USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 3
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Just across the Quinnipiac used to be East Haven-"East Farms" of the old settlers. Until 1701, it was substantially a part of New Haven, though the overflow in this direction doubtless began very early in the history of the mother community. That which is still known as "Fair Haven East" was the beginning of the East Haven village. It was not until 1785 that it was incorporated as a separate town. As late as 1881 the Quinnipiac River was still the western boundary of East Haven. Then what are now known as Fair Haven East, Morris Cove and Lighthouse Point were set off to New Haven, and are now its Fourteenth and Fifteenth wards. With the growth of New Haven eastward and the growth of East Haven westward the break between the two has been almost filled, and East Ilaven has of late years become highly popular as a suburban residence place, so that the intimaey of relation between the two towns approaches that of unity.
It seems impossible to leave New Haven in any direction without finding oneself in Hamden. In the old days, also, Hamden was very much on the edges
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of New Haven. That part of it nearest the city received the overflow early, as the thrifty farmers, getting over their fear of the Indians, desired to live on or near their farms. But it was 1785 before Hamden, whose name was a modification of that of the English patriot, John Hampden, became incorporated as a town. Mount Carmel, which still has many characteristics distinguishing it from the larger community-or rather group of communities-to the south- west of it, was a distinct village some time before that. As it stands today, Hamden is made up, in addition to Mount Carmel, of the more or less distinet villages of Ilamden Plains, Highwood, Whitneyville and Centerville, but all of them have a real and increasing connection with the parent city.
The venturesome William Bradley was a pioneer in making North Haven a distinct community as early as 1640. His settlement was, however, considerably south of the North Haven which one reaches today after a ride of three-quarters of an hour in an electric car. It was, in fact, only barely beyond the boundaries of the present New Haven territory. The settlement began, like the others, with the farm expansion idea. North Haven was "North Farms" until about the time that East Haven, Woodbridge and Hamden became independent towns. There seems to have been a definite recognition of the growth of the family in 1785, and a naming of the children. It was then that North Haven was incorporated.
We have seen how Wallingford was settled in 1669 with more land than it really knew what to do with. Before that the Hartford overflow had brought some pioneers from the north to what was the upper section of the present Meriden. It appears that the boundary line between Hartford and New Haven counties was somewhat wavering at that time, and the part of Meriden settled by Jonathan Gilbert and Capt. Daniel Clark was then claimed by Hartford County. It was, however, only the upper part of the present Meriden. The southern and larger part was the "North Farms" of what was then greater Wallingford. Meriden, therefore, seems to have been settled from both diree- tions. But we may find considerable warrant in the fact that it was ultimately ineluded in New Haven County for concluding that the New Haven influence was much the greater. Meriden in recent years has grown to an individual importance that makes it independent of either New Haven or Hartford, but if we go back to beginnings we are justified in recognizing it as largely New Haven in its origin and affiliations.
Orange, "so near and yet so far" from New Haven, has also a divided origin. To a large extent it is still as divided as that origin. Some day, perhaps, there will be a city of Orange, but today there is an Orange and a West Ilaven (not to mention Savin Roek), as there was in the latter part of the seventeenth eentury a village of West Haven and a village of North Milford. The explana- tion of this is the very natural one that the former was settled as an overflow of farmers from New Haven, and the latter as an overflow of farmers from Milford. The first was wholly a New Haven migration, and the second was partly so. Orange and West Haven, especially the latter, have with New Haven
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today the increasing suburban residence connection, but preserve a distinet community individuality.
The two youngest towns in the eastern part of the county owe their apparent youth to belated incorporation. One finds no laek of evidenees of age in Madison. Some of the Henry Whitfield party may have gone, the very year they landed, on as far as Hammonassett, or what is locally known as "Scotland," which localities seem to have been settled earlier than what is ealled the eenter. East Guilford grew up contemporaneously with Guilford, both being, as has been noticed, under the motherly sponsorship of New Haven, and reckoned a part of the New Haven colony. Madison was incorporated and named in 1826.
