USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > An historical address delivered at the opening of the village library of Farmington, Conn., September 30th, 1890 > Part 3
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lowing petition to that body, which states with much humor and with learned puns his view of the case. Though printed many times it is worthy of repetition.
"To the Honorable, the General Assembly at Hartford, the 18th of May 1725: The memorial of Joseph Hawley one of the House of Representatives humbly sheweth: Your memorialist, his father and grandfather and the whole church and people of Farm- ington have used to worship God by singing psalms to his praise in that mode called the Old Way. However, the other day Jona- than Smith and one Stanley got a book and pretended to sing more regularly and so made great disturbance in the worship of God ; for the people could not follow that mode of singing. At length it was moved to the church whether to admit the new way or no, who agreed to suspend it at least a year. Yet Deacon Hart the chorister one Sabbath day, in setting the Psalm, attempted to sing Bella tune, and your memorialist being used to the old way as aforesaid did not know bellum tune from pax tune, and supposed the Deacon had aimed at Cambridge short tune and set it wrong, whereupon your petitioner raised his voice in the said short tune and the people followed him, except the said Smith and Stanly and the few who sang aloud in Bella tune, and so there was an unhappy discord in the singing as there has often been since the new singers set up, and the blame was all imputed to your poor petitioner, and John Hooker, Esq., Assistant, sent for him and fined him the 19th of February last for breach of the Sabbath, and so your poor petitioner is laid under a heavy scandal and re- proach and rendered vile and profane for what he did in the fear of God and in the mode he had been well educated in and was then the settled manner of singing by the agreement of the church."
The memorial continues at great length, but if all the memorials written by Capt. Hawley during the contention and still preserved were printed, they would make quite a good-sized book.
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A single extract from the records of a Justice Court in Wethersfield shows how the youth of this town looked upon these proceedings.
" Asahel Strong of Farmington being presented . for that he did in company with several others in the night after the 13th day of November last past, it being the night next following the Sabbath or Lord's Day, at the place of parade or mustering in said Farmington, where Capt. Hawley usually trains his com- pany, make and set up something called a gallows with a strange picture or image fixed thereon with 'lybels' upon it &c., thereby notoriously defaming, reviling and traducing Capt. Hawley of Farmington, though in a clandestine manner under the name of vetge [effigy ?] or some such word, which actions or doings of his are contrary to the public peace of Our Sovereign Lord the King, his Crown and Dignity."
Two years later the Ecclesiastical Society, on the 17th of March, 1726-7, expressed their great dislike of the ." way of singing of Psalms which is recommended by the Reverend Ministers of Boston with other ministers to the number of twenty or thereabouts."
But the matter did not rest there. Some of the parties were disciplined by the church. A council of the neighboring divines was convened on the 18th of January, 1730-1, and memorials lengthy and spirited were presented. Finally the church, August 4, 1737, more than twelve years after the beginning of the trouble, decided the learned decision of the council too difficult for their understanding, and that they would drop the whole matter.
After the conclusion of this unhappy strife, the church had rest many years. The elders had tri- umphed, but the younger singers waited their time. On
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the 17th of December, 1750, the Ecclesiastical Society voted " that they would introduce Mr. Watts' Version of the Psalms to be sung on Sabbath days and other solemn meetings in the room of the version that hath been used in time past." This was a long step forward. True, some of the hymns describe the future state of the wicked in a manner too realistic to please our modern taste; and Dr. Watts himself in his last years desired to recall some of his verses, but having parted with the copyright was unable to prevent the publica- tion of what was no longer in accord with the more tender and loving feelings of his old age. Still very many of his hymns will be sung in our churches so long as devout worshipers shall admire whatever is majestic or reverential.
Twenty-three years more pass. The reform ad- vocated by the twenty divines half a century before has been preached in season and out of season from all the Congregational pulpits of New England. Tracts and sermons have been printed and scattered broadcast; singing schools have become the most popular amusement of the young. and finally the old men who stood up manfully for the old way have one by one ceased their earthly songs. The change was finally made without opposition, when, on the 12th of April, 1773, the Ecclesiastical Society " Voted that the people who have learned the rule of singing have liberty to sit near together in the same position as they sat this day at their singing meeting, and that they have liberty to assist in carrying on that part of divine worship."
