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Gc 974.602 B92p 1770168
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01148 6575
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/burlingtonconnec00peck_0
BURLINGTON, CONNECTICUT
HISTORICAL ADDRESS
Delivered by
EFAIFRODITUE PECS unseres dengel Tona.
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CENTE! CELEBRATION
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F 846055 . 67 -
Peck, Epaphroditus, 1860-
Burlington, Connecticut; historical address delivered by Epaphroditus Peck at the centennial celebration on June 16, 1906. Bristol, Conn., Bristol press publishing co. [1906]
cover-title, 36, [2] p. illus. 232cm
CHELF CARD
1. Burlington, Conn .- Hist.
Recat 154492 Library of Congress
₣104.B96P3 · 6-34778
1770168
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
Mr. Chairman, Friends and Fellow Citizens of Burlington :
I have felt some embarassment and - much sense of incapacity in attempting to prepare and deliver a sketch of · the history of a town of which I have never been myself a resident. One who has been brought up in a community has a familiar acquaintance with the locality, with the old homes and the old families, with the old traditions and legends, which makes it easy for him to understand the written materials that he may find, to put them into their proper place and read much between the lines, and which will naturally save him from the blunders into which a stranger may easily fall.
But since your committee thought that they had no one more available, I was glad to undertake the pleasant task. If I am not a son of Burlington, I may at least claim, since Burlington and Bristol are sister towns, to be a nephew. And I trust that you may see before I am through that I may well take pride in claiming civic cousinship with many of the distinguished sons of Burlington.
A local historian need not altogether deplore the fact that he is thrown upon the manuscript records for most of his early knowledge. In reading the original acts of the settlers themselves, recorded in their own language and handwriting, one comes to realize the hardship of their conditions, and the rugged resolution of their temper, far more than he could do by trusting to any later narrative. The early records of an old New England community are refreshing to read after one has, in the reports of some Home Missionary Society, read the appeals for the evangel- ization and uplifting of the pioneer West. There you may
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read how a community of five hundred people, expecting soon to be a city of ten thousand, has two theaters, five dance halls and twenty saloons, and that they will provide a small room over a saloon and permit their children to attend Sunday school, if the people of the East will provide and pay a missionary.
But coming back to our own past, we find a handful of pioneers, living in log-houses in the forest, voting to establish schools and to provide for the preaching of the Gospel, laying upon themselves taxes, to be paid in grain or in labor if there is no money, to set up these two pillars of the New England community, and holding divine service in their own houses and barns until they can provide a humble meeting- house. No wonder that from these little towns of New Engiand have gone out great currents of religious and intellectual, political and commercial leadership, to make of the United States the Christian, cultured and free nation that it is.
Our present information about the first settlement of Burlington is rather vague and scanty.
The settlement of the mother town of Farmington began in 1640, and it was incorporated in 1645. In 1672 the General Court fixed the length of Farmington at fifteen · miles from north to south, and its width at eleven miles westerly from the Hartford line. The town at once laid out the part of this tract on which settlement had already been made, four miles and sixty-four rods wide, as "the reserved land," and the wilderness to the west in six tiers, eleven miles long and about a mile wide, besides 20, 30 and 40-rod highways between the tiers, each of which tiers was to be divided between the proprietors in proportion to their own- ership of home land. 'The westerly five tiers of this layout constitute substantially the present towns of Burlington and Bristol. The lines of this allotment were not actually run out upon the land till 1721, and the survey was not com- pleted till 1728.1 Meantime the rough hills of Burlington and Bristol continued to be known as Farmington West Woods and the Great Forest. Occasional special grants
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were made of small tracts, but none of it was permanently settled till 1727 and 1728, when the settlement of Bristol began. Burlington was a little later. "A large bounty in lands was offered by the town to the first settler," says President Porter, and in 1740 " a man by the name of Strong went over the line into the border of the woods and made a clearing.""
