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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50
Go 974.602 B77 1151632
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01068 5284
The Old Downs' Mill, Riverside Avenue.
Photo by W. E. Throop.
VIEWS ON TIIE PEQUABUCK RIVER-(SEE POEM The Pequabuck River).
.
B risto
Onnecticut
("In the Olden Time "NEW CAMBRIDGE")
Which Includes FORESTVILLE.
SUSTINE!
TRANSTULIT
HARTFORD, CONN. CITY PRINTING COMPANY, 1907.
PUBLISHED BY
EDDY N. SMITH GEORGE BENTON SMITH and ALLENA J. DATES
Assisted by G. W. F. BLANCHFIELD.
1151632
HIS WORK is respectfully dedicated to the memory of those Bristol men and women of other days, whose stead- fast integrity and undaunted persever- ance, has made it possible for Bristol to become the eminently prosperous com- munity that it is today.
APPROACHING BRISTOL ON A WINTER'S MORNING.
OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
7
Introduction
BY FREDERICK CALVIN NORTON.
B RISTOL is less fortunate than some other towns in the state in that its complete history has not as yet been written by any one living within its borders. This work offers a very fruitful field of investigation for some historical student of the future, and it is the fond hope of all natives and residents of the town that such a history of Bristol will be produced within the memory of men now living. Fragmentary historical sketches of Bristol have been written with ability in the years that are past by Bristol men or women, and they have served their purpose. The real history of the hustling town among the hills of Hartford County, from the time that the hardy settlers of Farmington pushed their way through the woods and under- brush to what is now Bristol, to the present period of great commercial and social prosperity, has yet to come from the press.
When an effort is made to gather what has been written by Bristol people about their own town, and present it in a substantial, permanent form for posterity to look at, it is a matter of satisfaction to all those who have the welfare of Bristol at heart. If we have no completed history of the place any effort to collect what has been written and to present it in an attractive manner ought to meet with the appreciative support of all the people of the town. This book is such an undertak- ing; and it has been carried through with signal success. All that is of interest to the many inhabitants of this hill town has been embodied by the publishers between these two covers; and if anything has been omitted, it is the result of oversight. The book is most comprehensive and ambitious in its detail; it has been revised and rearranged several times, so that all departments of Bristol's life may find a place in the volume and the publishers may feel proud of their real success in the undertaking.
Many articles that have been printed in years past are here re- produced for the purpose of placing them on record permanently.
To the people of this town the work will be interesting for years to come, and will serve its mission, even if not a complete history of the subject; and, to coming generations, it will stand as a monument of the history of present day Bristol.
S
BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
NEAR PIERCE'S BRIDGE.
OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
9
INDIANS Of BRISTOL and VICINITY
BY MILO LEON NORTON
T HE Indians who frequented Bristol before its settlement by the English, were of the Tunxis tribe, of Farmington, and there is no evidence that there were ever any dwelling places other than"temporary camps of individuals, or, at most, small parties of the aborigines, within what are now the boundaries of the township.
In the early history of the town of Farmington, mention is made of that section now divided into the towns of Bristol and Burlington, under the general name of the "West Woods." It was the resort of the white hunters of that early period, by virtue of a treaty with the Indians by which hunting and fishing rights were to be equally enjoyed by whites and Indians; and so plentiful was the game in the forests which then covered the hills and valleys of Bristol and Burlington, that venison and bear meat sold at a very low price in the Farmington market. Dr. Noah Porter said in an address at the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of Farmington, in 1840, "There are men now living, who remember when venison was sold in our streets at 2d the pound."
