An historic record and pictorial description of the town of Meriden, Connecticut and men who have made it, Part 5

Author: Gillespie, Charles Bancroft, 1865-1915; Curtis, George Munson
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Meriden, Conn. Journal publishing co.
Number of Pages: 1252

USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Meriden > An historic record and pictorial description of the town of Meriden, Connecticut and men who have made it > Part 5

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

1 Vol. II., pp. 278-279.

2 P. 27.

3 Vol. IV., p. 450.

4 Italics are not in records.

A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.

CHAPTER IV.

The origin of the name of Meriden has for years been a subject of more or less interest to many of the residents of this town, and several theories have been advanced as to the derivation of the word.

One hypothesis urged, and which seems to be accepted as satisfactory by many, is that the old tavern or inn situated in that part of the town which first bore the name was a place of so much carousing and merriment that the house soon be- came known as the "Merry-den," hence Meriden. This attempt to explain the name reminds one of the effort of the school boy to translate the first three words of Virgil's Aeneid, "Arma virumque cano," by the astounding rendering "Man with a dog in his arms." The boy was able to advance the argument that "Arma" means "arms," "virum" is a man, and "cano" is much like "canis," a dog. The advocates of this theory also show ignorance of the character of our first Con- necticut settlers. A very grave and austere people they were, and had they for one moment suspected that a house of entertainment of such repute was within their borders, they would have considered it as the headquarters of the Devil, and would have proceeded to demolish the house and drive the proprietor out of the colony.

Again, it has been suggested that the name is a corruption of the word "Mer- idian." Some time ago one of our local papers printed an extract from Bradley's Register for the year 1847, reading as follows :

"Its name (Meriden) is probably a corruption of the word Meridian, the town- ship being equidistant from the two semi-capitals, Hartford and New Haven- from Hartford seventeen miles and from New Haven seventeen miles."

That meridian means "equidistant" is probably news to all our readers. As every one knows, meridian is an astronomical or geographical term; but when used in a non-technical sense it indicates culmination. Moreover, the farm to which the name was first applied is not equidistant from Hartford and New Ha- ven; it is about sixteen miles from the former city and twenty miles from the latter. This farm, now sometimes called the Belcher Farm, was granted to Jon- athan Gilbert, of Hartford, Aug. 28, 1661, and a full account of it has been given in a previous chapter. See pages 15-16.

Just when the name of Meriden was applied to the locality, we do not know. The first recorded use of the name was in a deed of land to Edward Higbey, dated Oct. 1.4th, 1664, which has already been given in a previous chapter. It

EARLY HISTORY.

is a well known fact that almost every township name in New England was taken from England. Names of rivers, lakes, and mountains are frequently Indian in their origin; but the names of settlements seldom have but one derivation, and that is the mother country of the colonists. Cotton Mather says:

"For as there are few of our towns but what have their names sake in Eng- land, so the reason why most of our towns are called what they are is because the chief of the first inhabitants would thus bear up the names of the particular places there from whence they came."1

Danbury, Norwich, Hartford, Windsor, Wallingford, Milford, Stratford, Dur- ham, and a host of others are all familiar names on the map of England. Meri- den also appears on the map of England. In the "History of Wallingford, Mer- iden and Cheshire,"2 it is stated :

"There cannot be a shadow of a doubt but that Mr. Belcher gave the name, and that it was taken from Meriden, Warwickshire Co., England. In the parish church at Meriden in England are deposited the remains of the Belcher family for many generations. The resemblance of the valley in which our town is sit- uated, with the stone house or inn, with the town in England and other associa- tions doubtless suggested to him the propriety of giving the name to his tract."

Dr. Perkins, in his Historical Sketches, also suggests the same derivation. And, indeed, the inference was a natural one, and without any other facts to guide one it would be reasonable to conclude that the matter was settled and that Meri- den was surely called after the village of the same name in Warwickshire, England.

