USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Bristol, Connecticut : "in the olden time New Cambridge", which includes Forestville > Part 14
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"God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on me, and receive my spirit, Amen, and Amen."
Moses Dunbar. Hartford, March 18, 1777.
As we read these high-minded words, in which there is neither any retraction nor attempted excuse, any effort at denial of the facts, nor any bitterness of complaint against the authorities who had condemned him, but a calm statement of his opinions, his acts, and his sufferings and a reiteration of his devotion to the church of his choice, as we think of this young man of thirty, leaving four children to be fatherless, mother- less, and exposed to hatred and persecution for their father's sake, a wife married but a few months, and a child yet unborn, and meeting death for the faith to which he had been converted, and the King and country to whom he believed that his loyalty was due, I hope we can see that there was devotion, heroism, and martyrdom on the loyalist, as well as on the patriot side.
The rightfulness of Dunbar's execution, in itself, may be a matter of fair debate. Of course he was within the terms of the act for the punishment of treason, "which prohibited levying war against the state or aiding its enemies, by joining their armies or by enlisting others;" but the law of England also prohibited the-levying of war against the King, or assisting his enemies, and the question which was his lawful ruler, to whose laws he owed obedience, was the very question at issue
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in the contest. From the British standpoint, all the Revolutionary soldiers were guilty of treason against the crown, just as in our recent civil war every Confederate soldier, was, by strict construction of law, subject to be hanged as a traitor.
But in civil contests, which take on the dimensions of war, it is not usual, in civilized communities, for the parties on one side or the other to apply the civil penalty of treason, but rather to regard captured enemies as entitled to the treatment of prisoners of war. So the British army treated its prisoners in the Revolution, as did both parties in the Civil War.
Nathan Hale, whom the British put to death, was 'a spy, and sub- ject to the death penalty by all the usages of war; Andre, whom the Americans executed, was also a spy in the American lines, and, besides, assisting in an act of nefarious treason by an American officer; these cases are quite different from that of a man who, when rival govern- ments were demanding his allegiance, decided for the King, and honestly fought for him, as his neighbors did for the state.
The fact that the state government, though a number of other tories were convicted of treason, executed none of them, seems to show that they had doubts of the propriety of their action.
And yet Dunbar was not carrying on open war, in the King's uniform, but acting secretly, and in the territory of which the state government had possession; by the acts of himself and his associates the British army was getting secret information and assistance from within the enemy's lines; that kind of service is much like that of a spy, and we can hardly blame the state authorities severely for not making fine distinctions in favor of those who were assisting the hated enemy in their own neighborhood, secretly winning recruits among the young men of their own communities, and, by all the means in their power bringing invasion, conquest, and royal vengeance, upon their fellow- citizens of the state.
RESIDENCE P. H. CONGDON, LAUREL STREET.
Records of the State of Connecticut, vol. 1, page 4.
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BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
RESIDENCE REV. HENRY CLARK, CHURCH STREET.
The burning of Danbury by a British detachment, guided by Con- necticut tories, the month after Dunbar's execution, showed how far the loyalists of the state were ready to go in their bitterness toward their fellow-citizens. Isaac W. Shelton, said to have been one of the guides of the Danbury expedition, was a member and officer of the Bristol Episcopal church in 1736, and it is not unlikely that he and Dunbar were acquaintances and associates in the cause.
Shelton was certainly across the line, and Dunbar, at least, very near to it, that divides open enemies, entitled, when captured, to be treated as prisoners of war, from traitors and spies, who, however, sincere may be their conviction of the justice of their cause, subject themselves knowingly to the penalty of death if they are taken.
But as to the outrages committed upon the tories by their neigh- bors, nothing can be said in justification. War does not justify nor excuse, among civilized people, the whipping, tarring and feathering, or hanging, of non-combatants, even if they hold and express opinions obnoxious to the prevailing sentiment of the community. That such excesses are not the necessary outcome of excited patriotic feeling was shown in the Civil War, three generations later. Our communities were no less stirred then by the emotions of a great conflict than they had been in the days of the Revolution; but, unless in isolated cases, the most odious of the "Copperheads" were not subjected to personal violence and outrage.
