USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Suffield > Celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Suffield, Connecticut, October 12, 13 and 14, 1920, with sketches from its past and some record of its last half century and of its present > Part 10
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From the date of the first settlement to the present the name has been preserved in Suffield but now is held only by Mr. George A. Harmon, the first selectman, He is a lineal descend- ant in the seventh generation from Joseph Harmon who was on the first board of selectmen of the town.
Deerfield Captives
Suffield like other towns in the valley participated in the tragedies of the Deerfield attack and the captivity of some of its people. One of the captives who never came back was a grand- son of James Rising, who settled in Suffield after King Philip's
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war at the lower end of High Street. He died in 1688 and his son John inherited the estate and married a daughter of Timothy Hale. They had nine children, one of whom, Josiah, was only four years old when his mother died. His father married again, and Josiah was sent to Deerfield to live with his father's cousin, Mehuman Hinsdell, whose house was opposite that of Benoni Stebbins.
After the Deerfield attack, Mehuman Hinsdell, whose wife and child had been killed, found himself a captive on the road to Canada with the boy Josiah Rising. In the same train were the wife of Godfrey Sims and their daughter Abigail, four years old. Abigail went to live with the squaw of her Indian captor and Josiah to the wigwam of his Macqua master, and with other captive children they were sent to the mission of Mar- guerite Bourgeois at Sault au Recollet near Montreal. The records show that both were baptized, Abigail in 1704 as Mary Elizabeth, and Josiah in 1706 as Ignace Raizenne. They were evidently favorites for in the several attempts made to redeem the captives Josiah and Abigail were never given up.
After the peace of Utrecht Captain John Stoddard and Parson Williams, with Martin Kellogg and Thomas Baker as guides and interpreters, undertook another mission to secure the remaining captives and arrived in Canada in 1714. There is evi- dence in the Massachusetts records that Abigail's Indian mas- ter, learning of the mission, took her down to Westfield and tried to sell her. Whatever happened, it is on the records that Josiah and Abigail were married by a priest in the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette at Sault au Recollet the next year, or July 29, 1715. The missing link in the story is how Abigail was brought back to Montreal.
Josiah's father, John Rising, died in Suffield in 1719, and bequeathed to his "well beloved son, Josiah, now in captivity, the sum of five pounds in money to be paid out of my estate within three years after my decease, provided he return from capitivity." But he never returned. Josiah and Abigail forgot their own people and became the progenitors of a family notable in the religious life of the French in Canada. In 1721 the mission was transferred to the Lake of the Two Mountains and the priests gave Josiah and Abigail, or Ignace and Elizabeth Raiz-
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enne as their new names were, a domain of their own a short distance from the Fort. There they lived for many years, and of their eight children the eldest, Marie Madeline, was a nun named Sister Saint Herman and taught Indian girls for a quarter of a century. The eldest son was a priest and curè of excellent character and ability. Marie Raizenne, born in 1736 was the most famous of the children. She was Lady Superior of the Community of the Congregation.
The Martin Kellogg who went to Canada in 1714 as interpreter for John Stoddard was doubtless the eldest son of Martin Kel- logg who with his four children was taken captive to Canada. The father quickly gained his liberty and came to Suffield to live, his farm being on Northampton Road. Martin Jr. was re- deemed once, but again taken in 1708 while with a scouting party, and again redeemed. The second son, Joseph Kellogg, was a prisoner ten years and became familiar with the languages and customs of the Indian tribes. In 1714 he was persuaded to leave with the Stoddard party, and returned to his father's home in Suffield. He married a sister of Rev. Mr. Devotion. The third child, Joanna, married an Indian chief and never returned. The fourth, Rebecca, after a long captivity returned and was long employed in Indian mission schools in western New York.
Early Courts and Lawyers
For many years Hampshire county contained all of western Massachusetts including the present towns of Suffield, Enfield and Somers. Worcester County was not incorporated till 1731; the three towns went into Connecticut in 1749, and Berkshire became a separate county in 1761. Practice in the early courts was as crude as the settlements but in 1692 Massachusetts by law established Courts of Common Pleas and substituted a Superior Court for the Court of Assistants. The old court re- cords deal largely with two subjects -the establishment and repair of highways and the human frailties of many people, even prominent settlers, in those hard and strictly religious days.
