USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > An historical address delivered at the opening of the village library of Farmington, Conn., September 30th, 1890 > Part 5
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" My name is Norval. On the Grampian Hills
My father feeds his flocks, a frugal swain "
and Noah Porter, Jr., now the venerable ex-president of Yale, had the part of John, and later in the evening, acted the part of a
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Frenchman in a play called "The Will or the Power of Medicine." The next year N. Porter, Jr., Ralph Cowles, and Edward L. Hart, recite a colloquy " On Improvements in Education," and Winthrop M. Wadsworth, then a youth of fourteen, acts the part of John Hickory in " The Country Boy," with Timothy Pitkin, son of the Hon. Timothy Pitkin, as Hotspur. Elijah L. Lewis has the part of Philip in the play of " The Curfew," in which N. Porter, Jr., is a robber disguised as a minstrel.
The example of the Academy boys and girls excited the emula- tion of the scholars in the district schools, who no longer had the fear of Gov. Treadwell and the school visitors of 1800 before their eyes. The favorite plays were those of a martial order, and happy was the boy who could wear a sword, and in grandiloquent language challenge some other youth to deadly encounter.
I remember seeing the Combat in Sir Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake enacted, James Fitz James appearing in the uniform of the Farmington Grenadiers with its Roman helmet and tower- ing white plume, while Roderick Dhu was arrayed in the red and blue uniform, or whatever it was, of the Bushwacker Company.
Before closing the subject of schools, perhaps you will expect some mention of the Indian School in Farmington. In the year 1706 the General Assembly desired " the reverend ministers of the colony " to present to the next Assembly a plan for promot- ing the conversion of the natives. In 1717 they resolve " that the business of gospelizing the Indians be referred to the sessions of the Assembly in October next." The result, after a long delay, seems to have been the establishment of the somewhat famous Indian school at Mohegan, and of another at Farmington. In October, 1733, " On a report made by the Reverend Mr. Samuel Whitman of Farmington relating to the Indians in said town ; This Assembly do appoint Capt. William Wadsworth and Capt. Josiah Hart of said Farmington, to provide for the dieting of the Indian youth at four shillings per week for the time they attend the school in said town." On the 27th of May. 1734, the Kev. Samuel Whitman writes to Gov. Talcott, " May it please your Honour. I understand that ye Act of Assembly relating to ye boarding out of Indian children in order to their being schooled is expired, and having a few moments to turn my thoughts on that affair, hope that ye defects in what is here brokenly offered will be overlooked. I have leisure.only to inform your Honour that of the nine Indian lads that were kept at school last winter, 3 can
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read well in a testament, 3 currently in a psalter, and 3 are in their primers. Testaments & psalters have been provided for those that read in them, 3 of ye Indian lads are entered in writ- ing and one begins to write a legible hand. I thank the Assem- bly on their behalf for their care of ym & past bounty to them and pray that that Act of Assembly be revived and continued, not at all doubting but ye pious care of ye government for ye education of ye Indians is pleasing to heaven, and may be of ad- vantage to some of them so yt they may be saved by coming to the knowledge of the truth. I ha'nt time to enlarge but
remain your Honour's humble and Obedient Servant
Sam" Whitman."
An itemized account was rendered of the amounts paid to Dea- con Timothy Porter and seven others named, for the board of these boys. Appropriations for the school were made by the Assembly for three successive years. In the next year, 1736, instead of the annual appropriation, the General Assembly ordered a contribution for civilizing and christianizing of the Indian natives to be taken "at the next public Thanksgiving."
The contribution was duly taken, but, whether from the peculiar regard felt for the Indian or from other causes, it consisted so largely of uncurrent money that the General Assembly at its next ' session appointed a committee " to receive the contribution money for gospelizing the Indians and exchange the torn bills with the Treasurer."
