USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > Historical sketches of New Haven > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
UC-NRLF
$0 167 697
Historical Sketches of New Haven
RULEN STRONG BARTLETT
GIFT OF THOMAS RUTHERFORD BACON MEMORIAL LIBRARY
C.
L
NIENSIS
LVX
SIG
FIAT
N
X
EX LIBRIS
HISTORICAL SKETCHES
OF
NEW HAVEN
BY
ELLEN STRONG BARTLETT
NEW HAVEN : PRINTED BY TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR.
1897
F102 . N5B3
Copyright 1897 by ELLEN STRONG BARTLETT
....
TO MY DEAR SCHOLARS
WHEREVER THEY MAY BE
This Book
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. E. S. B.
267905
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/newhavensketches00bartrich
PREFATORY NOTE.
These papers have appeared by request, from time to time, in The Connecticut Quarterly and the New England Magazine; and as some of them are out of print, it has seemed best to bring them together in this volume.
Although they are a humble contribution to the literature that is accumulating with reference to New Haven, they are the result of loving and careful research in the most trustworthy sources of information, and it is earnestly hoped that everything therein stated as a fact rests on undoubted testimony.
We cannot too often recount the efforts made in planting the tree, if thereby those who eat the fruit are incited to till the soil about the roots.
E. S. B.
CONTENTS.
THE NEW HAVEN GREEN,
- 9
A NEW HAVEN CHURCH, -
- - - - 21
THE GROVE STREET CEMETERY, - - -
-
- 42
HILLHOUSE AVENUE,
- 56 JOHN TRUMBULL, THE PATRIOT PAINTER, -
- - 77
U
Historical Sketches of New Haven.
1
THE NEW HAVEN GREEN.
WHEN the forefathers marked out their famous nine squares, with that in the middle set apart as a "public market-place," they fixed the center of the life of the city of Elmis. The Green has been called the heart of New Haven. In absence, the name calls up stirring memories ; on return, the sight of it stirs thrills of recognition. It is only a simple grassy square, surrounded and dotted by trees, divided by Temple street, crossed by many paths for the convenience of busy people ; and enshrining three old churches. But the square has been there since Davenport and Eaton laid out the town in 1638 ; the trees liave stood a hundred years; and around the churches are entwined the historic associations of the colony and the city.
The changes have been many. The alders and willows that over-hung pools of water, have gone; so, too, have the "market-house," the whipping- post, the buildings which one after another graced or disgraced its surface. The area is sixteen acres ; it is not exactly square, because the surveyor wlio meas- ured it in the midst of primeval wildness, was unable to be strictly accurate, but to the eye this is not apparent.
The surveyor was John Brockett, son of Sir John Brockett of Brockett's Hall, Herefordshire ; and perliaps a little inexactness may be understood, if we believe the tradition that he had left all in England and had crossed the sea in pursuit of a charming girl among the Puritan band.
Around the Green were placed the houses of the leaders of the colony, which was the most opulent of those that left England, and thus the Green has always been before the eyes of the citizens, and has been the short-cut from one " quarter " to another. It is itself a token that the colonists came, not to seek
to
The New Haven Green.
adventure or to avoid the restraints of civilized life, but with a definite purpose to found a state, with a city at its head, that they intended to be graced by order and beauty. May the good intentions of good men always be thus carried out.
The building of the meeting-house, identified in New Haven so pre- eminently with the state, came foremost in their plans. The first Sabbath, April 18, 1638, has been often described ; and artists have been inspired by the chronicle to show us the spreading oak and the reverent company of English- men, women and children, assembled there for the worship they had crossed the ocean to maintain. This oak, under which John Davenport, the favorite London
THE GREEN, SHOWING BRICK CHURCH AND CHURCH-YARD. From a Painting in the rooms of the New Haven Colony Historical Society.
minister, preached on "the temptation in the wilderness," was near the present corner of George and College streets, but the first house of God was as nearly as possible, in the center of the Green. This was in 1639, and on this historic spot have been placed the successive buildings of the church, so appropriately known as the "Center." Even inore than in other colonies was this a fitting situation, for the founders made the law that "the Church Members only shall be free Burgesses ; and that they only shall chuse magistrates and officers among them- selves to have the power of transacting all publique civil affairs of this planta- tion."
II
The New Haven Green.
