USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > Farmington papers > Part 17
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ing-school has been commenced here this winter, and it was understood that none were to have employment in our office who attended it." Three girls having trans- gressed, " In the morning I had to perform the unpleasant duty of dismissing them. Two of them had worked in the office for nearly two years, had been very faithful, and were good compositors." A little to the west of Wind- sor Ira Langdon and Aaron North settled, farther west, in Ludlow, Deacon Lee, and a little to the north, in Dum- merston, Samuel Orvis. A large number journeyed north- ward on the west side of the Green Mountain range. Ben- jamin Lewis, John Ford, and Ambrose Collins stopped short in West Stockbridge. Col. Orsamus C. Merrill, successively printer, lawyer, and member of Congress, went on to Bennington, Vermont, Oliver Woodruff and Thomas Porter to Tinmouth. In Castleton, a few miles to the north, Nathaniel Hart taught a grammar school, Selah Gridley practiced medicine and wrote poetry, Chauncey Langdon became a judge of probate, and Ebenezer Lang- don owned a grist-mill. Cyrus Porter went to Middlebury, where William G. Hooker was a physician before he re- moved to New Haven, Conn. In Poultney lived and died Col. James Hooker. In Burlington, on Lake Champlain, resided George Wadsworth and Farmington's ancient tan- ner and shoemaker, Gabriel Curtis. In Montpelier, the state capital, lived Timothy Merrill, lawyer, and Col. James H. Langdon, a wealthy merchant, who was previously one of the Farmington colony at Windsor. To the west of Castleton along the New York state line, partly in one state and partly in the other, are to this day numerous descendants of Farmington Hookers, the names and virtues of whose ancestors are recorded in all the cemeteries around. Over the line into the state of New York the Farmington
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settlers journeyed. Rev. Asahel Norton became pastor of the first church in Clinton, and Seth Norton Professor of Languages in Hamilton College in the same place, which, while still an academy, had been in charge of Rev. Robert Porter, another native of Farmington, and all three grad- uates of Yale. Here also resided Martin Porter, and near by in Litchfield, New York, Joseph Hooker. The original members of the First Presbyterian Church of Sherman were mostly from the church in Farmington - George, Dennis, and Ava Hart, Elisha Woodruff, William Williams, Charles Hawley, Robert Woodruff, Hiram Glea- son, together with the wives of most of them. Amzi Porter went to Smithfield, Jesse Cowles to Augusta, and Alpheus Hawley to Jamestown. To the Genesee country went Dr. Timothy Hosmer and Major Isaiah Thompson - the for- mer successively the village doctor of Farmington, sur- geon of the Sixth Connecticut Regiment in the Revolu- tionary War, and the first judge of Ontario County. An account of others who were scattered all over the state would detain us too long. New York soon ceased to be the "Far West," and New Connecticut became the land of promise. New Connecticut you will hardly find in a modern atlas. In the year 1662 Charles II gave to the Governor and Company of Connecticut the territory of the present state and a strip of land of the same width extending westward across the continent to the South Sea, now the Pacific Ocean. In 1681, without troubling himself much about the geography of this western wilderness, and claiming the royal right to recall any gift and bestow it on some new favorite, he gave to Sir William Penn the land now known as the state of Pennsylvania. The north half of that state was included in both charters. Later on Connecticut men settled the Wyoming Valley, situated
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on the Susquehanna River in this common ground. Here they suffered all the horrors of Indian warfare in the suc- cessive Pennamite wars, and in the final massacre known the world over to all readers of Campbell's " Gertrude of Wyoming." Of the Farmington men engaged in the strife Major William Judd was four times chosen justice of the peace for the county of Westmoreland and was among those who in 1780 were voted compensation for losses sustained. Mervin Clark of our East Farms district lost a valuable farm and house, and barely escaped with the clothes on his back. Joseph Gaylord, a resident of Bristol and afterward of Farmington, removed from the latter place to Wyoming in the spring of 1769, whence he was driven out by the Pennamites in the following November. From Farmington he returned to Wyoming in 1772, and was in the Gaylord blockhouse in the Plymouth settlement during the massacre of July 3, 1778. There were other settlers with names identical with those of Farmington men of the time, but whether they were the same has not been clearly proved.
