At the start of the war, Connecticut raised a force of a thousand men, and this was gradually increased to five thousand, which was maintained through all the campaigns. Unfortunately, but a single list of the soldiers raised in Litchfield during this period has been preserved, and many of the names on it are of men who came to Litchfield to enlist. This is the pay-roll for Capt. Archibald McNeile's Company, in the second regiment of Connecti- cut Forces, for the year 1762, which is on file in the office of tht^ Secretary at Hartford. This list is reprinted in the Appendix. Some of the officers who i*eceived commissions in these years were undoubtedly at the War, but it is no longer possible to say which ones. The list of these is as follows:
1756: Captain Solomon Buel;
1757: Colonel Ebenezer Marsh; Captain Isaac Baldwin; Lieu- tenant Joshua Smith; Ensign Abner Baldwin;
1758: Ensign Zebulon Qibbs; Captain Archibald McNeile;
1760: Lieutenant Stephen Smith; Lieutenant Eli Catlin;
1761: Lieutenant Isaac Moss; Lieutenant Josiah Smith; Lieu tenant Asa Hopkins; Ensign Gideon Harrison; Ensign David Lan don;
1762: Ensign Lynde Lord.
We also know that Timothy Collins was Surgeon of one of the Connecticut Raiments at the battle of Crown Point. The only nar- rative of service is the very laconic one made by Zebulon Gibbs: •'I was active in the French War in the year 1756 till the year 1762. I was conductor of teams and horses, by which means I obtained the title of Captain".
The names of the more prominent settlers and those of the men of action in the wars of the time will not, however, paint for us a true or complete picture of those early days. More than any other period that has followed it was a time whose real character was typified in those who were not men and women, as we say, of action. In his Centennial Sermon in 1851, the Rev. Horace Bushnell pointed this out in what is really an address describing the life of the times, which for beauty of style, not less than for truth of obser- vation and dignity of thought, is probably the finest address that has been delivered at any time in our town. The changing fashions, if the word can be used of Sermons, have not made The Age of Homespun one whit less striking than it was the morning the
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
49
great Divine delivered it. Tlie same humanizing influence whicli he brought to his interpretation of the old Calvinistic theology and which made his preaching appear so advanced to the Hartford of eighty years ago will be found in his kindly, yet always just, analy- sis, of Colonial life as it existed in our town and those like it. The address is better history than the Historical Address delivered the preceding day; it is better history than ever we can hope to write in this book; and in reprinting it herewith we can only regret that it has been necessary somewhat to abbreviate it. The Sermon in full will be found on pages 107-130 of the Centennial Book published in the same year, 1851.
CHAPTER VI.
THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. BY HORiVCE BUSHNELX,.
[Extracts from a discourse, delivered at Litchfield, on the occasion of the County Centennial Celebration, 1851.1
It has often occurred to others, I presume, as to me, to wish that, for once, it were possible, in some of our historic celebrations, to gather up the unwritten part, also, of the history celebrated; thus to make some fit account, of the private virtues and unrecorded struggles, in whose silent commonalty, we doubt not, are includefl all the deepest possibilities of social advancement and historic dis- tinction I think you will agree with me, that nothing is more
appropriate than to offer some fit remembrance of that which heaven only keeps in charge, the unhistoric deeds of common life, and the silent, undistinguished good whose names are Avritten only ^n heaven. In this view, I propose a discourse on the words of King Lemuel's mother: —
PROA^ 31: 28. "Her children rise up and call her blessed".
This Lemuel, who is called a King, is supposed by some to have been a Chaldee chief, or head of a clan; a kind of Arcadian prince, like Job and Jethro. And this last chapter of the Proverbs is an Eastern poem, called a "prophecy", that versifies, in form, the advice which his honored and Avise mother gave to her son. She dwells, in particular, on the ideal picture of a fine woman, such as he may fitly seek for his wife, or queen; drawing the picture, doubt- less, in great part, from herself and her own practical character. "She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff. She is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her hoiise- hold are covered with scarlet. Her husband is known in the gates, Avhen he sitteth among the elders of the land. She openeth her mouth in wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eatetli not the bread of idleness". Omitting other points of the picture, she is a frugal, faithful, pious housewife; clothing her family in garments prepared by her industry, and the more beautiful honors of a well-kept, well- mannered house. She, therefore, it is, who makes the center of a happy domestic life, and becomes a mark of reverence to her children: — "Her children rise up and called her blessed".
