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The Old Mount Carmel Parish Origins & Outgrowths
By George Sherwood Dickerman
Gc 974.601 N41di 1159337
M. M
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01068 5060
The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
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اللهـ اط استحداث
The Old Mount Carmel Parish Origins Outgrowths By George Sherwood Dickerman
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68
VERITAS
New Haven: Published for New Haven Colony Historical Society by Yale University Press London, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press 1925
References
H Highway to North
A Shepherd's Pen B Gilbert's Farm
C New State
D Joel Munson's Mills
E Bellamy's Tavern
F Meeting-house
tt Cemeteries
I John Sackett
2 Jacob Atwater
3 Samuel Atwater
4 Daniel Bradley
5 Alvan Bradley
6 Stephen Cooper
7 Jonathan Dickerman
8 Jonathan Dickerman, 2d
9 Samuel Dickerman
IO Enos Dickerman
II John Goodyear 12 Noah Woolcott
13 John Hitchcock
14 Ithamar Todd
15 Nathaniel Tuttle
16 Lazarus Ives
17 James Ives
18 Jonathan Ives
19 Ezra Ives
20 Thomas Leek
21 Benjamin Warner
22 Enos Pardee
23 Samuel Peck
a Thomas Fugill
b David Atwater
c Stephen Goodyear
Adapted from United States Survey of 1889 and 1890, as embodied in the United States Topographical map of 1892, reprinted in 1912, with addi- tional data supplied by G. S. Dickerman.
Scale: about 3/4" to I mile.
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish Origins Outgrowths By George Sherwood Dickerman
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68
VERITAS
New Haven: Published for New Haven Colony Historical Society by Yale University Press London, Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press 1925
Copyright 1925 by Yale University Press. Printed in the United States of America.
,
1159337 Contents.
List of Illustrations vii
Preface
1X
I. The Cruise of the Onrust
I
2. The Quest for Beaver .
7
1 3. New Netherland and New England 16
1 4. Pioneer Communities 24
5. Quinnipiac Lands 34
6. Land Apportionments
46
7. Scattered Homesteads
55
8. Mills, Roads, Fords, and Bridges .
64
9. Parish and Church .
73
IO. The Ministry and the People
89
II. Revolutionary Times
IOI
12. Change from a State-Church to Free Churches
108
13. Farms as Schools of Pioneering
I19
14. Migrations to Litchfield, Berkshire, and Vermont 129
15. Susquehanna Frontier
I45
16. Cabins in New York Woods
I54
17. Up the Mohawk and Beyond
167
18. Personal Recollections
18I
19. Canal, Railroad, and Factories
199
Index 215
Read June 28-1978
) E. Houlgate.
Dame
List of Illustrations.
Map-Quinnipiac and Mount Carmel Valley of Mill River from East Rock
Frontispiece
facing page IO
Looking South from the Cheshire Border
58
President Stiles's Diagram of Mills
66
President Stiles's Sketch of Quinnipiac Valley
68
Store at the Steps
70
Facsimile of the Petition for a New Parish
74
House Built by Nathaniel Sherman
96
The House of Jonathan Dickerman, 2d
96
Schoolhouse
142
Ives Dam
142
The Author's Old Home
182
The Blue Hills, from a Field back of the Author's Old Home
182
Diagram of Canal Locks
204
Homestead of Jared Dickerman
206
·
Preface.
S OME forty years ago there came into my hands a copy of the newly published Tuttle Family containing a huge mass of information about New Haven people of an earlier time. Necessarily the family records were incom- plete and sometimes erroneous. This aroused my desire to make additional investigations in order to secure a fuller knowledge. At this juncture, my brother Edward made us a visit, having come from Hillanddale, the stock farm of my younger brother Watson, where he had been spending a few days. Edward had been fond of horses from his boyhood and had usually kept a good roadster for his own enjoyment. So he was exceedingly interested in Watson's highly bred horses and in his plans for raising superior trotters; and he came to us with his mind so full of Arabian coursers, Mes- senger blood, famous mares, and stallions with long pedi- grees, that he could hardly talk of anything else. Then I brought out the new book and suggested that he give some attention to his own pedigree. He became as much interested in family history as I was. He was retiring from business and had plenty of time for inquiry. For a number of years he pursued investigations that extended to all parts of the country in search of descendants of Thomas Dickerman of Dorchester. He had my cooperation and the results appeared in due time in the publication of the Dickerman Genealogy.
