A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume II, Part 1

Author: Lincoln, Allen B
Publication date: 1920
Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke publ. co.
Number of Pages: 960

USA > Connecticut > Windham County > A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume II > Part 1

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Gc 974.601 W72&1 v.2 1351103

M. L

GENEALOGY COLLECTION

ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01150 6539

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015

https://archive.org/details/modernhistoryofw02linc

A MODERN HISTORY OF

WINDHAM COUNTY CONNECTICUT

A Windham County Treasure Book

ALLEN B. LINCOLN, Editor

ILLUSTRATED

VOLUME II

"The thing I want is not Redbook Lists and Court Calendars * * but the Life of Man *

* * * what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, especially the spirit, of their terres- trial existence; its outward principle; how and what it was, whence it proceeded, and whither it was tending. * * * His- tory, which should be the essence of innumerable biographies." -Carlyle.

CHICAGO THE S. J. CLARKE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1920

1351103

A MODERN HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY, CONNECTICUT

CHAPTER XXXIII

MY NEIGHBOR-WINDHAM COUNTY

AS SEEN FROM WILLINGTON HILL-AN EXCUSE FOR SUNDAY CALLING-A DEFENSE OF ASHFORD-MEMORABLE BIBLE-DAY GATHERINGS-MENTION OF SOME NOTEWORTHY MINISTERS AND CHRISTIAN WORKERS-WELCOMING THE STRANGERS WITHIN OUR GATES-EXTEND A FRIENDLY HAND TO THE FOREIGNERS.

By Mrs. Annie A. Preston

When Mr. Lincoln honored me by an invitation to contribute in a neighborly way to his forthcoming Modern History of Windham County, he gave me very full liberty, as to matter, manner and space. Instantly a mental vision of what I might do in a readable way was inevitably followed by a doubt as to the wisdom of the impulse. Having learned, however, by long experience, that my first thought is my right thought, as my favorite Scripture precept has cver been : "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you," and as acquaintance has been fostered through my efforts to promote an interest in the work of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society, as director for Ashford association, there seems to be adequate reason for my neighborly impressions to center about the churches and the dear church people who cheerfully supplemented my humble efforts; for in those days of the beginning of forward religious movements, there were no trained workers, the need for the effort and the will to try being the equip- ment.

That Windham County was within the line of vision from Willington Hill was gained at the time of the semi-centennial of the Willington Baptist Church, December 18, 1878, when Rev. Thomas Atwood, a former pastor who was pres- ent from Newton Highlands, Mass., was a guest at the Sylvester T. Preston family home (now known as Hillside farm), as were we, having come from our home at Northfield, Mass., for the occasion. Mr. Atwood was relating strenu- ous experiences during a winter's evangelistie tour in Vermont and I, to show myself an interested listener, asked, "In what part of the Green Mountain state was this ?"

"Windham County."

"Indeed ? Even in winter you no doubt enjoyed the beautiful and varied scenery ?"

"The scenery? Have you been there?"

"I was born in Vermont, my mother's native town, and was baptized and united with the Baptist Church in Brattleboro, under the pastorship of the Deloved Rev. Horace Burchard, although my home has always been in my father's native town, Northfield, Mass., just across the state line."

"I trust I have said nothing to injure your feelings ?"

"Not at all; the section is proverbially snow-loved, and the country indeed, excepting in the river valleys, is hilly and mountainous."

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HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

And a much-amused listener, to smoothe the narrator's slight embarrass- ment over his uncomplimentary remarks, said casually :

"Windham County, Vt., has Massachusetts for its southern boundary and that state is the northern boundary of Windham County, Conn. This lady may not be aware that she still has Windham County as next neighbor." Naturally Mr. Lincoln's happy suggestion that I write of the county as a neighbor brought this to my mind.

My first call was on a Sunday afternoon in mid-winter when, after a cheerful morning at the crowded church where the congregation was largely made up of people who had driven for miles, as the custom was, to attend the regular services and the Sunday school, I had told of the excellent sleighing and the fairy-like aspect with everything snow-laden, and not the suggestion of a breeze.

At dinner my husband said, "Grandfather Amos could always find an excuse for an afternoon drive for himself and a 'cutter' full of grandchildren to attend a meeting at some church roundabout. Do you know of any place within easy driving distance where services are held?"