The struggle of a brave people for independence is not ennobled or advanced by acts of riotous violence.
And yet, though the circumstances offered no justification, they do afford some mitigation and excuse. The position of the weaker and invaded party inevitably arouses more bitterness of feeling than that of the invader. To illustrate again from the Civil War, a northern sympathizer at the south would probably have been in much more
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danger of personal injury than a rebel sympathizer at the north. The language and acts of the northern Copperheads while they tended to produce national disaster and disunion did not excite any real fear of the invasion of our towns, the burning of our homes, or our subjection to a foreign yoke.
But the real explanation of the harsh and cruel treatment of the tories and their families was in the narrower, more intolerant spirit of the time and the place. The spirit of intolerance was perhaps the worst defect, so far as the outward life was concerned, of the Puritan character. The Puritans had learned to be firm, devoted, tenacious even to death, for the truth as they saw it; they had not learned to be, considerate, charitable, or even tolerant, to the different views of others. The very adherence to Episcopacy had seemed to them a scandalous wickedness and offense; and when the religious schismatics also opposed them in their cherished ambition to establish an independent commonwealth, and dared to defy public sentiment, and to maintain loyal allegiance to King George, the dominant party could admit neither any soundness in their reasoning, any purity in their motives, nor any right to differ so widely, and on such vital questions, from the majority.
Dunbar's own father is said to have declared when his son was arrested that he would furnish the hemp to make a rope for him; and I have no doubt that brutal utterance, so unlike in temper to the son's words, which we have read, was applauded as patriotic firmness by his neighbors.
The revival of historic patriotism of these past few years ough to bring an increase of knowledge, as well as of zeal; certainly after a hun- dred and twenty years we can afford to look at the great struggle from both sides; and so I have taken pleasure in drawing the picture of a man highminded, devout, and heroic, and yet a determined and obdurate tory, whom the state of Connecticut hanged as a traitor.
RESIDENCE WILLIAM E. SESSIONS, BELLEVUE AVENUE.
1
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BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
THE TORY DEN .*
I N THAT section of the country where the towns of Harwinton, Burlington, Plymouth, and Bristol touch, is situated a wild tract of wooded land known as "The Ledges." There is one cliff among many that faces the south and at its foot lies the "Tory Den." Large bands of Patriots in Revolutionary times sought for this hiding place in vain, and there are few even to this day who can find it.
By climbing to the top of the cliff you may picture the country to the south as it was in those stirring days. In 1775, the Chippens Hill section, that rolling land seen at the left, was one of the flourishing parts of the town of Bristol. There were houses there many more than now . and where there are now strips of woodland was rich meadow. East Plymouth at the right was also good farming country. Even Fall Mountain upon the southern horizon had patches of good land. Bristol and Plymouth were sections of a state which had the proud distinction of being the granary of the Revolution. Occasionally in a patch of woods there is discovered a cellar of one of the old time houses.
The people living in the region spread out before the eye, were an industrious class of farmers and their religion was in an overwhelming proportion that of the Church of England. Originally Congregational, and of Puritan stock, they had been converted by missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to the Episco- pal faith. They had paid with their own money the expenses of a stu- dent from Yale, James Nichols, and sent him over to England to be ordained as their minister. This divine, a Waterbury youth of wealthy family, became filled with the enthusiasm for the mother country and returned to take up his work in Bristol and Plymouth in 1774, being the last Church of England clergyman to come across the water for service in Connecticut. He held meetings in the mission house in Bristol Center and also at Plymouth Hollow now Thomaston.
With the coming of war the Church of England people were in a predicament. Though more tolerant perhaps to individual thought than the Puritan church, the established church preached strong loyalty to church and king. Rev. Mr. Nichols was not hesitant in his utterances upon the controversy. He was arrested as an instigator among his people, which he undoubtedly was, and brought. before the court at Hartford. At one time he was caught in an East Plymouth cellar and tarred feathered and dragged in a brook. It became so warm for him that he Hled to Litchfield whence he made occasional visits to administer baptisms in his parish and possibly to attend to his real estate transac- tions, for some of his money was invested here.
