USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Plymouth > The Tories of Chippeny hill, Connecticut; a brief account of the Loyalists of Bristol, Plymouth and Harwinton, who founded St. Matthew's church in East Plymouth in 1791 > Part 1
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M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01151 4038
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
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The Tories of Chippeny Hill, Connecticut
A Brief Account of the Loyalists of Bristol, Plymouth and Harwinton,' who Founded St. Matthew's Church in East Plymouth in 1791
BY
E. LeRoy Pond
INSITV
VERBVM
CIPITE
JACO
THE GRAFTON PRESS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
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1774684
THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY, HILL, CONNECTICUT
-
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THE TORY DEN
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Pond, Edgar Le Roy, 1883-
The Tories of Chippeny Hill, Connecticut; a brief ac- count of the Loyalists of Bristol, Plymouth and Harwin- ton, who founded St. Matthew's church in East Plymouth in 1791, by E. Le Roy Pond. New York, The Grafton press, 1909.
5 p. 1., 19 :- 92 p. front., plates, port., map. 19}"". $1.25
ĐHELP CARD
At the time of the revolution, this region belonged to . Farmington and Waterbury, Conn.
Bibliography : p. (91)-92.
1. Farmington, Conn .-- Hist .- Revolution. 2. Waterbury, Conn .- Hist .- Revolution. 3. Chippeny Hill, Bristol, Conn. 4. East Plymouth, Conn. St. Matthew's church. 5. American loyalists-Connecticut.
10-1163
Library of Congress
F104.BSP7
Is25gli
186613 Copyright . A 252983
.
DEDICATED To the venerable Rev. X. A. Welton, discoverer of the Tory Den, and rescuer of the Tories from the field of legend
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE TORY DEN
Frontispiece
MAP OF THE TORY REGION
FACING PAGE 10
GRAVE OF CAPT. NATHANIEL JONES
32
VIEW LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE TORY DEN CLIFF 52
ST. MATTHEW'S CHURCH AT EAST PLYMOUTH .
74
REV. ALEXANDER VIETS GRISWOLD, D.D.
82
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
V
CHAPTER
PAGE
I CHIPPENY HILL
11
II THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS
17
.
III THE TORY PRINCIPLES
.
.
31
IV THE TORY DEN
40
.
V CAPTAIN WILSON'S SONS OF LIBERTY
45
VI STEPHEN GRAVES
50
VII MOSES DUNBAR
56
VIII THE WANING OF TORYISM
70
IX EAST CHURCH
75
APPENDIX
Signers of Petition
0
84
Early Enrollment
85
Descriptions of Chippin's Hill
·
86
The Tory.
A Poem
88
INTRODUCTION
T HE hamlet of East Plymouth, two miles north of Terryville, Connecticut, and more commonly known as "East Church," was brought into existence about 1792, by the building of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church by a clan of Tories. These Tories, or, if you so prefer, loyal members of the Church of England-for they could not conscientiously be loyal to the head of the church without bearing the name of Tory-lived in the farmhouses scattered along the hillsides where the boundaries of the present towns of Bristol, Ply- mouth and Harwinton now meet. With Chippeny Hill in the town of Bristol, or Chippin's Hill as it is common- ly called now, as a centre, they had gathered together, unshaken by the stress of the times as the stone ledges north of them, united by family bonds, and by the perse- cutions of marauding Sons of Liberty, under the leader- ship of that "designing church clergyman," the Rev. James Nichols. It is certainly time that some memorial of their lives is placed upon paper. Their loyalty to their beliefs, though perhaps not guided by prudence, is certainly to be admired, and that they were hunted, robbed, flogged, and driven to the ledges for refuge, because of this loyalty, deserves not to be forgotten. They were noble men, some of them, and courageous, yet there remains little to remember them by save here and there a family tradition. In this attempt to weld
wel a wyell baa
10
INTRODUCTION
together a collection of facts directly and indirectly concerning the life of that Tory clan, the writer is greatly indebted to the research and assistance of Rev. X. A. Welton, of Redlands, California, who is un- ashamed of his Tory ancestry, and he is also indebted to Mr. James Shepard, of New Britain.
1
Scale of Miles
HAYWINTON
15
1000
900
800
:14
700
17
945
13.
MAYSh Pond
700
800
150
EAST Plymouth
Plymouth
=
10.
9
Bristol
650
Bristol Res.
. Terryville
Bristol.