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Of course a radical change of method did not at once go smoothly, and the next year a committee had to be appointed "to compromise the difference among the singers;" but differences among singers have been known since that time. The change was made by other towns of the state about the same time. In one of the churches of Windsor, in 1771; in Farmington and Simsbury in 1773: in Norfolk and Columbia in 1774: and in Harwinton in 1776. The change was not always made so easily as with us. In some churches the deacons persisted in lining out the psalm ; but the new singers having once got well under way with the first line, kept straight on with the rest of the psalm, carrying everything before them like a whirl- wind and leaving the deacon in hopeless despair. But not always. We read of one deacon who sat down in grim silence, biding his time, and when the young people had finished their musical antics, arose, and with trumpet tones which rang through the house, an-
nounced " Now let the people of the Lord sing." And they did it, though for the last time, in the good old way. The historian of Worcester, Mass., tells us that in 1779, after the town had voted to adopt the new way of singing, "after the hymn had been read by the minister, the aged and venerable Deacon Chamberlain, unwilling to desert the custom of his fathers, arose and read the first line according to his usual practice. The singers, prepared to carry the alteration into effect, proceeded without pausing at its conclusion. The white-haired officer of the church, with the full power of his voice, read on until the louder notes of the collected
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body overpowered him, and the deacon, deeply mortified, . seized his hat and retired from the meeting-house in tears." Nearer to us, in 1773, the History of Sims- bury tells of the employment of a teacher of music who, " after practicing some time, appeared with his scholars in church on a Sunday, and the minister having an- nounced the psalm, the choir, under their instructor's lead, started off with a tune much more lively than the congregation had been accustomed to hear. Upon which one of the Deacons, Brewster Higley, took his hat and left the house, exclaiming " Popery, Popery !"
And now that more elaborate music began to be sung, instruments were allowed to guide the voices. First the pitch pipe, and then that horror of the older Puritans, the great viol, followed by the little viol, the flute, the bassoon, the hautboy, the clarionette, and if there were any other instruments known among them, all were introduced to praise the Lord and triumph over their elders.
And now, breaking loose from all restraint, whether religious or esthetic, with their taste founded on the patriotic songs that helped to usher in the War of the Revolution, the young men sang with wild en- thusiasm the noisy fugue tunes of the day. William Billings was the pioneer of this style of music. Born in Boston, blind of one eye, and otherwise deformed in person, taking snuff by the handful from his open pocket, he pursued the trade of a tanner, and as he tended the mill for grinding bark, wrote out his intri- cate fugues on the wall with chalk, and sung them with a voice of thunder such as has been seldom be
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stowed on man. His first book " The New England Psalm Singer," was published in 1770, the title page being enlivened by a doggerel of his own composition, "O, praise the Lord with one consent, And in this grand design, Let Britain and the Colonies Unanimously join."
Somewhat later he kept a music store, his sign projecting out over the sidewalk painted BILLINGS' MUSIC in big letters on both sides. He was much annoyed by the ungodly youth of Boston, who amused themselves by tying cats together by their hind legs and hanging them on his sign. Their unearthly screams in connection with the words BILLINGS' MUSIC, expressing the popular opinion of his per- formances. Samuel Adams, the " Father of the Rev- olution," while he relied on such men as John Han- cock to influence the wealthier and more cultured classes of Boston, made good use of Billings and his music in stirring up the masses against the British rule. To the tune Chester, Billings set the words,-
" Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And slavery clank her galling chains ; " '
The 137th Psalm " By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion," he paraphrased as " By the rivers of Watertown we sat down and wept, when we remember thee, O Boston." " If I forget thee, O Boston " " Then let my tongue forget to move, And ever be confined. Let horrid jargon split the air, And rive my nerves asunder:
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Let hateful discord grate my ear, As terrible as thunder."
A wish which his own music amply fulfilled.
Billings' own description of his music is as follows :
" It has more than twenty times the power of the old slow tunes ; each part straining for mastery and victory, the audience entertained and delighted, their minds surpassingly agitated and extremely fluctuated, sometimes declaring for one part, and some- times another. Now the solemn bass demands their attention, - next, the manly tenor ; now, the lofty counter, - now, the volatile treble. Now here, -- now there,- now here again. O, ecstatic ! Rush on, ye sons of harmony !"
