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LETTERS SCIENCE
ARTS
AGRICULTURE
KNOWL FOGE
LIBRARY of the OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
THE SMITH HOMESTEAD, SHARON, CONNECTICUT.
COLONIAL DAYS & WAYS
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COLONIAL DAYS & WAYS
As GATHERED from FAMILY PAPERS by Helen Evertson Smith Of SHARON, CONNECTICUT With Decorations by T.Guernsey Moore
NEW YORK Publifhed by The CENTURY Co. M : C M
Copyright, 1900, by HELEN EVERTSON SMITH. Copyright, 1900, by NEW YORK EVENING POST CO. Copyright, 1900, by THE CENTURY CO.
THE DE VINNE PRESS.
CARPE
DIEM
TO THE BELOVED MEMORIES OF MY FATHER AND MOTHER THESE SIMPLE RECORDS OF THEIR ANCESTORS ARE LOVINGLY INSCRIBED
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE ALPHABET OF COLONIAL STUDY . ix Sources of Information. Superiority of Letters and Diaries over other Records. Pilgrim, Puri- tan, and Cavalier; Dutchman, Huguenot, and Palatine. Rapidity of Colonial Growth.
II THE CONTENTS OF AN ANCIENT GARRET 17 Sharon, Connecticut. When and how the Township was Settled. The Old House: how it was Constructed; who Lived in it; the Papers it Contained.
- III A PIONEER PASTOR . 33 Rev. Henry Smith of Wethersfield, Connecticut. Troubles of a Wilderness Church. Letter from Samuel Smith of Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1698, describing Early Days in Wethersfield. The Minister's Will.
IV A PIONEER HOME IN CONNECTICUT 59 The Coming of Mrs. Margaret Lake and the Family of Captain John Gallup. Voyage of the Abigail. The First Homesteads of the Second Generation. Household Labor. A Bride's Furnishings.
V TWO HOUSES IN OLD NEW AMSTER- DAM 89 The Long Step from Connecticut to New York. Comforts of the Dutch. Mr. David Codwise
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CHAPTER
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Tells of the Houses of his Grandfather and of Niclaes Evertsen, Grandson of Lieutenant-Ad- miral Jan Evertsen.
VI THE CARES OF THE HUYSVROUW . 107 Every Homestead a Manufactory. Slavery. Good Providers. Spinning and Weaving. Soap and Candle Making. Washing. Bread and Yeast. Butter Making. Nursery Lore.
VII THE ESCAPE OF A HUGUENOT FAMILY 123 Edict of Nantes and its Revocation. The Hu- guenot Exodus. Arts Carried Abroad. Daniel L'Estrange. A Huguenot " Lady in Waiting." An Effectual Disguise. To New Rochelle by Way of England.
VIII HUGUENOT HOMES IN NEW RO- CHELLE . 139 Life less Toilsome than with Most of the Colo- nists. Attachment to the Services of their Church. Refugees not Colonists. Loyalty to the Land of their Adoption. Little Daintinesses of House Furnishing.
IX HUGUENOT WAYS IN AMERICA . . 153 Alterations in Names. Resentment toward their Native Land. Differences between French and English Calvinists. Schools Established by the Huguenots. Amusements, and Games of Courtesy.
X A COLONIAL WEDDING 167 Gallup and Chesebrough. Rev. William Worth- ington of Saybrook, Connecticut. Wedding Customs. Quality and Commonalty. The Uninvited Guests. A Valiant Supper.
XI LIFE ON AN EARLY COLONIAL MANOR .
.
183
Terms of Grant.
The First Lady of the Liv-
ingston Manor. Extent of the Manor.
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PAGE
CHAPTER XII PROSPEROUS DAYS ON A LATER MANOR . . 197
Increase of the Clan in Numbers and Wealth. Education. Margaret Beeckman Livingston, Last Lady of the Manor of Clermont.
XIII A COUNTRY PARSON'S WIFE . 205 Lake, Gallup, Chesebrough, and Worthington; Elliott, Chauncey, Hopkins, Ely, and Good- rich. The Parsonage and its Furnishings. Fire and Flint.
XIV HOME CARES IN A PARSONAGE . . 221 Madam Smith's Multiplied Employments. Small Incomes and Many Out-goes. Extracts from Madam Smith's Reminiscences. The Small- pox. Hospitality. The Preaching of Whitefield.