In 1786 Connecticut ceded to the United States the western part of the land claimed under the charter of 1662, reserving, as the basis of her school fund, what now con- stitutes the ten northeastern counties of Ohio, and also reserving, for the benefit of the Connecticut towns burned by the British, the so-called " Fire Lands," now the coun- ties of Erie and Huron lying next west. The whole re- served land was described as the "land lying east of a line 120 miles west of and parallel with the western bound- ary line of the state of Pennsylvania." The land was sold by a committee of one from each of the eight counties of Connecticut, John Treadwell of this town, afterwards Governor Treadwell, being first on the list. Thirty-six men
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who afterwards organized the Connecticut Land Company, purchased the three millions of acres for $1,200,000. The share of Major William Judd of this town was $16,256, and that of Gen. Solomon Cowles was $10,000. To this land of promise came Farmington pioneers - Samuel Tillotson, Rollin Dutton, Lewis B. Bradley, Gad Hart, Daniel Woodruff, Rev. Ephraim Treadwell Woodruff, first pastor of the church in Wayne, and I know not how many more. Still further west in Kaskaskia, Judge Alfred Cowles, brother of the late venerable Egbert Cowles, settled in 1823 as a lawyer, his first stopping-place in his western journeyings. He was active in the anti-slavery fight at Alton, and later on practiced law in Chicago and San Francisco, and at length celebrated his one hundredth birth- day at San Diego, July 7, 1887.
There were others who left the old home besides those who traveled with their families in the big ox-wagons. Young men tired of the monotony and restraints of this happy valley, and, hoping to better their fortunes, began to travel over the South and West. Their letters home show how the unusual manners and morals of the new world appeared to them, and how soon their own opinions of many things were changed. From a great variety of letters we have time to make a few selections in illustration from those of one young man only. In October, 1816, he left a commercial house in New York and a salary of $350 to travel in its interest. After a voyage of seven days in a terrible gale, he arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, from which place he writes : " I was invited to dine and take tea with a gentleman to whom I had letters of introduction. I did myself the honor to attend, and was treated with the greatest hospitality. His wife was a lady of about thirty years of age, and highly accomplished, playing charmingly
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on the forte piano and harp, and, in fact, was about as elegant a woman as I ever saw. They live in great style, and have about 15 or 20 negroes in the house. They have a fine plantation up in the country, where they live in the summer. They were quite inquisitive respecting the cus- toms and habits of the northern people, and were much surprised at my relation respecting them. The people have very little regard for the Sabbath, Bible, or religion." He writes from Petersburg, November 17th, on his way to Richmond : " I have been now two weeks in Virginia, and have seen a considerable part of the country, but do not like it much. The general state of society here is wretched, and as respects morality, it is known in this state only by name. This day being Sunday, there is a large party engaged before the house where I am now writing in playing ball, fighting, halloing, swearing, and making every other kind of noise that their ingenuity and the whisky they have drunk prompts them to." Five weeks afterward he writes from the same place: " I have spent my time very agreeably, and am more pleased with the place and inhabitants." January 25th sees him still in Petersburg, about starting for Kaskaskia, Illinois Terri- tory, having just returned from a six days visit to Norfolk, where he had a good time as before. " I was six days in Nor- folk, and was treated with great hospitality by my acquaint- ances there, and attended two splendid parties. At one of them tea was brought in about dark, and was carried round in the same manner as you do in Connecticut. After tea the ladies and gentlemen played whist till about 9 o'clock, when a fiddler was called and cotillions and country dances were performed till 1 or 2 o'clock, when the party adjourned. There were about twenty ladies present. During the eve- ning we were regaled with the best of wine, cherry rum,
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apples, filberts, raisins, peaches in brandy, almonds, and every kind of foreign fruit that I think of. At about 11 we sat down to an excellent cold collation. Some of the ladies were very communicative and polite, and not so re- served as the northern girls. They converse very hand- somely, and have, in general, received a very good educa- tion." His description of Williamsburg, through which he passed, would answer as well for the present day. “It has formerly been quite a handsome town, but is now fall- ing into decay in consequence of the seat of government having been removed to Richmond. The ancient college of William and Mary is in this place, where many of our first men have been educated. . . . In the yard of the college is a handsome marble statue erected in honor of Lord Bottetourt, one of the former governors of Virginia." On the 12th of February he had arrived in Pittsburg, having stopped a day in Washington to call on Mr. Pitkin, the member of Congress from this state and town. At Pittsburg he found the Ohio river frozen over and had to wait until about the first of March. On the 9th of April he writes from Kaskaskia: " I arrived in this place about 8 or 10 days since, after a thirty days passage from Pitts- burg. I came down the Ohio in a keel boat and stopped at a number of very handsome towns as I passed down, as Marietta, Cincinnati, Louisville, etc. The pros- pect is beautiful as you descend the river. I also passed through Vevay, a small town in Indiana which is inhabited by Swiss, who pay great attention to the grape and manu- facture a great deal of wine, some of which I tasted." Of the fertile prairie lands all around him he speaks in the manner of the spies on their return from the promised land. No wonder the delvers among the stony hillsides of Con- necticut made haste for this western paradise. Here he
