USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Bristol, Connecticut : "in the olden time New Cambridge", which includes Forestville > Part 12
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50
SITE OF KATHERINE GAYLORD HOMESTEAD.
was fastened. As it was reputed that he had in some manner incurred the ill will of Granby Olcott, as she was known, a reputed witch who lived in the adjoining town of Wolcott, it was supposed that she was the cause of the trouble. But a still more serious case was reported at the house of Joseph Byington, now occupied by J. H. Clemence. A young woman living there was grievously tormented, night after night, by having pins and needles stuck in her flesh by invisible hands. Seth Stiles was employed to watch with the afflicted girl, and as fast as the pins were inserted in her flesh he would draw them out and stick them in a silk handkerchief. When the pins ceased to be inserted in the human pin cushion, he held the handkerchief over the hot coals in the fireplace until the pins became so hot as to burn themselves out of the cloth and to drop into the fire. She was never troubled afterward, but the witch suspected was found the next day, so it was reported, terribly burned. Another case bordering on the supernatural was reported and thoroughly believed by those who witnessed the phenomenon. In 1822,
a woman named Stiles, who lived in the Gideon Roberts house, called one evening, at the home of my father, who was then nine years of age. Later in the evening her family heard groans outside the door,and found her in an unconscious state from which she never rallied, but died soon after being taken into the house. Medical aid was summoned,
but nothing could be done to relieve her. A postmortem examination revealed the fact that she had been assaulted and outraged by a number of fiends in human shape, the scene of the assault being traced to an orchard some distance north of my father's residence, in what has long been called the Bunker Hill lot, on the Barnum farm. That she had been carried from the orchard to her home was shown by her shoes having been removed and left under the trees, while her stockings were not soiled. The criminals were never detected. Some time afterwards, at night, when any one came up Peck Lane past the scene of the crime, a light would appear, which would keep along abreast of the traveller, but inside of the fence, and when nearly out to the corner of the moun- tain road, it would turn eastward toward the deceased woman's home, and disappear. I have talked with one or two persons who solemnly
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declared they had seen this light, beside my father, who remembered it distinctly. The lane ceased to be used as a thoroughfare for some time afterward, by the timid, after nightfall.
Joel Truesdell, who lived on the place afterward owned by the late Andrew R. Rowe, was a type of the old-time self-made American noble- man. Descended from an English farmer who had settled in the Mo- hawk country, he was the son of a seafaring man who lost his all in a ship wreck, including his life from the freezing and exposure that he endured. The widow left with five small children to support had enough to look after, so the two oldest boys, James and Joel, started out from New London, their home, to seek their fortunes in the wide world. They drifted to Wolcott, but there the town officials much alarmed lest the boys should become public burdens, bade them move on. Bristol offered them a refuge, and here Joel spent the remainder of his long life. He purchased the Rowe farm in the southwest corner of Bristol, working at his trade as a shoemaker as well as at farming. His three sons settled in the west, but his two daughters married and remained in the vicinity, one of them becoming the wife of Seth Gaylord, and the other the wife of Ransell Brockett. He held various offices of trust, being elected selectman in 1807, afterward holding minor offices, and becoming a Justice of the Peace, from which he obtained his title of Esquire. As a justice he was always strictly upright, but a terror to evil doers. He was twice married, his second wife surviving him. He died of a rose cancer in 1856, in his eighty-eighth year. I well remember the one-story red house in which he lived, and the immense granite
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(19) No. 172, Mrs. Flora J. Clark R, formerly the A. H. Rood place; (20) George Lawley, Jr. R, formerly the William Nichols place: (21) Mrs. Harriet L. Root, O; formerly the Smith Dart place; (22) Wm H Coons 0; (23) "Woodlawn," Frank M. Gaylord O, formerly the Nancy Horton place; (24) Averitt E. Hare O, formerly the Cyprian Elton place ; (25) Edward H. Allen O, formerly the Garry Allen place; (26) Allen T Bunnell O, formerly the "Jake" Wright place (a still at the rear in the olden time); (27) Henry A. Way O, formerly the John Peck, Sr place
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boulder in front. The rock was broken up and removed by the last owner of the place, Mr. Rowe, who also replaced the old house by one of modern design. It was recently burned, and has not been rebuilt. One of the most interesting natural objects of Fall Mountain, was the Cedar Swamp, which was flooded early in the seventies, and used as a storage reservoir for Waterbury factories. In the earliest times, when the swamp first became known to the white men, there was a beaver dam at the southern end, which can now be seen at low water. The entire swamp was covered with a dense growth of white cedars, except an open channel near the eastern edge. When a dam for a sawmill was built, soon after the first settlement of the vicinity, and the water begun to rise, it was found that the whole growth of cedars rose with the water, and fell again when the water was drawn down- a floating forest. It was a natural lake which had become overgrown with the cedars, the matted roots forming a raft, through which spliced rods were driven, in places, to the depth of forty feet without striking bottom. At one time there was a movement on foot to drain the swamp and to remove the peat, which exists there in enormous quantities, for. fuel. But the flooding of the swamp prevented this from being carried out.
