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 78

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 78

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Nor could any unmarried man. John Hall or any other man. have had a lot by himself in Hartford at this time, still less a lot with a mansion upon it. What would any single man, "merely starting in the world." want. or what would he do with. the John Hall man- sion, which, on March 4. 1640-41 ( Conn. Co- lonial Records, vol. i. p. 450), comprised these rooms among others: Hall, hall bedroom [parlor], parlor chamber, pantry. large bed- room, besides, doubtless, kitchen ? Why should a single man build that residence. with an expected or destined Jane Woolen to marry in New Haven? With what money. having had none to buy even the land? and as a young man starting in lite?

But the civic aspect of the matter is con- clusive. In no colony of New England was any single man allowed to "keep house." Too great a danger existed that a house which was

not a home would be a resort of tipplers. In- dian women, etc. Especial would be the dan- ger on the outskirts of Lord's Hill. Here is the law of the Connecticut "Corte held at Newtowne 21 Febr. 1636 (N. S .. 37) : "It is ordered yt noe yonge man yt is neither mar- ied nor hath any servauntes & be no publicke officer, shall keepe house by himself. wthout consent of the Towne where he lives first had. under paine of 20 s pr weeke." A like pen- alty for a family entertaining a young man. And a family tradition settles the matter, and would be received as conclusive in court. The tradition stands on this basis :

Samuel Hall (2), youngest son of John Hall ( I), settled in Cromwell (as now called ). and his son Samuel (3) was there a deacon of the church. This son, Samuel (3), removed to Portland (as now called), and was also there a deacon of the church. The opening of the noted Portland stone quarries, recos- nized by Middletown vote. as early as 1665. made the Portland branch of the Hall family, seated, consecutive, capable for generations. None more so. Dr. Field, the best historian that ever a county had, says: "The first quar- ry in Portland, was opened where the stone originally hung shelving over the river. or * had been broken off from the cliffs *

and thrown about the banks. In 1836 % in the old grave-yard in that city ( Hartford ), monuments of Portland free- stone over the graves of such as had been dead 190 years, were not in the least affected * * nor injured." So, beautiful mont- ments of the first generation, Middietown. Thus, these monuments of the dead were also monuments of a living traffic ( by water) bc- tween Hartford and Portland from ich all the way down.

The first Samuel Hall ( 2) certainly re:nem- bered where he had lived in Hartford, being at least nine years old when he went there. 1635 (or 6). Doubtless his son. Samuel Hall (3), born February 3. 1663-64, wa- often taken to see the spot.

Charles H. Hall (S). eighth in this direct line of consecutive business men (born in Portland, April 4. 1809. died untimely, June 4. 1826), doubtless to prepare for home business, became the bookkeeper of Charles Sigourney, merchant, who lived on this spot. 77 on Por- ter's map. for 1640, male 1850. From the custom of merchants of that day with confi- dential clerks from equal basiness families. it might fairly be assumed that Charles H. Hall shared the Sigourney home. There he cer- tainly would be socially familiar. A ietter from the husband and two from the wife, still preserved, show the Sigourneys' intimacy with

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Charles H. Hall. Indeed, it is entirely pos- sible that this intimacy first began from the Halls' intimacy with their original home, now the home of the Sigourneys. Mr. Sigourney's is a letter of condolence with the parents on Charles Hali's untimely death. It also in- cludes business. Mrs. Sigourney's last is also a letter of condolence with the parents. Mrs. Sigourney's first is a letter to Charles Hall himself, dated April 30, 1826, in which she re- fers to his sickness, and saying she would visit him with her husband the "following Satur- day," and asks what he would like to have her bring him, etc., etc.

Philip Sage. father-in-law to the bereaved sister, looked for a son from her and his son, Charles Henry Sage, who married her, to car- ry forward the Hall family name. holl its po- sition, and fulfill its hopes, for the next gen- eration. For that generation, Charles Sage took Charles Hall's expected place and became treasurer of the Shaler and Hall Quarry Com- pany. as well as judge of probate. When the expected boy was old enough to understand, Judge Sage told his son, Jolin Hall Sage, that this Sigourney place was the first seat of his mother's family at Hartford, where his emi- grant ancestor, John Hall ( 1), first pitched, and that he was named for him at the request of his grandfather. Philip Sage.

John Hall Sage made a record of his fa- ther's statement, which, barring fires, etc., will long survive. John Hall Sage is the well- known bank cashier of Portland, director, in the steady line down, of the ( Brainard) Sha- ler and Hall Quarry Company. treasurer of the Episcopal diocese of Connecticut, member of the Connecticut Historical Society, son-in- law of the late Elijah C. Kellogg, of Hart- ford, and is equally known and recognized as a careful and exact scientist. not only in birds but in many other branches.