MAP OF THE TORY REGION
1. Carrington homestead.
2. Nathaniel Matthews homestead.
3. South Chippens Ilill School- house.
4. Constant Loyal Tuttle home- stead, built by Caleb Mat- thews.
5. Hungerford homestead.
6. Jones homestead.
7. North Chippens School- house.
8. Mount Hope Chapel.
9. Isaac Welles Shelton home-
stead.
10. Cyrus Gaylord homestead.
11. East Church.
12. Site of Ensn. Ozias Tyler's " New House," destroyed by fire 1905.
13. Roadwav entering the ledges toward Tory Den.
14. Fork in roads was flogged.
where Graves
15. Stephen Graves homestead.
16. Tory Den.
17. Old Stone Bridge, over which a cross road anciently led to Chippens Hill.
Burlington
Z
CHAPTER I
CHIPPENY HILL
HE place where the churchmen first came together r
was Chippeny Hill, within the confines of New Cambridge, the present Bristol. From the time of its settlement by white men, the history of the Hill has been connected with the growth of the Church of Eng- land in New Cambridge. The Brooks and the Matthews families settled there between the years 1742 and 1747, and were soon joined by others of the Church of Eng- land. It was in July, 1747, that a group of the mem- bers of the meeting house at New Cambridge revolted, owing to the Calvinistic doctrines of the new minister, Rev. Samuel Newell, and "publicly declared themselves of the Church of England and under the Bishop of England." Those who seceded, most of them influential members of the Society which they were leaving, were Caleb Matthews and Stephen Brooks, patriarchs of the families that bore their name, John Hickox, Caleb Abernathy, Abner Matthews, Abel Royce, Daniel Roe, and Simon Tuttle. Caleb Matthews was a captain of militia, and he was also the chairman of the Society's committee and of the building committee which was then making plans for a meeting house. Both he and Simon Tuttle were spared to live until the Revolution. Abner Matthews was also a member of the building com- mittee. John Hickox had been the Society's treasurer.
·
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THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL
Nehemiah Royce, a younger man, within a few weeks followed the original eight in joining the new congrega- tion, and he was followed in October, 1748, by Benjamin and Stephen Brooks, Jr., and Joseph Gaylord. It is the opinion of Mr. James Shepard that the dissenters were inclined to worship according to the Church of England even before they were settled at New Cambridge. The Brooks family, the Matthews family, the Gaylords, the Rices, and the Tuttles came from Wallingford, where Church of England services had been held as early as 1740.
The selection of the Calvinist, Rev. Samuel Newell, came after a strong factional conflict within the walls of the meeting house. The orthodox wished to call him as early as 1744, but the liberals refused to accept him, and after a few years of preaching by various candi- ' dates, among whom were Ichabod Camp and Christopher Newton, both of whom later became Church of England clergymen, the orthodox faction became the ruling majority and obtained the man they desired. The new church naturally found itself in conflict with the old Society, which was the legal municipal corporation of New Cambridge, and it was several years before the matter of taxation was satisfactorily readjusted. At the time of the Revolution, the largest part of the Church of England residents in New Cambridge had chosen Chippeny Hill as their dwelling place.
It is a tract of land which was well worth recognition, both as farming land and because of its sightly situa- tion. North of it lie the Ledges, a section of rocky woodland; west of it are seen the hills of Litchfield county. The Hill itself is one of those long ranges,
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CHIPPENY HILL
running north and south, that are peculiar to that part of the country, and although it escapes by a few rods from being within Litchfield county, it may truly be called the easternmost member of that north-stretching fraternity of hills. Below it, on the east, stretches the valley of the Farmington, with the houses of Bristol vis- ible at the south, and the distant church spires of Farm- ington visible at the north. It was from this valley that Cochipiance, the Indian, came, from the band of Tunxis Indians that encamped there. He found the Hill in New Cambridge a good place, and claimed it and the surrounding region as his hunting preserve, making his home there by a good spring on the eastern slope. After- ward the white men bought it from him. Two high- ways, half a mile apart, run northward along the hill until they are lost in the woods and ledges. The west- ern one of the two has long been known as Hill street. A cross road at South Chippeny Hill is called Shumway from the name of an Indian, Shum, whose trail it was. By the year 1774 the hill was cleared and fertile land.
Why it was that the farmers of this section were mostly Church of England men, it is hard to say. Whether their long open hill life bred an independence that rebelled against the Calvinistic tenets of the estab- lished church or whether the bright sun that causes the strawberries to ripen there warmed the hearts of those that ate them, we may not know. Certain it is that by 1774, they were a colony of churchmen.
