USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Winchester > Annals and family records of Winchester, Conn.: with exercises of the centennial celebration, on the 16th and 17th days of August, 1871 > Part 3
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In 1860, the borough of Winsted was authorized by the Legislature to raise the high-water level of the lake four feet above the previous high- water mark, and to take water therefrom by aqueduct, and convey and distribute the same into and through the borough, in such quantities as the conveniences of the borough should require. The same season, an imperfect embankment was raised to the required height, which during the following year was perfected by raising the former causeway to the same elevation, and protecting it by a thoroughly-built outer wall and two wide waste-weirs. This raises the surface, and expands the shores of the lake, so as to make a reservoir of about twelve feet in depth from high- water mark to the bottom of the bulkhead gates.
The Little Pond is a smaller body of pure and limpid water, covering a surface of about fifty acres, lying about a third of a mile northwesterly of Long Lake, at an elevation of ninety feet above, and discharging its waters into it by " Sucker Brook," running southerly between the two bodies of water, a distance of one mile. Neither of these lakes are fed by large streams of water, but both are mainly supplied by springs. Both of them, in early times, abounded with trout of large size, some of them reaching a weight of six to seven pounds. Perch, roach, bull-heads, and eels were abundant. About 1815, pickerel were introduced from the Southwick Ponds, by Colonel Samuel Hoadley. The Farmington river " Dace;" as they are called, were introduced several years since as live bait, by pickerel fishermen, and escaping from their hooks, grew and mul- tiplied, reaching the size and shape of a shad. Like the pickerel, it is a gamy fish, and these two intruders had exterminated the trout, and largely thinned out the smaller fish, when, about 1860, the black bass was trans- ferred by E. S. Woodford, Esq., and has become the gamiest champion of our lakes.
Mad River, which rises in Norfolk, runs its rapid course southeasterly, receiving the lake stream, and emptying into Still River, in the borough
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ANNALS OF WINCHESTER.
of Winsted, has until recent years been little used above the junction of the lake stream, except for saw mills. It now furnishes water for a cutlery establishment, and for two of the largest tanneries in the state, and will, when proper reservoirs are built near its sources, furnish an important addition to our water power. The Connecticut Western Rail- road, by an average grade of abont eighty feet ascent to the mile, finds its way through the town, along the banks of this stream, to its summit level in Norfolk.
Still River, rising in Torringford, runs with little fall along the border of the Nangatuck Railroad to its junction with Mad River, and thence still northerly through the borough, furnishing near the borough line the power of two of the best water privileges of the town. The fall of water from the lake surface to the northern limit of the borough, exceeds 225 feet, all of which is profitably employed for manufacturing purposes.
The other streams in the Winsted section of the town are small, and unfitted for manufacturing purposes. In the west section, the two head branches of the Nangatuck River have their source. The eastern branch proceeds from a small pond near Norfolk line, and runs southerly to Wolcottville, and affords good water power as it approaches Torrington line. The other runs along Hall Meadow, and passes through the south- east corner of the town to its junction with the east branch at Wolcott- ville, where the united streams take the name of Naugatuck River.
CHAPTER IV.
INDIANS-GAME-THOROUGHFARES.
THE Green Woods section of Litchfield County, though abounding with game, seems not to have been a permanent abiding place of the Indian, save along the Tunxis or Farmington River on the east, and the Housatonic on the western border. The Scaticoke Indians dwelt along the Housatonic, their chief residence in Kent. The Weatogues, of Sims- bury, crowded out from the Tunxis valley by the white settlers, took refuge on the meadows of the Housatonic in Canaan.
On the east, a small tribe, or fragment of a tribe, probably crowded out of Farmington, took up their abode in New Hartford, near the gorge where the Farmington River breaks through a mountain ridge, which spot was designated by the early settlers as " the Kingdom," and even- tually by the specific name of " Satan's Kingdom."
A portion of this tribe moved up the Farmington, to the foot of Ragged Mountain in Barkhamsted. Modern wiseacres assert that their council fire was the mythical " Barkhamsted Light House," of which so much has been said and so little known. The head man, or the last man of this tribe, named Changum, lived and reigned to near the close of the last century. His descendants in the female line, a race of bleached-out, basket-making, root-gathering vagabonds, with high cheek bones and bow-and-arrow eyes, have continued to dwell on the Ragged Mountain domain, and kept up the council fires until a very recent period. A daughter of Chaugum married a runaway servant of Secretary Wyllys of Hartford. They settled in the Danbury quarter of Winchester, and their descendants are the only known representatives of the aboriginal race in this town.