Two poems of Mrs. Sigourney's. pp. 274-5 and 309-10. of "Hartford in the Oldlen Time," by "Scaeva." show her interest, close study, and minute knowledge of early Hartford.

Thus the traditions in the Portland Hall family, of their first camping down in Hart- ford. are anchored at both ends.

It was by sailors and ship-builders, drop- ping down from Hartford, that Middletown was settled in 1650. Wherever these settlers' names have been found. John Hall heads the list. He and his sons and son-in-law, Thomas Wetmore, and Thomas Allen, from the same Hartford outfit, took up practically the whole north and south strip, a half mile long, lying between Main street and the deep-water shore of the river, suited to shipping and ship- building. They continued in touch with Hart-

ford. the capital of Connecticut, and with men of state influence. In Hartford, in 1644. John Hall was made surveyor of highways. This would now be street commissioner. By the general court, with sessions at Hartford. March 9. 1658-59, he was made collector of customs at Middletown, and May 17. 1660, he was made by the same court, grand juror for Middletown-that is, that town's state at- torney, to enter complaints in the state court, while, at the same session, Robert Chapman was made grand juror for "Sea Brook."

These are elements of a long and steady career ; badges of one "who has companied with us from the beginning," and not of late arrival ; signs of an impress on the community which was duplicated in the family. Not a generation but had its John Hall. Richard (2) and Samuel (2), of the second genera- tion, both named sons John. Samuel (3), of the third generation, named a son John, and that John named a son John. And as they kept up the name and memory of their an- cestor, so they kept their hold on his city.

The quarry-owning Samuel Hall's descend- ants, of Portland, for generations have had their own sloops and schooners onto whose decks they stepped, at their own wharves. on their trips to Hartford, fifteen miles. as fre- quently and naturally as a business man steps into his buggy. The river is their front step- stone. The freestone fronts at Hartford are a continuing monument of continuous traffic. of which the old Center Church burial ground stone is the first milestone. No generation of the Portland Halls was out of touch with Hartford until John H. Ilall, of the last gen- eration, president of the Quarry Company, went up to Hartford to be also president of Colt's. One of John Hall's ( 1) Portland de- scendants, bred in the shipping line, Charles Gildersleeve. son of Oliver, has just finished his course in the Hartford high school, tak- ing the trip daily and daily passing the old family seat there ( the evening school). Thus there was a continuing love, memory, tradi- tion, and intercourse, covering the founding of the family in Hartford and perpetuating its story, not a trace of which is found with descendants of any other Jolin Hall.

It has been already said that the first Sam- uel (2) was at least nine years old when the family moved to Hartford. The grandson. Samuel (3), was ten years old when John Hall ( !) died at 89. Had he not told the boy the Old Hartford stories? Was not the boy taken along when the collector went to Hart- ford on business and banking. reports and returns? Did not the old street commis- sioner point out his fellow officials? Did he

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not show the boy where himself and the boy's father, uncles and sister camped down the first moonlight night with their cows? Did he show him where they lived "near the wolf pound"? with its tall or roofed-in palisade, to drive the young calves in nights. from prowling wolves? How should it be that the Portland Hall family to this generation have the first deed given to their ancestor, 1640, preserved right, yet should have a tradition preserved wrong? pilfered, twisted, wrung? Not, perhaps, to the man that ransacks books, but to the man that knows folks, the resi- dences and promotions of John Hall at Hart- ford are as plain as the latitudes of a man's face, with the eyes below the hair, the nose below the eyes, the mouth below the nose, the chin below the mouth.

Hartford needed: a channel to the high seas : a wharfage; a forest, whence the ships ; a site : a safety : a granary, and a mill stream. Thomas Hooker knew these wants, and he knew who else knew them. He took along. or, in 1635, sent along, the man who had lo- cated the mill site in 1633, and he or Mathew Allen located him millwright in 1635 or 1636. Lool: on Porter's map. No more than Ma- homet, they couldn't bring The Mill to the church, so they laid a road from the church to The Mill.

Who built The Mill? Where did he live? Two men were pitched next it-Mathew Al- len, John Hall. John Hall. shipwright. house- wright, millwright. Two masterful mill- wrights. his descendants, belong to Middle- town to-day, with Hall family names, Hall offices: Deacon John Stevens. Deacon Sam- uel Stevens. The father of the two was a master of mill work and heavy outdoors busi- ness.