This is a most unceremonious mention of Col. John Strong, Justice of the Peace. Thirty-four years later, when news of the Boston Port Bill reached Farmington, and a meeting was called to express the sentiments of the town, and to appoint committees of relief and correspondence, Col. Strong, then probably an elderly man, was moderator of a great meeting which filled the new meeting-house." He died in 1776 or 1777.+ His son, Simeon Strong, was a Major in the Revolutionary war, and died in the service in 1776.5 Col. Strong in 1744 added to his ownership of Bur- lington land by buying 261 acres of land in two pur- chases." When the society of West Britain was incorpor- ated, the act read "saving and excepting John Strong, Esq., and Simeon Strong, his son, and their improved lands."" The land occupied by them is that where Adrian Moses now lives, and that farm continued, by the above exception, to be a part of Farmington society. But in 1789 the West Britain society voted to send agents to the Gen- eral Court " to git the Wider Mary Strong farm * * Enext to the Parish of West Britton,"" and in this they were successful:
During the next generation a meager tide of settlement set in from many directions and to several parts of the town. And here I may perhaps appropriately say that it seems to me that the history of Burlington has been much affected by its topography. Johnnycake Mountain on the west, and the high hills in the center and east, have been. rather too formidable for settlement even to the present time. The more habitable valleys have been on the outskirts of the town, and so little communities have grown up, separated by distance and by difficulty of travel, and con-
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nected more with other villages than with each other. Even to this day, Whigville is connected in many ways with Bris- tol, and North Burlington with New Hartford and with Collinsville, rather than with Burlington center.
Between 1740 and 1755 a number of settlers had come into different parts of the town: Enos Lewis, Asa Yale, John Wiard, Joseph Bacon and Joseph Lankton to the western part ; Abraham and Theodore Pettibone, men of wealth and influence from Simsbury, to the extreme north ; Samuel Brockway to the east; Titus and Nathaniel Bunnell and Joseph Smith to the southwest. Abraham Brooks had come from Milford to what has ever since been known as Milford Street before 1773; on January 18th, 1773, he deeded to Justus Webster of Middletown one hundred and twelve acres of land with a barn thereon. A few years after a little group of Milford settlers, Abijah Gillett, Thomas Beach and Joshua Curtiss, followed Mr. Brooks. Two adjoining farms in this section. those of Justus Webster and of Abijah Gillett, are still occupied by the descendants of the original settlers.
About 1774 Simeon Hart came from Southington, and settled at first in the southeastern part of the town, but soon removed to the geographical center. While he was build- ing his first barn, the work was interrupted and the town thrown into excitement by the news that a battle had taken place between Massachusetts farmers and British troops at Lexington. Zebulon Cole and Zebulon Frisbie were prob- ably ahead of him as settlers in the center, and these three men became most prominent in the early life of the com- munity. Simeon Hart was chosen Justice of the Peace by the General Court in May, 1779, he was one of the first deacons of the Congregational church, and when the town of Bristol was formed he was one of its first board of selectmen, and its first representative to the General Court. His wife died on January 11th, ISoo; after her funeral in the church, Mr. Hart felt unable to go to the cemetery, and returned home. As he entered the vacant house, he fell dead. Mrs. Hart's body was thereupon brought back to the
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house, and on the following day they were buried in one grave. His third son inherited his name, and also his dis- tinction as a public man. He was chosen town clerk eleven years in succession, and was for thirty or more years Justice of the Peace. Bliss Hart, second son of Simeon, Sr., was was also a Justice, and many times elected Representative.10
The houses of Zebulon Cole and Zebulon Frisbie, both in "Shin Hollow," about half a mile southeast of here, were called taverns, which probably means little more than that they kept a supply of New England rum to sell to the neighbors and had house and barn room enough to lodge an occasional stranger and his horse ; and the meetings of the ecclesiastical society were for many years usually held at one or the other of these two houses. There was not then thought to be any great incompatibility between spir- ituous and spiritual refreshment. One of the early town meetings, held in the meeting house, was adjourned for fifteen minutes to the house of Zebulon Frisbie ; whether this meant that they were to go on with the meeting there, or that a visit of fifteen minutes to the tavern would add to the spirit of the meeting, I do not know.
