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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28
THE making
OF bristol
CLOCKMAKER
Gc 974.602 B77b 1390237
M. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01068 5292
CLOCK MAKER
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Published by
BRISTOL PUBLIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 1954
OUR YANKEE HERITAGE
THE making OF Bristol
CARLETON BEALS
PEACEABLE STREET OAK . . . "I see where the live-oak is growing." (Vault, Bristol Public Library)
preface
HISTORY, the record of the past, is the foundation on which the present is built. It is this foundation on which the future, too, must stand if the fundamental ideals of our present free society are to be preserved.
It has been said that America's greatest need in this crucial hour of history is more citizens who understand the past from which this country grew. The recent trend of world events stresses the importance of bringing to our citizens, especially to the younger generations, knowledge of our heritage of freedom, and the hardships which the early settlers were willing to endure in order to achieve and preserve it.
Bristol is fortunate in the preservation of its story. Two histories of the city have been published; a file of The Bristol Press from 1871 to the present is complete; numerous documents, scrapbooks, account books, vital statistics, letters and manuscripts exist in the vault of the Public Library.
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The collection and preservation of historical data is the particular re- sponsibility of the public library in the community. Yet here in Bristol, serving all of the people from the school child to the research worker, we have felt the need to be more than a custodian of the recorded past. We have felt the urge to make this past live again in a form which would inspire and quicken the young people of this city. We have known the demand for a detailed documentation of all the material available on Bristol history.
Thus YANKEE HERITAGE: THE MAKING OF BRISTOL, written by Carleton Beals, erudite historian, author and teacher, is presented as a textbook for use in the schools of this city, and as a record of the high adventure, courage, industry and sacrifice by which a city was built.
The author's notebook, available for the use of teachers, research workers and others interested, documents and identifies not only material used in the book but every source explored in an effort to evoke the past.
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It contains also a discussion of the contradictions in various sources and the reasoning by which the author arrived at his interpretations.
Our thanks go to the Barnes Foundation, the Bristol manufacturers and the city government for their cooperation in making this volume possible.
We have arrived at this publishing milestone with full confidence that here is an inspirational, informative, interesting story of our beginnings and our progress through the years. The history of Bristol is more than a chronology of events. It is the story of our great country in miniature, and it offers proof that there is no quick, easy or painless way for a com- munity to grow and prosper. It is, in essence, the story of the individual, his problems and accomplishments, and his contribution to the founda- tion of freedom upon which we rest so firmly today.
The promotion of Bristol history by the Public Library does not end with the publication of YANKEE HERITAGE. Many avenues remain to be explored - biography, education, merchandising, religion. As we finish this first task, begun eighteen months ago, we are conscious that
"Much is there waits you we have missed; Much lore we leave you worth the knowing; Much, much has lain outside our ken."
CELIA T. CRITCHLEY, Librarian MONA O'HARA, Chairman Board of Library Directors
Bristol, Conn. December 1, 1953
contents
1 The HOUSE in the GREAT FOREST 1
2 LIFE on the PEQUABUCK 13
3 The CHURCH on the HILL 23
4 PIONEERS build a SOCIETY 35
5 The GREAT LAND RUSH 45
6 SONS of LIBERTY 57
7 The FIGHT for FREEDOM 65
8 FREE TOWN 73
9 CANDACE ROBERTS: GIRL of the NEW CENTURY 83
10 The GREAT CANAL 99
11 Keeping TIME with PROGRESS 111
12 The TURNING WHEEL 125
13 BRASS, WAR and PROSPERITY 137
14 LET there be LIGHT 157
15 The HORSELESS BUGGY 173
16 The NEW CENTURY 187
17 The NEW CITY 197
18 The CHALLENGE of AGGRESSION 215
19 WAR and PEACE 233
20 TODAY and TOMORROW 255 POSTSCRIPT 267 BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 CALENDAR 295 INDEX 301
THOMAS BARNES HOUSE - FARMINGTON (top); HOUSE BUILT BY EBENEZER BARNES ON THE PEQUABUCK - 1728 (bottom) (both, Courtesy Fuller F. Barnes)
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THE house IN THE great forest
"THIS summer, Steve, you will have to do a man's work," Ebenezer Barnes told his son at their home in Farmington. He was taking Steve and two of the other boys up the Pequabuck River where he was go- ing to build a new house in the wil- derness the Indians called the Great Forest. In 1728 that was still un- tamed frontier country stretching on West toward the almost unknown continent.