Right on the Hartford mill stream's op- posite bank lived John Wilcox and daugh- ter, over the mill dam or across the mill pond. John Hall ( first or second, historians differ). went to visit and visited to marry. When The Mill was an established and a settled going concern. and Hooker's sermons were made by John Hall's meal. as John Hall's meal was made by Hooker's sermons. John Hall sold his · house and lot (or part of the lot) northwest of the Riverett. to William Spencer. and bought a small lot, southeast of the stream. This lot he had as a slice off William Bloom- field's lot. who. later, went with him as a neighbor to. Middletown. and it put him next city lot but one. to father Wilcox. The land pitched on by John Hall at first. was entered in the name of William Spencer : it was never entered in the name of any Jolin Hall. It was cold before any John Hall started to enter any

land, probably before any clerk was elected to enter any land.

The name John Hall, connected with it on the town book in 1640, was only a description ; a reference to popular knowledge ; a state- ment of a past condition, not a present trans- action ; not at all a demarcation or legal re- quirement. It might have been left out, and still the entry would have been good. It equaled: "The place where John Hall used to live"; but one John Hall had lived on any place. The land bought of Bloomfield was entered, and there the name was a legal for- mality: John Hall Senior, as this was about 1640, and John Hall Junior had been sixteen, the age of Hartford freemen. in 1635. Omit- ting the "Senior" in Spencer's record page, would not affect the title, which was now in Spencer. Leaving off the "Senior" in the title to the Moonfield lot miglit cause it to stand so for fifty years and make confusion between the heirs of the first and the second Jolin Hall of the family. In fact, from the date of the purchase, both John Halls were alive for a generation. This little house lot was very likely bought as a makeshift or stepping stone to something larger, and perhaps, also, as a home for John Hall "junyer." The homestead and mansion had to be sold to Spencer when he was ready to buy it; this will be seen below.

In the early part of this article. there was had a view of the moral leadership and prin- ciples in whose train John Hall and family moved on: better than by that of any other one man, they could be designated as those of Thomas Hooker.

In welding fast the fact and memory of Jolin Hall's accomplishment, it will now be necessary to consider, in ensemble, the human outfit with which he worked, which. more than that of any other one man, must be des- ignated as that of Mathew Allen. It was when Hooker had braved Winthrop (even ef- fecting the change of the oath at The Bay, from allegiance to Governor and Council, so that it was now taken to the Commonwealth), when Hooker had braved Winthrop; John Hall had braved the Indians; William Cood- win had negotiated land from them; Mathew Allen had grappled all the business difficulties of new. untried and incalculable conditions : John Talcott had risked life and goods to make a social center ; it was then that states- men and merchants tool: up Hartford as a town of promise: men whom it was an ob- ject to clerks and historians to write up and record. Haynes reached Hartford in 1637; Hopkins in 1638: Ludlow was at Windsor.

Samuel Allen, father of Mathew Allen, was

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apparently a man of resources, mental and material, in Chelmsford, England. Undoubt- edly he attended the only church (and meet- ing) there, during the four years of Hooker's incumbency. Samuel Allen reared four sons, one of whom, Richard, remained in England. The sons, Samuel, Thomas and Mathew, came to Charlestown with the Braintree company in 1632. These three took the Puritan cult strenuously, both from their nativity and the preaching of Hooker. They really thought, felt and acted, each for himself, on religious principles, and thereby Mathew Allen got ex- pelled from the Hartford church. Mathew Allen was a very stirring, driving, business man. He did not reach inside and make ac- quisitions by courtesies in court circles, like Penn and the Winthrops, but whatever could be done with the hard facts of nature and the plain ways of folks. Mathew Allen could do it. He could not get a patent of the wilder- ness, but he could make it blossom.

Mathew Allen was probably born April, 1604, and by the time he was thirty-one years old, 1635, was the largest landholder in Cam- bridge. Massachusetts, having, with many other holdings, five houses on the town plot, near the meeting house. Harvard College was there in three years more, and in that three years he had bought out the Pilgrims' plant at Windsor, through a power of attor- ney to William Holmes, there. signed last by John Howland. Mathew Allen was a Yan- kee when he came here ( what New England Indians made out when they started in to say "English -- Owanux, Yanx, Yanks, Yankee" ), and was just as much of a Yankee as his great-great-grandnephew, Ethan Allen (4th generation from Samuel (2) of Windsor). Thomas Hooker "would put a king in his pocket": had he been uneducated. he would have been Mathew Allen or Ethan Allen ; had these been educated, each would have been a Thomas Hooker. Said by one of these three. the reader will not readily guess from which is the following judicious utterance : "No person or persons can be supposed to be under any particular compact or law, except it presupposeth that that law will protect such person or persons. in his, or their, properties : for otherwise. the subject would by law, be bound to be accessory to his own ruin and destruction, which is inconsistent with the law of self-preservation ; but this law. being nat- ural as well as eternal. can never be abrogated by the law of man."