Unfortunately, however, the theory will not stand when a careful investiga- tion is made. In the first place, Mr. Belcher did not name the farm. At the time of the first recorded use of the name, viz. 1664, he was a boy, living in Cambridge, Mass., and it was not until 1670, at the age of 22, that he married Mr. Gilbert's daughter, Sarah, and not until 1682 or after the death of Mr. Gilbert did he ac- quire an interest in Meriden Farm. Moreover, the Belcher family in question did not come from Meriden in Warwickshire. The home of the family previous to emigration was in London and Danbury, Essex county.3

The writer has made a careful search in the parish register of Meriden in Warwickshire and not a name can be found in it similar to that of any one of our early settlers and there is not a Belcher buried in the parish church; and there is no topographical similarity between our Meriden and the one in Warwickshire for the village over the water lies in a flat valley about half a mile wide with gently sloping hills around. It is embraced in the territory of the forest of Arden, fa- mous as one of the haunts of Robin Hood.

1 Magnalia, Ed. 1820, Vol. I., p. 83.

2 pp. 159-160.

3 N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., Vol. XXVII., pp. 239-240.

A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.

A few years ago, while reading a book called "England, Picturesque and De- criptive," by Joel Cook, the following singular paragraph was noticed. The Parish Church Register of Dorking, Surrey Co., among other curious entries, records the christening in 1562 of a child, whose fate is stated in these words :

"Who, scoffing at thunder, standing under a beech was stroke to death, his clothes stinking with a sulphurous stench, being about the age of twenty years or thereabouts, at Mereden House."

Naturally, it was at once concluded that there must be a locality near Dorking called "Mereden." A resort to the maps failed to show such a place, but later a careful examination of a section of the ordinance survey of Surrey Co., Eng- land, with the aid of a strong reading glass, revealed a place about three miles south of Dorking, called Meriden Farm. The coincidence was striking. Here was the very name by which Mr. Gilbert's farm was known two hundred and . thirty years ago. This English farm is in the civil parish of Dorking, and lies in a valley of the same name; it is not a village. It was some time before any definite information could be gained. A search through the pages of Manning & Bray's History of Surrey furnished the following meagre facts.

"In the Borough and Maner (sic) of Westcote is a vale called Mereden, com- mencing between Cold Harbour and Boar Hills, in which is a Farm of the same name belonging to Abbotts Hospital in Guildford and in a wood or coppice belong- ing to this Farm is a spring called Meg's Well, the water of which is of great beauty and uncommon coldness."

The writer, when in London a few years ago, easily persuaded himself that it was a duty that he owed to his native town to go down to Dorking and see what sort of a place Meriden Farm was. He had previously corresponded with a Mr. Alfred Mitchell, in whose charge was the care of this farm, and so on a beautiful day in spring, when the hawthorn hedges were bursting into leaf and the tender green of the English meadows was suffused with sunlight and bathed in a gentle haze, duty and inclination, assisted by the railway train, soon carried him over the twenty miles that separates Dorking and London, and placed him in the care of Mr. Mitchell. The farm is a part of the large estate of Mr. Robert Barclay, a wealthy London brewer, and Mr. Mitchell, his father and grandfather have been faithful stewards of the property of the Barclay family during nearly a hundred years ; and singularly enough his aunt, Mrs. Arrowsmith (since deceased) was an inmate of the Curtis Home in Meriden, Connecticut, and was born on Mr. Barclay's estate. This fact and his natural courtesy led Mr. Mitchell to do every- thing in his power to assist to a thorough acquaintance with Meriden Farm, and a tramp over the hills and through the vale to Cold Harbor just below, gave one a fair knowledge of the lay of the land and the appearance of the country. The topography is very similar to the valley in which lies our Meriden Farm, only it

EARLY HISTORY.

