USA > Connecticut > Tolland County > Hebron > Hebron, Connecticut, bicentennial, August 23d to 25th, 1908 : an account of the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town : 1708-1908 > Part 2
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Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway We feel it e'en in age and at our latest day."
As we listen to the story of Hebron as it will be told in prose and song there will pass before our minds pictures of future generations happy in the enjoyment of the places, privileges and pleasures made possible through the acts and labors of those whose most important political act furnished the inspiration for this celebration.
To His Excellency, the Governor of the State of Connecticut, and the other distinguished gentlemen who come from beyond our borders to join with us in making this occasion a memorable one, and to all our guests, we give the heartiest of welcomes, and we beg all who are present to be not only in Hebron, but of Hebron and for Hebron, for all that we have and all that we can give are at your service.
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INTRODUCTION OF FLAVEL S. LUTHER, LL. D., President of Trinity College.
Several years ago there was born in a place in Windham County, very similar to Hebron, a boy who was destined to become an educator, theologian and statesman. President Flavel S. Luther of Trinity College, and Republican Senator from the First District, is fulfilling his destiny in a marked degree. He really needs no introduction by reason of his attainments and the distinguished position which he occupies in civic and religious affairs. The honor of his coming out here among the hills to address us is a very great one, and we shall all beinterested I know in his remarks.
I take pleasure in introducing to you President Luther of Trinity College.
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT LUTHER.
I do not know to what extent the Connecticut towns that are at this period celebrating their bicentennials commemorated in 1808 or there- abouts the completion of their first century. Two hundred years ago we were founding towns. One hundred years ago people were wondering what the towns and the states and the country would turn out to be. The Revolutionary War was nearer to our grandparents and great grandparents of one hundred years ago than the Civil War is to us. The Revolutionary soldiers were in evidence everywhere. The death of Washington was a recent grief. The hostility between the Tories and Revolutionists was still bitter. The material civilization was essentially that of Colonial and earlier times. No one of the characteristic devices, outgrowths of scientific investigation and inventive genius-no one of these things, I say, was more than a dream of the future. The ordinary conveniences and facilities of our life to-day were not nearly as definite in the minds of the most advanced thinkers as the flying machine now is to our school children.
Yet I dare say that one hundred years ago, if the men of Hebron gathered together in celebration of the completion of one full century of organized communal life, it seemed to them that they were in the midst of an era unprecedented, marvelous, separated from the past by mighty achievements This is the way of life. This is the story of progress, and when in 2008 men, women and children gather here again, remembering the three hundred years since the town was born, they also doubtless will wonder what we were thinking of in 1908 and how we existed amid the crude suggestions of what was to become a real civilization. It is pleasant
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to wonder how the guests will reach Hebron one hundred years from now when the celebration takes place; whether they will alight from flying ships (that is an inevitable suggestion); whether they will need to come at all; whether by that time one cannot turn his attention upon any part of the world or of the solar system through some means of distant vision far surpassing anything that scientists have dreamed of yet; whether the orator may not speak to you from a thousand miles away, his bodily presence distinct before your eyes, his voice sounding in your ears with all that touch of personality which now comes from actual propinquity.
But I suppose we are not here to indulge in guesses as to the future, and I am not here to discourse upon the history of Hebron. One more learned than I am is to take up this latter task, and if I thought I knew anything of interest about the history of your town I should not dare to mention it in this presence; for the historian who is to speak to you was at one time my own professor, and the misfortunes which attended my attempts to recite to him something of the history of Rome have taught me that it is not well to venture into that region of thought when Doctor Hart is within sound of my voice. Most of the historical information with which I favored him forty years ago he pronounced to be incorrect. I am not going to take another chance of that sort now that we are both older.
There is a certain connection between Trinity College and Hebron, however, which makes my presence here not inappropriate; for when, eighty-five years ago, certain benevolent and far-sighted men petitioned the Legislature of our state for permission to establish within its borders a second institution of the higher learning, consecrated for all time to the advancement of literature, art, and science, there were among them two men of Hebron, John T. Peters and John S. Peters. Both of them were, I say, among those who established Trinity College. Both of them were trustees from 1823 until they died, John T. in 1834. John S. Peters, governor of the state from 1831 to 1835, was our trustee for thirty-five years until in 1858 he died. And his name, a Hebron name, is carried still upon our records and will be remembered, so long as there is a Trinity College, as that of a benefactor of that institution. He gave us money for our library, and every year we spend about one hundred dollars in the acquisition of new books, the income from the fund which he gave; a small endowment as we count figures now, and yet one which was large at the time when the bequest was made. I suppose that nearly four thousand of the volumes in our library have been purchased with the income from this fund, and we still have the two thousand dollars which he gave. It may be of interest to some of you to know that for some time now we have been expending this part of our library income in the pur- chase of books on Philosophy and Psychology. So, I say, Trinity College has reason to remember with gratitude your former fellow-citizen, a man whom some of those present, perhaps, knew personally and recollect with satisfaction and pride.