On Sundays, they rode down the Hill to their church at New Cambridge, which was east of the meeting house, across the training ground, near where the north wing
ninnim
IN
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THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL
of Federal Hill schoolhouse now stands. There a mis- sionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts conducted the services for them. First, Rev. William Gibbs of Simsbury, then for a time the converted dissenters, Rev. Ichabod Camp and Rev. Christopher Newton; after them, Rev. Richard Mans- field of Derby : then for a number of years until 1773, Rev. James Scovil of Waterbury, and, finally, Rev. James Nichols. Their friends and cousins alighted at the block in front of the meeting house ; but they entered the church and joined in the litany, and the choristers led them in the chant. Then they rode back to the Hill.
Meeting house little boys doubtless twitted church little boys that they were not as good as they, yet, methinks, the meeting house little boys wished sometimes that they might climb up on the pillion and ride away to Chippeny Hill. Life was not so stern there. There were good things to eat Sabbath afternoons on Chip- peny Hill and there was time to play. And there were good things to eat at other times, too. When the Christmas time came, Chippeny Hill boys had puddings with raisins in them. And there were Christmas trees, trees inside the house, with candles on them. And that was the time when the Yule log was put on the fire and . the stories were told and the songs were sung. Of course it was wicked. Parson Newell would say that such things were an abomination of heathendom and the ruination of souls ; but what fun it must have been. And girls, and boys too, actually had playthings given to them. The customs of merry old England, which the Puritans despised, were certainly cherished there.
4
15
CHIPPENY HILL'
Yet there was work to be done on the Hill. There was corn to plant and wood to cut. In the winter the long flames went roaring up the chimney, and the winds that rise in Goshen swept down upon them. It was not England. No churches with their long choirs had these people seen, nor cathedrals, where the organ bellowed gloriously. Yet they had heard of them from the mis- sionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. And they loved their home, England. Not that they expected ever to see it, but they liked to read of it, those who could read, and all of them delighted to hear of it; the great cathedral at Canterbury where the archbishop lived; and St. James Palace, where Prince Charles was brought up as a boy and later re- turned to his own again ; and the King, the head of the Church, and, by the grace of God, Defender of the Faith. They liked to hear what play had been presented before him, what noble he had knighted, what hospital he had founded, what sculptor, poet, or artist had received favor at his hands. They prayed for him as their sovereign lord and king,-not lukewarmly, my friends, as you repeat the Lord's prayer day after day, but affectionately,-for a living prince, that he might ever incline to the Heavenly will, that the King of Kings might endue him with heavenly gifts, grant him to live long in health and wealth, strengthening him that he might vanquish and overcome all his enemies, and finally after this life that he might attain everlasting joy and felicity.
The troubles of 1775 were a great shock to these loyal people. The Boston port bill had thrown the Puritans into agitation. It seemed as if they were demented.
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16
THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL
They blasphemed the name of the king, and in the streets of New York they defaced his statue. "If you pray for the king," said the meeting house men, "then we will kill you." So the members of the church in New Cambridge closed its doors in silence.
.
THE
CHAPTER II
THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS
T HE principle of loyalty to the king, which was the guiding light of the Chippeny Hill band, was in- stalled in great measure by Rev. James Nichols. In the words of the public records of Connecticut, concerning seventeen of his parishioners, they were "much under the influence of one Nichols, a designing church clergyman who instilled into them principles opposite to the good of the States" and "under the influence of such princi- ples they pursued a course of conduct tending to the ruin of the country and highly displeasing to those who are friends to the freedom and independence of the United States."
Rev. James Nichols*, born in December, 1748, the son of James Nichols of Waterbury, was graduated from Yale College in 1771. The churchmen of New Cam- bridge, at a vestry meeting held August 2, 1773, voted · to have him for their minister, and appointed a com- mittee to confer with him. They then owned a small building at New Cambridge near the training ground, where Rev. James Scovil occasionally held services but
*Rev. James Nichols was an only son; grandson of Joseph and Elizabeth (Wood) Nichols of Waterbury. His mother was Anna, daughter of Daniel and Deborah (Holcomb) Porter and widow of Thomas Judd. Daniel Porter was a physician. The Nichols family owned much land in Waterbury.