The staunchest friend of Rev. Mr. Nichols was Stephen Graves of Harwinton. It was upon or near his property that the Tory Den was located. His log house at Upton, where the Prof. John C. Griggs house now stands, was the meeting place of the Tory leaders. Upon high ground, in the very ledges themselves, it was the safest council chamber that could be found. The Tory Den in fact was much used as a refuge from this place and was probably first hit upon for this purpose. Ruth Graves, a bride not more than 19 years old, furnished food for the men of the den, clambering nearly a mile through the wooded crags. As her husband became more and more suspected, he was compelled to
Reprinted from Hartford Courant April 25, 1907.
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THE TORY DEN. PHOTO BY BRISTOL PRESS.
resort oftener to the den.' Once returning from Stratford he escaped from his captors near Pine Hollow hill and spent some time in the cave before he dared enter his home.
The traditions in the Graves' family give us the best information of any about the "Sons of Liberty," and it is probable that the Graves homestead was the most frequent recipient of their unwelcome raids. "Captain Wilson's Sons" they are in one place called. Who Captain Wilson was is left to conjecture, but Wilson is a Harwinton name and a name found to fit the description is that of Captain John Wilson, who during these troublesome times, was Harwinton's deputy to the General Assembly. From the Graves family may be learned the precautions that the Tory families were compelled to resort to; how, while the men worked together on the farm of one of their number with their guns near at hand for protection, the women each with her children at home, listened for the sound of a horn and watched for a glimpse of the "Sons;" how upon sight of the marauders she blew a loud blast upon a conch or horn and then laid it in its hiding place, prepared to receive the entire band, or how, when she heard a blast sounding in the air, blew an even louder one herself, that the signal might pass along to her neighbor. The story told that Captain Wilson once presented his pistol to the head of a young girl in the Graves' household and threatened to shoot her if she did not tell him where the noisy conch shell was concealed.
That these bands of searchers were large is evidenced by the words of Moses Dunbar, who says that he was grievously abused at the hands of about forty men. Flogging and beating were apparently methods of chastisement frequently used. Hanging and stringing up were re- sorted to. Nichols, the minister, it is said, was shot at. Stealing of food supplies was a source of great annoyance if not suffering.
The story of Moses Dunbar should be so familiar as to need no com- ment. Somewhere in the Chippens Hill district it is probable that he lived with his wife's people, for the home of his father, a Congregationalist in Plymouth, was shut against him. A nobler minded man it would be
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hard to find. In returning from Long Island to transport his family thither, he was caught with a commission as captain in the King's army, found guilty of enlisting a man for that army, and was hanged at Hart- ford, March 19, 1777, being the only Tory executed as such in Connecticut. On South Chippens Hill lived probably Isaac W. Shelton, who at the time the war began, was about 19 years of age. Judging by his later life, he was a man of ability. He left the section early and went to the British, being one of the guides that assisted at the destruction of Danbury.
Furtherest of any from the cliff, in the Fall Mountain section, on the top of Todd Hill, lived Chauncey Jerome, the most picturesque of the Tories. The house in which he lived is supposed to be the place known as Nathan Tuttle's store, which burned a few years ago, on the three corners near where the fishing club of Bristol has recently constructed a small lake. Erect in bearing, fully six feet in height, and of muscular build, he was a man of spirit and filled with the courage of his convic- tions and was not afraid to express them. A crowd captured him, pulled his shirt up over his head, tied him to a tree, and preparing to flog him, when he wrenched himself away, leaving his shirt on the tree, and ran to the house of his brother-in-law, Jonathan Pond, who stood at the door with gun in hand, forbidding any to enter.
The Tory Den was familiar ground to Jerome and it is probable that he was one of the leaders at the secret councils. He lived to be an old man and is described as often walking toward Chippens Hill with dignified, but resolute step with the aid of a stout staff, his nose slightly aquiline, his eyes as keen as an eagle's and almost fierce, when unex- pectedly overtaken upon the roadway by any whose faces were not familiar to him, his forehead high and broad, with thin white locks falling gracefully nearly to his shoulders.
