USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > Farmington papers > Part 13
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canal, but allowed anyone to use it on paying toll. Such was the custom of the early railroads as well as canals until trains became numerous and the confusion of separate management intolerable. The tolls were only sufficient to pay. the ordinary expenses of the company, while its heavy debt and very extensive damages to the canal in 1836 made it necessary that some measure of relief should be found. The plan finally adopted was the formation of a new company, the New Haven and Northampton Com- pany. As the plan involved the entire relinquishment of all the stock of the Farmington Canal Company, it may be proper here to mention the amount of it. It was as follows :
Mechanics Bank, New Haven, . City of New Haven,
2,000 shares
1,000
Citizens of New Haven, .
1,229
" " New York City,
924
"
" Farmington,
125
'Cheshire,
74
Simsbury,
46
Other towns,
16
5,414
Farmington also subscribed 76 shares in the stock of the Hampshire and Hampden Canal Company. The New Haven and Northampton Company was organized June 22, 1836. The stock in the two old companies was sur- rendered, the creditors subscribed their debts, and there was a cash subscription of net capital, $120,184.92. And now a rival appeared to whom all ordinary canals have had to give way, more formidable than the Connecticut River itself. On the 3d of December, 1838, the Hartford and New Haven railroad was opened from New Haven to Meriden, the time over the eighteen miles being fifty-seven
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minutes. The subsequent history of the canal is briefly reported thus :
1841. This year, for the first time, a business commu- nication was opened through the canal between New York city and the upper part of Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. Many tons of merchandise were trans- ported- upon the canal for those regions. In August of this year the story of the canal connects itself with an in- teresting episode in the history of the village. The Amistad captives, just set free by the United States Supreme Court, were living here until their return to Africa the following year. While swimming in Pitkin's Basin, Foone, one of their number, was drowned, although an expert swimmer. He had left a wife, parents, and sisters in Africa, and just before his death exclaimed, "Foone die and see his mother." It was probably a case of suicide. A decent monument in the cemetery near by records the incident.
1842. The canal was operated throughout the whole business season of eight months, and the business was extended by the establishment of a line of boats to run · from Northampton to Brattleboro, Vermont.
1843. Canal damaged $20,000 by floods and the whole fall trade lost. Repairs finished November 6th.
1844. The canal was navigable its entire length throughout the whole season without a single day's inter- ruption.
1845. Navigation interrupted from the middle of July to the last of September by an unprecedented drought. Oc- tober 7th, a breach in the embankment occurred at Ten- Mile Run, costing $7,000, the work of design.
1846. A large majority of the stock held in New York by parties who were unwilling to make any further ad- vances. Charter obtained for a railroad.
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1848. Railroad opened to Plainville, January 18th. Navigation was not suspended till the railroad was ready to take the place of the canal.
I distinctly remember one of the breaks in the canal which interrupted business. It occurred a little north of the grist mill just as a boat loaded with coal was passing. The boat was swept down into the river, and the coal scat- tered over the river bottom as far north as the Whirlpool. Probably some future savant, a hundred years hence, will find traces of this coal and triumphantly argue that some- time the Farmington river was navigable by steamboats which dropped the coal overboard. I remember also see- ing the first train of cars come into Plainville. It was in January, and my impression is that we skated down on the canal, a not unusual excursion for the boys on a Sat- urday afternoon. Skating was not then the performance of sundry fancy figures on a square rod of ice, but a swift race mile after mile to Plainville or the Aqueduct, or even to Avon, and he who could outstrip his companions with the greatest ease and the most graceful motion was the best skater. But we knew that the canal was doomed, and that this was probably our last winter's expedition of any considerable length. The farmers the next sum- mer dug outlets for the little water that remained, and the boys were driven to the river for amusement, which, especially for the smaller ones, was a poor substitute for the old canal. While that remained no boy could help learning to swim. The water was just so deep that any frightened learner had but to stand on tip-toe and his head was at once safely above water. Everybody learned to row a boat as soon as he was old enough to run away and get to the canal, and the water was full of roaches shining in the sun, and bullheads and eels down in the
