A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume I, Part 2

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

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Thompson Hill then had also among its residents the proprietor and operator of the rising factories in the river valley below, at the site of the present Grosvenordales, and some retired gentlemen of means. That happily was before the days of absent proprietor- ship. It had a very popular tavern and enjoyed a large trade. It possessed a private academy which for many years as the Parker-Rawson School was very popular and ex- tensively patronized, even from without the state. The principal, Prof. Henry Parker, was an exceedingly able and successful teacher, and the manager, the Rev. Alanson Rawson, was a competent executive. Although the latter had only one arm, he was able with it to wield the rod and at emergency to control the most turbulent youths. The Hon. Charles E. Searls, formerly secretary of state of Connecticut, for a long time and still public prose- cutor of the county, and at present one of the leading lawyers of Eastern Connecticut and the principal citizen of the town, is one of the last young men whom Professor Parker prepared for college. It used to be said in Thompson that young Searls was so well pre- pared that he passed the best entrance examination of all his class at Yale.

The people generally of Thompson in those early years were exceedingly broad and liberal-minded. That attribute was well demonstrated by the fact that during the Revo- lutionary war period the land within the town limits which still belonged to the heir of Robert Thompson, the original proprietor, was not confiscated, although he was a non- resident Englishman and therefore an enemy. In 1778 the Connecticut legislature passed an act providing for the confiscation of lands within the state belonging to English sub- jects. That law, however, provided that the confiscation could be had only through a pro- ceeding taken by the selectmen in the local county court, whereas in some other states, as in New York, the corresponding statute was self-executing, at least as to a considerable list of named individuals. The heir of Robert Thompson still owned a considerable part of the original Thompson grant of 2,000 acres of land within the then parish, now town, of Thompson. He was a non-resident English subject, never in America, and therefore legally an enemy, and without doubt liable to that confiscation act. Nevertheless, while a single individual did attempt to institute the requisite proceedings, it was so unpopular that it was not prosecuted and the land was not confiscated. Indeed, when in 1785 the town came to be incorporated, the people had it named Thompson after the original proprietor, who had been a noted friend of the colonies and the president of the Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, although a small minority wanted it named Prince- town instead. And yet the people of that locality were all patriots. There was not among them a single pronounced Tory. Possibly the minister, the Rev. Mr. Russell, came the near- est to being one, as he continued perilously long to pray for the health of the king and the royal family, until he squared himself with the people by preaching a very patriotic sermon to the local militia companies of the Eleventh regiment when they mustered for their march to New York, in September, 1776, to aid Washington in the Westchester county campaign. Perhaps, however, the good man simply thought that the king was acting so badly that he stood in special need of prayer. The Thompson family soon after the war (Revolutionary)

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

sold all of the land to Thaddeus and Daniel Larned, uncles of Miss Larned, who in turn shortly sold it in parcels to different purchasers, of whom the writer's paternal grandfather was one. It is interesting to note that there is not an acre of land in Thompson, the title of which comes through confiscation, which fact is in marked contrast to the New York territory, where the writer has spent his manhood life.

In short, there could then have been found in all New England no locality more favor- able for the development of an educated, cultured, energetic, and independent personality; and Miss Larned made the most of her environment and became, at least for that period, its best individual product.

In physical appearance she was of less than medium height, slender and erect in form, and very alert in movement. Her features were small, delicate, and animated. She was uniformly of good health and, except for failing sight, retained all her faculties unimpaired till very near her end. She was a most entertaining conversationalist, possessed of the rare and attractive faculty of making one feel that she was really interested in him and his affairs. Endowed with all the proverbial inquisitiveness of the New England nature, she yet managed to prosecute her inquiries with such consideration that she soon learned one's entire history without giving any offense, and escaped the reputation of being a gossip. It is likely that no other person ever knew or heard as much about the people of Thompson as she did. She was intensely loyal and patriotic, a strong Abolitionist and Temperance advocate. If she were living now she would undoubtedly stand firmly for the Eighteenth Amendment and even for the Volstead act and its strict enforcement. The writer, how- ever, recalls that the Thompson Temperance sentiment, which was strong during his boy- hood, excepted from its prohibited list of intoxicants cider, even of the "hard" variety, known locally as "old man's cider." Perhaps Miss Larned would even now make the same reservation, as she was generally very loyal to local custom and tradition.