But let us not forget the schoolmasters of the olden line. The records rarely name them. They give, with labored precision, year after year, long lists of committees, treasurers, collectors and what not, but the schoolmaster, the center and life of the whole system, and the only man we much care to know about, is rarely men- tioned. Mr. James is the first master named. This was the Rev. John James, who came from England, where he had been under the instruction of a Mr. Veal, a dissenting minister. We first hear of him in January, 1683, when a committee from Haddam was chosen "to go to New London and speak with Mr. John James In reference to securing him to be our minister." In May, 1684, the town of Farmington " agreed that the town would give twenty- five pounds as a town by the year for the encouragement of Mr. James to teach school and so proportionably so long as the town and he shall agree." In December of the same year they chose a committee "to treat and agree with Mr. James for to teach
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school for one year after his year agreed for is up." In Decem- ber, 1686, the town of Haddam made another and probably suc- cessful attempt to secure his services, and voted "that if Mr. James stand in need of a house to live in, he shall have Mr. Noyes's house and orchard and pasture for one year."
Seven years afterwards he began to preach in Derby, where he soon became preacher, schoolmaster, and town clerk. . In 1706 he was sick and disabled and removed to Wethersfield, where he died August 9, 1729, aged about 72.
Dr. Stiles, visiting the Prince Library in Boston in 1770, made some memoranda from a letter of Rev. Stephen Mix of Wethers- field, dated September 22, 1729. "He came from England, I should think, 40 years since. Devoted to Books. Was some time Pastor of the church in Derby. Some years before his death he removed hither, living a private life. Delivery very ungrace- ful. Died a good man." Dr. David Dudley Field, in his " Statistical Account of the Town of Haddam," says, "Some ludicrous ancedotes are transmitted respecting him, and are now widely circulated in the country ;" but Dr. Field and most of the good people living in Haddam in 1819 are dead, and the aforesaid ancedotes do not seem to have survived them. The Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, writing to John Winthrop of an attack on New London by French privateers on the morning of July 17, 1690, alludes to a Mr. James, who was without much doubt our early school- master He writes, " my wife & family was posted at your Hon's a considerable while, it being thought to be ye most convenient place for the feminine rendevouz. Mr. James (who commands in cheife among them) upon ye coast alarme given, faceth to ye mill, gathers like a snowball as he goes, make a generall muster at your Hon", and so posts away with the greatest speed, to take ye advantage of ye neighbouring rocky hills, craggy inaccessible mountaines : so that w' ever els is lost, Mr. James & ye women are safe."
In 1705 " the town by vote declared it to be their minds that Mr. Luke Hayes shall not be further employed in teaching of school." This votes implies that he had previously taught, and the title Mr. at that day cannot very well be construed to mean other than Reverend. Two years afterwards they vote that Mr. Luke Hayes shall not be further employed in teaching of school. Luke had married Elizabeth, daughter of Deacon John Langdon, deceased, and lived in the leanto of his house, which stood near the
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present site of the South District schoolhouse. Elizabeth died in 1703, and Luke married Maudlin, whose maiden name was probably Daniels. She was a much-marrying woman, having had at least four husbands of various nationalities and colors. First she married Samuel, son of Rev. Samuel Street of Wallingford; next, in 1696, she married Frank Freeman of Farmington, a negro, a man of property, and an office-holder duly elected by the town. He died in a few months, and she married next Luke Hayes, who followed his pre- decessors in 1712; and in a little more than three years afterwards the records inform us that Maudlin Hayes, widow, on the third of May, 1716, married Dennis Hoogins of Ireland. Seven years later . Maudlin is again a widow. Luke's library is inventoried as consisting of one Latin book, which, with other items, was in- ventoried at eighteen pence, not one-fourth of what the library of his predecessor, Frank Freeman, was valued.
From the close of the administration of Luke Hayes ten years elapse before the name of any succeeding master is recorded. On the 8th of January, 1717-8, the Ecclesiastical Society voted to pay William Lewis, schoolmaster, for teaching school the year past. It is extremely improbable that this was his first year's service. for he was now sixty years old. He was one of the six- teen children of Capt. William Lewis, a son of William Lewis, the immigrant, who arrived in Boston in the ship Lion on Sunday, September 16th, 1632. That William Lewis became a school- master is not far to seek. His father married for his second wife Mary, daughter of Ezekiel Cheever, the famous school teacher of New England, who taught school for seventy years, at New Haven, Ipswich, Charlestown, and Boston successively. Ezekiel, a younger brother of William, preached occasionally in Farmington in 1698 after the death of Rev. Samuel Hooker, but afterwards became an assistant teacher in the Latin School of his grand- father, Ezekiel Cheever, in Boston.
