USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 17
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Before all the soil of the colony had been taken by settlers there was a disposition to swarm. The first effort was due to the boundary settlement of 1713-14 between Connecticut 'and Massachusetts. Because of concessions made by Connecticut, Massachusetts gave the sister colony sixty
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thousand acres of her western lands. Some of these were in Vermont, though believed to be in Massachusetts. Pri- vate parties bought them, and the erection of Fort Dummer in 1729, gave some promise of protection. New York claimed the whole territory under the grant to the Duke of York, but the Connecticut colonists carried with them the system of town government with which they were familiar, and asserted their "independence and unbridled democracy." When the territory became a state in 1777, it took the title of New Connecticut, the name Vermont being substituted during the year-a triumph for the Connecticut town system. The way Vermont was settled is also sug- gested by names of towns found in that state, such as Hart- ford, Wethersfield, and Windsor. Vermont may be thought of as a child of Litchfield County. Ethan Allen was born at Litchfield in 1739; when thirty years old he moved to what was then known as New Hampshire Grants, but is now Ver- mont, and became a vigorous opponent of the encroachments of New York. Seth Warner, born in Roxbury, Connecticut, in 1743, settled at Bennington, and with Allen became one of the active Green Mountain Boys, resisting New York encroachments and valiant in the Revolution. The first governor of Vermont was from Litchfield County, and in later times three other governors, three United States senators, and one chief justice. Forty-five of her governors have been natives of Connecticut; twenty-one of her Su- preme Court judges, and eleven of her United States senators.
The expansion of the colony westward was encouraged by the fact that the charter bounds extended to the Pacific Ocean. When the Plymouth council gave up its charter in 1635, it notified the king that the grant was "through all the mainland, from sea to sea, being near about three thou- sand miles in length." The geographers in England knew also that the Connecticut grant was three thousand miles long, though no one dreamed then of pressing the claim be-
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yond the Mississippi River to lands owned by the Spanish, but Connecticut did think that she owned the northern two-fifths of Pennsylvania. Soon after the charter was granted, Charles gave his brother James the Dutch colony of New Netherland, thus interfering with the contin- uity of Connecticut. In 1681, Charles gave William Penn a grant of Pennsylvania, which took from the Connecticut strip the northern coal, iron, and oil fields. In 1753, a move- ment was made to colonize the Wyoming Country as the Pennsylvania section was called: it started in Windham
County. In 1754, the Susquehanna Company was formed with nearly seven hundred members, of whom six hundred and thirty-eight were of Connecticut. Their agents made a treaty with the Five Nations, July 1I, 1754, by which they secured for two thousand pounds a tract of land, beginning at the forty-first degree of latitude, the southern boundary of Connecticut; thence running north, following the line of the Susquehanna to the present northern boundary of Pennsylvania; thence one hundred and twenty miles west; thence south to the forty-first degree, and back to the point of beginning. The General Assembly of Connecticut acquiesced, provided that the king approved. Pennsylvania objected, but the company sent out surveyors and plotted the tract. Settlement began on the Delaware River in 1757, and in the Susquehanna purchase in 1762. There were conflicts between the settlers and the Pennsylvania men; the number of Connecticut men increased to some three thousand. The Connecticut Assembly passed a resolu- tion in 1771, maintaining the claim of its colony to its charter limits west of the Delaware. In 1774, it raised the Susque- hanna district into a town, under the name of Westmoreland, making it a part of Litchfield County, and its deputies took their places in the Connecticut legislature. In 1776, Westmoreland was made a distinct county. Connecticut laws and taxes were enforced regularly; Connecticut courts alone were in session there; the levies from the district
Hartford State-House Lettery.
No. 1100%
T THIS TICKET entitles the Bearer to fuich Prize as fhall be drawn againft ity Number. Subject to : Deduction of Twelve and an lalf per Cent.
