A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume I, Part 106

Author: Lincoln, Allen B
Publication date: 1920
Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke publ. co.
Number of Pages: 930

USA > Connecticut > Windham County > A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume I > Part 106

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The family moved to Willimantic at the time she was fifteen. Willimantic at that time consisted of a few houses, four stores and one bank, which was over

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a store. She saw the first train of cars that ever came to Willimantic. At the age of nineteen she was married to Elisha Phillips. They had five children, two dying while yet quite young. In 1900, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips celebrated their golden wedding anniversary at their home. Eight years later Mr. Phil- lips died, and since that time Mrs. Phillips has lived with her daughter in North Windham. When she was eighty-five years old she lost her eyesight in one eye, and the other had to be operated on. She was taken to the hospital and an operation was performed which was successful. A lady with a clear mind in a sound body and still is now eighty-nine years along life's journey.

Concerning old people in Hampton, Allen Jewett writes: "William Ashley is eighty-six and his wife eighty-five. I knew his grandfather and he now has a great-grandchild, so that six generations of that family have lived in Hampton."

In Plainfield in May last there were living, all over eighty-five, Mrs. Phillip Matthewson ; J. Homer Bliss, long connected with the Moosup Journal; Mrs. Jane Prior, mother of Judge John E. Prior; Mrs. Samantha Hall, Mrs. Phebe Robinson, Mrs. Phebe Moffit, Mrs. Caroline Kenyon (about ninety-five), Mrs. Maion died in Moosup last year at age 101.

In Scotland just now, there "do not seem to be as many old people as usual," writes Town Clerk John B. Bacon. "There are several between sev- enty and eighty, but I suppose they are not called old in these times. Charles M. Smith, father of the Willimantic produce dealer, William H. Smith, is eighty-two, and there is Jared Fuller, who was for several years a stage driver, and who now at eighty drives a jitney-auto every day between Scotland and Willimantic. Egbert Bass, a former resident, is living with his daughter, Mrs. Robert H. Fenton, in Willimantic, at age ninety-two."

Probably the most aged person in Thompson is William Segur, who lives near "Brandy Hill." He is an old soldier and is now considerably over ninety. Among those who lived to be over ninety and died within recent years were Andrew Mills, who lived on Thompson Hill, and the Ballard brothers, Deacon Ballard and his brother, Winthrop. The mother of State's Attorney Chas. E. Searls died in 1907 at eighty-seven. Mrs. Harriet Munyan, mother of Judge Fred A. Munyan, and Mrs. Jane A. Elliott, widow of Marvin Elliott, Mrs. Ann Knight, mother of Frank Knight, and Mrs. Nathan Chase, all over eighty-five, are living in Thompson.

So far as reported, James M. Keith is now the only person living in East- ford over eighty-five, and he was eighty-five May 15, 1920.

OCTOGENARIAN ACTIVITIES

By C. B. Montgomery

Our minds must be all part of one great invisible plan, aiding and pushing each other on, and from day to day as we grow older, I think all of us at times must realize this fact. Now for instance, just after I had completed a story of the D. A. R.'s 102d birthday gathering at the home of Sarah Bosworth Bradway up in Eastford, Editor Lincoln drives up to my door and asks me to write him something about old people. About the first person Mr. Lincoln meets after myself is my eighty-two-year-old father-in-law, Hiram Handy, who is still hale and hearty and loves to tell of his three years and a half experience in the Civil war. Yes, I know something about old people, for up to the first year of the world's great wicked war I kept in touch with every person over