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remained until about the first of October, preparing the goods he was to take down the river and hunting all sorts of game, with which the woods abounded. With western manners and morals, as before with southern, he was fast becoming acquainted. "Dancing is very fashionable in this place, particularly with the French, who indulge them- selves almost every night in this amusement. There are no Moral Societies to rail against the innocent amusements." To his sister he writes: " In your last you make some inquiries how I passed my time on Sunday. There is no established church in the place except the French, and we commonly feel no great disposition to attend that, nor has there been any preaching since I have been here, and it is very seldom that there is any. When the weather is fine Sunday we commonly ride out on hunting expeditions or fishing, or, in fact, anything to amuse ourselves and drive away time, or sometimes we are employed in taking care of peltries, selling merchandise, posting books, etc., etc. We are troubled with no grand juror's spies, tything-men, etc., every man following the dictates of his own con- science." November 3d sees him in Baton Rouge, on the way to New Orleans. " I shall proceed there tomorrow, and from there I shall go on to New York as soon as I can dispose of the property I have in charge. . . . If I am fortunate I shall be in New York about the 25th of De- cember." Kaskaskia was a favorite gathering place for Farmington youths. Here were coming and going at or about this time, Edward Cowles, Erastus Scott, Alfred Cowles, Thomas Mather, John W. Mix, William Gleason, and doubtless others. All the way from Connecticut to New Connecticut, Farmington men could be found. A prominent townsman of many years ago who had peddled tinware through the South in the days when stories of
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wooden nutmegs were rife asserted that he had made a journey without expense to the Western Reserve and back, finding acquaintances at every stopping-place happy to barter hospitality for news from their old homes. What- ever we may think of such economy, we are reminded of the great numbers who had gone from the old village.
Besides the broad West there was another outlet for the superfluous energy of the village. Much Farmington capital and some men were engaged in seal voyages. Starting from New Haven, they proceeded to the Falk- land Islands, thence to the island of South Georgia, thence around Cape Horn to the island of Juan Fernandez, sup- posed to have been the home of Robinson Crusoe, and thence to Massafuera. Here they were accustomed to leave a part of their crew to catch seals, returning for them in about two years and taking with them the seals captured on some previous voyage. They touched next at the Sandwich Islands on their way to Canton. Here they exchanged their sealskins for tea, silks, nankeens, and china ware, and then touching at Calcutta, made their way home around the Cape of Good Hope. This history of some of the voyages has been minutely told, but how much our townsmen had to do with any particular voyage is un- certain. The ledgers of Elijah Cowles & Co., sold for old paper, might have told, and the records of the New Haven custom house certainly would, but during the recent stir in the matter of French Spoilations they were shipped to Washington as evidence, and are inaccessible to the ordinary investigator. A few glimpses come to us from other sources. David Catlin, a young man about town and a favorite in Farmington society, writes from the island of South Georgia to his friend Horace Cowles, then a student in Yale College. He left New York May 28th, 1800,
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crossed the equator on the fourth of July, celebrated both the crossing and the day with the usual ceremonies, stopped at sundry ports duly recorded, arrived at the Bay of St. George September 5th, stayed two months while building a shallop of 28 tons, and arrived at the island of South Georgia December 17th, where he found seventeen sail of American and English ships. We must omit his descrip- tion of the island, which you can read elsewhere, and also the poetry he wrote on the voyage for the entertainment of his scholastic friend. We have also the original agree- ment of a crew signed at Massafuera April 1, 1803, in which many details of the business are set forth, and in which the crew agrees to remain two years and catch seals. The profits were divided about January, 1807, by Esquire John Mix at his office here. The ships Oneida and Huron were the most frequently mentioned in Farmington corre- spondence. The former carried sixteen guns and the latter twenty, for use, if necessary, against the Spaniards in Pata- gonia. These voyages began about the year 1796, and ended with the commencement of Jefferson's embargo, in December, 1807.
