USA > Connecticut > Colonial Days And Ways: As Gathered from Family Papers > Part 11
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The first Captain John Gallup was a grandson of Thomas Gallup, owner of the manors of North Bowood and Strode in Dorsetshire, England.
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Being a younger son of a younger son, the emi- grating Gallup may reasonably be supposed not to have possessed an unduly large share of this world's gear, but it is certain that he speedily became a man of some substance and much value in the colonies. His son, the second Captain Gallup, married Hannah, daughter of Mrs. Margaret Lake, thus bringing together the gentle and the warlike, and from their union sprang a race many of whose descendants have made their mark by council-fires and on the tented field, passing from one to the other as the needs of their country required, but flinching from no difficulty or danger when fol- lowing what appeared to them to be their duty.
William Gallup, a son of the second John Gal- lup and Hannah Lake, married Sarah, a daughter of Samuel and granddaughter of William Chese- brough of Stonington, Connecticut. The last- named came from England in 1630 in Winthrop's fleet. Of Mr. Chesebrough it has been written that " he could frame a building or he could sit as judge in a case at law. He could forge a chain or draw up a plan for the organization of the municipal government. He could survey a tract of land or he could represent his town in the General Court and adjust its disturbed relations with the constituted [colonial] authorities." This shows him to have been a typical Yankee of the best sort -a man who could successfully turn his capable hands and brains to any useful thing.
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It is said that Mr. William Chesebrough was a man of strong religious convictions, and certainly he must have enjoyed religious services, for it is recorded that in bad seasons, when the necessarily ill-made roads of the time were rendered more than usually impassable by heavy freshets and oozing frosts, he had been " known to start for church at a little after midnight in order to accomplish in good time the fifteen miles that lay between his home and the meeting house." It required both strength of muscle and conviction to render the best of men so zealous as that. But, with all his zeal, Mr. Chesebrough had a fund of humor which made his genial society sought by young and old until his death in 1667, while his "judicious mild- ness smoothed many public and private difficulties in the region where he was, in two senses, the first settler."
It is this Mr. Chesebrough's granddaughter, Temperance Gallup, whose marriage to the Rev. William Worthington is related in our account of " A Colonial Wedding," and it was one of the daughters of this couple who, in 1756 or 1757, became the wife of the Rev. Cotton Mather Smith of Sharon, Connecticut.
The Rev. William Worthington was the first settled pastor of the West Parish of Saybrook, Con- necticut, where he died in 1756. Family tra- ditions, coming down through several lines of descendants, unite in ascribing to him "great
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blandness, urbanity and grace of manner com- bined with a keen and trenchant wit." He was considered a learned man in his day, and as a preacher "was distinguished for using the persua- sions of the Gospel rather than the terrors of the law." Mr. Worthington left five daughters and one son - also William Worthington, a colonel of patriotic troops during the Revolutionary War, who died a bachelor. The youngest daughter married Dr. Aaron Elliott, son of the Rev. Jared Elliott of Killingworth, now Clinton, Connecticut. Another married Colonel John Ely of Lyme, Con- necticut, whose noble record of high patriotism is but too little known. A third daughter married Elnathan Chauncey. A fourth daughter married Mr. William Hopkins. All of the sons-in-law of the Rev. William Worthington were prominent men in their several places of residence, and from all of them have descended many persons of social and intellectual distinction. It was the second daughter, Temperance, who became the wife of the Rev. Cotton Mather Smith of Sharon, Connecticut.
All of the sisters bore a contemporary reputa- tion of being more accomplished than most of the women of their time. Their father, being in ad- vance of his age in considering that girls had as much brain and as much use for it as boys, had given to his daughters every attainable advantage. Comparatively few of the pastors of Parson Wor- thington's generation paid visits to Europe, but
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Mrs. Smith and one of her sisters in their girl- hood accompanied their father on a visit which he made to England. In the diary of Juliana Smith we find this " long and arduous " journey referred to several times, but with an exasperating brevity and incompleteness, as :
" When Mamma was with Grandfather Wor- thington in Boston, England, she heard a great Organ the tones of which rolled like the Ocean, and the whole soul melted to its music."
