USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > East Windsor > East Windsor heritage; two hundred years of church and community history, 1752-1952 > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
On this particular occasion, the Pastor and people were able to per- ceive the outside world through new windows in the audience room, which had demanded longer frames than the discarded balconies. A year or so later, the Society voted to sell the old windows with their now highly- desirable seven-by-nine lights. And how the faithful ladies of the parish, who occasionally pitched in to clean the windows, must have welcomed the big quarter-panes with their fewer corners!
There were other advantages, too. Even Rev. Mr. Bartlett, no seeker after creature comforts, records that on the Sunday following the dedication exercises, the new sanctuary was "comfortably and pleasingly warm". Certainly this upper room was much more easily heated than the former high-ceilinged sanctuary with its balconies. As far as that goes, it was not until 1827 that any effort had been made to provide stoves. It is probable that at that time was added the chimney, sticking out like the docked tail on a terrior. Assuredly the spiritual satisfaction and warmth of soul in attending an unheated meeting house must have been over- powering to offset the wintry cold, keen enough to penetrate even home- grown and homespun woolens!
About this time, the interior of the belfry was also completed, as near so as it ever has been. That Saturday afternoon after the rededica- tion service, Rev. Mr. Bartlett, armed with his spy-glass, made his first climb to the top of the steeple. From that lofty perch above the earth, he was much impressed by the beautiful country he surveyed, and also by what man had done with it. Less than a century later, he would have seen
32
many new features, among them numerous lake-like spots dotting the land- scape, the acre-wide cheesecloth tents of the shade-grown tobacco fields; the chimneys of many industrial plants, and paved highways winding rib- bon-like across the terrain. And that Nature-loving minister might not have been altogether so pleased on observing some of the things which man, in heedless disregard of God's bounty, has perpetrated.
At various stages of our Church's history, the lower room has re- ceived different appelations. Although well above ground-level, it has been at times called the basement, at others the conference hall, social room, and once, at least, the town hall. Since 1907, the usual designation has been Library Hall. In that year the public library moved into this room, cases were built in, and an additional partition (removed in 1920) was run across the outer vestibule with double two-way doors at either end.
Thus this room has been put to several different uses. At first, both the preparatory services for communion and the Society's business meetings were held here. In 1845, when East Windsor was divided into the present towns of East and South Windsor, this hall was the scene of many elections, its walls re-echoing to the keen debate of New England town meeting. Until the early Twentieth Century political parties also held their caucuses here. Not for nothing did the appelation 'Town Hall' come to be set down in the records. In fact, prior to 1845, the meeting house was in alternate years used for regular town meetings.
At some date unknown, a stage was built across the west end. It was altogether acceptable despite the lally columns which it included as sup- ports for the organ. Here many a local Thespian answered the curtain valls before kerosene footlights. Many an evening, the saw-horse-supported tables groaned beneath the weight of harvest suppers. About the walls were ranged booths for fancy work, grab-bags, fish-ponds, and even for- tune-tellers! Here, too, in 1895, were installed those gigantic hot-air furnaces. The stove age was at an end.
On weekdays for twenty years, those two furnaces regularly poured out smoke and heat. Saturday mornings, Sexton George B. Spencer trudged over to start the fires. There could be no surer sign that the next day was to be Sunday than the smoke curling from the Church chimney as the kindling crackled and wheelbarrow-loads of coal were shovelled into the yawning fire boxes. To small boys, used to nothing bigger than a one- room stove, those furnaces were wondrous, fire-breathing demons.
In 1915 both stage and furnaces were to go, and that year also saw culminating the decade-long discussion of the proposed parish house. Generous donations and twenty-five-cent neighborhood suppers given in parishioners' homes helped to provide the necessary funds. The Library Hall stage was transformed into a passageway to the new building, and the furnaces were replaced by twin steam boilers in the east end of the Parish House basement. All the resources of efficiency and convenience were marshalled to make possible an expanding social program for the community. Members at the first meeting in the Parish House, January 24, 1916, regretfully accepted the resignation of their greatly-loved Pastor,
33
Rev. Dr. William F. English. In his letter of resignation, he declared his conviction that a new period in the Church was about to begin. Indeed it was, and in the expanded plant he had laid its material foundation.
