A history of Connecticut : its people and institutions

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Preface

WHILE Connecticut is passing from foundation work and a style of living, moulded by the frugal Puritan influences of the early years, into conditions, shaped largely by people from many other lands; while wealth, luxuries and amusements multiply, it is well to review the past, study the reasons for the migrations hither; glance at early idealism, hardships and problems; see the thrift, wariness and common sense; observe what farmers had for breakfast, what and how they believed, the way they worked, struggled and occasionally played; how fines as well as interest in a warm theology promoted attendance at the icy meeting-house. It is diverting to notice leather breeches, home-spun coats and linsey-woolsey gowns issuing from forest, sheep-pasture and flax-field; watch the evolution of the log-house into the gambrel -roofed and lean-to; see the bridle-path widen and harden into turnpike, railroad and trolley; schooner change to steamboat and ferry to bridge; mark how the versatile people managed with Indians, wolves, rattlesnakes, witchcraft, slavery, tramps and Sunday; how they erected schools, meeting-houses, whipping-posts and pillories in every town; how they relieved the monotony of brewing beer, working the loom and hoeing corn by a journey to Tower Hill to enjoy the luxury of a moving picture of a public hanging. We are to see the innocent-looking sloop go down the river toward Barbados, loaded with horses, pipe-staves, salted fish, beef and pork, returning with a cargo of rum and molasses, or of unwilling immigrants from

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Preface

Guinea; examine afresh the evolution of town and colonial government; the working of Charles II 's liberal charter; the development of courts, schools, colleges, taxation, insurance, temperance, music, art, literature, industries, penal and reformatory methods, philanthropies and religious freedom ; how slavery grew, waned and ceased; mines were opened, inventions multiplied, looms worked and brickyards poured forth their treasure; how tobacco fields, market gardens, orchards, factories, Yankee notions and tin-peddlers nourished.

In touching so many interests, adventurous were the daring that should expect to include in one volume all that deserves saying, and with infallible accuracy, but in this endeavor to describe the place and influence of Connecticut in the onward movement of the country, the author believes that the work invites to an instructive and interesting excursion into a vital and inspiring field.

The author wishes to express his hearty thanks to all who helped him by suggestions and criticisms : chief of these is Charles M. Andrews, Professor of History in Yale College, who, with accurate scholarship, made many invaluable comments. Among others who have placed the writer under decided obligations are the following librarians: George S. Godard of the State Library, Albert C. Bates of the Connecticut Historical Society Library, Frank B. Gay and Forrest Morgan of the Watkinson Library. Material assistance has also been rendered in lines in which they are experts by President F. S. Luther and Professor J. J. McCook of Trinity College, Professor W. S. Pratt of Hartford Theological Seminary, Professors W. M. Bailey, Williston Walker and H. A. Beers of Yale University; Dr. Edwin A. Down, Chairman of the State Board of Charities; C. D. Hine, Secretary of the State Board of Education; Dr. W. N. Thompson, Superintendent of the Hartford Retreat for the Insane; Dr. G. H. Knight, late Superintendent of the School for the Feeble-minded; Albert Garvin, Superintendent of

Preface ix

the State Reformatory; W. A. Garner, Warden of the Connecticut State Prison; W. G. Fairbank, Superintendent of the Connecticut Industrial School for Girls; C. M. Williams, Superintendent of the Connecticut School for Boys; Dr. W. E. Fisher of the staff of the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane; Dr. H. M. Pollock, Superintendent of the Norwich Hospital for the Insane; E. M. Warner, Esquire, of Putnam; C. M. Thompson, Secretary of the Connecticut Prison Association; J. M. Taylor, President of the Connecticut Mutual Insurance Company; Burton Mansfield, Insurance Commissioner; W. S. Corbin and C. C. Maxfield, Tax Commissioner and Clerk; R. B. Brandegee, C. N. Flagg and James Britton, artists; Charles Hopkins Clark of the Hartford Courant and Professor Anson D. Morse of Amherst College.

G. L. C.

Wethersfield, Connecticut, April i, 1914.