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eighty years of age in this section, and the list I had was something wonderful. I have had experience with old people "write ups" in many places, but none went ahead of old Windham County, with the single exception of our near neighbor Tolland. While I am near Mrs. Bradway, it may be well to mention that that same Eastford gave the county many other grand old people. One of the most widely known perhaps being Hon. Simeon A. Wheaton, who lived long past four score years. I attended my first democratic convention in 1880. Mr. Wheaton was Windham County Caucus Chairman, and from then until 1904, I never failed to grasp his hand at those gatherings. But the whole county is full of "old folk," due in a great measure, I believe, to the solid (frugal, perhaps) food and open air life of their early days. Also, many who are old today can thank their forefathers for their solid frames and staunch constitution. The first year that Roosevelt ran for President, Ezra Mathewson, 101 years of age, and his neighbor, Benjamin Warner, 102, walked together two miles to vote for him up in old Woodstock Town. Yesterday I read of Jacob Pidge of Killingly, way past ninety, walking three miles to visit a neighbor. But one of the most interesting and at the same time impressive "old people stories" that I ever personally came in contact with was when agent at the little station in Packerville. Some years ago an old white-headed chap hopped off the train before it had fairly stopped and asked me if his Uncle Henry was around there. "Uncle Henry," said I, "don't you mean nephew?" but just then Henry Truesdell, ninety years of age, came around the corner to meet his nephew, eighty-two or eighty-four, I forget which. I asked them what reason they could give for old age resting so lightly upon their shoulders, and both answered in unison, "temperance all our lives." I picked up my paper and in less than a quarter of an hour was aroused by a voice singing. Going out I met another old chap ninety-two and put the same question to him. His reply was: "good whisky." One of the grandest old men I ever knew was Rev. Asa A. Robinson, many years Baptist pastor at Packerville. He died in my arms about eighty-eight years old, and a brother Luther, two years older, was then on the road selling elevators. Mr. Robinson, after he was eighty-two years old, immersed in the mill pond twenty-six people, in the dead of the winter, and refused the aid of his son, also a preacher.

Mrs. Cloe Ensworth Truesdell, eighty-five, widow of Henry Truesdell men- tioned above, one of God's most noble women, still lives in the old Ensworth house in Packerville, helpless in a measure, but happy and contented as many a young girl. She has no fears for the beyond. Some years ago I was trying to talk with Mr. Wilcox, the Central Village tailor, who stuck to his job until almost ninety years of age. He mentioned several past eighty that he thought would have lived to a good old age if they had taken care of themselves, and the next man I met after leaving him was "Unele Cy" Arnold, age ninety-one, who was proud of the fact that he had voted the "dimocratie" ticket at every election for seventy years. One of my near neighbors, Mr. Charles Sweet, hale and hearty and a hard worker at seventy-six, called me in yesterday and proudly showed me some rugs and carpets made by his late mother, Audora Sweet of North Sterling, after she was ninety years old. He has refused one hundred dollars for one of the rugs. Up on Ekonk Hill resides one of the men best known in the county for an active life as a lumber man and republican politician and office holder, Hon. Avery A. Stanton. He is about eighty-two years of age. My own mother at eighty-one walks from one to two miles each

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day, and her mother passed away some years ago at eighty-eight, by a peculiar coincidence my wife's grandmother, Lydia Mathewson, was called away the same day at about the same age.

Canterbury has been full of grand old men and women, one of the most widely known, late Deacon Thomas G. Clark, cut up his own wood pile when near ninety years of age, and Caleb Tarbox, a neighbor not many miles away, also passed the ninety year milestone. John Rile of "Cork City," Plainfield, lived to be ninety-four years old; Pierce Finnessy, ninety-three; his wife, Mary Finnessy, ninety-eight; Horace Gallup, eighty-eight; Walter Palmer, eighty-four; Jonathan Gorton, ninety-four; and so on as fast as I can write they have come to my mind. People do grow old in Windham County, and always have. It is, in my estimation, due almost entirely, as I said before, to the start they had.

A short time ago I had to secure some affidavits in a complicated pension case, and the clearest statement (written without glasses) among nearly a dozen was from Miss Caroline Kenyon, age ninety-seven, of Moosup. Not many rods away from Miss Kenyon at that time resided Mrs. Maria Maine, who lived to celebrate her centennial birthday at the home of her son Thomas C. Maine, Esq.