The first meeting house, austere, cold, and lacking a steeple-a House of Worship as stern as the religion to which its parishioners so rigidly and undeviatingly held-was thoroughly representative of the people and period it served. The early years of the second meeting house were consecrated to the same spirit. But since then time has mellowed the Church as it has also softened the dutiful and disciplinary faith of the fathers. It required one long century before discipline to the extreme of excommunication was abandoned. A less intolerant people has transformed the stern meeting house into a comfortable Church, the House of Worship with its modern auxiliary plant.
31
CHAPTER VI
RING IN THE VALIANT MEN AND FREE
Just as I tell the hours for my companion, the clock in the belfrey of this, our 150-year-old meeting house, so I shall now intone our separate and companionate stories. Indeed, we are inseparable. In 1809 we came here together and both of us immediately went to work. That October, our owners, those "valient men and free", voted twenty-two dollars an- nually, to be paid Mr. Thomas Tarbox "for ringing the bell and taking care of the clock." He lived right handy by, in that little house, today the parsonage, on which the clock's south face looks down. Strange to think the parson dwells in what was once a tavern!
1682207
We bells are of a proud and ancient lineage. Through more than 4000 years we have been pealing forth our messages, some of joy, others of sorrow, and, since the advent of clocks, our warning that the hours are fleeting past. As for me and my friend, the belfry clock, we know that we were hauled here by team. According to the official records, "sundree individuals" donated us "for the use and benefit" of this ecclesiastical so- ciety in East Windsor. Those "sundree individuals" were that modest! For this handsome gift of theirs they were properly thanked by all their friends, but today nobody knows who they were.
The clock and I have much for which to be grateful. We've never been melted down to be forged into cannon balls. And for all these years we've had a pretty good home notwithstanding a handful of intruding bats and swallows. Even the Big Wind of 1938, though it rocked this venerable belfry tower, did not succeed in toppling it down. And up here in this pleasant penthouse we can leisurely survey the quiet rural scene, the countryside as, with the shifting seasons, it changes color, light and shade, and our goodly neighboring townsfolk as they go about their chores and business. In recent years, while steadily sticking to our appointed tasks, we have even had company that does not leave at nightfall. Know what those lights mean in yonder building? Their constant companioship means that our friendly neighbor, Howard Barber, like all up-to-the-minute poultrymen, is brightening up the interior of his hen-houses so that the hens will more cheerfully work for him at night.
Time is never heavy on our hands. We cherish, keep and dispense it, announcing the hours even to the sleeping countryside. That is, they're all asleep down there except those wide-awake hens. Come to think of it, if my friend the clock were more voluble-he never says anything at all except "Tick-tock!"-he'd probably strip his gears with rage or bust his escapement laughing at that crack of mine about time hanging heavy on our hands. He's got six of them!
35
Year after year the townsfolk of this community used to vote on pro- visions for my use and care. But it was in 1812 that I really settled down to business. At that time it was ordered that, besides telling the hours, I should ring every day for five minutes at noon and, as for curfew, at nine in the evening. After nine, I should toll the day of the month. So, for I don't know how many years, I also did duty as a calendar. Then, of course, there were also special periods on Sunday when I was at my best. After nine in the morning, I rang for fifteen minutes to remind all within hearing that divine worship was about to be held. And, to speed the late arrivals, I had to ring "for five minutes at meeting time, and then toll until the minister comes and enters the desk." You know, I could always tell from the sexton's tempo pulling on that long rope whether they wanted me to ring or toll. There's a heap difference, I can tell you; and that old sexton was pretty smart about controlling my tones and messages.
True, I never did like that grim task of announcing a death, and I don't think the neighbors cared for it too much because, by common con- sent, I seem to have been relieved of that sad duty. But in those days there was a pretty careful set of rules for my tolling so as to let folks know just who had died and at what age-baby, child under ten, adult, male or female. When hearing me, folks must have wondered at times where grief had struck. Of course, the grievous burden of my tones was more mean- ingful when they knew it must be for some friend who had been for days past close to death. And, frequently at such times, I have seen the faithful pastor hurrying past to bring comfort to some bereaved family.