"No," laughed Father Sylvester, amused at the reminiscence; "but an excuse that always held good with him was a Sunday afternoon call on the old or the sick; and ever since my friend Barlow of Westford has been shut in with a broken bone, I have been wishing I could send him my regards and sympathy.

"Oh, do go," said mother, "and I will send a basket of apples-no doubt they have better, but these will be different-and you might carry a bundle of your religious papers, you have so many and such a variety, and they love to read."

Thus occurred my first and never-to-be-forgotten visit to Neighbor Wind- ham, up the peaceful Fenton River valley and on over the picturesque hills in the pale winter sunshine, through a silent world of purest white and soft eider- down. Returning we passed the White Farm and the Gilbert Amidon neigh- borhood, calling at the door to speak to Aunt Hannah Amidon in her pretty cheerful home, and then keeping the upland for miles until the old Gen. Orrin Holt estate was reached. The wide view for the whole distance was most impres- sive-the light of the setting sun seemed to intensify the brightness of the gib- bous moon in the east; the long ranges of hills and myriads of smaller hills like tents, reminding of an encampment of the Lord in Holy Writ, with The Presence walking in the midst. For all that the snows of nearly forty winters have intervened, this first impression of the snow-white tented fields of neigh- bor Windham has remained in my fancy as a scene of prophecy and promise; showing the place which the incomparable beauties of Nature come to hold in the mind during the vicissitudes of life, as a recurring delight and compensa- tion which time cannot efface.

The altar fire of neighborliness thus kindled is still burning. To begin with, neighbor Barlow kept up the acquaintance and never forgot the solace of "some- thing new to read to a shut-in." Other acquaintances followed and the episode left an abiding and favorable impression of Windham County folk; the farm- ing folk, if you please, who held New England community-wise like the warp and woof of a mantle, kind, social, helpful, intelligent, responsive. Happy they who can look back to the decade following the War of the Rebellion and on for a lustrum and more.

In looking back you count these dependable people as friends who you were sure held for you a kindly interest, expressing it in pleasant greeting when

MRS. ANNIE A. PRESTON

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HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

meeting at the fair at Stafford Springs, which has always attracted Windham County neighbors, or at "Barnum and Bailey's" in Willimantic, or more fre- quently at Sunday school conventions, fellowship meetings or at the meetings of the Ashford Baptist Association, at the camp-ground at Willimantic, and . at Woman's Christian Temperance Union conventions. It was pleasant on the return to bring greeting for the home people and the church people, and many pleasant acquaintances have been made in this charming social succession. For, is it not a fact that, in the years we are pen-picturing from memory, the older people were more considered as among the assets of community life ?- a senti- ment now so outgrown that we fear it is the exception and not the rule. Per- sonally, however, I have nothing whatever of which to complain.

In many ways the acquaintance with picturesque Ashford and Westford flourished with so much appreciation on my part, that when the countryside was maligned by a magazine writer seeeking notoriety (whose name, if I recalled, I would not perpetuate), I at the suggestion of many indignant readers gladly took up the cudgels for Ashford in an article which found sympathetic readers in the columns of the Springfield Republican and was something in this familiar vein :

"Well, now," said an Ashford resident, as I met him with his wife at the railway station at Willimantic, "glad to see you. How do you do? Possibly you hesitate about recognizing in so public a place natives of our mercilessly assailed and inoffensive small town. Do pass your opinion upon us. Is degen- eracy stamped upon our general make-up? We naturally, after such a set- back, feel rather shy when we start out for a little journey in the world!"

As I glanced at the attractive couple, both, as always, faultlessly modish in dress, with nothing that the ultra urbanite delights in dubbing "rural" in their appearance, I said laughingly :

"It was not fair to single out Ashford."

"No," replied the gentleman; "and it was short-sighted for the papers to exploit the matter as they did. Ashford should be given more of an oppor- tunity to show what it has been and what its possibilities are."

"And now is the time for you who know the field so well to make a truthful statement for the press."

"But," said the wife, "we are not literary, as far as writing for publication goes, although we do take books on occasion from our 'unpatronized library.' You tell the story for us, please. In a neighborly way you can not help under- standing the situation, and the general unfairness of designating Ashford as a spot given over to moral degeneracy."

