Genealogical and family history of the state of Connecticut, a record of the achievements of her people in the making of a commonwealth and the founding of a nation, Volume IV, Part 77

Author: Cutter, William Richard, 1847-1918, ed; Clement, E. H. (Edward Henry), 1843- joint ed. cn; Hart, Samuel, 1845-1917, joint ed; Talcott, Mary Kingsbury, 1847-1917, joint ed; Bostwick, Frederick, 1852- , joint ed; Stearns, Ezra Scollay, 1838-1915, joint ed
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: New York, Lewis historical publishing company
Number of Pages: 1178

USA > Connecticut > Genealogical and family history of the state of Connecticut, a record of the achievements of her people in the making of a commonwealth and the founding of a nation, Volume IV > Part 77

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Third, John Hall, with his family, was a strong instance, though not a sole instance, of a man who read his Bible and simply accepted its teachings : and, as such a man. he early ac- cepted the leadership of Thomas Hooker. To him Thomas Hooker's views were an emanci- pation. He lived in the Thomas Hooker cir- cle, and eventually his family married into it. Where the stalk and tassel grow, Indian corn is in the ground. The needle is moved by an inward force. not by an outward finger. It is impossible to state this moving and locating force in John Hall-to print this identifica- tion card-in any brief words or by any few facts. The conviction becomes a primary pos- tulate, after scanning John Hall's locations and moves, for the eighty-nine years of his life, and the more definite and frequent rec- ords of the latter years, including his son's records, the ten last years of John Hall's life, twenty years more of the family's. As the ship steers by the needle, John Hall steered by the same principles held by Thomas Hooker.

Fourth. A family tradition received by a responsible man now in full vigor, near half a century ago, long before David B. Hall's book came out, and by the receiver placed on record. makes this John Hall the man to whom the Sigourney or Catlin place belonged in the settlement of Hartford ; how much before 1639 we do not know ; nor do we know this of any allotment of land in Hartford: 1639 was the first record, because the first town clerk, though by no means the first personal occupation of land. This status tallies with other towns.

As universally stated, never contravened, John Hall was born in Kent county, Eng- iand, and in 1584. the year of the founding of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. The same forces wrought in man and college, both, as

they were working widely and deeply in all England. The personal stream appeared merged in the public stream at the Yale Bi- Centennial of 1901. First Harvard, and then Yale were the ultimate expansion of Eminan- uel, and Joseph H. Twichell, who gave the ad- dress at the Yale anniversary, with all na- tions of earth assembled: "For my brethren and companions' sakes I will now say, 'Peace be within thee,'" was a lineal as well as a spiritnal descendant of John Hall. Joseph Twichell is not an orator, he is a life. His voice only gives ont what has been lived by his hands and his heart ; the hands and heart of John Hall-both men, patient doers, both: widely effective doers, the present, a more widely known doer of God's will. It was more indispensable that John Hall should lay the social foundations of Yale, than that Jo- seph Twichell should celebrate tiem.

The records of John Hall in England are "the short and simple annals of the poor." We must know him by the principles of his birth- place, Kent, the ship-building part, principles which he lived into there, and which he lived up to here. The non-conformists can be easier traced, identified, by their viral faith than by their vital statistics.

Kent was the most historic part of Eng- land. and the strongest builder of character; the maritime part. In Kent were Chatham and Woolwich, old ports of docks and ship- ping. Four of the Cinque Ports were in Kent -"Sandwich and Romney, Hastings. Hithe and Dover"-the other, Hastings, was in Sus- sex, only a dozen miles down the coast. in one of these ports of shipping, perhaps, John Hall was born : in many wrought.