North Branford had a similar experience as the upper part of Totoket, being an overflow from the southern part of the town, and only slightly younger. It was 1831, however, before it was recognized and incorporated as a town, though it did not then change its name.
III
We may be sure that John Davenport regarded the whole of the first and second purchases from the Indians as ineluded in his church-state. And with or without reason, he probably considered Guilford as in a way under his authority. In the early conception, then, practically all of the section of New Haven County which we have been considering was one community. All but the people of the Guilford group, and some of those, were from the New Haven settlement. There was much of common interest and something more than blood relationship, through the whole section. We should not, with our facility of communication, think twenty-five miles a great distance now, but some of us do. It is probable that from New Haven to East Guilford, though almost a day's journey on horseback over the bridle paths of 1645 or 1660, seemed less to them than it does to ns. There was frequent visiting between the communities, and even a trip to Saybrook, far beyond the limits of this territory, seemed worth much more than the trouble.
So the strength of the relationship between the mother and the daughter towns was not weakened as the years passed. New Haven was their market place, in several senses. The eustom of "going to New Haven to trade" is older than at first we think. The ambition of Saybrook at the other end to become a metropolis was short lived. New Haven's dream of greatness, for that matter, was long delaved in fulfillment, but for all that New Haven was the only place to get the things the people needed, and the place where they could dispose of what they had to sell. The natural relationships of origin became strengthened by others very real to a people who, with all their religions spirit and idealism, did not neglect to "look after the main ehanee."
New Haven came to have a still greater hold on the country around with the development of its second century. There the Collegiate school, after a checkered early career which had involved Branford, Killingworth, Saybrook and Milford-not to mention Wethersfield-settled definitely, in 1716, as Yale
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OLD VIEW OF COLLEGE STREET. FROM CHAPEL, SHOWING THE OLD STATE HOUSE, NEW HAVEN
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College in New Haven. And what able-minded youth in all those towns did not at some time cherish the hope of studying under Rector Williams or Clap, or the even then famous Tutor Jonathan Edwards, in that great, blue-painted, awe-inspiring building at the corner of Chapel and College streets? And in later years, as the "Brick Row" grew to a quadrangle, Woolsey, Porter and Dwight were names that called to the ambition of learning. The graduate list of Yale is an impressive proof of the hold which this institution has had from the first on the young men of the daughter towns of New Haven. Such ties as these do not diminish with the years.
But not all the boys of Branford and Guilford and Wallingford and Meriden who looked toward New Haven had their eyes on the Campus. New Haven did strike its commercial gait in good time, and golden opportunities grew.
A very absorbing tale could be told, if there were not so many other things to tell, of the fibre from the surrounding towns that came to the making of the mother community's upbuilding in business and commerce and industry. With the builders, of course, came the workers. New Haven was the land of oppor- tunity. It had, particularly after 1820, when it finally took its place as the leading city of Connectieut, the fascination of the metropolis. They came to make it from the daughter towns, and brought to it their best and most pro- gressive stuff. Fortunate is that eity whose foundations and early superstructure are thus made.
There came to be a reciprocal movement, in time. It so happens, as we shall see, that the coast towns of this section of New Haven County, with their strangely faseinating variety of shore and island and inlet, form an important summer playground, not only for Conneetieut, but for regions farther away. It was not New Haven, strangely enough, that first discovered the shore of East Haven, Branford, Guilford and Madison, but New Haven was not slow to take notice. Then followed a rivalry between the summer shore seekers of Water- bury, Hartford. New Haven, Buffalo, New York and points beyond to improve this playground. The story of today tells itself in an almost continuous chain of summer settlements along the coast from South End to Hammonassett, which bring to some of these towns a summer population greater in itself than the winter rating of the census. To this New Haven gives its full share, and it all helps to keep green the old time relationship.
Again. as the years have passed, the sons of the country towns have come back. Prosperous New Haven business men have reclaimed or repurchased the well nigh abandoned farms of their early days, and are using them for summer homes or are running them for practical profit. And their example is con- tagious. The "back to the land" movement is having its results here. The wealth of Woodbridge has already been mentioned. Others have discovered the beauty of North Branford, the fruit raising possibilities of Cheshire, the fer- tility of East Haven and Branford and Guilford and Madison. As Meriden has grown in size and wealth. it has become a eenter in itself, with its own suburban reach. But between all the towns there exists and grows a tie which is accounted for by something more substantial than county boundaries.