In continuation of these studies, I have turned my thoughts to the conditions determinant of family history, or to history in its larger scope; to the preparation of the ground, the course of events, and the discipline of circum- stance which influenced fathers and mothers at the outset and trained their children for the long succession. Then, to carry on the survey, something had to be said of the conse- quences that have followed-a glance, if nothing more, at
X
Preface.
the dispersion of families and what they have done in the new communities of which they have been a part.
The neighborhood which gives to this book its title is somewhat obscure in Connecticut annals. It is not mentioned in Atwater's History of the Colony of New Haven; only a few lines are given to it in the Ecclesiastical History of Con- necticut ; and even the History of Hamden contains only the barest allusions to the old New Haven parish which the town of Hamden displaced at its organization. But the story of this old neighborhood can hardly be regarded as less inter- esting for this obscurity. Perhaps it is a more impressive ex- ample of unfolding life in those times. For most of the people along the Atlantic seaboard in the eighteenth century lived an obscure life among rural surroundings, and from that rural population have come the virile forces that have been foremost in our country's development. For the nar- rator of this story, there can be no higher satisfaction than comes from the evidence that pioneers bred in the old Mount Carmel parish have borne their full share in this national development.
In the preparation of my manuscript for the press, I have enjoyed the discriminating counsel of Professor Charles M. Andrews, for which I am truly grateful. My thanks are also due to Mr. Donald Lines Jacobus, who has given valuable help in the field of family history.
An interesting work on Mount Carmel by Mr. John H. Dickerman, published in 1904, is particularly rich in photo- graphic illustrations. By the kindness of friends I am able to add a number of pictures of like significance.
The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
I.
The Cruise of the Onrust.
I HE locality which now bears the name of New Haven was known to the Dutch traders as "Rooden- bergh." This name was given to it by Aedriaen Block in 1614, five years after Hudson's exploration of the North River, six years before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and twenty-four years before Eaton and Daven- port planted their settlement at Quinnipiac, which was the old Indian name of New Haven.
Block was one of the earlier adventurers who sailed from Holland to Manhattan Island. The ships of Holland were then plying over many seas on errands of commerce. The trade in furs, which was carried on with Russia, was lucrative; and when Hudson told his story of beaver and otter without number in the new lands of his exploration, it was a stirring appeal to the Dutch spirit of mercantile enterprise. Some of the merchants quickly made engagements with men who had been with Hudson, fitted out a ship according to their sug- gestions with stuffs to barter with the natives, and sent them out on a trial voyage. The ship returned after a little while with a cargo rich beyond all expectation. Other ships were then sent out, on one of which was Block. When these ships came back from an equally prosperous voyage, five vessels were fitted out to be commanded by Block and a comrade, Hendrick Christiaenssen. While this little fleet was at Man- hattan, disposing of its merchandise and taking on loads of furs for the return trip, one of the vessels, named The Tiger, was burned. Thereupon Block took his men and went into the woods for timber with which to build another, depend- ing on the hospitality of the Indians for food. The new ship was successfully built and was called the Onrust, which means the "Restless."
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
In the spring of 1614, Block got together a crew for this craft and started with her up the East River. Piloting his way through the rapids, he gave them the name of "Hellegat," by which name, with the transposition of one letter, they have ever since been called. The coast on their left opened on the view in ever changing aspect: now a rocky point jutting out into the waves, again a long stretch of sandy beach, level meadows bordered with rushes, barren ledges with boulders on them, little islands wooded and grassy, bays and inlets which told of streams flowing out from valleys and hills in the distance, uplands with many a rugged line of cliffs rising above broken hills and valleys covered with forests of oak, maple, beech, chestnut, and hickory mixed with the ever- green of hemlocks, pines, cedars, and junipers. Borne east- ward by the wind, they noted one inviting landing place after another where they might well have paused to see more of the region. Doubtless it was toward the close of a fair day that they came to the bay where New Haven is today. At the hour of sunset the columnar walls of East Rock and its sister cliff are often bathed in a crimson glow which might well be spoken of as ruddy, and the name of "Rooden- bergh," or Red Hills, which the Dutch gave them seems to be altogether fitting. In a place that offered so good an an- chorage and on a shore so abounding in attractive features, one can well believe that the explorers lingered for a day or two.
