USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > New Milford > The two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the town of New Milford, Conn., July 17th, 1907 > Part 1
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Gc 974.602 N43d 1779003
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01177 5902
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THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN OF
NEW MILFORD, CONN.
June 17th, 1907.
ADDRESS DELIVERED BY DANIEL DAVENPORT, Of Bridgeport, Conn.
Press of The Buckingham, Brewer & Platt Co. Bridgeport, Conn. THE
F 5
THE 1579003 Oum Ahundredth Anniversary
of the Settlement of the
June the Seventeentb
Nineteen Hundred anth Seuen
Address by DANIEL DAVENPORT Bridgeport, Conn.
1:
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Davenport, Daniel, 1852-
The two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the town of New Milford, Conn., July 17th, 1907. Address delivered by Daniel Davenport ... Bridgeport, Conn., Press of the Buck- ingham, Brewer & Platt co. [1907]
20 p. 233.
1. New Milford, Conn .- Hist.
. Library of Congress
F101.N73D2 .
7-30340
$ 12000
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ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT NEW MILFORD, CONN., JUNE 17TH, 1907, BY DANIEL DAVENPORT OF BRIDGEPORT, CONN., ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN.
The settlement of New Milford began in 1707, exactly a century after that of Jamestown, Va. At that time, although Milford and Stratford at the mouth of the Housatonic had been settled almost seventy years, and the river afforded a convenient highway into the interior, for much of the dis- tance, this place, only thirty miles from the north shore of Long Island Sound, was still beyond the extreme northwest- ern frontier of New England, and indeed of English North America.
The inhabitants of Connecticut then numbered about fifteen thousand, settled in thirty towns, mostly along the shore of Long Island Sound, and upon the banks of the Con- necticut and Thames Rivers. During the thirty years next before, a few families from Norwalk had settled at Danbury, from Stratford at Woodbury, from Milford at Derby, and from Farmington at Waterbury. With these exceptions, hardly more than pin points upon the map, and a few settle- ments about Albany, N. Y., the whole of western and north- western Connecticut and of western Massachusetts and northern New York was a savage wilderness, covered with . dense forests, and affording almost perfect concealment for the operations of savage warfare.
Though the northwestern portion of Connecticut was then a most formidable and inhospitable wilderness, strenuous efforts were already being put forth by the Colony to encour- age its settlement. For, strange as it seems to us now, at that time, owing to imperfect modes of cultivation and the diffi- culty of subduing the wilderness, the settled portions of the Commonwealth had begun to feel overpopulated. Twenty- five years before, the Secretary of the Colony had reported to the Home Government, that "in this mountainous, rocky
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and swampy province" most of the arable land was taken up, and the remainder was hardly worth tillage
This need of more land, and the protection from invasion which the settlement of this section would afford the commu- nities near the coast, and the innate love of adventure and de- sire to subdue the wilderness which have characterized the American people from the beginning, were the impelling causes which led to the planting of New Milford.
So pressing did this movement become that, though what is now Litchfield County was then as remote and inaccessible to the rest of the Colony, as were Indiana and Illinois to our fathers in the middle of the last century, within forty-five years after the first settler had built his log cabin and lighted his fire here, twelve towns had been settled and the county organized with a population of more than ten thousand.
In order that we may appreciate, somewhat, the broader political conditions under which the first settlers took up their abode here, which largely engrossed their thoughts and vitally affected them and their children for two generations, it is necessary, before taking up the narrative of their actual settle- ment here, to advert briefly to the state of affairs at that time in England, and on the continent of Europe, and in the Eng- lish, French and Spanish Colonies of North America.
By 1707, it had become apparent to the people of Connec- ticut that, soon or late, they must fight for the very existence of their chartered privileges and natural rights, not alone the British Crown, but the English people. The disposition of the people of England to reap where they had not sown had become very clear. In April, 1701, Connecticut was named in the bill then introduced in Parliament to abrogate all Ameri- can charters. She resisted with all her might through her agent, but it passed the second reading, and would have be- come a law but for the breaking out of the French War. Its principle was supported by the mercantile interests and the great men of England. Then for the first time the people of Connecticut fully realized that their foes were to be, not the exiled house of Stuart, but the English people themselves, and that though they changed their dynasties they did not change their own nature.
