USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Harwinton > The history of Harwinton, Connecticut > 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 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15
tols
Gc 974.602 H26c
Gc 974.602 H26c 1136851
M. L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01151 3303
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historyofharwint00chip_0
THE
HISTORY
OF
HARWINTON
9
CONNECTICUT.
BY R. MANNING CHIPMAN.
HARTFORD: PRESS OF WILLIAMS, WILEY & TURNER, Park Printing Office, 152 Asylum St., 1860.
1136851
TO THE
NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, This History,
PREPARED BY ONE OF THEIR EARLIEST-CHOSEN
CORRESPONDING MEMBERS, IS, WITH EXPRESSIONS OF THE AUTHOR'S CONTINUED DESIRE FOR THEIR PROSPERITY,
Respectfully Inscribed.
PREFACE.
A century of its municipal existence was completed by Harwinton, in the year eighteen hundred and thirty-seven. The facts, regarding it, which as viewed from just the close of that period seemed to be the more worthy of notice, were presented then in pulpit discourses delivered by the pastor of the (Congregational) Church in the Town. When of late there began to be desire that a History of the Town should be prepared, those discourses, remembered as probably containing outlines or sub- stance for such a narrative, were brought into review. After there had been sub- tracted from them such portions mainly as, suggested by the subject, were more germane to a Sabbath-day's ministration than to a purpose not thus restricted, there was left the basis of the following work. The first movement towards publication had respect to that residuum, without addition of matter and without alteration of form. Enlargement and changes became desirable when recurrence to 'the old founts' of information had brought forth new supplies; while investigation made in quarters not before resorted to discovered more. The recast, which fused the older and the newer materials together, partially admitted the shape before chosen; by the retention, in a few paragraphs transferred, of the style distinctive in personal address.
In the direct narrative as well as in the Appendix will be found fuller details than the discourses gave of the things which, as "old" in eighteen hundred and thirty-seven, were then "ready to vanish away." These additions comprise also a sufficient account of the things "which came newly up:" and so bring the narra- tive down to the current time. In the added matter are included all the notices furnished to the writer, of the Episcopal Church which has been established or re- established in Harwinton, since the dato of his residence there.
When a locality not of Connecticut is named in the succeeding pages, the State to which it pertains is usually specified. The cases excepted are those whose pub- licity or some other circumstance made that specification needless.
6
If preparing the memorial of 'merely a Town' requires no profound investiga- tion, it does exact careful inquiry. 'The old Town Records,' such as they too often were made, have, along with their 'general character' which is obvious, their 'par- ticular characters' which, though to be found on 'the surface'-if any where, they disclose only to thorough 'explorers.' 'The spirit' of them always is dark, in pro- portion as 'the letter' of them is light. The darkness that is not in them makes them obscure. "To set forth in order a declaration of those things" which often "without order" are reposited in them, goes quite as slowly as surely, embarassed thus. On this introductory trouble others press; so that " the beginning of sor- rows " from such an 'excess of light' is soon recognized to be in effect a promise, quite as 'reliable' as is 'the paper' that makes it, of a 'to be continued' to the more than 'twice-told tale' of 'the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.' Wlio- ever tries the task is likely to find a way of being mentally 'exercised.' As is said in the preface to the History of Waterbury, Connecticut: "Those who have been en- gaged in a similar undertaking need not be told the labor it has cost ; and those who have not would not comprehend me, though I should attempt to tell them." Yet the perplexity brings after it pleasure which, not pecuniarily, however, is a reward. Even runes thus, when well deciphered, well repay the toil. To one who makes for himself companions of the 'characters,' neglected and humble now and withal very pale, that once in their assumed sufficiency could hardly tolerate society, since with themselves alone was primitively 'engrossed' all the area of the ' Town Libra- ry;' there is certainly this assurance given, that not only extended and complex treatises, but ' short and simple annals' also, will in their own way remunerate the attention he bestows on them, for in these, too, he learns MAN.
The writer's obligations to Hon. Abijah Catlin, of Harwinton, for the list of Soldiers and of Representatives by him furnished, and to Gaylord Wells, M. D., of West Hartford, for facts by him communicated, are gratefully acknowledged.
Having reference throughout to household use, this book aims to shed a kind in- fluence on every Harwinton home.