And again, writing in 1779:
" When my Mother and Aunt were in England, thirty years ago, they were hospitably entertained at the country seats of some of my Grandfather's relatives there, and now we are told that one of them, who was an officer of the King's troops, and was an Ensign then, is now a Major, and is sick and a Prisoner in the hands of the Continentals. My Father will use every effort to have him brought to us, and then it is possible we may secure an ex- change for my Uncle Ely, who holds the same rank in our army, and is now a Prisoner in the hands of the British in New York."
This exchange, so much desired, was not effected, the doctor being found too useful as a physician among the sick prisoners confined in the "Old Sugar
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House." It was nearly or quite at the close of the war when Dr. Ely, much broken in health, but not in spirit, was restored to his family.
Mr. S. G. Goodrich (Peter Parley), who was the grandson of Mrs. Chauncey, says that Mrs. Smith and her sisters were all " noted for their wide read- ing, their elegant manners, and their excellent house-wifery." The last two accomplishments may be taken without qualification, but in regard to the first claim it is necessary to make allowance for the conditions and times. Mr. Worthington's daughters certainly read Shakspere and Milton, for odd volumes of both of these classics still exist bearing the name of " Temperance Worthington, from her Father," written on fly-leaves. Both bear evidence of having been well read, though care- fully used. (Books were far too costly and rare to be treated slightingly.) It is said that all of Mr. Worthington's daughters were good Latin scholars, and it is certain that at least one of them, Mrs. Smith, was a fairly good French scholar, speaking the language sufficiently well to act as interpreter when occasion required, as it sometimes did when the French troops were here during our Revolu- tionary War. The same useful office was filled by one of her sisters, Mrs. Ely, I think, at Newport, Rhode Island. Mrs. Smith taught the language of our allies to her own sons and daughters, giving them such an interest in it that at least two of them continued to read French and translate it with ease,
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even in their latest years. Where Mrs. Smith ac- quired her knowledge of the French tongue I do not know. It was a most unusual accomplishment in the New England of her time, and may have been gained in one of the Huguenot schools in New Rochelle. There is no proof that she attended one of these, but several circumstances seem to point that way; among them is the existence of some delicate specimens, made by "Madame Smith" and her daughters, of such needlework as was then universally known as " French embroidery."
The house to which Mrs. Smith came as a bride, in 1756 or 1757, was built a few years before that date by her husband's predecessor, the Rev. Mr. Searle. In spite of the fact that this dwelling was still in an admirable state of preservation, it was taken down in 1812 by my grandfather, who re- placed it by a house of the then fashionable Grecian temple style of architecture.
The old house, as described to me, was large and heavily timbered, with its sides covered with over- lapping cedar shingles. In front the hipped roof began to rise from a little above the ceiling of the first story, but sloped so little that the house was practically two stories high on that side. At the rear the roof slowly receded from the ridge-pole to the long stoep which ran from north to south across the back of the low-ceiled, many-windowed, wide and comfortable old manse. On the first floor four large rooms were grouped round the
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central chimney, against which, and directly op- posite to the outer door, was a square hall from which a flight of stairs broken by a platform ran to the second story. In accordance with the general usage of the time, this outer door was divided into upper and lower halves. It opened upon a stone porch, provided with seats on the sides, and cov- ered with an overhanging shingled roof unsup- ported by pillars. At the time that my grand- father remembered it a portion of the stoep at the rear had been inclosed to afford accommodations for a summer kitchen, for washing clothes, and a milk-room. At right angles with the house, stretching eastward, there ran out from one corner the immense woodshed, rendered necessary by the incessantly devouring open fires ; and near the east- ern extremity of the shed were disposed the other outbuildings. This was a great improvement upon the common village usage of colonial days, which was to cluster the woodshed and some of the smaller outbuildings around the front door.
The village green, which is now so beautifully elm-embowered, could then have been but a wide and unkempt common, a pasture-ground where scattered trees, the scant remains of ancient growths, afforded shade to sheep, cows, calves, geese, and sometimes even to swine.
Directly in front of the parsonage, shading its porch, there stood an immense white-ash tree, be- lieved to have been the largest of its kind in New
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England, under whose giant branches the Wequag- nock Indians had often built their council-fires. This glorious tree lived and apparently flourished until a great gale in August, 1893. My grand- father, William Mather Smith (who was born in 1786), said that within his recollection this tree had never increased in apparent size. From the front door to the gate, passing by and under the great ash, was a short and irregularly flagged walk, edged with box.