Previous to the discovery of the beautiful meadows at the great bend of the Tunxis River, which the early records name, "Tvnxis Sepvs" (literally the little river, to distinguish it from the great river, the Con- necticut), nothing was known of the territory west of the Talcott range, except as it may have been penetrated rarely by a few daring hunters and explorers. When a treaty was ratified with the Indians, in 1650, and the lands opened for settlement, two well-defined trails led west- ward through the woods, one practically where the first colonial road was built from Chippen's Hill to Farmington; the other southwestwards crossing the mountain west of the sewer beds diagonally; crossing the present town of Wolcott also in a southwesterly direction; thence through the southeast corner of Plymouth to Waterville, then in the territory known as Mattatuck. Over this trail to Mattatuck the early settlers of Waterbury travelled, taking the first millstones ever used in that town on horseback. At the reservoir on South Mountain, southwest of the Allen place, near the south end of the pond, and not far from the town line, the trail crossed what was then a swamp over a causeway of loose stones and earth, the nearest approach to a roadway ever made by the aborigines.
The trail crossed Mad River near the beaver dam which then existed
10
BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
JACK'S CAVE.
near the south end of the Cedar Swamp reservoir, continuing south- westerly, the present highway following it for some distance. A cave. near Allentown, known as Jack's Cave, is but a short distance from the old trail. The Indians made it a stopping-place on their journeys to and from Mattatuck. It was afterward inhabited for many years. by a negro, named Jack, who had a squaw for a wife, and who subsisted by basket making. There is a fireplace which has a natural flue ex- tending to the top of the cliff. The open side of the cave was protected by slabs and earth, forming a comfortable dwelling. At Allentown, upon the farm of Walter Tolles, were open fields, which were cultivated by the squaws in summer; and corn and beans, and perhaps tobacco for the pipe of peace, were grown there.
It seems to have been the custom for certain of the huntsmen of the tribe, in their communistic form of government peculiar to the race, to hunt in certain areas which were either assigned by the chief, in his patriarchal capacity, or were held by common consent during the pleasure of the individual hunters. At any rate trespassing upon each other's hunting preserves was looked upon with disfavor; and encroachment by the white hunters, notwithstanding treaty privileges, was not en- tirely satisfactory to the dusky huntsmen who claimed certain tracts as their private territory. This state of affairs was the more aggravated, doubtless, by the gradual disappearance of the game caused by the in- roads made by the white hunters, with their superior weapons, the skillful use of which, however, was soon acquired by the ied men.
Thus previous to the first settlement of Bristol by the Whites, after this part of Farmington had become somewhat famous as a hunting- ground, hunters from Farmington, Hartford, Wethersfield, and even Wallingford, which then included Meriden and Cheshire. penetrated these dense woods and returned laden with trophies of the chase. It ought to be mentioned in passing, however, that there was then no. undergrowth, the Indians ani ually burning over the woods, so that one
11
OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
could see quite a distance through the standing timber, and pass rapidly and easily through.
Among these early hunters were Gideon Ives, of Middletown, and Capt. Jesse Gaylord, of Wallingford. They were companions in hunt- ing expeditions, both being famous hunters. It is a tradition in the Ives family, that their ancestor was, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter; his proud boast being that from these "West Woods" he had taken be- tween four and five hundred deer, eighty or ninety bears, and a large amount of other game. On one occasion the two were stalking a deer which they saw upon the summit of the hill since known as the Rock Lot, just south of the residence of James Peckham, near the Cedar Swamp. The deer was making toward the east, and the two hunters agreed to separate, one going around the hill on the north side, and the other on the south side, the one who sighted the deer first to shoot it. Just as Mr. Gaylord reached the eastern extremity of the hill, which slopes to the edge of a swamp in that direction, he saw an Indian taking deliberate aim at Mr. Ives, who, unaware of his danger, was taking aim at the deer. Mr. Gaylord instantly leveled his rifle, and, being a quick shot, dropped the Indian before he had time to fire. Mr. Ives, in astonish- ment, asked why he had shot the Indian, and was told that it was done to save his life. They decided to dispose of the Indian's body by stamp- ing it into the soft mud of the swamp near by, and kept the matter a profound secret for many years, for fear that it would become known to the tribe, and that revenge would be taken for the death of their kinsman; the very simple code of the red men requiring blood for blood, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. The reason for the attempt upon the white man's life was supposed to be because he was trespassing upon the private hunting-ground of the red man, which his sense of justice caused him to resent. The same sense of justice, when an Indian found a carcass of deer or other game, hung up out of reach of prowling wolves, until the hunter could return with assistance to take it away, prevented him from molesting it, and also filled him with wrath when
.