When the Duke of Wellington had re luced the disorders of the frenzied peoples, by which conservative yet progressive England was threatened, the most distinguished title which could be given the defender of the ancient regime and realm was, "Warden of the Cinque Ports." It was to this title that Longfellow wrote his threnody, which, of its length, is the most manly and sonorous poem in the Eng- lish tongue. This made known here the Cinque Ports; but the Cinque Ports terri- tory which made John Hall has been to its unknown. Each port, but Hythe, had from four to nine other towns attached to it. These made up a jurisdiction, including a number of inland districts, perhaps for ship-timber, far from these ports and towns themselves. This great incorporation had its origin in the ne- cessity for some means of defense along the southern seaboard of England, and in the lack of a regular navy. It was here that Cæsar landed, and for centuries England was in con-

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stant danger of incursion at this point, with no navy to watch and no wireless to warn. In large bodies and small, every man was liable to go on instant and detached service, which, on land and sea. implies absolute power and alert self-direction. At times a corporal mast shoot a spy or traitor as promptly as a gen- eralissimo. Each man was organized for and capable of the defense of England. Of such men, though not these men, were Welling- ton's squares at Waterloo. If a hundred sail of the enemy rose up from the horizon and appeared in the offing. it was a time for dis- patch and not for dispatches.

The Cinque Ports rule extended from Sea- ford, in Sussex. to Margate in Kent. It dated back to Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror. It was a realm within a realm. It had eleven immemorial great rights. un- known to outside England, including the power of life and death. and an annual port- mote, or parliament, assembling at Shepway Cross, a few miles back of Hythe. To this. or its courts, went the mayors, select freemen. and the jurats, men select and sworn.

This system made John Hall. The first government at Hartford was almost a dupli- cate of the Portmote ( ports-meet ). If Thom- as Hooker suggested it. John Hall was ready trained to it. The first protection to Lon- don. the heart of the world: Cambridge, the world's brain : Canterbury. the world's soul ; Chatham. the world's shipyard: Woolwich. the world's (old) dockyard-this all lav on the shoulders of the old Cinque Ports. In a moment of destiny. it might lie on the shoul- ders of any one man of them all. And they were fit. They had to be. Men thus self- directed, men used to responsibility and in- itiative, were likely to read their own Bibles. form their own opinions. direct their own lives. That all England should not do this was often the object of the incursions that the Cinque-Porters withstood. This certainly did not make them any the less independent in religious views. Their enemies were French. Spaniards. advancing sometimes with the blessing of the Pope. Their friends were Hollanders. There was a constant and heavy ebb and flow of population between England and the Low Countries. A Dutch Protestant was less obnoxious in England. where he could not speak the language, and less endan- gered where less known. in English Prot- estant or Independent was safer in Holland. The brunt of this tidal immigration fell upon the eastern sea-border, and the southern half : Sussex. Kent. Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, from South to North. Into Braintree, in Essex, a notable name for American settlement (the

Raines of Domesday Book ). woolen mannfac- titres were introduced by Flemings, who fled from the Duke of Alva. ravaging the Low Countries, 1567-73. In Norwich, in Norfolk, in 1571, there were by actual count 3.925 Dutch and Walloons : in 158; there were 4.670. making a majority of the population. They located by thousands in the Cinque Ports. These exiles fitted out privateer-, which re- sulted in the renewed freedom of Holland. The Cinque Ports had almost a monopoly of the commerce of the English Channel.

Tyndale's, the first considerable English translation of the Bible, was printed abroad. in an edition at Worms and several at .Ant- werp. whence it was brought to England, for which it was designed, and of course, brought first and most to the country of the Cinque Ports.