To the east, and near the head of the pond, is a natural curiosity, in the shape of a bowlder, the formation of which has been declared by experts to be very peculiar. Several geologists have examined the rock and declared themselves at a loss to account for it. It was discovered by my father about seventy-five years ago, who thought that he had
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(28) Mrs. Cora M. Eddy O, J. J. Mulpeter R, formerly the Aaron Norton place, built about 1786; (29) A. C. Bailey O, formerly the Gideon Roberts place; (30) B. G. Nichols O; (31) Mrs. Drusilla Blakeslee O, formerly the John R. Peck place; (32) O. J. Bailey O, formerly the Burton Allen place; (33) S. T Nichols O; (34) Trank H. Wood O, for- merly the Barnum place; (35) Peter G. Gustafson O, formerly the Went- worth Bradley place; (36) Wallace H. Miller O, formerly the Leonard A. Norton place.
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found a bowlder of limestone. The rock is composed of thin layers, or veneers, of quartz, cemented together with lime. Broken off the interior has one color, and resembles limestone, or marble. But the edges of the veneers, where they have been exposed to the weather, show where the lime has been eroded, leaving the layers of quartz ex- posed. Fragments of this rock are scattered for a mile to the south, being laid up in cellar and field walls, but I never have been able to find it elsewhere. When in New Hampshire and Vermont, I have looked in vain for the rock in situ, for somewhere to the north of us there must be the original ledge from which it came. It was not until recently that I obtained a clue that may lead to the discovery of its starting place on its long pilgrimage over the New England hills. Al friend who is of an observing turn of mind, and a student of the natura sciences, when shown this rock, said that when exploring the geological formation along the St. Lawrence River, known as the Laurentian formation, he discovered the thin edges of protruding quartz, precisely as they exist in this bowlder. The place of his discovery was near the mouth of the Saugenay river, which would be rather too far east to be the home site of this rock; but the same formation may exist farther up the river St. Lawrence, and more in range with the path of the glaciers.
The first schoolhouse built in the district, stood on the corner op- posite the Barnum place, near the present guide board. On the opposite corner stood a blacksmith shop, where, early- in life, Capt. A. Wooding worked at blacksmithing. The second schoolhouse stood at the four corners at the top of the mountain, on the east side of the road that runs north and south, and on the south side of the road to Bristol. Later it was moved to its present site. There may be a few people now living who can remember when the schoolhouse was heated by a fireplace; and when the benches were made of logs hewn flat on the upper side; legs, driven into auger holes on the underside, serving for supports. The schoolhouse (20) of my boyhood had advanced far beyond this primi- tive stage. It was provided with plank seats running around three sides of the room, the teacher having a table and chair at the front end of the room, between the two entrances opening into the entry. Some of the schoolhouses of that period had a dungeon in one end of the entry, where refractory pupils were shut in to reflect upon the enormity of their misconduct. But ours was not so provided. A desk of wide boards, sloping inward, and having a shelf underneath for the storage of books, slates, and the like, took up the room between the seats and the wall. In the middle of the room was a box stove, and two benches for little tots. A blackboard, much out of repair, occupied the wall space back of the teacher's chair. An incident connected with this blackboard, may be worthy of mention.