GUILFORD, December, 1858.
Delay in sending the work to press has furnished an opportunity to take from The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor a few dates, not previously ob- tained, respecting a part of the Windsor first settlers in Harwinton; as well as to bring down a few other personal items to the time hereto subsigned.
WOLCOTTVILLE, May, 1860,
CONTENTS.
Page.
CHAPTER I .- INTRODUCTORY.
Small Towns important, - - - 9-11
CHAPTER II .- YOUR FATHERS.
Preparatory events, - . 11-13
Connecticut prospering, -
13-14
Evil-workers,
15
Randolph and Andross, .
16
Hartford and Windsor vs. the State, - 16-19
Division of "the Western Lands," 19-20
Name, and its import, of Harwinton, 21-22
22-23
Captain Messenger,
. 23-26
Other early settlers,
26-30
Whence they came,
. 30-32
Primordials, 32-33
Results,
. 33-35
Agriculturists, -
35-37
Agricultural advantages,
- 37-39
School provisions,
39-45
Building Church edifice,
- 46-55
CHAPTER III .- THE PROPHETS.
Formation of Church-First preacher, - 55-57
Pastors, incidents and characters of, 57-86
Deacons;
86-87
CHAPTER IV .- DIVINE WORDS AND STATUTES TAKE HOLD. Religious revivals, . - - -
87-95
APPENDIX .- NOTES A. TO II.
New England Towns seminaries of Liberty, . 96-97
Population of Harwinton, 97
American Indians-Purchase of land from Indians, - 98-101
Relative priority of Harwinton, -
8
Page.
Connecticut ('blue ') laws,
101-102
Early 'border ruffians,' - 102-103
Extent of the 'land claim' set up by Hartford and Windsor, 103-104
Original Proprietors of Harwinton,
104
Act incorporating Harwinton,
104-105
Litchfield County formed,
105
The pioneer settler,
106
' Modern improvements,'
106
The Messenger family,
-
106-107
Statistics of early immigrants, -
107-109
Titles as formerly prized, 110-112 -
Boundary questions, . 112
112-113
Wars and soldiers,
. 113-115
Oldest Houses,
116
First Town Meeting, 116-117 -
Town and State officers, 117-123
' One Hundred Years Ago,'
- 123-124
Tunxis and other Indian tribes, 124-125
Wild Animals, 126-127 - Minerals, 'exploitations ' of, and explorations for, in Harwinton, 127-131 Vital statistics and viability, - 131-132
Traders and trading,
132-133
Manufacturers,
-
133-134
Education-College graduates,
- 134-135
Professional men,
135-136
' Raising the meeting house,'
136
'Dignifying the seats,'
137-138
Pews,
. 138-139
'Sabbath-day houses,'
139-140
Preachers, who in Harwinton were not pastors, - 140-141
First pastor's grave, -
141-142
Half-way Covenant, -
142-144
Separatists,
144-146
Church records,
- 146-148
First settlers' last-surviving children, -
148
SUPPLEMENTARY.
Catlin Family in Massachusetts, . 149
INDEX OF NAMES. 149-152
Singing, old and new style of,
-
HISTORY OF HARWINTON.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
An instinct of nature prompts in every man a reverent regard for his parentage. A command from the Author of nature, "Honor thy father and thy mother," shows that to heed that prompting is our duty. This duty we may best perform when we most fully appreciate the character and the condition of our parents, by obtaining an accurate knowledge of their times ; and this knowledge we the more largely obtain while, as we keep in view that portion of the past which is compassed by our personal recollections, we also bring into view that incom- parably greater portion of it which is assured to us by writ- ten records alone. Not from the Hebrews only was sought such an intelligent compliance with natural prompting, such an enlarged obedience to Divine command, when, after their legislator had bid that people: "Remember the days of old," he with equal authority bade them: "Consider the years of many generations." The spirit of such precepts cogently applies to ourselves. From our position near where were blended our Town's first and second centuries, Affection is seen now looking forward with alternate hope and fear towards those who will be here in time coming, and now looking backward with grateful veneration to those who were here in times gone; and Reason with Religion is heard approving and sanctioning the design of rendering a meet tribute to our predecessors' memory. As their era and their circumstances are recalled; in sketching their inci-
.