A very homely and rather common picture, some of you may fancy, for a queen, or chief woman; but, as you view the subject more historically, it will become a picture even of dignity and
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 51
polite culture. The rudest and most primitive stage of society has its most remarkable distinction in the dress of skins; as in ancient Scythia, and in many other parts of the world, even at the present day. The preparing of fabrics, by spinning and weaving, marks a great social transition, or advance; one that was slowly made and is not even yet absolutely perfected. Accordingly, the art of spinning and weaving was, for long ages, looked upon aa a kind of polite distinction; much as needle work is now. Thus, when Moses directed in the preparation of curtains for the Taber- nacle, we are told that "all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands". That is, that the accomplished ladies who understood this fine art, (as few of the women did), executed his order. Accordingly, it is represented that the most distinguished queens of the ancient time excelled in the art of spinning; and the poets sing of distaffs and looms, as the choicest symbols of princely women- If I rightly remember, it is even said of Augustus, him- self, at the height of the Roman splendor, that he wore a robe that was made for him by Livia, his wife.
You perceive, in this manner, that Lemuel's mother has any but rustic ideas of what a wife should be. She describes, in fact, a lady of the highest af^^^omplishments, whose harpsichord is the distaff, whose piano is the loom, and Avho is able thus, by the fine art she is mistress of, to make her husband conspicuous among the elders of the land. Still, you will understand that what we call the old spinning-wheel, a great factor^' improvement, was not inventefl till long ages after this ; being, in fact, a comparatively modern, I believe a German or Saxon, improvement. The distaff, in the times of my text, was held in one hand or under one arm, and the spindle, hanging by the thread, Avas occasionally hit and twirled by the other. The weaving process was equally rude and simple.
These references to the domestic economy of the more ancient times, have started recollections, doubtless, in many of you, that are characteristic, in a similar way, of our own primitive historj. You have remembered the wheel and the loom. You have recalled the fact, that our Litchfield County people down to a period com- paratively recent, have been a people clothed in homespun fabrics — not wholly, or in all cases, but so generally that the exceptions may be fairly disregarded. In this fact I find my subject. As it is sometimes said that the history of iron is the history of the world, or the history of roads a true record, always, of commercial and social progress, so it has occurred to me that I may give the most effective* and truest impression of Litchfield County, and especially of the unhistoric causes included in a true estimate of the century now passed, under this article of homespun; describing this first century as the Homespun Age of our people. The subject is homely, as it should be; but I think we shall find enough of dignity in it as we proceed, even to content our highest ambition; the more, that I do not propose to confine myself rigidly to the single matter of spinning and weaAung. but to gather round this feature of domestic
52 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
life, taken as a symbol, or central type of expression, whatever is most characteristic in the living picture of the times we commemo- rate, and the simple, godly virtues, we delight to honor.
What we call History, considered as giving a record of notable events, or transactions, under names and dates, and so a really just and true exhibition of the causes that construct a social state, I conceive to be commonly very much of a fiction. True worth is, for the most part, unhistoric, and so of all the beneficent causes and powers included in the lives of simple worthy men: causes most efficient, as regards the well-being and public name of communities. They are such as flow in silence, like the great powers of nature. Indeed, we say of history, and say rightly, that it is a record of events : that is, of turnings out, points where the silence is broken by something apparently not in the regvdar flow of common life; just as electricity, piercing the world in its silent equilibrium, hold- ing all atoms to their places, and quickening even the life of our bodies, becomes historic only when it thunders; though it does noth- ing more, in its thunder, than simply to notify us, by so great a noise, of the breach of its connections and the disturbance of its silent work. Besides, in our historic pictures, we are obliged to sink particulars in generals and so to gather, under the names of a prominent few, what is really done by nameless multitudes. These, we say, led out the colonies ; these raised up the states and communi- ties ; these fought the battles. And so we make a vicious inversion, not seldom, of the truth; representing as causes, those who, after all, are not so much causes as effects, not so much powers as instru- ments, in the occasions signalized by their names : caps only of foam, that roll conspicuous in the sun, lifted, still, by the deep underswell of waters hid from the eye.
Therefore, if you ask, who made this Litchfield County of ours, it will be no sufficient answer that you get, however instructive and useful, when you have gathered up the names that appear in our public records and recited the events that have found an honorable place in the history of the County, or the Kepublic. You must not go into the burial places, and look about only for the tall monuments and the titled names. It is not the starred epitaphs of the Doctors of Divinity, the Generals, the Judges, the Honorables, the Governors, or even the village notables called Esquires, that mark the springs of our successes and the sources of our distinction. These are rather effects than causes; ija.e spinning wheels have done a great deal more than these. Around the honored few, here a Bellamy, or a Day, sleeping in the midst of his flock; here a Wolcott, or a Smith; an Allen, or a Tracy; a Keeve, or a Gould; all names of honor: round about these few, and others like them, are lying multitudes of worthy men and women, under their humbler monuments, or in graves that are hidden by the monumental green that loves to freshen over their forgotten resting place; and in these, the humble but good many, we are to say are the deepest, truest causes of our happy history. Here lie the sturdy kings of Homespun, who climbed
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 53
iimong these liills, with their axes, to cut away room for their cabins and for family prayers, and so for the good future to come. Here lie their sons, who foddered their cattle on the snows, and built stone fence while the corn was sprouting in the hills, getting ready, in that way, to send a boy or two to college. Here lie the good housewives, that made coats every year, like Hannah, for their children's bodies, and lined their memory with catechism. Here the millers, that took honest toll of the rye; the smiths and coopers, that superintended two hands and got a little revenue of honest bread and schooling from their small joint stock of two-handed investment. Here the district committees and school mistresses; the religious society founders and church deacons; and, withal, a great many sensible, wise-headed men, who read a weekly newspaper, loved George Washington and their country, and had never a thought of going to the General Assembly! These arc the men and Avomen who made Litchfield County. Who they are, by name, we cannot tell: no matter Avho they are: Ave should be none the wiser if we lould name them ; they themselves none the more honorable. Enough that they are the King Lemuels and their Queens, of the good old times gone by: kings and queens of Homespun, out of whom we draw our royal lineage.