That one of the four principal rooms on the first floor which opened by four large windows to the west and south was occupied by the parson, both as his study and as the class-room for his pupils. There were then no theological seminaries, and the young men who wished to be fitted for the ministry studied with such pastors as were held in the highest estimation for learning and ability. About the time of the Revolutionary War the Rev. Dr. Bellamy of Bethlehem, and the Rev. Cot- ton Mather Smith of Sharon, seem to have divided between themselves the greater number of divinity students of western Connecticut.
The parsonage furnishings would not strike the modern eye as either abundant or very comforta- ble, yet there were comparatively few dwellings of the day so well supplied. The dark mahogany desk at which the Rev. C. M. Smith wrote hun- dreds of the sermons preached during his fifty-two years' pastorate in Sharon is now in possession of
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his great-great-grandson. Some of the fine old chairs and a sofa of the same unrivaled wood, the latter handsomely carved, but of severe outlines and unapproachable discomfort, are in the same ownership. An inlaid sideboard of mahogany and satinwood, which adorned the parsonage liv- ing-room, and which had belonged to the parson's father, is now owned by a great-great-granddaugh- ter. These, with some small round mahogany stands for candles, an ebony-framed mirror, and a few other of the choice things which once stood in the parsonage, are all that now remain of its fur- nishings, save the portraits of King George III and Queen Charlotte. About these the only re- markable thing is that they exist at all, for they are on glass, and could not have survived save by dint of great care; and who could or would have be- stowed this care immediately after the War of the Revolution ? The parson and his wife were both very strong patriots, but it would seem that there might have lingered some feeling of personal loy- alty to the old sovereigns, which, through it all, preserved their frail presentments with faithful care.
One of the comparatively few imported carpets at that time in the country lay on the parson's study floor. The living-room, across the hall from the study, and communicating with the kitchen behind it, had a carpet of heavy homespun woolen yarn, woven in a pattern of broad, lengthwise
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stripes. Such carpets had two merits: being as smooth of surface as the " Kensington art squares " of our day, they were much more easily swept than the ugly rag carpets; and being of wool, honestly spun and woven, were practically indestructible, save by moths. Some were still made in Connec- ticut well into this century. In the specimens which I have seen the colors were a rich red, a dark yellow, an indigo blue, a dingy purple, and a dusky green.
The bedroom of the parson and his wife, com- municating directly with the study, and, through a passage, with the kitchen also, was a fireless room opening to the south. No wonder that in winter its tall four-poster was sheltered with heavily woven linen or wool curtains under the more decorative hangings of picture chintz. Bitterly cold and drafty, in zero weather, must have been the rooms whose only warmth was that which could escape from the adjacent rooms. No matter how generous might be the blaze of the open wood fire, far more of its heat made its way up the chimney- throat than to the opposite wall upon which its evening shadows gaily danced, and still smaller was the portion which could be coaxed into an adjoining room.
Heavy bed-hangings were a winter necessity be- fore steam-heat, furnaces, or even stoves had been invented. My father and his brother, who well remembered these days, which, in country places,
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continued until about the end of their college terms in 1830 and 1832, have told me that on cold nights, after the fires had been covered, the wind often blew in great gusts down the wide-throated chimney, and that then the bed-curtains, heavy as they were, " blew like handkerchiefs in a gale," and they were glad enough of the additional protection for their ears and heads of warm nightcaps knitted by grandmother, mother, or cousin from the yarn even then still spun at home from the wool of their own sheep.
As friction matches did not come into general use until 1835 or thereabout, it was still the cus- tom to bank the fireplaces with ashes at night until not an ember or spark of fire could be seen, just as similar fires had been banked for untold centuries before. If this precaution were not thoroughly taken the fires were an ever-imminent danger. On very cold and windy nights it was cus- tomary for some members of a family to take turns in sitting up to watch the fires.
