USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > Farmington papers > Part 16
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Chieftains of a vanished race, In your ancient burial place, By your father's ashes blest, Now in peace securely rest. Since on life you looked your last, Changes o'er your land have passed ; Strangers came with iron sway, And your tribes have passed away. But your fate shall cherished be, In the stranger's memory ; Virtue long her watch shall keep, Where the red-men's ashes sleep.
More enduring than these frail memorials are the few Indian words of liquid sound which remain forever attached to the places where the red man lived: Pequabuck, the clear, open pond; Quinnipiack, the long-water land; and Tunxis Sepus, by the bend of the river.
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16
AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT
THE ANNUAL MEETING
of the
VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY
OF FARMINGTON, CONNECTICUT
i
September 9, 1903
by Julius Gay
O.K
THE SWARMING OF THE HIVE
1
delivered at the annual meeting of the Village Library Company September 9, 1903
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of Farmington :
I propose this evening to speak of some of the divi- sions and migrations of our early New England ancestors which led to the settlement of Farmington, and how new divisions in their turn drove new colonies one by one from the old hive. Want of room for their flocks and herds and tales of fertile fields somewhere just beyond them were not the only causes of unrest. Back of all were the more potent internal dissensions which drove them forth. The Hebrews of old would have preferred the flesh-pots of Egypt to the glories of the promised land. It is the trouble within that causes the swarming of the hive.
The first New England concourse with which we of this village are interested by descent was that at Newton, now Cambridge, gathered around the Rev. Thomas Hooker as pastor, and Rev. Samuel Stone as teacher, appointed to their respective offices at a fast, October 11, 1633. Wood in his New England's Prospect printed the next year says : " This is one of the neatest and best compacted Townes in New England, having many Faire structures, with many handsome contrived streets. The inhabitants most of them are very rich, and well stored with Cattell of all sorts;
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having many Acres of ground paled in with one generall fence." Nevertheless on the 15th of May, 1634, we read that " Those of Newton complained of straitness for want of land, especially meadow, and desired leave of the court to look out either for enlargement or removal." Six months later they give three reasons for their desires: the want of accommodation for their cattle, the fruitfulness and commodiousness of Connecticut, and what was much more to the purpose, the bent of their spirits to remove thither. The theocratic notions of the Boston divines did not har- monize with the more democratic ones of Hooker. It was time for the hive to swarm. The account of the re- moval of the Cambridge church to Hartford, given by Dr. Trumbull in his history of Connecticut, and much ex- panded in almost every history of Hartford and its ancient families, is thus given in the concise and graphic original. " About the beginning of June Mr. Hooker, Mr. Stone, and about a hundred men, women, and children, took their departure from Cambridge, and travelled more than a hun- dred miles, through a hideous and trackless wilderness, to Hartford. They had no guide but their compass; made their way over mountains, through swamps, thickets, and rivers, which were not passable but with great difficulty. They had no cover but the heavens, nor any lodgings but those which simple nature afforded them. They drove with them a hundred and sixty head of cattle, and by the way, subsisted on the milk of their cows. Mrs. Hooker was bourne through the wilderness upon a litter. The people generally carried their packs, arms, and some uten- sils. They were nearly a fortnight on their journey." The next year saw the extermination of the Pequots, the only people from whom the settlers had any fear of moles- tation. Here then in this quiet valley, looking out on
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the broad waters of the Connecticut on the east, on the Talcott Mountain range on the west, and within easy reach of their friendly neighbors of Windsor and Wethersfield on the north and south, here surely was an ideal resting place for weary mortals. Nevertheless, after a residence of less than three years, the settlers "moved the Court for some inlargement of accommadacion," and desired that a committee " view those parts by Vnxus Sepus which may be suitable for their purposes." How much the fertile meadows of Farmington and how much internal dissen- sions had to do with the swarming of this particular hive is uncertain. The situation which led to open rupture after the death of Hooker is not difficult to understand. The Hartford church had a triple leadership. The pastor, Thomas Hooker; the teacher, Samuel Stone; and the ruling elder, William Goodwin, were all strong men, and the duties of their respective offices, gathered from scanty scrip- ture texts, were none too well defined. The teacher was " to attend upon points of knowledge and doctrine, though not without application," the pastor to attend upon "points of practice, though not without docrine." The ruling elder was the man of affairs, the moderator in meetings, the watcher over the private conduct of church members, and the visitor of the sick. Whatever may have been the im- mediate cause, a number of Hartford families began the settlement of Farmington in 1640, and for more than thirty years there was no considerable departure of its people to other settlements. We know little of the life of the village during this period. All town votes before 1672 were recorded in "ye ould book " which, when the dry details of land grants had been copied out, was allowed to drop in pieces, and with it perished almost the only record of the habits and customs of the olden time. The church
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record, begun by John Steele in 1652, and indebted to Rev. Samuel Hooker for most of its value, contains a tedious account of the church dissensions from 1668 to 1675, which ushered in the removal of some of the best citizens to Waterbury. The two parties most active in the quarrel were James Bird and Simon Wrothum. On the 15th of June, 1673, " the church at Farmington assembled at Dea- con Hart's to attend the admission of James Bird. .