I have spoken of the great advance in human society, indicated by a transition from the dress of skins to that of cloth — an advance of so great dignity, that spinning and weaving were looked upon as a kind of fine art, or polite accomplishment. Another advance, and one that is equally remarkable, is indicated by the transition from a dress of homespun to a dress of factory cloths, produced by machinery and obtained by the exchanges of commerce, at home or abroad. This transition we are now making, or rather, I should say, it is already so far made that the very terms, "domestic manu- factiire", have quite lost their meaning; being applied to that which is neither domestic, as being made in the house, nor manufacture, as being made by the hands. This transition from mother and daughter poAver to Avater and steam poAA^er is a great one, greater by far than many have as yet begun to conceive: one that is to carry Avith it a complete revolution of domestic life and social man- ners. If, in this transition, there is something to regret, there is more, I trust, to desire. If it carries aAvay the old simplicity, it must also open higher possibilities of culture and social ornament. The principle danger is, that, in removing the rough necessities of the homespun age, it may take away, also, the severe virtues and the homely but deep and true piety by which, in their blessed fruits, as we are all here testifying, that age is so honorably distinguished. Be the issue AA-hat it may, good or bad, hopeful or unhopefid, it has come; it is already a fact, and the consequences must follow.
If our sons and daughters should assemble, a hundred years hence, to hold another celebration like this, they will scarcely be able to imagine the Arcadian pictures now so fresh in the memory of so many of us, though to the younger part already matters of
54 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
hearsay more than of personal knowledge or remembrance. Every- thing that was most distinctive of the old homespun mode of life will then have passed away. JThe spinning wheels of wool and flax, that used to buzz so familiarly in the childish ears of some of us, will be heard no more for ever: seen no more, in fact, save in the halls of the Antiquarian Societies, where the delicate daugh- ters will be asking, what these strange machines are, and how they were made to go? The huge, hewn-timber looms, that used to occupy a room by themselves, in the farm houses, will be gone, cut up for cord wood, and their heavy thwack, beating up the woof, will be heard no more by the passer by; not even the Antiquarian Halls will find room to harbor a specimen. The long strips of linen, bleaching on the grass, and tended by a sturdy maiden, sprinkling them each hour from her water-can, under a broiling sun, thus to prepare the Sunday linen for her brothers and her own wedding outfit, will have disappeared, save as they return to fill a picture in some novel or ballad of the old time. The tables will be spread with some cunning, water-power Silesia not yet invented, or perchance some meaner fabric from the cotton mills. The heavy Sunday coats, that grew on sheep individually remembered, more comfortably carried in warm weather on the arm, and the specially fine-striped, blue and white pantaloons, of linen just from the loom, will no longer be conspicuous in processions of footmen going to meeting, but will have given place to showy carriages, filled with gentlemen with broadcloth, festooned with chains of California gold, and delicate ladies holding perfumed sun shades. The churches too, that used to be simple brown meeting houses, covered with rived clapboards of oak, will have come down, mostly, from the bleak hill tops, into the close villages and populous towns, that crowd the waterfalls and the railroads; and the old burial places, where the fathers sleep, will be left to their lonely altitude: token, shall we say, of an age that lived as much nearer to heaven and as much less under the world. The change will be complete. Would that we might raise some worthy monument to a state which is then to be so far passed by, so worthy, in all future time, to be held in all dearest reverence.
It may have seemed extravagant, or fantastic, to some of you, that I should think to give a character of the century now past, under the one article of homespun. It certainly is not the only, or in itself the chief article of distinction; and yet we shall find it to be a distinction that runs through all others, and gives a color to the whole economy of life and character, in the times of which we speak.