In 1707, the principal kingdoms of Europe and their colo- nies were ablaze with war. Anne was Queen of England.
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In that very year she attached her signature to that long projected and most important constitutional arrangement, the Act of Union between England and Scotland, which made them one kingdom, the crown of which, by the Act of Settle- ment passed a few years before, had been forever vested in the person and heirs of Sophia, the electress of Hanover, the present reigning dynasty. Anne's accession to the throne in 1702 had been followed by the acknowledgement, by Louis XIV, of the son of James II, the deposed and fugitive king of England and the determined foe of the rights of the Colonists, as the rightful king, although in the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, he had solemnly stipulated to the contrary. This act of perfidy roused the English to fury. The primary cause of the war, then raging, was the acceptance by Louis of the crown of Spain for his grandson Philip despite a previous formal renunciation. But the immediate occasion was his espousal of the cause of the son of James II as pretender to the British throne, which enabled the English Government to form a great European alliance to wrest Spain from Philip and prevent Louis from becoming the absolute master of Europe.
The year before, 1706, had witnessed the humbling of the pride and ambition of Louis by the defeat of his armies, at Ramillies by the Duke of Marlborough, in Piedmont by Prince Eugene, and in Spain by Lord Galway. Charles XII of Sweden had advanced to Dresden in Saxony, an English and Portuguese army had occupied Madrid, and an attack of the combined fleets of Spain and France upon Charlestown, S. C., then claimed by Spain as a part of Florida, had been repulsed by the vigor and martial skill of the Colonial authorities.
At that time, the valley of the St. Lawrence was occupied by about fifty thousand French settlers, imbued with bitter hostility towards the settlers in New England and New York. Already the vast design of LaSalle to acquire for the King of France the whole interior of the Continent seemed to have been accomplished. While as yet the English were struggling to secure a foothold upon the Atlantic seaboard, the French had explored the Mississippi and its tributaries to its mouth, and the whole vast region drained by them, between the Alle- ghanies and the Rockies, had been taken possession of by the French under the name of Louisiana, and a chain of military and trading posts from New Orleans to the St. Lawrence, ad-
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mirably chosen for the purpose, had been established to hold it, and another chain was already planned to extend south- ward along the west side of the Alleghanies, to forever keep out the English. The French had been for fifty years hound- ing on the numerous tribes of Canada and northern New Eng- land to attack and exterminate the settlers of New England. The conquest of Canada by the English was therefore an ob- ject of the greatest political importance, and necessary for the peace and safety of the colonies, and their future growth, and it continued to engross the efforts and exhaust the means of the colonists, until their purpose was finally accomplished in 1763.
The people who settled here were entirely familiar with the hardships, dangers and horrors of Indian warfare to which they were liable in taking up their abode on this frontier. The horrible incidents which attended the massacre of the inhabi- tants of Schenectady, in 1690, seventeen years before, during the previous war, and of the inhabitants of Deerfield, Mass., and other places in 1704, during the war still raging, were household words throughout Connecticut, and had left an abiding imprint in the minds of the people on the border. Though the Indians, right about them here, seem to have been few in number and comparatively harmless, they knew from their own and their fathers' experience, that their position was one of extreme danger, and that at all times their scanty and hardwon possessions and their lives were liable to instant de- struction, from unheralded irruptions by the more distant Indian tribes of the North and Northwest, urged on by their French instigators and allies. For the experience of the last seventy years, from the time of the Pequot War, and during the subsequent troubles with the tribes in southwestern Con- necticut, and on Long Island, and during King Philip's War, had fully taught them the craft, treachery and pitiless cruelty of the savages, as well as their capacity for extensive combina- tion among widely separated tribes.