XV SUNDAYS AND OTHER DAYS IN THE PARSONAGE · 233
From Sunset to Sunset. The Weekly Ablution. Care of the Teeth. Long Services. Catechiz- ing. Sunday Night. Fashions and Clothes. An Evening of Sacrifice.
XVI MANOR LADIES AS REFUGEES . . 247 Flight of the Livingstons from Kingston and Clermont to Litchfield County, Connecticut. The Young Van Rensselaer. Westerlo. Vaughan's Raid. Ladies as Hostlers. Husking Bees.
XVII A LITERARY CLUB IN 1779-81 . . 267 The "Clio." Two Diaries. The Sharon Literary Club. Canfield. Spencer. News of Victory. Tailors and Clothes. Chancellor Kent. Noah Webster. Holmes the Historian.
XVIII NEW ENGLAND'S FESTIVE DAY . . 289 Thanksgiving in 1779. Expedients. Abun- dant Hospitality. Absence of Beef. Celery. After-dinner Entertainment. Two Oranges.
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CHAPTER XIX A SNOW-SHOE JOURNEY 299
A Blizzard in 1779. Litchfield's Busy Days. Judge Tapping Reeve and Family. From Litch- field to Woodbury on Snow-shoes. Parson Bene- dict.
XX A NEW YORK EVENING FROLIC . . 315 Mr. David Codwise Tells of an Evening at the Rhinelander Homestead. Candles and Candle- dipping. The Supper. The "Fire Dance." The Parting Cup.
XXI A MAN OF ENTERPRISE · 329 Medical Man and Merchant. An Early Medical Convention. A Captain of Volunteers. Ad- vancing Money and Supplies. A Solvent Debtor. Comparative Prices. Removal to Vermont.
XXII A COUNTRY PARSON'S USEFUL LIFE 347 Ancestors. Personal Characteristics. Small- pox in Sharon. " Old Jack " and "Billy G -. " A Lesson in Kindliness. Influence with Indians. The Sabbath Made for Man.
XXIII "WELL DONE, GOOD AND FAITH- FUL". 365 The Meeting-house as a News Depot. A Season of Discouragement. A Meeting-house of the Eighteenth Century. The News of Burgoyne's Surrender. A Half-century Sermon. De- scendants.
CHAPTER I
THE ALPHABET OF COLONIAL STUDY
CHAPTER I.
THE ALPHABET OF COLONIAL STUDY.
Sources of Information. Superiority of Letters and Diaries over other Records. Pilgrim, Puritan, and Cavalier ; Dutchman, Huguenot, and Palatine. Rapidity of Colonial Growth.
ITH the gathering of relics to make W suitable exhibits at the centennial celebration of our national inde- pendence, there came a general awakening of interest in all things pertaining to the history of our Revolutionary War and of the few years preceding it. Beginning with an interest only in this special period, the slow fire spread backward until now there are few persons -at least, of English, Dutch, Huguenot, or even of the late-coming Palatine descent - who are not increasingly interested in all that pertains to the earliest colonists. Especially is this true - proba- bly because reliable information concerning it is so difficult of access - in whatever pertains to the home life, the employments, the enjoyments, the hardships, and the habits of our ancestors in those far-away days when the comforts and conveniences which they possessed were, as compared with our own, proportionately as those of the Indians when compared with those of the English in 1620.
So far, it must be confessed that, while the amount of information painfully gathered from
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town records, wills, inventories, letters, traditions, and relics is not inconsiderable, we are not as greatly the gainers by it all as we should be. We have the alphabet, but we do not yet know how to make words, still less how to construct the sentences, which shall tell us the true story of the most in- teresting beginning which any people has ever had.
Our national life has not been one of growth from savagery up, through many wars, through centuries of depression and oppression, of slow disintegrations and slower constructions, but is the result of deliberate purpose on the part of the majority of the first colonists, of no matter what creed or nationality, to occupy this wide, wild, new land, free to the first comer, and bring to it all the best of the institutions of the Old World, while leaving behind all that was worn out, all that had served its day.
For this reason, if for no other, the smallest traces of our national beginnings should be sought for; but not as one gathers pebbles on the sea- shore, to bring them home, turn them over, and throw them away. Every old record, every homely detail, every scrap of old furniture, every bit of home handicraft, above all, every familiar old let- ter or diary or expense-book, should be treasured ; not always each for its own sake, but because each thing, however valueless by itself, is a letter in our alphabet, and, when read in connection with
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something else, may help in the formation of a word hitherto unknown to us.