T
18
THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL
as he also cared for other parishes, they desired a permanent minister of their own, and united with the parish of Northbury (now Plymouth) to procure one. In the report of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts read at the annual meeting, February, 1774, before the distinguished assemblage of its patrons, at the parish church-the Church of St. Mary Le Bow, the church of the Bow-bells, in Cheap- side, which Sir Christopher Wren had built after the great fire,-the portion treating of the field in Con- necticut says: "The two parishes most distant from Waterbury, viz., Northbury and New Cambridge, con- sisting each of about forty families, have voluntarily engaged to support their own minister. Sixty pounds sterling and a glebe of very good land are to be his maintenance. The Rev. James Nichols, a gentleman well recommended, hath lately been ordained to those parishes ; and the Society, in consideration of his receiv- ing no salary and of the commendable zeal of the people, have presented him with a gratuity of twenty pounds." The people of New Cambridge had already, at a vestry held August 30, 1773, voted forty pounds yearly for their part of his stated salary and "voted to raise twenty-five pounds to carry him home." He was the last man from Connecticut to take holy orders from * "home" before the Revolution. The statement that Nichols was "well recommended" is worthy of notice. Nine particulars are named in the reports of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of which the Society required those who recommended a clergyman to testify, and of these, number eight is "His affection for the present government."
1
19
THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS
The young priest of twenty-five had a bitter time of it in his parish. He administered baptism at New Cambridge in May, 1774. The following day, May 9th, is the date of the last vestry meeting recorded as held in the church, for the wave of insurrection was sweeping over the country, rendering public allegiance to the king dangerous, and the church only followed the example of the other churches throughout New England when it ceased its public services. For the ten years thereafter of his pastorate, he held meetings in farm houses, and the people were practically without a church. His parish, as reported by Rev. Mr. Scovil in 1773, consisted of thirty-three families and forty-seven communicants in New Cambridge, and forty-five families and sixty-three communicants in Northbury and in the bounds of Harwinton. He was the recognized instiga- tor of the strong love for England that imbued his flock, and the patriots hunted for him high and low. When they found him hiding in a cellar near Cyrus Gaylord's home in East Plymouth, they tarred and feathered him and dragged him in the neighboring brook. He is also said to have been shot at several times. He baptised his son, Charles Nichols, January 21, 1776. November 22, 1776, he sold a farm of seventy acres to Jonathan Pond. With Moses Dunbar, he was tried by the Superior Court in Hartford, January 27, 1777, for treasonable practices against the United States, but was acquitted. May 22, 1777, seventeen Tory prisoners from New Cambridge were examined at the house of Mr. David Bull at Hartford by a com- mittee of the General Assembly, and were found to be "much under the influence of one Nichols, a designing
L
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THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL
church clergyman." He received his ministerial taxes in 1778, at Salisbury, and in 1779 and in 1780 at Litch- field. It is probable that Salisbury was familiar ground to him for his father's residence was there in 1756. The receipts for the taxes, as they appear upon the records of the New Cambridge society, are as follows :
"To the Collector of Minister Rate in Farmington. This may certify that the People of ye Town belonging to the Episcopal church have paid ye Minister Rate to me for the year 1777 and this may discharge the same. Salisbury, March 7, 1778 .- James Nichols, Mission- ary."
"Litchfield, February 27, 1779, this may certify the Collector of minister Rate for the parish of New Cam- bridge that the people of the Episcopal Church of said Parish under my care have paid their rates to me and I hereby discharg the Colector said Rate is on. Test. James Nichols, Clerk."
"Litchfield, Dec. 29, 1780, this may certify the Colector of minister Rate for the parish of New Cam- bridge that the people of the Episcopal Church under my care have paid their Rate to me and I hereby dis- charge the colector is on list. James Nichols, Minister."
Receipts like the foregoing were customarily accepted by the collectors of the "Standing Order" from Church of England clergymen, but the law did not authorize the acceptance of them except from a resident clergy- man. Nichols was not of course a resident at New Cambridge while living as a fugitive at Litchfield. Con- sequently we read that, "At a meeting of the inhabitants of the Parish of New Cambridge holden at the Meeting House on the 17th of February, 1779, it was voted that
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21
THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS
our Collector shall collect the Rates of the People of the Church of England."