The last occasion on which I had to announce a cause for mourning was on the death of President Harding. This was, of course, before the days of the glib radio, so infernally clever at communicating by means of wave lengths, which really took a leaf out of my book. The upstart! Why, if it hadn't been for me, announcers would never have come into being. When science was in its infancy, long before they were born, I was tolling the centuries.
Moreover, I have in my time played a far more intimate role in the lives of our townsfolk than ever did radio wave-lengths. Why, I can re- member the days when, before 1867 when the first organ was installed in our meeting house, the church fiddler used to tune his A-string by my tone! This afforded me an even more immediate participation in the service than my ringing to summon the worshippers from near and far. I've also had my fun, and I know how to keep secrets, too, or I might drop a few carefully chosen hints about those young folks, out on a lark, who used to prevail upon me to proclaim the arrival of the Glorious Fourth. But I know how to hold my clapper, and I wouldn't even dream of disturbing the peace and telling tales out of school about certain noc- turnal doings.
I regret to relate that my friend, the Clock, has been far more erratic in the performance of his sole appointed task than I have in the regular and punctilious fulfilment of my several duties. From time to time, he has seemed to be just stubborn, and refused to run for long periods. Perhaps in justice to him it should be said that he has occasionally suffered
36
from neglect. There were those days, months and years when the towns- folk and authorities just didn't seem to care what happened to him. There was one long stint, when I had to do everything all on my lonesome, while his hands remained motionless, set at 2.20. How was anybody to know if it was afternoon or before cock-crow?
These peculiar lapses on the part of friend Clock recall an amusing incident. In former days there were two ladies of comfortable means from a near-by village who used to ride into town behind their smart span and coachman. And that slick outfit of theirs was in those horse-and- buggy days the tarnation envy of all admirers of horseflesh, harness and carriages. And on one particular day I distinctly overheard one of those ladies, naming the coachman, turn to the other and say: "He certainly is regular and steady in his job. It is always twenty minutes past two o'clock when we pass the Scantic Church."
Let this be a hint to the wise: If you don't keep a careful check on your clocks and timepieces, there are times when they will slip one over on you. But of course my friend the Clock was not being deliberately deceitful; he was just feeling neglected and retrograded. Not his fault.
Ofttimes I have witnessed the comical spectacle of my good neighbors, all snarled up in a confusion of clumsy effort and scientific deliberation, trying to lift Companion Clock out of the dumps and over one of his balky spells. For instance, there was a certain farm laborer who took the notion that the Clock would certainly run as he ought to if only his weights were increased. Poor old Clock! They nearly ruptured his interior mechanism.
But in the early 1900's there was even a hint of romance about the way in which Friend Clock got a thorough going-over. About that time Mr. Thomas Porter of Broad Brook moved into the dwelling formerly occupied by Mr. Daniel Clark, about 36 rods from the original oaken stake that was to mark the site of this house of worship. Mr. Porter's brother-in-law was Mr. Samuel Newman, a jeweler of Hartford. But whether it was I, or Miss Clara Spencer, the daughter of the postmaster and sexton, George B. Spencer, who first attracted Mr. Newman's atten- tion, I wouldn't know. At any rate, Mr. Newman, his glances all this way, won the hand and heart of Clara Spencer, whom he took as his bride to live in Hartford. But he also gained permission to try his arts on re- pairing Friend Clock, and for several years did his best to look after him and keep him up to the minute. There was no hitch in the romance, but something went wrong with our friend here in the tower, and again his hands became transfixed somewhere around nine-morning or evening is anybody's guess.
Mr. Newman's parting diagnosis was that some vital parts of our friend were missing, and he said it would cost a great deal to have new ones cast. But in 1946, Mr. Davis Phinney, one of those ingenious Yankees and an engineer who will tinker with anything from a timepiece to the most intricate innards of aircraft engines, bought the old town par- sonage. And when he came to live here, he said it was a shame our friend
37
should still be ailing. Davis Phinney knew just what to do to revive the failing heart of a clock. Applying his scientific knowledge to the task, he fashioned the essentail parts, reset the pulleys through which the ropes run to the weights so that raising the weights is now a far easier job, and has since kept Friend Clock running to the edification of the entire com- munity. And I know our old friend thoroughly enjoys being back at the business of ticking.