When Major DeRouville, in 1704, with his band of civil- ized and uncivilized savages, committed the atrocities at Deer- field, Mass., the suspicion of the Colonists that the French had instigated the former Indian outrages became a certainty, for in this instance they openly shared in them. Their object was, as I have said, to drive the English Colonists from North
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America, and substitute in their place their own colonial system. For this purpose they fitted out hundreds of parties of savages to proceed to other portions of the English settle- ments, shoot down the settlers when at work at their crops, seize their wives and children, load them with packs of plunder from their own homes, and drive them before them into the wilderness. When no longer able to stagger under their burdens, they were murdered, and their scalps torn off, and exhibited to their masters, and for such trophies bounties were paid. The French government in Paris paid bounties for the scalps of women and children, as Connecticut did for those of wolves, and it not only fitted out other savage expedi- tions, but sent its own soldiers to assist in the murderous work. Detailed reports of each case were regularly made to the government at Paris by its agents in Canada which can now be read. This is true of every French and Indian war until 1763, and the fact was as well known to the settlers here in 1707, as it is to the historical investigator of to-day.
In the beginning of 1707, reports of an expedition by the French and Indians against some part of New England gave alarm to the Colony, and on the 6th of February of that year a council of war was convened at Hartford, consisting of the Governor, most of the Council, and many of the chief military officers of the colony. Suspicions were entertained that the attack would fall upon western Connecticut, and that the Indians in this vicinity intended to join the French and Indians. The Council of War determined that the then western frontier towns, Danbury, Woodbury, Waterbury and Simsbury, should be fortified with the utmost expedition. They were directed to keep scouts of faithful men to range the forests to discover the designs of the enemy, and give intelli- gence should they make their appearance near the frontier. At the October session in 1708, it was enacted that garrisons should be kept at those towns, and so it continued until after the close of the war in 1713.
It was in the midst of alarms and dangers such as these that the settlement of this town was begun. One of the first houses constructed here had palisades about it to serve as a fort, which lasted many years, and in 1717 soldiers were stationed here for the protection of the inhabitants, and this was repeated several times afterwards. Every man was a
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soldier. He was a soldier when he sat at his meals, a soldier when he stood in his door, a soldier when he went to the cornfield, a soldier by day and by night.
At the time the first settlers arrived here there was a tract of cleared land on the west side of the river called the Indian Field. It extended from where the river runs in an easterly direction south to the mouth of the little brook which runs along Fort Hill. It was not included in the original pur- chase from the Indians, having been reserved by them in their deed. It was, however, purchased from them in 1705, by John Mitchell, and was conveyed by him to the inhabitants of the town in 1714. This was of the greatest advantage to the first settlers. It furnished them a space of cleared ground, where each planter could at once plant his corn and other crops, without the delay of felling the trees.
It is thought also that the ground where we now stand, and Aspetuck Hill had been in a large measure cleared of trees by the Indians by burning, as was also Grassy Hill, two miles east of here. There appears also to have been some meadow land partially cleared at the mouth of the Aspetuck River.
At that time the country about here presented no such appearance as it does now. The river then flowed with a fuller tide. With the exceptions I have noted, a continuous forest overspread the whole landscape. No thickets, however, choked up the ways through it, for the underbrush was swept away every year by fires built by the Indians for that purpose. Winding footways led here and there which the Indians and wild beasts followed. The roots of the smaller grasses were destroyed by this annual burning over. A coarse long grass grew along the low banks of the river and wherever the ground was not thickly shaded by trees. After the occupation of the country by the white settlers this annual burning was prohibited. In lieu thereof, the General Court early, in its history enacted that every inhabitant, with a few exceptions, should devote a certain time yearly, in the several plantations, to the cutting of brush and small trees in the more open forests for the purpose of allowing grass to grow in such places, as during the summer the cattle ranged through the forests near the plantations subsisting on what grew there. It is said that in the early settlement of this town, all meadow
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land was secured by clearing marshy or swampy ground and allowing it to grow up with grass from the roots and- seeds already in the soil. It was one of the early difficulties in the Colony to secure grass, from want of grass seed.