It was most naturally in this country, taken in a wider sense. that Thomas Hooker sought a patron and found a parish. at Chelmsford, in Essex. in 1626. Soon. 1630. he was si- lenced by Land. and then taught the free school at Little Baddow, a few miles cast from Chelmsford, whence he fled from Laud into Holland. later in 1630. Chelmsford was dis- tant but eleven miles from Braintree. in Essex. where was born John Talcott, one of Hooker's inost attached followers at Hartford. There is increasing reason to believe that Elder \\ :1- liam Goodwin was also a native of Braintree. From Chelmsford to Maldon. in Essex. a sea- port on the Blackwater river, was nine miles. but from Little Baddow to Malden. was but five. The dissensions between Land and Hooker were then as widely noised as to-day's dissensions between Pinchot and Ballinger. In days not then far gone. non-conformist min- isters had preached behind sheets and- shawls, that none might be able to swear to their iden- tity, and men of the plain people had had their cars clipped for going to hear them. These ministers were well advertised. There is every probability that John Hall met Hook- er's admirers, and much that he heard his ser- mons. His handicraft would call him to many neighbor ports, when and where was need : carpenters, though paid. were impressed and taken to any port. and it is strange if he did not visit the seaport Maldon, five miles from Hooker's school: strange, indeed. if Hooker did not visit Maldon. the nearest trading town and natural source of supplies ani nen books: strange if he should not become wel! known and noted there. From thence. not im- possibly. Hooker escaped to Holland: to be near Maldon, perhaps it was, that he preached at Chelmsford, and taught at Little Baddow. Possibly to John Hall and to Giles Hamiin.

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ship-master, Hooker was well known abroad. Indeed, Giles Hamlin may have been a cabin boy on the "Griffin." landing Hooker at Bos- ton in 1633. Possibly, when free schools were almost none, John Hall, the son, Middletown's town clerk, and for thirty years, was taught in Hooker's school. Sea routes were as nat- ural then as stage routes or trolley routes later. Connecticut boys of twelve were sent away to school a little later on by water routes two, three and four times as long as the water route from Chatham. Dover, etc., to Maldon. Maldon was on the very next estuary north from the Thames.

When the sea shall give up its dead. it can be safely told what ship took Thomas Hooker to Holland, and from what port; who was captain, mate, ship's carpenter and cabin bor, where and when John Hall and family became attached to the person and principles of Hook- er. What we know now is that they did be- come attached and that they have stayed fast- ened.

This view of the Cinque Ports territory people as a Bible-reading, duty-doing, self-di- recting, country-protecting humanity, would lead us to expect what they did at Hartford. There is a plant which breeds much more freely and much more truly from the root than from the bloom. Blossoms show : roots do. To the careful historian. the lasting ef- fects of John Hall's constitution of body and mind are much more visible than those of John Locke's constitution of South Carolina. The abstract principles of the New Testament, Haynes and Hooker embodied in sermons and statutes. John Hall and families materialized in houses and homes. The influence of John Hall is all unrecorded at Hartford: no one had the personal interest to put his name on the Founders' Monument. But for thirty years his son John continued to record his own, his father's, and the family's doings and character on the town books of Middletown- a record unconscious and unswerved. No one has spent thirty years in recording the char- acter of any other person or family founding Hartford, nor can any one of them be so com- pletely recovered from the past and1 set living before us.

Back of all this, however, with his appren- ticeship completed in 1605 and marriage de- ferred till perhaps 1618, John Hall had a dozen years, if he chose. as a ship's carpen- ter to see the world. He may well have been in the voyage with Captam . John Smith and six other captains to settle Jamestown, Vir- ginia, in 1607, and in Smith's subsequent voy- ages to explore the New England coast. Ra- leigh's expedition to Roanoke, and Drake's

to the West Indies, being the year of John 1fall's birth and the year after, he could not be engaged in them.

Before Hartford could be founded and the ideal of human life by God's word. which had been crushed in England, be realized in Amer- ica, there was needed a man who had been in touch with all men (up to Indians), who was a sailor, boat manager, judge of harbors: a carpenter, with tools along, to repair or re- place a crushed or burned or stolen boat : who could build a hut for shelter ; a man ripe with use, yet hardy with youth undissipated; of the broadest yet most practical judgment : upon whose conclusions and information Thomas Hooker could safely launch a new commonwealth : and who. for the fear of God and the love of man, would risk the terrors of Indians and of winter. and knowe a spot where God should set his people in a large place. The Indians killed John Hall's companion on this trip, two or three years later. and his grandson Richard at Hadley in 1676.