One very singular body of settlers to find in an old New England town was a company of Seventh Day Baptists who, for some reason I cannot give, came to the north part of the town from Hopkinton, R. I. Prominent among these were three families named Covey, from whom this part of the town received the name of Coveytown, which is still sometimes heard ; although after the church there died out, and the clock factories brought in a population of less pious men than the original settlers, it received the unflattering name of Heathenville.
It is hard for us to realize the hard and stern conditions that confronted these early settlers. The first houses were log cabins made from the trunks of the trees that were cut to make a clearing ; and such timber as was not needed for the house or barn was burned in huge piles to clear the ground for plowing. There were for a good while no roads at all in the modern sense : only trails or bridle paths which
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a man on foot or on horseback could follow. In winter communication was often difficult or impossible, and the severity of the forest cold, the imperfect protection afforded by the houses, and the isolation of life, must have made it a time to try to the utmost the fortitude of men, and the very powers of endurance of women and little children.
One sentence from William Marks's chronicle is a vivid reminder of the hardship of life in the winter forest. "As early as 1763, Nathaniel Bunnell was found frozen to death in the West mountain, standing beside a tree with a gun in his hand."
Nothing is more pathetic in looking through an eighteenth century New England graveyard than to note the early date at which the women died, most of them apparently before their fortieth year ; and any collection of family records of that time shows an appalling record of the deaths of infants.
As I have said, most of the first settlers lived for a time at least in log-houses, but frame houses soon began to take their place. We can form some judgment as to what were the better and larger houses by the places where the society held its early meetings.
The first meeting of which we have the record was held at John Wiard's, in May, 1775 ; it was then voted to hold the next annual meeting at Samuel Brockway's, and the preaching services at Zebulon Cole's. In December, 1776, it was voted " to hire Six Saboth Preaching two att mr John Wiards three att mr Abijah Gilletts and one att mr Matthias Leamings"; in July, 1777, "to continue the Preaching att mr Wiards and mr Gilletts Untill frisbees hous is fit for to meet in," and in October, 1777, "to meet for Publick wor- ship att the hous of mr Frisbees as long as the Committee Obtain it and When they Cant to Meet att mr Wiards and mr Gilletts Every other Saboth."
The next vote, in August, 1778, was "to Meet one half of the time att Mr Gilletts & the other half att mr Wood- ruffs Hous" (Asa Woodruff lived on the turnpike, a mile or so northwest of the present center), and the next, in March,
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1779, "to meet in Capt. Simeon Hearts Barn * * Venture- ing the Barn if Burnt on the saboth if it Cant be Recovered out of the Person fiering the same." .
After this time, the business meetings were all held at either Zebulon Cole's or Zebulon Frisbie's, until the meet- ing house was able to be used.
All these houses are now gone. It seems not to be quite certain what is the oldest house now standing. The house built by Simeon Hart, now occupied by Manzer S. Brockett, which was for so long the fountain head of law and justice for this section, bears on its chimney the date, nearly obliterated, 1780.
The house of the first minister, Jonathan Miller, now occupied by Ernest N. Witham, whose gambrel roof and dormer windows show its ancient distinction as the .minis- ter's house, was probably built soon after his settlement in 1783.
The Dr. Mann house, nearly opposite the Jonathan Miller house, and the one between that and the Simeon Hart house, built by Marcus Hart, were both erected before 1800.11
Mrs. Ralph Humphrey has in her attic a stone from the old chimney of her house, bearing its date and builder's name, Elisha. Covey, 1789.
The stone house built by John Fuller, and now owned by Cyrus Curtis at the base of Chippen's Hill, and the two houses built by Thomas Brooks, one now owned by Samuel Lampson, and the other by Sherman Scoville, are all said to have been built about 1800. .
Another of the older houses is the one northeast of Whigville, built by Lieut. Amos Smith probably before 1800, and owned by his descendants many years. On the road between this house and the turnpike J. C. Hart enumerates fourteen houses standing a century ago. Before 1855, every one of these houses had gone except the Smith house which still remains, and the road is now hardly pass- able. This section was known as Clark City.
