USA > Connecticut > Men of mark in Connecticut; ideals of American life told in biographies and autobiographies of eminent living Americans > Part 1
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
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MEN OF MARK IN CONNECTICUT
n. G. Oborn
Men of Mark in Connecticut
IDEALS OF AMERICAN LIFE TOLD IN BIOG- RAPHIES AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF EMINENT LIVING AMERICANS
EDITED BY COLONEL N. G. OSBORN EDITOR "NEW HAVEN REGISTER
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER "What Connecticut Stands For in the History of the Nation" BY SAMUEL HART, D.D. PRESIDENT CONNECTICUT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Vol. I
WILLIAM R. GOODSPEED HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 1906
Copyright 1904 by B. F. JOHNSON
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Press of Springfield Printing and Binding Company, Springfield, Mass.
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EDITOR'S PREFACE
The difficulties to be encountered in compiling and editing a work of this character are many and varied, and it remains for public opinion to say with what success they have been met and over- come. The aim has been to make a representative presentation of the men in the State of Connecticut who have contributed in marked ways to its professional, industrial, and commercial integrity. It would be an affectation to claim that the work has been thoroughly done. It has in some cases been impossible to secure the cooperation and support of men of mark who belong in a book of this character. At the same time a larger and more sincere effort has been made to achieve the end in view, without exercising a snobbish discrimination, than has ever before been attempted. In asking the indulgence of the public, we do so in the knowledge that our purpose has been to group together, so far as possible, the men and their records, modestly worded, to whose usefulness the historian must in time turn for the human documents necessary to his purpose.
I must in a word express my appreciation of the work under- taken and accomplished by those who have been associated with me, and in particular the many, whose biographies will be found be- tween the covers of the "Men of Mark," who, averse to publica- tions of this character on account of past experiences, have been willing to take at its face value my characterization of its seriousness and assist me in making it possible. Finally I ask the indulgence of the public for what will unquestionably be detected as short- comings on the part of the Editor and his associates, still short- comings though anticipated so far as possible.
September 20, 1906.
N. G. OSBORN, Editor.
15.00 (5vel5)
Good SP
MEN OF MARK IN CONNECTICUT
COL. N. G. OSBORN, Editor-in-Chief
ADVISORY BOARD
HON. WILLIAM S. CASE . JUDGE SUPERIOR COURT
HARTFORD
HON. GEORGE S. GODARD · STATE LIBRARIAN
HARTFORD
HON. FREDERICK J. KINGSBURY, LL.D. · WATERBURY MEMBER CORPORATION YALE UNIVERSITY
CAPTAIN EDWARD W. MARSH . ·
BRIDGEPORT TREASURER PEOPLE'S SAVINGS BANK
COL. N. G. OSBORN . .
NEW HAVEN
EDITOR NEW HAVEN REGISTER
HON. HENRY ROBERTS
HARTFORD
GOVERNOR
HON. JONATHAN TRUMBULL
· NORWICH
LIBRARIAN PUBLIC LIBRARY
WHAT CONNECTICUT STANDS FOR IN THE HISTORY OF THE NATION
T HE English settlement of the territory now included in the State of Connecticut was three-fold in origin and purpose, as it was in place. Soon, however, the three streams of history and of influence were merged into one, and the annals of the colony and the State show how they were combined and what has been the strength of the resultant force in character and in action. There came to Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford in 1635 (following the steps of earlier emigrants from Plymouth, who made no permanent settlement) a band of men who had been given, not ungrudgingly, permission to remove from the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Their leaders were men of strong character and of strong will under the restraint of sound judgment. Thomas Hooker and Roger Ludlow, with whom we might name William Pynchon, though he never really came under the jurisdiction of the new colony, were not satisfied with the ecclesiastical and civil principles which prevailed in Boston and its neighborhood. They came with their followers to the western bank of the Great River, then the very limit of civilization, that they might found a commonwealth which should be puritanically religious on its religious side, but in which citizenship should not be dependent on church membership, and laws should have their binding force from the will of those who were to be governed by them. It was a settlement made by practical men under the guid- ance of a practical preacher and a practical lawyer. In the same year John Winthrop, the younger, representing a company in which the names of Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brook were prominent, sent a party to build a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Lieutenant Lion Gardiner was put in command of the garrison, and the place became for a few years the seat of an independent govern- ment. Soon merged in Connecticut, it contributed to it no small part of the experience of the Pequot War, and helped at least to
