USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > Farmington papers > Part 7
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If the Rev. Dr. Smalley of New Britain, eminent divine and esteemed pastor, had not at this time deter- mined which cause to espouse, there was no doubt in the mind of the pastor of the church in Farmington, the Rev. Timothy Pitkin. His pulpit rang with fervid discourses on liberty. He visited his parishioners in their camp, and wrote them letters of encouragement and sympathy. To Amos Wadsworth, in camp at Roxbury, he writes:
"These wait on you as a token of my friendship. Truly I feel for my native, bleeding country, and am embarked with you in one common
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cause. . . What you may be called to is unknown. I wish you may fill up your new department with wisdom, courage, and decorum. My hope is yet in God, the Lord of Hosts and God of Armies."
To the first company of soldiers marching from Simsbury he preached a farewell sermon from the words, " Play the man for your country, and for the cities of your God; and the Lord do that which seemeth Him good."
At the opening of the war there stood at the south- west corner of Main street and the Meadow lane, as it was called, a shop where Amos and Fenn Wadsworth adver- tised to sell drugs, groceries, etc., etc. Amos, the elder brother, was one of the first soldiers to march to Boston, and it is from his extensive correspondence, together with the orderly-book of Roger Hooker and the diary of Dea- con Samuel Richards, that most of our knowledge of Farmington men in the war is derived. The first Farm- ington company commenced its march on the 18th of May, 1775, being the 6th company of General Joseph Spencer's regiment. The officers were Noadiah Hooker, Captain; Peter Curtiss and Joseph Byington, Lieutenants ; Amos Wadsworth, Ensign, and Roger Hooker, Orderly-Ser- geant. They were eight days on their march, resting one rainy day at Thompson. They were stationed at Rox- bury and there remained during the siege. They were therefore at a distance from Bunker Hill and took no part in the battle of June 17th. Deacon Richards, however, gives a description of the battle as he saw it from elevated ground at Roxbury. With the exception of this one bat- tle, the whole army was kept in inglorious inactivity for want of powder, seldom returning the fire from the bat- teries in Boston. Deacon Richards says :
"The almost constant fire of the enemy produced one effect probably not contemplated by them: it hardened our soldiers rapidly to stand and
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bear fire. When their balls had fallen and became still the men would strive to be the first to pick them up and carry to a sutler to exchange for spirits. At one time they came near paying dear for their temerity. A bomb had fallen into a barn, and in the daytime it could not be distinguished from a cannon ball in its passage. A number were rushing in to seize it when it burst and shattered the barn very much, but without injuring any one. One night a ball passed through my apartment in the barracks, a few feet over me, as I lay in my berth. Such things, having become common, we thought little of them."
The troops before Boston were mostly farmers, each at home the absolute lord of his broad acres, impatient of military discipline, and a sore trial to the patience of Washington. Over and over again Orderly-Sergeant Roger Hooker records, " It is with astonishment the Gen- eral finds," etc., etc. On the 4th of August it is
"With indignation and shame the General observes that, notwith- standing the repeated orders which have been given to prevent the firing of guns in and about the camp which is daily practised, that, contrary to all orders, straggling soldiers do still pass the guards and fire at a distance where there is not the least probability of hurting the enemy, and where there is no end answered but to waste their ammunition and keep their own camp in a continual alarm, to the hurt and detriment of every good soldier who is thereby disturbed of his natural rest, and at length will never be able to distinguish between the real and false alarm."
Occasionally the men were allowed to gratify their restlessness in certain madcamp adventures. On the 12th of June Amos Wadsworth writes:
"A week ago last Friday about one hundred of our men went to one of the islands to assist some of the Whigs in getting off their families and effects. They brought off about 500 sheep, some cattle and horses, and took a boat belonging to one of the transport ships with three men as they were fishing near the shore. They secured the men and drew out the boat in plain sight of a man-of-war. The ship twice manned out her boats and set off, but put back without doing anything more. Our men got a team and cart, loaded the boat into the cart, hoisted her sails, set the two com- manding officers in the stern of the boat, and the three prisoners rowing,
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and in this manner drove on as far as Cambridge, where they confined their prisoners in gaol . Eight of our company were in the expedition. She is now launched in a large pond about 100 rods from us, very convenient for us to fish and sail in."