But I am inclined to think that the Webster house on
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Milford street is older than any of these, and is the oldest house in Burlington. Justus Webster bought this land in January, 1773, and is said by his descendants to have built two log cabins before he built the present house. The first one was east of the road, and was so small that the children had to sleep in the barn, and were awakened by the wolves. In May, 1775, the society voted to have preaching at the house of Justus Webster, but later reconsidered this and substituted Zebulon Cole's. It is a matter of conjecture, but I venture a strong opinion that the frame house now standing and used by George Webster was built before 1780.
In 1774, the little community felt strong enough to seek a measure of self-government, and its petition was presented to the General Court, setting forth that there were about seventy-five families here, of which over fifty were of the standing denomination, that is, were Congregationalists, while a few were Episcopalians and "Saturday men ;" that the grand list was over £3,500, of which over £2,500 belonged to the standing order, stating the difficulties of going to Farmington for their gospel privileges, especially in the winter, and praying for incorporation as a society. The original petition may be seen at the state library, with the signatures of thirty-three of the inhabitants.12
This petition was at once granted. As Farmington's southern colony had, twenty years before, been named New Britain, with loyal pride in their British ancestry and allegiance, so this western offshoot was named West Britain.
The chief functions of an ecclesiastical society in those days was to provide for the worship of God according to the established Congregational order, and to establish and maintain schools. But Burlington is unique among Con- necticut towns in that a dissenting and irregular form of religion had established itself here in advance of the ortho- dox and lawful Congregationalism. I have already men- tioned the Seventh-Day Baptists who colonized the northern part of the town from Rhode Island. They remained a part of the Hopkinton church for a time, and that church ordained Rev. John Davis to minister to the West Britain
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colony. But in 1780 the mother church commissioned their pastor and deacon to organize an independent church at West Britain, and on September 18th of that year a church of twenty-one persons, eleven men and ten women, was gathered together. Then, as the formal minutes declare, "they unanimosly agreed and in a solom and afectionate maner covananted to watch ever over one another for good and to Bare Burdens togather for the suport and mantaing the cause of christ and where willing to be Established a church in feloship with this church and chose Elder John Davis to be there Elder & Benjamin West to be there Deacon & Elisha Covey for there Clark."13
Of these twenty-one members, seven were Coveys and five Davises. This little church seems to have enjoyed the respect and friendship of the Congregationalists ; indeed one of the earliest society votes, passed December 22nd, 1775, was as follows: "Voted that those of the Seventh Day Babtis Perswation Should Be Exemted from Paying ministors Rates By Perduceing a Citificate from an ordaind Elder to the Societeyes Clark that they are of that Perswa- tion." Between that time and 1811, twenty-eight such certificates were recorded by the clerk.
They held their services in private houses (of course on Saturday) until 1800, when they built a church in the north part of the village ; this building was standing till after the middle of the century, in the triangular fork of the roads, a little over a mile north of here.
Elder Davis ministered over this church until his death in 1792, after him Rev. Amos Burdick and Rev. Amos Stillman, both chosen from the membership of the local church. Mr. Stillman died in 1807, and the church had no settled pastor after him ;1+ many of its members removed to New York state, and joined a Seventh Day Baptist com- munity there. Those who remained went to other churches, and the organization faded out of existence. The building stood vacant and abandoned until it fell into ruin.
Appendix B is an interesting reminder of the existence and of the peculiar tenets of this little church.
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But let us return to the history of the regular society. As I have said, it was incorporated in 1774, and its existing records begin in April, 1775. In the following May it was voted to hire preaching till December, and in 1776 also six months preaching was engaged. A Mr. Hutcheson and a Mr. Tuller (or Fuller) were the ministers employed. Ezra Yale, Samuel Brockway and Jude Clark were chosen chor- isters, and Ebenezer Hamblin and Joseph Bacon to read the psalm.
Mr. John Camp, Mr. Seth Swift and a Mr. Cook are afterward mentioned as preachers, and Mr. Camp's services were so acceptable that in 1780 the society offered him the pastorate, with a salary to gradually rise from £45 to $60, "all in hard Quoin or Grane Equivilent," and a settlement of £140 payable in three years, £110 "in hard Quoin," and £30 "in Labour at hard money Price."
