USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 9
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The Tapping Reeve Law School. The First Law School in the Country
" உதடு வீடு
Tapping Reeve (1744-1823)
From an Old Print
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Courts and Laws
Connecticut has had many distinguished lawyers, as might be imagined from the quality of the settlers, the con- ditions favoring strong individuality and the establishment, in 1784, of the first American law school in Litchfield. Tapping Reeve was the founder of the school, and after exerting a profound influence upon successive classes of students in his school, he became judge of the Superior Court, and then chief justice. Reeve was a man who "loved law as a science and studied it as a philosopher." It was from Litchfield that the first volume of reported law cases printed in the United States appeared in 1789. Among the graduates of the school were five Cabinet ministers, two justices of the United States Supreme Court, ten governors of states, sixteen United States senators, fifty members of Congress, forty judges of the higher state courts, and eight chief justices of the state.
In the constitutional convention of 1787, the three lawyers from Connecticut, Sherman, Ellsworth, and John- son, contributed keenness, good judgment, and experience. In 1789, Oliver Ellsworth was sent to represent the state at the first session of the Senate; he was made chairman of the judiciary committee, and drew up the act of Con- gress under which the courts of the United States were organized after the pattern found in Connecticut, the merit of which appears in the fact that they remained sub- stantially unchanged for a hundred years. In 1795, Chief Justice Swift published at Windham the first general and systematic treatise on the laws of any state, it being the System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut. In 1810, Swift became the author of the first American treatise on the law of evidence, it being also the first American case-book, for use in legal education, and in 1823, he published the first American work descriptive of the whole body of law and equity.
Jeremiah Mason, who was born in Lebanon in 1768, became United states Senator and attorney-general of New
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Hampshire, of whom Daniel Webster said: "Of my own professional discipline and attainments, whatever they may be, I owe much to that close attention to the discharge of my duties, which I was compelled to pay for nine successive years from day to day, to Mr. Mason's efforts and arguments at the same bar." Webster said also: "Go as deep as you will, you will always find Jeremiah Mason below you." From Bozrah went Reuben H. Hyde to be chancellor of New York, and Story called him "the greatest equity judge of his time." Lyme has furnished three chief justices of the Supreme Court of the state, Henry M. Waite, Matthew Griswold, Jr., and Roger Griswold; also Judge C. J. McCurdy and M. R. Waite, chief justice of the United States.
Connecticut has been a leader in making law, of which there are three important instances according to Simeon E. Baldwin:
I. The common law excluded from the witness-stand every one who had a pecuniary interest in the event of the ac- tion. The first statute to abolish the rule was by the General Assembly, in 1848, and the author of the reform was Justice McCurdy of Lyme, who, on going abroad later on diplomatic service, brought it to the attention of some men of influence in England; in 1851, Parliament took similar action, and every other state in the Union has adopted the method of McCurdy.
2. The United States inherited an artificial system of legal remedies, and in 1879, Connecticut enacted a brief "Practice Act," leaving all details to be worked out through rules adopted from time to time by the judges of the higher courts. Of this act David Dudley Field, an author of the New York code, said that it was the best form yet devised, and it has remained substantially unchanged for thirty years.
3. In 1895, Connecticut took action to prevent the marriage of the unfit, extending the prohibition to paupers, epileptics, and imbeciles.
R E
P O R T S
OF
CAS E S
ADJUDGED IN THE
SUPERIOR COURT
OF THE
State of Connecticut.
FROM THE YEAR 1785, ro MAY 1788;
WITH SOME
DETERMINATIONS
IN THE
SUPREME COURT OF ERRORS.
BY EPHRAIM KIRBY, ESQUIRE.
LITCHFIELD: PRINTED BY COLLIER & ADAM. M, DCC, LXXXIX.