2
10
dents correctly, their character and themselves may rightly be portrayed.
Some persons will not admit that just a Town, especially a smaller Town, can possess any significance worth commemo- rating. Yet to deny this would betray sheer superficialness. One might as well deny that there exists any significance in what even distinguishes a nation ; for what distinction pertains to at least this nation more notably than that which belongs to New England ? and what distinction more remarkable has New England than her origin, at Plymouth, Salem, Wethersfield, New Haven, from Towns? From the beginning planted in Towns and with them, they ever have been to her as they ever will be her seed, her stem, her branches with fair flowers and crowning fruit .* Few Towns indeed are prominently figured on charts outlining the boundaries of a continent or of an em- pire, just as few springs and rivulets or none are denoted on maps exhibiting the course and chief tributaries of the Missis- sippi; but, apart from those unmarked confluents which first gave and still continue to give their liquid quotas to the vast flood of that mighty stream, where would the Mississippi be ? The American cities now largest were a while since villages merely; and from what were less than hamlets rose the old world's London and Rome. Regarding places as correlated with their occupants, the names which grace the annals of America's most historic period, names in their illustrious nationality second to none, a Trumbull, an Adams, a Washington, attach to Lebanon and Quincy villages, with Vernon a villa-farm. The public is nowhere when individuals all are gone. The integral parts of families are the integrating parts of nations. A history divorced from biography is a nullity. Gibbon's itself, were there with- drawn from it the personages it presents, would for another reason deserve the title which it bears: The Decline and Fall. Every nation, in respect of that which imparts to it true dignity, is in its greatest things what it is in its least things. Bodies politic as really as bodies natural have members, and the one sort not less than the other live and thrive, in the only way an organism can, by "the effectual working in the measure of
*See, in Appendix, Note A.
1
11
every part;" and always is "the whole body fitly joined to- gether and compacted by that which every joint supplieth." The aggregate common-weal will be the better understood and the more prized by him who best understands and most prizes the several contributive portions. Our Towns as well the small as the great, each in its own measure, are all directly constit- uent of our State ; and so the honor of the State is consulted for and her welfare throughout is promoted, by whatever adorns the present or illustrates the past of her smallest incorporated divisions. In this faith are we to estimate Harwinton-which one may liken to " Bethlehem-Ephratah," in the respect of be- ing "little among the thousands of Judah, yet" "not the least among the princes of Juda."*
CHAPTER II.
YOUR FATHERS.t THEIR WAY PREPARED FOR THEM.
At this outset of the sketch proposed, God's Providence is recognized as having assigned other times to other men, and, meanwhile, determined our epoch, established our bounds of habitation, and in every way supervised kindly all these our humbler affairs. It is interesting to notice the broad sweep which that Providence takes in its course; how, in even apparent intermis- sions of its work, it is never the more working vigorously; and to trace out those steps by which, when it even was seemingly at halt, it still was in grandeur marching on. Such interest will
*See, in Appendix, Note B.
+Not made by age naught, but enhanced by age into a more precious gem, is that scripture which " came the word of the LORD unto Zechariah;" each phrase of it, as if prearranged with such intent, expressing themes which the proposed narration requires : its natural inquiry-" Your fathers, where are they ?" its plain- tive elegy-" And the prophets, do they live forever?" its energetic eulogium- "But my words, and my statutes which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers ?"-On that passage, ZECH. 1 : 5, 6, were based the Centennial Discourses herein (, in the Preface,) referred to.
12 1
be quickened by the perception we shall gain, that certain things which, viewed aside from that Agency, were quite aloof from ourselves, have in fact had, by that Agency employing them, a near connection with our immediate concerns.
REMOTER EVENTS PREPARATIVE.