The Hartford people, to be-for out of 47 Cambridge families in 1632, 28 were Hartford families in 1639-the Hartford people to he would not risk their Thomas Hooker for this exploration. As often before and often aft- erwards, John Hall took the contract, and he filled the specifications. Very likely Mathew Allen financed the exploration.

With John Oldham as a sailor, the trip was made. The hour of starting was as prede- termined as the perigee of Halley's comet. On September 4. 1633, when the "Griffin" struck Boston with Thomas Hooker on board, John Hall struck ont. The brain of a new commonwealth had arrived ; there was to seek. the clay of its embodiment. Some have thought that a boy of twenty-one. with John Oldham, a man of vagaries and vagrant re- pute, were in the lead. But Hooker did not trust to such beforehand nor accept their judgment afterward. To found Hartford took a man too sound to be expelled from Plymouth, as had been Oldham. Hubbard of Ipswich, writing about 1683 of what was done in 1633, kindly mentions his parishioner and parish benefactor as one to be credited for this trip: Samuel Hall, of Maldon. Fig- land, where he soon' returned and later died. with executor John Hall, in or near Kent : two family names with our John Hall. But where Hubbard thinks this expedition and dis- covery was providencial, there is little doubt that, like all Hooker's movements, it was fore- sighted, prearranged by correspondence be- tween Hooker and his old Little Baddow ush- er and convert, John Eliot, who had now been at Boston and Roxbury two years, while

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Hooker had had a house lot assigned him among his own people at Cambridge for a year back prior to his coming on. Thomas Hooker picked his apples and did not depend on windfalls, and, as a good keeper of that fall, he chose a Roxbury russet. Indeed, it has been universally said, and without dis- pute, that this John Hall, reaching Boston in 1633, soon joined Jolin Eliot's church in Rox- bury. This belief now comes to fall, because the number 4 opposite the name of some Jolin Hall there about 1639 has now come to be understood by all historians to refer to land or some material subject of taxation, and not to persons, which view was taken to identify that name with the Middletown John Hall, as he had four children. Had the identity been established, as once supposed, for 1633. it would be almost conclusive that the explora- tion of Hartford had been planned by Hooker, Eliot and John Hall. But as it is, to this do all the indications point.

John. HIall returned from his explorations. whether one trip or two. January 20. 1634 (N. S.). Of his three companions, Oldham had been one. Young Samuel Hall, of Maldon, England. may have been another, and a rela- tive. In this one instance, Winthrop lacks the details. Evidently the particulars were not given out. Hooker withheld his destination from public knowledge till permission to re- - move was had May 14. 1634, and even then was recalled when the destination transpired. Hooker's was a definite. deep-seated plan. probably matured while he saw three years of the intelligence, freedom, happiness and thrift of the self-directed people of Rotterdam and Delft, and confirmed when he saw the hier- archical régime at Boston, whose effects, now safely out of their reach, he deplored, to use a mild term. in his letter to Winthrop. fall of 1638, reprinted as the very first item in the "Collections of the Connecticut Historical So- ciety.'

While Jolin Hall was absent to explore "Connecticut River." a large number of per- sons were made freemen. on November 5. 1633. The average requiredI time in the coun- try, of men made freemen. was six months. Thus Hooker was not eligible in November. , 1633. On May 14. 1634. among one hundred and four, the following names were placed in the list of freemen, all of which are found in the list of Hartford lot holders in 1639, ex- cept Twichell :

John Haynes. *

* * *

William Hill. * * * ×

George Stecie.

Mr. Thomas Hooker, Mr. Samuel Stone, Andrew Warner. Thomas Spencer.