This reference to hard coin reminds us that we are now in the height of the Revolutionary struggle, when the ordinary currency was greatly depreciated paper. How little the Continental money was worth is shown by the fact that when Mr. Camp declined the society's call, they paid him about $2200 for eleven weeks preaching and board ; truly a munificent compensation if the money in which it was paid had been worth anything !
Later in 1780 a Mr. Chapman, and in 1782 Mr. Reuben Parmely, a Yale classmate of Mr. Miller, preached for a time ; but in December, 1782, we find the vote "that the Committee should apply to Mr. Jonathan Miller to Preach til the parish order other ways." He continued to preach to the people, evidently to their great satisfaction, during that Spring, and in May they invited him to settle with them in the ministry. They offered him, after some nego- tiation, a salary which began at £60, but was to increase until it should be $80 per year. They also gave him a set- tlement of $200, which I think was paid by building for him the house already mentioned.
Before speaking further of him, let us go back to the other prime necessity of the infant church, a meeting-house.
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There is no evidence of any dissension over the choice of the minister, but as to the location of the meeting-house it was far different. Lots were offered the society on the east and on the west side; two committees were sent by the County Court, one of which reported in favor of the east side, and the other for the west side. Many pages in the record book are filled with votes to accept the site fixed, to reconsider and reject it, and to reconsider again and accept.
THE CHURCH, Burlington, Conn.
By the advice of the Bristol and Farmington ministers, Samuel Newell and Timothy Pitkin, they sought the advice of the ministerial association, but even this brought no har- mony. At length, in 1781, after six years of contention, they came to a unanimous agreement on a site "on the frount of the hill about 15 Rods south of the dwelling- house of Zebulon Coles at a stake Which the Peopple of ye Parish set up." There is a popular legend that they finally reached an agreement by choosing a committee by whose action they agreed to be bound. Landlord Cole was to brew a bowl of flip while the committee were gone ; and they set the stake directly opposite the Cole house lest they
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should be too late to get their share of the flip. I decidedly prefer the account given in their petition to the General Court that after considerable difficulty and disagreeable uneasiness they had "lovingly and unanimously agreed." J. C. Hart says that the two contending parties agreed to unite in leveling the hill by gratuitous labor, and that it cost more than one thousand dollars in labor. 15
Here at last the meeting-house was built; in what is now an open lot south of the road, about half a mile southeast of the center, just opposite the branch road from the station. The Cole tavern was north of the main road and west of the branch to the station. The meeting-house was forty feet by thirty-six in size, and there were, by society vote, "24 squares of glace in the meeting House winders." In August, 1782, for the first time a society meeting was held at the meeting-house ; but it was evidently still unfinished, and the meeting appointed a committee to " shut up the meeting house except glace and be Paid for their Service and Wait for there Pay till January next."
It is said that this little meeting-house was never finished inside, and that the swallows used to make their nests in the rafters and often fly in and out during service. The congregation might well have sung :
"The sparrow hath found her an house,
And the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young, Even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, My King and my God."
-Ps. 84 : 3.
On July 3rd, 1783, the church was formally organized by twenty-six persons entering into a covenant of church fel- lowship, and on November 26th, 1783, the meeting-house being ready for occupancy, the church organized and the pastor called, Mr. Miller was ordained to the pastorate by the Rev. Messrs. Samuel Newell of New Cambridge, Tim- othy Pitkin of Farmington, John Smalley of New Britain, and four other ministers. He had graduated from Yale College in the class of 1781, and was twenty-two years old on the day of his ordination.
Then appears to have begun a time of rapid growth and prosperity for the community. In the two years 1799 and
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1800 fifty-five members were added to the Congregational church, the Baptist church also received many additions, and, as we shall see, a Methodist church of considerable size was being formed, and a group of Episcopalians had also grown up.
Mr. Miller, in his dedicatory sermon in 1809 said : " Thro the goodness of God, we have greatly increased in numbers & wealth, & now rival the older about us in the comforts and conveniences of life. * * * The Lord grant, that we may take heed to ourselves against the temptations of pros- perity, lest it harden our hearts to the neglect of divine things."
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