Time will fail to describe more at length this noisy music, with the best specimens of which you are already familiar, or how by slow degrees a better style took its place.
Let us not, however, leave the subject without some slight attempt to understand the position of the worthy men of old who clung so tenaciously to the barbarous methods of their day, during their long war with the so-called " regular singing " of their children. They sung in their rude way as their fathers and their fathers' fathers had before them. Their three or four tunes had become so sacred to them that we are told " the people put off their hats, as they would in prayer when they heard one sung, though not a word was uttered." Some believed the tunes inspired equally with the Psalms themselves, and that they had been taught by the very voice of Jehovah speaking face to face with man as with Moses on Sinai.
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They held singing to be an act of devotion com- manded by Him to whose ear their rude melodies and the more delicate tones of their children were alike as vanity except as they helped to bear upward the con- trite soul of the worshiper. And now to sit in silence, debarred the right to worship as they believed the Word of the Lord commanded, while their children in no devotional mood performed their pretty tunes, was indeed hard to bear.
Like the patriarchal Cotter of Burns,
" They chant their artless notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim; Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise, Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name : Or noble Elgin beets the heav'nward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays :
Compar'd with these, Italian thrills are tame ; The tickl'd ears no heart felt raptures raise ; Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise."
So sang our fathers in the sanctuary, generation after generation, until one by one they lay down to rest in the old burying-ground with an unfaltering trust that sometime, at the mighty blast of the arch- angel's trumpet, they should arise and stand in their flesh before God, singing with a now united voice, the glorious song of the redeemed.
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS IN FARMING- TON IN THE OLDEN TIME .*
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Ladies and Gentlemen of the Connecticut Historical Society :
I have the honor to read for your entertainment this evening, an account of the Schools and Schoolmasters of Farmington in the Olden Time, trusting that it may not be wholly devoid of interest to those of other ancestry and other environments.
Our knowledge of the life of this community for the first forty years is most meager, and it may interest the members of this Society who have occasion to consult ancient records, to consider once for all why this is so.
The first volume of our town meeting records has disappeared. Tradition says the early records were all burned. The Rev. William S. Porter, a very learned local antiquary, accepts the tra- dition, while the historian of the descendants of Stephen Hart draws a lurid picture of Indians dancing at midnight around a burning house, and watching with fiendish glee the cremation of a whole family. The town records, he says, were burned with the house. Let us examine a moment the foundations of this oft repeated story.
The house of Sergeant John Hart, son of Deacon Stephen, the immigrant, stood on the west side of the main street, nearly oppo- site the meeting-house, and was burned on the night of Saturday, December 15, 1666. The Rev. Samuel Danforth, pastor of the First Church in Roxbury, kept a diary, and under date of Febru- ary 11, 1666 (O. S.). entered "Tidings came to vs from Connecti- cot, how that on ye 15th of 10 in 66, Sergeant Heart ye son of Deacon Heart and his wife & six children, were all burnt in their House at Farmington, no man knowing how the fire was kindled, neither did any of ye neighbors see ye fire till it was past remedy. The church there had kept a Fast at this mans house 2 dayes
. A paper read before the Connecticut Historical Society, Jan. 5, 1892, by Julius Gay.
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before. One of his sons being at a farm, escaped this burning." The Rev. Simon Bradstreet of New London also kept a journal, and under date of December, 1666, entered, " There was a house burnt at Farmington in Connecticot jurisdiction. The man, his wife (who was with child) and six children were burnt in it. The Lord is to bee feared because of his judgments. 129 Psal. 120."
John Winthrop, Governor of the Colony of Connecticut, writes to Col. Richard Nicolls, the Royal Governor at New York, under date of December 24, 1666, and the paper states that "a narra- tive of the sad accident of ye fire at Serg. Sol. Harts at Farming- ton was also inclosed." .