One of the early Suffield lawyers was Christopher Jacob Lawton, born in 1701, and grandson of John Lawton a first settler. Like many adventurous spirits of those days he became
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something of a land speculator and promoter of settlements. When in 1713 the long standing dispute between Suffield and the towns to the south was settled, and Windsor and Simsbury gained the disputed territory that forms the notch to the south- west of Suffield, the people were much aggrieved and subsequent events did not improve their feelings toward Massachusetts. In 1726 John Kent, Sergeant King and Captain Winchell were chosen a committee "to pursue that matter respecting the ob- taining an equivalent for the land taken from the said Proprie- tors by the late establishment of the line of Connecticut, and given to Windsor and Simsbury."
In 1732 this committee was impowered to employ Christopher Jacob Lawton to petition the General Court in order to obtain an equivalent.
It appears from other records that Lawton had already se- cured extensive tracts of land in the region then known as Hous- satanick and now as the fashionable Berkshire Hills, and that sometime before or during the year 1732, when Suffield retained him, he had already petitioned the General Court for a grant of 500 acres on "that part of the road from Westfield to Albany that lies between Westfield and Houssatanick," on the plea that travelers suffered great hardships because there was no tavern along the road. Long before these western Massachusetts wilds were settled, an old road or path led from Westfield over the hills to the Hudson and later became a thoroughfare for the armies engaged in the French and Indian wars.
It has been surmised that Lawton had an interest in the lands, afterwards the town of Blandford, as a connecting link between his Housatonic lands and the river towns. In any case the Gen- eral Court at Boston granted him the 500 acres on condition that he would erect a house of entertainment with suitable stables by September 1, 1734, and should himself reside in it or provide a suitable person to reside there. In the same year, and presumably at the instance of Lawton whom the town had re- tained, the General Court granted to the Suffield Proprietors as an equivalent for the lost Simsbury lands a tract six miles square, which was roughly known as Glasgow and later became Blandford. The quantity for each proprietor was two hundred and thirty acres.
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Meantime Lawton built a tavern in the west portion of the present Blandford, and put a man named Joseph Pixley in charge of it. It was long known as Pixley's tavern. Meantime also the Suffield Proprietors had found no way to make their equivalents of value, and they gradually sold them to Lawton at such sums as he bid.
Lawton evidently had some trouble with the Massachusetts General Court but the incidents are obscure. It is possible that having acquired the whole town region from the Suffield Pro- prietors, he showed less concern for the conditions of the small grant of land within it for a tavern. The records show that he sold the first lots to the settlers of Blandford.
A contemporary of Lawton in the law was John Huggins, who was born in Suffield in 1688. He moved to Springfield where he had an extensive practice, and about 1732 removed to Sheffield, where he continued in practice and was succeeded in the pro- fession by his son. He is reputed to have had as correct knowl- edge of the law as any man of that day.
General Phinehas Lyman
Practice in the Hampshire County Courts had become greatly improved in the second quarter of the eighteenth century and it has been attributed to three men, Phinehas Lyman of Suffield, John Worthington of Springfield and Joseph Hawley of North- ampton-contemporaries and all men of note. Of these Lyman and Hawley became most famous, the former, however, passing from the scene before the Revolution, while Hawley participated in it. General Lyman was born in Durham, Conn., in 1716, was graduated from Yale in 1738 and for three years was a tutor there. Meantime he studied law and in 1743 came to Suffield, then in Hampshire County, and began practice. His business soon became extensive and he established a law school at Suffield; John Worthington and Joseph Hawley were among his pupils. Historians of the period have attributed to him in large measure the separation of Suffield and the other Connecticut towns from Massachusetts, though it is evident from the town and other records that the people of Suffield were unwilling subjects of Massachusetts as early as 1720, or almost a quarter of a century before Lyman came to town. It was his influence and skill,
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however, that finally accomplished it. The late George Bliss in a historical address on the bar of the period surmised that Lyman was not pleased with the growing fame of Worthington and was apprehensive that they could not move harmoniously in the same orbit. This is doubtful as Lyman's gifts were not likely to suffer from competition.