Schoolmaster William lived in a house which stood on or very near the site of the Elm-Tree Inn, and was one of the seven houses which the town, on the 31st day of March, 1704, ordered to be fortified and supplied with powder, lead bullets, flints, and half-pikes. This was during the French and Indian War. Not only did Master William Lewis teach school, but the Society ap- pointed him collector to collect of the parents of his scholars their share of the rate bill and the wood tax. For this service he was to receive " five shillings as a reward for his trouble "; but let
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no one presume to envy him his reward. The effigy of Queen Anne or of George the First on the coin of the realm was a rare sight to the farmer of 1717. Year by year the town voted how taxes should be paid, and this year ordered payment in wheat at five shillings per bushel, rye at three shillings, and Indian corn at two shillings and eight pence. The office of collector was no sinecure.
It was many years before we learn the name of any succeeding master. The olden time was gone and the modern teachers are well known ; nevertheless, I cannot well constrain myself from paying a brief tribute to the memory of the noblest of them all. Deacon Simeon Hart, the teacher of my boyhood. He was a member of this society, admitted in 1840, and a frequent donor to its collections. No minute account of his life is needed. To some of you his face and voice and person were a familiar bene- diction. Others can read of him on the printed page. I shall confine myself to a very few personal recollections. Most prom- inent in the character of Deacon Hart was his profound but unaffected piety. Next to his religious life, and growing out of it, through love of his fellow men, appeared his wonderful public spirit. He was. no originator of brilliant schemes which ended in failure and the setting by the ears of all participants. What- ever he undertook, his remarkable practical good sense was sure to carry through, and when all was done, he invariably paid much more than his share of the expense. By his foresight and gener- osity was built the Farmington Female Seminary building with its wide-reaching consequences. He was the first treasurer of the Farmington Savings Bank and its principal founder. Perhaps his next most conspicuous characteristic was his love of farming. I remember hearing him deliver the annual address before the Hartford County Agricultural Society in October, 1849. The
Department of Philosophy and the Arts, providing instruction in Agricultural Chemistry, had just been established in Yale College. and Professor John Pitkin Norton, with all the energy and zeal of his enthusiastic nature, was lecturing all over the country about the new science. The notion somehow was prevalent that the farmer had only to send a few pounds of soil from his farm to New Haven for analysis, and then, putting this alongside of the known analysis of the different grains, could at once know how to doctor his farm and pour untold wealth into his granaries.
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The object of Deacon Hart's address was to explain what the new science really proposed. It was as successful as most attempts to popularize science. He had much to say also of what seemed to him the delightful life of the farmer, his independence, his long winter evenings for social and intellectual enjoyments, and the firm and vigorous health which crowned his labors. As a schoolmaster, he could not well refrain from closing his address with an extract from the Georgics of Virgil, about the fortunate husbandmen needing no lofty palaces, or gold embroidered gar- ments, or delicate perfumes, but happy in quiet security, honest lives, and abundant riches. Anyone who ever attended school in the front basement room of his house, will doubtless remember the " Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry," edited by Prof. Nor- ton. Other studies were somewhat optional, but that book every boy had to study. None were excused, whether intending to be farmers or merchants or professional men. It made no differ- ence. That book they had to learn. Mr. Hart had a fondness for scientific studies, and many were the brilliant experiments he showed us in that old basement room. His experiments were always successful. He did not say "Young men, we will mix these two colorless fluids and the result will be a brilliant blue," and then have it turn out red. If he said blue, blue it was. His profound religious beliefs and his scientific knowledge did not con- ilict. The time . for plans to harmonize religion and science annually brought out and then laid aside, had not come. I re- member on one of those glorious rides to the Tower, which he gave the boys, we noticed a huge rock split from top to bottom, and when the boys asked how it came in that condition, the Dea- con, doubtless having in mind a recent Sunday-school lesson, replied, that it might have occurred at the time of the crucifixion. when the earth did quake and the rocks were rent; which was not bad science for the year of grace 1846.