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deep holes ready to fall an easy prey to the youthful fish- erman. Boats bearing on their sterns the names: Gold Hunter, Enterprise, Paragon, Sachem, American Eagle, James Hillhouse, DeWitt Clinton, and I know not how many other names, passed frequently, and the boys had but to drop from the nearest bridge upon their decks and ride as far as they would. If the captain amused himself by steering too far from the towpath for the boys to jump ashore, they had only to wait for the next bridge which they climbed into where the sides had been previously knocked into wide gaps for their accommodation. The farmers hated the canal. The water leaked through the towpath and turned their meadows into swamps. The rickety bridges frightened their cattle and were set so high that it was hard to draw a good-sized load of hay over one, but it will be hard to find one who was a boy in those happy days speak evil of the Farmington canal. Nor was it the small boy only that found recreation on the old canal. Those of an older growth did not disdain its quiet pleasures. I remember standing one fine autumn day on the old " Yellow Store Basin " wharf and watch a packet-boat sail away northward with a jolly crew for a week's fishing on South- wick ponds. They were farmers who had finished haying, merchants tired of daily drudgery, and foremost among them all and chief organizer of the expedition, Professor John Pitkin Norton, who loved his favorite science much, but nature more, enthusiastic, laborious, healthy minded, an ardent disciple of good old Isaak Walton, and ever ready in spirit with him to invoke the blessing of St. Peter's Master "upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his providence, and be quiet and go a-Angling." Of all the worthies who sailed on that expedition but two survive. They have long since laid aside their fishing-
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rods and only occasionally are heard to recount the mar- velous exploits of that week's life on the old canal.
Such is the brief account of an interesting episode in the more recent history of this village. Whatever honor attaches to the enterprise belongs to the Hon. James Hill- house of New Haven. His biographer, Dr. Bacon, tells us that he took no part in obtaining the charter, but there- after, though far advanced in life, yielded to the solicita- tions of the townsmen who, since he led them in repelling the invasion of Tryon, had always looked to him as the one man able to accomplish any public enterprise to which they called him. He died in 1832 while the canal seemed about to justify all the care and labor he had lavished upon it.
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AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT
i
THE ANNUAL MEETING
of the
VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY
OF FARMINGTON, CONNECTICUT
September 12, 1900
by Julius Gay
O.K
THE LIBRARY OF A FARMINGTON VILLAGE BLACKSMITH A. D. 1712
delivered at the annual meeting of the Village Library Company of Farmington September 12, 1900
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of Farmington:
It has been the custom of the managers of some neighboring libraries to celebrate the passing of each decade of their history. Let us also to-night briefly consider how it has fared with us. Ten years ago the old library, dating from the close of the Revolution, had ceased its usefulness for want of suitable accommodations. Another, known as the Tunxis, the result of enthusiastic and well-directed in- dividual enterprise, had taken its place, and it in turn began to find its usefulness limited by its contracted habitation. Again, the village library, heir of many predecessors, has outgrown its quarters, and we hope that somehow in the march of public improvements a larger and more convenient building, and one separate from all other public uses, may in good time be provided for it.
Ten years ago this library was opened to the public by a goodly company; to-night we are again met, but not all. First among the speakers of that evening to pass over to the majority was Professor Nathan P. Seymour, who came among us every spring with the coming of the birds.
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To the school he discoursed on Grecian literature, and by us all his familiar conversation was greatly enjoyed, rich with stores of the most genial wisdom. Next passed away President Porter, whose love for his native village was strong and enduring. He was its earliest and best historian, his high position reflecting honor on the home of his youth and of his long line of ancestors. Next to leave us was the Rev. Thomas K. Fessenden, active in all good words and works. Then came Mr. Edward Norton, one of the founders of the library and useful with advice and assist- ance as an officer of the company. An active helper in all worthy enterprises, and of great learning in his special department of thought and research, but so modest that few knew of his attainments. Next passed away the be- loved minister, Rev. Edward A. Smith, helpful in all good things, judicious in no ordinary degree, loved by all, and the personal friend of many. These were all graduates of Yale and an honor to any station to which their lot called them. Last of all the company of that evening passed away from the scene of her life-long work, Miss Sarah Porter, the eulogies upon whom from all parts of the world need no repetition here. Her life is known to all men. On that evening a paper was read on the former public libraries of the village. To-night I propose to speak of the private library of a Farmington village blacksmith in 1712, if so small a collection of books can be called a library.