He was chosen one of the town's selectmen in 1746, continued on the board from year to year, and was usually chosen modera- tor at town meetings. He was appointed justice of the peace for Hartford county in 1750 and also a commissioner to settle the Massachusetts boundary line with Governor Jonathan Law and Roger Wolcott; four years later he was one of the commis- sioners meeting with those of other colonies to take measures to prosecute the war against France.
In March 1755 the General Assembly appointed him comman- der in chief of the Connecticut forces under the British comman- der, General William Johnson in the expedition against Crown Point with the object of driving the French from Lake Cham- plain. Lyman's troops marched ahead over the difficult route to the Hudson to the point where he built the fort afterwards named Fort Edwards. Then the army proceeded to Lake George where General Johnson laid out a camp to which the artillery and stores were later brought. Here the French from Crown Point attacked and a five hours battle ensued. General Johnson was wounded and General Lyman took command and won a signal victory. Among the Suffield soldiers in this expedi- tion were Lieutenant Elihu Kent, Sergeant Benjamin Bancroft Seth King, drummer, Nehemiah Harmon, Joel Adams, David Bement, Phinehas Lyman Jr., Noah Pomeroy, John Spencer, James Halladay, Zebulon Norton, Edward Foster and John White.
In 1760 Connecticut sent four regiments under the command of General Lyman in the campaign against Montreal under General Amherst. The troops assembled at Albany in June of that year and began the march toward Montreal, reaching Oswego in July. At this point the troops embarked in batteaux August 10th and sailed down the lake, entering the St. Lawrence the 15th. On the 18th Lyman's troops with British regulars reached the island on which Fort Levis is situated and were
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ordered to make the first attack. Under fire from the fort they landed on the island and erected batteries within 600 yards from which fire was opened the 23d; on the 25th the French surrendered. The expedition immediately passed down the river and invested Montreal, Lyman's regiment having a position in advance. On September 8th the French commander surren- dered, and this terminated the French war which had con- tinued six years and completed the conquest of Canada. Among the Suffield men in this expedition were Oliver Hanchett, John Harmon and Thaddeus Lyman.
In 1762, Great Britian having declared war against Spain, the Connecticut General Assembly voted to raise and equip 2300 men for the King's service. Under the act 1000 men were enlisted for the expedition against Havana. New York furnished 800 and New Jersey 500, and the whole army was put in com- mand of General Lyman. Rev. John Graham, the first minister of the West Suffield Congregational church, was appointed chaplain. The expedition joined the force of Lord Albemarle which, after an attack of two months, captured Havana, thus completing within a few years a British victory over both France and Spain. Robert Burns commemorated the two events in "The Jolly Beggars" by a few spirited lines in which the old soldier sings :
My 'prenticeship I passed where my leader breathed his last,
When the bloody die was cast on the heights of Abram; I served out my trade when the gallant game was played And the Morro low was laid at the sound of the drum.
By the treaty of Paris in 1763 Havana was restored to Spain but England received from France all the territory claimed by that country east of the Mississippi. This acquisition led to a movement for the colonization of the Mississippi region. Gen- eral Lyman went to England soon after returning from Havana and was there for about ten years engaged in obtaining Miss- issippi grants from the British Government. Returning to Suf- field, he formed a company of Connecticut men of adventurous inclinations including some from Suffield.
In January 1774 he left Connecticut in a vessel commanded by Captain Goodrich and at about the same time his sons
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Thaddeus and Phinehas Jr. sailed in another vessel from Ston- ington. Both vessels arrived safely at New Orleans, and General Lyman and his men immediately proceeded up the Mississippi river to the Big Black, thence up that river about seventeen miles where they fixed the site of a town. In June 1774 Thad- deus returned to Suffield for the purpose of settling his father's affairs and removing the family to Mississippi. General Lyman and his son Phinehas remained to promote the settlement and make arrangements for the family.