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Ticket of a Lottery to Build the Bulfinch State-House. The Original is Owned by George S. Godard
At the May session, 1793, the General Assembly granted a lottery to raise 65000 lawful money for erecting and completing the State House at Hartford, and appointed Messrs. John Chester, Noadiah Hooker, John Caldwell, John Morgan, John Trumbull, or any two of them . managers. Owing to circumstances the lottery was not productive
As Gore thera auce was such a word."
NOTE .- The principal authority for the statements made in this paper is a series of several hundred manuscript lettera and documents owned by the Connecticut. Historiat Society, by whose kind permission they have been consulted and war.
The following are the chief printed authorities that bave howen consulted . The Connecticut Gore Title Stated and Considered. Hartford, 1799
The Rise, Progress, and Effect of the Claim of the Connectiont Gory Stated and Con sidered. Hartford, 1802.
An Inquiry Concerning the tirant of the Legislat i to Andrew Ward mål Jorominh Halsey. Hartford. 1820
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N.H
Canada.
Mass claim
New York.
Mass.
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Conn Western Reserve
Penn.
Ohro.
NJ
Report of the Regents' Boundary Commission upon the New York and Pennsylvania Bondary. Albans, TANi.
Trumbull, Benjamin. A Plea In Vladlention of the Connecticut Title la the l'ont Landa Las Ing West of the Province of New York, New Haven 1775 cercond edition).
Tours, Hon. Porley. The Federal and State Constitutions, Colomal Charters. Wish. Ington, 1877.
The Connecticut Land Gore
From The Connecticut Lund Gore Company, by Albert C. Bates
lake Erie
Conn
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formed the twenty-fourth Connecticut regiment in the Continental armies. In July, 1778, after the Continental Congress had refused to allow the men from Westmoreland in the army to return home, a band of tories and Indians under John Butler and Joseph Brandt, fell upon the defense- less settlement. The old men and boys mustered, and fought until half their number was cut down. The women and chil- dren were spared for the greater horrors of the overland retreat to Connecticut, and the new county disappeared. Detached parties returning from time to time, gathered slight crops, under danger from the Indians, but Westmoreland County was no more. When the articles of confederation went into force, a court was appointed to settle the Susque- hanna or Wyoming dispute. Connecticut asked for time to get papers from England, but was overruled by Congress, which ordered the court to meet at Trenton. The unani- mous decision was that Wyoming belonged to Pennsylvania. The Wyoming settlers had a hard time for years, being deserted by their own state, and left to the mercy of rival claimants. The old Susquehanna Company reorganized in 1785-86, but there were dissensions between the first settlers and the newcomers, and in 1799, Pennsylvania passed an act to allow actual settlers to retain their lands, thus there came to be a large infusion of Connecticut blood in Pennsyl- vania. Had it not been for the Revolution, Connecticut might have retained the Wyoming country; as it was, the dreams of Westmoreland faded, and the state is restricted to the present territory.
This seems to be the place to speak of the Connecticut Gore Land Company. In May, 1792, five citizens of Hart- ford were appointed to build "a large and convenient State House," and owing to a scarcity of money, the Assembly in May, 1793, voted that the committee be allowed to hold the Hartford State House Lottery. Tickets to the number of twenty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-seven were issued at five dollars a ticket. Twelve and a half per
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cent. was set apart for the prizes, which ranged from ten to eight thousand dollars. Two years dragged by with small sales of the tickets; the lottery was a failure. The money contributed by the state for the new building having been expended, the work was at a standstill, when, in May, 1794, Jeremiah Halsey and Andrew Ward of Guilford pro- posed that the state deed to them the Gore west of the Dela- ware River, that they might sell the land in foreign markets, offering to share the proceeds with the state. On July 25, 1795, Samuel Huntington, the governor, executed a deed, releasing the land to the men mentioned above. The Gore was a strip of land, two and a third miles wide and two hundred and forty-five miles long, and it came into possession of Connecticut in this way. The Plymouth Company, in 1628, sold to an association of Massachusetts Bay all New England from the Atlantic ocean to the South Sea, between the parallels three miles north of the Merrimack River and three miles south of the Charles River, "or of any or every part thereof." The Connecticut charter described its northern boundary as the southern of Massachusetts. The question as to the boundary between Connecticut and Massachusetts, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, was long in controversy: In 1642, the Massachusetts surveyors placed it at forty-one degrees fifty-five minutes north lati- tude, and in 1695, Connecticut surveyors placed it at forty- two degrees north, or a difference of two miles and a third, and thus the strip of two and a third by two hundred and forty-five miles, west of New York, became known as the Gore. After receiving the deed, Ward and Halsey offered fifty thousand acres for sale, and the value of the land rose as farms were bought. New York interfered, and the courts supported the Connecticut Gore Land Company, but in the deal between the United States government and Connecticut, whereby the latter gave up all claims on western lands, on condition that it receive the Connecticut Reserve, the Gore was ceded to the United States and to the individual states.