From New Haven, they followed the coast till they came to the Connecticut River which, observing the great volume of fresh water that flowed out of it into the Sound, they called the "Fresh River." Then they turned and sailed up the river, going as far as the rapids where now are the Wind- sor locks. As their way was closed at this point, they went about and sailed back to the mouth of the river, whence they proceeded on their eastward course. Soon they came to an island larger than any they had found before, where the Sound opens out into the broad ocean. Here they landed and gave to the ground the name of their captain, calling it "Block Island." The Indians on the island gave them a cor-
3
The Cruise of the Onrust.
dial welcome and entertained them with hominy, succotash, clams, and game. The next step was the exploration of Nar- ragansett Bay with its islands, to the largest of which they gave the name of "Roode Eiland," or Red Island. Thence they passed on between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, coasted along the shore of Cape Cod, rounded the cape into the bay beyond and explored the Massachusetts waters as far as Nahant, where they found numerous Indians whom they described as "extremely well-looking but timid and shy."
A time had been set for meeting an ocean-bound ship from Manhattan; and so the Onrust went no further. Sail- ing back to Cape Cod, they met the ship Fortune laden with a cargo for Holland. Block gave the charge of the Onrust to his mate, Cornelis Hendricksen, to take her back to Manhat- tan, and he himself went on board of the Fortune to hasten at once to Holland and there to report his discoveries to the merchants. Arriving at Amsterdam, he prepared a map of the coast he had skirted with an outline of its more promi- nent features, and this map became the guide of voyagers in the years that followed.
The interest of these Dutch merchants and mariners, however, was not so much in the geography of the new land for its own sake as in the new fields opened for commerce. Block and his comrades had this in mind during the whole of their cruise. They threw down baited hooks in the waters sailed over to find what fish were there. They watched the wild fowl in the skies and on their feeding grounds in bays and rivers. They took notice of the trees and the valuable purposes they might serve; of the plants, berries, and nuts growing wild; and the patches of cultivated ground on which the natives raised a few simple vegetables. Their eyes were keen for traces of wild animals, footmarks in mud or sand; a burrow in a river's bank, a nest in a hollow tree, a beaver dam on a brook, a muskrat's lodge out in a still pond, anything that revealed the presence of an animal wearing a skin of fur that might be stripped off and sent to the Hol- land market.
A wonderful preserve of wild life it was, unmolested by
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
fisherman or hunter through long ages, except for the tri- fling chase of the Indians. The wild creatures did indeed prey upon one another. The beaver gnawed down the young trees along the brooks to build their dams, so that the forest growth must have suffered. But the wilderness everywhere overflowed with abounding resources and was the home of multiplying life in a thousand forms.
The most highly prized of all the fur-bearing animals was the beaver, and apparently the most abundant. A trad- er's manifest of a cargo that went from Manhattan in 1626 gives the number of skins shipped on one vessel as 8,250, of which 7,246 were beaver; the rest were mostly otter, with a few mink, cat lynx, and small rat, which we may suppose to mean muskrat. Conditions were especially favorable for beaver. The woods were denser than now and brooks fuller in their flow. Hundreds of brooks ran down the gentle slopes through the wooded valleys into the larger streams. There were places without number which were just right for the beaver, places where they could build dams and set lodges for rearing their young, places abounding in the aquatic plants upon which, with the tender bark of birch, willow, and poplar, they fed. The otter and mink also found what they wanted, fish, mollusks, frogs, birds, and other creatures that were an easy prey to them. The muskrat was unknown in Europe before explorers came to America; but here they were to be found in every inland pond and were easily taken by hunters. Wildcats were more dangerous game. They were the big game of forest and mountain and put up an ugly fight against the hunter. A few of their pelts meant more to the man who brought them in than many of other kinds. Wolves and foxes were common, as the settlers afterward found to their cost, but no mention is made of them in the Dutch manifest.