Thus, if the clothing is to be manufactured in the house, then flax will be grown in the plowed land, and sheep will be raised in the pasture, and the measure of the flax ground, and the number of the flock, will correspond with the measure of the home market, the number of the sons and daughters to be clothed, so that the agriculture out of doors will map the family in doors. Then as
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 55
there is no thought of obtaining the articles of clothing, or dress, by exchange; as there is little passing of money, and the habit of exchange is feebly developed, the family will be fed on home grown products, buckwheat, indian, rye, or whatever the soil will yield. And as carriages are a luxury introduced only with exchanges, the lads will be going back and forth to the mill on horseback, astride the fresh grists, to keep the mouths in supply. The meat market will be equally domestic, a kind of quarter-master slaughter and supply, laid up in the cellar, at fit times in the year. The daughters that, in factory days, would go abroad to join the female conscrip- tion of the cotton mill, will be kept in the home factory, or in that of some other family, and so in the retreats of domestic life. And so it will be seen, that a form of life which includes almost every point of economy, centers round the article of homespun dress, and is by that determined- Given the fact that the people spin their own dress, and you have in that fact a whole volume of characteris- tics. They may be shepherds dwelling in tents, or they may build them fixed habitations, but the distinction given will show them to be a people who are not in trade, whose life centers in the family, home-bred in their manners, primitive and simple in their character, inflexible in their piety, hospitable without show, intelligent with- out refinement. And so it will be seen that our homespun fathers and mothers made a Puritan Arcadia among these hills, answering to the picture which Polibius, himself an Arcadian, gave of his coun- trymen, when he said that they had, "throughout Greece, a high and honorable reputation; not only on account of their hospitality to strangers, and their benevolence towards all men, but especially on account of their piety towards the Divine Being".
Thus, if we speak of what, in the polite world is called societj^ our homespun age had just none of it: and perhaps the more of society for that reason, because what they had was separate from all the polite fictions and empty conventionalities of the world. I speak not here of the rude and promiscuous gatherings connected so often with low and vulgar excesses; the military trainings, the huskings, the raisings commonly ended with a wrestling match. These were their dissipations, and perhaps they were about as good as any. The apple paring and quilting frolics, you may set down if you will, as the polka dances and masquerades of homespun. If they undertook a formal entertainment of any kind, it was com- monly stiff and quite unsuccessful. But when some two queens of the spindle, specially fond of each other, instead of calling back and forth, with a card case in their hand, agreed to "join works", as it was called, for a week or two, in spinning, enlivening their talk by the rival buzz of their wheels and, when the two skeins were done, spending the rest of the day in such kind of recreation as pleased them, this to them was real society, and, so far, a good type of all the society they had. It was the society not of the Nominalists, but of the Kealists; society in or after work; spon- taneously gathered for the most part, in terms of elective affinity:
56 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIFXD
toot excursions of young people, or excursions on horse back, after the haying, to the tops of the neighboring mountains; boatings, on the river or the lake, by moon light, filling the wooded shores and the recesses of the hills with lively echoes ; evening schools of sacred music, in which the music is not so much sacred as preparing to be ; evening circles of young persons, falling together, as they imagine by accident, round some village queen of song, and chasing away the time in ballads and glees so much faster than they wish, that just such another accident is like to happen soon; neighbors called in to meet the minister and talk of both worlds together, and, if he is limber enough to suffer it, in such happy mixtures, that both are melted into one.
But most of all to be remembered, are those friendly circles, gathered so often round the winter's fire: not the stove, but the fire, the brightly blazing, hospitable fira In the early dusk, the home circle is drawn more closely and quietly round it; but a good neighbor and his wife drop in shortly, from over the way. and the circle begins to spread. Next a few young folk from the other end of the A^illage, entering in brisker mood, find as many more chairs set in as wedges into the periphery to receive them also. And then a friendly sleigh full of old and young, that have come down from the hill to spend an hour or two, spread the circle again, moving it still farther back from the fire; and the fire blazes just as much higher and more brightly, having a new stick added for every guest. There is no restraint, certainly no affectation of style. They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. They are serious and gay by turns, or the young folks go on with some play, while the fathers and mothers are discussing some hard point of theologj' in the min- ister's last sermon; or perhaps the great danger coming to sound morals from the multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers! Meantime, the good housewife brings out her choice stock of home grown exotics, gathered from three realms, doughnuts from the pantry, hickory nuts from the chamber, and the nicest, smoothest apples from the cellar; all which, including, I suppose I must add, the rather unpoetic beverage that gave its acid smack to the ancient hospitality, are discussed as freely, with no fear of conse- quences. And then, as the tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on majestically towards nine, the conversation takes, it may be, a little more serious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy evening may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative look on every face, which is itself the truest language of a social nature blessed in human fellowship.
Such, in general, was the society of the homespun age. It was not that society that puts one in connection with the great world of letters, or fashion, or power, raising as much the level of his consciousness and the scale and style of his action; but it was society back of the world, in the sacred retreats of natural feeling, truth and piety.