The "meeting-house " was a modest little shelter for sentiments like these. It was only fifty feet square, perfectly plain, withi roof like a truncated pyramid, but on Sabbaths it must have been furnished nobly with keen intellect and high principle. We know all about the Sabbath then, the beating of the drum, the decorous walk through the Green to the meeting-house, the careful ranking of seats, the stationing of the guard to keep watch on lurking Indians. Those who go up now to worship may feel that they are literally following the foot- steps of the fathers. Through the Green was the special path allowed to the first pastor, John Davenport, so that he might walk on Sundays from his house to the pulpit in the complete seclusion befitting his dignity. Here, later, was the first school-house, a little back of the church, and alas ! in spite of all these privileges of religious and political liberty, before long a jail was necessary, that made a blot on the Green. The whipping-post was moved about until 1831,
THE GREEN.
From a Drawing owned by the New Haven Colony Historical Society.
when it was exchanged for the less appalling sign-post for legal notices. And the public square was not too good in early days for a pound. The old alms- house stood on the northwest corner, near College street. For its convenience was a well of excellent water, which, it is thought, has never been filled up.
In 1639, Ne-pau-puck, a persistent enemy, was beheaded here, and perhaps this ghastly yielding of savage ferocity to Anglo-Saxon law is the darkest picture the Green has offered. After the English custom, the burying-ground adjoined the church, and there were laid the wise and the good, the young and the old, of the infant settlement. Martha Townsend was the first woman buried in this ground. Sometimes, at dead of night, apart from others, the victims of small-pox were fearfully laid here. The ground was filled with graves between the church and College street ; sixteen bodies having been found within sixteen square feet, when i11 1821, the stones were removed to the Grove Street Cemetery, and the ground was leveled. A few stones are left in their original places, while in the
THE GREEN.
13
The New Haven Green.
crypt of the church may be seen, as they stood, the monuments of more than a hundred and thirty of the early inhabitants. Back of the church are some small, dark stones, decidedly gnawed by time. Tradition used to ascribe two of these to the resting-places of Goffe and Whalley, the hunted regicides ; and elaborate interpretations were given of the purposely brief and misleading inscriptions. Opinion now discredits this, and assigns the stone formerly called Whalley's to Martin Gilbert, Assistant Deputy. But there is no mistake about the grave of Dixwell, the third of the regicides, and the original stone, simply inscribed, "J. D. 1688-9," etc., is plainly seen, while in the same enclosure is the monu- inent erected in 1847, by the descendants of Dixwell. He had concealed lis name under that of Davis. An inscription on the church-wall tells us that
THE GREEN.
From a Drawing owned by the New Haven Colony Historical Society.
Theophilus Eaton, the noted founder of the town, lies near. Over the entrance of the church are the main dates and facts of the settlement of the town, and many a passer through the Green stops under the shade of the trees to read, and get a lesson in history.
As time passed, the Green was graded and cleared. Around it lived the Pierponts, the Trowbridges, the Ingersolls, and facing its upper side were the buildings of the infant Yale. They were very simple, and afford a great contrast to the elaborate and imposing array of to-day, but the forty boys were proud of their college.
The three churches on Temple street, in the very middle of the Green, are an unusual and striking feature of a public square. The North Church, now called the United Church, and Trinity Church, were built in 1814, as well as
THE OLD STATE HOUSE.
15
The New Haven Green.
the present building of the Center Church, so that the three buildings were rising at the same time, during the troubled period of our second war with Eng- land. It is said that the ship which was bringing in material for Trinity Church was overhauled by a British cruiser, but that the enemy was persuaded to relin- quish that part of the booty when its sacred destination was disclosed.
Besides these, no buildings now stand within the enclosure, and no further encroachment is allowed. One after another, the various structures which a too accommodating public allowed, have been removed.
The last to go was the "old State House," in 1887. Built in 1829, by Ithiel Towne, it was the successor of several State Houses which stood in different parts of the Green. Its removal was long discussed, and the friends and the opponents of the measure were aroused to couch their argu- ments in decidedly vigorous language. Without the State House steps, classes and associations go hunting for a place for photographic groups. The classic columns of this copy of the The- seum, must figure in many a picture belong- ing to by-gone days.
In the latter part of the last century, the Green began to put on its present appearance. The county-house and jail were taken away in 1784. In that year, a market-house was placed near the corner of Church and Chapel THE GREEN, FROM THE REAR OF CENTER CHURCH. streets, but in 1798, it was taken down. At that time, the square was fenced, under the direction of James Hillhouse, David Austin, and Isaac Beers.