INDIAN ROCK OR ROCK HOUSE.
12
BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
RUINS OF CAPT. JESSE GAYLORD'S HOUSE IN 1907.
this confidence was broken by the unscrupulous white hunter, and no doubt kept alive a bitter animosity against the white invaders. The Indian was known to the Whites as Morgan, and the swamp where he was buried, as Morgan's Swamp, to this day. It would be interesting to know what became of the deer.
There are other versions of this story. One given by Deacon Charles G. Ives, at the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of his deaconship, in 1859, has it that the shooting was done by his ancestor to save Capt. Gaylord; that they discovered the Indian trying to get a . shot at them, that they separated with the understanding that if the Indian pursued either the other was to shoot him down. But this ac- count does not agree with the one handed down in the Gaylord family, which is substantially as related It was told to the father of the writer by Capt. Jesse Gaylord, grandson of the hero of the story, who also stated that the Indian's rifle, powder horn and bullet pouch were pre- served many years in the family; but other traditions, including that of Deacon Ives, assert that the rifle and other accoutrements of the red man were buried with him. It may have been this adventure which determined Capt. Gaylord's choice of location for a residence, for he afterward purchased land and built upon it, in the immediate vicinity, his first house being a few rods south of the big bowlder, known as Indian Rock, or Rock House, from the fact that it was the temporary home of Morgan, who occupied the grotto underneath it when hunting in the vicinity. He afterward built a quarter of a mile south, the large, red farmhouse being occupied by his descendants until 1870, when Jesse, his great grandson, moved to Bristol village. The old house was torn down a few years afterward, and only the picturesque cellar and chimney stack remain.
Aside from occasional infractions, such as the foregoing incident, there always existed friendly relations between the white population and the Tunxis tribe, of Farmington. It has been stated that a man named Scott, was murdered in a brutal manner at what is now known as Scott's Swamp, in the western part of Farmington, by Tunxis In-
13
OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
dians. But Julius Gay, who has made the history of the Tunxis tribe a subject of much research, says that there is not a particle of evidence that Scott was murdered by the Tunxis. He ascribes the deed to a prowling band of some outlying tribe, who skulked around for the pur- pose of carrying off any stray white people they might encounter, hold- ing them, bandit like, for ransom. He says that Scott was captured while at work in a field, and because he made an outcry, which the captors feared would bring assistance, his tongue was cut out, and he was afterward brutally murdered. This was about the year 1657. The traditional massacre of the Hart family, near the present Avon town line, Mr. Gay regards as mythical. The house was burned, acci- dentally, at midnight, and all but one of the family perished in the flames. The Indians had nothing whatever to do with it. There was a murder of some person by the Indian, Mesapano, which may have been the Scott incident, and which is mentioned in the records of April, 1657, of the General Assembly, as "a most horrid murder by some Indians at Farmington." But the Tunxis were not mentioned as the guilty parties, for messengers were sent to the Norwootuck and Pocumtuck Indians, of Hadley and Deerfield, demanding the surrender of Mesapano, to be tried and punished for the crime. The Tunxis were peaceable, treaty- keeping and tractable Indians, many of the young attending school, and their parents attending church, with their white neighbors. There is reason to believe that they were never very redoubtable warriors, as their own version of a battle between themselves and an invading armed force of Stockbridge Indians, at Indian Neck, near the bend of the river, admits their defeat and retreat to their village on Round Hill, where they were saved from extinction or capture by the bravery of the squaws, who armed themselves and so ably defended their homes and supported their brothers in arms, that the intruders were driven off with great loss. This was but a short time before the settlement of the Whites at Farmington. No doubt the proximity of the more invincible whites, was a strong inducement to them to permit white occupation of the beauti- ful valley of the Tunxis; and for many years thereafter, when there was a threatened attack by the Mohawks, whom all the Connecticut Indians feared, the Tunxis tribe, men, women and children, would rush pell mell across the river and place themselves under the protection of their white allies.