The Indians had, therefore, nothing to do with the fire. Mesa- pano, Cherry, and the rest of them, had indulged in that amuse- ment once too much some nine years before, and the Colonial Records show ample reason why they were not likely to repeat their indiscretion. We shall soon see how such accidents hap- pened without any help from savage malice. There is no reason to suppose that any records were ever burned. None seem to be missing but the most interesting volume of them all, the minutes of town meetings for the first forty years, and the history of that book is briefly this. At a meeting held December 27, 1682, the town voted that " the Ould Touen Book should bee keept by the Touensmen annually as they are chosen & thoes persons yt will have any act or grant yt is therein, transcribed into ye New book, it shall bee don att their oun proper charg and cost." In 1709, a notch in the top of the leaf is reported and the exact size is given. . In 1714 the clerk reports a still larger "gap torn out at ye top of ye leafe." Some thirty-three extracts were made from the old book, and from the dates, we learn that the old book was in existence eighteen years before the fire, and fifty-two years after the fire, and simply fell in pieces, and no one cared enough for it to rebind or save it. Thus much in explanation of our want of information about the earliest schools of the town.
The Puritan Fathers of New England founded the church and the school simultaneously. They were their two strong defenses in the eternal warfare in which they were engaged, a strife not simply with savage beasts and savage men, but with the powers of darkness who seemed to them to have made the gloomy forests of New England especially their home. They did not found the school so much from their love of learning, though there were ripe and rare scholars among them, but from the religious motives very clearly
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set forth in their code of 1650. "It being," so runs the code, "one chiefe project of that old deluder Sathan to keepe men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former- times keep- ing them in an vnknowne tongue, so in these latter times by per- swading them from the vse of Tongues, so that at least the true sence and meaning of the originall might bee clouded with false glosses of saint-seeming deceiuers; and, that Learning may not bee buried in the Grave of o' Forefathers, in Church and Common- wealth, the Lord assisting our endeauors. It is therefore ordered by this Courte and Authority thereof, that euery Townshipp within this Jurissdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within theire Towne to teach all such children as shall resorte to him, to write and read."
For the first sixty years of its existence as a town, the inhabit- ants of Farmington met annually in town meeting to transact all public business, whether pertaining to the town, the church, or the school. About the year 1686, Richard Seymour and others began a settlement near the present north line of the town of Berlin on the road known as Christian Lane. The settlement prospered, and in 1705 the General Assembly made it into a dis- tinct society called the Great Swamp Society, the remaining part of the town being from this time on known as the First Society of Farmington. For ninety years thereafter the inhabitants met in society meetings in divers places to vote upon matters relating to churches and schools, and in town meetings at the center for all other public matters. At the May session of the General Assem- bly of 1795 certain moneys were granted to towns and societies, and the societies which received them began to be called by the Assembly, School Societies. On the 29th of October of that year the First School Society of Farmington was organized, and \ thenceforth for sixty years the division of the public business was a triple one. The Ecclesiastical Society provided for the church, the School Society for schools and cemeteries, and the town for all other matters. In 1856 the legislature abolished school socie- ties, and ever since the Ecclesiastical Society has been confined to the care of matters religious, and the town to matters secular.
By the code of 1650 reading and writing were to be taught in all public schools, and, whenever any town increased to the number of one hundred families, it was required to set up a Grammar school, that is, a school in which the Latin and Greek
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languages were taught. That a somewhat high standard was aimed at in this town will appear from the qualifications required of the masters. The first master of whom we have any knowl- edge was a minister. In 1685 the town voted to procure "a man that is so accomplished as to teach children to read and write and teach the grammar and also to step into the pulpit to be help- ful there in time of exigency."
In 1693 they desired " a man that is in a capacity to teach both Latin and English, and, in time of exigency, to be helpful to Mr. Hooker in the ministry." A similar vote was passed the next year. All this learned instruction was to be given in the winter schools which the older boys attended. The proper education in this town for females was settled by a judicial decision in 1656. The previous year Thomas Thomson of Farmington, the first of that numerous family, died and left in his will directions for the education of his children. The court in Hartford, " finding many terms or expressions therein dark and intricate," decided " that the sons shall have learning to write plainly and read distinctly in the Bible, and the daughters to read and sew sufficiently for the making of their ordinary linen." The same court in 1655, on the death of Thomas Gridley of Hartford, ordered the adminis- trator to "well educate ye children, learning ye sonnes to read and write and ye daughters to read and sew well."