About eight brethren voted for his admission, three against it .. . . Whereupon the Pastor told the said James, that the Church did expect of those that joined, and conse- quently of him, that he should promise to submit to the government of Christ in his house, walk with his brethren; . and fear, and keep all the commandments of God, as far as Christ should enable. To which the said James re- turned, . . . as the Lord liveth, I will not close with you thus ; and so departed the house." One of the two offenders was denied membership and the other was dismissed. The latter applied to the General Assembly of the Colony to cite the church before it to show the reason why they cast him out of the church. The Assembly saw no cause to give the church or council any trouble to appear before them, but advised said Wrothum to a serious consideration of his former ways. Time fails us to consider all the petty annoyances which made a separation desirable. There were no fertile fields in the west that caused this swarming of the hive. Dr. Bronson in his history of Waterbury says of the settlers, " They were tough men, and had come into a tough country; a country which, for easy tillage, was in striking contrast with the plains of Farmington." The most recent historian of Waterbury says, "Why were these men not content? The question of land surely could not have been a serious one; nor were its divisions
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so arbitrary as to account for the spirit of unrest that prevailed in Farmington, as elsewhere. Men were not equal. The government of towns was in the hands of a few men. Few were the changes in the more honorary offices, and heavy was the repression felt by the individual consequent upon the letter of the law, whose weight weighed him down more heavily than he could bear. Hence the efforts of the individual to seek out some tract of land, even if distant from the settlement, where he could, at least to his little herd of cattle, speak his mind, without suffering the consequences." To this indictment of our ancestors, it may be said that no lists of town officers be- fore 1680 exist, and if a majority of the voters chose to give office to well tried men rather than as spoils of party activity to a succession of new men, who shall oppugn their wisdom? The trouble was largely a church quarrel in which the participants were not the men to seek out some lonely spot in which to rehearse their woes to their flocks and herds, but at all times and in all places spoke their minds with great freedom and plainness of utterance, as was the custom of their day.
On October 9th, 1673, twenty-six of the most substan- tial citizens of Farmington presented a petition to the General Court sitting at Hartford for the establishment of a plantation at Mattacock, now Waterbury. The very kindly response of the Farmington church to the petition is as follows: " The Church having considered the desires of their brethren William, Thomas, John, and Benjamin Judd, - as also John Standley Jun. touching their removal from us to Mattatuck, agreed as followeth : --
" 1. In general. That considering the divers difficulty and inconveniences which attend the place toward which they are looking, and how hazardable it may be, (for
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aught that appeareth, ) that the house and ordinances of Christ may not, (for a large time at least, ) be settled among them, the Church doth advise the brethren, to be wary of engaging far, until some comfortable hopes appear of being better suited for the inward man, in the great things forementioned.
" 2. . Particularly. To our brother William Judd, - that it having pleased God to deal so bountifully with him, that not many of the brethren with us have so large accom- modations as himself, yet see not his call to remove on the account of straightness for outward subsistence, - and therefore counsel him, -if it may be with satisfaction to his spirit, - to continue his abode with us, - hoping God will bless him in so doing.
