A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume I, Part 9

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

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The Universalist Church has not been used for years but at one time a pros- perous church organization existed in West Woodstock. The Litchfield house, half way up the Baptist hill, has an interesting history. Work on the house was started just as the Revolutionary war was commenced. The frame of huge oaken timbers, hewed out by native carpenters, had been erected and was ready to be boarded, when the battle of Lexington and the events which followed summoned the colonists and house builders to the country's defense, and for seven years the oak frame stood the prey of the sun and storms until they were warped and twisted greatly out of shape. After the close of the war the house was finished, but it still shows it is out of line on all corners.

The next house east of the "Clark House," now owned by Benjamin Shep- pard, was the early home of Robert Sherman; his son Henry became a success- ful business man in Minnesota. Isaac Corbin, the village shoe maker, lives in the next house. Next is the old "Bolles Tavern" and it was the scene of many festivities a hundred years ago; now owned by Prescott Hammond, son of Deacon Ezra Hammond, who spent his long life in West Woodstock Village. Jeremiah Church is deputy sheriff and lives across the street from Bolles Tavern.

On Alpin hill is the Cyprian Chandler place. He was a school teacher. The old Austin house on the east side of Alpin hill is an exact copy of the birthplace of John Adams in Quincy, Mass. Just south of Alpin hill lives Capt. Samuel Bicknell, a recent comer from Ashford. This house was built by Joshua Chan- dler about 1740, and is probably the oldest house in this locality. His son, Joshua Chandler, Jr., born in West Woodstock, March 1, 1728; graduated from Yale in 1747; became a lawyer and settled in New Haven; his house being on the site of the Tontine Hotel. He was a Tory during the Revolutionary war and when General Tryon invaded New Haven in July, 1779, his son William piloted the British into the city. Their stay was short and the Chandler family fled to Long Island and later reached Nova Scotia. In 1787 he and his son

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

William were shipwrecked near St. John, N. B., and they both perished mis- erably in the woods from exposure. I seldom pass his birthplace without think- ing "what might have been."

It is interesting to note here that the Rev. Harvey M. Lawson gave a very interesting and valuable account of the Chandler tragedy in the "Connecticut Magazine" in Vol. X, No. 2, 1906, in which he says :

"In England commissioners were appointed to adjust the claims of the loyalists. Colonel Chandler returned to Annapolis; on that fatal March of 1787, he, with his daughter, Elizabeth, and his son, William Chandler, took their books, papers and evidences of their colonial property, and sailed across the bay for St. John, New Brunswick, to meet the commissioners, to prove their titles and their losses, and to get their claims adjusted. But a violent snowstorm arose and the vessel, missing the harbor, was driven on the rocks at Musquash Point, within about nine miles of St. John. William Chandler, hoping to secure the boat, fastened a rope about his body and leaped into the wintry sea, to swim ashore. But just at that moment a heavy sea caused the vessel to give a lurch which caught him between the ship and the rocks and crushed his body. His agonized father and sister saw him sink and perislı before their eyes. This was on the 19th of March, 1787. Colonel Chandler and his daughter, with the others, finally got ashore. But their clothing was wet, it was bitterly cold and windy and there was no human habitation near. They traveled as far as his strength would allow, when, seeing that he could go no further, he begged his daughter to leave him and seek to save her own life. But she refused to leave him. He then climbed to a rocky eminence to get an outlook over the surrounding country, to see if there was any hope of help near. But being benumbed with cold, he fell from the rocks and soon died. His daughter with her companion, Mrs. Grant, wandered about in the woods for awhile longer but at last fell and perished on the 11th of March, 1787. Their bodies were found and carried to St. John, New Brunswick, where they were buried in the burying ground at the head of King Street. After seventy years the bodies were sought for and reinterred by descendants in the new and beautiful Rural Cemetery at St. John, where the original slabs bear the inscrip- tion given below.

"When the news of this sad tragedy reached Woodstock, Conn., birthplace of Joshua Chandler, it made a great impression on the surviving relatives and friends (among whom were my own ancestors) and it was handed down from generation to generation as the most thrilling tragedy of the Revolutionary drama.