Stiles' "Ancient Windsor" says: "He (Thomas Allen from Cambridge, Massachtt- setts), removed to Hartford with his brother Mathew, in 1635"; in another place it sets

this removal of Mathew Allen at 1637. as docs Savage, because, says Savage. "he was representative at Massachusetts General Court, March session, 1636." Careful search shows that Mathew Allen is not recorded with oth- ers present at the Massachusetts General Court, in 1635 or 1636. Hence this must be classed with other cases, where election was in absence, like that of Hopkins, elected gov- ernor of Connecticut in 1654, though his final return to London was in 1652. It was like a degree conferred "in absentia." It is almost incorrect to speak of Mathew Allen's removal at all. He was always moving, and he kept things moving. In 1638 he was spending a night with Roger Williams in Providence Plantations. When he began to operate in Hartford, must be judged by the intent of the man, the date and size of things effected, as the length of a fox's burrow by the earthi at its mouth.

By 1640 existed The Mill at Hartford. It was on the Riveret. now called Park river. and about one-third of the way from the lon- gitude of the present Capitol to the longitude of the present Armory. It had acquired in 1640 a prestige. a control, such as takes many years. It had been essential from the very first. It was the great physical center, as the spiritual center was the meeting house. By the Riveret, Hartford was divided into the North side and the South side, with officers assigned for each, elected at a general annual meeting. It was inconvenient to ford the Riv- eret. There was but one bridge. That was at The Mill. Whatever woman would visit a sister on the other side, must cross at the bridge. Half the streets were named from The Mill; "Road from the Meeting House to The Mill." etc., etc. "The Bridge" was undoubtedly built as these hands have led the horse to build another bridge, and causeway, directed by another John Hall of the 7th gen- eration down. Two heavy walls were laid. and filled and ranimed with small stone and earth between them, so that the whole formed a dam, and carriage road in one, in which were two bridges, one over the raceway ( wasteway) and one over the flume for the wheel. It took men and time and capital and confidence to build such a mill and dam and bridge. They were needed in operation cer- tainly as soon as the arrival of Thomas Hook- er. by middle June, 1636. There is no rec- ord of any other early mill, but The Mill. save that the townsmen ( selectmen) inventoried a "horse mill", which may have ground the food of those who built the water mill, and of those who built John Talcott's kitchen in 1635. The Mill was still a going concern in

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1696, and was appraised by Thomas Bunce (2), etc., in John Allyn's estate, at £16o, while his splendid mansion was appraised at £150. It seems plain that nothing but the energy and enterprise of Mathew Allen, operating in Hartford from 1635, on (whether he was personally there or not), could have made "The Mill" an historic center, as "all roads lead to Rome." by 1640.

Had this Mill been broken into in 1640. and John Hall been found nearest thereto, the only man with burglar's tools upon him. he would have been convicted. And the only man found near (and the nearest of any man ) with a set of carpenter's tools on him. we shall not go far astray in convicting of build- ing The Mill.

Like every other sole and indispensable in- stitution, as the Consolidated Railroad to-day. everybody found fault with the weather and The Mill. its approaches, and all its goings and doings. Committee after committee was appointed to supplement it or supplant it. By his brother merchants, Allen was turned out of the church, very likely to get him out of The Mill. He did go off to Windsor. But The Mill turned on for John Allyn, the son. In one case, when the approaches were com- plained of. one approach was shortened by a new route through land sold by John Hall and owned by William Spencer's widow : and in town meeting. January 11, 1641, Mathew Allen "promissed To macke a waie offer to ye mill, so yt good man hall wold doe it for 20s (8 days' pay). & mr Alin Layd him stuffe." i. c., gave the plank.

Savage. Andrews and Dr. Field, well say that, in early days, men moved around in groups and outfits. We hardly realize the ne- cessity of doing this; if we step outdoors. some corporation extends to us, as a moving sidewalk. to carry us to any desired point or end.' But in making Hartford, there must be siniths, carpenters. even tauners. in the company. These groups were already formed in Cambridge. Of 47 Cambridge lot holders in 1632, 28 were Hartford lot holders in 1640. There is every probability that John Hall. relied on at Hartford, built Mathew Allen's five city lot houses at Cambridge. He was there from spring. 1633. to spring, 1635. when Allen's houses are recorded as already built. Many settlers owned homesteads in separated colonies. John Hall was close in with Allen and his relatives for a generation. There may have been ties of blood or marriage. John, Richard and Samuel were favorite names in both families.