Nichols took his nephew with him to Litchfield as a valet, and there the boy found the girl who afterward became his wife. From Litchfield, the young minister made occasional visits to his former parishioners at New Cambridge. He administered baptism once in 1777, and not after that until 1780. At a vestry held at Jo- seph Gaylord's in March, 1782, it was voted that he give one-third of his time to West Britain, now Burlington, and provision was made for the collection of his minis- terial rate by subscription ; Nathaniel Matthews being chosen to receive the subscriptions. At a vestry meet- ing held at Joel Tuttle's, in 1783, William Gaylord and Samuel Smith, jr., were elected to make up and collect Mr. Nichol's rates. The last baptism at New Cam- bridge performed by him was March 21, 1784. It was on January 30, 1780, that he baptised among others, a daughter of Stephen Graves, whether at the Graves home or at some other farmhouse it is not recorded.
The snow came and there was famine in the Amer- ican camp in New Jersey. Two days later, Long Island Sound was almost frozen over in the widest part so that persons crossed the ice from Staten Island, an under- taking never before possible since the first settlement of the country. With Long Island Sound almost frozen over, Harwinton and Litchfield were certainly cold places, and Parson Nichols, I wot, was glad when his pastoral visit was over, and his valet led the horses to the stables in Litchfield and he could seat himself once more by the warm fireside.
"Respected for his pleasing manners and eloquent
22
THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL
preaching," he became Rector of St. Michael's Church at Litchfield in May, 1780. This church had been deprived of the services of a minister from 1774 to 1780 owing to the lack of the usual support from the old country, but had been held together by Captain Daniel Landon and other loyal souls who met regularly despite the fact that the church windows were the favorite tar- gets of hoodlums. Landon's granddaughter remem- bered that when General Washington passed through Litchfield, the soldiers, to evince their attachment for him, threw a shower of stones at the church. He re- proved them saying, "I am a Churchman and wish not to see the church dishonored and desolated in this manner."
Nichols "collected a respectable congregation," wrote Truman Marsh, who became rector in 1799, "and did much to remove prejudice and to raise the church from its low and depressed state." He resigned May, 1784, about the same time that he left New Cambridge and Northbury. In 1785 he drafted an "Address of Thanks" to the Legislature for incorporating the church society.
The historians of Litchfield knew little about Nichols. Statements that he came from Salem, Mass., are in- correct. There was a church clergyman by the name of Nichols at that place, and mentioned in the letters to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, but his name was Robert Boucher Nichols and he was a native of the Barbadoes and a graduate of Oxford. James Nichols, though ordained by the Society, was not one of their regular missionaries, which partly accounts for the scant mention of him in their reports.
Certain correspondence with Jonathan Pond, who
1
1
23
THE REV. JAMES NICHOLS
lived at the foot of Fall Mountain, within what is now the town of Plymouth, throws light on his later career. On August 23, 1784, in a business letter to Jonathan Pond, he wrote from Arlington, Vermont, "Your agent was not sufficiently impowered to make a settlement on any conditions but payment of money which was not in my power. I expect to be down at Litchfield in about a fortnight, but of this I am not certain. My business is such I cannot assign time and place to meet you, but I shall be hereabouts until the latter part of September. The gentleman Mr. Andrews will inform you I am willing to submit the matter to men &c other matters of conversation he can relate to you which would be tedious to write." Before this, Novem- ber 19, 1782, he had written to Jonathan Pond, the place from which he wrote being unknown, "I am desirous of leaving our matter to men Mr. Graves has nominated, Mr. Prindle, Capt. Phelps, & Lieutenant Cook of Harwinton. I am fully agreed to those gen- tlemen and I hereby impower my friend Mr. Stephen Graves to sign instructions with Lieut. Thomas Brooks / in my behalf." In December, 1785, Jonathan Pond re- covered judgment in the Litchfield county court against Nichols as an absent and absconded debtor for a debt of two hundred and fifteen pounds, as a result of which judgment Judah Barnes, constable, levied execution upon two pieces of land belonging to the debtor, in Bristol, appraised at about one hundred and sixty pounds. His last letter to Pond was as follows :
"Arlington, February 12th, 1787. "Sir-Upon Mr. Tuttle's request and also my own
24
THE TORIES OF CHIPPENY HILL
earnest desire of an amicable settlement between us I have come to this resolve. I will meet you and him at any time after the 15th of March at Williams Town bay state where if we do not settle I will pay you a reasonable price for coming and I hereby declare I will not give you any trouble in Law on any account in your journey and this writing shall be sufficient to assure you of the same. My meaning is I will not commence any action whatever against you in the bay or Vermont State until after the first day of May next.
"Sir-I have an earnest desire to see you but as Mr. Tuttle will inform you necessary business will prevent my coming to Connecticut until next summer when matters might be better settled, but they are now in such a situation that it seems necessary and a saving of costs to accommodate matters soon.
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