In dealing with the Indians, the Dutch pursued a policy of conciliation. Business made this necessary, for the Indians could not be expected to trade with them unless friendly re- lations were maintained. In general, they seem to have found the Indians well disposed, as at Block Island and
5
The Cruise of the Onrust.
Nahant. If it had not been so, and if the explorers had feared the Indians, they would not have ventured inland up their new-found Fresh River, even to the rapids at Windsor, as they did.
A passage in Governor Bradford's History of Plymouth bears testimony to the amicable relations between the Dutch and Indians in this very region of the Connecticut valley. He speaks of about a thousand Indians, far up the river above Windsor, who had "enclosed themselves in a fort which they had strongly palissadoed about" as a defence against another hostile tribe, and tells how "three or four Dutchmen went up in the beginning of winter to live with them, to get their trade and prevent them from bringing it to the English, or to fall into amity with them; but at spring to bring all down to their place." While these Dutchmen were at this fort, "a great sickness visited the Indians-and half of them died-and the Dutchmen almost starved be- fore they could get away for ice and snow." The event thus recorded was some twenty years after Block's visit, but is none the less descriptive of the habitual conduct of the Dutch in their trading enterprises.
Block arrived in Amsterdam in September, 1614, and gave his report, which was made more graphic a little later by the map he prepared. Some six months previous to this, on March 27, the States General had passed an act:
That whosoever shall from this time forward discover any new passages, havens, countries or places shall alone resort to the same or cause them to be frequented for four voyages, and that any other person sailing from the United Netherlands to such newly dis- covered places in the meanwhile will do so on pain of confiscation of his goods and ships and a fine of fifty-thousand ducats to the profit of the discoverer.
This opened the way for the company of merchants who . had financed the explorations with which Block was identi- fied to take advantage of his discoveries and they made peti- tion to the States General accordingly. In response a charter was granted, October 11, 1614, giving exclusive right
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
to resort to, or cause to be frequented, the aforesaid newly dis- covered countries situated in America between New France and Vir- ginia, the sea coasts whereof lie in the latitude of from forty to forty-five degrees, now named New Netherland, as is to be seen by a figurative map hereunto annexed; and that for four voyages within the term of three years, commencing the first of January 1615 next coming, or sooner.
Apparently this was the first company of capitalists to un- dertake the fur trade in North America. There had been a good deal of traffic in an unorganized way as individual ad- venturers had fallen in with the Indians here and there along the coast. So it had been in Nova Scotia and Maine, and especially on the St. Lawrence in Canada, as well as at Manhattan. But this had been without much system. Now the business was being equipped and organized for mercan- tile operations on a larger scale, which was to include both sides of the Atlantic.
This step becomes the more significant when we take into view the later organizations for a similar object, particularly if we follow the story of the fur trade in its broader aspects and consider the great part it has played in American affairs for all these three hundred years. The enterprise of the Dutch in New Netherland was soon followed by the far ex- tending activities of the French about Montreal, in the up- per lake region, and in the valley of the Mississippi; and these in due course were succeeded by the Hudson Bay Com- pany chartered by Charles II of England in 1670, the North West Fur Company a few years later, and a vast network of trading posts and Indian agents, reaching to the Arctic, which still continue with undiminished energy to gather pel- try for the markets of the world. The building of the On- rust and its maiden cruise had not a little to do with the be- ginnings of all this enterprise. For this reason, if for no other, the story is well worth keeping in remembrance.
II.
The Quest for Beaver.
URING the twenty-nine years between the discov- ery of the Hudson River and the planting of the English settlement at New Haven, the traders from Holland made a distinct impression on the new country. The story of their community at Manhattan is preserved to some extent in historical documents. We are less fortunate in our knowledge of their doings in Connecticut, about which we are left largely to conjecture and our own imagination.