Not a single mountain, lake, or river, bears an Indian name. The flint arrow-head is occasionally found on the intervale lands, and in con- siderable numbers along the south shores of Long Lake, together with some other stone implements, indicating a resort there for fishing and hunting. There was also a cleared spot around a copious spring of water on the east shore of the lake, on land of Deacon Joseph W. Hurlbut, . where numerous arrow-heads have been found.
4
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ANNALS OF WINCHESTER.
Game was abundant at the early settlement of the town. A hunting lodge was erected on the bridle-path from New Hartford to Norfolk, near the south line of the town, before any settlement was made, and a deer park was enclosed near the reservoir pond, on the west branch of the Naugatuck, at a very early period.
Bear's meat was by no means a rare dish among our early settlers. It was in some families almost their ordinary fare. The records of Justice Alvord show frequent prosecutions for killing deer, out of season, up to 1790. Wolves abounded as late, or later, than the Revolutionary War. Mr. Levi Norton, while living in the red house between the two ponds, after 1783, returning from a neighbor's after nightfall, encountered a drove of these border ruffians on his own clearing, and was saved from an attack by the timely help of his powerful mastiff, which, on hearing his cry of alarm, rushed from his house and put them to flight.
Panthers, or "painters " as they were called in olden times, were not unfrequently shot by early settlers. Wild cats are still indigenous to the mountain range east of the lake, and running southerly into Torring- ton, as well as the Danbury quarter, where one was killed in November, 1871. Foxes and raccoons are still sufficiently numerous to afford good sport to huntsmen. Wild turkeys were brought in by our hunters as late as 1810, and probably later. A full-grown female hedgehog, or porcupine, the nursing mother of a living brood, was killed as late as 1860, on the Colebrook border.
Speckled trout, of large size and rare beauty, abounded in all our lakes and streams. In the boyhood of the writer, almost every ripple of Mad River, within the borough limits, had its trout ready to seize the bait or fly of the fisherman. In the lake some of them have been taken weighing five to six pounds. Perch, roach, and bull-heads of large size, and in great numbers, formerly occupied our lakes, but since the intro- duction of pickerel they have essentially fallen off in size and numbers. Fresh water eels may be caught in large numbers, in weirs along the lake stream, when descending at the fall equinox to deposit their spawn in some lower region, and in the following August their offspring, from three to six inches long, return in immense numbers. The basin of the Still River Falls, near Colebrook line, is for several days alive with them. They may be seen laboriously crawling up every rock which is moistened by the spray of the fall, and endeavoring to reach their ancestral lake or dam. At the foot of the Niagara Falls this phenomenon may be wit- nessed on a large scale at the same season of the year, or later, and probably in other places where the fall is too high and the current too swift for the young eels to stem it without contact with the rocks.
From these slippery reptiles the transition is natural to their finless congeners. Of these the rattle snake is the only one of a venomous
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GAME-THOROUGHFARES.
character. They were numerous when the country was new, and are not yet extinct. One or more of them has, within twenty-five years, been killed in the wood-house of a residence on Main Street, in the borough of Winsted, and others in the contiguous region. The milk snake still, on occasions, robs the birds' nests in the shrubbery around our houses, and is sometimes suspected of milking our cows in the fields. The peaceful striped snake is not unfrequently caught in a disabled state for running away by reason of his gormandizing propensity for swallowing toads and frogs, and, when caught in the act, incurs the penalty of a bruised head, though in other circumstances he may, in these lax times, be carefully let alone, notwithstanding the scriptural malediction.