"3. To the rest. Though we know not how much they will be bettered as to land, all things considered, by their removal, - especially John and Benjamin Judd, - and therefore cannot much encourage, - yet if the bent of their spirits be strong for going, and the advice afore- given, touching the worship of God, be taken, - we shall not trouble, - but say, - the will of the Lord be done."
The next swarm which left the hive chose for its home a spot in what was known as the Great Swamp. If you will take a car at the Berlin Junction railroad station on the Middletown branch, after going about a mile eastward, you will see at your left across a quarter of a mile of level ground, the white stones of the old Christian Lane Ceme- tery on ground slightly raised above the deal level of what was once the Great Swamp. Near by was the Sey- mour Fort fenced in with palisadoes and containing a well and cabins for nightly shelter from the Indians, and near by stood the first meeting house of Kensington Parish. What prompted the settlement of this lonely swamp can-
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not well be explained, but as early as January 18th, 1669- 70, before the Eighty-Four Proprietors came into exist- ence as such, the town granted to sixty-one men 1082 acres of land "in the Great Swamp lying on the branches of Mattebesit River through the condescendency of partic- ular persons in the town to part with something of that which is their right, to persons of lesser estate on these conditions, viz., that this tract of land given to sundry persons shall perpetually and forever hereafter belong to and be a part of Farmington never to be a distinct people from the aforesaid town without their liberty and consent." On December 22, 1681, the town again voted "that the upland adjacent to the Great Swamp shall be laid out so as they may best accommodate for inhabitants and the com- mittee that laid out the swamp are chosen to do that work." On December 27, 1686, the order was repeated and a com- mittee of six named for its execution. Again on the 28th of September, 1705, the town votes " that so many of their inhabitants that do or shall personally inhabit at the place called the Great Swamp and upland belonging thereto and in the division of land on the east side of the Blue Moun- tains and in the lots called Bachelders lots and so much of the division of land against Wethersfield as shall ex- tend northward from the Great Swamp until it shall include the lot that was William Judd's and no more, so many of them, as see fit (none to be compelled), that they become a ministerial society, when they do gain a capable minister among them." The next month the proposed colonists prefer their petition to the General Assembly stating that "our unanimous desire is that the Worshipful Capt. Thomas Hart will prefer this our humble petition." Cap- tain Thomas Hart was a representative from Farmington to the General Assembly and was the speaker of the house.
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It was around the worshipful captain as a center that the storm raged which attended the second division of the settlers and turned a peaceful community into an angry hive. The quarrel began about the choice of a successor to the lamented Rev. Samuel Hooker. An oldtime New England community without a minister was like a hive of bees without a queen. In 1701 the annual town meeting for the choice of officers was abruptly broken up, and it required an Act of the General Assembly the next year to set the machinery of government again in motion. The petty lawsuits arising were appealed to the higher courts, and the long and tedious details, looking trivial to all but the inflamed minds of the contestants, are spread over many pages of the records. All this verbosity is occasionally re- lieved by the vigorous language of the worshipful captain as when, "upon a Sabbath Day after the exercise, the church being stayed and a Fast propounded Capt. Thomas Hart replied and said," quoting the words of the prophets of old, " When ye fasted and mourned . . . did ye at all fast unto me, even me? Behold ye fast for strife and de- bate, and to smite with the first of wickedness," etc. The day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer was not voted. After a trial of ten candidates whose names are duly recorded, and no doubt of many others, the General Assembly of the colony appointed " the reverend ministers of the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield to procure a min- ister for Farmington, who are hereby ordered to receive him and pay him as formerly until this Court do order otherwise or themselves agree." October, 1705, saw the grant of a distinct society called the Great Swamp Society, and the month following saw the departure of a committee of the town and church to Nantasket to negotiate with the divine chosen for them by the reverend ministers. They
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had selected a man from another state with sufficient power of will to hold his own until the storm subsided. The hive had swarmed and peace reigned.
Let us not judge our ancestors too severely for this one unfortunate episode. Deny the present residents of this happy valley all means of communication with the outer world, railroads, telegraphs, postoffices, newspapers, and even the slow stage coach; limit their thoughts and inter- est to the petty actions of neighbors close around them, and how much would they excel their forefathers? It is not so much human nature that changes as its surroundings.