Vol. 1-2
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A MODERN HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN
Modern communication has eome in time to further strengthen the chain. The rude bridle paths to the north and the east in the colony's early days were not unused, but comparatively few were those who passed over them. The many ride by the modern trolley, or the still more modern motor car. Every town of the section is in easy reach of New Haven, and makes full use of this advan- tage. To New Haven's shore, to New Haven's and West Haven's ammsement resorts, to theaters, to concerts, athletie sports they come by thousands daily, almost the year around. Constantly, in these twentieth century days, there is a fulfillment of his dream of the large community that would have staggered- and not altogether pleased, we must fear-the ambitions but straight-laced John Davenport. But there are other features which he must reckon, if he passes judgment on the conditions of today, in compensation.
CHAPTER Ill THE DUAL DEVELOPMENT
THIE COMMON ORIGIN OF THE TOWN AND THE COLLEGE IN DAVENPORT'S PLAN-THE VICISSITUDES OF THE COLLEGIATE SCHOOL IN ITS FOUNDING AND EARLY DAYS, AND THIE NEW HAVEN-HARTFORD STRIFE OVER A SITE-THE PART OF ELIHU YALE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF YALE COLLEGE IN NEW HAVEN
I
There have been some New Haveners so narrow of vision as to resent the complete description of their town as the home of Yale University. They are not the ones who know that this was destined from the beginning. We have seen that it was a trinity which John Davenport conceived-the church, the state and the college. His ideal community was to combine the three. He died without realizing one of them, and the spirit of the New World was not to brook the dependent alliance of church and state. But the college was to be a part of the Davenport community, though not in his time. And the college was to grow, albeit with a far different superstructure, on the foundation which he laid.
In all this ambition, as imperfectly they realized it, the people of his flock were with Pastor Davenport from the first. They dutifully attended those all- day Sabbath services, and sat, shivering but sanctified, through their two-hour prayers and their two-hour sermons, each a day's work for a minister, and requiring an able bodied assistant to carry the service through. They submitted obediently to the discipline which Governor Eaton measured out to evil doers, his law being John Davenport's interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Rare were they who did not, through some seemingly natural weakness of the flesh, find themselves evil doers now and then. The governor's wife was not among the fortunate who escaped, but was publicly punished for some offense of which the details have not come down. Even in a little community of scaree 300 people there were many who failed to measure up to the stern standard of the Puritan- elaborated Mosaic law. A settler would be leaving the "state" without per- mission ; a storekeeper was charging more than a just profit on his goods (verily they had food dietators in those days) ; a watchman slept on his beat; a shoe- maker's leather was not up to standard; someone worked on the Sabbath. All these, and a multitude of others too many to mention here, were offenses pun- ishable in Magistrate Eaton's court, and were punished there. The wonder is
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that one pair of stocks sufficed to correct all the offenders worthy of their cor- rection. There they stood, a prominent feature in the scenery of the Market Place. Their sight may well have been a deterrent to the righteous who in- advertently sinned, but the wicked, then as now, passed on and were punished.
This is a glimpse of the rigors of the church-state. and perhaps it hints at the reason why that alliance did not long survive. But in the matter of education it was different. There was need of education. True, these settlers had been used to good schools in the Old World, but here were their children, with nothing but the church to depend upon in their new home. Not all of them had been so fortunate as John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton in aneient but classie Coventry, blessed by its free school. Both knew the imperative necessity of establishing, as soon as might be, a system of education in their ideal state. Davenport had brought the Ezekiel Cheever aforementioned with him when he came down from Boston, and he set him at work as soon as ever . the people got into better quarters than their dugouts on the banks of the West ('reek. It was a strange education, from our viewpoint, which Cheever threshed into the minds of the youth of the colony. He was long on Latin and strong on temper and birch rods. He was effective, but his reign. as we have seen, could not exist in the same domain with John Davenport.