The first permanent English set- tlers had come to Connecticut from near Boston nearly a hundred years before this, to Wethersfield and Windsor, then Hartford. The three river towns drew up the famous Eleven Fundamental Orders for free democratic self-government.
Ten years later a daring group, among them Stephen's grandfather, Thomas, had pushed over the moun- tains west of Hartford to Farming- ton in the Tunxis Indian country. Before long some of them, or their
sons, went on to Southington and Waterbury. But the Pequabuck hill lands remained unsettled, a region of wild game and roving Indian hunters.
Mostly the early people had gone out into the wilderness in groups. It was a daring venture, this idea of Ebenezer's, to set forth alone and put up a house in the deep forest far from any neighbors.
Steve was only fourteen, and was so excited by the adventures ahead of them he hardly slept the night before they set out.
Light from over the eastern Tal- cott Range was barely streaking along the top of Round Hill beyond the village commons when he pulled on his clothes and raced downstairs.
His young stepmother, Mabel, was already getting breakfast at the big kitchen fireplace about which hung cast-iron and brass cooking utensils. Little Abijah, his half brother, the newest member of the
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
family, lay quietly in the cradle, sucking at his wooden milk bottle and staring up at the flickering light on the blackened ceiling beams. One by one the other brothers and sisters came bounding in.
Anna, one of his sisters, was stow- ing provisions into the saddle-bags. Steve kept pestering his older broth- ers, Jedidiah and Gideon, to hurry.
They rode out of the yard under the great elms, herding before them the two yoked white oxen, pride of the Barnes family. The animals were loaded with axes and saws, shovels and hoes, and a big coil of new hemp from the ropemaker who had set up shop on the Connectieut River in Middletown.
Steve waved a last good-bye to the gaunt unpainted house, built more than eighty years ago by his grandfather. It stood near the een- ter of Farmington, two and a half stories high on massive stone foun- dations, beside the burying yard with its stiff red sandstone markers. The large bay windows at the south end gave a view of the slope to the ereek that flowed down from Brown- son's grist and sawmills. The high front poreh overlooked the farm, ten acres of meadow and or- chard that dropped off on the other side of the street toward the june- tion of the Pequabuck and Farming- ton Rivers.
The boys and their father turned down Meadow Road, a narrow
muddy cart traek, and forded the Pequabuek. They followed the In- dian trail west toward the wilder- ness. In places the traee was worn deep by centuries of mocassins and animals. Beyond sedgy ground, they erossed wide meadows and climbed the first wooded hills. The last house, and finally Rattlesnake Mountain, where Ebenezer Barnes had onee owned land, were lost to sight.
It was a fine erisp Spring day, and the early sun sparkled on the dew in the long grass. Maples and other trees were leafing out, and the deep forest was already banded with every shade of green, almost black where spruce and hemloek banked the hillsides. Silver birehes rose like slender columns, and great white oaks, still almost bare, flung their gnarled arms over lesser growth. A dark cloud of passenger pigeons swept overhead with a rush of wings loud as wind.
Beyond a grove of scattered red cedars, a bear ambled across the trail. But Ebenezer told Jedidiah to put his flintlock down.
"Let him fatten up for the winter. It's too far to carry the meat, and we have too many other things to do today."
They followed rolling hill coun- try, and two hours later, near a thieket of white-flowering hawthorn, forded the northeast fork which was running high. At the southern end
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THE HOUSE IN THE GREAT FOREST
of a high ridge, dense with timber, Ebenezer drew rein.
"Here's the spot, my sons."
It was a finc stretch of meadow in a wide elbow of the Pequabuck. The woods werc partly cleared be- cause here the two Farmington coopers got hickory and oak for their staves and barrels, so it had become known as 'Pole-land.'
Steve raced his horsc ahead in the joy of new discovery.
"This is the best spot for the house," suggested Jedidiah, halting near the hill, well up the slope from the river. "It will be dry and will take less work to dig the cellar."
"Here it will be," said Ebenezer, driving in his stave and heaping loose stones about it.
They gazed down the sunny val- ley, aware suddenly of the many miles between them and the place they had always called home.
"Before long," said Ebenezer stoutly, "the trail we came over will be a cart road - the 'King's Road,' we'll call it."
"Where does it go from here south of the river?" asked Steve.