In 1799, permission was obtained to level the surface at private expense. Evidently public spirit was stronger in individuals than in common councils. About that time the great planting of elms began. The two famous trees, which may have set the fashion which caused Mrs. Tuthill to call New Haven the "City of Elms," were brought to town in 1686, by William Cooper, as a gift to the pastor, and were planted in front of the Pierpont house, where the Bristol house now is. There they flourished for more than one hundred and fifty years. They shaded the windows of Sarah Pierpont, that rare maiden who was "of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and unusual benev- olence," who "sometimes went about singing sweetly, and seemed to be always full of joy and pleasure," who " loved to be alone, walking in the fields and
.
TEMPLE STREET.
1
17
The New Haven Green.
groves," and whose charms of beauty, intellect, and good sense subjugated even Jonathan Edwards, the intellectual giant of America. Some one has said that in the shade of those trees, these famous lovers must have often lingered. Twenty-three years after their marriage, a platform was built under the pen- dent boughs and the "sil- ver tongued " Whitefield preached to the listening crowd on the Green. The Pierpont elms lived for more than a century and a half. The last was cut down in 1840, having at- tained a circumference of - eighteen feet. Two mag- nificent elms were also in front of the house and school of the Rev. Clau- dius Herrick, where Bat- tell Chiapel now is. They too, were a century and a half old, in 1879, when cut down. At the corner of Church and Chapel streets, is the most noted of New Haven elms, the " Franklin Elm." Jerry THE DIXWELL MONUMENT. Allen, a " poet and pedagogue," brought it on his back from Hamden Plains, and sold it to Thaddeus Beecher for a pint of rum and some trifles. It was planted on the day of Franklin's death, April 17, 1790. Its girth, two feet from the ground, is sixteen feet ; its height is eighty feet. This noble tree spreads its graceful branches as a welcome and a shelter to all who make pilgrimage to. New Haven. It seems a fitting gateway to the arcades that stretch athwart the turf beyond. In the shade of the Franklin elm is the "Town pump," one of the old landmarks which thirsty people would regret to see removed. It was given to the city long ago by Mr. Douglass, of Middletown.
In 1784, the Common Council ordered the extension of Temple street to Grove street, and in 1792, Hillhouse Avenue was laid out. Col. James Hillhouse, ever enthusiastic in public works, besought the citizens to subscribe for beautifying the Green by planting trees. This was in 1787, and most of the trees were set between then and 1796. Most of them were brought from the Hillhouse farm in
18
The New Haven Green.
Meriden, and by the testimony of eye-witnesses, they varied from the size of whipstocks to a foot in thickness.
The zeal of Col. Hillhouse, who often took the spade in his own hands, inspired others. The Rev. David Austin was moved to plant the inner rows on the east and west sides of the Green, and many stories are told of the enthusiasm of boys in holding trees, of girls in watering and tending them, all to help on the good work. The cool and shady streets of New Haven are a memorial of this widespread interest in Hillhouse's plan. Such men as Ogden Edwards, United States Judge Henry Baldwin, and President Day, were proud, in mature life, to look back on their boyish participation in the work.
A constant and varied succession of foot-passengers may be seen on the diagonal paths. There is no "age, sex, or condition " which is not to be found
ELM STREET.
there during the day. Babies in summer, boys skating in winter, wise professors and students with book in hand, at all times, are surely there. Many times, thousands of children have been massed there, to add to the festivity of Fourth of July, Sunday-school, and centennial celebrations, and their choruses have carried the swelling voices of vast choirs to the cathedral arch of Temple street. Probably no famous man has ever visited New Haven without contributing his presence to the personal associations of this simple square. Nobles, scholars, poets, divines, statesmen, from all countries, have been tliere. Washington decorously attended church at Trinity. Lafayette reviewed troops here, and both were sometimes visitors of Roger Sherman, who lived just above the Green. After the Revolutionary heroes, the place felt the tread of Madison and Monroe, of John Quincy Adams, of Andrew Jackson, of Van Buren. Then came the
19
The New Haven Green.
great men of the civil war; Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Hancock, McDowell, and many more, have bowed to the cheers of thousands crowded on the Green.