The forests about here abounded with bears, wolves, foxes and catamounts, deer and moose, wild turkeys, pigeons, quail and partridges, and the waters with wild geese, ducks, herons and cranes. The river itself was alive with fish and every spring great quantities of shad and lamprey eels ascend- ed it. Strawberries, blackberries and huckleberries were ex- tremely abundant in their season.
The winters were usually of great severity. In 1637 the snow lay on the ground three feet deep all over New England from the third of November until the 23rd of March and on the 23rd of April it snowed for several hours in Boston, the flakes being as large as shillings. The springs were very backward, the summers extremely hot and often dry.
Upon the petition of the people in Milford, in May, 1702, the General Assembly granted them liberty to purchase from the Indians a township at Wyantonock, the Indian name of this place, and directed them to report their doings to the Assembly. The next March they made an extensive purchase of the natives, and a patent for the same was granted by the Assembly. In October, 1704, the Legislature enacted that the tract so purchased should be a township by the name of New Milford, and that it must be settled in five years,-the town plat to be fixed by a committee appointed by the General As- sembly. In October, 1706, the Legislature annexed the tract to New Haven County. In April, 1706, the first meeting of the proprietors was held at Milford, and it was voted that the town plat and home lots should be speedily pitched and laid out by the committee appointed by the Legislature, according to its own best judgment, following certain rules laid down by the proprietors. During that year and according to those rules, the town plat was laid out.
It was originally intended to lay out the settlement on the hill immediately east of the present village, from this circum- stance called Town Hill to this day. In point of fact, it was laid out on Aspetuck Hill, and consisted of. the town street and sixteen home lots. The street was twenty rods wide. It began at the south end of the brow of the hill, or at the lower
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end of what was then called the "Plain on the Hill" and extended northward. Eight lots were laid out on each side of this street, each lot being twenty-one rods wide and sixty deep.
By the rules adopted by the proprietors, these lots were to be taken up successively in regular order by the settlers as they should arrive. John Noble took the first lot on the east side of the street at the lower end, he being the first settler to arrive. John Bostwick took the lot on the opposite side of the street, he being the next settler on the ground. This method was followed by others until there were twelve settlers with their families, numbering seventy souls located on this street in 1712. Of these twelve families, four were from Northamp- ton and Westfield, Mass., four were from Stratford, two from Farmington, and only two from Milford. In 1714, the town street was extended southward to the south end of the present public green.
The first houses constructed here by the settlers were of the rudest description. They were built of logs fastened by notching at the corners. They were usually from fifteen to eighteen feet square, and about seven feet in height, or high enough for a tall man to enter. At first they had no floors. The fireplace was erected at one end by making a back of stones laid in mud and not in mortar, and a hole was left in the bark or slab roof for the escape of the smoke. A chimney of sticks plastered with mud, was afterwards erected in this opening. A space, of width suitable for a door, was cut in one side and this was closed, at first, by hanging in it a blanket, and afterwards by a door made from split planks and hung on wooden hinges. This door was fastened by a wooden latch on the inside, which could be raised from the outside by a string. · When the string was pulled in the door was effectually fasten- ed. A hole was cut in each side of the house to let in light, and, as glass was difficult to obtain, greased paper was used to keep out the storms and cold of Autumn and Winter. Holes were bored at the proper height in the logs at one corner of the room, and into these ends of poles were fitted the opposite ends, where they crossed, being supported by a crotch or a block of the proper height. Across these poles others were laid, and these were covered by a thick mattress of hemlock boughs, over which blankets were spread. On
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such beds as these the first inhabitants of this town slept and their first children were born. For want of chairs, rude seats were made with axe and auger by boring holes and inserting legs in planks split from basswood logs, hewn smooth on one side. Tables were made in the same way, and after a time, the floor, a bare space being left about the fireplace instead of a hearthstone.