The subsequent history of the Great Swamp or Ken- sington parish can best be found in the Ecclesiastical His- tory of New Britain by Deacon Alfred Andrews. With a few words from a historical discourse by the late Rev. E. B. Hillard concerning the Great Swamp meeting-house and its surroundings, we will leave this part of our sub- ject. He says, "I visited a short time since that sacred spot. I stood beside the ancient graves. I looked around upon the scenes on which the silent sleepers in them used to look. I turned my eyes, as the sun was setting, to the summit of the western mountain, whither, at sunset, their eyes had so often turned when home and friends lay be- yond, and all was forest-wild between. In sight and near at hand was the swell on which stood the old meeting- house, in which they first covenanted to walk with Christ and with each other. . . . The snow lay on the ground, as a century and a half before it had lain there on the December day when they first, collecting from their scat- tered homes, had gathered at the meeting-house to see him whom they had chosen to be their shepherd in the wilderness, set apart to his sacred work, and to covenant with him to be his people. . . . The spot where they sleep
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seems fit for their long rest. It is retired and lonely, as is now the history of their lives. The age in which they lived has passed away. The present is new and strange. It is meet that in their final rest they should be withdrawn from it. .. . And so it is. They sleep in peace. .. . the scene of their early homes is still almost as quiet as when no sounds were heard there save those of the Indian's footfall or the forest cry. There let us leave them to their sleep, beneath the trees, beside the river,
"'Each in his narrow cell forever laid.'"
The next considerable exodus from the old center was southward. The first settler is supposed to have been one Samuel Woodruff, who made the place his summer residence for purposes of hunting and fishing, preferring the freedom of the forest to the restraints of the farm. Here his sixth child, David, was born in 1696, and was, by tradition, the first white child born in Southington. Monuments to the memory of Samuel and Rebecca, his wife, stand on Burying-Ground Hill. Other families came in slowly. By the year 1722 the number had so increased that the Proprietors of Common Lands ordered Panthorn surveyed and divided for individual holding. No reason- able explanation of the name has ever been given. Dr. Trumbull is quoted as saying that the word is not Indian. " As poor as Panthorn " was long a common phrase. In December, 1721, the First Ecclesiastical Society, " in con- sideration of the farmers southward of the town their hiring of Mr. Buck to preach among them this winter season, do agree and manifest the same by vote to abate" the said farmers one-third part of each of their propor- tions toward the payment of Mr. Whitman's rate," the
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four winter months constituting one-third of the year. Winter privileges did not long satisfy. In 1724 the Gen- eral Assembly gave the inhabitants of Panthorn a dis- tinct existence as the Third or South Society of Farmington.
The next settlement within the original territorial limits of the town which attained a separate ecclesiastical or- ganization was that of Bristol. In 1663 this town " granted to John Wadsworth, Richard Bronson, Thomas Barnes, and Moses Ventrus forty acres of meadow land lying at -the place we commonly call Poland." Somehow, in Feb- ruary, 1650, the Rev. Roger Newton, two years before the beginning of his pastorate here, was the owner of " one parcel called Bohemia, through which a river doth run, containing by estimation fifty acres." Bohemia and Poland were included in the six divisions of land laid out in 1721 by the Proprietor of Common Lands west of the reserved lands. The inhabitants of five of these divisions, in 1742, represented to the General Assembly that they " are so remote from any meeting-house in any ministerial society in said town as renders it exceeding difficult for us to attend the public worship of God in any place where it is set up, and especially in the winter season." Winter privileges, so called, were granted them, and in 1744 they were constituted the New Cambridge Society.
In the year 1743, while these changes were taking place, the inhabitants of the West Society of Hartford living within the limits of the town of Farmington petition the General Assembly to be relieved from paying " ministerial and meeting-house charges " to Farmington, their location being such " as renders it very difficult to have any com- munication at all with Farmington so as to partake of any of the society privileges or be the better for them." The granting of this petition seems to have relieved all
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friction until the building of our new meeting-house in 1771, when certain farmers owning land in both towns petitioned the General Assembly to be relieved from pay- ing society taxes here. " " Said First Society in Farming- ton," they say, "is very extensive as to its limits, their inhabitants wealthy, opulent, and numerous . . . are en- gaged in building a very superb and costly meeting-house." Petition granted.