From Mr. H. S. Sheldon's notes it appears that General Lyman had sold his homestead in Suffield (situated on the south corner of Main Street and the West Suffield road and including the land where the present railroad station is) to Benjamin Bancroft who had been one of General Lyman's Suffield comrades in the French and Indian wars. The deed was executed in New York City January 6, 1774, and therefore when General Lyman was on his way to Mississippi. For some reason the property was bought back by his son Thaddeus when he returned to settle affairs, the deed being dated September 30, 1775 or about a year after his return. For some years General Lyman had owned the whole of Great Island in the Connecticut river and the records show that the same year he sold it to Roger Enos of Windsor for 200 pounds. Thus all indicates that he planned a permanent depar- ture for his Mississippi enterprise.
The records do not reveal the causes or the motives that operated in the Lyman family at this time. Thaddeus returned to Suffield in the summer of 1774, the year of the first Continen- tal Congress, and the declaration of rights. He was there when Captain Elihu Kent rallied his Suffield men at the time of the Lexington alarm. Patriots were already taking arms in all the colonies north and south. Washington had been appointed commander in chief; the battle of Bunker Hill had been fought; Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point that General Lyman had captured for the English, had been taken from the English by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain boys in the months of 1775, before Thaddeus Lyman bought back his father's place.
The records show that May 1, 1776, Thaddeus, his mother, two brothers Oliver and Thompson and two sisters Eleanor and Experience in company with others, emigrants for the new
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Mississippi colony, sailed from Middletown Conn., and on July 30th reached the Mississippi river, a few days after the Declaration of Independence. For some reason the family did not reach General Lyman's plantation till about the middle of September and then learned that General Lyman and his son Phinehas were both dead. Phinehas Jr. died in Natchez in 1775, and his father soon after. Mrs. Lyman died a few days after arriving and was buried by the side of husband and son.
Such was the tragic ending of one of Suffield's most brilliant and notable men. His rare gifts and attainments would have placed him in the front rank of the patriots of the Revolutionary period could events have moulded his course differently. For twenty years he had been a soldier of the King. Though in those years Suffield was his home, his life had been on the march, in camp and field; he had led troops that ended the war against France and troops that ended the war against Spain, and during the ten years in which British policy bred revolution in the colonies he was in England, his adventurous spirit looking to a great new domain on the Mississippi. He had not been living in the atmosphere of colonial patriotism in the years preceding the Revolution, and it is not strange that, though he returned to Suffield on the eve of the Lexington alarm, he did not take up his sword for independence but, selling his Suffield property and gathering men about him, carried the British flag to that sad ending on the banks of the Lower Mississippi. Thaddeus and his sisters returned to Connecticut; he deeded the homestead to Benajah Kent June 2, 1788, and settled in West Suffield.
Gideon Granger
Another Suffield lawyer to acquire large fame in national life was Gideon Granger, born in 1767, prepared for college by Rev. Ebenezer Gay and graduated from Yale in 1787. He practiced law in Suffield, his office being next to his father's house. He was a natural politician and in 1792 as the representative from Suffield became a leader in the Legislature. At first a Federalist in politics, he later espoused the cause of Jefferson and oppor- tunity for larger fame came to him in the presidental election of 1800. Gideon and his cousin were the most important cam- paign speakers for Jefferson in New England, the Federalist
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stronghold. Naturally these efforts attracted attention at Wash- ington to which the Government was now moving, and when, after the election, Gideon Granger visited Washington he had a notable reception. He was appointed postmaster-general and held the office throughout Jefferson's two terms and a large part of Madison's administration. He grew out of sympathy with the Madison wing of the party and, after resigning, re- moved to New York and became identified with the political fortunes of De Witt Clinton, dying in 1822.
Hezekiah Huntington
Hezekiah Huntington was born in 1759 in Tolland, Conn. in which his grandfather was one of the first settlers. He studied law with Gideon Granger and with John Trumbull, afterwards Judge of the Superior Court, and was admitted to the Hartford Bar in 1789. The next year he came to Suffield and rapidly es- tablished a law practice. April 1, 1796 he bought the Phinehas Lyman homestead from Benajah Kent, who eight years before had bought it from Thaddeus Lyman, and at the same time became Suffield's first postmaster of record, the first quarterly return being made in the fall of 1796. With the Grangers he went into the Jefferson party and in 1806 was appointed at- torney for Connecticut. He held the office until 1829. He repre- sented the town in the Legislature from 1802-5. In 1813 he moved to Hartford where he died in 1842. He was the father of Judge Samuel H. Huntington who was born in Suffield in 1793. The Lyman homestead was burned at about the time Hezekiah Huntington removed to Hartford, but his law office was saved and still stands on the lot where it has served for various purposes, including the office of School Superintendent for a period.