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 57
Descending from the topic of society in general to one more deli- cate, that of marriage and the tender passion and the domestic felici- ties of the homespun age, the main distinction here to be noted is, that marriages were commonly contracted at a much earlier period in Vifi.' than now. Not because the habit or the time was more romantic or less prudential, but because a principal more primi- tive and closer to the beautiful simplicity of nature is yet in vogue, namely, that women are given by the Almighty, not so much to lielp their husbands spend a living, as to help them get one. Accord- ingly, the ministers were always very emphatic, as I remember, in their marriage cermonies, on the ancient idea, that the woman was given to the man to be a help, meet for him. . . . What more beauti- ful embodiment is there, on this earth, of true sentiment, than the young wife who has given herself to a man in his weakness, to make him strong; to enter into the hard battle of his life and bear the brunt of it with him; to go down with him in disaster, if he fails, nud cling to him for what he is; to rise with him, if he rises; and share a two-fold joy with him in the competence achieved; remem- bering, both of them, how it grew, by little and little, and by what methods of frugal industry it w^as nourished; having it also, not as his, but theirs, the reward of their common perseverance, and the token of their consolidated love. . . .
The close necessities of these more primitive days connected many homely incidents with marriage, which, however, rather heighten the picturesque simplicity than disparage the beauty of its attractions. The question of the outfit, the question of ways and means, the homely prudence pulling back the heroics of faith and passion only to make them more heroic at last; all these you Avill readily imagine.
I supi)Ose many of my audience may have heard of the dis- tinguished Christian minister, still living in the embers of extreme old age, who came to the point, not of a flight in the winter,?, >but of marriage, and partly bj* reason of the Revolution then in pro- gress, could find no way to obtain the necessary wedding suit. Whereupon, the young woman's benevolent mother had some of her sheep sheared and sewed up in blankets to keep them from perish- ing with cold, that the much required felicity might be consummated. But the schools, — Ave must not pass by these, if we are to form a truthful and sufficient picture of the homespun days. The school- master did not exactly go round the district to fit out the children's minds with learning, as the shoe-maker often did to fit their feet with shoes, or the tailors to measure and cut for their bodies; but, to come as near it as possible, he boarded round (a custom not yet gone by) , and the wood for the common fire w\as supplied in a way equally primitive, by contribution of loads from the several families, according to their several quantities of childhood- The children were all clothed alike in homespun ; and the only signs of aristocracy were, that some w^ere clean and some a degree less so, some in fine white and striped linen, some in brown tow crash ; and, in particular,
58 THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
as I remember, with a certain feeling of quality I do not like to express, the good fathers of some testified the opinion they had of their children by bringing fine round loads of hickory wood to warm them, while some others, I regret to say, brought only scanty, scraggy, ill-looking heaps of green oak, white birch, and hemlock. Indeed, about all the bickerings of quality among the children, centered in the quality of the wood pile. There was no complaint in those days of the want of ventilation; for the large open fire- place held a considerable fraction of a cord of wood, and the win- dows took in just enough air to supply the combustion. Besides, the bigger lads were occasionally ventilated, by being sent out to cut wood enough to keep the fire in action. The seats were made of the outer slabs from the saw-mill, supported by slant legs driven into^ and a proper distance through augur holes, and plained smooth on the top by the rather tardy process of friction. But the spelling went on bravely, and we ciphered away again and again, always till we got through Loss and Gain. The more advanced of us too made light work of Lindley Murray, and went on to the parsing, finally, of the extracts from Shakespeare and Milton, till some of us began to think we had mastered their tough sentences in a more consequential sense of the term than was exactly true. . . .
Passing from the school to the church, or rather I should say to the meeting house, (good translation, whether meant or not, of what is older and more venerable than church, namely synagogue), here again you meet the picture of a sturdy homespun worship. Probably it stands on some hill, midway between three or four valleys, whither the tribes go up to worship, and when the snow- drifts are deepest go literally from strength to strength. There is no furnace or stove, save the foot-stoves that are filled from the fires of the neighboring houses, and brought in partly as a rather formal compliment to the delicacy of the tender sex, and sometimes because they are really wanted. The dress of the assembly is mostly homespun, indicating only slight distinctions of quality in the wor- shippers. They are seated according to age, the old king Lemuels and their queens in the front near the pulpit, and the younger Lem- uels farther back, enclosed in pews, sitting back to back, impounded, all, for deep thought and spiritual digestion; only the deacons, sit- ting close under the pulpit, by themselves, to receive, as their dis- tinctive honor, the more perpendicular droppings of the word. Clean round the front of the gallery is drawn a single row of choir, headed by the key -pipe, in the center. The pulpit is overhung by an august wooden canopy, called a sounding board: study general of course and first lesson of mystery to the eyes of the children, until what time their ears are opened to understand the spoken mysteries.