is on a smaller scale, and the hills are not so grand and rugged as Lamentation Mt. and Hanging Hills. This valley in England is called by many the most beauti- ful in Surrey Co. It lies between parallel ranges of hills running north and south, that on the west rising gradually to an elevation of nearly one thousand feet. From its summit can be had a view over a beautiful country extending to the sea twenty miles away. It is called Leith Hill. There are two stone cottages in the valley which is well wooded and now used as a game preserve. A mile to the south beyond Leith Hill lies the hamlet of Cold Harbor. Less than a mile to the north lies Wotton House, a fine old estate once the home of John Evelyn, the celebrated botanist and diarist of the reign of Charles II. Here he passed many years of his life and one of his favorite walks was through Meriden Farm to the top of Leith Hill. The estate is still in possession of the Evelyn family. Near the entrance to the vale as one comes from Dorking is a small elegant mansion once the property of Daniel Malthus, and here was born and lived Thomas Robert Malthus, the scientific expounder of the principals of population, and frequently called Population Malthus. In the woods on the side of the hill is a spring that is celebrated the country round on account of the great coldness of the water. It is called Meg's well, but this is a comparatively recent name as time is counted in England ; a century and a half ago it was one of the haunts of a witch-like creature and many curious legends are told of the woman until like Norna in Scott's Pirate the character of Meg is more mythical than real. The Vale of Meriden in Dorking cannot boast of a single historical event. During all the centuries it has rested in peaceful loveliness; for a long time the farm was in the possession of Abbott's Hospital in Guildford, not many miles away, an endow- ment gift from Archbishop Abbott, who founded the institution. But about five years ago it was bought by Mr. Barclay whose estate quite surrounded it. Dork- ing itself has had nearly as quiet an existence as the Farm of Meriden and we should hardly know of it were it not for the peculiar breed of poultry with five claws which originated here, and that Dickens chose it as the scene of some of the adventures of the immortal Weller family. Here was located the "Markis of Granby" where Mr. Weller, Sr., lived and smoked his pipe and practiced patience, while the "Shepherd" imbibed hot pineapple rum and water until Tony Weller could stand it no longer and the Rev. Stiggins was ignominously kicked out and ducked in the horse trough in front of the inn; and here the father imparted to Samivel the oracular information that "Vidth and Visdom alvays grows together." About three miles beyond Cold Harbor lies the parish of Ockley. The Rev. Henry Whitfield, who with his flock settled the town of Guilford, Conn., was from 1618 to 1638 rector of this parish. He was, of course, a clergyman of the Church of England at that time, but he had pronounced Puritan sympathies that finally in- duced him to leave the church and join the great Puritan migration across the

CENTURY OF MERIDEN.

ocean. During his ministry in Ockley his home was a place of refuge for non- conformists in their trials and tribulations. The Rev. John Davenport of New Haven, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Hartford, and others frequently found refuge in his rectory,1 and two of Mr. Whitfield's parishioners in Ockley came with him to Guilford, Conn., and many of his flock in this country were from Surrey Co., England. With the many striking resemblances between Meriden Farm, lying between Lamentation Mt. and Hanging Hills, and Meriden Farm in Surrey Co., England, does it take very much imagination to believe that some one of these men saw the likeness and gave the name to our farm? Both farms lie in pronounced valleys. In both cases the name was that of a farm and not of a town ; each valley has a spring of uncommon coldness ; each valley is screened by a lofty hill whence may be had a glimpse of the sea about twenty miles away. Another point of resemblance is that each has at the entrance to the valley a harbor. Ours is called Pilgrims' Harbor ; the one in Surrey Co. is called Cold Harbor. Now it is a singular fact that these names are interchangeable. They both mean the same thing. The Century Dictionary gives the definition of Cold Harbor as "a protection at a wayside for travelers who are benighted or benumbed with cold." The term is not an uncommon one in England. Now as to the origin of the name of our Pilgrim Harbor, one thing is absolutely sure and certain-it was not so called because the regicides or judges of King Charles I. found protection and shelter on the banks of our stream when pursued by the king's officers. The letter from John Davenport to Governor Winthrop dated 30th day of 8th month, 1660, and printed on page 37 of this book, proves this conclusively, for at that date the regicides had not left Boston and did not come to Connecticut until the following spring.2 Moreover it will be observed that the name of Pilgrims Har- bor was well known at the date of this letter. It was written to a man in Hart- ford by a New Haven man and there is no attempt to explain its location, so that the name must have been in use for some time. Dr. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College for many years, born 1727 and died 1795, was responsible either for the preservation or birth of this tradition3 and it is one of those stories that will never die no matter how often it is shown to be entirely unsupported by facts. Singularly enough Dr. Stiles' diary, lately published, gives a clue to the very fact that we are looking for. Under date May 7, 1793, he says "Rode to Meriden and loged at Capt. Webb's, aet 86, wife 82"; on the 8th follows, "Tra- dition at Meriden and about here (Hartford) Pilgrim's Harbor, so named from two men stopt here till they could make a float. After- wards Public built a shed for Pilgrims caught here by high Freshes.