There are but few purely Indian names which now cling to the haunts of the red men in this vicinity. Chippen's Hill is a contraction of Cochipianes, which the old records give as the name of the red hunter who made that part of the town his hunting preserve. In my boyhood it was invariably pronounced Chippeny, which was much nearer the original. Another Indian, called Fall, gave his name to the mountain of that name. Morgan, whose tragic end has already been related, has his name preserved by the swamp in which he was buried. Zach was the name of the Indian who made what we now call Mine Mountain, but which the early settlers called Zach's Mountain, his hunting place. Bohemia and Poland are names applied to two Indians who held re- served lands, including Poland Brook and the Bohemia Banks, in Forest- ville. Poland Brook flows through what is known as Todd's lot, and the Bohemia Banks are the bluffs extending from Poland Brook to the Plainville town line. Poland lived in a tepee on the banks of the brook; and Bohemia lived on the flat south of the Sessions Clock factory, or in that vicinity. Compound, who gave his name to Compound's Pond, now known as Compounce, was the most important, historically, of the Bristol Indians whose names have been handed down to us. His history is fully set forth in another place. Presumably the European names given to some of the Indians by the Whites, were so given be- cause the real names were unknown or unpronounceable; and, for pur- poses of identification, one name was as good as another.
One interesting incident may be worth relating in connection with the Indian, Zach. When Capt. Newton Manross was a lad in his teens, he was fishing one day in the brook that flows into the mine pond west
14
BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
BALANCED BOULDER, NEAR WITCH ROCK.
of Zach's Mountain, where he took refuge under a shelving rock to escape a shower. Being of an inquiring turn of mind he noticed what appeared to be a white stone in the earth floor of the cavern, which proved to be a skull. He returned the next day with a spade and unearthed an entire skeleton of an Indian, a full-grown male. The bones were taken by him to his father's clock shop in Forestville, where the skull was long used as a recepticle for small parts of clock movements. When the factory was burned the bones shared the general cremation. The skeleton was undoubtedly that of the old hunter, who may have been murdered and concealed by his enemies, or he may have died a natural death, and was buried by his friends. How many tragedies, unwritten and unknown, may have taken place on these hills in the far-off cen- turies, when the red men hunted each other with the ferocity of pan- thers, and the cunning of foxes!
My grandmother, who was born in 1783, remembered the Indians distinctly. They were in the habit of calling at the farmhouses for cider, on their way from Farmington to Waterbury, and vice versa. B.it one Indian would call at the house, the others, when there were several in the party, invariably sitting on the ground by the roadside. until their companion returned with the coveted beverage. She lived in the old house now occupied by the Tymerson family, then the home of Elijah Gaylord, which stands on the summit of Fall Mountain. A locality about a mile to the westward has been known as Indian Heaven, since the first settlement of that neighborhood by the Whites. It is not known how the name originated, but presumably because of the abundance of game in that vicinity. A region where game was abundant would naturally excite the admiration of the red huntsmen, whose highest ideal of heaven was expressed by the words, "Happy Hunting Ground."
The name Pequabuck, which is applied to the stream flowing through Bristol, is of Indian origin, taking its name from the Pequabuck Meadows, mentioned in the early records of Farmington, which lay near the beau-
.