The oldest lady in the town of Sterling is Miss Melinda Gallup, eighty-six years of age, a resident of Ekonk Hill. She is one of the noted Gallup family that were among the early settlers of the mother town, Voluntown. Not far from Miss Gallup resides Hon. Avery A. Stanton, eighty-three, a man known all over New England. He has been very successful in business, was one of the organizers of the republican party and always very active in that party's work. He held many offices in the town, county and state.

Mrs. Mary A. Johnson, eighty-four, widow of Hon. Robert Johnson, a former town officer and representative, lives near Oneco. She is hale and hearty and operates her own farm.

When the law allowing women to vote for school officers was passed some years ago, the first two women registered were Mrs. Phebe L. Montgomery and her daughter, Jeanette P. Weeks, of the Town of Plainfield. Mrs. Weeks resides today with her son Charles B. Montgomery in Oneco and is past eighty- one years of age. She was twenty years station agent and mail carrier at Packerville, never missed a train, never received a black mark for a mistake of any kind, and when seventy years of age went to Providence and passed a one hundred per cent examination on the railroad book of rules. She was a newspaper correspondent fifty years and for ten years wrote social items for the Connecticut editor of the New York Sunday World.

While science and modern improvements have greatly advanced us in every respect, the great undeniable fact still remains that the nearer to nature ways of our ancestors have much influence on the lives of all of us. Improper food, fast living, drug dosing and completely losing sight of the natural me- dicinal remedies God has planted all around us for our use, crowding seven days into six, and then going wild the seventh one, will in future generations leave its mark, and the historian who follows the one of today will have no trouble in writing the names of his neighbors who have lived out the three- score and ten years now given to man, to say nothing of eighty, ninety and one hundred and two. This may be only my opinion, but you who read it a half century hence can judge for yourselves how near right I am today.

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MOUNTAIN LAUREL* By Alfred Noyes (A Connecticut poet returns to his hills, singing)

I have been wandering in the lonely valleys, Where mountain laurel grows;

And, all among the rocks, and the tall dark pine trees, The foam of its young bloom flows,

In a riot of rose-white stars, all drenched with the dew-fall, And musical with the bee,

Let the fog-bound cities over their dead wreaths quarrel. Wild laurel for me !

Wild laurel-mountain laurel-

Bright as the breast of a cloud at break of day ! White-flowering laurel, wild mountain laurel,

Rose-dappled snowdrifts, warm with the honey of May ! On the happy hillsides, in the green valleys of Connecticut, Where the trout-streams go caroling to the sea,

I have laughed with the lovers of song, and heard them singing, Wild laurel for me !

Far, far away, is the throng that has never known beauty, Or looked upon unstained skies.

Could they think that my songs would scramble for withered bay-leaves In the streets where the brown fog lies ?

They never have seen their wings, then, beating westward, To the heights where song is free ;

To the hills where the laurel is drenched with the dawn's own colors. Wild laurel for me!

Wild laurel-mountain laurel-

Where Robert o' Lincoln sings in the dawn and the dew; White-flowering laurel, wild mountain laurel,

Where song springs fresh from the heart, and the heart is true; They have gathered the sheep to their fold; but where is the eagle ? They have bridled their steeds, but when have they tamed the sea ? They have caged the wings; but never the heart of the singer. Wild laurel for me !

Wild laurel-mountain laurel -* O, mount again, wild wings to the stainless blue, White-flowering laurel, wild mountain laurel, And all the glory of song that the young heart knew. I have lived, I have loved, and sung in the happy valleys, Where the trout-streams go singing to the sea.

I have met the lovers of song in the sunset, bringing Wild laurel for me !

-Yale Review, April, 1920.