The earliest historians of the eastern continent had no knowl- edge of this western one. It long was untenanted by man. Peoples renowned through centuries are there, while not even wild men are here. Another cycle of ages come and gone, and then men indeed are here of whom those, dwelling in the old seats of these, retain no memory. Through all this procession and recession of years, the races which we denominate civilized were held back from our hemisphere. Practically, it was to them then as if it had not been made, or as if, like a thing marred in the making, it had been rejected by its Maker. At length, certain Iceland wanderers at sea come hitherward and-wonder- ful to them-behold what we now style a Massachusetts coast; they do not however remain and-wonderful to us-their dis- covery, after they have returned to their drear homes, is fated to go for ages into oblivion. That discovery was in A. D. 1000-1, and towards the end of half another millenium Colum- bus, starting for Cathay* but reaching Guanahani,t makes, by a blunder which has sublimity in it, a re-discovery. Once more are European feet on Transatlantic soil. Spaniards are the first European colonizers of North America. Its south part is their location. Cabot, emulating Columbus' career,
*That 'wonderful' land in the East, or India, of which he was in quest, and about which Marco Polo had excited many others' imaginations, was China-the Cathay of which old writers speak. "Before the invasion of Zingis, China was divided into two empires or dynasties of the North and South." "In Marco Polo, and the Oriental geographers, the names of Cathay and Mangi distinguish the northern and southern empires, which, from A. D. 1234 to 1279, were those of the great khan, and of the Chinese."-Gibbon, Chap. LXIV.
As Khatai is a Persian, so Kitai appears to be a Russian, name of China. " Kitai Gorod, or Chinese City," sc. CATHAY COURT, is the only part of Moscow, in Rus- sia, which escaped destruction in the memorable conflagration of that city, in 1812.
+Called, by Columbus, San Salvador (, St. Savior); called now, on maps, Cat Island.
13
and, soon after him, arriving more northerly at the American continent, accomplishes again a re-discovery. Fifty years pass. English colonists have come. They, also, are southward. They are for trade. They are transient. A generation from their date is completed; and now other colonists from England are on their way hither. Persecution has driven them out. These, mainly, are for religion. These, too, have chosen a locality where shine warmer suns; but the perverseness of their pilot- as some then thought it was; the favor of their God-as we now know it to have been; brought them to found and to maintain their settlement "at New Plimouth in New England."
NEARER EVENTS PREPARATORY.
Fourteen years after the Pilgrims from England had foun- ded Plymouth, eight years after the Planters from England had founded Salem, and thus Massachusetts on the seaboard had be- gun, English emigrants, who had been tarrying in that Colony for a time, have founded Wethersfield, to which the next year are added Hartford and Windsor; and so Connecticut by the riverside begins. One series of fifty years following is signal- ized by the new Colony finishing the settlement of its eastern extremity; a second by its beginning the settlement of this western one. The termination of a hundred years to our State synchronize with the commencement of a hundred years to our Town; but through a longer period than the first century of the Town the influence has been felt of certain events which oc- curred in the middle part of the State's first century. This specialty in Connecticut's relation to Harwinton will sufficiently appear from a brief outline of the condition of our State, during the most turbulent time in her history.
Connecticut, like the other States of New England, but unlike most States known, had her origin in an ascertained method and known time. She did not, on her entrance into being, find herself possessing a territory which became hers no man could tell how. She did not inherit her soil. She did not steal it. Though it had been nominally given to her by authorities in England, yet she also came actually into possession of it in the unsurreptitious way of open purchase from inhabitants whom she regarded as its proprietors by a previous occupancy. She gave
...
14
for it to them a price which, small next to nothing as that price may to others have seemed, was all which the sellers required for it and which they accounted an equivalent value .* This correct general statement of the matter is qualified, or rather is verified, by a single important exception; for, if the land of the Pequods within her boundaries was obtained in war, the title to even that part of her domain was acquired by at least as good a right as a military conquest ever gave. So far forth this Colony had done as well, then, as her sister Colonies had done. The equality extended farther. Upon Connecticut, as upon Mas- sachusetts, there had been laid a necessity of making the haz- ardous experiment, to unite two original Colonial establishments into one; and here, as well as there, the great difficulty and danger had been surmounted and the delicate adjustment effected with so little trouble as may well excite surprise. This Colony, not less happily than that, had struck out a free constitution and set up a decided though mild administration of laws which approved themselves in the main wise and good.t The former, indeed, in attacking and subduing the red men, who prowled around her young townships and in the midst of them, had nearly as much excelled the latter as the number and hostility of these savages was here proportionably greater than there. In a word, through all the obstructions, privations, hardships, toils, incident to founding new States on wild nature made worse by wilder men, our Colony, as fully as any one of the sister- hood, had not only taken a fair start, but made, on the whole, steady advances, upon the road conducting to a permanent solid prosperity. Just now, as to all the nascent States of New Eng- land, a cloud rolls up over the sky, their prosperous career is as ignobly as undeservedly interrupted, and that, for which they now for half a century have made efforts so strenuous and sac- rifices at so high a cost, is brought into imminent peril. Expla- nation of this reverse behooves to be given.