Considering the serious character of Puritan literature, we approach the subject very much as Burns did his Epistle to a young friend, feeling
"Perhaps it may turn out a sang, Perhaps, turn out a sermon."
There is certainly an opportunity for something more solemn than any sermon you have heard of late years.
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LIBRARY of a VILLAGE BLACKSMITH
We will, however, endeavor to take as cheerful a view of the subject as it admits. I think it may be interesting for us all to know, not merely what books might have been read in New England in 1712, but what was actually the daily intellectual food of the common people in this very community.
Samuel Gridley, son of Thomas Gridley the immigrant, lived and had his blacksmith shop near the site of the house of the late Egbert Cowles, Esq., now known as the Lodge. He repeatedly held the office of townsman or selectman, and that of constable. I do not know that his collection of books surpassed that of his neighbors, but he had the rare good fortune of having John Wadsworth write the inven- tory of his estate. He, instead of valuing the books in a lump, as was usually the custom then as now, gave us the title of each volume. First in order came an "Old great Bible," valued at three shillings. The precise edition we do not know. I have seen the great Bible of only two of the first settlers of this town, that of Newell and of Thom- son, and for many reasons believe Mr. Gridley's to have been of the same kind, namely the London Bible of 1598 or of about that date, commonly known to collectors as the " Breeches Bible," from its peculiar rendering of a certain passage in Genesis. It had maps showing the pre- cise location of the Garden of Eden and many curious cuts. It contained also Sternhold and Hopkins' Book of Psalms, " with apt notes to sing them withall." I do not suppose we should enjoy the constant use of this music, but I should be greatly pleased for once to hear a hundred strong voices singing in unison, with all the fervor of their souls, the music set, for instance, to the 68th Psalm. " Let God arise and then his foes will turn themselves to flight." Such were the tunes which carried the Ironsides of Cromwell
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victorious over many a bloody field. Next on the list ap- pears one Psalm Book, 18 pence. We cannot be sure which one of the three versions of the Psalms in common use was meant. These were Ainsworth's "Book of Psalms Eng- lished both in Prose and Metre," that is, with the prose and meter side by side, so that the worshiper might see how far he was straying from the Bible; Sternhold and Hopkins' " Whole Booke of Psalms," and the famous Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in New England, a copy of which was bought by Cornelius Vanderbilt at the Brinley sale in 1879 for twelve hundred dollars.
Next we find KOMETOTPADIA, Or a Discourse Con- cerning Comets ; wherein the Nature of Blazing Stars is Enquired into : With an Historical Account of all the Comets which have appeared from the Beginning of the World unto this present Year. . By Increase Mather, Teacher of a Church at Boston in New England. . And sold by J. Browning at the corner of the Prison Lane next the Town House. 1683. This was the only scientific book in Mr. Gridley's collection, but it was a scientific book written by a Puritan divine with a theological intent. This is set forth by the Rev. John Sherman in his introduction to the book. " Comets," he says, " are ordinarily the fore- runners of disastrous calamities, mischiefs, and miseries, hastening to follow and fall down on the heads of senseless and secure sinners. . . If it be said that some of these peri-wigged heralds have appeared on the etherial stage upon a more benign account, it may be rationally replied, that the number of such is very small. . . . When the hand of heaven is seen writing Mene, Mene, Tekel, etc., it may become the highest of mortals to tremble." The author begins by expressing his regret that he could not at this distance from Europe, in this American wilderness,
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suddenly obtain the long list of learned works he proceeds to enumerate. The opinions of ancient philosophers from Aristotle down as to the nature of comets, he combats. " The Peripatetic School," he says, " has fancied them to be meteors generated out of the bowels of the Earth, ex- haled and extolled by the Sun to the supreme region of the air and there set on fire." He contends that comets are not placed in the first heaven or air, but far above it in the second or starry heaven. After vanquishing the ancients, he enters on his main task, that of setting down the dates of the appearance of great numbers of comets from the beginning of the world to his own day, and, alongside of them, the duly corresponding dates of all the dire disasters which history has recorded. We will consider a few of these remarkable coincidences: "In the year after the creation, 1656, there was seen a formidable blazing star, which all the old world beheld for the space of nine and twenty days. Immediately upon its appearing
Methuselah died. The next year the flood came, wherein all men, women, and children throughout the earth (excepting eight persons) perished." "Anno Mundi 1744 there appeared a comet in the sign of Capricorn, which in the space of sixty-five days passed through three of the celestial signs. The building of Babel, confusion of lan- guages, and subsequent dispersion of mankind throughout the world have been noted as events attending that comet.