I, who am myself a native of a small Connecticut town, take pride in all the small Connecticut towns, and in particular in that characteristic of the citizens of these communities which led them to care for the high things of life; which led them to an interest in schools and colleges; which made them interested in religion and in churches. There is, of course, an unlovely side to the ecclesiastical life of early New England. We do not to-day understand why people should quarrel so bitterly about questions as to whose answers no man can hope to satisfy himself. We regret that toleration and brotherly love and neighborly kindness were so lacking between those who thought differently about the relations of man to God.
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But this we must not forget, that our ancestors quarreled because they were utterly convinced that religious questions were the greatest of all questions, that to worship God properly was the highest of all human duties, the greatest of all human privileges. They cared about great things; and if they also quarreled about them, if they were foolish about them, we need not in deploring these unseemly contests forget the fundamental dignity of the attitude of the men of old toward the most important of all human interests.
These towns which, in the later development of our state, have come to be the little towns, outgrown by communities more favorably situated, had in them the dominating spirit of New England. They made the history. They gave their tone to the country which survived the throes of the greatest civil war of all history. It was the spirit of the New England country town which made it possible to conquer and settle and enrich the Mississippi Valley and the still greater West. It is the spirit of the New England town which has tied our land together with the bands which no political contests can ever break, and which to-day expresses itself in much of the best and noblest of our national life.
It is well then that when the significant dates roll around, it is well now that we can say "it is two hundred years since Hebron began to be a town," to commemorate the past, to take stock of the present, and highly to resolve concerning the future. Obviously enough the country town in Connecticut counts for less in the growth and progress of civilization than it did in the past which is not yet remote. More and more men are gathering into the cities to do their work and to carry on the enterprises of to-day. That, I take it, is an inevitable consequence of progress in human development. The spirit of the times is such that men must work in large masses rather than in small groups if they would accomplish most. In the arts of peace as in the art of war armies must be greater than ever before if victory is to come. And, for one, I look to see this tendency become even stronger in the years upon which we are entering. The instinct of co-operation, the instinct whereby men gather together in larger and larger communities for the carrying on of purposes which are ever growing in magnitude, is an elemental characteristic of mankind. And I note with interest that in the early apostolic dream of the Heaven that awaits God's faithful children it is a city, the New Jerusalem, which presents the ideal of the future life.
Yet so wonderful are the scientific possibilities of the present and of the immediate future that it is easy to conceive how the country and the city shall more and more exist together without sacrificing those advan- tages which come from close association of men in great masses and without losing those other advantages which belong to the individual life possible only where there is plenty of room. It is a simple and a very trite observation that the improvements in means of transportation are making it possible for men to live their lives in several different places, not quite at the same time, indeed, but in such a fashion that both city and country shall be at the command of everybody. The time is close upon us when the farmer can live in the city if he so elect and go to his work in the morning and go back at night. The time is already here when the man whose work is in the metropolis may live his life in the quiet and restfulness of the country town. Not quite yet have we reached the point where this method can be enjoyed in perfection, yet we see the beginning of it all about us. I fully believe that what our philosophers sometimes call the "problem of the country town" is about to be solved by whatever is presently to suceed the trolley car.
That to-day the country towns do not count for as much as they did
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a short time ago, except, indeed, when the Legislature is in session, is obvious. There are evidences of a loss of prestige on every hand. i never was in your town before yesterday, and perhaps what I have noticed in other country towns is not true here; but there are places in Connecticut as beautiful as Hebron and with a history as dignified and interesting. in which it is evident that the people care less than their fathers of fifty years ago about those things which are most important in civilization. There are towns in which the schools are less efficient that those of half a century ago. There are country towns from which the old efficient yeomanry have nearly disappeared and the fine old places have passed into the hands of those who must yet learn what it is to be an American citizen. The basis of material prosperity is less stable on the New England farm than it was prior to the Civil War. We have come to think, incorrectly, I fancy, that the hard, rocky soil and the New England hills and valleys are not sufficiently fertile to invite our best to seek their living there. I cannot help thinking that this is a mistake.
A year ago at a meeting of the Granges held in Hartford, it was my privilege to welcome the farmer into the ranks of the so-called learned professions. For thousands of years agriculture, the oldest and most dignified and most necessary of all the occupations of man, has lingered in the rear of the march toward better things. It is true, indeed, that the machine has taken the place of the muscles of man and animals to a very large extent in the cultivation of the soil and in the planting and caring for and harvesting of crops. And yet, although things are done in a different way and more easily. it is true, is it not, that substantially the same things are done as were done when your ancestors incorporated this community.