My father, when a boy of eight or nine years, saw his father display to admiring neighbors "a wonderfully handy new invention by which fires could be readily kindled." Something like the trigger of a flint-lock musket was pulled, and a spark struck from the flint and steel, which ignited a bit of punk ; this, being judiciously blown upon, set fire to splinters of resinous wood, and this, in turn, to carefully reared piles of splintered kin-
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dlings and well-seasoned logs. Before the advent of the "fire-sparker " of flint and steel, when the earliest riser of a family was so unfortunate as to find that the too slightly protected embers of the previous night's fires had burned themselves out, or that the too densely covered ones had been hopelessly smo- thered, it was his chilly task to wait and watch forthe nearest chimney which should show rising smoke, and then to sally forth, with chafing-dish or foot- stove in hand, to " borrow coals."
CHAPTER XIV HOME CARES IN A PARSONAGE
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CHAPTER XIV.
HOME CARES IN A PARSONAGE.
Madam Smith's Multi- plied Employments. Small Incomes and Many Out-goes. Extracts from Madam Smith's Reminiscences. The Small-pox. Hospitality. The Preaching of White- field.
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0 0 I ON Madam Smith's time, and for many a long year before and af- ter, there was never a matron so wealthy that she had not her hands full of Martha-like cares. In general the richer the family the more arduous were these cares; but, of them all, not even the lady of a manor was so overburdened as was the parson's wife -the " madam," as she was generally styled,- so much was demanded of her, so multi- farious were her duties. Ministerial stipends were then very small. Mr. Smith's salary at the time of his settlement, in 1754, was "220 Spanish dollars or an equivalent in old tenor bills." In addition to this he was to receive, as what was then known as a " settlement," " 140 ounces of silver or an equivalent in old tenor bills, annually for three years." I believe that the yearly salary was sub- sequently increased, but do not know to what extent.
Salaries of four or even of three hundred dollars a year were considered liberal in country places un- til years after the Revolution. On such small sums,
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eked out by the produce from a certain number of acres of glebe-land, the minister was expected not only to support his own family, but to bear an un- due share in the entertaining of strangers, as well as in aiding the neighboring poor. When, as some- times happened, either the pastor or his wife had private property, still more was expected of them, and rarely indeed did they fail to respond to this expectation. Parson Smith, in a letter to his son- in-law, the Rev. Daniel Smith of Stamford, Con- necticut, written in 1804, states that in his family there were maintained, in addition to his own six children, "an average of four penniless orphans during more than thirty years." These were not only fed and clothed, but educated, at the parson's sole expense. They, with his own children, the divinity students, and some of the boys whom he fitted for college and who resided with him, made a household of unusual numbers even for those days of large families, and entailed a great amount of care and labor on his own part, while his wife must have been very heavily burdened.
Long working hours were a necessity of the period. Five o'clock was the usual breakfast-hour in summer, and from six to half-past six in winter. Dinner was at noon, and tea at six in winter and seven in summer. This was so that the many tasks might be accomplished, for sufficient unto each day was its own work; it had no room for labors left over from the day before.
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Wheat, rye, and corn were ground into flour and meal at the local mills, and salted fish, sugar, molasses, " West India Sweetmeats," and, except- ing in war-times, tea, coffee, and chocolate, could be bought at the village stores; but aside from these, with long volumes of a country store's ac- count-books, covering many years, open before me, I can hardly find a trace of any kind of provisions that did not have to be produced and prepared, from start to finish, by manual labor on the farms and in each individual household -and all this without the aid of any of the toil-saving devices which we now deem matters of course.
Perhaps an idea of some of these daily labors may be best conveyed by extracts from relations which were found among the old papers some years ago. Mrs. Smith in 1775 had made the week- long and perilous journey from Sharon, Connecti- cut, to Fort Ticonderoga, where her husband was dangerously ill of camp fever. All the way above Saratoga was through an unbroken wilderness. In after years Mrs. Smith told her story many times, and at least three of her children made notes of her narrations, from which the full story was compiled and told in the first person. Some years ago this was published, under the title of " Led by a Vision," in the " Home-Maker," a magazine then most ably edited by Mrs. E. P. Terhune - " Marion Har- land." From this sketch the following extracts are taken:
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" Your dear Father was among the very first to volunteer and received the honored post of Chap- lain to the Fourth Connecticut Regiment, com- manded by Colonel Hinman, and ordered to march to Ticonderoga. In common with many other well qualified Pastors my Husband had been in the habit of receiving into his family from time to time such young men as might wish, after leaving college, to fit themselves for the Gospel Ministry. At this time there were five such students in our house. My Husband provided for them by engaging his beloved friend, the Rev. Dr. Bellamy, of Bethlehem, to come and reside in our house, prosecute the education of the young theological students, supply the Sharon pulpit and attend to pastoral duties ; a young friend of Dr. Bellamy engaging to per- form like brotherly services for him in his parish. As Dr. Bellamy had two students of his own he brought them with him, which added to those already in our house made my family to consist of twenty-two persons besides servants.