Amos Wadsworth, Roger Hooker, and others of their company were in the somewhat famous boat expedition of July 11th. Amos writes :
"It was necessary for us to take the night for the business, as we had several ships of war to pass. We lay till after sundown, and then manned out 45 whale boats and set off for Long Island in order to take whatever we could find on the island. About 11 o'clock arrived at the island, and landed without opposition, and drove off 19 cattle, about 100 sheep, 1 horse, 4 hogs. The island lies between the lighthouse and Castle, and, we sup- posed, was guarded by a party of regulars. The island is about one and one-half miles long, and one large house on it, which contained considerable furniture, which we carried off the most of it. We took 19 prisoners on the island, two of whom were women, one a young lady a native of Boston, who, they said, was to have been married to the captain of the King's store ship the next week. The most of the prisoners, we suppose, were marines and sailors sent on shore to cut hay for the use of the troops in Boston. . We towed the cattle near two miles at the stern of the boats to another island, where we landed them, and a part of the men drove them at low water to the main land. There were 7 ships lying so near the shore that we could hear people talk on board them, though not distinctly, and see the ships plain. I can give no reason why they did not fire on us. After we had returned as far as Dorchester with the boats the prisoners said there was something of value left in the house. We got to Dorchester Wednesday morning about 6 o'clock. Ten boats were manned out with fresh hands to go and make farther search and burn the barn and hay. They landed in the daytime, and were attacked by a number of the King's troops in a boat and an armed schooner, which fired grape-shot and obliged them to retreat with the loss of one man. However, they fired the house and barn before they left the island, but had not time to get much furniture on board, nor was there much for them, as we brought off all the beds, chairs, tables, a considerable quantity of wool, cupboard furniture, etc."
Amos wrote many entertaining letters which I have no time to quote at length. He gave to his brother Fenn,
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who kept the shop in his absence, minute directions for preparing those tremendous medical compounds which were supposed to suit the hardy constitutions of our ances- tors. His orders about clothing would horrify the trim militia man of our time. Every man in the army dressed as seemed good unto himself. There were no uniforms. Deacon Elijah Porter, Farmington's first librarian, is said, on the authority of another deacon, to have worn his wedding suit to the war. Orderly-Sergeant Roger Hooker records on the 14th of June :
"That no man appear for any duty, except fatigue, with long trousers, or without stockings and shoes."
After Washington took command the orderly-book announces that the officers
"Be distinguished in the following manner. The Commander-in- Chief with a light blue ribbon worn across his breast between his coat and vest. The Major and Brigadier-Generals with a pink ribbon in the same manner, and the Aids-de-Camp by a green ribbon."
Colonel Fisher Gay writes, February 26th :
" Was Officer of the Day. . 27th, returned the sash . at 9 o'clock and made report to Gen. Ward."
This sash or ribbon seems to have been the means of distinguishing officers from privates. On the 4th of Sep- tember Lieut. Wadsworth was on the point of joining Arnold's expedition against Quebec, but was dissuaded by his friends. Almost the next we hear of him is the ac- count of his funeral, celebrated with much military dis- play on the 30th of October, the day after his death. The procession was headed by an advance guard of twenty men with reversed arms, followed by the Sergeants as bearers. The coffin was covered with black velvet and
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bore two crossed swords. Then followed the mourners, his mother and brother, the regiment under arms, and the officers of the other regiments. The musicians played the tune, "Funeral Thoughts," and at the end of every line the drums beat one stroke. The march was a mile and a half long, and during the last half-mile the Brookline bell tolled constantly. His monument stands to-day in the old cemetery of Brookline. His brother Fenn soon entered the army, and was for several years one of the Committee of the Pay Table in Hartford. He died just after the close of the war, and a monument in Saratoga marks his resting-place.