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Meanwhile the statehouse had been finished; shares in the Gore Company dropped to nothing; in 1805-08, Connecticut paid it forty thousand dollars and the Gore became a dim tradition.
In return for its surrender of its claims on western lands, the United States Government gave to Connecticut a tract about the size of Wyoming in the western part of Ohio, which became known as the Western Reserve of Connecti- cut, and it contained about three million three hundred thousand acres, the settlement of which was not attempted until after the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was the beginning of government under territorial system. The authorship of that Ordinance has usually been attributed to Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, but Manasseh Cutler of Killingley, minister, doctor, scientist, and diplomat, had decided influence in Congress as he talked of the interests of Ohio with brilliant persuasiveness, in- sisting that slavery should be excluded, and provision made for a university. Indian hostilities delayed the settlement of the Reserve, but after Anthony Wayne's campaign in 1794, toilers on the rocky farms of Connecticut sighed for the mellow soil of Ohio, and in 1795, the General Assembly passed an ordinance, approving the sale of the land, and entrusting it to eight men, one from every county. The section was divided into twelve hundred thousand shares, and Oliver Phelps, a native of Windsor, led the enter- prise, opening an office in Canandaigua-the first in the country for sale of forest lands to settlers. Moses Cleave- land of Canterbury, magnetic, able, decisive, and patriotic, was selected as agent of the company. Cleaveland, whose name will always be associated with the city of that name, after service in the Revolution, and taking his degree from Yale, opened a law office in Canterbury and won a high place among the able lawyers of Windham County. The winter of 1795-96 was one of active preparation for the migration. Augustus Porter, a surveyor, a native of Connecticut, after
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seven seasons of laying out lands in western New York, was well fitted to conduct the expedition. Six weeks carried the party to Lake Ontario, and the portage around Niagara Falls was wearisome. On the site of Buffalo, a conference was held with Red Jacket of the Six Nations, the stalwart form, martial air, together with the curt but courteous ad- dress of General Cleaveland won the admiration and con- fidence of the Indians. The payment of twelve hundred and fifty dollars in goods secured from the chiefs a formal relinquishment of their claim to land in the Western Re- serve, and the expedition embarked on Lake Erie. On July 4, the twentieth anniversary of American Independence, they landed at a place they christened Fort Independence, and celebrated, by salutes for New Connecticut. Toasts were given and the day "closed with three cheers. Drank several pails of grog, supped, and retired in remarkable good order." A few more days of coasting brought the party to Cuyahoga River, where a landing was effected. After climbing to a broad plateau, and gazing upon the blue waters of the lake and the wide plain, General Cleaveland said: "This shall be the site of our city. Here we will lay the foundation of the metropolis of our Reserve." It was a sun-burned, travel-stained company of men that stood there that July day, a fitting beginning for the city of Cleaveland, and the development of great business and educational interests of the Western Reserve. The cen- sus of 1850 shows that twenty-three thousand of the Ohio people were from Connecticut, and nineteen thousand from Massachusetts.