Contents

[APTER

I The Prehistoric Period

II The Settlement

Chapter I The Prehistoric Period

CONNECTICUT extends on Long Island Sound a hundred miles, rises to an average height of a thousand feet at its northern line, and in the case of Bear Mountain in Salisbury, to the extreme height of two thousand three hundred and fifty-four feet. The eastern boundary is forty-five and the western seventy- two miles in extent, and within these modest limits lies one of the original thirteen colonies, busy, thrifty, inventive, and conservative. It is on the turnpike between empire states, — sharp for the best trade, keen for the main chance, laughed at for its steady habits, wooden nutmegs, peddlers, and Blue Laws; leaned on in times of national peril ; sought by tired nerves for its lovely valleys, whispering brooks, and radiant lakes. The eastern counties are sandy, stony, sometimes rocky and wild, but beautiful. The western parts are famous for their noble mountains, picturesque lakes, and entrancing scenery. The three main rivers and the streams which flow into them once abounded with salmon, shad, and trout. These streams are still beautiful, and are useful for steamboats, tugs, sailboats, power-boats, and for turning wheels to manufacture everything from a jackknife to an automobile. Varied is the wealth of Connecticut — forests, mountains, orchards, and meadows — and in their season there abound sweet and blushing peaches, spicy apples, delicious grapes, mammoth strawberries, the lowly potato, the rank tobacco, the crisp celery, the royal Indian corn, the courtly rye, and the graceful herd's grass.

Searching for the foundation of this park-like state, we see beneath all else the ancient rocks — granite, quartz, feldspar, found in abundance in the eastern and western counties, and sometimes cropping out elsewhere. Midway, the highlands sink into a wide trough, in which are rocks of a later date, showing that a muddy valley once ran through the state into Massachusetts, and that over it sauntered in lazy promenade, or leaped in hungry pursuit of prey, huge reptiles and the terrible mastodon ; some of those footprints used to be called "Connecticut River bird-tracks," but it is now known that birds did not appear at that early period, and that the animals must have been reptiles. An interesting example of the monsters in Connecticut thousands of years ago was found in Farmington in August, I 9 I 3» by workmen digging on the shore of an ancient lake, whose mud bottom rests on glacial rock. It is a skeleton of a mastodon, which is supposed to have been eleven feet high and to have weighed about eight tons. Upon that weird scene a volcano rolled its molten lava, spreading over the beds of mud, hardening it into rock, after which there succeeded a long era of peace, with busy streams pouring in their tribute of sand and gravel. Then there occurred another volcanic outburst, and later still another, for there are in central Connecticut three sheets of volcanic trap, and sandwiched between them are beds of sand, clay, and gravel, long since hardened into rocks known as shale, sandstone, and conglomerate. The three fiery torrents killed the animals, preserving many of their tracks. Long after the rocks were laid, and the last lava stiffened, there were powerful earthquakes, which tilted the rocks. The latter, through the weathering of the ages, form the mountains we call Talcott, Hanging Hills of Meriden, Lamentation,

THe Prehistoric Period 3

Three Notches, and Pond Rock, in the long range from Mount Tom to the Sound.

Then came the Glacial Age, whose vast sheet covered the land and moved heavily down mountain and hill, carrying bowlders for miles, grinding the surface of the rocks, leaving piles of sand here and there. All the rocks of the state show the results of the Glacial Age, but the clearest markings are in the trap ridges of the central parts, wherever the trap comes to the surface. The broken material torn off by the ice is found in the gravelly soil of the cultivated land, in the hills of gravel, and in the sandy bluffs along the rivers. Long Island is probably a terminal moraine, and Say brook rests on a glacial sand plain, as does the town of Essex, and a part of Norwich. In the central part of the state, the drift is mostly of trap, sandstone, or shale, but in the eastern and western sections the light-colored crystalline rocks and gravels are seen.

The central valley, about twenty miles in width, is drained by the Connecticut as far south as Middletown, where the stream forces its way between two mountains, leaving the valley to reach the Sound at New Haven. This valley, the home of the first settlers, is of a deep, rich loam, until the river leaves it, after which it is sandy. The more broken country, often rugged and grand, in the eastern and western parts is less favorable for agriculture than are the central parts, but the rivers are powerful sources of wealth.