Before the survey and allotment of the Winchester lands, settlements in Goshen, Norfolk, and Canaan had begun, rendering it necessary for settlers from the eastern towns to pass through our township to their new homes. The Lawrences, and other settlers of Canaan, abont 1738 to 1740, came from Windsor and Simsbury, first entered the wilderness by way of New Hartford, the northeast part of Winchester and southwest part of Colebrook, to the center of Norfolk. They left their families and stock at points along the way, where openings in the forests could be found for grazing, and went forward with their axes and cut down the trees and cleared a trail from one such opening to another, and then moved their caravan. Tradition says they made one of their halts on the Hoyt Farm in Colebrook, and went forward with their trail to a natural meadow at the northerly border of the small pond, a mile east of Norfolk Center, where they found a dead loon, and hence the name by which the location is still known. They returned, and brought forward their fami- lies and flocks to this oasis. From Loon Meadow they cleared their way to the foot of Hay Stack Mountain, and thence along the Blackberry River, to the land of Canaan, which to thiem must have been a happy land indeed after the toils and privations of their journey.
Where this trail passed through Winchester is not definitely known. It was, doubtless, the first that penetrated the town, and continued to be the traveled path in the direction of Albany for more than twenty years.
The General Assembly, at its May Session in 1758, " being advised that the road or way now often traveled through the towns of Simsbury, New Hartford, and Norfolk, to and through the northwestern parts of Canaan, towards Albany, is in many respects ill-chosen and unfit for use, and that some new and better road through said towns, or some of them, or the towns adjacent, may probably be discovered more direct and con- venient, as well for carriages as traveling, to the great accommodation
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ANNALS OF WINCHESTER.
and benefit of his Majesty's subjects, and especially in time of war, occasionally traveling or marching, either from the eastern or central parts of the colony," therefore -" Resolved, that Colonel John Pitkin of Hartford, Seth Wetmore of Middletown, Mr. Wells of Glassenbury, and Colonel David Whitney of Canaan, be appointed a committee, as soon as conveniently may be, to repair to and through said towns (and towns adjacent if need be), and with all care and diligence to view and observe said roads now used ; and also, with the utmost care to explore and find out how and where any other shorter and better way, in whole or in part, may be practicable, and their full description thereof, with their opinion thereon, to make report to the Assembly at their session in October (then) next."*
This committee, at the May Session in 1759, reported a new line of road, not departing in any instance more than two miles from a straight line, extending from the Court House in Hartford, to Colonel Whitney's in Canaan, and a plan of the intervening towns, with the line pricked thereon.
The Assembly accepted this report, and directed the committee "to lay out and make plain and certain, the said new country road from the mansion house of Samuel Humphrey in Simsbury, to Colonel David Whitney's in Canaan." In May, 1760, the committee having discharged their duty, the Assembly ordered the way to be cleared and made passable for traveling before November 20, 1761, by the towns and proprietors of townships through which it ran, and in case of non-compliance by any such towns and proprietors, the committee was to take such other measures to that end, at the expense of the delinquents, as would without fail accomplish the service, before May 1, 1762.
This thoroughfare, known to a former generation as "The North Road," and now almost a myth, had in its day an importance and renown which justifies our detailed history of its origin and progress. According to tradition, it was a wonder of the age that a direct and practicable route could be found and opened through the jungles and over the succession of steep rocky hills and mountains of the Green Woods for travel, and the movement of troops and munitions between Hartford and Albany. It soon became, and continued until 1800, the great and almost the sole thoroughfare of the colony in the direction of Albany. Continental troops passed over it for frontier service. Detachments of Burgoyne's army, as prisoners of war, marched over it to the quarters assigned them.
Colonial Records, vol. 9, pp. 94-5.
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THOROUGHFARES.
There is a tradition that Col. Ethan Allen, while on military service in the Revolutionary War, presumed to desecrate the Sabbath by traveling over this road, instead of spending the day in sacred meditations at the hostelry of Landlord Phelps, or Roberts, on Wallen's hill, or of Land- lord Freedom Wright, further westward, when a little bushy-headed Grand Juror, of our town, emerged from his log cabin on the road-side, siezed the bridle-rein of the Colonel's charger and attempted to arrest him as a Sabbath-breaker. The Colonel, sternly eying the legal digni- tary, drew his sword, and flourishing it aloft, irreverently exclaimed, "You d-d woodchuck ! get back into your burrow, or I'll cut your head off!" Grand Juror Balcomb, finding what a Tartar he had caught, prudently abandoned his captive and retired to his cabin.