He was one of the seventeen prisoners from Bristol who were found to be under the influence of one Nichols, a designing church clergyman, and to have refused to go in the expedition to Danbury. Of his sisters, Ruth was the wife of Stephen Graves, Phebe was the wife of Moses Dun- bar, and Jerusha was the wife of Jonathan Pond. Jonathan Pond lived at the foot of Fall Mountain, in the house now owned by Martin Konop- aski, in the town of Plymouth. He bought the place from Rev. Mr. Nichols. He was a blacksmith and formerly lived on Chippens Hill, which accounts for his intimate relations with the people there. He was not of the Episcopal faith. He paid for one substitute to fight for him in the war and owned a half interest in another and was a mem- ber in good and regular standing in a Bristol military company.
The troublesome times of '77 passed away and as American success became more pronounced the Tories disappeared or became Patriots, some of them fighting nobly for the patriot cause. Stephen Graves and Chauncey Jerome remained Tories to the end of the war, and the name clung to them. Those who left their homes and were less remem- bered as Tories, as Isaac W. Shelton, or as Mark Prindle of Harwinton, returned and were restored to influential positions in the communities in which they lived. The question of whether to stay or flee must have been a difficult one to solve. The moving of a family of such size as they had in those days was no easy matter and the prospect of losing all one's properties was not alluring. Captain Abraham Hickox, a deputy sheriff in Waterbury, withdrew to the British lines and his Han- cock property was confiscated, including the mill at Greystone, and was developed in the interests of the state. To a man unmarried such as is supposed was the case with Isaac Shelton, flight was the natural solution. To one having property, flight was also feasible. Yet Moses Dunbar tried it and didn't succeed. General Washington, during his six months' dictatorship, after the battle at Princeton, issued a procla- mation promising no molestation to Tories who would leave the country. It was on this proclamation that Moses Dunbar was relying when he left the safe confines of Long Island and returned for his family.
In 1791, St. Mathew's parish was founded at East Plymouth, and
--
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the church was built, which is now standing within two miles of the Tory Den. This parish was made up of the Episcopolians of Bristol, to whom were united some from Harwinton, and some from Plymouth, who it is said were displeased that their new meeting house had been built at Plymouth Hollow, rather than on Town Hill. The members chosen to present the petition for the formation of this new parish to the Legislature, was the prosperous Isaac W. Shelton, and he, with Stephen Graves, were two of the four upon the building committee. The church was dedicated in 1795, by Bishop Seabury, which dedication, together with one in a nearby parish, was his last official act before his death. Alexander Viets Griswold, the first minister, became later a noted bishop. The name of Stephen Graves appears once as selectman in Harwinton, showing that his Tory reputation was being forgotten. Chauncey Jerome, to the day of his death, was known as Jerome, the Tory.
The populous nature of the country in those times can be guessed today by the size of the church. Services are held in the building oc- casionally during the summer months, with no heating apparatus but a low wood stove, with stiff backed seats and creaky floor, a living rem- nant of the past. Certain of the old families have clung to it through thick and thin, until hardly a one remains and no services not of the Episcopal form has ever been held within its walls.
A tradition which is probably reliable states that Eli Terry J ,r, wished to purchase from Luman Preston the Marsh mill and property for manufacturing purposes, "having found out that Poland brook could be turned into the Old Marsh pond," but Preston, who was a strong churchman, would not sell. One reason given was that the building up of a factory village would ruin the church.
The shops of Bristol and Terryville are drawing away the life of what was once a thriving community of farmers, but as the Tory Den reminds one of the warlike attitude of some of the church's ardent supporters, the church building also reminds of their intense religious loyalty, a people of whom Bishop Griswold quaintly writes were "mostly religious and all comparatively free from vice."
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BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
THE LEATHER MAN.
BY ALICE M. BARTHOLOMEW.
I
F NOT a resident, the "Old Leather Man" was a regular visitor in Bristol for many years.
His well-known route of travel brought him from the west through the north part of the town, and to Forestville journeying east.
It is said he went to a Connecticut coast town, and turned westward again through the southern part of the State, ending his trip at the Hudson River, whence he returned by a second road.