In forming pictures of home life in the colonies, dates, places, and social classes must all be most carefully considered. Slow-moving as those pre- electric days now seem to us, there yet was a con- stant and, when rationally considered, a rapid progression, from the moment of the first landing at Jamestown onward.
The life conditions which prevailed in the New England colonies from 1620 to 1640 were by no means the same as those which prevailed in the same colonies during the next two decades, and in the other colonies they were at no time quite the same as in New England. The settlers of Vir- ginia, Delaware, and Maryland were not of the same creeds, either political or religious, as those which prevailed in New England. They had more money, not having been obliged to make their flitting under such adverse circumstances, and climate had also its influence.
The Dutch held very similar religious and politi- cal views to those of the New England colonists, but their commercial instincts were stronger, their aggressiveness was less vehement, and their love of home comforts and knowledge of how to obtain them were much greater, for during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Holland was at the head of the commerce and manufactures of the world. Besides this, many of the immigrant Hollanders
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were either wealthy themselves, or were the well- provided offshoots from wealthy families who were disposed to enlarge their estates by commerce in the new lands.
The first three sets of colonists had passed through their pioneer stages, and gathered around them- selves a fair degree of all the accompaniments of civilization before the advent of the fourth dis- tinct and considerable body of settlers. These were the refugee Huguenots. In religion the Hugue- nots were as Calvinistic in their creed as were the Puritans and the Dutch, and were fully as earnest and steadfast in their belief, while the per- secutions which the Puritans had suffered in Eng- land could no more be compared with those which had been endured for nearly two centuries by the Huguenots than the privations of one of our late Spanish captives could be compared with the suf- ferings of the colonists harried by the Indians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Whether they had been rich or poor in France, there were very few of the Huguenot refugees who were not in the depths of poverty when they reached here. But they were gentle (in both senses of the word), they were trained in many arts, and they had the keen perceptions, the cour- tesy, and the easy adaptability of their race. Home life among them was different from that of any of the other colonists, partly because they had the advantage of coming to a land which had already
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been occupied for more than threescore years by laborious, progressive, and intelligent settlers, and partly because they came from a land which was in some things more advanced than either Holland or England. Politically the Huguenots had little sympathy with either English or Dutch. Their race was strongly monarchical by instinct; the rights of the individual man had never assumed their proper proportions in the eyes of Frenchmen.
The last of the great immigrations was that of the Palatines. In modern times there never has been such wholesale abandonment of home and fatherland as that by these unfortunate members of a home-loving race, driven by scores of thou- sands forth from the land of their birth by unen- durable misery. Their home had been the battle- ground of Europe. Great kings and petty princes, Catholics and Protestants, had alike fought over it, burned its villages, destroyed its crops, leveled its strongholds, and harried its people until they had no hope remaining. In sheer desperation they begged from the compassion of England a passage to and a home in the wilds of the new land. Theirs is a history as yet inadequately written, but it is worthy of the pen of a really good historian, and when one shall arise from among their descen- dants theirs will prove to be a worthy and in some respects an unexampled record.
In studying the lives of the early colonists these different origins should always be considered.
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The one colony must not be judged by another. The Puritan,- a political as well as a religious exile,- persecuted for his political views even more than his religious tenets, came here to found an empire where all his views should have room and liberty to expand. He was keen-witted, and,-for his day, be it ever understood,- in spite of his rigid notions of morality, and of all modern assertions to the contrary, he was no narrower in his strictness than was the roistering Cavalier in his laxity of morals. The harshness of the Puritan toward those who disagreed with him was tender- ness and mercy compared to the "justice " meted out to either religious or political dissidents in old England, or, for that matter, in any other country in Europe, with the possible exception of Holland, at that period. Neither man nor nation should be judged by other than the standards of his time.
The conditions of the Puritan's life were hard, but full of mental, moral, and physical health. Whether gentle or simple, he despised no handi- craft, neglected no means of cultivation, shirked no duty (nor did he permit any other to do so, if he could help it), and he fought his way upward, unhasting, unresting.