"In the beautiful Rural Cemetery at St. John, New Brunswick, may be seen two old slate stone slabs placed against an embankment where the persons whom they commemorate were reinterred. On the first of these, under the 'death's head,' with rays and wings, is the following inscription :

"Here lyeth the Bodies of Col. JOSHUA CHANDLER, Aged 61 years And WILLIAM CHANDLER His Son Aged 29 years, who were Ship wrecked on their passage from Digby to St. John on the Night of the 9th day of March 1787 & perished in the Woods on the 11th of said Month."

The other slab gives a similar epitaph for Mrs. Sarah Grant and Miss Elizabeth Chandler.

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

"William Chandler, who was crushed on the rocks, was a classmate at Yale , of the patriot, Nathan Hale. Although they both came to a tragic end, yet how different is the reputation and fame which have been handed down. And yet, who shall say but that one may have been as conscientious as the other ? The same difference of opinion with consequent suffering and hardship to those who were in the minority has always occurred in each of the struggles through which our country has passed. We now honor the Union men of the South who clung to the national cause with great difficulty and loss between 1861 and 1865. Yet we also recognize the conscientiousness and noble character of Rob- ert E. Lee, although we feel that he chose the wrong side. But just now we praise the Panama secessionists as the real patriots and heroes.

All these things teach us that it is not best to be too cocksure that we are always right and everybody else wrong, but to recognize that human judgment is fallible. While we justly honor the Revolutionary heroes and feel proud if we can belong to the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution, would it not be well to found a new society, called "Descendants of the Loyalists" to do full credit to those honest, true, brave, cultured and self-sacrificing persons, like Joshua Chandler, who lost all in devotion to what they believed to be their duty ?"-EDITOR.

Mr. Hiscox here continues :

James Wilcox lived in the next house, this was the Joseph E. Dean place. Mr. Dean is engaged in business in New York City. Mr. Wilcox is a Civil war veteran, he and five brothers being in the war at the same time. Across the street was the home of Capt. Nathaniel Marcy. He was a Revolutionary soldier and commanded a company of men from Woodstock. He was grand- father of Rhoades Marcy, who delights to drive a spirited pair of horses. East of the Dean House is the highest point of land on my journey, being 900 feet above sea level, and is known as Greenland. We now pass near the base of Coartney Hill, the highest land in this portion of the town, being over one thousand feet above sea level.

Peter Benycume lives on the southern slope.

William Weaver lives in the large wood-colored house which was the home of Captain Holden, who constructed a hewed stone tomb for himself and family and the nine vaults are nearly all filled. I cross the old Connecticut path at the south end of the Weaver meadow. The square flat-roofed house which I reach next is the home of Otis Lyon who by frugality and industry has amassed a smug fortune on a small farm. Quasset is just to our right. Harding Wil liams and sons are running the twine mill he has recently built. This is the last one of an even dozen twine mills that were running in Woodstock a few years ago. The little Village of Quasset was the home of the Caulkins brothers, who ran a small woolen mill and later moved the old church which stood near the Quasset cemetery down to the village, put in a set of woolen machinery, and tried to run the two mills. But the experiment was not successful and was given up. The old church building is now used as a gristmill.

Over the next hill I catch a glimpse of Erastus Wells' mill pond, one of the prettiest scenes on the road. This was the home of his father, Henry Wells, who ran a saw and grist mill for many years. When the present house was built, it was built to face the river, as it was expected a road would be built

JEW

CONK"

ACADEMY AND COMMON, WOODSTOCK

MCCLELLAN ELMS, SOUTH WOODSTOCK

Set out in 1775 by Mrs. McClellan, grandmother of Gen. George B. Mcclellan.

The house is an old Woodstock tavern.

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

between the house and river, if it had been the route would have been much shorter and nearly a level grade, but people chose to climb the hills. William Russell is now running the grist mill, and Mr. Wells is giving bis attention to the sawmill. His cousin, Lewis J. Wells, occupies one of the old Wells home- steads and has long been a prominent man in the town, an efficient secretary of the Woodstock Fair Association and a prominent Granger. His brother, George W. Wells, went to Southbridge, Mass., when a boy. He was active in organiz- ing "The American Optical Company," and is now the efficient head of the largest optical company in the world. The site of the William Rhoades Arnold store is now occupied by Charles S. Sheldon, who has remodeled it to an up-to- date store.