There is no affectation of seriousness in the assembly, no manner- ism of worship ; some would say too little of the manner of worship. They think of nothing in fact save what meets their intelligence and enters into them by that method. They appear like men who have
Rkv. Truman Marsh
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 59
a digestion for strong meat, and have no conception that trifles more delicate can be of any account to feed the system. Nothing is dull that has the matter in it, nothing long that has not exhausted the matter. If the minister speaks in his great coat and thick gloves or mittens, if the howling blasts of winter blow in across the assem- bly fresh streams of ventilation that move the hair upon their heads, they are none the less content, if only he gives them good strong exercise. Under their hard and, as some would say, stolid faces, great thoughts are brewing, and these keep them warm. Free will, fixed fate, fore-knowledge absolute, trinity, redemption, special grace, eternity: give them anything high enough, and the tough muscles of their inward man will be climbing sturdily into it ; and if they go away having something to think of, they have had a good dayr A perceptible glow will kindle in their hard faces, only when some one of the chief apostles, a Day, a Smith, or a Bellamy, has comq to lead them up some higher pinnacle of thought, or pile upon their sturdy mind some heavier weight of argument: fainting never under any weight, even that which, to the foreign critics of the dis- courses preached by them and others of their day, it seems impossi- ble for any, the most cultivated audience in the world, to have sup- ported. Oh, these royal men of homespun, how great a thing to them was religion ! The district school was there, the great Bellamy is here, among the highest peaks and solitudes of divine govern- ment, and between is close living and hard work, and they are kings alike in all!
True there was a rigor in their piety, a want of gentle feeling; their Christian graces were cast-iron shapes, answering with a hard metallic ring, but they stood the rough wear of life none the less durably for the excessive hardness of their temperament, kept their families and communities none the less truly, though it may be less benignly, under the sense of God and religion. If we find something to modify, or soften, in their over-rigid notions of Chris- tian living, it is yet something to know that what we are they have made us, and that, when we have done better for the ages that come after us, we shall have a more certain right to blame their austerities.
View them as we may, there is yet, and always will be, some- thing magnificent, in their stern, practical fidelity to their prin- ciples. . . .
Kegarding now, the homespun age as represented in these pic- tures of the social and religious life, we need, in order to a full understanding, or conception of the powers and the possibilities of success embodied in it, to go a step farther; to descend into the practical struggle of common life, and see how the muscle of energy and victory is developed, under its close necessities.
The sons and daughters grew up, all, as you will perceive, in the closest habits of industry. The keen jockey way of whittling out a living by small bargains sharply turned, which many suppose to be an essential characteristic of the Yankee race is yet no proper
6o THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
inbred distinction, but only a casual result, or incident, that per- tains to the transition period between the small, stringent way of life in the previous times of home-production, and the new age of trade. In these olden times, these genuine days of homespun, they supposed, in their simplicity, that thrift represented work, and looked about seldom for any mo re. delicate or sharper way of getting on. They did not call a man's property his fortune, but they spoke of one or another as being worth so much; conceiving that he had it laid up as the reward or fruit of his deservings. The house Avas a factory on the farm, the farm a grower and producer for the house. The exchanges went on briskly enough but required neither money nor trade. No affectation of polite living, no languish- ing airs of delicacy and softness in doors, had begun to make the fathers and sons impatient of hard work out of doors, and set them at contriving some easier and more plausible way of living. Their very dress represented work, and they went out as men whom the Avives and daughters had dressed for work; facing all weather, cold and hot, wet and dry, wrestling with the plow on the stony-sided hills, digging out the rocks by hard lifting and a good many very prac- tical experiments in mechanics, dressing the flax, threshing the rye, dragging home in the deep snows the great wood pile of the year's consumption; and then, when the day is ended, having no loose money to spend in taverns, taking their recreation, all together, in reading, or singing, or happy talk, or silent looking in the fire, and finally in sleep, to rise again, with the sun, and pray over the family Bible for just such another good day as the last. And so they lived, working out, each year, a little advance of thrift, just within the line of comfort.
The picture still holds, in part, though greatly modified by the softened manner of indoor life, and the multiplied agencies of emi- gration, travel, trade and machinery. It is, on the whole, a hard and over-severe picture, and yet a picture that embodies the highest points of merit, connects the noblest results of character. Out of it, in one view, come all the successes we commemorate on this fes- tive occasion.
No mode of life was ever more expensive; it was life, at the expense of labor too stringent to allow the highest culture and the most proper enjoyment. Even the dress of it was more expensive than we shall ever see again. Still it was a life of honesty, and simple content, and sturdy victory. Immoralities, that rot down the vigor and humble the consciousness of families, were as much less frequent, as they had less thought of adventure, less to do with travel, and trade, and money, and were closer to nature and the simple life of home.