" In our present state of peace and plenty [1795] this does not seem so very great a burden; but at that time when the exactions of the Mother Coun- try had rendered it impossible for any but the wealthiest to import anything to eat or wear, and all had to be raised and manufactured at home, from bread stuffs, sugar and rum to the linen and woollen for our clothes and bedding, you may well imagine that my duties were not light, though I
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can say for myself that I never complained even in my inmost thoughts, for if I could even give up for the honored cause of Liberty, the Husband whom I loved so dearly that my constant fear was lest I should sin to idolatry, it would assuredly have ill become me to repine at any inconvenience to myself. And besides, to tell the truth, I had no leisure for murmuring. I rose with the sun and all through the long day I had no time for aught but my work. So much did it press upon me that I could scarcely divert my thoughts from its demands even during the family prayers, which thing both amazed and displeased me, for during that hour, at least, I should have been sending all my thoughts to Heaven for the safety of my be- loved Husband and the salvation of our hapless Country ; instead of which I was often wondering whether Polly had remembered to set the sponge for the bread, or to put water on the leach tub, or to turn the cloth in the dying vat, or whether wool had been carded for Betsey to start her spinning wheel in the morning, or Billy had chopped light- wood enough for the kindling, or dry hard wood enough to heat the big oven, or whether some other thing had not been forgotten of the thousand that must be done without fail or else there would be a disagreeable hitch in the house-keeping; so you may be sure that when I went to bed at night, I went to sleep and not to lie awake imagining all sorts of disasters that might happen. There was
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generally enough that had happened to keep my mind at work if I stayed awake, but that I very seldom did. A perfectly healthy woman has good powers of sleep.
" On the third Sabbath in September Dr. Bel- lamy gave us a sound and clear sermon in which God's watchful Providence over his People was most beautifully depicted and drew tears from the eyes of those who were unused to weeping, and during the prayer-meeting in the evening the same thought was dwelt upon in a way showing that all who spoke and prayed felt that our God is indeed a Father to all who trust him; so that on that night I went to bed in a calmer and more con- tented frame of mind than usual. I had, to be sure, been much displeased to find that our supply of bread (through some wasteful mismanagement of Polly's) had grown so small that the baking would have to be done on Monday morning, which is not good house-keeping; for the washing should always be done on Monday and the bakings on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. But I had caused Polly to set a large sponge and made Billy provide plenty of firing so that by getting up be- times in the morning we could have the brick oven heated and the baking out of the way by the time Billy and Jack should have gotten the clothes pounded out ready for boiling, so that the two things should not interfere with each other. The last thought on my mind after committing my
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dear Husband and Country into our Maker's care for the night, was to charge my mind to rise even before daylight that I might be able to execute my plans. .
" As early as three o'clock in the morning I called Nancy and Judy, Jack and young Billy, but would not allow old Billy to be disturbed; whereat the rest marvelled, seeing that I was not used to be more tender of him than of any of the other servants, but rather the less so in that he was my own slave that my Father had given to me upon my marriage. But I let them marvel, for truly it was no concern of theirs, and by five o'clock the bread was ready to be moulded, the hickory coals were lying in a great glowing mass on the oven bottom, casting a brilliant light over its vaulted top and sending such a heat into my face when I passed by the oven mouth that it caused me to think then, as it always does, of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, seven times heated. Young Billy was already pounding out the clothes and over the fire Jack was hanging the great brass kettles for the wash, while Nancy and Judy had made ready the smoking hot piles of Johnny cake, the boiler of wheat coffee (which was all we could get in those days, and a poor substitute it was for good Mocha) and the big platter of ham and eggs and plenty of good potatoes roasted in the ashes, which is the best way that potatoes can be cooked, in my opinion."
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