The opposite corner was the home of William Rhoades Arnold. He was once engaged in manufacturing and the place was known as Arnoldtown. Across the road from the Arnold home is the pretty house of Lawyer Stoddard, son of Governor Stoddard of West Woodstock. The old Arnold Tavern is now occupied by the Southworth family, Rev. Aldin Southworth being a retired clergyman.

The pretty common at South Woodstock was given to the town by John Holmes, ancestor of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who lived where Oliver H. Perry now lives. By the way, I noticed Perry had a string of steers that he is train- ing, around the dooryard, and I noticed he had a peculiar smile on his face; later I heard that he took first prize on the string of steers, and I also heard later that one of his yoke of steers that led the procession were heifers and fooled the judges. No one enjoyed the joke more than Mr. Perry. Two or three of the old-time mills are scattered down the stream. N. G. Adams, who came to Woodstock from Norwich, has tried to run them with varied success. The three large elms on the north side of the common were set out by the wife of Gen. Samuel Mcclellan on the 19th of April, 1775, her husband having left for Boston in command of a troop of horse. The Mcclellan family have lived in Woodstock from that day to this. The town may thank Zenas Marcy for the other elms that are growing on the common. The powder house occupied the northeast corner of the common. John Chandler, the town's earlier sur- veyor, lived where Edward G. Warner now lives.

Samuel Phillips is running the store formerly owned by Samuel H. Fenner, who was representative and senator from Woodstock and auctioneer for all the towns around, and one of the fair officers for many years. Mr. Phillips is a Civil war veteran, having served in the navy. Lawyer Chandler's place is just south of the bridge and is a fine old colonial house now occupied by N. G. Adams. But why are so many people on the street ? Oh! It is entrance day for the Woodstock Fair and people are bringing in their exhibits.

Finley M. Fox and his daughter, Justinia, have just driven in with a big load of flowers. She always has a big floral display. Mr. Fox has a fine line of vegetables and 140 varieties of beans. He lives on the east shore of Rose- land Lake. Nathan E. Morse just drove in with a lot of vegetables and boxes of canned fruit for his wife, who always has an exhibit in that line. Their daughter Susie married Nathaniel Williams of Brooklyn.

Dr. George Austin Bowen is president of the society and will be sure to have his prize-winning Jerseys on exhibition. Harris May and his brother, Carlo, are driving in with loads of fruit and vegetables. Carlo is a well-known singing master; has taught singing school all around the country, all the boys

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

and girls for miles around have taken their first lessons in singing of Carlo May. Both Harris and Carlo and their sons will be in East Woodstock Band tomorrow to furnish music for the occasion.

William Lester is on hand with twenty-five varieties of pears. Judson Sanger and George Spaulding each have a wonderful collection of small fruit and vegetables. J. Marshall Perrin will exhibit pigs of all sizes. But I must go on.

WOODSTOCK FAIR GROUNDS

The next house is the old hotel which has had a varied and checkered career. Martin Paine lives at the foot of the hill on the farm that has been in the family for nearly two hundred years. Probably no other farm in town has been retained in the family as long as this. Across the street is the Potter place with the wonderful orchard that has recently produced 1600 barrels of apples. Albert Chandler is making a success as a general farmer on the flat just below.

At Harrisville is the old cotton mill of Captain Harris, so successfully run by him and his two sons, William and Edward, in connection with saw and grist mills.

John Lake and son, Thomas, for many years manufactured packing boxes here. I now cross the river and am in the Town of Putnam. I must go to John O. Fox, the lumber dealer, for some cement. He came from West Wood- stock to Putnam, where he had been engaged in the shoe manufactory business in its earliest stages. His father was Abel Fox who for many years ran the Fox Tavern in Providence, R. I., which stood where the Roger Williams Church now stands. He married Eliza, daughter of Edward Phillips, who lived near the Valley Schoolhouse. She had brothers, Asa, Waldo and Henry. Asa built his house on the old homestead, Henry building on the site of the old house. Mr. Fox was depot master in 1845 when the place was called Pomfretville depot.

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

I saw Gilbert W. Phillips just a moment on the street. He was a son of Wheeler of West Woodstock. He studied law with Governor Stoddard and later married his daughter.