All through her early life there were in Thompson several surviving Revolutionary patriots. Her father, having been born in the most critical year of the Revolutionary war, learned in his youth the songs of that period and used to sing them in his home circle; . among them one which voiced the aspirations of the patriots in this refrain,-

"This we loudly sing- A Church without a Bishop, A State without a King."

And another with these words, referring to the expedition against Quebec in which many Connecticut men participated,-

"We are all marching to Quebec, The drums they are a-beating. America will gain the day, The British are retreating."

Hence it may well be said that she 'was reared to the music of the Revolution.

No one is absolutely perfect; and with all her admirable qualities she was somewhat wanting in tact. She would under no circumstances compromise the truth and was incapable of even a "white lie." This trait was strikingly illustrated by her address at the dedica- tion of the Tourtelotte Memorial High School which the late Dr. Francis Jacob Tourte- lotte and his wife, the late Harriet Arnold Tourtelotte, gave to the town of Thompson and endowed at an expense of upwards of half a million of dollars,-the only considerable bene- faction that town ever received. Both Dr. and Mrs. Tourtelotte were of Thompson rearing and ancestry. Miss Larned in her address mentioned by name the persons of Thompson birth who had become distinguished but among them named no Tourtelotte or Arnold, which was the maiden name of Mrs. Tourtelotte. Almost any other person under the circum- stances would have stretched his conscience far enough to have included in the list of Thomp- son "immortals" at least one Tourtelotte or one Arnold, especially as several of the former family, notably the late Col. John Tourtelotte, had had quite eminent careers, and Wil- liam S. Arnold, the father of Mrs. Tourtelotte, had been one of the most successful of Thompson 's business men.

She was strongly religious-was a member of the Thompson Congregational Church, having united with it in 1858, and was all her life a steady attendant upon its exercises, and for fully half a century taught in its Sunday school. The writer of of this article was

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

throughout his boyhood one of her scholars there and remembers most agreeably the kind- ness of her manner and the clarity and enthusiasm of her teachings. Her name stands as No. 1209 upon the roll of that ancient church, upon which the name of her paternal great-great- grandfather, William Larned, is No. 30.

Her education, so far as attendance at school is concerned, was, according to present day standards, quite limited, merely at the local district common school with some scanty sojourn at a neighboring academy. In this connection it should be remembered that in her early years there was substantially no opportunity for the higher education of women and, in fact, very little of it. Had Miss Larned been born twenty-five years later she would very likely have been the first Thompson graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, now College. Her education, however, did not cease with her attendance at school, but by her own per- sonal studies continued practically throughout her entire life. Her long association with her talented mother was in itself a liberal education; and she considered herself greatly indebted to her brother, the professor, for counsel as to her reading and for aid in forming her literary style by means of his criticisms and correction of her earlier writings. By the time she began the composition of her more important works, hereinafter reviewed, she had become possessed of a most admirable literary style,-clear, terse, compact, abounding in short words and short sentences. She had acquired the happy faculty of expressing much thought in few words. The reader of her books has no difficulty in understanding her mean- ing. She had gained, and afterwards maintained, in her writings what may be termed the "carrying quality," which makes the reader follow the article or chapter through without becoming tired.

After her fame had become established through the publication of her history, she often delivered addresses, mostly written and carefully prepared, principally before various state and county historical societies and at local anniversary celebrations. She was a pleasing platform speaker with clear, distinct enunciation, agreeable manner, quiet and perfectly composed,-always neatly and tastefully though plainly dressed, not too much after either the old or the very new styles. Her addresses both as to matter and manner held the respectful and interested attention of her audiences.