The next separation was by the farmers on the north living in what was long known as Nod, afterward North- ington and finally Avon. Nod extended north to Sims- bury, the southern boundary of which was laid out through the mouth of Nod Brook. It was to Nod that John Hart had fortunately absented himself when all the other mem- bers of his father's house were burned on the night of December 15th, 1666. It had been known for a long time as Hart's Nod. Why Nod does not appear. Its pious owners could hardly have named it from the land of Nod on the east side of Eden into which Cain went from the presence of the Lord. In 1726 the inhabitants of the ex- treme north part of Nod and those of the south part of Simsbury petitioned the General Assembly to unite them into a new society, but the vote failed in the Upper House. Winter privileges were, however, granted them in 1746, that is, they " shall have liberty to hire some suitable or- thodox person to preach the gospel among them during the months of December, January, February, and March annually." In 1750 the Nod people on both sides of the river were constituted " a distinct ecclesiastical society and parish by the name of Northington Parish." In 1754 they built on the east side of the river on high ground a meeting-house, which however was burned in 1817, leav-
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ing, as in the case of the Great Swamp parish, only a grave- yard in a lonely spot to mark its site. In each cemetery lie the remains of the first pastors of each, of Burnham in the one and of Booge in the other. As we near the last considerable removal from the old village, it must have occurred to you that whatever may have been true of the state and the town, the ecclesiastical society certainly pre- ceded the town except in the few cases where they had a common origin. The minister was the most important personage in the land.
It was a quarter of a century before any further sep- aration of the inhabitants took place. The five tiers of lots to the north of New Cambridge, known as the West Woods, were gradually settled by families from the ad- joining towns, and in 1774 they were constituted a society by the name of West Britain, which in 1806 became the town of Burlington. The last families to leave the old center and form new societies were those of Plainville and Unionville, the former in 1840 and the latter in 1841. During the palmy days of the old canal the worshipers of both localities came to church at the old center by boat in the summer season. A rare Sunday picnic.
Divisions into new societies do not account for all the removals from the hive. At the close of the Revolutionary War, when Indian atrocities largely ceased, and the vast unknown regions of the west were open to settlers, they did not need a Sewall to tell them
"No pent-up Utica contracts your powers, But the whole boundless continent is yours."
Esquire Mix, than whom there could have been no better authority, in preparing material for Gov. Tread- well's History of Farmington, says: "There have emi-
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grated from this town into other states between August 1783 and March 1802 inclusive, 147 families, which, allow- ing five to a family, will make the whole number 735, besides a number of unmarried persons of both sexes not belonging to those families, which I believe may be fairly estimated at 40 more. This will make the total number 775. - They are principally gone into the states of New York and Vermont, though some few to different parts of the North West territory." This was written about the year. 1800 when the town included Avon and Plainville. The manner of their going is set forth by Washington Irving in his Sketch Book, " with a whole family of chil- dren, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with house- hold trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord knows where." We have time this evening to give the names of only a few of the best known of the leaders of the great exodus. One of the first companies followed the west bank of the Connecticut River as the easiest route. They sent in advance three pioneers in a boat to spy out the land, Capt. Steel Smith, Joab Hoisington, and Ben- jamin Bishop. Landing in a meadow just north of the present village of Windsor, Vermont, they cut down a tree and claimed the place by possession. They were soon followed by Gen. Zebina Smith, Major Elisha Hawley, Capt. Israel Curtis, Deacon Hezekiah Thomson, Asahel Hoisington, and Elihu Newell, and later on by the Rev. John Richards. They did not carry their titles into the wil- derness but acquired them there. Here in Windsor the most recent of their number printed bibles and a newspaper, and here they developed sterner puritanic notions than they had learned in their childhood's home. A Farmington boy in their printing office writes to his parents: " A danc-
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