I called at Perry and Brown's hardware store and traded with Charlie Brown. No one in Woodstock can call him anything but "Charlie." His father, Hiram N. Brown, had a tailor shop in West Woodstock village, occupy- ing the building used by Oscar Fisher for a law office. Mr. Fisher was judge of probate in Woodstock for many years. One of his daughters married George Perry and the other Carl Johnson, both of Putnam. Mr. Wagner also had a tailor shop in West Woodstock. I called at Manning and Leonard's dry goods store. Moses G. Leonard of the firm, with his brothers, Thomas and William, conducted a general store and manufactured shoes at Woodstock Valley before coming to Putnam. I saw Charles Bradway, Marshal Kenyon and Will Long- don. They all left Woodstock when hardly out of their teens and are success- ful business men.

Judson M. Lyon, the lawyer, was a school teacher in Woodstock, who made the boys and girls toe the mark. Charles N. Allen, a Woodstock boy, has been active in politics ever since coming to town. I stopped at Bosworth Brothers for a bag of grain; found Chauncey, Sanford, Orlo and Merrill, all attending to business as usual. They commenced manufacturing phosphate at Kenyon- ville in the early '60s. Their father was Sanford Bosworth. Their gentle- manly attitude and integrity in business have won them the success they so richly deserve. William R. Barber, who has made a success at the Putnam Foundry, was a Woodstock boy and a school teacher in his early life. His mother was the daughter of John Perry of Woodstock, his father coming to Woodstock just after the close of the Revolutionary war from Rehoboth, Mass.

James B. Tatem is driving up to Woodstock to exercise his horse around the track. He will enter the gentlemen's driving class tomorrow. Mr. Tatem is dairy commissioner for the State of Connecticut. He is a successful manu- facturer of handles. While in Woodstock he was representative and senator. He married Angie, daughter of Eli Kenyon. Eli was a brother of Joseph Kenyon, who owned the woolen mill at Woodstock Valley. He made a success of the manufacture of woolen goods, especially so in making army cloth.

Mr. Kenyon came from Huddersfield, England. A little colony of sixteen, all akin, came from the same place to Woodstock and most of them at one time or another worked in Kenyon's mill. Joseph had children, Albert, Winfield, and Josephine, who married Prescott Bartlett of Putnam. Albert and Winfield continued to run the mill after their father's death. The Hollingsworth brothers, Benjamin and Joseph, also English people, built and ran a one-set woolen mill just above the Kenyon mill. Joseph was killed by a runaway horse. Arthur H. Stetson passed me on the street; he was a carpenter in Woodstock before coming to Putnam. He and his father, John H. Stetson, built many houses in the Town of Woodstock.

My journey home seemed to be all the way up hill, the old horse was slow and I had time to think, and I wondered if all those Woodstock people I had seen in Putnam had stayed in Woodstock instead of leaving the grand old town and their early home and had put the same hustle into their lives in Woodstock if they would not have made the same success. And I wondered if it would not have made a difference to Putnam if they had not received this young blood from the hill town of Woodstock. Then is it any wonder that the hill towns

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

are losing in population, while nearby places are increasing rapidly ? While coming back over the hills of Woodstock, as I viewed the beautiful fields and woods and winding streams, here and there a farmhouse half hidden among the trees, just turning to a golden yellow, I again wondered if some day people would not appreciate such scenes.

"How the dim visions throng the soul When twilight broods upon thy waste The clouds of woe from o'er thee roll Thy glory seems replaced."

WOODSTOCK SCHOOLS

By Oliver A. Hiscox

Along educational lines Woodstock always stood in the front ranks, our public schools ever the pride of our town, our teachers representing the best families in town, and behind it all a strong determination to give to the boys and girls of Woodstock the very best.

The beginning of the last century found Woodstock divided into seventeen school districts, with a schoolhouse of the "little red" type, but before the middle of the century most of them gave way to their more pretentious successor. The "little red schoolhouses" of Woodstock were generally about eighteen feet square, with two windows on each of three sides, of desks there were none of the kind known to the scholars of today, but a wide plank of oak at a convenient height from the floor was placed against each of the three sides of the room, in front of which another plank arranged in the form of a bench for the schol- ars to sit on and he or she could face the wall and desk, for the plank had to serve the purpose of a desk, or by throwing his feet over the bench, face the center of the room and the master's table. The older scholars occupied the wall or desk seats.