Connecticut is well supplied with clay for bricks in Newington, Windsor, North Haven, and elsewhere; its granite quarries are many and inexhaustible, its sandstone measures at Portland abundant, and its iron mines at Salisbury of great value, especially where toughness is required. It was a long, stiff discipline through which Connecticut passed to prepare for the coming days; she was wrenched, twisted, racked, pounded, frozen, washed and burned, but at length the sturdy foundation was laid for a resolute people and a vigorous history.

Chapter II The Settlement

IT is well that this singularly favored tract with its varied wealth of building materials, soil, rivers, and harbors stayed in obscurity so long, until the seed of a highly developed civilization could be winnowed out of the gloomy and wearisome life of Europe. It was in 1614, that the clear waters of the Connecticut were first traversed by a keel steered by a pale-faced mariner. The first European visitor to Connecticut was the Dutch navigator, Adrian Blok, who, on his way through the Sound in his American-built yacht, the Restless, explored for sixty miles the river, which the Indians called "Quaneh-ta-cut," the long tidal river. It was springtime, and forest and meadow were charming to the keen mariner ; few signs of life were seen until he reached Middletown, where the Indians were numerous, and he learned that they were of the nation called Sequins; near Hartford he came to the country of the Nawaas, where "the natives plant maize," and their village was fortified to withstand the Pequots. Landing there, Blok parleyed with the Indians, and learned that natives from the upper parts of the river brought rich peltry in bark canoes. Then he sailed up-stream as far as Enfield Rapids, where he turned and went down to the Sound ; thence he continued eastward, taking note of the Thames and Montauk ; explored Narragansett Bay, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket; named Rhode Island the Red Island, from the color of the soil;

The Perched Glacial Bowlder at Taftville, Connecticut

Reproduced from The Connecticut Quarterly, vol. iv., No. 3. (By permission)

Glacial Striae, Summit Street, Hartford, Connecticut

Reproduced from The Connecticut Quarterly vol. iv., No. 3. (By permission)

glanced at Plymouth Rock, and entering Massachusetts Bay, went as far as Nahant. On his way back he fell in with another Dutch captain, Christaensen, in the Fortune, and turning over his vessel to another, Blok sailed for Holland, where so much interest was awakened that the Amsterdam Trading Company was formed; a map was made from Blok's data, and the whole matter was laid before the States-General, which gave the company a charter, and exclusive right to trade for four voyages during three years.

Under that charter of 1 614, Dutch ships were soon sailing up and down the river, trading with the Indians, and for nearly eighteen years Amsterdam vessels were on the Connecticut, which was unknown to the English until a Dutch captain from Manhattan, seeing the Pilgrims at Plymouth "seated in a barren quarter," shortsightedly told them of the rich valley Blok had discovered; said that it was a "fine place for plantation and trade," and wished them to make use of it. This was in 1627, and, the hands of the Pilgrims being full, the acceptance of the invitation was deferred for six years. In 1 631, some Mohican Indians visited Plymouth and urged the settlers to go to Connecticut, extolling it as a good place for plantation and trade; they wished to gain the help of the English in behalf of their chief, the able and unscrupulous Uncas, who was seeking the headship of the Pequots.

Moved by these persuasions, in 1632, Edward Winslow went in a boat to the river, confirmed the statements of Dutch and Indians, and on his return went with Bradford to Boston to discuss a plan for a joint trading-post, but they received no encouragement. In September, 1633, a vessel was sent from Boston into the Connecticut, and John Oldham with three others set out from Watertown overland to explore the river. Plymouth waited no longer, but equipped "a great new bark," in the hold of which was the frame of a house, with "boards to cover and finish it," and sent it forth under command of Captain William Holmes.

When they reached the Connecticut, they were surprised to find the Dutch at Hartford in possession of a fort, on which were mounted two cannon. In the previous June, the Dutch bought of the Indians twenty acres, and called their fort the "House of Hope," on reaching which Holmes heard the drum-beats and saw the cannoneers beside the guns with lighted torches, under the banner of the Netherlands. The commander, Jacob van Curler, bade Holmes "strike and stay," but the Plymouth captain appealed to his commission and went on. No shot was fired, and on reaching the point just below the mouth of the Farmington River September 26, 1633, they landed, quickly "clapt up" the house and soon had a palisade around it to protect against the Dutch and the far more dangerous Pequots.