He was succeeded by others. more subservient to the pastor. They had to follow a somewhat definite plan, and in it we can trace the beginnings of the compulsory school system as it exists today in New England. The old English school system was undemocratic, and depended for its educational equipment on private endowment, while attendanee was more or less voluntary. The plan which Davenport had in mind was conceived from the view he had of the Dutch school system. It was public: it was thoroughly democratic; it was compulsory. With "a schoolhouse in every valley" it was to become the effi- cient educational force which we have today.
But this was fundamental. Davenport had ambitions for higher education for his to-be-perfect community. Here he departed almost entirely. it seems. from the known lines, and proposed to establish a college to serve eertain purposes which he deemed highly essential. It was not to be an institution for all. It was not to provide what we should call a liberal education. We have come to term such schools as he had in mind "theologieal seminaries," not accepting for them the modern and broader term "schools of religion." It was, in short. John Davenport's purpose, as a means of perpetuating in un- diminished strength the peculiar religious seet which he represented. to es- tablish a college for the training of young men in the doctrines of the Calvinistie church, in order that they might become orthodox preachers of that faith in the churches of the colonies.
With the modern Yale before our view, we may scoff at the narrowness of that idea. We wonder not and we care little that it failed. But we should not forget that though it failed, though John Davenport left the seeming wreck of his church-state with his college plan even more in ruins than his state, he
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OLD YALE CAMPUS, LOOKING NORTHWARD, NEW HAVEN
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had planted seed which bore the fruit that now we see. There was to be a college, and in spite of everything, it was to be in New Haven.
II
We may recall that there was with the Davenport party one Edward Hopkins, who had married Anne Yale, sister of Elihu. When Theophilus Eaton had spied out the goodly land of Quinnipiac, but suspected that it was under the jurisdiction of the Hartford colony, he sent Edward Hopkins from Boston to Hartford to seeure a title to the site. But Hopkins did not return, and seems for some time to have neglected to write. He found Hartford very much to his liking, we may judge, for remaining there, he waxed wealthy. And Eaton went it alone without any title except what he got from the Indians. Davenport, however, supposed Hopkins to be friendly to New Haven, and so he proved to be. For when Davenport had written to him in London, whither he had returned with his wealth, in 1656 or 1657, asking him to help him financially with the collegiate projeet which he outlined, Hopkins's reply was to the effect that "if I understand that a college is begun and likely to be carried on, at New Haven, for the good of posterity, I shall give some encouragement thereto."
But Edward Hopkins's death occurred within a year after that time, and instead of his inclination to "give some eneonragement" to the Davenport college plan, his will, made previously, dictated the disposal of his Connecticut estate. It consisted, in the main, of £1,324 "and a negar." This was divided, for educational purposes, between "both grammar school and college." If the New Haven share had been realized at onee, only about £331 would have been available for the college, obviously meh too small a sum. Eventually, all that came to New Haven was used for the establishment of the Hopkins Grammar School, which was founded in 1660, and in existence continuously sinee.
Thus was the original Davenport college plan sidetracked, mainly for laek of funds. But thus was what was in a certain sense a harvest of the Davenport seed realized. It was ineffectual as an educational provision, for at least the first few years. For it was inadequately endowed, and the colony's educational tide was at a low ebb. Meanwhile, came the Reverend James Pierpont as the first pastor's sueeessor, and with him a new spirit into the plan to found a college in New Haven.
Pierpont was a Harvard graduate in the class of 1681. Davenport had left in 1668 to elose his disappointed days in Boston, and the seventeen years' in- terval between that and the coming of Pierpont was filled, first by the somewhat ineffectnal Reverend Nicholas Street. who had been Davenport's assistant, then hy several temporary preachers. Looking back on the failure of Davenport to achieve his ambition, one may regard without especial regret the faet that Pierpont was a man of different type. He was less forceful and obstinate; more winning and diplomatie. He may have been a less awesome preacher, but it is conceivable that "the common people heard him gladly" rather than
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through compulsion. And he caught, in large degree, the Davenport idea as to the establishment of a college in New IIaven.