"My first thought on reading the effusion was that if one had been required to portray a rugged country town not yet invaded by railroad or trolley ; where the people are doing their best and holding their own under what in this age of many changes might be considered as adverse conditions, he might have singled out picturesque Ashford, with its library, its town band, its five churches, its Sunday schools, its Bible society, its Christian Endeavor societies, its bright, alert, aggressive, young ministers, its model general stores, where everything needful is bought and sold, and its charming kindly people."

"How comfortable you are making us," sighed the lady. "Is there anything else pleasant that you can think of to say of poor, old, traduced 'Ashford ?"

"I am reminded of the old story of the boy who went to muster, and when asked, on his return, if he had enjoyed himself, replied, 'They had good cakes

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HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

there!' I have found that true of Ashford. During my sojourn as neighbor, I have attended there four or five large religious conventions; two or three patriotic gatherings, where I first met Congressman Charles A. Russell, also of your county, listening with great interest to his admirable address; and to the unique Bible-day observance which is always a town picnic, on several delightful occasions. At every one of these community gatherings all who came were hospitably entertained. The people were quiet and cordial, well-bred and well dressed; they came in comfortable and often in handsome turnouts, and the idea of an adverse criticism was far from my thoughts. Flowers and refine- ment always go hand in hand, and Ashford has a flower-loving community, judging from appearances at these gatherings; and in driving about the town, and judging from appearances also, the town has good gardeners and good farmers."

"You judge us from our point of view," said my acquaintance, "if we were anxious to change our habitat, I fancy I could manage it. I do get away on business trips that take me far and wide over the country, and am always happy to get back to my pleasant, comfortable Ashford, Windham County, home."

So was, tradition tells us, our former townsman, Col. Thomas Knowlton, who at one time during the Revolutionary war was commander of the City of New York. He loved Ashford, and its natural beauties are the same now as then. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, also a native of Ashford, born July 14, 1819, whom Gen. Orrin Holt of Willington, when member of Congress from Connecti- cut, had appointed to West Point as a cadet, was always pleased of an oppor- tunity to come home, and was never ashamed to write himself down as from Ashford. General Lyon was the first general officer killed in the Civil war, you know; and his record of service is most remarkable. There are still veterans who were members of the escort when his body was brought back to Eastford for burial. Rev. Ezekiel Skinner, M. D., the first president of Liberia and the first foreign medical missionary, was an Ashford native. And to come down to the present, there is a young fellow who has been all over the world and in our army in the Philippines and who, having returned to the culture and comfort of his early home, declares that "an Aslıford farmhouse is good enough for him."

"There are common-place, ignorant people everywhere," said the young woman, "or there would be no ever-present problem of how we are to elevate the masses, but they are not to be despised. The condition is not new nor peculiar to Ashford. Christ himself could do no mighty works in certain places, we are told, on account of their unbelief; but it is unfair to judge the whole world as heathen on account of that class."

"The last settled Congregational minister in Ashford town, Rev. Austin Gardner, was a well-equipped college alumnus and a graduate of Hartford Theological Seminary. He and his accomplished wife made a notable record as educators, in the South before the war, and they have an exceptionally cul- tivated family. The Rev. Samuel Clark, a recent pastor of the Westford church, was an able man. He and his wife did valiant service there. She often speaks in appreciation of the library. Both of these families live in Willington now, and from intimate acquaintance we have come more fully to understand and appreciate Ashford's people and privileges; one of these being our really fine library, that is highly esteemed by most of our people and so is the band. Both

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are helpful factors in the life of the town. There are more novels read than sermons, but so there are everywhere, and the band does not attempt classical music. Ashford is not alone in liking what is catchy and familiar; but one of the best cornetists in the country today is from Ashford and commenced his noteworthy career in that band."