The Dutch in the House of Hope found their English neighbors disagreeable, but they stayed in their meager stronghold till 1654, in almost constant broils, their land invaded, workmen harassed, and claims challenged. They were "disgusted with a post so constantly insulted," the English denying the right of the Dutch to any land about the fort. Facing the question of Governor Hopkins, "Show your right and we are ready to exhibit ours," there was only one thing to do since the English were becoming so numerous. In 1636, the English secured deeds from Sequasson, the son of Soheag, "lord and rightful owner of the entire river and land thereabouts," and he testified in the Hartford Court that "he never sold any ground to the Dutch." A little later, the colony procured from Uncas, who, after the Pequot overthrow, was the all-powerful Mohican sagamore, "a clear and ample deed of all the lands in Connecticut, except the lands that were planted." The purchase money was in wampum, shoes, and trading-cloth. Boundaries were indefinite, especially when a distance was described as far as "one day's walk," and Connecticut carried out the advice of Sir William Boswell, English ambassador at The Hague, to "crowd on, crowding the Dutch out of those places which they have occupied, without hostility or any act of violence." Soon English and Dutch farmers came to blows; Evert Duyckink, a garrison man, while sowing grain was hit "a hole in his head with a sticke, so that the bloode ran downe very strongly, downe upon his body." Ground which the Dutch had made ready for seed was seized in the night and planted with corn by the English, and then held by them. At length, after countless irritations, retaliations, and negotiations, the English cold shoulder proved so stiff, and the English disposition so freezing, that in the April session of 1654, the Court at Hartford "ordered and declared that the Dutch Howse of Hope, with the lands, buildings and fences thereto belonging bee hereby sequestered." Captain John Underhill posted this notice on the doors of the House of Hope, "I, John Underhill, do seize this house and land for the State of England, by virtue of the commission granted by the Providence Plantation." The Dutch were glad to leave a place which had become so uncomfortable, and long ago the river wore away the last vestige of the fort, of which the only relic remaining is a tired-looking yellow Holland brick with the halves of two others, which are now among the relics of the Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford.

We must now go back to the story of the settlers from Boston Bay. The people of Watertown, Dorchester, and Newtown (Cambridge) were growing restless under the Massachusetts authority, and the lure of Connecticut appealed strongly. The master mind of this migration was Thomas Hooker, a man of majestic presence and powerful intellect, who had graduated at Cambridge at the age of twenty-two, and continued for a time in residence as a lecturer, at a time when Laud was advancing to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and the policy of "thorough" was developing. Hooker's disposition is seen in his unwillingness to accept a living, for which he would come under obligations to a bishop, and as an alternative he accepted a living of forty pounds, the gift of Francis Drake. Soon afterward he was appointed to a lectureship, a method of reaching the people when preaching fell into disuse. Laud said that lecturers were "the people's creatures" and "blew the bellows of sedition." Hooker's influence appears in a letter written to Laud's chancellor by a minister who said, "His genius will still haunt all the pulpits where any of his scholars may be admitted to preach. There be divers young ministers about us that spend their time in conference with him, and return home and preach what he hath brewed. Our people's pallets grow so out of tast, yt noe food contents them but of Mr. Hooker's dressing." The lectures were delivered on the market-days and Sunday afternoons, and on one occasion in the presence of the judges and before a large congregation, he "declared freely the sins of England, and the plagues that would come" for such sins. Mather quotes one as saying of him that "he was a person, who while doing his Master's work would put a king in his pocket."