If they were sometime drudged by their over-iiitcr.se labor, still they were kept by it in a generally rugged state, both of body an 1 mind. They kept a good digestion, which is itself no small part of a character. The mothers spent their nervous impulse on their muscles, and had so much less need of keeping down the excess, or
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 6i
calming the unspent lightning, by doses of anodyne. In the play of the wheel they spent fibre too, within, and in the weaving, wove it close and firm. Be it true as it may, that the mothers of the homespun age had a severe limit on their culture and accomplish nients. Be it true that we demand a delicacy and elegance of man- ners impossible to them, under the rugged necessities they bora Still there is, after all, something very respectable in good health, and a great many graces play in its look that we love to study, even if there be a little of "perdurable toughness" in their charms. How much is there, too, in the sublime motherhood of health! Hence come, not always, I know, but oftenest, the heroes and the great minds gifted with volume and power, and balanced for the manly virtues of truth, courage, persistency, and all sorts of victory. It was also a great point, in this homespun mode of life, that it imparted exactly what many speak of only with contempt, a closely girded habit of economy. Harnessed, all together, into the producing pro- cess, young and old, male and female, from the boy that rode the plough-horse to the grandmother, knitting under her spectacles, they had no conception of squandering lightly what they had all been at work, thread by thread, and grain by grain, to produce. They knew too exactly what everything cost, even small things, not to husband them carefully. Men of patrimony in the great world, therefore, noticing their small way in trade, or expenditure, are ready, as we often see, to charge them with meanness, simply be- cause they knew things only in a small way; or, what is not far different, because they were too simple and rustic, to have any con- ception of the big operations, by which other men are wont to get their money without earning it, and lavish the more freely because it was not earned. Still this knowing life only in the small, it will be found, is really anything but meanness.
Probably enough the man who is heard threshing in his barn of a winter evening by the light of a lantern, (I knew such an example), will be seen driving his team next day, the coldest day of the year, through the deep snow to a distant wood lot, to draw a load for a present to his minister. So the housewife that higgles for a half hour with the merchant over some small trade, is yet one that will keep watch, not unlikely, when the school master, board- ing round the district, comes to some hard quarter, and commence asking him to dinner, then to tea, then to stay over night, and literally boarding him, till the hard quarter is passed. Who now» in the great world of money, will do, not to say the same, as much, proportionally as much, in any of the pure hospitalities of life?
Besides, what sufficiently disproves any real meanness, it will be tound that children brought up in this way to know things in the small, what they cost, and what is their value, have in just that fact one of the best securities of character and most certain elements of power and success in life; because they expect to get on by small advances followed up and saved by others, not by sudden leaps of fortune that despise the slow but surer methods of industry and
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Dierit. Wlien the hard, wiry-looking patriarch of homespun, for example, sets out for Hartford, or Bridgeport, to exchange the little surplus of his year's production, carrying his provision with him -and the fodder of his team, and taking his boy along to show him the great world, you may laugh at the simplicity, or pity, if you will, the sordid look of the picture; but, five or ten years hence, this boy will like enough be found in College, digging out the cent's worth of his father's money in hard study; and some twenty years later he will be returning in his honors, as the celebrated Judge, or Governor, or Senator and public orator, from some one of the great States of the Republic, to bless the sight once more of that vener- ated pair who shaped his beginnings and planted the small seeds of his future success. Small seeds, you may have thought, of mean- ness; but now they have grown up and blossomed into a large minded life, a generous public devotion, and a free benevolence to mankind.
And just here, I am persuaded, is the secret, in no small degree, of the very peculiar success that has distinguished the sons of Connecticut and, not least, those of Litchfield County, in their migra- tion to other States. It is because they have gone out in the wise economy of a simple, homespun training, expecting to get on in the world by merit and patience, and by a careful husbanding of small advances; secured in their virtue by just that which makes their perseverance successful. For the men who see the great in the small and go on to build the great by small increments, will commonly have an exact conscience too that beholds great princi- l)les in small things, and so will form a character of integrity, before both God and man, as solid and massive as the outward successes they conquer
I have wished, in particular, to bring out an impression of the unrecorded history of the times gone by. We must not think that the great men have made the history. Rather it is the history that has made the men. It is the homespun many, the simple Christian men and women of the century gone by, who bore their life struggle faithfully, in these valleys and among these hills, and who now are sleeping in the untitled graves of Christian worth and piety. These are they whom we are most especially to honor, and it is good for us all to see and know, in their example, how nobly fruitful and beneficent that virtue may be, which is too common to be distin- guished, and is thought of only as the worth of unhistoric men. Wortli indeed it is, that worth which, being common, is the sub- structure and the prime condition of a happy, social state, and of all the honors that dignify its historj^: worth, not of men only, but quite as much of women; for you have seen, at every turn of my subject, how the age gone by receives a distinctive character from the queens of the distaff and the loom, and their princely mother- hood. Let no woman imagine that she is without consequence, or motive to excellence, because she is not conspicuous, Oh, it is the greatness of woman that she is so much like the great powers
THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD 63
of nature, back of the noise and clatter of the world's aifairs, tem- pering all things with her benign influence only the more certainly because of her silence, greatest in her beneficence because most remote from ambition, most forgetful of herself and fame; a better nature in the world that only waits to bless it, and refuses to be known save in the successes of others, whom she makes conspicuous; satis- fied most, in the honors that come not to her, that "Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land!". . . Men and women of Litchfield County, such has been the past; a good and honorable past! We give it over to you: the future is with you. It must, we know be different, and it will be what you make it. Be faithful to the sacred trust God is this day placing in jour hands. One thing, at least, I hope; that, in these illustrations I have made some just impression on you all of the dignity of work. How magnificent an honor it is, for the times gone by, that when so many schemes are on foot, as now, to raise the weak; when the friends of the dejected classes of the world are proposing even to reorganize society itself for their benefit, trying to humanize punish- ments, to kindle hope in disability, and nurse depravity into a condition of comfort, (a distinction how magnificent!), that our fathers and mothers of the century passed had, in truth, no dejected classes, no disability, only here and there a drone of idleness, or a sporadic case of vice and poverty; excelling, in the picture of social comfort and well-being actually realized, the most romantic visions of our new seers. They want a reorganization of society! — some- thing better than the Christian gospel and the Christian family state! — some community in hollow-square, to protect them and coax them up into a life of respect, and help them to be men! No, they did not even so much as want the patronage of a bank of savings to encourage them and take the wardship of their cause. They knew how to make their money, and how to invest it, and take care of it, and make it productive; how to build, and plant, and make sterility fruitful, and conquer all the hard weather of life. Their producing process took everything at a disadvantage; for they had no capital, no machinery, no distribution of labor, nothing but wild forest and rock; but they had metal enough in their character to conquer their defects of outfit and advantage. They sucked honey out of the rock, and oil out of the fiinty rock. Nay, they even seemed to want something a little harder than nature in her softer moods could ^'ield them. Their ideal of a Goshen they sought out, not in the rich alluvion of some fertile Nile, but upon the crest of the world, !<omewhere between the second and third heaven where Provi- dence itself grows cold, and there, making warmth by their exercise and their prayers, they prepared a happier state of competence and Avealth, than the Goshen of the sunny Nile ever saw. Your con- <lition vnll hereafter be softened, and your comforts multiplied. Let your culture be as much advanced. But let no delicate spirit that despises Avork, grow up in your sons and daughters. Make these rocky hills smoothe their faces and smile under your industry. Let
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no absurd ambition tempt you to imitate the manners of the great world of fashion and rob you thus of the respect and dignity that pertaia to manners properly your OAvn. Maintain, above all, your religious exactness. Think what is true, and then respect your- selves in living exactly what you think. Fear God and keep His commandments, as your godly fathers and mothers did before you, and found, as we have seen, to be the beginning of wisdom. As their graves are with you, so be that faith in God, which ennobled their lives and glorified their death, an inheritance in you, and a legacy transmitted by you to your children.
CHAPTER VII.
LITCHFIELD IN THE HEVOLUTION. BY DOROTHY BULL.
The hardy life of the Age of Homespun and the severe discipline of the Colonial Wars, prepared the people morally and physically for the severer test to come, in which the new nation "conceived in liberty" was to be born. Out of that background of vigorous and earnest life came the great figures of the founders of our nation and the sturdy army of citizen soldiers, who were to preserve and renew the fine tradition of their race.
Let us picture our village at the close of the French War, with its streets still unkempt, its houses more widely scattered than now, its people vigorously engaged in the occupations of the pioneer farmer, and cherishing, no doubt, new hopes of peace and prosperity. Already the little to^vn had taken its place in the life of the Colony as the County Seat of a new County. The first Court House and Jail were built, and Oliver Wolcott, then a young man in the middle thirties, had taken up his duties as High Sheriff and built his house on South Street. Elisha Sheldon had come from Lyme, and aftei- a service of seven years as Associate Judge of the Court of Com- mon Pleas for the county, had been elected to the Connecticut Legis- lature as a member of the Upper House. Jedediah Strong had graduated from Yale, and was shortly to begin his career, as "petti- fogger and politician". Bezaleel Beebe had returned, at the age of twenty-one, from four years' service in the Colonial wars, and set- tled on the Beebe homestead, north of Bantam Lake, with his young wife Elizabeth Marsh, the daughter of Captain John Marsh. Young Judah Champion had begun ten years before, his energetic pastorate of the First Society of the Congregational Church, and the! new Meeting House on the Green had just been finished. Into this atmos- phere of industry and peace came in 1765 the first rumble of the approaching storm.
Between Great Britain and her colonies stretched three thous- and miles of "unplumbed, salt, estranging sea". Between the minds of the British Government and of the settlers of the New World lay unmeasured spaces of "unplumbed, salt, estranging thought". The Home Government was concerned chiefly with its own credit, with the low state of the exchequer after the recent wars, and with dreams of empire. The Stamp Act seemed a simple solution of the first two questions, and a reasonable assistance in the