1 Steiner's Hist. of Guilford, Conn., p. 15.

2 Palfrey's Hist. of New England, Vol. II., p. 499. or any other history treating of the regicides.

3 Stiles' Hist. of the Three Judges, p. 108.

EARLY HISTORY.

Mr. Meriam1 aet say 35 lives at the Bridge-intelligent-tells the common story -2 pilgrims-but nothg of Regicides-rather persons travellg fr. N. H. to Hart- fd." The next year (1794) Dr. Stiles' History of the Three Judges was pub- lished and so notwithstanding the information he had picked up in Meriden and Hartford, he started this story about the Regicides and Pilgrims Harbor Brook- a story that will always have perennial youth and like the brook will go on for- ever. Dr. Stiles tells the story in this way: "there is a tradition of their mak- ing a lodgment at Pilgrims Harbor, so called from them, being twenty miles from New Haven at a place since called Meriden, half way between New Haven and Hartford." The Rev. Mr. Perkins, in his Historical Sketches, repeats the story but Dr. Davis in his History of Wallingford shows that there can be no truth to the tradition. Now note the similarity of the meaning of Cold Harbor as given in the Century Dictionary and that of Pilgrims Harbor as found existing in Mer- iden over a hundred years ago and stated in Dr. Stiles' diary. They both mean a refuge for travelers by the wayside-not an inn or a tavern, but simply a shel- ter. There must have been other places of like character in Connecticut during those days of sparsely settled country, but to one only was the name of Pilgrims Harbor given. So is it not fair for the sake of argument to admit that the nam- ing of Pilgrims Harbor was, like the naming of Hartford or Windsor-a calling of localities by the old names of the mother country, and that the original form was Cold Harbor but that it was changed to Pilgrims Harbor to avoid confusion with Cold Spring only a couple of miles away ?

From a topographical point of view there are again striking coincidences. Cold Harbor, in Surrey Co., lies not far from the entrance to the vale in which is nestled Meriden Farm. Pilgrims Harbor here is not far from the entrance to the valley in which lies our Meriden Farm. Back of Cold Harbor in Surrey Co. to the northwest is an escarpment or steep hill very like the sudden rise to the north- west that one would observe standing at the corner of Colony and Main streets if the Meriden House and other buildings did not hide the view of the elevation crowned by Prospect and Mt. Pleasant streets and Washington Heights. Two or three miles to the west we see the heights of West Peak range; a mile or two to the west of Cold Harbor is the elevation known as Leith Hill. Besides these remarkable coincidences of names and topography we have learned that a num- ber of people in this colony had lived or visited near Cold Harbor and Meriden Farm in Surrey Co. To the names of Thomas Hooker, John Davenport and Henry Whitfield, we may perhaps add the name of Edward Higbee, whose Indian deed, printed on pages 17-18 of this book, contains the first recorded use of the word Meriden in this colony. The records of the parish church in Dorking show

1 Benjamin Merriam, son of Benjamin Merriam, who died in 1807, and owned the Meriden House corner and east side of Colony street also. His house stood on site of the Meriden House.