From this point our sources of information about Farmington men in the war are sadly lessened. The or- derly-book of Roger Hooker closes with his promotion to be Second Lieutenant under Ebenezer Sumner, Captain of the 5th Company in the 22d Regiment, which office he was holding as early as December 11th. On the 2d of February, 1776, begins the short diary of Colonel Fisher Gay. He says :
"Set off for headquarters to join the army under command of General Washington before Boston, and arrived at Roxbury the 6th of said month. Stationed at . Roxbury with the regiment I belonged to, and quartered at Mr. Wyman's with Col. Wolcott and Mr. Perry. Was sent for by General Washington to wait on his Excellency the 13th of said month, and was ordered by the General to go to Connecticut to purchase all the gunpowder I could. Went to Providence, and from thence to Gov. Trumbull, where I obtained 2 tons of the Governor, and then to New London to Mr. T[homas] Mumford, and obtained of him an order on Messrs. Clark & Nightingill, merchants in Providence, and returned to camp the 19th, and made report to the General to his great satisfaction."
On Sunday, March 17th, he writes :
"Col. Wolcott on the hill. An alarm in the morning. I ordered the regiment to meet before the Colonel's door after prayers. I marched them
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off with Major Chester. Near the alarm post found, instead of going to action, the enemy had abandoned Boston. 500 troops immediately ordered to march into and take possession of the fortifications in Boston. Col. Larned, myself, Majors Sproat and Chester, with a number of other officers and troops, marched in and took possession, and tarried there till the 19th at night, then returned to camp at Roxbury. Never people more glad at the departure of an enemy and to see friends."
Deacon Samuel Richards also tells of the entry into Boston in his " Personal Narrative." He says :
"I had the gratification of being selected to carry the American flag at the head of the column which entered from the Roxbury side. When arrived in the town numerous incidents crowded upon our view. I can particularize but few of them. The burst of joy shown in the countenances of our friends so long shut up and domineered over by an insulting enemy; the meeting and mutual salutations of parents and children, and other members of families, having been separated by the sudden shutting up of the town after the battle of Lexington; the general dilapidation of the houses, several churches emptied of all the inside work and turned into riding-schools for the cavalry ; all the places which had been previously used for public resort torn to pieces. As I was the bearer of the flag, I attracted some attention and was constantly pressed with invitations to 'call in and take a glass of wine with me.'"
On the day before the evacuation of Boston Governor Trumbull closes a letter with the exclamation :
"Hitherto the Lord hath helped us. Although they came against us with a great multitude and are using great artifice, yet let our eyes be on the Lord of Hosts and our trust in Him."
And then adds :
"P. S. This moment received a letter from headquarters requesting me to throw two thousand men into New York from the frontiers of Con- necticut to maintain the place until the General can arrive with the army under his command."
In response thereto the Farmington soldiers marched by way of Providence to New London, where they took ship, and, after running upon a rock in Hell Gate, finally
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reached New York in safety. Here, on the 22d of August, shortly before the Americans were driven from the city, died Colonel Fisher Gay. A not very well authenticated tradition affirms that he was buried in Trinity Church- yard.
With New York in possession of the enemy, the towns on the coast were exposed to raid by the British and Tories. This, with the scarcity of provisions in New Haven, caused the corporation of Yale College to send the freshman class to Farmington, the sophomore and junior classes to Glaston- bury, and the seniors to Wethersfield, to meet at these respective places on the 27th of May, 1777. Again they advertise that the sophomore class is ordered to meet at Farmington October 22, 1777 :
"Where provision is made for their residence. We could wish to have found suitable accommodations for the senior class, and have taken great pains to effect it, but hitherto without success."
Here came their tutor, the Rev. John Lewis, and here in the old cemetery you will find a stone recording the birth and death in this village of his son, John Livy.
After the surrender of Burgoyne, General Gates ordered the captured artillery sent to Connecticut for safety, and a memorial to the General Assembly states that Colonel Ichabod Norton, grandfather of the late John T. Norton, Esq., was ordered
"To take the command of a company and proceed to Albany for the purpose of guarding the cannon taken from Gen. Burgoyne the last cam- paign, ordered to be removed to said Farmington."
After the expedition was well under way the snow disap- peared, and the men were a fortnight dragging the heavy pieces through the mud. They were finally stored in the orchard of John Mix, where they remained a considerable time.