In 1629, Laud turned his attention to the lecturers, and among the first to feel the weight of his heavy hand was Thomas Hooker of Chelmsford, who was compelled to retire to a village four miles away, where he taught school in his house, and the next year he was cited to appear before the High Commission, but he escaped arrest, he went to Holland and, in 1633, we find him in Boston. Hooker's sister was wife of John Pym, who pleaded for the restoration of the Puritan clergy, but the opposition was too strong and Laud's influence was growing. The voyage was of eight weeks' duration, and the conversations must have been interesting, for besides Hooker was Samuel Stone, a lecturer, and later associate pastor with Hooker, and also John Cotton and John Haynes. Cotton stayed in Boston, while Hooker and Stone went to Cambridge. On October II, 1633, Hooker was chosen pastor and Stone teacher, and Hubbard says that "after Mr. Hooker's coming over, it was noticed that many of the freemen grew to be very jealous of their liberties." Cambridge was prospering with its hundred families; its tax was as large as that of Boston, and John Haynes was chosen governor in 1635, but an uneasiness arose. The town "complained of straitness for want of land, especially meadow." Enlargements were granted to include what is now Brighton, Brookline, Newton, and Arlington, but the uneasiness continued. Hubbard, who lived within fifty years of these events, says that other motives did "more secretly and powerfully drive on the business. Two such eminent stars as were Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker, both of the first magnitude, could not continue in one and the same orb." In a letter written to John Wilson, a writer says that he heard "that ther is great diusion of judgment in matters of religion amongst good ministers and people which moued Mr. Hoker to remoue." He also wrote: " You are so strict in admission of members to your church, that more than half are out of your church . . . and that Mr. Hoker, befor he went away, preached against yt." John Winthrop, the grave, scholarly and deeply religious Moses of the Puritan migration to America, found John Cotton, his gifted minister, an able yoke-fellow in the position that it would be calamitous to allow any one who was not a member of the Congregational Church to vote or hold office. This combination of the aristocratic and the political was not popular in some of the towns. Samuel Stone said it was a "speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy."

The number of freemen had increased so rapidly that in 1630, they could not all meet in one place to transact business, and a board of assistants was appointed to choose the governor and make laws, and in May, 1631, it was further decided that the assistants need not be chosen every year, but might keep their seats during good behavior, or until set aside by the vote of the freemen. This was not agreeable to Cambridge, Watertown and Dorchester, and they sent a deputation to Boston to inspect the charter, to see io A. History of Connecticut

if such power was authorized by it. The method of electing assistants was changed, but Cotton was ever strenuous in a position, in which he had with him a majority of the ministers, that democracy was no fit government either for church or commonwealth. Chief in opposition was Hooker, who maintained against the proposition that "the best part is always the least, and of the best part the wiser is always the lesser," that "in matters of greater consequence, which concern the common Good a General Council, chosen by all to transact businesses which concern all, I conceive, under favor most suitable to rule, and most safe for relief of the whole."

It appears thus that the motives leading to the migration were political, democratic, and commercial, for there were many who preferred a more popular basis for the government than that which prevailed at Boston Bay, where the right to vote was so strictly guarded that only one man in six had suffrage. Land hunger also impelled many, not so much through lack of pasturage, of which there was sufficient in eastern Massachusetts, but the fertility of the Connecticut valley appealed strongly to the enterprising. Although theoretically there was scanty place for freedom in Massachusetts, especially for extremists like Mrs. Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and the Quakers, the actual condition was not as trying as one might think for most people, because of the sturdy common sense of the settlers, who demanded much liberty of discussion. The towns of Cambridge, Watertown, and Dorchester (together with Roxbury, which settled Springfield) developed a more energetic local self-government than elsewhere, and in 1631 , Dorchester and Watertown led the way in organizing town government by selectmen. In that year a tax of sixty pounds was assessed upon the settlements to pay for building frontier fortifications in Cambridge, and the inhabitants of Watertown at first declined to pay their share of this tax, on the ground that English freemen cannot rightfully be taxed, save by their

THe Settlement II

consent, a protest which led to a change in the constitution of the colony. In view of these facts it is not strange that in May, 1634, the congregation at Cambridge petitioned the General Court for permission to move to some other quarter within Massachusetts. The petition was granted, and messengers were sent to Ipswich and Merrimac to look for a location, but after the invitation of the Indians on the Connecticut, a petition was presented to the Court in September for leave to go outside Massachusetts, and it was rejected by the assistants, though the deputies favored it. In the spring of 1635, some of the Watertown and Dorchester people were more successful with their application, and it was voted to allow them to go, provided that they continued under the Massachusetts authority.