Facsimile of the Title-page of the First Published Law Reports in America
It is from the original volume in the possession of the Connecticut State Library
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This is a good place in which to speak of the seal of the state. In a paper by Roger Wolcott, written in 1759, he says that his stepfather, Daniel Clark, secretary of the colony between 1658, and 1666, told him that the seal was given the colony by George Fenwick, agent for the proprietors, under the Warwick patent. There is an impression of this seal in the State Library; it is in wax and is affixed to the commission of John Winthrop as magistrate of New London in 1647. It represents a vineyard of fifteen vines, with a hand above, and the motto, "Svstinet qvi transtvlit." It was
ordered in 1662, that the seal previously used remain the seal of the colony, and the first printed revision of the statutes made in 1673, had, by order of the Assembly, an impression of it on the title page. When Andros took the government in 1687, the seal disappeared, and Gershom Bulkley says John Allyn delivered it to Andros. When the charter government was resumed in 1689, a larger seal was made with the motto, "Svstinet qvi transtvlit," and no further change was made until the next century when a new stamp was ordered, suitable to seal wafers. It was larger, and instead of fifteen vines, it had but three, with a hand pointing to them, and on a label below, the motto, "Qvi transtvlit svstinet." Around the seal are the words, "Sigillvm Colonia Connecticensis." In 1747, the Assembly ordered that the oval be changed to a circle, and engraved, with corrections of mistakes, but nothing was done. In May, 1784, the Assembly voted to change the words around the seal to "Sigill. reip. Connecticutensis," but the inscription was cut without abbreviation, though the shortened form is in the engravings of that period. In October, 1784, the new seal was approved, and ordered to be kept by the secretary. In the constitution of 1818, it was ordered that the seal be not altered, and now there are two seals: one procured in 1842, for sealing with wax or wafer, a seal with three clusters of grapes on each vine, made of brass; the other, used on paper, without wax, and declared sufficient
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in 1851; supposed to have been obtained in 1782. The first issue of bills of credit in 1709, has the seal with three vines. When small bills were issued in 1777, a small seal with one vine was used; it was used also in the secretary's office to seal letters.
Connecticut has always had able political leaders, and statesmen of national renown; the Declaration of Indepen- dence was signed by Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams and Oliver Wolcott. Of the more recent are Buckingham, Foster, Jewell, English, Eaton, Barnum, Burr, the Baldwins, Hubbard, Andrews, Platt, and Hawley. Three of these were both governors and United States sena- tors. Buckingham's unsurpassed efficiency during the Civil War is described elsewhere. In the reconstruction which followed the War, General Joseph R. Hawley was as effec- tive as statesman as he had been patriotic while soldier. He was in the United States Senate for twenty-four years, able, eloquent, devoted, sincere. Orville H. Platt was born in Washington in 1827, and he rose swiftly to the office of United States Senator; dying in office after twenty-six years of service-the longest term in the history of the state- after achieving a career, whose solid worth was distinguished for integrity, sagacity, breadth and manliness. He is best known as the author of the "Platt Amendment," which governs the relations between Cuba and the United States.
For years there was but a narrow margin between the Republican and Democratic parties, but after the breezy campaign of 1872, the state became decidedly Democratic, and continued so for years. The famous deadlock of 1890, when Governor Bulkeley held over, was due to a conflict be- tween a Democratic Senate and a Republican House over the question of the recount of votes for governor. This deadlock aroused so much feeling that an amendment to the state con- stitution was adopted, declaring election to state offices by plurality of votes.
SIGILLO
VE1721TIN NOS
In matters of greater. consequence which Concern the
TRANSTV
e
Comon A
Good
General Council
(halenby all to
tranfact bufinilles .cr
sowhich concern all
conceive vnd
mont fvitable
SOIT.
favor to Tvle &d. mont fare for relief of the whole.
CONNECTIC
AL . Y
Thomas Hoker
FINO105
TICENSIS
ASN3d
4
Seals of Connecticut and Hooker's Declaration
This collection of seals, with Hooker's concise statement of the reason for the migration from Massachusetts to Connecticut, is the central panel in the floor in Memorial Hall in the Con- necticut State Library. The lower seal at the left is the English seal used during colonial days; that at the right of this was in use, 1711-1784. The upper right-hand seal came into use in 1662, and disappeared in 1787, when Andros was governor. That at the upper left was made in 1784, and the Constitution of 1818, declared that it should not be altered. It is now in use.