Now within a few years people have awakened to this fact, that we know almost nothing of the nature and productivity of the soil which God has given us, that we have been blind to the prodigal bounty of nature. We are beginning to learn that the farm is a scientific laboratory and that the chemist standing at his desk before his shelves of samples and reagents has the key which is to unlock the material treasure-house of the world. It is not so long since the phrase "scientific farming" escaped from the contempt of men who raise and harvest our crops, but I think it has escaped and that from this time on there is to be a wonderful increase in the productivity of our soil, in the interest which will attach to the farmer's life, and in the material profits which will flow into the coffers of the man who owns the land. This influence, combined with the easy means of going from place to place, may, I think, be relied upon for the rehabilitation of the New England country town. It is a fact that men will not content themselves to live in a place in which the conveniences of rational pleasure and the means for culture and self-improvement are less than those in other localities. To do so is simply to be a victim of that kind of contentment which is merely sweetened despair.
The beauty of the old town such as your ancestors and mine were familiar with grew largely out of the fact that there was not so much difference between town and city, and the difference that did exist was not always to the advantage of the larger group. When schools were as good in one place as in another, when the country church was as active as the city parish, when houses in country and in city were heated alike by the fire place or the stove, when the candle or the oil lamp stood upon the library table in both city and country, when a man must walk from place to place or drive his own horse, when the reader must own his own books wherever he lived, when music was equally bad all over the country, and to go to the theater was a sin wherever one lived, it made but little differ-
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ence to one's life whether it was spent amid thousands or amid scores of one's fellow-beings. Now the pleasant things which I have hinted at in naming their opposites can be commanded only where there are many people to work together for the attainment of a common end, and it is this thing which is draining the life blood of the country town. It is the readjustment of these things, the discovery that the products of the associated enterprise of the city can be easily distributed over wide ranges of less thickly settled country, that is going to bring back, that has already begun to bring back, the glory of the country town.
Meanwhile it is not necessary to await in absolute quiescence the progress of modern science, however promising that progress be, before beginning to reap some of the rewards of what is already at hand. That sense of pride which has dictated your commemoration here to-day, that pride which exists in every town like this in all our New England states, stimulates a resolve that the present and the future of towns like Hebron is to be worthy of every possibility. I feel sure that out of your medita- tions over the glories of what has been will come a determination that schools, for example, shall be such as will give the Hebron boy and girl a chance to develop every capacity with which they have been endowed. I know that this is so because only yesterday you dedicated a new school building and let me join you in your satisfaction.
I believe that as we look back and realize the folly of the old ecclesias- tical quarrels which were certainly not less acute in Hebron than in other towns of which we know, you will come to understand that men who do not think alike in all things may yet worship together in spirit and in truth, may worship together in organie union. I do not know how many churches there are in Hebron, but I came to you yesterday from a little country town, near whose center stand four houses of worship. Every Sunday morning four church bells ring, and a community that worship one God, that are agreed about all important religious matters, who must co-operate if any of them are to live a life worth living-must co-operate in almost all the relations of human life-separate into four petty little groups, and in these four buildings hear four excellent clergymen discourse about subjects which are apt to be very much alike. It seems a pity, does it not, that these four congregations should not somehow and on some basis get together. It seems a pity to see the people of this country town of which I speak drawing apart from each other just at the time when they should be nearest together.
Now, as I have said, I do not know just what the differences are in this, your town of Hebron, but that name of yours, "Hebron," which is a good Bible name, means "a league." It stands for intimate association, for the helping of each by all, and the close organization of men together whereby all great things are accomplished. Let me commend to you the name of your town as a motto, "A League." Stand together in the things as to which you agree, which are most things, and forget as far as possible that you disagree about other matters.' It is not necessary that men should think alike in order to work together. Indeed if all men thought alike not only Hebron but the world would be a desolate place in which to live. If all men thought alike there would be no improve- ments, no growth. If men did not urge their opinions upon each other, if they did not think independently we should advance not at all. Had men always agreed in the past we should still be living in holes in the cliffs and chasing palaeozoic animals over the palaeogaean plains, and even then I suppose, we should not catch many of them without co-operation from various directions. Yes, my friends, it is essential both that we differ and that we agree. Out of the differences of men comes the possibility of
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progress. Out of the agreement of men comes the achievement of that progress. There is everything in the spirit of the disagreement and in the spirit of the co-operation. Your word "Hebron" your word "League" stands for the best thing in human life, for the association of men together in a common purpose, each determined to contribute of his best, each determined to contribute that which makes him different from all other men, each willing to subordinate himself to the best interests of the whole.