This routine, summer sun or winter's wind were seldom allowed to interrupt and usually occupied thirty-four days for the circuit.
In 1884 and '5, he made nineteen consecutive trips of thirty-four days each, but during the last years of his life the periods grew longer, even forty days, but more often thirty-six or thirty-eight.
Clad in a suit entirely constructed of old bootlegs laced together , trousers, coat, cap and sack, even moccasins of the same home make, and naturally of swarthy complexion, but blackened still more by wind and weather, he was a terrible object for little girls to meet on the side- walk and even some little boys rather shunned the honor.
The picture given above is very good. It was taken without his knowledge from the shield of a good woman's washing hung out to dry.
She habitually fed the traveler and knew what noon to expect his
THE TORY DEN, WHERE THE OLD LEATHER MAN USED SOMETIMES TO STOP
OR "NEW CAMBRIDGE,"
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THE OLD LEATHER MAN.
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BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
call. It is thought he never would have consented to be photographed, had he known it.
Much romance has been circulated about this traditional Connecticut character. It is even true that more than one man has worn the costume and title. An earlier, more gentle-bred person was known in Water- bury and Litchfield, whose death was a mystery, but our traveler died .of cancer in the mouth, some twenty years ago. He was found in a ·cave, where he had habitually spent the nights, near Mount Pleasant, New York.
It has been said that he was a Frenchman, by name Jules Bourglay, who lost a fortune in the leather business and his fiancee with it, but it seems much more probable that the account of him offered by Mr. John Welton, a local historian of western Connecticut, is more trust- worthy. Mr. Welton calls him a fugitive from justice and a negro.
"Years ago," he says, "there was a notorious resort not far from New Hartford known as the Barkhampsted lighthouse."(There was always a light there at night.) "It was the rendezvous for a gang of thieves, white men and colored who committed all sorts of crimes. At last the authorities broke up the place; and would have been glad to capture more of the people.'
This man, in Mr. Welton's opinion was one of the half breed negroes, who had settled into this apparently lawful, if wandering life. It is possible that the other leather-man was the Frenchman.
There was always a small package in the bottom of our traveler's sack, which he would not allow any curious friend to even touch. This led to a little suspicion that he might possibly be the bearer of some valuable, in a business way. The regularity and persistency with which he traveled, would be thus accounted for. It was noted that no such package was found in his sack, in the cave. It must have been delivered before he lay down to die, and the wonder expressed at the time, whether a successor would some time follow him, has apparently been answered in the contrary.
THE LOG CABIN, On Wolcott Mountain After An Ice Storm
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BITS OF PEQUABUCK SCENERY. ( Photographs by Milo Leon Norton.)
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BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT
THE PEQUABUCK RIVER
BY MILO LEON NORTON.
MILO LEON NORTON
HE was born of the hills, of the royal hills, And the nymphs of the fountains and laughing rills, Poured out their treasures of jewels rare, To deck the couch of the princess fair.
Queen Summer came from her leafy bowers, To crown the babe with a wreath of flowers; And the Frost King brought her a diadem, Inwrought with many a beautiful gem.
'Twas a peaceful valley she wandered through Where the supple willows and alders grew. Through meadows where daisies nod and bend, And trees their welcoming arms extend.
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Or, lingering oft in some silent pool, She would sleep and dream in the shadows cool; Then dancing and tripping from stone to stone, She would sing in a mellow undertone.
, But, oh! an enemy came one day, As she leaped and laughed in her innocent play ; And he, in his sordid soul, decreed Henceforth she must minister to his need.
He reasoned that if, in the Calvinist plan, To be damned is the fate of degenerate man, Were it foreordained, then it might be true, This stream to be dammed was predestined too.
So they piled up a barrier huge of stone, Which directly athwart her path was thrown; And she beat and struggled against it in vain, Her liberty fearing she ne'er would regain.
But at last, with a rage that she could not conceal, She sprang at the flukes of the miller's wheel. With a dash, and a crash, and a deafening sound, The brimming buckets spun round and round.
Then quickly again she flowed along, And filled the air with a gleeful song; Through dingle and dell wound in an out, Or leaped o'er the rocks with a joyful shout;
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