Such, so far as I have been able to describe them, were the schools and schoolmasters of Farmington in the Olden Time. We, in these modern days, have increased the cost of schools many fold. We have introduced studies, the very names of which were unknown to our ancestors. We teach wonders in science which they would speedily have set down to dealings with " that old deluder Sathan." The funds which their pious care provided. our towns and cities have in many cases used in payment of their
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debts, and issued bonds for their children to pay. We have broadened our theology, extended our intellectual horizon, put all manner of learning within easy reach of all, but let us not for- get that the men and women who went forth from the old log schoolhouse to found and preserve our free institutions and make our modern scholarship possible. have earned our profound- est gratitude, and are worthy of eternal honor.
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Farmington in the War of the Revolution
AN
HISTORICAL ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT THE
ANNUAL MEETING
OF
THE VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY
OF
FARMINGTON. CONN.
MAY 3, 1893
By JULIUS GAY
HARTFORD. CONN. PRESS OF THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD COMPANY
1893
031801218
ADDRESS.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of Farmington :
I propose this evening to answer, in a somewhat informal way, certain questions often asked about Farm- ington in the days of the Revolution. I shall have little to say of battles and campaigns, and great generals. A glimpse, and only a glimpse, we may have of Washing- ton as he rides into the forest toward Litchfield, soon to learn of the treachery of Arnold. All these weightier matters every schoolboy knows, or ought to know. My subject lies nearer home, of little interest but to those whose grandsires here lived, and from this valley went out to preserve its liberties.
The visitor to the old cemetery, after passing through the gateway with its grim inscription, " Memento Mori," and climbing the steep pathway beyond, soon finds on his left a stone with this inscription : "In Memory of | Mr. Matthias Leaming | Who hars got | Beyond the reach of Parcecushion. | The life of man is Vanity." There is no date of death or record of age. It is not so much the memorial of an individual as of a lost cause. Its posi- tion, facing in opposition to all the other stones, is itself a protest. Matthias Leaming was a Tory, or, as he pre- ferred to be called, a Loyalist. At the close of the war the Tories mostly fled to England, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada, and in 1790 were allowed fifteen and one-half millions of dollars by the Crown, besides annuities, offices, and other gifts, in recompense for their
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services and sufferings. So few remained here that we hardly realize that once, taking New England as a whole, they were as numerous and wealthy as the patriot party. We have no time to consider at length the causes of the war, but certain things we must bear in mind if we would at all understand the spirit of the times. The orators had much to say of taxation without representation, and stout Dr. Johnson replied in vigorous English that taxation was no tyranny. Other matters, however, less abstract, had gradually prepared the patriots to resist to the death this last imposition. The colonists were denied the right to manufacture for themselves almost all articles of neces- sity, but must import them from some Englishman whose sovereign had given him the monopoly. Their commerce was restricted to British ports. Even the agricultural products of the neighboring West Indies must first be shipped to England before they could be landed in Bos- - ton. They were denied a market either for sale or pur- chase outside of the dominion of Great Britain. The British merchant could say, "You shall trade at my shop or starve, and you shall make nothing for yourselves." Their solemn charters were annulled, authority to elect their principal officers was denied them, and the right to assemble in town meeting abolished. Repeatedly his Majesty asked, in a long list of questions submitted to the General Assembly of Connecticut, where his dutiful sub- jects bought and sold, and what they presumed to manu- facture, and repeatedly he was shrewdly answered. So long as diplomacy and downright, wholesale smuggling availed, the crisis was averted, but when the wants of the British treasury, and especially of the East India Com- pany, demanded a rigorous enforcement of the laws, the situation became intolerable. To all this was added the threat of vigorous government by lords spiritual as well
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as lords temporal, from which they had once for all escaped.
The lapse of a hundred years has made the position of the loyalists, who were ready to submit to all demands of their divinely anointed king as a matter of course, a mystery to us whose habitual treatment of our highest magistrate has not trained us in habits of reverence. The graceful sentiments of Sir Walter Scott's heroine have to us an unreal sound :
" Lands and manors pass away, We but share our monarch's lot. If no more our annals show Battles won and banners taken, Still in death, defeat, and wo, Ours be loyalty unshaken !"