A.M. 2118 a comet was observed in the sign of Aries . , followed by the famine which caused
Abraham to remove into Egypt." He gives the dates and the descriptions, too lengthy for our purpose, of the comets which heralded one after another the Trojan War, the War of the Amazons, the destruction of the Philistines at the death of Sampson, Haman's plot to massacre the Jews,
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the Peloponnesian War, the burning of the temple of Ephesus, the burning of Rome by Nero, the prosecution under Diocletian, and the composing of his diabolical re- ligion by Mahomet. As he proceeds to the more precise dates of modern times, the misfit between the comets and the disasters became more apparent, until he was forced to exclaim, " But there must needs be some mistake in that relation, and therefore I intermit it and proceed unto." And he proceeds accordingly. The Star of Bethlehem could not very well be called a herald of evil, so he concludes that it was not a comet, but is ready to believe that the darkness of the crucifixion was caused by a comet inter- posing itself between the sun and the earth.
The next book enumerated was "Time and the End of Time," by John Fox. Printed in Boston in 1701. This is worthy of a moment's consideration as a good specimen of the form of sermons two centuries ago. The writer divides his subject into five heads : 1stly, When is time to be re- deemed ; 2dly, What time must be redeemed; 3dly, How time must be redeemed; 4thly, Why time must be redeemed; and 5thly, Motives and Directions to help you. Each of the five heads has from five to seven subdivisions, each of which subdivisions has its application, and each application has six heads called uses, and each use from four to ten motives. I do not propose to weary you with any re- hearsal of the subject matter of the book, for I am too forcibly impressed by the arguments of Mr. Fox against wasting time to be guilty of any such folly. In general we gather that time is most wisely spent in "reading the Word, catechising and prayer," and that it is most deplorably wasted in story-telling, inquiring after news, card-playing, dicing, dancing, stage plays, bear and bull baiting, hunting, hawking, and in reading romantic tales.
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Especially was he displeased at the waste of precious time by a certain gentlewoman who invited a godly minister to dinner and kept him waiting from ten of the clock till one, all of which time she was dressing.
Next we come upon " Sion in Distress, or the Groans of the Protestant Church," printed in Boston, 1683. This is now one of the extremely rare books of Mr. Gridley's collection, though common enough in his day. The in- ventory of a Boston bookseller in 1700 showed six copies on his shelves. It is the third edition of what the writer calls " a revived poem with such additions and enlarge- ments as makes it very different from the first impression." That is, he dares to print more fully here than in England, what the Popish or Titus Oates Plot of 1678 had sug- gested to his heated imagination. He says, "We have now a plain prospect (by the gracious discoveries of Provi- dence) of those horrid and execrable plots which the rest- less adversary has contrived against the peace and very being of Sion, and which were much in the dark when my Muse first bewailed its condition." As for the style of his poetry, he informs us that " In a subject of grief a quaint and ornamental method is not to be expected, for an abrupt and sobbing delivery is more natural in the de- lineation of sorrow than a studied, well-poised and artificial harangue." He accordingly opens his poem with the lines,
" What dismal vapour (in so black a form) Is this, that seems to harbinger a storm? "
The poem is a discourse between Sion's Friend, Sion, Sion's Children, Babylon, Jehovah, Beelzebub, and Jus- tice, which soon takes the form of a judicial trial, and the Wadlenses, Albigenses, and Protestants of Piedmont, Savoy, Bohemia, and other lands are called in as witnesses.