Farmington letters of the last century have much to say of ships fitted out by the merchants of this village at Mid- dletown, New London, and New Haven, and sometimes stopping on their way at all three places. I once bought at a book auction in Boston what purported to be an import- ant work on Farmington. It cost me twenty-five cents, and turned out to be the "Ship Book for the Brigantine Mary, September 10, 1792. 3/8 belonging to Solomon Cowles Jr. & Co., 3/8 belonging to John & C. Deming, 1/4 to Capt. Amon Langdon Master." It contains a minute account of the cargo, from numerous horses down
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to one quire of paper. An account of five other voyages follows, the value of the cargoes varying from £677 to £1734.
· An account of one more exodus from the village must complete the story. When gold was found in California, Farmington, too, had her Forty-niners who went around the Horn, and in due time returned not much poorer than they went, but rich in a fund of stories which lasted the rest of their lives. But it is not of them I would speak. A Farmington man, born in the Eastern Farms and edu- cated at the Farmington Academy and at Yale College, Dr. Joseph Washburn Clark, with a party of settlers jour- neyed across the plains to California in the spring of 1850. A relative writes : " He never traveled on Sunday ; what- ever danger of Indians there might be, the wagons belong- ing to his party always stopped on Sunday, letting the rest of the train push on in their eagerness to reach California ; and it always came out that his teams, refreshed by a day's rest, overtook the train before the next Sabbath." A quarter of a century of labor and honor, with sufficient wealth, awaited him in California.
Such have been some of the principal removals from the old center of Farmington. The tide has at length begun to turn. New names are fast taking the place of the old. But twelve of the surnames of the old Eighty-four Pro- prietors remain with us, while almost every state in the Union has its Farmington. I trust there are still enough descendants of the men of old left to take some interest in this too long rehearsal of matters fast fading from the memory of our people.
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AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT
THE ANNUAL MEETING
of the
VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY
OF FARMINGTON, CONNECTICUT
September 14, 1904
by Julius Gay
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FARMINGTON TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Address delivered September 14, 1904
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Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of Farmington:
Two hundred years ago, that is, on the 14th day of September, 1704, this town had existed sixty-four years. Its polity, whether civil, ecclesiastical, or social, had be- come firmly settled. Its inhabitants were loyal subjects of good Queen Anne, voted every year for Major-General. Fitz-John Winthrop for governor, and for John Hooker, Esq., and the " Warshipful Captain John Hart " for dep- uties, stood stoutly to their own opinions in matters eccle- siastical, and lived the lives of prosperous farmers.