15
OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
tiful spot where the Pequabuck joins the Tunxis. Its name, according to Trumbull, would indicate that it flowed out of a clear pond, being a variant of Nepaug, which means the same thing, having reference to Sheherd's Pond, in New Hartford. But there was no such pond from which it could flow, until artificial ponds were constructed by the white people. About the year 1863, an educated Indian physician, of the Chippeway tribe, Dr. Monwadus, pitched a tent in winter north of the house of Mr. Wetmore, on Park street. That was before the street was opened or a house built there. The doctor was very skillful, and treated many cases during the few weeks that he remained in town. He was familiar. with the Indian tongue, not only of his own tribe, but with other dialects, and asserted that the name, Pequabuck, meant stony river; but that it should be spelled, Pequabock. That interpretation certainly applies to this part of the stream with greater propriety than the one favored by Trumbull; but at Farmington, where the stream was best known to the Indians, who probably applied the name to the meadows at its confluence with the Tunxis, and not to the river itself, stony would be as inappropriate as clear pond. Therefore, as yet, the name is not satisfactorily accounted for.
Bristol has the distinction of being the place where the rude pottery of the aborigines was manufactured from the cotton-stone, or foliated talc, which is found upon the eastern slope of Federal Hill, where Joel T. Case built a machine shop. As late as 1876 fragments of this pottery were common about the fields of the vicinity, laid up into stone fences, or doing duty as corner stones for the zig-zag rail fences of the locality. This stone, a variety of soap-stone, being easily worked, was hollowed out by chipping with hard, sharp-edged stones, into round and oval dishes, and kettles of various capacity, ranging from a pint to several gallons. Other Indians beside the Tunxis may have come here to re- plenish their supply of crockery and cooking utensils, camping, perhaps, for weeks while they were patiently chipping away at the soft stone. The same formation crops out in other places on the same range of hills; one near the Liberty Bell shop, where there was once a saw mill for saw- ing the cotton-stone into jambs for fireplaces; another at Edgewood, near the Bartholomew factory. But this Federal Hill quarry seems to have been the only one known to the Indians. When the machine-shop was built, and the debris was cleared away from the ledge where the cotton-stone was quarried, a large bowl or kettle was found, partially completed, but undetached from the rock. It may easily be imagined that as the Tunxis potters were busily at work, there was a sudden descent of the dreaded Mohawks, and a precipitate retreat.
16
BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
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FACSIMILE PAGE.
Old Town Record Book of Farmington, Conn., showing signature of Jon a Compaus (Compound) and Compas "Squa" to the Indian agreement of May ve 22, 1673.
228€ 3 mile/ Hall or NE pansoir x Jadim name
th the townsicomaty: In & vami and behalfe
John wadsworth,
17
OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE."
"Compound' A TUNXIS CHIEFTAN
BY MISS ALICE NORTON'
A BOUT the middle of the 17th century, a tribe of Tunxis Indians and their chief, Compound, occupied the land adjacent to the lake now known as Compounce, in what was then a part of Farmington, now Southington.
The old deeds preserved in Farmington and Waterbury furnish the evidence in regard to this chief. His name is variously given as Compas. Compaus, Compowne, Compoune, Compound and appears with those of other Indians who gave to the white settlers titles to the Farmington and Waterbury lands.
There are three original deeds containing his autographic mark. The first of these, among the Farmington records, is dated May ye 22, 1673, and is of extreme interest.
It confirms to the men at Farmington, 33 years after its first settle- ment, previous grants of land made to them by the Indians. On the deed is traced a crude map of the land in question, beneath which are the names and marks of twenty-six Indians, written in two columns. each column beginning respectively with the names and marks of "Nesa- heg" (Neasaheagun, sachem of Poquonnock, in Windsor), and of Jon a Compaus (Compound).
Here is revealed the interesting fact that "Compas squa" (squaw) was present and by her mark upon this deed, bequeathed to us with her own hand the only record we have of her existence. Her mark and that of "Compaus" are, queerly enough, transposed, thus revealing their simple ignorance of the King's English.
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