"It climbs up past Compounce Pond, then over to Cedar Swamp and on to Waterbury," his father answered. "All my life I have dreamed of building a house here."
Land in this section had been granted to Ebenezer's father, Thomas, Barnes, sixty-five years ago
in return for giving up thirty acres in Farmington center. That was shortly after the region had been purchased from the Indians. As one of the original eighty-four Farming- ton proprietors, or founders, he held rights also in additional unsurveyed land. Half he had willed to Ebene- zer, his youngest son, with the privi- lege of first choice of any single tract.
But when Thomas died - that was in 1689 - the western area was still unsurveyed, and Ebenezer, only thirteen, was tied closely to the Farmington homestead. His four brothers and sisters had married and moved away to the new settlements of Waterbury and Southington, so he was left with his mother to carry on the whole burden of the farm.
But he owned no share of the land he tilled. The house and barns, the orchard and pasturage, even the furniture, equipment and 'quick stocke' or animals - all had been willed to one of his brothers, though use of half of everything had been granted to their mother during her lifetime. This made Ebenezer anxious to have his own farm farther up the river.
But at twenty-three he married Deborah Orvis, a girl of eighteen, daughter of the tanner and shoe- maker, and seven children came along. After she died, he married Mabel Hancox, daughter of a Farm- ington landowner, once the village
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
butcher and for a time the Hartford jailkeeper. Before she was thirty, Mabel had borne Ebenezer four more ehildren.
By hard work and frugality he had prospered and become a lead- ing eitizen, and by the Spring of 1728 felt free now to take the mo- mentous step of starting his own home. His oldest sons, Ebenezer Junior and Thomas, were married and living in Southington, but he had the help of his other three grown sons. Later, they and the younger children, for whom Ebene- zer was determined to provide prop- erly, would have their own houses. Here in this free western forest there would be ample room on the various 'pitches' of land he and Mabel had inherited or purchased.
The survey of the Pequabuck meadow and hill land had finally been made in 1721, and the plots duly granted to the original Farm- ington proprietors or their heirs. It had been set off in six 'divisions,' called tiers, which the local people spelled 'tears.' Strips were set apart for future streets, and two Indian reservations were provided, one here in Poland, a little northeast of where Ebenezer planned to build, the other in what they came to call Forestville.
By trade or purchase Ebenezer took over his brother's share in all the Pequabuck lands in their fa- ther's will and bought out the other
joint owners of the 1663 grant. He also sold Farmington holdings in order to buy more land here. The last transaction, for thirty-three aeres on the south bank of the river, had been completed on May 16, just before he set out on this trip.
He was already well past fifty - late in life for the hardships of pio- neering - but he was strong and healthy, and as he sized up the splendid acres sloping away before his feet, he felt the thrill of new life and hope. Already he could picture the fine new house, the well-kept fields and orehards - all his grow- ing family sheltered and seeure.
The spot selected had to be near the trail for Ebenezer was planning his house to be an inn or tavern. This was the main all-year route be- tween Farmington and Waterbury - the place called Mattatuk by the Indians - which had been settled by Farmington folk after lead mines were discovered. A few years back the Colonial Assembly had ordered a highway built between New Ha- ven and Waterbury, so there would be considerable going and eoming between the various communities, particularly by people bound for Hartford, the eapital of the eolony.
It was a long hard day's trip up from the deep Naugatuck Valley over the high south ridge, and trav- elers would be grateful for a place to rest and eat. When Ebenezer would no longer be able to do heavy
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THE HOUSE IN THE GREAT FOREST
farm work, his growing sons would tend to that and to getting the pro- visions necessary for such an estab- lishment.
"One of the first things we have to do," he told them, "is to set out a big apple orchard. We shall be needing lots of cider."
The river here creamed over sev- eral rocky ledges, making a steady splash and roar - that was why the Indians had called it Pequabuck, which in their language meant 'noisy,' for there were numbers of such places as the stream tumbled down through the hills. It would be easy to put in a dam for power.
"We can get some mills built," said Ebenezer.
It seemed a weird idea, with only wild forest about, but he was look- ing ahead. "Yes, this is a good spot," he added.
They found a clay bank where they could kiln the necessary bricks and a hollow near the edge of the timber.
"Just right for a saw pit," said Jedidiah. "There are a lot of well- seasoned logs we can handle right away."