Few other men in American history have accomplished results of greater importance than Moses Austin and his son Steven, in planning and carrying into execution the making of Anglo-American Texas. It was a venturesome family. Elijah served in the Revolution, and was the first to fit out a ship for China. Moses, brother of Elijah, was born in Durham, in 1764; he established at St. Genevieve, Mis-
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souri, the first mines west of the Mississippi; he planted an Anglo-American colony in the rich wastes of Texas. Steven Austin, the son, took up the work; both father and son builded better than they knew, and are highly honored as noble founders of the Lone Star State.
In 1666, Philip Carteret, the new governor of East Jersey, arrived, and he sent agents at once to New England, to publish the terms offered to settlers, and invite them to his lands. The offer was liberal, and, in the following year, a committee from Guilford, Milford, and Branford was sent ahead to look over the country, to learn more exactly of the offer, and discover how friendly were the Indians. The reply was favorable, and the word passed to buy a township, select a site and arrange for settlement. Soon thirty fam- ilies were on the way by boat from New Haven to Newark. On reaching the spot selected, delegates were appointed to form a government, and true to the principles of the New Haven colony, no one was allowed to vote or hold office, unless he was a member of a Congregational church. A typical pioneer was James Kilburn of Granby, who in 1802, formed a company with seven associates to move to the Northwest Territory; Kilburn going ahead to explore. In 1803, a schoolhouse, log church, blacksmith shop, and twelve cabins were built in Worthington, Ohio, and a hundred per- sons had arrived. The first Episcopal church in the state was formed there, and in 1817, Worthington College, of which James Kilburn became president. He also went to the legis- lature and to Congress, and he formed an early abolition society. Many of the first settlers in Ohio showed their origin, naming their towns Kent, Ashland, and Lebanon.
Of eighteen early governors of Wisconsin, four were born in Connecticut, whose pioneers were not apt to stop in Indiana, for the southern element was strong there, and the Virginian and Kentuckian were in danger of confusing the unscrupulous Yankee peddler with the substantial Yankee farmer, treating both alike.
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Connecticut people usually knew exactly whither they were going, and they moved in large numbers to Long Is- land, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. The school system of Michigan was carried bodily to Wisconsin. They were great movers, and at Collinsville, Illinois, opposite St. Louis, the three Collins brothers from Litchfield established a town in 1817. They used the same horse-power for a distillery, sawmill, cooper-shop, blacksmith and carpenter shop; built, in 1818, a union meeting-house, which was also used as public school and Sunday School, and their father became the first substantial contributor to Illinois College. From 1676, to 1713, Connecticut expanded more rapidly and emigrated more widely than any other New England colony, and the descendants of this state are found from New Hampshire to Michigan.
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CHAPTER XVI
EDUCATION
S
INCE the leaders in the settlement of Connecticut were men of trained intelligence and energy, they began as soon as possible to lay the foundations of a school system, and Hartford was three years old when John Higginson opened a school there. There must have been a school in New Haven that year, for a record of the Court says that Thomas Fugill was required to keep Charles Higginson at school for one year. Christmas, 1641, New Haven colony ordered that a free school be started in town, and John Davenport was requested to ascertain the amount of money which would be required to support it, and to draw up rules for it. In 1644, the legislature of Connecticut established a school system, and Lord Macaulay, in a famous address in Parliament in 1847, eulogized the fact that "exiles living in the wilderness should grasp and practice the principle that the state should take upon itself the educa- tion of the people." As in all the other colonies there was need of schools, for the greater part of the people had little education when they came hither, and some of the most active of the proprietors could not write their names. Eight of the first thirty-five that settled Norwich, as ap- pears from inspection of deeds and conveyances, affixed their marks, yet among them were townsmen, deacons, and constables.