More easily can we understand the sturdy independ- ence of the patriots. They came to these shores, not for religious freedom, which was a principle unknown, but to establish a church of their own and a government of their own, such as their consciences demanded, narrow, as our vision, broadened by two centuries, looks upon them, but established by themselves and for themselves only, where there was no one to be interfered with, and leaving in the more genial regions of the South plenty of room for the colonies of other religious proclivities. How long this exclusiveness could be maintained, time has shown. These men, to whom Church and State were one, whose religion was a covenant with God, between whom and themselves they allowed no human mediator, were the men whom George III thought to crush.
On the 3ist of March, 1774, the Boston Port bill was signed, and on the ist of June it went into effect. Its reception in this town will appear in the following letter :
" FARMINGTON, CONNECTICUT, May 19, 1774.
" Early in the morning was found the following handbill, posted up in various parts of the town, viz. :
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"'To pass through the fire at six o'clock this evening, in honor to the immortal Goddess of Liberty, the late infamous act of the British Parliament for farther distressing the American colonies. The place of execution will be the public parade, where all Sons of Liberty are desired to attend.'
"Accordingly, a very numerous and respectable body were assembled, of near one thousand people, when a huge pole, just forty-five feet high, was erected, and consecrated to the shrine of Liberty; after which the act of Parliament for blocking up the Boston harbor was read aloud, sentenced to the flames, and exe- cuted by the hands of the common hangman. Then the following resolves were passed, nem con."
The resolves were spirited, but too long for our pres- ent purpose.
The Rev. Samuel Peters, of Hebron, notorious as the author of "A General History of Connecticut .
by a Gentleman of the Province," and inventor of the so-called "Blue Laws of Connecticut," comments on these proceedings as follows :
"Farmington burnt the act of Parliament in great contempt by their common hangman, when a thousand of her best inhabi- tants were convened for that glorious purpose of committing trea- son against the king; for which vile conduct they have not been styled a pest to Connecticut, and enemies to common sense, either by his Honor or any king's attorney, or in any town meeting. We sincerely wish and hope a day will be set apart by his Honor very soon for fasting and prayer throughout this colony, that the sins of those haughty people may not be laid to our charge."
We shall hear enough of fast days, but they were not proclaimed to bewail the sins of Farmington.
The situation of the once flourishing port of Boston was now most critical, and donations for the relief of its suffering inhabitants flowed in from the surrounding towns. The action of this town on the 15th of June is chronieled at length in the admirable discourse of Presi- dent Porter. The following is a letter written by Samuel Adams in response to this action, addressed " To Fisher
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Gay, Esq., and the rest of the Committee in Farmington, Connecticut.
"BOSTON, July 29, 1774.
"Sir,-I am desired by the Committee of the Town of Boston, appointed to receive the donations made by our sympathizing brethren, for the employment or relief of such inhabitants of this town as are more immediate sufferers by the cruel act of Parlia- ment for shutting up this harbor, to acquaint you that our friend, Mr. Barrett, has communicated to them your letter of the 25th instant, advising that you have shipped, per Captain Israel Wil- liams, between three and four hundred bushels of rye and Indian corn for the above-mentioned purpose, and that you have the sub- scriptions still open, and expect after harvest to ship a much larger quantity. Mr. Barrett tells us that upon the arrival of Cap- tain Williams he will endorse this bill of lading or receipt to us.
"The Committee have a very grateful sense of the generosity of their friends in Farmington, who may depend upon their dona- tions being applied agreeable to their benevolent intention, as it is a great satisfaction to the Committee to find the Continent so united in opinion. The town of Boston is now suffering for the common liberties of America, and while they are aided and sup- ported by their friends, I am persuaded they will struggle through the conflict, firm and steady.
"I am, with very great regard, gentlemen, "Your friend and countryman, "SAMUEL ADAMS."
Five weeks later, on the 3d of September, the follow- ing agreement was drawn up in the handwriting of Major William Judd, and bears the signatures of seventy of the principal inhabitants of this village :
" We, whose names are hereunto subscribers, promise and engage to be in readiness and duly equipt with arms and ammu- nition to proceed to Boston for the relief of our distressed and besieged brethren there, and to be under the direction of such officers as shall be by us appointed, as witness our hands this 3d day of September, A. D. 1774."
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