I also have every assurance that all our good neighbors-those down on "Sixty-two Road", along the former Bissell and Allen roads, the high- way to the old mill-site and beyond to Prospect Street, and those up the street toward Broad Brook and Station Nine, formerly the Allen district -- all of them welcome my perpetual sounding of the hours. These good folks, whether to be found afield or at home, in far-away mart, mill or office, are none of them wasters of the golden hours I proclaim. Yet they never seem to mind or regret the modern eagle flight of time. True, the passing commuter, jobward-bound, as he drives past may glance up at the face of Friend Clock to see what time it is and involuntarily step down a bit harder on the accelerator, or in yonder fertile fields the plowman may remark that chore-time has once more come around.
For them, for one and all without discrimination, Companion Clock and I tell the hours. Time is such an impartial arbiter of the ways of men. And so "timeless", too, that I feel certain, when your tercentenary comes one hundred years hence, I shall have the pleasure of announcing, in joyous, reverent tone, its observance. And I shall then peel forth another call to worship at the appointed hour which, too, I shall proclaim.
38.
CHAPTER VII
AGRICULTURE
Though many industries have come and gone, agriculture has ever re- mained the mainstay of this parish. Following the pitch-gatherer's drill and bucket came the woodsman's axe and saw. Forests of oak, chestnut and pine were felled for local use and export to neighboring cities. Then came the arduous work of clearing the land. Axe and shovel and lever and oxen with yoke-and-chain pushed back the forested frontier. In those days, no power-growling bulldozers ripped through virgin soil and rolled up the debris to be burned. It was arduous work preparing the land for its first plowing, but cleared and fitted it was. And from its crops were derived the chief financial sinews of the infant church; and today's Church still benefits from the same source. But in the past decade there has been an increasing, welcome contribution to the life and support of the Church by those who gain their livelihood in the industries and busi- nesses of Greater Hartford and the neighboring communities.
Paradoxically, the mainspring of information are meager concerning this most generally followed occupation of farming. Yet there are indi- cations of its early nature. Rye Street is one of the oldest designations of any locality, except perhaps that of The Street along the Connecticut River uplands. Obviously, the high, light land bordering Rye Street was ideal for growing rye, much of which supplied the numerous distilleries. Fur- thermore, we find listed those grains which parishioners might offer in payment of their ecclesiastical tax "for the support of the gospel ministry": rye, corn, oats, wheat and barley.
During the Revolutionary War, East Windsor (then including the present towns of East and South Windsor and Ellington) was a "provision town". In the Washington Pension Office and in the Hartford State Archives are the faithfully kept records of those selectmen designated to gather arms and ammunition, clothing and food. The fact that the cloth- ing consisted chiefly of blankets gives a hint that in those days the fore- runners of Rosie the Riveter did what they could to support the War.
Captain Lemuel Stoughton, one of the most prominent men in town and State, had the title: "Ac P for East Windsor in the East Department." Not only was he in charge of gathering and shipping beef, pork, flour, and other staples, but he was also State inspector of firearms and locks. Great quantities of beef and pork, salted and packed in barrels, were transported to Palmer, Massachusetts, at "the rate fixed by law", and thence to Boston. A bit puzzling is "the collection of rice"; the most plausible explanation is that Yankee clippers brought in considerable tonnage of rice, and the colonists must have used a great deal because the potato was not then generally cultivated.
39
Emulating the Indians, the earliest settlers began cultivating tobacco. As early as 1640, the General Court decreed that no tobacco was to be used in the Colony except the home-grown. In 1662, a duty was laid on tobacco imports. In his Windsor Farmes, John Stoughton records that in 1697 tobacco sales brought in from thruppence-ha'penny to six-pence per pound. In 1752, when the North Society was incorporated, tobacco was already being exported. The richness of this source of income may be estimated from the fact that, according to the records, the second church built in South Windsor was almost wholly financed by the sale of tobacco. But it was not until about the early Twentieth Century that tobacco became the chief money crop of many farmers in our community. Even so, one vener- able landowner would never permit the use of his land for tobacco. But the business boomed all around him, and far and near in the River towns.