"Oh, Fred Brown, yes, son of John Albert and nephew of Theron, clergy- man, author, and editor of the 'Youth's Companion.' Thereon Brown was one who found stimulus for his life work at a school taught by Rev. Charles S. Adams, pastor of the Westford Hill church; where also Dr. Elisha Robbins of the Zulu Mission, Dr. Melancthon Storrs, Hartford's well-known physician, Sylvester Whiton of the Worcester Salt Company, Col. Charles L. Dean of Malden, Mass., 'temperance mayor and Boston business man,' and many other youths and maidens who have lived beautiful and useful lives, received their first impetus. One August day, in 1859, a reunion was held on Westford Hill, when there were notable and impressive exercises, the orations, poems and toasts were perpetuated in a highly interesting pamphlet that should be re- printed at this crisis for general circulation and called The Spirit of Ashford or of Windham County, showing the worth while results of the effort of this intellectual, cultured, public-spirited minister and his family; the record is valuable for its suggestiveness."

This championship brought showers of letters to the writer, one of the most comprehensive and most highly prized coming from Dr. Cyrus Newton of Stafford Springs, whose large practice reached over into Windham County, giving him personal reason to say emphatically, "The people of the Connecticut country sides are not degenerate, and I know whereof I write."

That the bloom of the peach is not easy to describe and impossible to retain, we all know from personal knowledge and this may serve as an illustration of the difficulty of striving to perpetuate the social atmosphere of New England a half century ago. This can only be done by pen pictures and character sketches.

In these days, farming was recognized as a necessary and reputable busi- ness, giving pleasant, healthful and lucrative occupation to the different mem- bers of the family, and prosperity was written suggestively by luxuriant crops, well-kept fences, immense barns, for the accommodation of flocks and herds and abundant crops. And nestled beneath primeval trees were rambling, roomy houses, made up of additions built on for the accommodation of generation after generation, with no leaning toward architectural beauty or desire for mo- dernity. However, there was the picturesqueness of convenience and comfort, of light, air and sunshine, and a hint of wintry comfort and open fire-places in chimneys rising from roofs of weather-toned gray, regardless of regularity or artistic effect. One house that I recall had eight of these home-making and warmth-promising accessories; and that these smoke escapes were often the habitat of the fire-fiend which has reduced to many of these ancestral homes to ashes, is also an accepted fact.

In one of these irregular family mansions, it was once my good fortune to be entertained, when an associational meeting put the hospitality of the enter- taining church to the test. The charming hostess-not a Baptist-was a widow, with a family of lovely children-the other members of the household I will not particularize lest the sketch may seem too personal; but the home atmos- phere was ideal and as a bit of real life of the period has a value. At the close

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of the evening service I was piloted to the hospitable door by friendly neighbors going that way with a lantern. The hostess made me welcome and room was made for me on an upholstered "rocking settee," before an open hearth-stone wood fire, and when I exclaimed "How cheerful !" some one replied :

"Cheerfulness, you know, has been called the fair weather of the heart."

"And this fair weather of the home makes one forget that the day has been a portent of grey November"; and as I went on to tell something of my early start and a varied day, I was impressed by a child who was listening intently with an expression which I could not analyze until he said abruptly, the mo- ment I had finished :

"The minister over there, not at our church, but our neighbor, asked if he might send a minister over here for the night, and it was a man with a woman's name and we were all allowed to sit up to see him."

"And are disappointed, of course. Mr. Hanna had to go away early and I was so fortunate as to be sent in his place and must tell you something about him as compensation. His name seemed unusual to me when I heard it. His name is Thomas A. T. Hanna, and in college he was called by his fellow students Tat Hanna; and one time he went to preach at a country church, and was sent to a farmhouse to be entertained. When the lady of the home opened the door, he said, 'My name is Hanna,' and she exclaimed, 'O, Tat Hannah?' 'Yes, how did you know?' 'My son is one of your class-mates!' The lady, Mrs. Lucy Vinton Clark of Tolland, a sister of Justus Vinton the celebrated missionary, told me about it and added, 'By that time we were well acquainted.' "

That interested them so much that I went on to tell that Mr. Hanna's lovely wife was the daughter of Doctor Judson and Fannie Forrester,-"My Bird"- and I recited the poem, for many years so familiar, written in Maulmain, India, In January, 1848, soon after the birth of her daughter Emily Frances Judson, wife of Mr. Hanna.

"'E'er last year's moon had left the sky A birdling sought my Indian nest And folded oh so lovingly Her tiny wings upon my breast."

By that time we were all on very friendly terms and all went up stairs to- gether; and I exclaimed, as I was ushered into a charming room, that I trusted Mr. Hanna was faring as well.