William Gay -
William Gay, son of Dr. Ebenezer Gay and brother of Ebene- zer 2d, was a contemporary of Gideon Granger, being born the same year. He graduated from Yale, studied law and bought the house known as the Gay Mansion in 1811. He succeeded Hezekiah Huntington as postmaster in 1798 and continued in that office for thirty-seven years.
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Calvin Pease
Calvin Pease was born at Suffield and studied law with Gideon Granger. In 1800 he went to Ohio and was a member of the Leg- islature and was active in the formation of the State Govern- ment. From 1803 to 1810 he was judge of the Court of Common Pleas and from 1816 chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. He died at Warren, Ohio, in 1839. Seth Pease his brother, born in 1764, graduated from Yale, was educated for a physician, but he was appointed First Assistant Postmaster General in 1816, and was the first to hold that federal office.
Ministers and Laymen
Several ecclesiastical figures stand out conspicuously in the history of Suffield as men of strong natures, high intellectual qualities and effective leadership. The first was Dr. Ebenezer Gay, who became pastor of the First Congregational church in 1741. He was widely known and was reckoned as one of the able and learned divines of his day. In the latter part of his life he suffered much from bodily infirmities which often confined him for weeks together, but his people provided him an assistant in his son, who at his death succeeded him. This son, Ebenezer Gay Jr., was also an able man and fitted several of the young men of later prominence for Yale college.
Asahel Morse
One of the strong ecclesiastical characters in Suffield a century ago was Rev. Asahel Morse, who succeeded Rev. John Hastings as pastor of the First Baptist church. He took much interest in political movements and in 1818 was a member of the conven- tion that framed the Constitution of Connecticut and drafted the article relating to religious liberty. Rev. Calvin Philleo, partly a contemporary in the Second Baptist church, once re- corded this story regarding "Elder" Morse: He had been down to Hartford in the course of the week to attend a religious meet- ing and returning early Sunday morning to West Suffield to preach, as usual, passing through Windsor, he was accosted and asked where he was traveling on the holy Sabbath. He replied that he was going to West Suffield. He was told to dismount from his horse and stay in their house till Monday morning, and then
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he might go on his way. He pleaded with them to let him pass . on; he would disturb no one. He then bid them good morning, put whip to his horse and was on his way to West Suffield. The Standing Order mounted their horses and pursued, determined to bring him back to Windsor, to be tried for breaking the holy Sabbath. The elder led them on, keeping a little ahead of them, till they all arrived in front of the Meeting House on Zion's Hill, where a multitude of people were gathered. The Elder dismounted and turned and addressed his pursuers and perse- cutors: "Gentlemen, here is where I preach, and if you will go into the meeting and hear me preach, you may then go home to Windsor; otherwise I will complain of you for breaking the holy Sabbath as you call it." The men complied with the terms proposed.
Calvin Philleo
Elder Philleo was himself a notable ecclesiastical figure in his time which was distinctly one of the revival seasons that for a half century periodically swept over much of New England. Elder Philleo, says a historian of the Second Baptist church, was emphatically a revival preacher, eccentric, impulsive and en- thusiastic. He went everywhere that opportunity offered, preaching the word, the church granting him the liberty. He was possessed of a vivid imagination and remarkable descriptive powers which he used to great advantage.
Dwight Ives
Under his preaching on a Fast Day, Dwight Ives, a gay thought- less young man, seventeen years of age was convicted of sin, and in great distress of mind for two weeks until he found forgive- ness in Christ and said, "Lord what wilt thou have me to do?" What he did is a part of the later history of Suffield. He was pastor of the Second Baptist church for nearly thirty-five years. and one of the ablest men Suffield has produced. He left a strong impression on the life of the town. His long pastorate was coin- cident with the religious, educational and material growth of the community. He was an earnest preacher, a wise executive and a leader of his people, firm yet beloved.
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