Geographically considered, the town was a rectangle fifteen miles long from north to south, and eleven broad from east to west, the Round Hill being the starting point for measurements. With the exception of the main street and a locality next to Simsbury known as Hart's Farm the whole region was the lawful hunting ground of the Tunxis Indians and the home of wild beasts. Wolves were numerous, as were also animals of the wild cat variety, magnified of record into lions and panthers. The reward for their destruction, along with crows, blackbirds, and other objectionable animals, was a fruitful source of rev-
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enue to the adventurous youths of the village. Scattered here and there were lands known as "Soldier Lots," giv- en those who had served against the Pequots, together with many broad acres granted the minister, and lesser holdings bestowed upon those who had deserved well of their fellows. The owners were allowed to locate their grants anywhere outside of the village subject to the approval of a com- mittee, provided they did not trespass on highways or previous grants. These grants, known as "pitches," were much in the way when the surveying out of rectangular lots began in 1721, and made an oldtime map much resemble the so-called crazy quilt. A fence or a combination of fence and ditch ran from Nod on the east side of the river south to the Eighty Acre meadow, and another along the north bank of the river west to Crane Hall. The three principal openings through this fence were closed by the North and South Meadow gates and by the Eighty Acre bars. Every spring the Proprietors of Common Fields voted when the meadows should be cleared of all sorts of cattle, and every fall when they could again be used for pasturage. Woe to the sluggard who left his corn and beans unharvested a day too long! Before knocking off the fetters by which they had been restrained, and turning neat cattle, sheep, and swine into the meadows, each owner marked the ears of his animals for future identifi- cation. Their private forms of mutilation, by the crop, the half-penny, the slit, and the swallow tail, were duly recorded by the town clerk and were the inviolable prop- erty of each owner. Thomas Gridley used " a half-penny on ye upper side of ye left ear "; Thomas Judd, Sen., “ a half-penny on ye under side of ye left ear "; John Cowles " a crop cut upon the left ear and a half-penny cut on each side of ye right ear "; and so on down the list.
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Two HUNDRED YEARS AGO
Before introducing to you the ancient denizens of the village, let us consider a moment the streets which their daily steps brought into existence and along which their houses arose. The main street ran much as now. Starting from near Cronk Swamp, named from the Indian Cox- cronnock, on the south, the first considerable branch we find ran westward through the South Meadow gate where now runs the road to the railroad station. A little to the north a road ran eastward between the present holdings - of Messrs. Vorce and Porter to the old mill. Just before reaching the meeting-house the Little Back Lane, so called, ran south and also to the mill. A few rods further on we reach the mill lane, which ran westward to the new mill on the river and along the present north line of the Dem- ing property. Next we come upon the "Road up the Mountain," now leading to New Britain. Arriving at the north end of the main street we find one branch turning sharply to the east towards Hartford and one westward to the North Meadow gate. A noble, broad highway gave an uninterrupted prospect from Mrs. Barney's west to the river. The town had not then allowed Deacon Richards to encumber it with his shop, nor had the subsequent owners sought to fortify their possession with a building of brick too huge, in their estimation, ever to be removed. Just before reaching the river, a path along the river bank, often impassable by reason of floods, conducted northward to Nod. If any desire on this 14th day of September, 1704, to cross the river, and their business in the wilderness be- yond, or perchance with far-off Albany, admits of delay, it may be well to know that in February, 1705, the town will vote to " be at the charge of providing and keeping in repair a canoe with ropes convenient for passing and re-
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passing over the river at the landing-place." The subse- quent history of this river crossing is beyond the scope of this paper, but I can hardly forbear stating that in De- cember, 1722, the town "granted to Samuel Thomson, son of John, for the charge he hath been at in recovering the canoe that was driven down to Simsbury, five shillings." In 1728 a vote was passed to " sell the boat, that at pres- ent lies useless." The subsequent history of sundry bridges and of the war between the high bridge and the low bridge parties, with the frequent "I told you so " of the high bridge men, is interesting. As for the highways to the west of the canoe place, the town in 1736 took down the testimony of "John Steele, aged about 89 years, and of William Lewis, aged about 82 years," concerning the roads they remembered as running in their boyhood from the . North Meadow gate to the south side of Round Hill, to Crane Hall and to divers other places, all which informa- tion is open to the perusal of the curious. The branch known first as the road to Hartford, and then, as it en- tered the forest, simply as the Hartford Path, crossed Poke Brook as now, and, climbing Bird's Hill, passed local- ities whose obsolete names were once household words. The traveler soon reached the Rock Chair, corruptly known as the Devil's Rocking Chair, on his left, and a few rods beyond came to the Mile Tree near the present remains of the stone-crusher, and opposite the Mile Swamp or Round Swamp, of bad repute as engulfing stray animals in its treacherous depths. Then, leaving Prattling Pond on his left and the Wolf-Pit path on his right, his course lay along the old Road to Hartford, the favorite route sixty years ago. A branch, known of record as the " Road to Durty Hole," ran north from Poke Brook to connect with " Clat- ter Valley Road," and a highway running south, recently
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