Training days and county fairs must have caused the Green to smile, and even to laugh aloud, and whenever the feeling of the town has been stirred to its depths, the Green has been the spot to which every one hied to show his share in that feeling. Here the loyal subjects of George III. cele- brated his majority, and some years later, made public re- joicing over the repeal of the Stamp Act. Here Benedict Arnold, after Lexington, assembled the Governor's Guard, to lead them to Cam- bridge, to swell the patriot army ; here the citizens of a new republic crowded, to shout over the surrender of Cornwallis, and two years later, the gunners in long green gowns boomed the salutes for the treaty of peace with England. Here passed, in 1851, the barouche which contained all the survivors of the Revolution who could be mustered for the Fourth of . July parade. £ The year THE FRANKLIN EI,M. before that dirges were played here after President Taylor's death, and, ten years later, the Green was whitened by the recruiting tents of the Townsend Rifles ; and the boys of the three months' regiments made their first bivouac here ; too many, alas ! after- ward finding the "bivouac of death" on Southern fields. Here the New Haven branch of the Sanitary Commission was organized, and its chairman, Mr. Alfred Walker, sent out two hundred and eighty-seven boxes in the first month. In the State House, the New Haven Soldiers' Aid Association met for three years.
Under the trees, collations were given to returning soldiers, and sad crowds assembled to witness the funeral honors paid to New Haven's sons : to Theodore Winthrop, so early sacrificed ; to General Terry and Commodore Foote, lost when ripened by experience. Great was the rejoicing when "the cruel war was over." Thousands assembled to cheer the news of the fall of Petersburg and Richmond. Then in the midst of joy came the blow of Lincoln's assassina-
20
The New Haven Green.
tion, and a greater and a sadder crowd hurried back to the old Green than it has ever seen gathered for any other occasion. Then, on the steps of the State House, Dr. Leonard Bacon voiced the lamentation of a city bereaved of its national head, and the elms sighed over a horror-stricken multitude. 1 It seems safe to feel that, after such a history, as long as life remains in the city, the "heart of New Haven" will beat on in its old place.
A NEW HAVEN CHURCH.
THE Center Church in New Haven has been fitly called a "time-piece of the centuries," and the stranger who worships there may well find his eyes roving over the dial marks on its venerable walls.
--
In mediæval times the church walls displayed the pictured Bible story to all who entered ; this church in the New World bears a syn- opsis of a colony's history.
Over the entrance is a concise statement of the main facts of the founding of the town. This tablet was prepared by the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon before he retired from his active ministry, and, in a small space, it is significant with the story of the "coeval beginning of the church and town." On a corner of the building is a tablet bearing the dates of the four suc- cessive buildings which have sheltered an unbroken suc- cession of worshippers from the organization until 110W- 1640, 1670, 1757, 1814.
Thus this spot is hal- lowed by the continuous THE CENTER CHURCH, NEW HAVEN. public worship of more than two centuries and a half. The first simple structure, a few yards in front of the present building, was the center to which all turned to hear the illustrious London divines, or
A.D. 1640.
THE
A COMPANY 4L CHRISTIANS
FIRST CHURCH
N DAVENPORT AND
API 14.1001631
COPHILUS CATO
804 12111678.
THIS HOUSE
THER LARHEST
A.D.1621
PLC. 27. 1811.
=
L
CENTER CHURCH ENTRANCE.
23
A New Haven Church.
for discussion of the questions, theological, political and social, which agitated that miniature world.
-.
-
THE MEMORIAL WINDOW.
Hither came up the Sabbath worshippers at the first and second beating of the drum ; and woe to the careless or irreverent wight who was late, or
24
A New Haven Church.
absent from the service. He was promptly rebuked and fined, even when pro- vided with excuses such as clothes wet in Saturday's rain, and no fire by which to dry them !
THE . VOICE . OF . ONE . CRYING . IN THE . WILDERNESS.
JOHN . DAVENPORT . B.D . (OXON 1625) BORN . IN . COVENTRY . WARWICKSHIRE . APRIL - 1597 VICAR · OF · S · STEPHENS . COLEMAN . STREET - LONDON . 1624. FLED · TO · AMERICA · FOR · RELIGIOUS · FREEDOM - 1637. LAID . THE . FOUNDATIONS . OF . NEW . HAVEN . APRIL . 1635. PASTOR . OF . THIS CHURCH . FROM . ITS . FORMATION . 1639. UNTIL . HIS . REMOVAL TO . THE FIRST . CHURCH . BOSTON . 1668. DIED . IN . BOSTON · MARCH . 1670 0
t See Foot Note.