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WHAT CONNECTICUT STANDS FOR
give an element of caution in meeting danger, combined with vigor in warding it off. Three years later, in 1638, another company came from England by way of Boston, and took up their home at the fair haven - they presently called it the New Haven - at the mouth of the Quinnipiack. They were independents, like the pilgrims who had settled Plymouth; there was among them a strange combination of spirit of almost fanatical ecclesiasticism and a spirit of commercial adventure; they were led by the theologian, John Davenport, and the wealthy merchant, Theophilus Eaton; they expected to found a theocracy in which the saints should rule, and they hoped to increase the worldly prosperity of which some of their number already had a goodly share. With this company there were affiliated from the next year Milford and Guilford, the latter being the best example of a community of yeomen devoted to agriculture. Doubtless the religious and civil history of the future State was largely molded by the founders of the River colony, while its record for neighborli- ness and bravery may be traced back to Saybrook fort; and speaking generally, we look to New Haven for strong intellectual influences and for the sources of material prosperity fostered by invention and secured by trade.
Early in 1639 the freemen of the three towns in the River colony met in a general assembly and, adopting the first written constitu- tion in history, "associated and conjoined themselves to be one public state or commonwealth." The government which they estab- lished, with no recognition of King or parliament or of any devolved authority, was a pure democracy, the example and pattern of all the democracies in this land or elsewhere; and the recognition of the three towns, each with its reserved rights, was also the example and pattern of all true federal governments. The germ of the Nation was in that assembly of citizens and in their work, and all the history of our land has been profoundly affected by it. As its immediate consequence there sprang at once into existence an abso- lutely independent state; its members were citizens of England, and not unwilling to be called by the name, but they could hardly be called English subjects, and their commonwealth, though a colony, was not a dependency of the crown. When, at the restoration of the monarchy in the mother country, Winthrop presented a petition for a charter and a charter was granted, it was not asked or given
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IN THE HISTORY OF THE NATION
for the bestowal of rights or the creation of obligations; on the con- trary, it contained an acknowledgment on the part of what was vaguely recognized as having a permanent authority over the land, of the existing condition of things. So liberal was it in its provis- ions, that one wonders how it was brought about that the sovereign and his counsellors ever gave their approval to it; and so well adapted was it to the needs of the people here that for more than forty years after the Declaration of Independence it was retained as the funda- mental law of the state. In but one instance, that, namely, of Sir Edmund Andros, was Connecticut called upon to submit to a gov- ernor who was not of her own choice; she followed her own laws, and not those of the English parliament until she formally adopted them as her own; she distributed estates according to the Scripture rule which she had accepted and in defiance of the English statutes, and her action was upheld by the supreme tribunal across the sea; she even refused the writ of habeas corpus because her legislature had not formally incorporated it in her code. And all this she did quietly and soberly. "The consistent policy of Connecticut," says an historian - and it would be easy to prove the assertion in detail through many years -" was to avoid notoriety and public attitudes ; to secure her privileges without attracting needless notice; to act as intensely and vigorously as possible when action seemed necessary and promising; but to say as little as possible, yield as little as possible, and evade as much as possible when open resistance was evident folly. Her line of public conduct was precisely the same after as before 1662 (the date of the charter). And its success was re- markable; it is safe to say that the diplomatic skill, forethought, and self-control shown by the men who guided the course of Con- necticut during this period have seldom been equaled on the larger fields of the world's history. As products of democracy they were its best vindication."