A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.

that in 1602 a John Higbey was living near that town. Savage, in his genealogi- cal dictionary, suggests that Edward Higbee was the son of a John Higbee. Of course this does not prove that the two men named John Higbee were one and the same person, but in this first recorded use of the word, Meriden, it is spelled Mer- ideen, which denotes an intimate acquaintance with the correct and early spell- ing, as will be seen later, at a time when others in the colony were writing it Mer- idin, Meridan and even Meridon. It is very likely that this Indian deed was drawn up by Higbee. Mr. Gilbert in his will dated 1676, written by himself, wrote the word Meridin-that is he spelled it as he thought it was pronounced. Mr. Gilbert was not from Surrey Co. in all probability. With so many individuals in this colony who were acquainted with this particular locality in Surrey Co. it is not difficult to believe that the resemblance to be seen in Connecticut on the highway between Hartford and New Haven was sooner or later recognized.

Necessarily the question is incapable of an absolute solution. But the coin- cidences in names and topography is remarkable and one may surely be par- doned for believing or trying to believe that our Meriden Farm took its name from Meriden Farm, Surrey Co., England. It is a curious fact that the country folk who live around our English namesake, display the same tendency to explain the origin of the name by its evident sound as their Yankee cousins in Connecticut. The story goes that 200 or 300 years ago there was a cave in the vicinity where smugglers were in the habit of resorting with their ill gotten goods to make a fair division and to celebrate their exploits by a carousal and hilarious merry- making-hence Merry-den. When Mr. Barclay bought the farm he acquired the old deeds that went with the property and the earliest one was dated in the twelfth century, over seven hundred years ago and the form of the name was then Mer- rideen.

And now it is time to ask the question. What does 'Meriden' mean? What is the derivation of the word? Will etymology teach us its primitive signification ?

The naming of towns and localities in England was an entirely different pro- cess from that employed in New England. Here, the forefathers borrowed the names of Indians, or else they endeavored to quiet the longings of their home- sick hearts by using the words made familiar to them in the Mother Country. In England, however, names of places were not borrowed; they were indigenous, and grew up with the people, so to speak. In every case a name embodies some local peculiarity of physical aspect, or perpetuates some historical fact. DeQuincy says1 "they are not inventions of any active faculty, but were passive depositions from a real impression upon the mind." Dean Trench has written of words as "fossil poetry" and "fossil history," and the comparison is fitting. Almost every town name in England illustrates this simile ; thus, Boston, in Lincolnshire, was

1 Essay on Style.

EARLY HISTORY.

anciently "Botulfeston," or "Botulphs town," preserving the fact that a monastery was built by him in 654, around which a town grew up ; Oxford was "Oxenford," and was just what the name implies ; Windsor, centuries ago was "Windelsora," from early English "Windel," to wind and "ora," a shore,-that is, a winding shore, referring to the course of the Thames at that point; Rochester was ages ago "Hrofe," a man's name, and "ceaster," a fortified place,-i. e., "Hrofeceaster"; Wallingford, one of the most ancient towns in England, on the Thames a little below Oxford, was by the Britons called "Guallhen," that is "Old Fort ;" the Sax- ons added "ford" to it on account of the crossing of the Thames at that place, and it became "Guallhenforde," that is, the Crossing by the Old Fort ; but the curious lingual inclination of the Saxons to change a "g" of a Romance tongue to a "w" (as perhaps best illustrated in the French "Guillaume" which became "William" in the Saxon mouth), corrupted the word to "Wallengaforde," which easily became the modern Wallingford.1 And the illustrations might be extended indefinitely.