It was the custom for the teachers to board around, in those days, and when one of the lady teachers was boarding at our house, she was shown a pair of double-lens, green spectacles, which had the peculiarity, by means of reflection, of enabling the wearer to see what was tran- spiring behind him, as well as in front. She borrowed the spectacles, explaining to the school that weak eyes were the cause of her wearing them. When she stood with her back to the school to oversee the writing of exercises on the board, was the signal for a general, but silent outbreak of grimaces, whisperings, and swapping of knives or trinkets dear to the juvenile heart. But this day, as she stood with her back toward them, she not only called out the name of every culprit, but told exactly what mischief was being done without taking her eves off the board. This convinced the urchins that she was gifted with super- natural powers, and resulted in much better conduct during the rest of the term. It was not until the last day of school that the secret was divulged. The effort on my part to keep a secret that length of time was a severe strain, but I did it.
The old schoolhouse was repaired, long after I had graduated, was burned about 1881, and the present (7) schoolhouse was built in its
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stead, the following year. It has the modern improvements in the way of chairs and desks, but I doubt if the three R's are more faithfully drilled into the minds of the pupils than they were fifty years ago.
Sherman Johnson, early in the last century, came into possession of the place now owned by William Fenn. He was a mechanic of much originality, and constructed upon the brook southeast of the house, a saw mill, a still, a turning shop and a cider mill. East of the residence of James Peckham, he built a dam, flooding over a large tract of land known as Morgan's Swamp, which served as his reservoir. The dam can still be seen. At the brook where the shops stood can be seen the wheel pit and foundations. Henry Bradley succeeded to the title of the farm by inheritance, and lived there the greater part of his life. He was a manufacturer of clock hammers, which were cast of zinc, in a little shop which stood west of the house of F. H. Wood, but which now stands east of the house, and is used as a carriage house. Mr. Bradley also manufactured that part of clock mechanism known as lock work, a specialty that was in the hands of his sons, Wentworth and Harlan P. Bradley, for many years afterward. The lock work was made in the chamber of his house. The front chamber of this house was in use for some time as a meeting place for Second Advent-' ists, Mr. Bradley and his family being early converts to the Advent
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(37) The Samuel McKee place, Miss Júlia Potter O, and used as a laundry by Jason H. Clemence; (38) Built by Truman Norton, later known as the Jerry Thomas place. In the ell of this building Gideon Roberts had the first clock shop in America, Jason H. Clemence O; (39) ruins of the H. A. Week's place, the original Isaac Norton home- stead; (40) S. P. Harrison O, the Joel Norton Tavern; (41) Mrs. Edwin Gomme R, the Eli Norton place; (42) Richard E. Dillon O, the Captain Alviah Wooding place; (43) Adam Schragder, O, the Charles Graniss place; (44) Louis Moulaski O (Allentown Road), the George William Mathews place; (45) the Orrin Judson place (at present unoccupied).
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faith. He sold out about 1862, and removed to Divinity street, where he ended his days.
The land upon which stands the red house, known to older residents as the McKee place, was purchased of John Gaylord, who owned the Fenn place, in 1805. It is now used as a laundry. Samuel McKee was of Scotch descent, came from Derby, and was a soldier of the Revo- lution, having had many interesting experiences, and some narrow escapes from death and capture. His daughter married Eli Terry, the Father of American clock-making, and the entire family became iden- tified with the industries of Terryville.
The small shop once used by Gideon Roberts, and which is un- doubtedly the original (8) clock shop of the United States, was built for a tin shop a few rods north of the house of the late Alonzo Rood. It was bought by Roberts and placed in the southwest corner of his front yard, where, by means of a foot-lathe and hand saws, he made the first Yankee clocks. The building was bought of Hopkins Roberts, and removed to its present site, by my uncle, Asahel Hinman Norton, where it now forms the L of the house now occupied by J. H. Clemence.