Soon their broadaxes were ringing against the oaks and hemlocks, pres- ently the swish and roar of the first falling tree broke the forest stillness.
Steve helped his father dig the cellar, more boresome than felling trees, but every so often they turned
up a flint arrowhead or knife, for this had been an Indian camping ground for untold centuries.
That night they sat around a big fire in the circle of black trees. Ebenezer talked about the bitter feud over new style and old style church music that had torn the Farmington congregation asunder and had even caused uproar in the Assembly in Hartford. By the light of a pine knot, he read a passage from the Scriptures, and they rolled up in their blankets on fresh-cut hemlock boughs. Steve was dead tired, but so full of the day's doings he stared up at the stars for a long time. Once he was awakened by the spine-tingling scream of a wild animal.
They were up at daybreak when the birds were shrill in the trees, and made a quick breakfast of smoked ham and coffee from toasted rye and chestnuts.
In a few days they were levering big stones loose for the foundation and dragging them into place with the white oxen. By then the older boys had felled and stripped a score of trees. The logs were hauled to the pit, and they set to work with the long saw, one in the pit, one above, taking turns, for though the downpull was easier, the sawdust got into hair and eyes.
They cut uprights and rafters and adzed big oak beams and joists stroke by stroke, then bored the
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
necessary holes with pod augers - blunt iron rods threaded at the end - for wooden pegs to 'lock' the tim- bers together. Later they sawed up pine and chestnut for paneling and split cedar for shingles.
The fourth day they bagged a small deer that came to the river to drink. They were cooking venison steaks when five Tunxis Indian hunters in fringed and beaded soft leather coats appeared in the clear- ing. One was a boy about Steve's age. In accordance with regula- tions, they were wearing white bands to distinguish them from hos- tile outside Indians who had been harassing settlers.
The Tunxis Indians were the orig- inal owners of Farmington and its outlying areas - Kensington and New Britain, Southington and Wa- terbury -but they had been friendly, and from time to time the sachems, including Chicf Compounce, of the hill lake south of the Pequabuck, and Chief Cochipianec, of Chippins Hill northwest, had made pacts granting land to the newcomers.
Ebenezer invited the hunters to join in the feast, which pleased them for they had only a little parched corn. The wooden bottles of cider were empty after that.
By Saturday night the house- builders were weary enough for a good day's rest. They drew lots, and it fell to Steve to look after the
animals and tools while the others rode back to Farmington for Sunday meeting. If they failed to attend, they would be fined three shillings each, though Ebenezer would gladly have ridden twice as far rather than miss services.
Steve wandered along the river , banks, watching the swirl of water and the birds. He wished it were not the Sabbath so hc could go fish- ing for the river was full of salmon and shad. An Indian paddled along in a birch canoc, and Steve anx- iously watched him from the bushes.
On a hill west of the mountain spur, Steve came upon an Indian cotton-stone quarry. Unknown arti- sans had left half-finished dishes, partly cut and shaped, still attached to the rock.
Almost before he knew it, the sun was dipping over the western hills. Night was ceric enough to scare any boy alone for the first time in the wilderness. He clutched his flint- lock tensely, believing every rustle in the forest to be a bear or wolf or an Indian. He was never gladder of anything than when his father and brothers rode in early next morning, loaded with fresh supplies.
All that summer they worked hard from sunup to sundown, but Steve had never known a happier time. He was not as strong as his brothers, but working outdoors hardened him up.
There were many thrills besides
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THE HOUSE IN THE GREAT FOREST
the work. They fished and trapped. Steve located a beaver dam on Po- land Creek; another at the outlet of the floating forest that was Cedar Swamp. One morning they snared three wolves by concealing fish- hooks in a dead carcass. Once they caught a wildcat. Bounties were paid for destroying these pests. Now and then they killed wild tur- keys, geese and ducks or netted pigeons.
Steve gathered strawberries and wandered through the woods look- ing for whortleberries, raspberries and blackberries. Hcavy purple clusters hung from dense tangles of grapevines that often smothered tall trees. Nature was right at their doorsteps to provide nearly all their needs. They hunted for winter- green, and sometimes steeped tea from sassafras bark or mint or rasp- berry leaves.
Occasionally a traveler passed along the trail, mostly neighbors known for years. One afternoon the two Farmington shoemakers came out of the woods where they had been collecting oak bark, sumach and hemlock for tanning leather. They used skills brought from Eng- land, but the Indians had taught the settlers how to use the products of the nearby forests.