An important result of the granting of the charter was the end of the separate existence of the colony of New Haven. It did not submit altogether willingly to its inclusion in the boundaries assigned to what had thus far been a neighboring jurisdiction; but its leaders saw it was better to fall into the hands of latitudinarian Connecticut than into those of the papist Duke of York, and the democratic element which had gained strength in the aristocratic
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WHAT CONNECTICUT STANDS FOR
colony welcomed the gift of civil rights and privileges. The union was of advantage to each of the parties which entered into it, and to the whole commonwealth; and the public interests were served by a succession of faithful men, whose names, when once they had been chosen to office, appear again and again as in the same place of responsibility until their death. It must suffice to allude to the gen- erous and willing part taken by Connecticut in the plans and acts of defence taken by the united colonies of New England, a promise of the part she was to play in the greater struggles of which notice will be presently made.
From the very first Connecticut had carefully provided for public education. The requirement of a common school in each town of fifty householders and a grammar school in each county, led to a desire for the establishment of a collegiate school to which those could resort who found Cambridge too far away; and the first year of the eighteenth century saw the foundation of such an institution at Saybrook, which was removed fifteen years later to New Haven, and there gained its name and its fame as Yale College, and was built up by the benefactions of Dean Berkeley and others. Under its shadow in its former home there was gathered in 1708, at the call of Governor Saltonstall and the legislature, the synod which framed the Saybrook platform, an act of ecclesiastical states- manship giving strength to the congregationalism which elsewhere lacked cohesion; and from its walls in its new home went out in 1722 Samuel Johnson and other leaders of an indigenous episcopacy which was almost immediately granted legal recognition, and never deserved the charge of being the agent of alien denomination. The ecclesiastical history of Connecticut runs, in a very interesting way, parallel to its civil history. The ministers have had a great in- fluence, willingly recognized and almost always soberly used; to recount their names would be to suggest the whole course of progress in learning, in character, and in all that makes up true prosperity.
When called upon to render assistance in the conflicts of the English against the French on this continent, Connecticut, without saying much about it, constantly sent to the front many more than the number of men assigned to her as her quota. At Ticonderoga and Louisbourg officers and men learned lessons which they prac- ticed later with good result, not on their own soil, for it was scarce
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IN THE HISTORY OF THE NATION
invaded by those against whom they were called to contend, but at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga, and at Yorktown. To the cause of common liberty Connecticut, though she might have pleaded that she had less than others at stake, contributed most generously the conscientious ability of her leaders, the no less conscientious service of a large proportion of her able-bodied men, and unstinted gifts from her treasury. To the Declaration of Independence there were affixed on her behalf the names of Roger Sherman, Samuel Hunting- ton, William Williams, and Oliver Wolcott, men whose public career, could it be sketched here, would tell the history of their times. Her governor during those momentous years was Jonathan Trumbull, friend and counsellor of General Washington, the " Brother Jona- than " of popular speech, to whose wise forethought successive cam- paigns owed more than was or is commonly known. Israel Putnam led her troops and directed the whole action at Bunker Hill, and was soon made major-general for further service; Thomas Knowlton, gallant and brave, fell as he turned the tide of battle at Harlem Heights; Nathan Hale gladly gave up his true young life for his country - a nobler and more helpful gift than years of service could have been; from many homes and from the State's council of safety, always vigilant, went men and supplies to Valley Forge; Wil- liam Ledyard, brave defender of the fort at Groton, was slain by his own sword in the hour of defeat; Joseph Trumbull and Jere- miah Wadsworth were commissary-generals for nearly the whole period of the war; and to help the work of the State's little navy David Bushnell invented the torpedo.
When the struggle was over and independence was acknowledged, the influence of Connecticut, the State which had had long experience in self-government, was seen even more plainly than in her quiet and efficient service during the war. Two of the signers of the great Declaration, Huntington and Wolcott, were governors during the " critical period " which soon followed; Sherman, whose name ap- pears not only on this document, but also on the Declaration of Rights and the Articles of Confederation, had the further honor of signing the Constitution ; and with him was associated in the framing of this document William Samuel Johnson, a man who (as was well known) had not favored a forcible separation from the mother country, but whom his native State honored for his integrity, his legal ability, his learning, and his active fidelity to her interests.