* Alfred Noyes, the English poet and professor at Princeton University since 1914, dedicated this poem to Connecticut friends in Litchfield County. The mountain laurel abounds in the woods of Windham County and many travel miles to see its glorious bloom in May-time .- Ed.

CHAPTER XXXII WINDHAM COUNTY VERSE

THERON BROWN, THE EPIC OF WINDHAM-" OBWEBETUCK"-LOUISE' CHANDLER MOULTON-JANE GAY FULLER-WILLIAM HENRY BURLEIGH, "SUGAR BROOK"- JOHN PHILO TROWBRIDGE-" THE KHAKI AND BLUE''-B. F. BROWN-JOSEPHINE ROBBINS-C. B. MONTGOMERY-LEVI ALLEN-EVERETT O. WOOD-ELIZABETH . JEWETT-MRS. C. H. N. THOMAS.

THE EPIC OF WINDHAM

Particular attention is called to "The Epic of Windham," which was written for the Bi-Centennial. Celebration of the Town of Windham by the Rev. Theron Brown, and read by him on that memorable occasion at Windham Center, June 8, 1892. In the hurry and bustle of that day, the merit of this poem was not fully realized. It was published in the "Memorial Volume" of the Bi-Cen- tennial, of which 500 copies were printed, but they are hard to find today, except in libraries.

REV. THERON BROWN

This "Epic of Windham" is a work of rare merit-a vivid interweaving of local history and tradition and legend and romance. The Town of Windham is peculiarly fortunate in such a possession so thoroughly and accurately and inspir- ingly recording its career. Many towns possess poems of local value, treating

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some historic incident or legend, but such a comprehensive work, done in such masterly manner, is unique. For these reasons and because so few are familiar with it, the entire poem is re-published in the present work. It is typical not only of the Town of Windham, but of the life and spirit of Windham County. It is worthy to take place as a local classic, to be treasured in our homes and taught in our schools. It will be read with interest and pleasure by future gen- erations, as an accurate portrayal of the life of the earlier days. It is worthy of an enduring place in all our minds and hearts ; and we should hold the talented author, too, in grateful remembrance.

Theron Brown was born in Willimantic April 29, 1832, the same year that the old Windham Bank was organized-a fact which he uses amusingly in the poem." He entered Yale with the class of 1856-since famous as the class of Chauncey Depew; Henry B. Brown and David J. Brewer, late justices of U. S. Supreme Court; Hon. Julius Gay, the Farmington banker, Hon. Andrew Jackson Bar- tholomew, a Southbridge lawyer, statesman and orator. Theron Brown himself was one of the most talented members of the class, being chosen class poet, and at every reunion of the class his services were in demand, both as poet and historian, as long as he lived. After leaving college, he entered the Hartford Theological Seminary and later the seminary at Newton, Mass., and pre- pared for the Baptist ministry; and served as pastor at South Framingham and Canton, Mass., during the years 1859-1870. He was brother of the late State Senator John A. Brown of Ashford, and occasionally visited in Willi- mantic and vicinity. In the autumn of 1862 he preached for a time on Will- ington Hill, where in 1859 he married Helen Mar Preston. Never of robust health, bronchial hemorrhages and failure of voice compelled him in 1870 to leave the pulpit. Always of literary talent and tastes, he had as early as 1860 become an occasional contributor to the Youth's Companion, and in 1875 became regular member of the editorial staff of that publication where he continued an honorable service of nearly forty years. His home was for many years at New- tonville, Mass., where he died.

He was author of various literary and religious publications, among which are "Banfill's Building Lot" and "Stories for Sunday" (Am. Tract Soc.) ; the "Red Shanty Boys" series (juvenile) (H. A. Sumner, Chicago) ; "The Blount Family" and "Walter Neal's Example" (D. Lothrop & Co., Boston); "Under the Mulberry Tree," a story of Windham County life, which will be found peculiarly interesting respecting community life of sixty or seventy years ago; also "Life Songs," a collection of poems (Lee & Shepard, Boston). He con- tributed historic poems for the Baptist Church centennial of Medfield, Mass .. (1876), semi-centennial of Hartford Theological Seminary (1883), and quarter- millennial of the City of Malden, Mass. (1899).