Fall Mountain has suffered, like many other rural districts, from the removal of the descendants of the original families'to other localities, as well as by the abandonment of homesteads, a condition prevailing to a great extent all over the State. There are now but two persons,
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(46) Alverda J. Tymerson O, the Enos Blakeslee place (Witch Rock Road); (47). Alexander Morin O, the James Adams place (Witch Rock Road); (48) David Y. Clark, the Thos. Prince place (Witch Rock Road) ; (49) Cabin, (Witch Rock Road); (50) Theron A. Johnson O, the Leander B. Norton place (Witch Rock Road); (51) James H. Peckham O, the Aunt Lucy Hotchkiss place; (52) Wallace A , Emily M. and Rachel E. Allen O, the Lyman Bradley place; (53) Clark Hare R. the James Scarrett place; (54) Wm. M. Fenn O, the Henry Bradley place.
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THE TRUMAN NORTON PLACE, Showing ell, in which Gideon Roberts had the first clock shop in America. From photo by Milo Leon Norton.
James Peckham and a widowed sister, descendants of Samuel Gaylord, now remaining on the mountain, within the boundaries of the district, of the old stock. I have not tried to trace the history, or even mention all of the old families, because of the lack of time and space needed to do the subject justice. Since 1860 five houses in the district have been burned and were never rebuilt, and two were abandoned and were torn down. In 1860 there were living in the district, with all of whom I was personally acquainted, the following families: Henry Bradley, James Scarrett, Lyman Bradley, Isaac Hotchkiss, Jesse Gaylord, Lorenzo Thomas, Leander B. Norton, Thomas Prince, James Adams, Enos Blakeslee, Orrin Judson, Benajah Camp, Eli Norton, George Plumb, Capt. Alvah Wooding, Moulthrop, Charles Granniss, Miles San- ford, George William Matthews, Charles Peck, Jeremiah Thomas, Leonard A. Norton, Garry Nettleton, and George Nettleton. Of all these per- sons there is only one now living, Lorenzo Thomas, who resides in an- other part of the State.
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Moses Dunbar, LOYALIST
BY JUDGE EPAPHRODITUS PECK.
T HE history of Moses Dunbar seems to me to be a story ful[ . of interest to all students of Connecitcut's history, because he was the only person who has ever been exccuted for treason against this state; and full of interest to all who love heroism and high-minded devotion to principle, because of the fidelity and con- secration with which he served the church and the King to whom he believed his loyalty to be due, consecration alike of the affections and the activities of life, fidelity even unto death.
Moses Dunbar was born in Wallingford in June 14th, 1746, the second of a family of sixteen children. When he was about fourteen years old, his father removed to Waterbury; that is, I suppose, to what is now East Plymouth. The present town of Plymouth was then a part of Waterbury, afterward set off as a part of Watertown in 1780, and set off from Watertown by its present name in 1795.
In 1764, when not quite eighteen years old, he was married to Phebe Jerome or Jearam of Bristol, then New Cambridge. In the same year, "upon what we thought sufficient and rational motives," he and his wife left the Congregational Church, in which he had been brought up, and declared themselves of the Church of England.
The Rev. James Scovil was then located at Waterbury as a Church of England missionary of the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," Connecticut being foreign missionary ground, from the standpoint of the English Church; he was also in charge of the little Anglican Church in New Cambridge, which perished in the storm and stress of the Revolution.
To his Episcopal surroundings we arc undoubtedly justified in tracing Dunbar's later toryism, and particularly to the influence of Mr. Scovil, and of the Rev. James Nichols, who succeeded him in charge of the New Cambridge Church.
When the war of the Revolution broke out, the King's cause had no other such zealous supporters, in Connecticut at least, as the Anglican missionaries stationed in the state.
We can easily sec the reasons for this These men, brought up in the English Church, accustomed to look on the King as the head of the church, and by the Grace of God. Defender of Faith, came to New England only to find herc the despised separatists, who in England were entitled to nothing more than contemptuous toleration, and who had not always had that, ruling in church and state with a high, and not at all a gentle, hand. Their own church, which at home had every advantage, political and social, whose Bishops sat in the House of Lords, whose services were maintained in splendid pomp by the public funds, which was the spiritual governor of England, as King and Parliament were its civil governors, was weak and despised and suffering great legal disadvantages, as compared with its Puritan rival
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RESIDENCE JUDGE EPAPHRODITUS PECK, SUMMER STREET.