John Pratt,

Stephen Hart, * * *

Edward Stebbins,

Richard Butler,

Richard Goodman,

Joseph Twitchweil, * * * * John Hall, * * * *

It should be noted here that this Thomas Spencer was cousin to the three Allen broth- ers, merchants of Connecticut, and, himself a first settler, was brother to William Spencer, to whom John Hall sold out his first land as- signed to him at Hartford, and the house that he had built upon it, if, indeed, he had not built in anticipation of supplying William Spencer a home. The law's limitation of Jolm llall's wages, both at Cambridge and Hart- ford, made this about his only way of getting ahead in the world.

In all, May 14, 1634. 104 names were en- tered, those being grouped together which are placed closely above, and John Hall being sixth from the end, as if he had come in late and in his working clothes, from building houses and churches, of which was pressing need.

Frankly be it said that there were twenty disconnected emigrant Jolin HIalls in New England, at or about this time. 1630-40, and but three were made freemen at Boston, whereas their descendants have desired this record for most, or all, of them. The best- posted and most effective genealogist concedes this, May 14, 1634, record to the Hartford and Middletown John Hall. at this court, for these reasons: Ist. It is known that he had reached Boston. 2d. It was his natural time to be made freeman, and not that of any other known to be there. 3d. The Winthrop com- pany, 1630, and other such men, emigrated only on condition that they should be freemen. 4th. Of 40 men, by estimate, in the 100 persons of Hooker's band, and with 20 added. by es- timate, of those who preceded him, to stay, in 1639, 52 were recorded Hartford land holders in 1639, 8 by estimate having died or dropped out by marriage and removal. etc .. and the same number. 52, of those in Hart- ford. 1639. had been made freemen before Hooker left Cambridge and are found there in Winthrop's lists. The conclusion is irre- sistible that Hooker had his men admitted electors as any statesman would have them to-day. He wanted every foundation for a new and independent government, and this was one of them -- undisputable citizen .hip. In the closely contested vote he also needed every voter that he could get, in favor of his removal to Connecticut River. John Hal! and family are found steady attendants on Hook- er's principles, purposes and person, and com-

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bined in living with those who were Hooker's fellow-townsmen at Chelmsford, so uniform- ly, that this conduct must be inferred on this occasion, as known on others. Of these 52 Boston-made freemen of Hartford, 1639, some had been made freemen before Hooker ; some, front later emigration, had not matured their claims, when Hooker was made. and were made later than Hooker, but a large com- pany, a dozen or two, were admitted this day, and apparently all that had not been admitted and had become eligible. At this date Hook- er got permission to emigrate, a permission recalled soon, when his destination was known, but he expected to start a new government at once, and, naturally, had his own and his fol- lowers' citizenship perfected before going where it could not be done. ( This conclusion and inclusion transfers this John Hall from May 6. 1635, as guessed by Savage, to May 14, 1634. Savage deplores the confusion from so frequent a name. Where there is a doubt, he gives the benefit to a Massachusetts man ; probably he worked them up into family books first. He had three hours to spend on each name, where the present writer has spent six months. John Hall, of Hartford and Middle- town, has never been consecutively treated before. Nor has any manly man whose hands wrought Hooker's plans. )

We do not find John Hall entering his final arrival on any hotel register in Hartford. He was too busy entering his saw and augur and chise into Chestnut and White Oak. Descend- ants have argued that Hooker took along some other John Hall, who was a gool singer (or such), and left these master-carpenters at Cambridge! For John Hall "junyer" was seventeen when Hooker started Hartford ; he was the oldest of a motherless brood, and through life showed much of that early re- sponsibility. He was chosen master-builder for the first framed meeting house in Middle- town; likewise for the first ferry boat, and by 20 or 21. seems likely to have been as well known in Hartford as his father : doubtless was on separate jobs. and. necessarily re- ferred to in the daily speech. being one of the doers at Hartford, had the suffix of "junyer" attached. Not one on Porter's map of 1640 had a middle name. In truth it is said that up to 1600 there were but four middle names in all England. He is mentioned as "junver" in the organization of the First Church in Middletown. though his father, then 84, is not named as a charter member. Where fa- ther and son had the same name this was the regular way-to add the suffix to each : senior, junior. This is done in three cases within two pages in the booklet-John Hall (of Wal-

lingford), Iolin Hall senior, John Hall junior ; John Cooper senior, John Cooper junior; Thomas Yaile senior, Thomas Vaile junior. Boys were admitted electors at sixteen at Hartford, perhaps to get soldiers ; some were killed under twenty in Indian wars. Thus, in law they were "junyer" at sixteen, the father senior. Common usage would begin when the Loy began work at a trade.