The settlers of the fertile Southlands were also principally of English blood, yet they differed widely from those of the sterile North. They were courageous, of course. A minority came under compulsion, but the majority came of their
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own free will, and cowards did not cross the ocean in those days, when the sea and the wilderness had real terrors for even the boldest. The love of lib- erty was in their blood, and both the traditions of their past and the comparatively genial conditions by which they were surrounded gave them easy and comfortable views. If the Englishman of the North were strenuous, energetic, a warm friend and a stern foe, he of the South was strong, generous, and joyous. If each were disposed to look a lit- tle askance at the other when the world went well with both, when trouble threatened either the fra- ternal blood flowed warm and true. We are all proud of them both - stern Puritan, gay Cavalier.
The Dutchman was milder than the Puritan, but every way as stiff-necked, and was an inborn republican as well as an educated Calvinist. Slower in his perceptions, narrower in his concep- tions, and more prejudiced than even the Puritan, his faults were not so glaring because less aggres- sive, and the strength of his friendships and family affections hid them from the view of those who lived nearest him. As a mariner and as a trader, as well as in the arts which tend to make life easier and more comfortable, he had few equals, and our country owes much of its subsequent prosperity to the Dutchman's commercial and industrial instincts. We are ever grateful to him.
The Huguenot was devout, unambitious, affec- tionate of heart, artistic, cultivated, adaptable. He
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brought to us the arts, accomplishments, and graces of the highest civilization then known, together with a sweet cheerfulness all his own. Not a colony or a class but was ameliorated by his influence, and, consciously or unconsciously, we all love him.
The Palatine came to our shores desperate with misery. Although Protestant, his faith was not Calvinistic, neither did it fill so large a place in his thoughts. To the older colonists he seemed to be material, almost sordid, in his aims; but they un- derstood neither his language nor his desperation. Perhaps they did not sufficiently try to do so. So he was left to himself, and so difficult was he of assimilation that even to-day those of his descen- dants who live a little off from the highways of com- merce may still be found speaking but very im- perfect English, if any, and living in self-centered communities, with little heed of the outside world, shut off from its influence. Industrious, frugal, un- progressive, living for himself alone, we still do not comprehend him.
Now, it is certain, from the nature of things, that the home lives of all these different bands of colo- nists must have differed widely. None had luxuries and few had comforts, as we now understand these terms, but each had some possessions, some ways, some deficiencies, and some attainments which be- longed to none of the others; hence it is that a knowledge of the home life and personal character-
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istics prevalent in one colony does not imply a knowledge of those of another.
Even the details of domestic life differed some- what in all the colonies, and a thing sometimes forgotten is that the house furnishings and personal habits, as well as the degrees of mental culture, differ with every advancing decade. Improved conditions came with a rapidity that was unexam- pled until that time. Because the first New Eng- land immigrants were obliged to live in moss- chinked and mud-plastered log huts, it does not follow that they long continued to live in them. In fact, it was but a few years before very substan- tial and comfortable dwellings were erected by the better class in all the colonies. The "Old Stone House " of Guilford, Connecticut, erected in 1639, is still an exceedingly comfortable and even hand- some residence, though it has been damaged by some ill-judged alterations for which there was no excuse, because they have in no way added to the convenience or comfort of the inmates.
Two or three years later than the building of the Guilford house, there was erected in Hartford, Connecticut, a two-story house of squared timbers, covered with overlapping shingles on the sides, for the Rev. Thomas Hooker. Of this house a cut is given in Barbour's " Historical Collections of Con- necticut," which shows it to have been not only a substantial, but, though a simple, yet a noticeable mansion for that period in the old England as
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well as in the New. The house erected for Mr. William Whiting about the same time is said to have been still better. The house furnishings of Mr. Hooker and Mr. Whiting, as inventoried after their deaths, would not seem very plentiful or lux- urious to-day, but, read in connection with the similar inventories of the same date belonging to the yeoman or petty gentry classes in England, do not show many marked differences. Even when compared with the inventories of the larger landed proprietors in England, there is not much to choose in the way of comforts, though undoubtedly there is in that of articles of luxury and display. In these there is as much difference between the pos- sessions of Mr. Hooker and Mr. William Whit- ing of Hartford and those of an English gentleman of high social grade, as there is between an English nobleman's belongings and those of a Frenchman of similar rank, or those of a Hollander of the rich merchant class at the same period. To the French nobleman or the untitled but wealthy Dutchman, the interior of the English nobleman's castle must have seemed to the full as barren of beauty and of comfort as the homes of the Hartford settlers would have seemed to all of them.