To give an extreme instance of the hardships which the Episcopal clergymen sometimes suffered, William Gibbs, of Simsbury, who was the first Anglican minister to officiate in New Cambridge, was required by the authorities of Simsbury to pay taxes from his own scanty income to support the Congregational ministry. When he refused, he is said to have been bound on the back of a horse, and in that harsh way carried to Hartford jail, where he was imprisoned as a delinquent taxpayer. He was then an old man, became insane, and continued so until his death. (1.)
Our own church records show that legal compulsion was used to make the churchmen, who doubtless had a heavy burden to carry in their own church, pay taxes for Mr. Newell's support.
While the law for the support of the Congregational churches by taxation was finally relaxed for the benefit of Episcopal dissenters, and their treatment probably tended to become more friendly, as their numbers increased, the position of constant inferiority and occasional oppression in which they found themselves must have been very galling to the clergymen of the English church, who doubtless felt that they were entitled by English law to be the dominant, instead of the in- ferior, church.
The Puritan government was not one likely to be beloved by those who were out of sympathy with its theology and practice; still less by those who devoutly believed it to be both schismatical and heretical, and who constantly felt the weight of its oppressive hand upon them.
But the churchmen had always the crown, and the powerful mother church at home, to look to as their backer and defender; and, though neither church nor crown seem ever to have interested themselves much in the lot of their co-religionists here, the distinguished connection there was at least a matter of pride and fervent loyalty to the ostracized churchmen here.
1. Welton's sermon and notes concerning the Episcopal Church in New Cambridge. Bristol Public Library.
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And, naturally enough, they believed that the fear of the wrath of the powerful church at home was all that restrained the Puritans here, and feared a withdrawal of all privileges, and an attack on the very existence of their churches, if the Puritan colony should succeed in establishing its independence.
"It was inferred from the history of the past that, if successful, few would be the tender mercies shown by the Independents in New England to a form of Protestant religion which was in their eyes 'dis- sent,' and which nothing but the want of power hitherto had prevented them from fully destroying. It was the remark of a Presbyterian deacon, made in the hearing of one who put it upon record, 'that if the colonies should carry their point, there would not be a church in the New England states.' " (2.)
And so, when the hated rulers of the colony openly defied the King, denied the authority of Parliament over them, and finally determined to make their Puritan commonwealths independent altogether, it is not difficult to understand how bitter the opposition to the revolutionary movement must have been among the churchmen, and what firebrands of tory zeal the missionary clergyman, in their circuits through the state, must have been.
The position of active hospitality to the colonial cause taken by the Episcopal clergy led to their being specially marked out by the intolerant patriotism of the day for prosecution; and this in turn, no doubt, reacted to increase their hatred of the colony, its Puritan religion, and the possibility of its acquiring independence.
Nineteen days after the Declaration of Independence, the clergy of the state met to determine their course; one point of peculiar diffi- culty was the prayer for the King, and that he might be victorious over all his enemies, in the prayerbook.
At least one Congregational minister in Massachusetts suffered embarrassment from a similar cause. He had prayed so long for "our excellent King George," that, after the war commenced, and independ- ence had been declared, he inadvertently inserted the familiar phrase in his prayer, but, recollecting himself in time, he added: "O Lord, I mean George Washington."
But the Church of England clergy could not so readily evade their prescribed prayer for the King. They could not omit it without unfaith- fulness to the canons of the church, nor include it without incurring the wrath of their neighbors, and the accusation of open disloyalty. They, therefore, resolved to suspend public services, until the storm of revolution should blow over; which they probably thought would be but a few months. (3.)
But one old man, John Beach, of Newtown and Reading, absolutely refused his consent to this resolution, and declared that he would "do his duty, preach and pray for the King, till the rebels cut out his tongue." The doughty old loyalist kept his word. and yet died peaceably in his bed, in the eighty-second year of his age, just in time to escape the bitter news of Cornwallis' surrender. (4.)
But he had some exciting experiences in the meantime, While officiating one day in Reading, a shot was fired into the church, and the ball struck above him, and lodged in the sounding-board. Pausing for the moment, he uttered the words, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." He then proceeded with the service, without further interruption.
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