We have given an account of the building of a trading house at Windsor in September, 1633; in the autumn of 1634, ten householders and planters, called "Adventurers," including the venturesome and trying pioneer, John Oldham, settled at Pyquag, or Wethersfield; building huts they broke the land and sowed some rye, thus starting agricultural life on the Connecticut, and during the following May about thirty more took up land there. In 1635, Windsor received the first installment from Dorchester, and a company direct from England. In October, some sixty men, women, and children, driving before them cows, horses, and swine, set out by land and reached the Connecticut "after a tedious and difficult journey," but the river froze over by November 15, and the vessel that carried provisions for the winter for the colonists was stayed at Saybrook. Fearing starvation, most of the settlers went to the mouth of the river, loosened a sloop from the ice, and returned to Boston. When the spring came many Cambridge people sold their lands on the Charles River, and in June, 1636, a large number of people took the "old Connecticut path," through Waltham, Framingham, Dudley, and Woodstock, the path over which Oldham went three years before, "lodging in Indian towns all the way." It was not an imposinglooking procession: men, women, and children on foot, though, because of ill health, Mrs. Hooker was carried in a litter; the only band of music that attended it was the lowing of a hundred and sixty cattle and the squealing of the pigs; but the presence of Hooker, Haynes, Stone, and Bull gave dignity to this movement of American democracy. Through the summer of 1636, people traveled to Connecticut, and almost daily a few would take up land and build their houses. Fever for change also seized some of the Roxbury people, and Agawam, or Springfield, was settled by a company of people under the leadership of William Pynchon.

The site of Hartford was deeded by Sachem Sequasson to Samuel Stone, William Goodwin and others, and while the original deed of 1636, was lost, a deed confirming the first and extending the original grant westward, executed by the heirs of Sequasson, is recorded in the Hartford Land Records. The settlers were known as proprietors, and to every one were allotted a house lot, a piece of meadow land and a wood lot; the ^remainder of the land was called the Town Commons. These lots were not recorded until October 10, 1639, when the General Court ordered that the three towns should provide a "ledger Booke, with an index or alphabett unto the same : Also shall choose one who shall be a Towne Clerke or Register, who shall . . . record every man's house and land already graunted and measured out to him." This book, known as the Book of Distribution, is the first book of land records in the town clerk's office in Hartford. Here is a sample entry: "Severall parsilles of land in Hartford upon the River of Coneckticott belonging to John Steele, Sinor, and to his heirs forever. Viz : One parsill on which his now dwelling house standeth with other outt houses, yardes and gardins." The name of Hartford at first was Newe Towne, but within a y%ar it was changed, since Stone and many other settlers were from Hertford, England, and the capital of Connecticut was called "Harteford Towne. And likewise the plantacon nowe called Watertowne shall be called Wythersfield, and the plantacon called Dorchester shall be called Windsor." There are two landmarks remaining from the earliest times: the graveyard back of the First Church, where many of the famous settlers were buried, and the well of Thomas Hooker, still in use in a foundry on Arch Street.

The coming of the Dorchester people to the neighborhood of the Plymouth fort at Windsor gave the Pilgrims there no little uneasiness in the spring of 1635, and Jonathan Brewster, in a letter from the fort in July, tells of the daily arrival by land and water of small parties of settlers. At length these newcomers, headed by Roger Ludlow, one of the ablest and richest men in Massachusetts, claiming that the land was theirs as the "Lord's waste" by "the Providence of God," moved into the midst of the Plymouth people, who protested against the Dorchester settlement on the Plymouth Great Meadow. As the Plymouth men had ignored the claims of the Dutch, so now the Dorchester people ignored the Pilgrim claims to the property, and proposed to allow the Plymouth people only one share, "as to a single family." A protest against the Dorchester intrusion was reported by Brewster at Plymouth, and Bradford entered his objection, contending that it was an attempt to "thrust them all out." Winslow went from Plymouth to Boston and had a fruitless conference with the Dorchester leaders. The negotiations with the Bay magistrates came to nothing. "Many were the letters and passages" that were indulged in by the sturdy combatants. Pious phrases and greedy purposes furnish interesting reading. Both appealed to God's good providence, and while Plymouth had the better argument, Dorchester had the greater power. The Plymouth men would not resort to arms, as it was "far from their thoughts to live in continual contention with their friends and brethren, though they conceived that they suffered much in the thing"; accordingly they entered into a treaty, insisting only that the Dorchester people should acknowledge their rights to the territory. "After much ado," the Plymouth house was retained by the Plymouth men with a sixteenth of all the land bought of the Indians, and the project of abandoning the "barren place" on Plymouth sands was given up.