The center of the room was occupied by benches for the smaller children, but no desks of any kind were provided for them. They had no place on which to rest a book, if they were fortunate enough to have one, for books were not plenty, and often two or three had to use the same book. But the teacher was resourceful and made good use of the blackboard and drilled into the minds of his scholars the "three R's" in all that it has meant to the succeeding generations.

The schoolmaster's chief qualification was often a physical one, and he had been hired to teach that particular school because he possessed the ability to stay in the schoolhouse and not be carried out by the big boys before the first week was through.

The local minister was generally the one to look after the schools to decide on the qualifications of teachers, "visit" the schools two or three times during each term. The older inhabitants tell of one such school visitor, the Rev. Alvin Underwood, a Woodstock boy, who was pastor of the Congregational Church at West Woodstock for nearly forty years following 1801, the date of his ordi- nation, who one day, on his rounds examining the schools, placed his hand on the head of a tow-headed boy and said in a stern voice, "Boy, do you know who made you ?" "Yes," said the boy, "God made me, but Mr. Ingalls made my boots," at the same time showing a pair of new cowhide copper-toed boots.

HISTORY OF WINDHAM COUNTY

The tow-headed boy was Oliver H. Perry, who spent most of his life in town and filled the office of judge of probate of this district for many years. "Mr. Ingalls" was Chester W. Ingalls, the village shoemaker. I wonder how many boys of today would be as proud of such boots as Mr. Ingalls made ?

The last one of the "little red schoolhouses" in town was in District No. 11, in the northwestern part of the town, which had been retained so long that it had become known as the "Red School House District," and when in 1875 the present schoolhouse was built and painted white like the other schoolhouses, the name "Red White" was the only one that seemed appropriate.

The opening of the Civil war drew from our schools some of our best teachers and older boys, as it did not hurt the conscience much to say eighteen years old when the Bible said sixteen, and many a Woodstock school boy, who expected to go to school still more, upon the fall of Fort Sumter, rushed to the enlisting office and enrolled his name for the defense of his country's flag. Ebenezer Bishop, Vernon T. Wetherel, Judson M. Lyon, Prescott Lyon and other Wood- stock teachers dropped their books for rifles.

It had been thought for years that it was not prudent or advisable for a woman to undertake the instruction of the scholars during the winter term, but now conditions were changed, and the big boys, who were so ready to "lick" the teacher or anyone else, found ample opportunity to show their pugnacity on southern fields. This period saw the entrance of the woman school teacher for the entire school year. Sarah Pond, the daughter of that staid, old Capt. Chauncy Pond, came over from Union and gave Woodstock a splendid example of that push and hustle that goes towards making a successful teacher. Ideas found lodgment and bore fruit in the efforts of some of her pupils who a few years afterward became some of the most successful teachers we have ever had. No scholars of the period will forget the recreation days when in the winter the whole school would go on a sleigh ride to visit some other school five or six miles distant, taking a dozen sleighs, more or less, to convey them. Two such sleigh rides remain permanently fixed in the memory of the writer. When bundled into sleighs, both great and small, we started out with the objective point "The Westford Glass Works," and what wonders greeted our youthful eyes ! There were caldrons of melted glass, kept at white heat by a fire supplied by wood just as fast as one man could throw it in, while dozens of men, the "Glass Blowers," would reach into the caldron with a long iron pipe and get a gob of melted glass on the end of it, stick it in a mould and blow in the other end for dear life, with the result that there had formed in the mould a bottle, which a Bottle-Boy took and placed in a big oven with thousands of others to be heated and tempered.

A visit to the willow shop was next in order to see the willow put on jugs and bottles by a dozen women, some working on the large ones that held five gallons, others on one-gallon jugs. Some of these jugs and bottles are still in use in many Windham County homes.

The school, on arriving at the glass works, was sure to be kindly received by Mr. Buck or Mr. Dean or perhaps by both, who were very courteous to everyone and spared no pains to make their self-invited guests have a good time. They always saw to it that some expert workman made some souvenirs which consisted of trumpets, horns, canes, posy holders, etc., which the glass blowers made and passed out to the boys and girls. I know now that it must have been a bother to have the plant invaded in that way, but not a word or

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A modern history of Windham county, Connecticut : a Windham county treasure book, Volume I, Part 9

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