It should not be inferred from the amount of travel that this road was an Appian Way. On the contrary, direct as it was, it went up and down the highest hills, on uneven beds of rocks and stones, and passed marshy val- leys on corduroy of the coarsest hemlock log texture, commencing at the Northend village in New Hartford, it ran westerly up a steep hill, then turned northwesterly through the Bourbon region, crossing the Green Woods turnpike, a little west of the toll-gate, then northerly by zigzags to the top of a lofty hill, then over Wallen's Hill by the northeast school house, down to Still River near Daniel Wilson's, then up Dishmill Hill and onward by the Rowley Pond, to Colebrook, and onward through Cole- brook center to Pond Hill, in Norfolk, and thence by Norfolk center and Canaan toward Albany.
Another bridle-path entered the township from the vicinity of Burr- ville and passed northwesterly by Landlord Mott's Tavern to the soutlı part of Norfolk before any settlement was made. In 1762, a committee of the Assembly, previously appointed, reported a highway along this ronte, "beginning at a rock about three rods west of the fore door of the house belonging to Rev. Mr. Gold in Torringford, and running in a north- westerly direction a little more than a mile to Still River, about a hund- red rods south of Yale's Mill, (at Burrville,) thence in a northwesterly direction by Spectacle Pond and Mott's house, to a stake and stones in Norfolk line."
This was the South Road, by which emigrants from the southeastern towns wended their toilsome way to the western townships, in process of settlement. It was so "hard a road to travel " that good Landlord Burr, living near the Hayden brick yard, used. as it was said, to detain his traveling guests until after morning worship that they might have the benefit of his prayers in aid of their arduous efforts to get up the old dug-way road, west of Burrville, an aid greatly needed.
The first of these roads was for many years the only way of access from
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ANNALS OF WINCHESTER.
the east to the Winsted section of the town. By the second, many, but not all of the immigrants, came into the "Old Society." Several of the earli- est pioneers came in from Torrington and Goslien, at the extreme south- west corner of the township, and located in Hall Meadow and the Blue Street region. The later roads will be adverted to as the settlement of the town progresses.
CHAPTER V.
RESUMÉ-PIONEER SETTLERS.
WE have, in the preceding chapters, opened the way for the long-de- layed settlement of our town. It seemed necessary to show, first, why the large domain of our western lands - the only unoccupied territory of the colony, Litchfield excepted - remained unsurveyed and unavailable for settlement from 1686 to 1729, a period of forty-three years. Second, if possible to learn why, after the two giant towns had secured and di- vided between them what may be aptly called their conquered territory, our Hartford step-fathers should still have held their assigned portion of the spoil from sub-division and settlement, twenty-nine years longer ; and third, to solve, if possible, the wisdom of the sub-divisions finally made. If the wisdom consisted in working out the problem - given, the settle- ment of a new town; required, how not to do it ?- we have nearly reached a solution.
The triple division gave to each rich proprietor, at the rate of one acre to the pound, three detached farms of large size and compact forms; to each forehanded owner, three small farmns, two of them with average length and width as one to six, and one of half the same length and twice the width ; to the poorest men, two driblets a mile long, and from half a rod to five or ten rods wide, and one of half the length and twice the width.
There was not sufficient variation in the quality of lands to render the triple division expedient, for the whole area of the township was hilly and mountainous, except narrow intervales of gravelly or marshy lands along the streams.
The rich owners, with hardly an exception, held their lands, awaiting a rise in their value, to grow out of the life-and-death struggle of poor settlers on adjoining lands. None of the forehanded or rich owners ever personally occupied their land, and the poor owners could not if they would ; they could only sell out for mere songs their driblets to owners of larger tracts of adjacent lands. Not one of the one hundred and six original proprietors to whom allotments were made, ever occupied his lands or dwelt in the town, and only one son* of a proprietor ever had
* Thomas Hosmer, Jr., was an early settler on a portion of his father's land. He removed to Canaan after about ten years, and left no descendant behind him.
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ANNALS OF WINCHESTER.
a permanent residence among us ; and only three known descendants* of a proprietor now reside in the town.
We have already adverted to the scant and, to a great extent, unavail- able reservations of land for highways, and to the endowment of two Hartford ministers by grants of three hundred acres of land to each ; and the want of any endowment to aid the poor and almost starving settlers in supporting the gospel and common schools among themselves. A show of liberality, on a small scale, is made in the reservation of two mill lots, apparently designed to encourage the erection of mills to grind the corn and rye of the early settlers. If they were reserved for this purpose, they were not so appropriated. Both of them were disposed of by leases of nine hundred and ninety-nine years, without conditions, for the benefit of the proprietary body.