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During the remainder of the war the Farmington soldiers were located almost exclusively in the Highlands above New York. Of the first occupancy of West Point, Deacon Richards says :
"I being at the time senior officer of the regiment present, of course led on the regiment, crossing the river on the ice. . Coming on to the small plain surrounded by the mountains, we found it covered with a growth of yellow pines ten or fifteen feet high; no house or improvement on it; the snow waist high. We fell to lopping down the tops of the shrub pines and treading down the snow, spread our blankets, and lodged in that condition the first and second nights."
Concerning this same affair Deacon Elijah Porter says in his journal :
"When Gen. Putnam was ready to go over on the ice he called me to come to him. He then loaded me with tools for building huts, and took a heavy load himself, and bade me follow him. When we got about half a mile on the ice, he went on some shelly ice, began to slip about, and down he went with his load of tools and made the ice crack so that I thought he would go down, but the ice held him up, and I sprang round and picked up his tools and loaded him up again. We went on and arrived safe on the point."
Deacon Porter soon returned home and his journal closes, but Deacon Richards remained at West Point and was an eye-witness of the execution of Andre. To Timothy Hos- mer, formerly the village doctor of Farmington, and now army surgeon, was assigned the duty of laying his finger on Andre's pulse and reporting him dead.
Deacon Richards was at West Point during the build- ing of the fortifications the subsequent spring under the direction of Kosciusko. He says :
"I was quartered a considerable time with him in the same log hut, and soon discovered in him an elevation of mind which gave fair promise of those high achievements to which he attained. His manners were soft and conciliating and at the same time elevated. I used to take much pleasure
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in accompanying him about with his theodite, measuring the heights of the surrounding mountains. He was very ready in mathematics. Our family now consisted of Brigadier-General Parsons, Doctor, afterwards President Dwight, Kosciusko, and myself, with the domestics. When the weather had become mild and pleasant in April, I went one day with Dr. Dwight down to view the ruins of Fort Montgomery, distant about eight or ten miles. There was a pond just north of the fort, where we found the British had thrown in the bodies of their own and our men who fell in the assault of the fort."
He closes a very gruesome account of the spectacle with the exclamation :
"Had the fort held out a little longer, I very probably might have lain among them."
I shall close this rambling paper with a notice of a proposed invasion of this quiet village, a bill for which actually passed the Lower House of the General Assembly near the close of the war in 1781 :
"Resolved by this Assembly that considering the peculiar difficulty that many of the members of this Assembly meet with in procuring sub- sistence for themselves and forage for their horses, it is expedient this Assembly be adjourned to the town of Farmington to transact and complete the business of the present session, as soon as proper accommodations can be made and that the selectmen of said town be desired to make the nec- essary preparation for the reception of the Assembly as soon as possible.
"Passed in the Lower House,
"Test, JOHN TREADWELL, Clerk, P. T."
The reply to this request by the Selectmen of Farming- ton was as follows :
" To the Honorable Lower House of Assembly now sitting in Hartford. Being desired by your Honors to make inquiry whether the General Assembly may be accommodated in their present sessions in this town, we have to observe that from the knowledge we have of the circumstances of the inhabitants, we are of the opinion that should the Honorable Assembly signify their determination to adjourn to this place, the members might be conveniently, though perhaps not elegantly subsisted, and their horses well
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provided. The greatest difficulty will be to provide a house in which it would be convenient to transact business. The Meeting House, though elegant and well finished, would be inconvenient for want of a fire at this inclement season. The dwelling house of Mr. Asahel Wadsworth, situate in the center of the town, may be obtained for the purpose, and is as convenient as any in the town. It is 42 feet in length and about 22 in breadth. The rooms on the lower floor finished, and one of them may well accommodate the Honorable Upper House. There are two stacks of chim- nies, one at each end. The chambers are unfurnished, the floor laid but not divided into several apartments. One fire place is finished, and the room, if proper seats were made, which might soon be done, would be large enough for the Lower House. The house is covered with jointed boards and clapboards upon them, but neither ceiled nor plastered. This is an exact description of Mr. Wadsworth's house, and if the Honorable Assembly shall judge it will answer the purpose, upon suitable notice might be accommodated and other preparation made in a short time.