With three nearly grown boys, John Hall was assigned an outlying home lot in Hart- ford, next the mill site and on Lord's Ilill, where was room to make gardens, pasture cows, keep swine and poultry, and raise corn for them. There was wastage, too, from the mill of Mathew Allen, and, as a great wilder- ness adjoined the home lot. the swine could le turnel loose on acorns in the woods, with the boys to herd and round them up. Swine and acorns in the woods, swine and salt in the branded barrel, was a great wealth of most early Hartforders. William Spencer, next succeeding owner of John Hall's stand, kept about thirty swine. Indians were no tin- known terror to the old explorer and friend of John Eliot, and the mill site could not be moved if they were. The back of it had to be at a fall and the front at the head of canoe navigation on the Riverett, now Park river. Wolves howled around o' nights in the forest, but the little pigs were doubtless in pens, and there was a "wolf pound" to drive in the calves at nightfall.

By several stages of reasoning, some who have come to Hartford or nearby in recent years, have sought to claim this lot for their ancestor, another of the twenty emigrant John Halls. They found the name here, not know- ing of all the multitude: they could not find their man anywhere. They have no proof that he was ever in Hartford. His son got land elsewhere on the claim of the father's "service in the Pequot war." Other land grants say plainly: "soldier in the Pequitt war." This man was probably a sailor, some- thing more than a common sailor, on the three vessels which Mason and Underhill were so glad to see heave in siglit, after the destrine- tion of the Pequots at Mystic fort. His son Jonathan also received a grant for war serv- ice in a vessel. The early locations of that family are those of sailors, and, as sailors, until married, they cannot be located any more than Captain Giles Hamlin can be located be- fore. he married and settled down at Middle- town. for a home port.

The sea was the farm he ploughed And the crop he reapt was freight; The billows' crests. his grain-tops' wave. And the limitless West, his gate.

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Pensions do not make history. An ex- amination of Porter's map of the lots in 1639 shows that soldiers of the Pequot war, central among them Benjamin Burr, were assigned small lots in a tier by themselves, both sepa- rate and distant from the above-named fam- ily lot of this John Hall, as well as larger lots in "Soldiers' Field." Those who had lots as proprietors, i. e., as contributors to the purchase fund, or by "courtesie," i. e., from the value of their trades, and subsequently went to the war, of course retained their for- mer homes. For those who went to the war, with previously no lots. a layout was made near "Centinel Hill." This Centinel Hill was an elevation in an open space, without streets cut through : up Main street, alout as far north, as the Riverett ( Park river ), crossing was down Main street, south, from the meet- ing house ( now Central Row ). It was in the "fork of the road," plot which was nearly "identical with the "fork in the road" plot now lying between that part of Main street which bends westerly from Morgan street toward "the tunnel." and Windsor street ( not ave- nue). Benjamin Burr's lot was in about the same direction and location as the present home of his descendant. Willie O. Burr. of The Times. This tier of small city lots given to Pequot war sol liers, with Benjamin Burr in the middle, had its base on Centinel Hill and its apex on the "Cow Pasture." Both cows and maidens had been raided at Wethers- field, and if any Hartford girl found an In- dian in her hair at night. those already tested at Mystic. were planted where they could ral- ly on Centinel Hliil and rush to her defense : a fire company to put out the fire of the In- dains. There was no John Hall's lot among these Pequot soldiers' lots.

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