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You will doubtless remember in this connection the nobler lines of Milton's sonnet,
" Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold :"
Finally the Judge, descending from lofty rhyme to vigor- ous prose, indicts Rome as the Man of Sin, and also under the various titles usually chosen for her from the Book of Revelation, and finally convicts her of the peculiar sins and abominations most popular at the court of Charles the Second. The next book is entitled " Spiritual Alman- ac," a title so abbreviated that we cannot discover the book with certainty. On the last page of an almanac for the previous year, 1711, is the advertisement of a book which · has the characteristics of what might be looked for in a spiritual almanac. It. is a chronological account of the labors of the farm, beginning in the early spring and going on through the year, with religious observations thereon. It is entitled " Husbandry Spiritualized: Or the Heavenly Use of Earthly Things. By John Flavel, late minister of the Gospel." The husbandry is decidedly spir- itualized, there being the least possible amount of hus- bandry that would suffice for a text to a long homily. Nevertheless the book is so superior to much of the lit- erature of the day that I should be tempted to say some- thing more about it if I could be sure that it was the very Spiritual Almanac we are seeking. That Mr. Gridley had an almanac of some sort, spiritual or otherwise, there can be no doubt. Every man, whatever other profession he might have, whether mechanic, or lawyer, or doctor, or minister even, was a farmer, and farming was in a way much more scientific than now. There was a precise time for every labor of the farm, and the almanac, with its
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information about the positions of the sun and moon and the signs of the zodiac and its list of saints' days was in- dispensable. In the book of Ecclesiastes they read: "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. . . A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted." What these times were they read in old Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry and in the other old English worthies who laid down the time for everything. Cut your hair when the moon is in Leo if you would have it grow like the lion's mane, or in Aries that it may curl like a ram's horn. The labors of the farm are duly set down as follows:
March 1. Upon St. David's day put oats and barley in the clay.
March 12. Upon St. Vitus' day sow cabbages.
March 21.
On St. Benedict's day sow oats and barley.
May 1. On St. Philip's and St. James' day sow peas and lentils.
May 25. On St. Urban's day sow flax and hemp.
June 11. On St. Barnabas' day put the scythe to the grass.
June 24. Cut your thistles before St. John's, or you will have two instead of one.
July 8. On St. Killian's day sow vetches and rape.
July 13. On St. Margaret's day put sickle to the corn.
Sept. 1. On St. Giles' day sow corn.
Sept. 17. On St. Lambert's day put meat in pickle.
Sept. 21. On St. Matthew's day shut up the bees.
Oct. 15. On St. Oswald's day roast geese.
Oct.
18. On St. Luke's day kill your pigs and bung up your barrels.
Nov. 11. On St. Martin's day make sausages.
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And the list ends with the very comfortable injunction, hardly of Puritan origin, Drink wine all the year round, and then you will be ready to die at any time.
The next title is " The Unpardonable Sin." In the catalogues of the many thousand sermons which came from the presses of London and Boston before 1712 it is amaz- ing that not one on this favorite subject of speculation can be found. If any are curious about the effect of this weird subject on the early New England mind, they can find a vivid picture of it in Nathaniel Hawthorne's story of Ethan Brand, who in early life wandered away from his native village in quest of the unpardonable sin, and re- turned in old age, boasting that he had found the object of his search.
The next book is " The Doctrine of Divine Providence opened and Applied," by Increase Mather, Teacher of a church in Boston in New England. Printed by Richard Pearce for Joseph Brunning, and are to be sold at his shop at the corner of Prison-Lane next the Exchange. 1684. The book opens with the well-known story of the angel who justified the ways-of-God-to-man to a doubting hermit by stealing a cup from one kind host who entertained them, drowning the servant of another, and killing the child of a third. All three seeming crimes the angel satisfactorily explained, and with this introduction Mather goes on to unfold to his readers things hard to be understood, - the Old Testament stories of the bloody extermination of the heathen by the word of the Lord, the destruction of Saul for his pity towards the wretches he was told to slay, and the removal of the American Indians by the plague to make room for the Pilgrim Fathers. All these cases he explains to the honor and glory of the Almighty. Next on the inventory we meet with " Man's chief End to Glor-
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