During the twenty-nine years that the Hartford proprietors were matur- ing a plan of division of their joint lands, many individual owners sold and conveyed away their undivided rights, by deeds, which were recorded in the proprietors' records. Caleb Beach, named of Goshen, became the owner of one of these undivided rights, by a deed dated May 21, 1750. Either despairing of a division ever being made, or hoping against hope for such consummation in the future, he at once, or in a very short time after his purchase, appropriated a small tract of land and erected thereon the first dwelling house in the township. It stood on the east side of the Hall Meadow road, about half a mile north of Torrington line, and about forty rods east of the line of Goshen, and some thirty rods south of the new house of Rufus Drake. This house or shanty disappeared more than a hundred years ago, and was replaced by a one-story frame house with stone chimney, erected on the same site, which is still standing - venerable in its marks of age, and still more venerable from its associations with the first human habitation in the town.
In the proprietors' vote of January, 1758, ordering the survey and allotment of the first and second divisions of land, the committee were instructed "to lay out to Mr. Caleb Beach or his assignees, his share or allotment in the Division where his house now is, so as to take in his house, barn, and orchard, if his allotment shall be wide enough to take [them ] in." The lot set out to him or his assignees under these instruc- tions, is a lot of sixteen and two thirds acres, within lot No. 6, in the first division. He conveyed away his right to this allotment, March 18, 1756, and probably soon after moved back to Goshen, where he died January 13, 1760, aged sixty-one years. His will was probated and recorded in the Litchfield Probate Court, and contained the following bequests of his earthly possessions :
* Solomon R. Hinsdale and his child, and Mary P. Hinsdale, descended from Wil- liam Pitkin.
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PIONEER SETTLERS.
" Imprimis, to my present beloved wife, Hannah, I give and bequeath one chest and one bed, and one great spinning-wheel, and one double spinning-wheel, to be her own and at her dispose.
Item, To my eldest daughter, Sarah Andros, the wife of Elon Andros, of Wallingford, I give and bequeath to her, out of my estate, but five shillings ; she having received her portion of my estate before.
Item, To my sons Caleb and Hezekiah Beach, of Goshen, I give and bequeath my plough irons, and drag teeth, and plow chains, viz : to my eldest son, Caleb, two third parts ; and to Hezekiah, one third part, to be their own and at their dispose.
Item, To my son, Joel Beach, of Torrington, I give and bequeath three steel traps, with the chains belonging to them, and my shaving knife, to be his own and at his dispose.
Item, To my daughter, Margit Beach, I give and bequeath three chests, one table, six puter platters and plates, three puter basins, four puter por- ringers, one pair of tongs, one fire shovel, and one tramel, one pair of andirons, one brass warming pan, one brass skillet, a brass kettle, one iron kettle and three iron pots, to be lier own and at her dispose."
Mr. Beach was grandson of Thomas Beach, an early planter of Mil- ford, son and youngest child of Deacon John, of Wallingford, and brother of Deacon John, of Goshen, from whom Beach street took its name. He was born at Wallingford, in 1699, where he married the first of his three wives. Thence he first removed to Goshen, and afterward to Winchester.
CALEB BEACH, born at Wallingford, in 1699; died January 13, 1761. He married first, May 26, 1726, Eunice Tyler. She died January 10, 1733. He married, second, October 4, 1733, Margaret Thompson. He had a third wife, named Hannah.
CHILDREN BY THE FIRST WIFE.
I. SARAH, b. at Wallingford, Oct. 26, 1728 ; m. Elon Andrews, of Wallingford. II. CALEB, b. May 10, 1732; m. Lois Preston.
CHILDREN BY THE SECOND WIFE.
III. HEZEKIAH, was in Goshen in 1760, and moved to New Ashford, Mass. IV. JOEL.
V. MARGARET.
JOEL BEACH, third son of Caleb, and inheritor of his traps and shav- ing knife, came into the town with his father, at about fifteen years old, and is named as of Winchester in the record of his first marriage, in 1757. He afterwards lived in Torrington until 1761, when he purchased his life- long residence on Blue street, a little south of the stone school-house.
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