People of three score years or so can easily recall when most of the tobacco sheds now standing were raised and warehouses were built. This generation can also remember those infant years of the shade-grown indus- try. Though Milady Nicotine has brought much income to this and other parishes, she has invariably been fickle and unstable, sensitive both to weather and trade conditions. With the exception of those years in the two world wars, and the periods of high protective tariffs, the cultivation of tobacco has ever been on a precarious footing.
Grain-growing and the fattening of beef cattle both succumbed to the gradual inroads resulting from widespread settlement of the Western Plains. As a profitable source of income, the raising of grain crops has never recovered; and beef cattle raising has given way to dairying. Then came the introduction of creameries, usually farmers' co-operatives. But forty or more years ago the last creamery, situated in Wapping, succumbed when the Western States began shipping cheaper products into Eastern markets. The sale of dairy milk, now an extensive business, did not come into its own until, soon after World War I, motor transportation made feasible the shipment of milk to Hartford.
In earlier days, local herds of cattle were annually augmented by purchases from those Vermont cattlemen who, selling as they passed through local farming communities, drove huge herds southward. At night they used to put up at the local tavern, or with some hospitable farm folk, while their beasts were confined to pasture or meadow.
Then, too, among the shrewd natives, there was considerable trading of their own stock. Mr. John H. Bissell, of patriachal mien with his flowing white beard and deep-set eyes, was fond of telling an astounding story. It seems that all one winter his father, Cap'n Phelps, and Dean Blodgett swapped yokes of oxen, and in the spring each had the yoke with which he had started in the fall. With a twinkle in his eyes, Mr. Bissell would conclude: "Any they each had sixty dollars profit!" Though this spectacular financial feat outdoes many tales of traditional Yankee shrewd- ness and trading ability, it does afford a strong hint that honest dollars were to be gained in many other ways besides land-grubbing.
40
On the subject of potatoes, in 1892 Lemuel Stoughton Sr. wrote: "I once heard Ebenezer Watson's widow say that when she was a young girl the people of this neighborhood raised no potatoes, except now and then someone had a few hills in his garden. A few people went out to Irish Row (Melrose), where were some (North of Ireland) Irish families, and brought home a half bushel and some a whole bushel. This, it seems, was about the beginning of the growing of potatoes hereabouts, and not far from a hundred years ago (about 1792)." It is a matter of conjecture whether or not this actually was the infant beginning of potato-growing in this community. We do know that in 1750 five bushels of potatoes glutted the Boston market! But in recent years there is no doubt about the im- portance of the potato as a major crop.
Poultry raising and egg production have steadily advanced from those days of the family-size flock, when an occasional surplus was traded in at the local store, to the scientifically conducted enterprise of today. And in recent years some market gardening and extensive strawberry crops have pretty well rounded out the agricultural picture.
Entries in the Rev. Shubael Bartlett's diary, referring to his troubles with his neighbor's sheep, remind us that sheep-raising was once a profit- able pursuit, basic to the home industry of cloth-making. Indeed, extensive sheep-raising was widely followed, frequently with the purpose of improv- ing breeds for wool and mutton. Although he was not of this parish, we may note that Colonel Barbour of Warehouse Point, a large-scale farmer and operator of distilleries, made an unsuccessful venture with some im- ported sheep. To get rid of them, he slaughtered a great many for the table at the boarding-house where he kept his hired help. One day at noon, the Colonel dropped in to see how things were going. He thought that his foreman should say grace. On this day, as on many days previous, mutton was the main dish. So the foreman raised his voice and said:
"Mutton young and mutton old, Mutton hot and mutton cold, Mutton tender and mutton tough- Thank the Lord, we've had mutton enough!"
It may be that foreman William is here credited with having too ready a wit and too much poesy, but the anecdote in question certainly substantiates the fact that sheep-raising once played a prominent role in this community.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.