No sooner had the first settlers taken up their abode here than they were called upon to defend the title to their lands in the courts of the Colony. About thirty-seven years before, the General Court had granted permission to certain Stratford parties to buy land from the Indians and settle a plantation at this place, and they had bought over twenty-six thousand acres hereabouts. Apparently, however, no attempt was made towards a settlement of the same until after the purchase of same tract from the Indians by the Milford parties in 1702, and the grant for a patent for the same to them by the General Court in 1703. Soon after the settlers first broke ground here in 1707, a suit was begun against them by the Stratford people in the County Court at New Haven in May, 1708, and it was carried thence to the General Court. It was tried sixteen times. The first fifteen times, the plaintiffs won on the strength of their Indian title. The sixteenth, the defendants won on the strength of their Indian title, the patent from the General Court, and occupation. This incident is particularly interesting because one of the plaintiffs and the lawyer in this great case was the famous John Read, one of the ablest men and most remarkable characters which New England has pro- duced. Some notice of him will not be inappropriate here, as he was one of the earliest inhabitants of this place.
He was born at Fairfield, June 29th, 1679, and was a brother-in-law of Governor Talcott. He graduated at Har- vard in 1697, became a minister, preached in Woodbury as a candidate, and in various towns in Hartford and Fairfield Counties and preached the first sermon ever delivered in this place. He studied law, and when in 1708 the General Assem- bly first provided for the appointment of attorneys as officers of the Court, he was one of the first admitted. He held the offices of Colony Queen's Attorney, 1712-16, Deputy for Nor- walk, 1715-17, Commissioner to settle the boundary with New York 1719, and he was Connecticut's representative in the
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Inter-Colonial Commission in regard to Bills of Credit, in 1720. He removed to Boston in 1722, and became the Attor- ney General and a member of the Council of Massachusetts. He was by far the most eminent lawyer in New England, and was called "the Pride of the Bar, Light of the Law, and Chief among the Wise, Witty and Eloquent." It was he who pre- pared the instructions to Lord Mansfield, the counsel for Con- necticut in the great case of Clark vs. Tousey, in which was discussed the question whether the Common Law of England had any force in Connecticut other than as it was adopted by the people of Connecticut. His exposition of the principles involved was most masterly, and it was the great authority upon which in a later generation the people of Connecticut relied to sustain them in their opposition to the measures of the crown in 1775.
In a centenary sermon delivered at Danbury in January, ISOI, the Rev. Thomas Robbins had this to say of him, "One of the early inhabitants of Danbury was John Read, a man of great talents and thoroughly skilled in the knowledge and practice of the law. He possessed naturally many peculiari- ties and affected still more. He is known to this day through the country by many singular anecdotes and characteristics under the appellation of 'John Read, the Lawyer.'"
In 1712, the town was incorporated, which gave it the power to tax the inhabitants to support a minister, and the place became thereby an ecclesiastical society. In March, 1712, the Rev. Daniel Boardman was called to preach to the settlers. In May, 1715, the settlers petitioned the General Assembly that they might obtain liberty for the settlement of the worship and ordinances of God among them, and the Leg- islature granted them liberty to embody in church estate as soon as God in his providence should make way therefor. On November 21st, 1716, Mr. Boardman was duly ordained as the pastor of the church of Christ in New Milford, the total number of inhabitants of the town then being one hundred and twenty-five. The first vote of the town to build a meeting house was passed in 1716, but work was not commenced upon it until 1719, and it was not completed until 1731, after infinite struggling. It was forty feet long, thirty wide and twenty feet in height between joints and was provided with galleries, pews and a pulpit. Long before completion, when it was first
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used for religious purposes, the congregation was accustomed to sit upon its outer sills, which were able to accommodate every man, woman and child in the town with a little squeezing. In 1713, the town voted to build for the minister a dwelling house forty fect long, twenty-one wide, two stories high, and fourteen feet between joints. In 1726, thirteen years later, the house was still unfinished. The first Sabbath day house was not built until 1745.
In 1721, when there were but thirty-five families residing here, a public school was ordered by the town to be kept for four months the winter following, one-half of the expense to be borne by the town. The children were taught reading, spelling after a phonetic fashion, writing, and the first four rules of arithmetic. In 1725, it was voted to build a school- house twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and seven feet be- tween the joints.
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