INOH
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CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED IN THE EARLY DAYS
H OWEVER important we may consider a clear view of the settlement, government, and courts of Connecticut, the question how the people lived appeals to most of us more intimately. The story is an interesting one, because of the vigor of the actors and the variety and strenuousness of the surroundings. It is a story of resolute men and women making their way into a stern situation, and with good sense, ingenuity, steady nerves, and unconquerable resolution carrying their task through. The Puritans, unable to re- form the church at home, and unwilling longer to brave the hostility of William Laud, who wielded the despotic power of the star-chamber, came to America to build after their own ideas a state, in which Christian institutions should exist in their simplest forms. None, save the Pilgrims at Plymouth, had renounced the Church of England, or sepa- rated from its communion, and only one boat-load of these came to Connecticut, faring so badly at Windsor, that their neighbors at Plymouth preferred to bear the ills there, rather than to crowd in where they were not wanted. The settlers of Connecticut were members of a great religious and political party, in an age when every man's religion was a matter of political regulation. They were in the reforming party in church and state, earnest, determined, practical men, with a keen sense of the presence of God and of the value of their theory of civil government. Though humble
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before God, they proposed to follow their convictions with- out fear or favor. They were plain, shrewd, straightfor- ward people, who usually knew what they wanted to do, and went at once to the point. Even their burial service suggests their dread of ceremony, for Lechford says of the customs about 1640: "Nothing is read, or any funeral sermon made, but all the neighborhood; or a good com- pany of them, come together by tolling bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and stand by while buried." Their seriousness made it hard for them to enjoy certain jokes as appears from a record of 1648, as follows: "The Court adjudgeth Peter Bussaker for his filthy and profane expressions (namely, that he hoped to meete some of the members of the church in hell ere long, and he did not but question that he should) to be committed to prison, there to be kept in safe custody, till the sermon, and then to stand the time thereof in the pillory, and after the sermon to be severely whipped."
There is a type of mind which cannot think of Puritan- ism save as "mere acrid defiance, and sanctimonious sectarianism, nor of the Puritans save as a band of ignorant and half crazy zealots." A calmer and clearer view of them leads us to see that they were, as Bradford said, "muskeeto proof," and that they were also men with a passion for God and the kingdom of heaven which often gave to their devo- tion to righteousness a seriousness which easily became sternness; a devotion like that of Cromwell, a keen convic- tion of the sovereignty of God as the absolute and invincible authority over all. They believed that things are right or wrong because they are made so by the fiats of their
infinite Ruler and King. That they were not depressed by this conception, and did not become weak and dreamy, is due to the fact that with their practical, Teutonic ambi- tion for trade and enterprise they had too much else to do, and while they were idealists, they were too busy to become morbid, and had too much common sense to brood. The
How the People Lived in the Early Days 103
fashion of speaking of them as joyless and hopeless, of dwelling in gloom and severity upon the dismal and the dis- agreeable, is appropriate for a mind soured as was that of Samuel Peters, but read the quaint humor of that sturdy age. Notice how readily the writers of that day passed into rhyme. Husbands and wives loved each other as tenderly as now, though not every woman could express her affection for her husband as gracefully as Margaret Win- throp. "Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work," this, as Lowell says, is the formula which sums up the teaching of the founders of New England. Our account of Puritan character were incomplete without reference to the Blue Laws, described at length in the preceding chapter, and to the distorted portraiture Samuel Peters made of the Con- necticut Puritans, who he said "out-pop'd the Pope, out- king'd the King and out-bishop'd the Bishops."
A more cheerful view of the seventeenth century in Connecticut is found in the daily life of the Puritans. There was much of warfare in it; whether their axes bit their way into the forest, or the night wind brought the howl of the wolf-a sound dreaded by the bravest-there was little time for reverie. Governor Leete, while chief magistrate of the colony, kept a country store for the convenience of his neighbors at Guilford, and his sons were taught to toil in the field. Governor Treat was as well skilled in the faculty of ploughing a cornfield, or mowing a field of grass, as in fighting for the colony or defending the charter, and his father, Richard Treat, one of the first men in the colony, daily crossed the Connecticut in a boat and helped break up the stiff sward of Glastonbury. Winthrop endured severe hardships going from place to place to serve as magistrate, mediating between contending parties, pro- curing and defending land titles, and fulfilling the office of physician. Industry, frugality, thrift, and honest work were wrought into the foundations of the commonwealth.