A few years later than the deaths of Mr. Hooker and Mr. Whiting, the recorded inventories grow longer and fuller. Stools gradually disappear from 'them and chairs are increasingly in evidence. Forks are not named until well on to the opening
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of the seventeenth century, and then they are of silver, and are first mentioned in the will of a citi- zen of Boston in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, at about which time they seem to have come into use among the upper classes in England, having been introduced there from France and Holland.
It may be taken for granted that the wealthiest settlers of New England in 1630 were a little better off in comforts than the poorest of 1650, and so on. The advance was continuous. So much industry, intelligence, energy, and invention were applied to the work that the progress was marvelous.
The same process was going on in all the col- onies. The Dutchman, when he became an Eng- lish subject, did not change his character or his ways, but his growth was steady, if, perhaps, a trifle slower than that of his English neighbor. It must be remembered that he started from a higher plane of comfort (Holland being much in advance of England in this regard), so that by the middle of the eighteenth century both stood upon about the same level in these things. In the meanwhile, both had been greatly helped by the incoming of the artistic, polished, and thrifty French element. The latter brought but few articles of luxury or even of utility, for, like the persecuted Armenians who lately sought our shores, the dangers and dif- ficulties of their escape made such importations impossible; but they brought the manufacturing
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and decorative skill to supply all deficiencies, and also the power and the will to impart their skill, and a few of them, like the Jays of Bedford, had been able to send some of their wealth to this country in advance of their own emigration. Very little of all that was left behind was ever regained.
As sources of knowledge concerning household possessions of the colonists, wills and the inventories accompanying them have been too much relied upon - not because they are not accurate, for this, of course, they are, but because they do not cover ground enough. As a rule, the larger the estate the less likely was there to be an inventory of household possessions, their appraisement and divi- sion among heirs being usually made by agreement. In several distinct lines of colonial families which I have traced back through seven and eight genera- tions to the years beginning with 1630, I have dis- covered comparatively few wills, and, after about 1650, these were seldom accompanied by inven- tories of household possessions. Even when an estate had been administered upon, in ordinary cases the more purely personal property had appa- rently been divided by lot or private agreement, without public appraisal. Especially is this found to be the case in families numbering lawyers among its members. In such families, when wills were made, some person was nearly always named as residuary legatee, in order, probably, to prevent the necessity for giving detailed information of
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such purely private matters to a curious local public.
From the extent and variety of my researches in this line, I have come to have little doubt that this aversion to recorded inventories of household pos- sessions was stronger in proportion to the wealth of the deceased. Hence it is unfair to suppose that the inventories which remain give accurate ideas of the kinds and qualities of the household furnishings of all the classes in a colony.
Perhaps it is due to too great a reliance upon such sources of information that many persons are in the habit of thinking that our ancestors possessed only the plainest, most uncouth, and most comfort- less of furnishings. This was quite true of even the wealthy among the first comers, but it speedily ceased to be true even of those who were not wealthy. The first immigrants among the Puri- tans had not a floor carpet among their possessions ; but the number used in England in the first half of the seventeenth century was small, and they were considered quite in the light of effeminate luxuries. By 1660, or a little later, the always ugly and hard-to-be-swept, but all-enduring (and much-inflicting) rag carpet came into use, while those of the better class were usually provided with several of the excellent and easily swept but equally ugly yarn carpets, which could be and were made in those private families who were rich enough to provide the material, own the looms, and pay for
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the weaving. A few fine carpets were imported from the Netherlands, but only by the wealthiest colonists. By the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, the yarn carpets were made and sold by vil- lage weavers, and had thus become comparatively plentiful. I find no evidence that rag carpets were used in the better sort of houses, except in rear passages and inferior rooms. Not long ago it was desired to restore one of the living-rooms in the most venerated house in North America to its condition in the years between 1776 and 1800, and preparations were made by one of our patriotic societies to cover its floor with a rag carpet. This seems an error in judgment. As Washington im- ported most of the finer clothes for himself and his immediate family, as well as their rich bed-hang- ings, their handsomest articles of furniture, and the best of wines for his family consumption, it is hardly likely that he did not follow the fashion of other gentlemen of his social rank, and import carpets for his best rooms, while using those of woven yarn for all inferior purposes.
At one time there was a general impression that all the immigrant families of good standing had brought over with them many rich articles of furniture, much silver plate, and even many articles of porcelain. Later on it had to be acknowledged that nothing but the most essential of household furnishings could have been permitted on vessels which were already entirely overcrowded with pas-
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