It is quite remarkable that nearly all of her literary work was done after she was forty years old. At an early age she began and continued throughout life a daily meteorological record from her own observations. That has been presented to, and is now in the posses- sion of, the Connecticut Historical Society. It is a model of accuracy, precision and terse- ness. At least the earlier part of it should be of great value because that must antedate most of the Federal government records of like character. Doubtless in her earlier years she must have done considerable writing because in the first article which has been pre- served her style appears to have been well established.

The first article which the writer hereof has been able to find published is one entitled "Three Days of Terror." That was published in Harper's Magazine of January, 1867 (Vol. 34, p. 225), and apparently was her first considerable production, and is as well of substantial historical interest and value. Therefore a liberal extract from it is given here. It states her experiences during three days' sojourn at the residence of her brother Joseph in New York City (197 East Nineteenth Street near First Avenue) during the famous Draft Riots of July 13-16, 1863. The following is a synopsis of the article.

Her mother and she arrived in the city on the morning of July 10th, evidently by the New London boat, then the usual medium of travel from Eastern Connecticut to New York City. They went at once to her brother's house, but found that he had just gone to Gettys-, burg with a friend to assist him in finding the body of his, the friend's, brother, who had been killed in the recent battle there, and also that her nephew, Joseph's son, a lad of seventeen years, was away as a volunteer in the Union Army. On the morning of the 13th she wrote this characteristic paragraph: "On the third morning of our sojourn, however, the sky brightened. The sun attempted to shine, and the papers brought good tidings. Lee was retreating, Meade pursuing, the Potomac rising, and our spirits rose with it."

That afternoon she had her first view of the riot, as her brother's residence was in one of the worst riot districts. She heard the first outcry about the mob, viz: "The mob! the mob! The Irish have risen to resist the draft!" She describes that view thus: "In a second my head was out the window, and I saw it with my own eyes. We were on a cross- street between First and Second avenues. First Avenue was crowded so far as we could see it with thousands of infuriated creatures, yelling, screaming and swearing in the most frantic manner; while crowds of women, equally ferocious, were leaning from every door

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

and window, swinging aprons and handkerchiefs, and cheering and urging them onward. The rush and roar grew every moment more terrific. Up came fresh hordes faster and more furious; bareheaded men, with red, swollen faces, brandishing sticks and clubs, or carrying heavy poles and beams; and boys, women and children hurrying on and joining with them in this mad chase up the avenue like a company of raging fiends. In the hurry and tumult it was impossible to distinguish individuals, but all seemed possessed alike with savage hate and fury. * * *. The armory on Twenty-second Street was broken open, sacked and fired, and the smoke and flames rolled up directly behind us."

The paragraph just quoted is a fine specimen of her power of graphic description. It portrays the scene so vividly that the reader seems to really behold it. Stone's "History of New York City" at page 543 states that on the afternoon of the 13th the mob de- stroyed "a depot of firearms at the corner of Second Avenue and Twenty-first Street." Evidently that was the same place referred to by Miss Larned as "the armory."

The article continues in substance thus: Late that afternoon her brother came home much bruised and covered with blood. He had been attacked by the rioters as he neared his house, beaten with fence pickets, and robbed of his watch and pocketbook, apparently simply because he wore a "little tri-colored badge of loyalty."

Of the night of the 14th she wrote: "The tramping, scolding, screaming, squalling and raving of the preceding night were repeated and intensified. Cats and dogs squalled and howled, bells rang incessantly, and mingled with all these sounds came at intervals the most mournful of all, the long-drawn, piercing wails of Irish women bemoaning their dead; " and that night the police station on Twenty-second Street, about in the rear of their house, was burned by the mob.