Two Hebron men at least, John S. Peters and Daniel Burrows, were conspicuous in the Connecticut constitutional convention of ninety years ago in their exhibition of a spirit of liberal toleration, that is to say in their exhibition of a spirit which recognizes the good in others, which recognizes the individuality of others, and will join with others in a common brother- hood. Surely there is this spirit still in Hebron. In those greatest things in communal life, in your churches and your schools, seek to get together. In your search for the material blessings of our civilization avail yourselves of the very best. Take the good that is offered to you at the hands of the wisest and greatest of your fellow-men, and those who follow you will look back with thankfulness to what you did, even as we to-day thrill with gratitude toward those who preceded us and lived lives long ago among these hills.
The country town of New England has not yet done its work. The glory of rural Connecticut is still with us and is to be enhanced and made more beautiful in the years that are coming, as in every community, large and small, the dominating word is more and more perfectly recognized to be "Hebron," "League."
Following another band selection President Way introduced Dr. Hart in the following words :-
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F.S.LUTHER Prest. TRINITY COLLEGE 1
ROLLIN S.WOODRUFF Governor OF CONNECTICUT.
Dr. SAMUEL MART Dean BERKELEY DIVINITY SCHOOL)
Speakers ana Officers OF THE DAY August 25.1998
F.C.BISSELL HISTORIAN
C.H.PENDLETON HISTORIAN
JOHN L. WAY CHAIRMAN
MISS MARY HALL MARLBOROUGH
MISS SUSAN B PENDLETON POETESS
ROGER F
PHELPS ANDOVER
INTRODUCTION OF THE REV. SAMUEL HART, D.D.,
Secretary of the House of Bishops of the P. E. Church in the U. S., Dean of Berkeley Divinity School, and President of the Connecticut Historical Society.
This celebration of our town and its beginning and history will naturally tend to increase our interest in the history of the Colony of which it was formerly a part. It is especially fitting that this history should be given by one who by his attainments is best qualified for the task-a man of letters and a ripe scholar in many lines, but particularly in the history of our own state, and the Head of the Organization whose valued and important ser- vices are preserving the records of the Colony and of our state.
I have great pleasure in introducing the Reverend Doctor Samuel Hart, Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School and President of the Connecticut Historical Society.
ADDRESS OF DR. HART.
The year 1708 is memorable in the annals of the Colony of Connecti- cut. In it four towns were added to the goodly number of those which in more than seventy years had been incorporated within the well-established charter limits. They were Newtown, on the northwestern frontier, where an outpost settlement had been made two years earlier; Ridgefield, on the west boundary not far back from the Sound, in a tract of land purchased from Indian proprietors; Killingly, near the Massachusetts line and not far from the northeast corner of the colony; and this town, much nearer the centre than any of the others, yet at some distance from the great river, and having from the first an idiosyncrasy of position, as it was destined to have a history peculiarly its own.
Hebron also, like one of the other towns which keeps its bicentennial this year, gained its land directly from the Indians; yet not by conquest, nor by purchase, but by gift and that a legacy. The story will presently be told you, how Joshua Uncas, son of the great chieftain, otherwise called Attawanhood, who asked that he might be buried at Saybrook after the manner of the English, left to Thomas Buckingham (son of the minister), Thomas Shipman and others, known as the Saybrook legatees, a large tract of land here; and a Saybrook man feels that he is in the in- heritance of his fathers when he reads that John Pratt, Robert Chapman,
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John Clark and Stephen Post were the committee which brought before the General Assembly the matter of settlement already begun and of organization desired.
Thus it was that there came settlers to this place from the old settle- ments at the mouths of the Connecticut and the Tunxis, from the Long Island to the south and the midst of the Massachusetts colony to the north. It was a time of prospecting and of establishing new homes. Though the war with the French was making heavy demands on the men of Connecti- cut for personal service and for taxes, and the not far distant frontier needed defence, the life of the colony was vigorous. The collegiate school, established but seven years before, was maintaining its position and graduating such men as Jared Eliot, Jonathan Diekinson and Samuel Johnson; and at the seat of the college a synod was about to meet, summoned by the civil authority at the instance of Governor Saltonstall, to frame the Saybrook platform. The two generations of Englishmen who had lived and labored in the ancient settlements and in their daughter- towns had so well served the commonwealth that its character had become fixed in matters both material and moral; and with great variety, due to diversity of place and circumstance, their successors were exercising a like influence.
But it is not my purpose to trace out the history of this town, nor indeed am I furnished for the undertaking, as are those who will presently bring it before you in its many interesting details. I had it in mind but to say a word of greeting and to indicate the place into which this town came two centuries ago. I should like, however, to speak briefly of the name of the town, and to bear testimony to its contributions to the written history of Connecticut.
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