The mode adopted was like that with which the colo-
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nists had been familiar in England-the method of town control-and the duty was laid upon the local authorities to establish schools, and to work with parents in the endeavor "not to suffer so much barbarism in any of the families as to have a single child or apprentice unable to read the holy word of God, and the good laws of the colony; and to bring them up to some lawful calling or employment." Every town of fifty families was required to maintain a school in which "reading and wrighting" should be taught, and in every town of one hundred households a grammar school should be supported, and if any town failed to have a grammar school it was required to contribute to a neighbor- ing school. In 1658, the law was modified to read thirty families instead of fifty, and in 1672, it was ordered that in place of the requirement that there should be a grammar school in every town with one hundred families, every county town should have a grammar school, with teachers competent to prepare for college. There were then four county towns, Hartford, New Haven, New London, and Fairfield, and the law continued for a century and a quarter. In the early time the studies were few but the terms were long, for in 1677, it was ordered that the school year be at least nine months in duration, but in 1690, the time required was reduced to six months in a year. Evidently the laws to promote universal education were evaded, for in 1690, the legislature passed the vote that since there were "many persons unable to read the English tongue . . . the grand jury men in each towne doe once in the year at least, vissit each famaly they susspect to neglect this order . . . and if they finde any such children and servants not taught as theire yeares are capeable of . . . they shall be fyned twenty shillings for each offence." There was the beginning of a new era in the history of education in Connecticut in 1700, the year in which was established the "Collegiate School," · which became Yale College. In that year was completed a revision of the laws, in which it was ordered that every
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town having seventy householders should have "a sufficient school master to teach children and youth to read and write, " and this school should be in session for eleven months in the year; also that every town with a less number than seventy households should have a "sufficient school master to teach for one half the year." The first mention of committees is in 1702. The clergy, authorized by the legislature, were the committee, visiting the schools to see that the catechism was thoroughly learned and religion drilled in. The custom of appointing a separate school committee crystallized into a law in 1750, when provision was made for the appoint- ment of such officers.
The change from the town to the parish system was made in 1712, when it was enacted that all the parishes, which were already made, or afterwards should be made, should be provided with funds for maintaining schools within their limits. At first the parishes were school districts of the towns, but in 1760, the societies began to organize as educational areas, often coterminous with towns. As population increased, the school districts multiplied, and in 1776, there were seventy-three towns and one hun- dred and ninety societies, every society having a de- finite territory. In 1717, societies were authorized to choose clerks and committees, and levy taxes, and these powers placed them on nearly the same footing as towns. In 1766, it was enacted that "each town and society shall have full power and authority to divide themselves into proper and necessary districts, for keeping their schools, and to alter and regulate the same from time to time as they shall have occasion." Another step was taken in 1794, when it was enacted that "the several school districts . .. shall have power and authority to tax them- selves for the purpose of building and repairing a school house . . . to choose a clerk ... and to appoint a col- lector." From 1797, to 1839, committees were appointed for the districts by the town or society, after that they appointed
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their own committees. A law passed in 1795, referred to the parishes or ecclesiastical societies "in their capacity of school societies," giving for the first time this title, and in 1798, the care of schools was transferred entirely from the towns to the school societies, with which it remained till 1856, when towns chose their system. During that period a school society might include a whole town, a part of a town, or parts of two or more towns, and all the business concerning schools was under its care. This system came about naturally, for the original towns were very large. After a time the dwellers in new communities petitioned for per- mission to form new parishes, and it was found convenient to manage the schools in those districts through the church organization. At length these societies became separate towns, and thus they prepared the way for a return to the town method. The act of 1798, perfected the old system; every society was given power to appoint a suitable number of persons (not to exceed nine) to be visitors, "to examine, approve and dismiss school teachers, and appoint public exercises." County towns were no longer required to main- tain a Latin school, but every society might institute a school of a higher order.
Before giving an account of the later development of public means of education, we must speak of the School Fund, which has played such a part in Connecticut schools. The funds to support public schools have been derived from several sources-taxes, tuition fees, and the income of invested funds. Taxation and tuition fees were resorted to from earliest times, the first school in New Haven being maintained wholly by taxes. Hartford guaranteed the teacher's salary, though a part, if not the whole, was expected from tuition fees, the town making up any deficiency, and paying for those who were unable to pay for themselves. The code of 1650, provided that the teachers' "wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of children, or by the inhabitants in general." The New Haven code of 1656,
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