On the night of the 15th a small band of soldiers appeared marching along their street (East Nineteenth from First Avenue) and a fierce conflict between the mob and the soldiers raged before their very eyes, and the latter were beaten. Some soldiers soon ap- peared with a wounded officer and soldier, looking from side to side for shelter. The brother said to open the doors and they did so and admitted the men. The officer was a colonel, "severely wounded in the thigh by a slug made of a piece of lead pipe, producing a compound facture." Soon the mob came to the door and insisted upon entering to search for two soldiers whom they declared had entered there, although Miss Larned's sister- in-law denied that any were there. The brother escaped over the roofs. Miss Larned and her mother took the wounded soldier to their room on the upper floor, and the colonel was taken by the surgeon and others downstairs to the cellar. The mob found the men in the cellar, seized the surgeon, beat him severely, and were about to kill the colonel when he asked for a priest, upon which they inquired, "What, are you a Catholic?" When he answered "yes,"' they stopped, and then one of the party, a young man, declared that he knew the colonel, that he used to go to school with him. They then, having found the two men, seemed satisfied and did not search the house further.

Some time about midnight a considerable body of soldiers appeared in front of the house with the brother. They took the colonel from the cellar, the wounded soldier from the upper floor, and the women, and marched away to the central police station. Miss Larned went in a light summer dress and thin slippers, and in fact went home the next day without going back to get her clothing. She pays a great compliment to the appear- ance of the police at the station. "Three days' experience of anarchy had made us feel the blessedness of lawful restraint, and surely no body of men ever looked so beautiful as these executives of law and government. Such fresh, radiant, energetic, clear-headed and strong-hearted leaders looked able to conquer all the rioters in the land."

At half past two in the morning they were taken to the St. Nicholas hotel, and at four, hearing loud cheers in the street, looked out and saw the glorious "Seventh" marshaled before them. They had just returned from Pennsylvania. "And so at three o'clock on Thursday afternoon, just three days from our first glimpse of the rioters, we shook the dust of New York from our slippers, and, trunkless and bonnetless, sped up North River."

In an attempt to verify her narrative, the writer recently examined in the New York Public Library the files of the New York Herald for those dates, and found in the issue of Thursday, July 16, 1863, on page 5, a brief account of the fight substantially as follows: On or about 11 p. m. the evening before there was a fierce and bloody encounter between the soldiers and the mob in East Nineteenth Street between First and Second avenues. The military force consisted of three companies of soldiers and two howitzers under command of Colonel Winslow of the Fifth Duryea Zouaves, Colonel Jordan and Major Robinson.

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

The soldiers no sooner appeared than they were assailed on all sides by stones, brickbats and shots from revolvers, the men firing from the housetops and the women from the rear and windows. The soldiers thereupon opened fire with their muskets and howitzers with grape. The fight lasted from twenty to thirty minutes and the casualties among the people were heavy. The soldiers were beaten and had to retreat into Second Avenue. Colonel Jordan was severely wounded; a captain, a lieutenant, and fifteen to twenty soldiers were killed and several others wounded. Evidently that was one of the most severe engagements of the entire affair.

Miss Larned's modesty is evidenced by the fact that she never told the writer about this incident in her life. He learned of it only after her death and from one of her rela- tives. The writer, having been in his early 'teens during the Civil war period and of course immensely interested in it, would have been delighted to hear of the incident from her own lips. The article was published in the magazine under the name of Ellen "Leonard" as the author.

One may readily imagine what must have been the feelings of this maiden lady in early middle life, who had spent all her previous days in the peaceful little New England hamlet of Thompson Hill, when she found herself in the midst of that scene of turmoil, riot, warfare, and bloodshed. Certainly it is that she kept her head, maintained her courage, and acted throughout it in a manner worthy of her ancestry. She evidently was resolved to save the life of the wounded soldier whom Chance had thrown into her hands, even if the effort to do so cost her own life.