The large low room with its smouldering chimney fire, its high-post bed with home-made linen, showed such marvelous needle-work that there could be no doubt the stitches were taught by a grandmother of colonial type, and a linen sampler embroidered in saddler's silk with an impossible green-house with yellow blinds framed and hanging upon the wall, confirmed this impression.

The delightful and well-trained children were waiting when I went down in the morning, eager to show me about the dwelling, which was a charming illustration of perfect housekeeping and home making; yet all was so unob- trusive in details. Nothing was crowded, nothing was too good to use. Noth- ing was precisely at right angles, yet everything suggested comfort. There were no closed doors between hall, music room, parlor, and reception room, but the sunny breakfast room was in a wing by itself, adjacent to the kitchen. There was no library, but in every room was a neat case of well chosen books. The

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house expressed family individuality, and had been for generations a type of what was best in a home-loving community.

At breakfast the oldest son, a youth of fourteen, said grace, and served the cereal and fruit in a dainty way, and later his mother told me that from the time of his father's sudden accidental death, when he was only ten, he had assumed this duty when she was necessarily absent for a few days, and had continued it without comment; and it had been the greatest comfort to her, the familiar routine having never been broken.

All the children were at table at first, but left as the time arrived for them to go to school. They were excused, kissed their mother and said good-bye to the guest in the most charming and natural manner imaginable, and without the least confusion. When we left the table, my hostess took me to a quiet room, small and low, in the original part of the roomy house, "This is the room where my husband, his father and grandfather were born," she said; it was all exquisite in blue and gray; there was not an article of furniture, but at the end upon an easel was a full length portrait of her husband, and beside it a luxuriant growing fern.

Very quietly she told of his sudden death and something of the beauty of his Christian character. Upon the shock and sorrow attending this tragic end- ing of a beautiful earthly life she was silent but told how kind and thoughtful everyone had been to her.

"All the days of my life I have been surrounded by kindness," she said. Later I was told of her extreme kindness to the old, the afflicted and the ill. She was no respector of persons or of station; the need of sympathy and as- sistance was all she required to know.

The years rolled away; the young mother passed on to join her husband. I knew of the young people in school and college. Changes came in the fortunes of the family, that necessitated the selling of the ancestral homestead. One day I heard that the foreign occupants were raising guinea pigs in the memorial room; and later it was told that the house was burned, and I was not sorry. The facts are thus briefly noted merely as "footsteps on the sands of time." However, I had been taking note of history in the making, as a son of that far away precocious youth of fourteen sleeps on Flanders Field.

On one of our memorable drives across that wide section of the beautiful county remote from railroads, we left our hilltop at day-break, driving east- ward. We presently met a neighbor walking toward the west to take the early train northward, his salutation being, "You are wise to get an early start. There are plenty of hills in your way and when you come to one, let Richard Gray take his own gait and act as if you didn't care whether you get there before dinner or not."

Following the advice we found it good; and away beyond Ashford town, on the summit of a long hill, some time since reduced to the level of an inter- state automobile road, our little dog Sancho surprised a woodchuck, and what was our amazement to see the little wild creature scramble up a small oak tree to a place of safety. Since then I have often seen woodchucks performing their toilets in the sweet-apple tree in my own home garden, after feasting on my early vegetables; but then it was a novelty and as I exclaimed :

"It is past belief," my husband responded,

"And so is this," pointing afar at hill, valley, distant mountain and broad tracks of woodland. Beyond belief indeed !

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The first rays of the fervid late September sun had called up fairy-like clouds of vapor from streams and ponds and great stretches of swamp-land, clouds that as we gazed grew so dense as to resemble water. The whole land- scape was transformed, cultivated fields became mountain lakes; long irregular valleys and ravines were changed to placid rivers flowing between wooded hills. Far, far away a vast blue-gray fog, just showing the outline of a distant moun- tain range, tempted us to believe that we were gazing upon the billows of the sea. Distant farm houses could be seen through a vapor sheer and even as finest gauze.

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A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume II, Part 1

Author: Lincoln, Allen B Publication date: 1920 Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke publ. co. Number of Pages: 960

Author: Lincoln, Allen B
Publication date: 1920
Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke publ. co.
Number of Pages: 960