The earliest houses of logs soon gave way to frame
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houses, or even to stone, as in the case of a house built in 1640, in Guilford, by the Rev. Henry Whitfield, its solid and massive walls still celebrating the fame of one of the founders of Guilford .~ An occasional style in early times was the old plank frame dwellings, whose sides were com- monly of two-inch plank, spiked perpendicularly to the heavy framework, and either clapboarded or shingled on the outside. There was little studding used on the inside, and even the partitions were often of inch lumber carried from floor to cross-beams, with a paneled base. In the central part of the house was a chimney with many flues, being about twelve feet square in the foundations, and sometimes containing a small room on the first floor. The typical house of the first period was of two stories, with two rooms in each story, and the large chimney between. On one side of the chimney was the stairway leading to the second story. The cellar usually extended under only a part of the house. The frame was of oak, and the walls were not sheathed, but the space between the studs was often filled in with clay mixed with hay. The exterior was covered with wide clapboards, and the hand-rived shingles on the roof would last one hundred years; those on the roof of the Farmington meeting-house lasted one hundred and thirty-five years. The interior was ceiled, or sometimes left unfinished. Across the center of each room from wall to chimney ran an immense beam parallel with the front of the house. This beam was called the summer or the summer-tree, and was either boxed in or left as the axe hewed it. In many of the houses, the second story overhung the first, and was over- hung by the attic. The overhanging was produced in this way: the corner oaken posts were placed with the larger part at the top, and, just below the second story, a part of the thickness was hewn away, leaving a scroll-like ornament called a corbel, and the second story projecting over the first about four inches, with sometimes a pendant at the corner. As wealth and family increased, such a two-story
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How the People Lived in the Early Days 105
house was enlarged by extending the rear roof to the level of the first story, giving a place for three rooms behind the original two rooms, with a loft above. The middle room of these three was the kitchen with its capacious fireplace, and later on a brick oven in the chimney, in which number- less pies were baked. One of the other rooms was a pantry or buttery, and the third a bedroom. Such a house was called a lean-to, or in some places a salt-box house from its resemblance to the salt-box hanging in the chimney corner. It is said that this form of roof was adopted to avoid an extra tax.
Not far from the time that the lean-to house was intro- duced the gambrel roof came into fashion-so named be- cause of its fancied resemblance to the hind leg of a horse. After a time, the builders began to put in two chimneys and have an entry run through the middle of the house, though many conservatives clung to the older style, often the lean-to was given up, and instead a shed was built. Houses were usually large, as lumber was plenty and children apt to be numerous. Fireplaces were commonly large. The Shipman House in South Glastonbury contains a fireplace nine feet and five inches in length, four and a half feet high, three feet deep, and two brick ovens. Often there was a porch in front, with a chamber over it. That of Thomas Hooker, had a porch, and the chamber over it was the preacher's study. The early houses were often built of wood put up cob-house fashion, or having posts at the corners with small branches of trees between, and clay mixed with hay. These chimneys were lined with clay, and were inspected often by the chimney-viewers. Brick chimneys were in the houses of the wealthy, but catted chimneys, as those we have just described were called, were common. In Hartford, it was voted in 1640, that "every householder shall provide a sufficient ladder standing at his houseside, reaching to the ridge of his house, or within two feet, by his chimney." Chimney-viewers were to examine the chimneys every six
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weeks in winter and every quarter in summer. It was also ordered in 1640, that "Jo Gening shall sweep all chimneys, and have 6d for brick and 3d for clay."