The word "Meriden" is no exception to this general rule, and from it may be extracted a little fossil poetry. The prefix, Meri, Merri or Mere is undoubtedly a corruption of Merry or Merrie. The definition of "Merry" as used to-day is sportive, playful, or mirthful, but its early meaning was decidedly different. Per- haps the best illustration of the distinction will be found in the following examples :

In the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer (which is the same as the Book of Psalms in the Great Bible of Henry VIII., published about 1541), the second verse of the SIst Psalm reads as follows :

"Take the psalm, bring hither the tabret, the merry harp with the lute";

but in the Bible of 1611, commonly known as the King James Version, the same verse is as follows :

"Take a psalm and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltry." During the time between the two translations, the character of "merry" has changed and no longer means "pleasant."

Another example ; an early English song runs thus:

"Merry sung the monks within Ely That Cnute King rowed thereby ; Row Knights near the land And hear we these monks' song."

A Latin translation of this song made at about the same date renders "Merry" as "dulce," and the modern translation of "dulce" is unquestionably "sweetly."

In 1528 Sir Thomas More wrote his wife as follows:

"I pray you be with my children and your household merry in God." He un- doubtedly wished her to understand him as bidding her be cheerful. No one

1 Camden's Britannia, Gibson's edition, 1695, p. 140.

A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.

would for an instant think he wished her to be sportive or gay or mirthful in God.

It is difficult to realize to how great an extent our language has changed dur- ing the last four or five centuries. Had a man of the time of Chaucer been asked to describe a sweet and amiable girl, he would doubtless have spoken of her as a "Merry Wench." What self-respecting young maid of to-day would submit to such a classification? Illustrations might be added indefinitely, but enough have been employed to demonstrate that the early meaning of "Merry" or "Merrie" was cheerful, sweet or pleasant.

The suffix "den" is very common in Surrey, and, indeed, in all parts of Eng- land. Not far from the Vale of Meriden are Oakdeane, Morden and Cotmanden. A beautiful country seat near Dorking was called, in the time of John Evelyn, Dip- den, but the present proprietor has revived the ancient form of the name, and it is now Deepdene. The place is appropriately named, for it is surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills. This suffix "den" was anciently dene, or dean, and was the early English term for valley, or vale.

With the information we now have, what does Meriden mean? "Meri" pleas- ant, "den" vale or valley ; that is, Pleasant Valley.

There were, or are, several places of this same name in England. In the time of Edward I., i. e. the 13th century, there was a village in Shropshire called "Meryden."1 Camden, in his "Britannia" written in the 16th century, mentions a village called "Merival," north of Coventry. The same book speaks of "Meri- field" as a "delightful meadow." There is to-day a "Merrivale" in Devonshire. Sir Wm. Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, states that Meriden, near Coventry, is derived from Mire-dene, meaning a muddy valley. Even that form would not prove his definition correct, for one of the early forms of "merrie" was "mirie" or "myrie." We know, however, that etymology in the 17th century was anything but a science, and we find that long before his book was written the place was recorded as "Meryden," and every one who has visited the place describes it as a pleasant valley.2 Human nature is always the same, and we still find evidences of this desire to describe one's residence as attractive. Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and many other states, each has its Pleasant Valley which may be found on the map. Did we still use the primitive language of our remote forefathers, these places would all be Meridens or Merivals. We have learned that "Meriden is the loveliest vale in Surrey," and Surrey is one of the fairest of all the counties of England, full of picturesque hills and dales. Have we not, then, extracted the fossil poetry from "Meriden," and may we not safely conclude that it means Pleasant Valley ?

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An historic record and pictorial description of the town of Meriden, Connecticut and men who have made it, Part 5

Author: Gillespie, Charles Bancroft, 1865-1915; Curtis, George Munson Publication date: 1906 Publisher: Meriden, Conn. Journal publishing co. Number of Pages: 1252

Author: Gillespie, Charles Bancroft, 1865-1915; Curtis, George Munson
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Meriden, Conn. Journal publishing co.
Number of Pages: 1252