Here paced the sentinels armed against Indian attack, and here resounded Sternhold and Hop- kins's version of the Psalms, "lined off."
Alas ! we learn that not the force of exhortation and ex- ample, nor the solemnity of danger, could altogether counteract the evil .suggestions lurkingin "water myllions."*
Here it was that the children were huddled on the pulpit stairs during the service. Not even the thunders of pulpit eloquence nor the chill of a fireless house sufficed to restrain the irrepressible spirit of childhood ; after divers long-continned public efforts to stop the disturbance, the children were wisely sent back to their parents.
Here it was that the Sabbath offerings in wampum and the fruits of their fields were taken to the deacons' seat. Here it was that Davenport, when it was known that the messengers of the King would soon be at hand, eager to search for the regicides, Col. Whalley and Col. Goffe, uttered his brave words of exhor- tation to "entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." The preacher afterward proved the sincerity of his words by sheltering the fugitives in his own house for a month. What coolness, and sagacity, and courage were exhibited by that tiny colony in that crisis! Here it was that, somewhat later, the messengers of the King were edified in the midst of their search for the judges by another Sabbath discourse by Davenport on the text : "Hide the ontcasts ; bewray not him that wandereth ; let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab ; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler."
* "Win. Pert was warned to the Court for taking water myllions one Lords day out of Mr. Hooks lot his answere was that his Mr sent him to see whether there were any hoggs within the fence and to bring home a watter milion with him he being bidd to goe through Mr. Hooks lott after the Saboth he tooke 2 watter milions he said it was the first act of his in this kind and hoped it would be the last. For his unrighteousnesse & profanesse of his sperit & way so soone thus to doe after the Saboth he was to be publiquely corrected although moderatly because his repentance did appeare."-Early Records of New Haven.
+ This and the nine following cuts are fac-similes of the memorial tablets on the walls of the audience room.
25
A New Haven Church.
Fearlessness so magnificent as that must have made the home government quite willing to act against New Haven when the charter struggle came up.
TOMALAM ROOKE;
Born.in . Southampton . England.1601 B.A . Frmity . College . Oxford . 1620 Teacher of this . Church . 1644-1656
Chaplain.to. Oliver Cromwell . and. master . of . the. Savoy-hospital. bill. the close of the Commonwealth.
Ne . died . March - 21 . 1678 his. remains . rest .m . Bunhill. Fields · London.
Among the worshippers in the second house of God was that "James Davids" around whom lingered a halo of mystery ; for his dignity, his reserve, his evident culture and means made the curious surmise, what was disclosed after his death, that he was John Dixwell, one of the three judges. His grave is immediately back of the church, and there may be seen what is left of the origi- nal headstone. The inscription was : "J. D., Esqr.
Deceased March ye 18th in ye 82ª year of his age, 1688-9."
The monument erected in 1847 by the descendants of Dixwell, commemo- rates their appreciation of the kindness shown to their distinguished ancestor by the inhabitants of New Haven, and sets forth the main facts of his career.
On the rear wall is a tablet in memory of a man second to Eaton only, Stephen Goodyear, the first deputy governor, who is buried in London ; and another which explains that until 1796 the first churchyard was liere, extending from the church to College street.
The third building, known as the "brick meeting-house," seems to have been removed, not on account of age or decay, but because increasing prosper- ity demanded something larger and better. The present one on the same spot, claims one's inter- est. more for its associations than for pretensions to architectural beauty. True to the London origin of the early settlement, this church was built with St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, on Trafalgar Square, as its model.
Nicholas Street. Second Pastor of this Church Born in) Somersetshire, England in 1603 a graduate of Oxford University in 1625 Pastor of the Church in Taunton, Mass. 1637 to 1657. Associated with Rev. John Davenport as Teacher in this Church. Sept 26th 1659.to April, 1668. and then Pastor until his death, April 22+d 1674 He was a Godly. Modest and judicious Man, and the first Pastor who died in the service of this Church.
At the rear of the church are more tablets ; one in memory of Theophilus Eaton, the first governor of the colony, who died in 1657, and is buried near the church wall, outside of the pulpit window. This was the successful Lon-
26
A New Haven Church.
don "merchant of great credit and fashion," who, in company with Davenport, the friend of his childhood, led the company of pioneers from London to Quin- nipiack. He was the son of a famous minister of Coventry, had been in business, had trav- eled extensively, and had repre- sented Charles I at the court of Denmark.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.