It was characteristic of James Pierpont, no doubt, that he did not set about to force the issue at once. It was nearly fifteen years after the coming of James Pierpont that the founding of a college reached an approach to actual realization, but even then he did not insist that it be at New Haven or nowhere. Ile realized that there was to be not a little difficulty, in the divided mind of the board of trustees, in settling the college anywhere in the New Haven region. The New Haven state, as we recall, had some time before been merged in the Connecticut colony, and there was a decided opinion in Hartford that the college ought to come in that direction. As a representative of the coast trustees Pier- pont was a leader in the successful effort to establish the college in the southern part of the colony. Later he compromised on Saybrook. But all along, we have excellent reason to believe, he held firmly the thought that it was in due time to come to New Haven. He did not quite live (his death was in 1714) to see the snecess of his purpose, but he lived long enough to make sure that it was to be.
The events in the life of the Collegiate school outside of New Haven are interesting, and have also a constant bearing on its ultimate destination for the place of Davenport's original plan. The movers for the institution were min- isters, for though there may have been a modification of the strictness of pur- pose to make it a school for training in Calvinistic theology, the main thought was still to make it a training place for ministers. The church-and that meant the Congregational Church of the Connecticut sort-must have some source of supply. The New Haven colony was spreading ont. New churches were being established. The call, then as now, was for men. The main de- pendence up to this time had been Harvard. But the sort of theology Harvard was teaching was being suspected in Connecticut. And anyway, Connecticut wanted its own school.
There were strong men in the Connecticut churches of those days, several of whom were powers in the New Haven distriet. Others of them, as the pilots of the Collegiate school ship soon learned, and not entirely to their pleasure, were in the Hartford district. There was the able Timothy Woodbridge of Hartford. Gershom Bulkeley of Wethersfield, though now well advanced in years, was still influential. Samuel Mather of the First Church of Windsor admitted himself "little and feeble," but he was mighty in council, neverthe- less. And Noadiah Russell of Middletown, born in New Haven, a classmate at Harvard of James Pierpont, seems to have been counted by the Hartford ministers on their side but to have had natural leanings to New Haven. There was a goodly group of ministers in Fairfield County, but the ones who chiefly concern us are Israel Chauncy of Stratford and Joseph Webb of Fairfield, the latter to be in the first list of trustees of the college. Stephen Buckingham of Norwalk, a younger man, was not to figure in the case until later.
New London County then had nine settled ministers, and all of them were concerned in the college plans. In Stonington and Lyme were brothers, James
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and Moses Noyes, Harvard 1659. Of the others Thomas Buckingham of Say- brook, Abraham Pierson of Killingworth (New London County came over to meet New Haven County in those days) and Gurdon Saltonstall of New London, later to be the governor of the colony and to play an important part in the bringing of Yale to New Haven, are the ones who figure here. Besides, Samuel Andrew of Milford and Thomas Ruggles of Guilford, Samuel Street of Walling- ford and Joseph Moss of Derby were the chief participants in the events of those years when the college was a pilgrim and a stranger to New Haven. It is desirable to notice them by location, for that played an important part in the alignment for the coming struggle between the Hartford party and the New Haven party to get the college.
Up to 1701, Hartford had been the sole capital, but in that year the legisla- ture of the colony held its first meeting in New Haven under the plan of making that the joint capital. This was not a change to the advantage of the Hartford group, but they nevertheless resolved to seek from that legislature a charter for the college, hoping at the same time to secure an order for its location where they wanted it. But the members of the New Haven group were even better politicians. They did not purpose to trust the matter to the legislature. It was at James Pierpont's house in New Haven that they met and formed a plan to make their charter in advance of the sitting of the legislature, and submit it to that body for ratification, not for formation. They took counsel with certain eminent lawyers at Boston for the construction of a charter. But when they got the document which the distinguished Secretary Addington and Cap- tain Sewall had prepared for them, they read it and then, in the characteristic Connecticut manner, did as they pleased. It was too Harvard-like to suit them.
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