In July, Nehemiah Manross, a Scotchman, arrived from Lebanon with his two oldest boys. He had bought sixty acres north on the
King's Road trail, and they began building at once so the whole family could come in the Spring. That was exciting to have another house going up and to know they would not live alone.
The Manrosses promised to be desirable well-to-do neighbors. Ne- hemiah, a member of the noble Montrose family, had fled twenty ycars before this from the religious feuds in Scotland. Originally a strong high church man, he adopted the Congregationalist faith of his New World wifc, Esther Bishop, and brought up his children in the religion of his Connecticut neigh- bors. Quiet and studious, he was an honest fair man of considerable cul- ture and means who inspired re- spect.
On an August day almost too siz- zling for work, Ebenezer suggested they ride up the river to find out about Daniel Brownson, a Farming- ton neighbor, who was putting up a place further west on land he and his brother and sister had inherited from their father. It was on the In- dian trail from Chippins Hill to Fall Mountain, near what was later called Goose Corner, where West and South Streets came to be opened up.
Young Daniel had thrown up a small log cabin in the midst of gir- dled trees. His wife, Mary Peet, and their baby girl were with him. Mary was not too happy in this
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
primitive lonely life, and he was talking of going to Southington.
"Some people have little pa- tience," said Ebenezer, as they rode back.
Steve knew what his father meant. Not just patience - waiting for something to happen - but the con- viction that by his courage in com- ing here alone and carving out a new homestead, other people would follow. Those who took the risk of coming first would someday prosper most. Ebenezer had the true pio- neer spirit.
It had seemed impossible that the big Barnes house would get built in time for winter. But presently the two-story frame was up. They sheathed it with rough pine boards, then clapboards. For the chimney, they laid up a massive cellar foot- ing, heavy stones tied in with huge timbers. The upper beams, sixteen inches square, projected out to sup- port the flooring. A cavity was left for ashes so they would not have to be carried out during bitter weather.
Two great stone fireplaces were fashioned. The one in the kitchen had a large side oven for roasting and baking. It was called a 'Dutch oven' for the early Pilgrims had learned to make them in Holland when they had fled there from per- secution in England before coming across the sea to America. Iron sockets were inserted in the stones for the movable cranes. Over each
fireplace opening, they laid long dressed bluestone slabs and started the chimney, with four flues, stone by stone, brick by brick, using clay and ground limestone to bind them together.
Many chimneys those days were 'catted,' made of wood and lined only with plaster, but Ebenezer was building everything solid to endure, for this was to be the Barnes home- stead, the center of the family he had founded, the anchor for his old age.
By late September they had the shingle roof on, the floor had been laid, broad sleek oak planking fas- tened down with wooden pegs, and the plastering was done in the parlor.
Steve's sister Anna, who was twenty-two, had planned to get married last Spring but Ebenezer had persuaded her to postpone the marriage until the new house could be built and Mabel and the children, still waiting in Farmington, could move over and set up housekeeping. Several weeks before November 14, the date set, the house on the Pequa- buck was pretty well finished.
They had even hewn out new ta- bles, benches and cabinets. House- hold utensils and pewter ware, warming pans for the beds, wool and flax spinning wheels, and the quilling wheel for winding the bob- bins or 'quills,' lead molds and the reel for making candles had been
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
brought over from their former home.
The slatted beds with their deep goose feather mattresses were set up. There was no rug in the parlor yet, and only oiled paper for the windows, but the guns were pegged on the wall or stowed in the carved chest in the hallway. There re- posed the family Bible, a religious tome Heaven Opened, and a book of home remedies - 'Simples' - to be made from herbs and roots. A small harvest of corn was stored in the bins in the upstairs bedrooms, dried meat was hanging in the gar- ret, and meat and river shad had been salted down in barrels in the cellar, together with a supply of soap.
Mabel and the girls scrubbed and polished, baked and cooked for the great event. The oven beside the kitchen fireplace was filled with crackling chestnut wood and when the bricks and stones were glowing, the coals were raked out with a flat 'peel shovel,' and the batches of bread dough, the cakes and pies, successively baked. A big pot of pork and beans was put in to sim- mer till the next day. Usually bak- ing day was Saturday, and the beans provided the Sunday meal, for on the Sabbath no cooking could be done until after sundown.
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