Some time after the Windham Bi-centennial I wrote to Mr. Brown urging him to tell me something about the writing of the Epie and he replied as follows:

"I know nothing worthy of note in my preparation of the 'Epie of Wind- ham' unless it was a curious psychological experience unlike any that ever hap- pened to me before or since. I had been writing on the historie part of the poem one evening, and naturally, took the theme to bed with me and dreamed of it. But next morning, on reading what I had written the day before, I was astonished to find it somebody else's work! The lines were in my handwriting, but by no reasoning could I make them seem mine. I had lost all recollection of them. After long puzzling, I concluded that the spirit of some ancient Nipmuck Vol. 1-55

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'prophet' had possessed me and controlled my pen, resenting my charge that the Indians had no literary use for their quills. If he ever appears again, and tells his name, I'll credit him with the lines I borrowed of him-I think they are the dozen or more beginning :

" 'But o'e r the fields by peaceful white men plowed'

"Replying to your queries, I am sorry I cannot remember precisely the sources from which I gathered the local names, but I am sure that an old pamph- let, 'The Battle of the Frogs,' was consulted and a later one by Mr. Wm. L. Weaver, and also Miss Ellen Larned's 'History of Windham County.' 'Sow- gonask,' the name of Joshua's squaw, I presume I found either in that history or in an old Indian deed copied by me many years ago from the Windham Town Records (Probate)."

Mr. Brown was an indefatigable literary worker and was a contributor to various magazines, including the Independent, the Overland, the Harpers' publications, etc.

I have met one adverse criticism of the Epic (which, perhaps, for a fair balancing I ought to mention) by a well known friend of Windham who says that he has "no patience" with the "magnifying of the frog story" which, as he thinks, has been done all out of proportion, and to the obscuring of the real nobility of Windham history. But it seems to me that this criticism loses sight of the real spirit of the poem. The author of the epic, as you will see by careful reading, gives the frog story its true setting, as due primarily to the "lying" of Parson Peters, and as ranking with the stories of "the harp that built a city in Greece" and of "Rome once saved by the cackle of geese," and "London's Lord Mayor was made by a cat." This criticism of the frog story reminds me of the similar perturbation of the Hartford Courant some years ago because of the persistence of stories of the "Connecticut Yankee" and the "wooden nutmeg;" the Courant seeming to fear that the fair reputation of "the land of steady habits" and the state of the "Charter Oak" and "the Constitution" may be obscured by the talk about a few tricky traders! But I suspect that the genuine character and historic influence, the industrial beginnings and develop- ment of Connecticut and of old Windham, town and county, will not be so easily obscured; while the delicious humor of the nutmeg and frog stories affords some- thing more satisfactory to human nature than an "expurgated edition" of our state and local history could provide! And wholly aside from its unequalled rendering of the frog story, Theron Brown's "Epic of Windham" is a wonderful portrayal of the community life of the earlier days.

THE EPIC OF WINDHAM

By Theron Brown

One day of the days divine, When the gods roamed everywhere, The horse of the sacred Nine Came down from his path in the air ; His lightning hoof fell first On the slope of Helicon green,

And out of that footprint burst The fountain of Hippocrene.

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And ever since then the thought Of the world the story has kept, And scholar and sage have sought The place where Pegasus stepped ; And the hole of the white hoof still O'erflows with the magic spring Where the poets drink their fill And the daughters of music sing.

Will the fountain's flow ever cease ? Will the old tale ever die out ? Its part in the fame of Greece Do any deny or doubt ? Do you call the dreamer a dolt Whose fancy and faith indorse The myth of Minerva's colt, The Muses' family horse ?