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WHAT CONNECTICUT STANDS FOR
There is no doubt that it is to these Connecticut men that the Con- stitution of the United States owes provisions which rendered it both practicable and acceptable at the time of its adoption, and which, morcover, have commended its wisdom in all the years that have passed. The principles of the fundamental orders of 1639, tested by experience, were thus brought into a wider application; and they were expounded by a Connecticut man who was called to be the first chief justice of the new republic, Oliver Ellsworth, conspicuous for public and private virtues. Jonathan Trumbull, the younger, presided over the House of Representatives in the second Congress. Oliver Wolcott served for a time as Secretary of the Treasury, and Roger Griswold as Secretary of War.
The political history of the State has never been greatly dis- turbed except when the waves of controversy and party strife, mov- ing over the whole country, have reached the land of steady habits; for the excitement and bloodless revolution which in 1818 led to the adoption of a Constitution was political only because ecclesiastical strife had passed into the political arena and politicians had taken up ecclesiastical differences. The charter government, surviving changes of civil administration, fell because the " standing order " of congregationalism fell; and the small majority who felt that they were suffering from an ecclesiastical tyranny secured the formal equality of all citizens before the law. But a full account of this change in its inception and its accomplishment must be sought in detailed histories. And it is impossible here to do more than allude to the influence, far-reaching and long-continuing, of the colonies which Connecticut sent to the western part of New York, to New Connecticut (better known now as the Western Reserve), and to other parts of the country as soon as it was possible to open them to emigration.
The conduct of the affairs of the State, still in its theory a typi- cal democracy, did not in quiet times depend largely upon the per- sonal ability of those who held the office of governor; for the supreme power was in the general assembly of citizens, and the affairs of state almost, as one might say, administered themselves. And when a great crisis came and the struggle for the preservation of the Union began, the flexibility and practicability of the system still were adequate for all needs. The towns took action, as they could readily
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IN THE HISTORY OF THE NATION
and promptly do; the governor took action as he knew that he could do with the body of citizens anticipating his plans; with unselfish devotion the State kept her quota of men more than full and sent into the service of the Union more men in all than the number which appeared on her militia roll. William A. Buckingham be- came the War Governor by successive election after the ancient cus- tom. For the navy, to which in former days of trial the State had given Isaac Hull and Thomas McDonough, she now gave Gideon Welles in the Cabinet, and Andrew H. Foote, with the two Com- modores Rogers and others in the service; and to the roll of the army there were added such names as those of Generals Sedgwick, Mans- field, Hawley, Tyler, Lyon, and Stedman. But on this phase of the history time does not allow us to dwell here, for two aspects of the life of the State still call for our attention; the progress of learning - never in this community divorced from religion - and the progress in invention and the industrial arts which has kept even pace with it.
Two of the Presidents of Yale College, who largely molded its course for the future, Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles, ended their work in the first century of its history ; the names of Dwight and Day and Woolsey and Porter and the second Dwight suggest growth into the university of our own time. Among the leaders of the old theologi- cal order many names stand out prominent; it is no derogation of the honorable place and work of others to mention Jonathan Ed- wards, Lyman Beecher, Leonard Bacon, and Horace Bushnell. The Episcopal Church gained her second strength after the Revolution; three of her five bishops, Seabury and Brownell and Williams, pre- sided over the Church in the whole country; and the two last named were presidents of the second college in Connecticut, first called by the name of Washington and later named Trinity College. The strong purposes and confidence of the Methodists were shown when they founded a third institution of higher education, which has made great progress in its service to the community. The common school system, strengthened by its endowment from the sale of the Western Reserve, fell into a decline from which it was rescued by the labors of Henry Barnard; it was long supplemented by academies of which but few survive, and it now finds its complement in local high schools, so near together that there is scarce a boy or girl of
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WHAT CONNECTICUT STANDS FOR
suitable age in the State who cannot enjoy the benefits of them; at least two of these, it may be noted, have handed down the benefits of very early benefactions. While New Haven has been in a sense the intellectual center, the "wits," including the author of McFingal, were a coterie in Hartford, where they were followed by Percival and Brainard and Mrs. Sigourney; and Noah Webster must not be for- gotten in any enumeration of literary men. To mention any names among the writers of our own day might seem invidious; but we may at least name, among scholars and writers of local history, in suc- cession to Benjamin Trumbull of an earlier generation, Hollister and Beardsley, J. Hammond Trumbull, and Charles J. Hoadly. Still, on the whole, it seems to be true of Connecticut that she has done things rather than told of them, made history rather than written it: caret vate sacro.