Writing was an accomplishment not considered necessary for females. To the girls and smaller children, a female teacher gave instruction in the summer months. In 1747 the society "granted to ye Scoll dame yt kept scool of the Inhabitants att Sider brook ye same Sallery pr week as they gave ye dames in the Town plat."
The Dames' School was an institution with which the first set- tlers had been familiar in the land of their childhood. Shenstone, born in 1714, thus describes good Mistress Sarah Lloyd, his early teacher, in the poem of "The Schoolmistress :"
"In every village mark'd with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame, There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire, A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name, Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame.
The noises intermixed, which thence resound, Do learning's little tenement betray ; Where sits the dame, disguised in look profound, And eyes her fairy throng, and turns het wheel around."
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I am not aware that the spinning wheel forms a part of the philosophical apparatus of the modern school, nor would the youthful schoolmistress of the present day find much in common with the dame of two centuries ago, either in appearance or man- ner or attire.
" Her cap, far whiter than the driven snow, Emblem right meet, of decency does yield ; Her apron, dyed in grain, as blue, I trowe, As is the hare-bell that adorns the field ; And in her hand, for scepter, she does wield Tway birchen sprays, with anxious fears entwined, With steadfast hate and sharp affliction joined, And fury uncontrolled, and chastisement unkind."
Possibly, good Mistress Lloyd might have had something on the other hand to say about the boy Shenstone. In more loving terms does Henry Kirke White paint the village matron of his youth, good Mistress Garrington.
" Gentle of heart, yet knowing well to rule. Staid was the dame, and modest was the mien, Her garb was coarse, yet whole and nicely clean ; Her neatly border'd cap, as lily fair, Beneath her chin was pinn'd with decent care ;
And pendant ruffles of the whitest lawn, Of ancient make her elbows did adorn. Faint with age, and dim were grown her eyes ; A pair of spectacles their want supplies."
Let us not regret that " Old times are changed, old manners gone." But what shall we say of the discipline of the winter school with its big boys and strong-armed master? The Puritan took the Bible, Old Testament as well as New, for his infallible guide, and when he read " He that spareth his rod hateth his son," he did not presume to be wiser than Solomon. It was the Englishman's belief that the learned languages could only be taught by a constant application of the rod. Bennet Langton is said to have once complimented Dr. Johnson on his skill in Latin. "Sir." said the great moralist, "My master whipt me very well. Without that I should have done nothing." It was a common notion of the older boys in New England schools, down to quite a recent time, that a master who had not the physical ability to give them a sound thrashing could teach them nothing. Many years ago a gentleman, then prominent in the public affairs of the town, told me the custom in the district school of his boy-
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hood. Winter after winter the boys had turned the master out of doors, until the school had become a total failure. The committee were at their wits' end. Finally, they heard of a young man in a distant town who thought he could teach the school. The committee thought otherwise, but, as no one else would under- take it, they engaged him. The very first day showed the boys that a new manner of man had come among them, and they went home battered and bruised and howling to their parents for vengeance. Their fathers were terribly enraged, and vowed that the very next morning they would show that master that he could not treat their boys in that sort of way. When the school bell jingled the next morning, every boy was in his place and everything went on in perfect order. An unusual stillness per- vaded the room, but it was a deathlike stillness that boded no good to the master. A fire of oak logs was blazing in the fire- place, and the master now and then stirred it up with the big iron shovel, which somehow he neglected to remove from the logs, and left it there with its long iron handle sticking out within easy reach of his desk. It was none to soon, for in a few minutes half a dozen burly men tramped into the room without any useless ceremony of knocking, and having briefly stated their business, made a rush for the schoolmaster. Drawing the huge iron shovel, blazing red-hot from the fire, he brought it down on their luckless pates with all the power of his strong arm. If the cherubim, who guarded the gate of Eden, with their flaming swords turning every way, had appeared among them. they could not have been more overwhelmed with astonishment. The action was short and decisive. In a few moments all that remained of the intruders was a very bad smell of burnt woolen and singed hair. The school that winter was a great success. Never had the boys made such progress in the "three Rs," but when the committee endeavored to secure the master's services for the next winter, he declined. He had proved his ability to teach school, and wandered away to fresh fields of usefulness.
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