The guiding spirits who led forth and gave prominent char- acter to these Colonies had ever been surpassed by few men in such qualities as have sterling worth; yet did neither their ob-
*See, in Appendix, Note C.
+See, in Appendix, Note D.
15
ject nor their success in obtaining it receive an unqualified approbation from the many persons whom they had left in their fatherland. It was true, rather, that 'the people raged and their rulers took counsel together against' them. Especially that sort of men in England who had forced upon their coun- trymen, better than themselves, the necessity of planting these Colonies, in effect had wickedly harried them into expatriation, looked upon the prosperity of the Colonies with unfriendliness, and upon that of the colonists with envy. Among the colonists, too, as-since they were human-was to have been expected, there were some "false brethren unawares brought in who came in privily to spy out our liberty," and who were anon disclosed in their true aspect of traitors and enemies. Mingled in among the good, like "Satan" among "the sons of God," some bad persons came at the beginning ; as, for instance, John Billington in the May-Flower's first company, who, getting "in due time" hanged for murder 'received upon himself that recompense of his error which was meet'. Others survived and perpetuated their kind, who too much merited a punishment which they escaped. Around this early nucleus there of course, as the col- onists in general increased, gathered yet other " sons of Belial."* Those who, as by the working in them of some abnormal instinct, were precociously inclined to evil; those who, for any reason or for no reason, came to be displeased with their betters, disliking the character, position, principles, objects, or methods and measures of these; whoever was arraigned before the au- thorities and, for his misdemeanors, either was punished, or felt that he deserved it and feared that he might be; men soured by disappointment attending their overweening expectations; men irritated by the circumvention and defeat of their schemes of villany; men of desperate fortune and grovelling ambition ; all these, acting here as their clan always acts elsewhere, natu- rally endeavored, what they earnestly desired, to do to the rest an injury. As a Latin writer long ago said: "The wrong-doer hates him whom he has injured;"+ and Hebrew ones, more anciently : "The wicked bend their bow, they make ready
*See, in Appendix, Note E.
+ Proprium humani ingenii est, odisse quem læseris .- TACITUS.
16
their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart;" "these are the men that devise mischief." A corypheus of these turbulent agitators was, notoriously, one Edward Randolph* who, on malign errands ever in motion, crossing the Atlantic one cannot well say how many times, now flitting to and fro in the Colonies, now rambling up and down in their fatherland, ubiquitously exerting himself for mischief with an energy worthy of some noblest cause, effected, at last, the evil purpose which throughout he had kept steadily before him, to wit, subverting the freedom of New England. Moved by the calumnies and misrepresentations brought to his court mainly by Randolph, the bigot monarch, James II., who indeed was predisposed towards the measure, appoints, in 1687, Sir Edmund Andross to be President and Captain-general over New England, its several Colonies consolidated into one royal Prov- ince, to whose government New York and New Jersey also are soon after required to bow. This minion, issuing to Connecti- cut the same order which he sends to her sister Colonies, enjoins her to put her privileges into his hands and lay her franchises at his feet. Of course such a mandate was not welcomed by the Colonies, nor by any was it readily obeyed. Each, so far as ex- pedients were at hand or daring found, resisted it. To the people of Connecticut this revulsion of prospects and reversion of hopes came not wholly unawares, but rather from a blow which had been anticipated; and, in the proceedings to which a foresight of evil impending led their rulers, there was in particular one act done,-at the time it, no doubt, was accounted wise,-which, fifty years afterwards, had results not expected convulsing the whole Colony for a season, and, following those, remoter influ- ences that, in two subdivisions of its territory combined into one to make Harwinton, are, as before said, working still.
The act thus specified, passed by the Colonial Legislature, 26 Jan., 1686, was in the words following: "This Court grants to the plantations of Hartford and Windsor those lands on the . north of Woodbury and Mattatuck, and on the west of Farm-
*And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a cap- tain over them .- 1 SAM. 22: 2.
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.