From the first, Connecticut men busily devoted themselves to commerce, and for a long time ships from her river and scaports sought markets in the West and the East Indies, and for that matter, in all available parts of the earth, and brought in oil and other treasures of the sea. The interests in traffic of this kind have largely passed away; but the spirit of discovery and of travel has been more than replaced by the spirit of invention and of manufac- ture. We are told that the versatile mechanical genius of the State was first conspicuously shown by one Abel Buel; it was Eli Terry who began the manufacture of wall-clocks, Eli Whitney to whom we owe the truly epoch-making invention of the cotton-gin, and John Fitch who first propelled a vessel through water by the power of steam. The manufacture of pins - the invention of the machine cannot be credited to Connecticut - led to the setting up of brass- works; the inventor of the cotton-gin undertook the manufacture of fire-arms. In his shop Samuel Colt began to make his revolvers; and then in his own shops he began to construct those instruments of precision which have made possible the work of the skilled mechanic of these later years and have given it so great encouragement. The progress of invention and the mechanical arts in the State has been beyond the power of adequate description, and the names of those who deserve honor for their part in it are so numerous that it is impossible to make any satisfactory selection from them. At first, wherever a fall of water could be found; then wherever coal could
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IN THE HISTORY OF THE NATION
be procured; now in almost every place from which goods can be carried to a market, there are busy hands at work to guide the ma- chines which embody human ingenuity, and human brains as busily occupied in devising plans for diminishing labor and increasing its product.
And in all this, from the settlements in the wilderness to the work in thriving towns and cities on the lines of the world's traffic, from the gathering of a few neighbors discussing a few simple rules for the common advantage to the assembly of the representatives of a modern State, from the study of the isolated minister to the lec- ture-rooms and libraries of the great university, it has been the work of faithful and good men which has been of benefit to its own time and has made ready the way for the coming ages. This is true everywhere; but probably nowhere is it more evidently true than in Connecticut that the record of the men of mark is the story of the commonwealth. Qui transtulit sustinet.
SAMUEL HART.
HENRY ROBERTS
R OBERTS, HENRY, the popu- lar Governor of Connecticut, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., in January, 1853. His father, George Roberts, was a prominent Connecti- cut manufacturer, who at the time his son was born was in business in Brooklyn. The same year he returned to his native State to retire to a farm in South Windsor. In 1864 he was chosen treasurer of the Hartford Car- pet Company and two years later he became its president, a position which he held for twenty years. He was likewise president of the Hartford Woven Wire Mattress Company and director in various benevolent and financial institutions. He was esteemed as a man of sound judgment, high integrity, and great execu- tive and business ability. He was a staunch Republican and a man of deep religious convictions. The Governor's mother was Elvira (Evans) Roberts. His ancestors came from England in colonial days and rendered service to the country in the French and Indian Wars, at Bunker Hill and at Valley Forge. The first of the name to reach America was William Roberts, who came from England in 1754. George Roberts held a captain's commission during the Revo- lutionary War, where he contributed his full share toward the event- ual success of the patriot's cause. On his mother's side the Governor is a descendant of John Taylor and of Thomas Taylor, to whom the people of Deerfield, Mass., have erected a monument in grateful com- memoration of his bravery in the French and Indian Wars.
Young Henry Roberts spent the early years of his life on his father's farm in South Windsor. He was a sturdy youngster whose special tastes were for outdoor athletic sports and for reading his- tory. Like most country boys he began at an early age to make
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