From their nearness to The Mill. where Allen would naturally want them, need them.

and secure them lots, it is quite likely that John Wilcock may have driven the ox team that laid the mill dam, and that William Bloomfield ( who sometimes got into liquor, too, and into the "pticular Corte" likewise ), got down into the water to lay the stones. It "historians" have not seen this done. the wri- ter well remembers a man up to his waist in water in such work. The "big ox pasture" nearby kept the teams. All these men, John Hall, John Wilcock, William Bloomfield, with Thomas Allen, capitalist, Mathew's brother. moved down to Middletown together to play over again the same parts as in Hartford, per- haps as in Cambridge. By that time, John ITall had become a capitalist and more of a director than a worker. He had three stal- wart sons and a son-in-law. Thus it appears that at Hartford, John Hall was Pontifex Maximus, and descendant Joseph Twichell, his far-off successor.

Preceding the corporations of to-day, Ma- thew Allen was a corporation by himself, a corporation sole: a self-constituted. central power, in lieu of an elected central power. like our President Mellen. Using our later phrase, he moved under his own steam and he moved John Hall. In the first half of his life. Mathew Allen bunted into about every- thing on the stream, and in the last half hic had them all in tow. By sheer force of grip- ping men and conditions, he rose to be chief judge of the colony court. and at the same time speaker of the general assembly. In his rise. apparently Jolin Hall stood by him, and he stood by John Hall, hence John Hall in- volved in dispute: September the 2d. 1631 : At a "prticuler Courte" before jurymen Thomas Stoughton. Henry Wooicott, John Talcott and nine more. Mathew Allen mulct- ed John Coggen £20 in an action of "slaun- der." and Thomas Munson, in the next case. muicted John Hall 20s. in an action of defa- mation. Apparently words had run high in the neighborhood, and John Hall bad got in- volved by taking the part of his friend Ma- thew. Allen. This was not the oil that ran down Aaron's beard ; but more pleasing was it when, in 1670, John Hall's son John Jr. and Mathew Allen's brother Thomas were made fellow deacons in the first election in the First Church, Middletown. By the multitudinous lawsuits which Mathew Allen got into in youth, he greatly advanced the importance and dignity of the court where he presided in his later years. Allen had a multitude of small transactions, such as buying corn of Indians. working the canoes up to The Mill. keeping the jetties or "staunchwaters." in efficiency, etc., etc .. to keep the water deep enough.

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In time, John Ilall was induced to sell out the four acres ont lot, and the two acres homestead, No. 77 Porter's map, which had been set to him in the settlement. In this, some have suggested difficulties, as rules re- quired four years' residence prior to a -ale. The probability is that John Hall had been in Hartford as long as any one, coming as Mathew Allen's carpenter to build for busi- ness, when Nicholas Clarke, John Talcott's carpenter, came to build tor home and for re- ligion. But these rules were not hard and fast. "Ratio cassat, cessat ler." Mathew Allen was a man of great and growing influ- ence. He had, doubtless, been the cause of John Hall's location on Lord's Hill, next The Mill. It was to Allen's cousin. William Spen- cer, that John Hall sold out. The date was probably 1639. There seem to have been special reasons for Spencer's removal to Hart- ford. He left behind and owned to his death a homestead of £120 value at Concord. in The Bay. He seems to have been in a decline; men made their wills when they became fee- ble. His will was made May 4. 1640, and proved the 4th of the following March. His object seems to have been, in view of death. to come to Hartford and leave property and children in the watchcare of his cousins, the Allens, and his brother, Thomas Spencer. a founder of Hartford. He could keep about thirty swine on the Jolin Ilall place : Allen perhaps helped him, out of his mill waste. Spencer probably could not labor. He had been lieutenant at The Bay; representative to the court, and on important committees. These duties there are last mentioned in 1638. He was similarly employed in Hartford. as townsman ( selectman ), and in military su- pervision, during his short remaining life. The rules on selling land were simply made to get in. and keep in, good inhabitants, and to keep out bad ones; and while there is no cause to think that Spencer's purchase con- flicted with these rules, there is undoubtedly cause to think that the rules would have been suspended. if it had. Suspended the rules were, again and again, and that without in- fluence, like the Allens, and needs like Spen- cer's. By his will. Spencer tied his property 'in safe, known. Hartford hands, for his chil- dren. To get next those safe hands. "my brothers" ( Christian ), he had come there. It is noticeable that Spencer's children had the same names as John Hall's, and these were the same names as the names in the Al- len family. As Spencer's will expressly men- tions "my Cosen. Mathew Allen," it is not unlikely that John Hall was related to both families.

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