Among other things, these years must have brought a great decrease in the number of animals that were hunted for their pelts. In nine years, 1624 to 1632, according to records, the company received 63,000 skins, mostly beaver. Governor Winthrop, speaking of the Dutch on the Con- necticut River, says that about 10,000 skins came annually to their trading post. A similar tale is told of the Swedes in Delaware, of whom it is said that they collected 30,000 skins in their first year. Such wholesale slaughter could not but affect the supply of game. Its disappearance began, of course, in the neighborhood of Manhattan. In the earliest days, Manhattan Island itself was rich in game. Beaver Street, in the business heart of lower New York, gets its name from having been what was first called the "Beaver Path," a trail along the side of an open ditch that was the outlet of a swamp lying toward the north, where now is Ex- change Place. The beaver ran over this path to the creek be- low, making both creek and swamp their familiar haunts. We cannot suppose that they lasted very long in such a spot as this after the Dutch came.
Looking at the topography of the country about New York, one may see at a glance that the land was well adapted to such fur-bearing animals. Across the Hudson River, in New Jersey, are the Hackensack, the Passaic, the Rahway, and the Raritan rivers, with their branches and ponds fed
8
The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
by smaller streams and brooks. Then, turning to the north, above Central Park and the Bronx throughout Westchester County, there are other streams, the Croton, the Bronx, and the Mamaroneck rivers with their ponds and brooks; then Byram River at the Connecticut boundary and a dozen streams with tributaries in Fairfield County, like the Sauga- tuck, with which is connected a brook still called Beaver Brook, and a pond called Beaver Pond.
The Dutch collected the furs for their earlier shipments largely from these neighborhoods. The animals were so abundant that, for a considerable time, they could keep up with the tremendous drain made upon their numbers. The fecundity of beavers under favorable circumstances is shown by some recent experiments in the Adirondack region, where they had become extinct. An undertaking was started to re- stock the country, and, in 1906, the State Commissioner re- leased there twenty-five beavers. In 1915, after nine years, there were not far from thirty-five hundred. So, in those first years of Dutch exploitation, their abounding numbers were not soon exhausted. But shipment followed shipment to meet an ever increasing demand. Instead of a single small ship, larger vessels came two or three at a time, all in a hurry to fill their holds with skins for the Holland markets. This told on the supply. The game became less plentiful, more wary, and harder to catch. So the Indian hunters went back into the woods, farther and ever farther, till there, too, the game grew scarce.
Three or four years after Hudson's voyage, it began to be seen that something must be done to reach out more widely into the wilderness. Two schemes were set on foot. One was the cruise of the Onrust; the other was the establishment of a trading post near the site of Albany. Both were undertaken about the same time and each led to a far-reaching enter- prise. The post on the upper Hudson became a center to which Indians brought their furs from the Adirondack re- gion, the Mohawk valley, and the country bordering on the Great Lakes, till it attained a commercial importance second only to that of Manhattan itself. The cruise of the Onrust
9
The Quest for Beaver.
occasioned the chartering of the New Netherland Company, as already indicated, for trading in southern New England.
This New Netherland trade had its center at Manhattan. In a most natural way, it followed along up the Connecticut coast, working eastward as the game became scarce, and at the same time going back from the shore up the valleys into the hill country. After eight or nine years, a new step was taken, in 1623, when a trading post was set up on the Con- necticut River, near the headwaters of navigation, after the manner of the one on the Hudson. This was equipped with a stockade for defence and was known as Fort Good Hope. From this point, trade was carried to the north throughout the Connecticut valley and into Canada.
Before this, no doubt, the Dutch had other trading posts for the Connecticut field, at convenient places as the business required. Certain points, from their geographical position, were peculiarly adapted to such a use. Among the earliest, we may believe, was a trading center in the neighborhood of Greenwich or Stamford, accessible to the hunters' trails lead- ing out to the brooks and ponds which were numerous there- abouts. Norwalk and Bridgeport now occupy ground that offered similar advantages. The same may be said of New Milford, Derby, and Waterbury, lying inland on the rivers, and also of Middletown, where there was an Indian village; it is conceivable that an important business was carried on there long before the post was established further up the river. We can be sure that New Haven, with its commodious bay, was not behind any of these places in the advantages it offered for a center of Indian trade.
Converging on each of these centers were the Indian trails that led away into the forests. Beaten paths ran from one center to another and the path most travelled led always to Manhattan. The country was covered with a network of paths and trails, not apparent perhaps to a European stranger, but clearly understood by the practiced eye of a native. Before the Dutch came, the Indians had their main trails over which they glided, sometimes on errands of friendship, and at other times for war. But when the great
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