"We are, with sentiments of the highest esetem and regard, "Your Honors' most obedient and most humble servants.
"FARMINGTON, February 26, 1781.
JAMES JUDD, ISSAAC BIDWELL, of Farmington.
Selectmen
A letter from Elijah Hubbard offering the Assembly ac- commodations at Middletown equally magnificent was also sent.
Time fails to speak of the after-life of these worthy men, of William Judd, famous in the political history of the State ; of John Treadwell, last of the Puritan Gover- nors of Connecticut ; of Samuel Richards, first post-master of Farmington ; of Roger Hooker, sitting of a sum- mer evening under his noble elm tree and delighting the assembled youth of the village with tales of a seafaring youth, of shipwreck, and of his long service in the Con- tinental army ; of Timothy Hosmer, village doctor, army surgeon, judge of Ontario county, New York, and pioneer settler of that western wilderness; of Noadiah Hooker, honored with many public trusts, and finally, as a white- haired old man, standing on the hillside above Whitehall
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and dropping a not unmanly tear over the graves of a hun- dred of his soldiers buried by him during the terrible days of the pestilence-at Skenesborough ; of John Mix, for twenty-six years the representative of this town to the General Assembly of the State, and of Timothy Pitkin, welcoming his children home from their victorious struggle, their beloved pastor and faithful friend. There were other, many other, worthy men of whom we would know more, who deserved well of their country. If this paper shall prompt anyone to preserve the scanty memorials of them which still exist, my labor this evening will not have been in vain.
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AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT
THE ANNUAL MEETING
of the
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VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY
OF FARMINGTON, CONNECTICUT
May 1, 1895
by Julius Gay
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OLD HOUSES
delivered at the annual meeting of the Village Library Company of Farmington May 1, 1895
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of Farmington:
I have been requested to speak this evening of the old houses of Farmington and of some of the people who lived in them. If my paper be not very profound with great events and much learning, it may perhaps none the less, for a passing hour, revive the fast-fading picture of our ancestors, their virtues and their foibles.
In the winter of 1639, when the town of Hartford had been founded three and one-half years, and Windsor and Wethersfield about the same time, all three towns began to think their broad acres too limited, and applied to the General Court " for some enlargement of accommo- dation." A committee was appointed to view the valley of the Tunxis and report on the 20th of February, but Windsor was busy building a bridge and a meeting house, and their neighbors of Wethersfield objected to the wintry weather; so the Court added to the committee Capt. John Mason, who had recently rid the colony of 600 or 700 Pequots, and who brought the Court on the 15th of June following to order the Particular Court "to conclude the conditions for the planting of Tunxis."
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Five years thereafter, in 1645, the village of Tunxis Sepus, literally the village at the bend of the little river, became by legislative enactment the town of Farmington.
The settlers found the natural features of the place much as we see them today. To the east of the main street their lots extended to the mountain, and on the west to the river, beyond which fertile meadows spread away to the western hills, undisfigured for more than one hundred years by divisional fences, a broad panorama of waving grain and green corn fields.
The land was indeed owned in severalty, but annually the proprietors voted on what day in October they would use it for pasturage, and on what day in April all must remove their flocks and herds. Access to this common field was through the North Meadow Gate just west of the Catholic church, or through the South Meadow Gate near the Pequabuc stone bridge. Along the main street houses began to rise, log huts at first, each provided by law with a ladder reaching to the ridge to be examined every six months by the chimney-viewers. In 1711 the town granted fourscore acres of land to encourage the erection of a saw-mill, but long before this time frame houses had been built, the sides covered with short clap- boards split from logs. The oldest house of which we know the date of erection was built in 1700 by John Clark and stood until 1880 on the east side of High street, a little south of Mrs. Barney's. It had a leanto roof, the upper story much projecting, and ornamented with con- spicuous pendants. Another, the last of this style, but with modern covering, still stands about seventy-five rods further south. Within, a huge chimney with its enor- mous fire-place and ovens, filled a large part of the lower story, barring all convenient access to the interior of the
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