Later, there was a change in the style of building houses, and the house of Colonel Joseph Pitkin, built in 1726, in East Hartford is a good illustration of the substantial homes before the Revolution. It was built after the old scribe method by which every stud or piece of timber was marked or scribed for the particular place it was to occupy. The sills were of oak, forty-one feet long, eight by ten inches. The building had oak posts nine by nine inches at the bot- tom and ten by fifteen inches at the top, being mortised about half-way up to receive the cross-beams of white oak, eight by twelve inches. The beams were thirty feet long and carried the weight of the second floor without any studding to support them. The interior finish was heavy paneling of native yellow and white pine. The main plates were of white oak forty-one feet long and seven inches square, which were securely framed into the posts. The king rafters were of white oak, five by six inches and twenty-two feet long. Some of the boards were twenty-six inches wide, and there were five large fireplaces. Several of the sleeping rooms had beds the posts of which were mortised into the floor and extended to the ceiling, supporting a framework from which draped a heavy curtain. The house was studded with three-by-four oak studs, mortised into the sills and plates, to which were nailed the sheathing boards, the edges of the sheathing being beveled so as to make a tight joint, and then reinforced by an inner sheathing upon which the laths were nailed to receive the inner finish of plaster. Paper was in use before the Revolution, and in the room in the Webb House in Wethersfield in which Washington rested, the paper was imported from England, and is rich and heavy. Nails, hinges, and latches were hammered out on the anvil.
Coming now to the food of the people, we start with the
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How the People Lived in the Early Days 107
breakfast of the farmers, which often consisted of a soup made of salt meat and beans, seasoned with herbs,-a dish called bean-porridge. Dinner was the substantial meal, and was served at noon; a large Indian meal pudding, with an appropriate sauce, was often the first course, and was so filling that the boiled beef or pork which followed was attacked less ravenously,-a prudent expedient, as meat was not always plentiful, though those living near river and Sound could easily obtain fish, and at certain seasons game was abundant. The waters teemed with fish, and both salmon and shad were caught in great numbers, and salted for home and foreign use. It was an occasional custom of apprentices, in binding themselves to their masters, to stipulate that salmon should not be served oftener than twice a week; and at times shad were so plenty and cheap, that-it was considered disreputable for any but "poor folks to eat shad." In all but the most wealthy families, food was cooked in the apartment where it was eaten, at the large fireplace, and a trammel in the chimney, by means of its hook, which could be moved up or down, held the kettle at the right distance above the fire. At one end of the fireplace there came in time an oven, and there were also the gridiron, a long-handled frying-pan, and a spit for roasting before the fire. At the end of the room were pewter platters, porringers, and basins, also a brass ladle, skimmer, colander, and warming-pan. A brew-house was a necessity, and beer as often on the table as bread. Seeds of vegetables were imported, and while potatoes were regarded with suspicion for many years-making their entry into the menu at about 1720, and used sparingly-turnips were much enjoyed, as were peas, beans, and pumpkins. Succotash, name and dish borrowed from the Indians, was soon popular in August and September, when Indian corn was in the milk and beans were plenty. Hasty pudding,. consisting of boiled meal of corn or rye, and sweetened with molasses or maple syrup on the table, was a common food.
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Brown bread, "rye and injun," a mixture of two parts corn- meal and one part rye, was the bread of the majority of the people.
Very substantial food was served at supper. It was almost always cold, with an occasional variation of cakes of corn-meal, rye, or buckwheat. Samp and hominy were enjoyed by both Indians and English. Baked beans formed a nourishing food from early times and the favorite time for them was Saturday night. The regular dinner on Saturdays (not on Fridays, which would have savored of the papacy) was salted codfish. The dishes were of pewter, wood, and crockery, though there was not much of the last for many years. Chief Justice Ellsworth, who was born in Windsor in 1745, told his son that when he was a boy "all ate upon wooden trenchers, that manners were then so coarse and such as would now in many respects prove disgusting, that men in Windsor assembled in each other's houses and would drink out a barrel of cider in one night." Silver tankards, cups, and spoons were owned by the wealthy, but cups, platters, and pitchers were usually of pewter. At one house a broken pewter spoon was given to Washington, with which to eat bread and milk, he gave the maid two shillings to borrow a silver spoon, and she found one at the minister's.
Yankee cooks early achieved a skill that made them famous the world over, and before long they became experts with berries of all kinds, also with plums, nuts, grapes, and apples, which were put into all kinds of preserves, pickles, and syrups. There was little money in circulation, and little was needed, as most of the living came from forest, field, and river. One cone of sugar, weighing ten or fifteen pounds, with honey, molasses, and maple syrup would sweeten a family for a year. The art of making the syrup was learned from the Indians, who made it in large quantities.
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