From the humblest ground that shows The dent of the flying steed Some slip of poetry grows, Some flower of immortal seed. Full many a hamlet's pride, Full many a city's seal Is the stamp where Pegasus tried The weight of his wizard heel.

One night, on the rising whiff Of the wind of a new renown, The wonderful hippogriff Came sailing o'er Windham town. Swift Hill just under his girth Rose, green, but he went beyond, And his hind foot struck the earth At the bottom of Follett's Pond.

The village woke at the whack. Had they heard a cannon explode ? Ten to one on the stallion's back That night Bellerophon rode. For the noise that followed him roared With a terrible warlike din As if all Waterloo poured From the hole that the horse broke in.

In the ballads early and late Still echoes the hullaballoo From seventeen fifty and eight To eighteen ninety and two.

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And the fame of that battle dark Will sing over Windham Green Till the last frog ceases to bark In the mud of her Hippocrene.

The maps of glory make room For the town with a tale to tell ; You are sure of a world-wide boom Where the Muses open a well. And to stir a song from its source In the dirt of the prosy trades One kick of the wingèd horse Is better than forty spades.

The silent ballads of the tawny tribes . Will never sound again. No warrior scribes Compiled on strip or scroll the tuneful spoil Of the wild ancients of our homestead soil. No word of savage minstrel points today To where their Tempes and Arcadias lay, Nor lives one leaf or line of lettered lore, By hand of feathered priest or sagamore, To tell a rescued region's paler sons The story of her earliest Marathons. Barbarian fate! Those first New England men Who plucked the eagles-never made a pen. Their gaudy helmets tossed the inkless quills ; Their arrows strewed them on these heedless hills, And left their speech, their thought, their life, their age, A glimmering legend on an empty page.

But o'er their fields by peaceful white men plowed Break the same wind and thunder from the cloud, Fall the same dew, and rain, and snow, and sleet, That wet, in strife or chase, their buskined feet, In the same tones through summer, winter, spring, The Willimantic and Shetucket sing, The same sun shines, the stars unsleeping glow Out of the dim colonial long ago, While here and there some local memory frames The forest music of the red men's names, And curious fancy, half unriddling, reads Their "totems" on our queer ancestral deeds.

Between the shadowy days of Nipmuck land New-conquered by the fierce Mohegan's hand, When Joshua Attawanhood, with his dog Hunted on Brick-top, angled in Natchaug, Or in his wigwam carved his powder horn While Sowgonask, his Podunk squaw, hoed corn-

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Between those days (whose echoes still ascend From Millard's Meadow to Hop River Bend), And the first planting of a Christian home, The ghosts of Andros and King Philip come To tell how meanly, by their marplot aid, This bi-centennial was ten years delayed. But we forgive them. Their ungracious part Assured and strengthened our historic start, And gave us a "first-settler" to engage The careless eyes that skip our title page.

Late in the seventeenth century's afternoon, Unlike the moon-man, who "came down too soon," Our Englishman from Norwich found his way Up where these meadows in the sunshine lay, And, forced to exile by some strange renown, Became the Cecrops of a Yankee town, Mysterious foreigner ! still silent waits The story of van-courier John Cates. A wandering star untraced by friends or foes, Men saw him set who knew not where he rose. Romantic fancy, hovering where he died, Ranked him "lieutenant," called him "regicide," Marked him red-handed from the Cromwell wars, Pious and pitiless, and at our doors In fable now the British bull-dog snarls For the stray Roundhead who helped kill King Charles. Pious he was, and Puritan, possessed Of worldly goods, a gentleman, a guest Of Pilgrim Land, a friend of high and low, A freeman-and he owned a slave, black Joe !

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A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume I, Part 106

Author: Lincoln, Allen B Publication date: 1920 Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke publ. co. Number of Pages: 930

Author: Lincoln, Allen B
Publication date: 1920
Publisher: Chicago : S. J. Clarke publ. co.
Number of Pages: 930