Her greatest work was the "History of Windham County," consisting of two vol- umes, of which the first was published in 1874 and the second in 1880, each containing about 600 pages. The late President Garfield said that it was the best local history ever written. It was one of the earliest of such American works. Its creation was a matter of prodigious labor upon her part. It was based chiefly upon the original church and town records of the county. At that time practically none of them had been published, and she personally examined them all in the original. It is remarkable that she found those records so gen- erally extant, as they had been kept for generations in the houses of the successive town clerks and pastors, not in any safe, but usually in one of those old-time "secretaries," which are the pride of the present generation. Incidentally she collected also a mass of family- history materials in every part of the county, but in order to keep the history within rea- sonable compass had to largely forego the use of that. Had she incorporated them in her history the work might have been as voluminous even as Rhode's "History of the United States." We shall soon see this fact demonstrated through the publication by Mr. Clarence Winthrop Bowen of the history of the single town of Woodstock, in the preparation of which he is using like material of his own gathering in reference to that single town. Many people are awaiting that publication with most pleasurable anticipation.

She divided the work into ten parts or chronological periods, and as to each portrayed the settlement and development of the county and its then component parts throughout that period. Implicit reliance can safely be placed upon her statements of facts; and her conclusions thereon and inferences therefrom are those of sound sense and intelligent and fair reasoning. If the work is to be criticised at all it may be, as the writer hereof thinks, for a somewhat meager index, making it perhaps unnecessarily difficult to look up in it quickly a particular name or fact. It must be remembered that when Miss Larned wrote her history she had comparatively few models of the sort to guide her. All things con- sidered, it must be regarded as a work of very great excellence.

Her next important literary product was a book entitled "Historic Gleanings In Windham County, Connecticut," published in 1899, when she was in her seventy-fourth year. It was a sort of complement to her history, but of a lighter, more gossipy nature, based rather upon tradition than records. It is, indeed, for the general public a most readable book. It consists of nine separate essays. Of the first eight each treats of a different phase of the early life of the county. The last one, entitled "Japhet In Search of His Forefath- ers" is a semi-humorous sketch of the current and customary genealogical research. In it may be found an outline of her own methods in that kind of work, and the amateur genealogist will find that outline most helpful.

During the last twenty-five years of her life she did much genealogical research work, and came to be regarded throughout the county as a genealogical authority. Few of her writings of that sort have been preserved in any permanent form. She wrote a series of sixty-five articles under the title of "Thompson's First Families, " the "first" meaning

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

in respect to time, which were published serially in "The Monthly Record," a little maga- zine issued by the Thompson Congregational Church Society from December, 1895, to No- vember, 1900. All the numbers containing those articles may be found in the Thompson Public Library. Each article gives the history of some one named family of the early settlers of Thompson, being based in large measure upon the traditions of that family as given to her by some old surviving member of it, and only to a slight degree representing any independent, original record research made by her personally. She is therefore not to be understood as having personally vouched for the correctness of the earlier features of any such history, that is of the period before the family came to Thompson. No person of means, who is interested in Thompson to the extent that he wishes to do something sub- stantial for the town, could do any better than to republish those articles in book form. Each member of any of the families treated of in it would be delighted to have a copy of the book.

In addition to the publications above recited she wrote many articles, usually upon local historical topics, which were published in various newspapers during her latter years, namely, The Windham County Transcript, The Putnam Patriot, The Providence Journal, The Hartford Courant and The Boston Transcript. Indeed, she continued her writing until very near the end, when from failing sight she was obliged to desist. She performed it all alone, without the aid of any investigator, amanuensis, or secretary. The literary work which she thus performed was simply prodigious, and all of it that is extant seems to be of the same high excellence.

It is said that she was stimulated to write and publish the history by encouragement given her by the late Hon. Jeremiah Olney and the late Hon. William H. Chandler, then leading citizens of Thompson, and that the latter aided pecuniarily in the effort. As to the extent of the circulation of each of her two principal books, the writer is not exactly informed, but understands that neither was properly advertised, at least according to modern practice, and that therefore neither received the circulation to which it was entitled upon the merits.

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A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume I, Part 2

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