USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 18
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At that time, the Farmington line was at the foot of Talcott Mountain. This long, narrow territory was divided into lots that were a mile and a half long and from ninety-one rods in width down to but three rods, the width being in accord with the individual interests of the owners. The western boundary was sometime later moved toward the west, by changing the Farm- ington line from the foot, to the top of Talcott Mountain, and by adding a considerable strip of land to the eastern boundary of West Division. The distance of the little settlement in West Division from the two Churches in the Village of Hartford, was so great that the inhabitants petitioned the General Court, in 1710, for a separate Church Society, but the petition was not granted till May, 1711, when the twenty-eight petitioners were formed into a separate society. The Church was organized in February, 1713, with the Rev. Benjamin Colton its first minister. It was known as the Fourth Church of Hartford. Mr. Colton was the minister for forty-three years. He was succeeded by the Rev. Nathaniel Hooker, a descendant of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, the Colony's first minister, and a grandson of Governor Talcott. The third minister was the Rev. Dr. Nathan Perkins, whose pastorate lasted for sixty-three years, and was only ex- ceeded by the pastorate of the Rev. Samuel Nott, who was minis- ter of the Franklin Church for seventy-one years. Dr. Perkins was a liberal, progressive man and a warm patriot during the Revolution, and in the second war with Great Britain, in 1812. He was one of the first and most uncompromising opponents of slavery. He, like many of the Congregational ministers of the
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early days, was frequently notable for his keen sense of humor, which was, upon the proper occasions, often dry and biting. The custom of paying a portion of the minister's salary in fire wood obtained in his day. Colonel X, one of his parishioners, called Mr. Perkins out, one day, to pass judgment upon a load of " salary wood ". The wood was chiefly composed of the small, crooked, tops of trees and being so crooked it did not pack closely, and was far from being up to the standard load of wood. Dr. Perkins looked at the load from both sides and then going to the rear, stooped and, seemingly looking through the middle of the load, at the cattle in front, remarked; " That is a remark- ably fine pair of steers you have on the lead, Colonel ".
He was the originator of the Theological Institute in Hart- ford and the first meeting of ministers, preliminary to its found- ing, was held in his home, and he laid the corner-stone of the first building. It is somewhat remarkable, that with the excep- tion of a very small and short-lived Society of Quakers, the Congregational was the only religious organization in West Hartford, from the first settlement down to 1843, when St. James' Episcopal Church was organized. The first four-wheeled vehicle of West Hartford, for carrying persons from one place to another, was introduced by an ancestor of William Faxon, who was Lincoln's Assistant-Secretary of the Navy. Captain Faxon had purchased this "carriage " for the especial purpose of carry- ing his family to Church. He probably had no idea that it would be a cause of disturbing the peace of the "Sabbath " and of keeping the people away from their places in Church till after the service had begun. But it did, and the good people con- sidered it to be so wicked an instrument of Satan, that the Monday after the Faxon family first arrived at Church in it, a committee called upon Captain Faxon to inform him that such a wonder-exciting contrivance would not be tolerated upon the highway on the Sabbath. The Captain explained that he had purchased the carriage for the express purpose of taking all of his family to Church in it, so finally the committee consented to its use, if he would drive very slowly so that the people would not be too greatly excited by it, and so be late to Church.
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HARTFORD.
NOAH WEBSTER.
Noah Webster was the kind of man and citizen who belongs to the nation at large. Not alone for his, and his father's ser- vice in the Continental army in the Revolution; nor for his high literary attainments and profound scholarship in the science of philology, which culminated in Webster's Dictionary; but chiefly for his patriotic and disinterested championship of President George Washington. For this purpose he left his lucrative law practice in Hartford to go to New York City, to establish and
HOME OF NOAH WEBSTER, OF DICTIONARY AND SPELLING BOOK FAME, WEST HARTFORD.
edit a newspaper devoted to the support of the Washington administration. That Washington could need friends, or that he had venomous enemies, seems impossible to Americans of today (to such Americans as have inherited their citizenship, not to such as have acquired it through the naturalization courts). but such is a fact. President George Washington was maligned, lied about and ridiculed, just as Lincoln and Mckinley were maligned, lied about and ridiculed, by the same variety of vermin,
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whose acquired American Citizenship was of that kind which regards dollars and cents more highly than good breeding and honesty.
But while the Nation may claim Noah Webster, the soldier- author, the charming old village of West Hartford claims him as her son, for there he was born on October 16, 1758. New York, New Haven, and Amherst, also claim him as an adopted son, for he was a resident of those college towns for many years.
He was descended from John Webster, one of the first Gov- ernors of Connecticut, and from William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, on his mother's side. His father was a farmer and for the first fifteen years of his life Noah lived at home doing the usual " chores " and light work that falls to the lot of a farmer's son. Just after he was fifteen, in 1773, he began to fit himself for College under the Rev. Nathan Perkins, D.D., and entered Yale, in 1774. In his junior year he joined the Revolutionary army as a volunteer, and was under the com- mand of his father, who was a captain in the "alarm list ", a · body of citizens who had passed the age of forty-five, and were only called upon in an emergency. Notwithstanding the interruptions caused by his military duties, he continued his studies and was graduated from Yale, in 1778, with honor.
After graduation, he taught in a Hartford school, and studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1781. In the summer of 1779, while he was teaching and studying law, he lived with Oliver Ellsworth, who later became Chief Justice of the United States and whose son, Governor Ellsworth, became a son-in-law of Dr. Webster. Noah Webster did not practice his profession, as the war had so greatly impoverished the country that the pros- pects for a young lawyer were not bright. He chose instead, the occupation of teaching and took charge of a Grammar School in Goshen, New York. It was in Goshen that he compiled his famous blue-covered spelling book, in which the majority of Yankees for many generations learned their a-b abs. This fa- mous book was published in Hartford, to which city he returned in 1783. While in Hartford, he published a grammar and a reading book.
To the twentieth century Americans, Dr. Webster is best known for his educational authorship, but in his day, he was
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a prolific and convincing writer on political subjects. His sup- port of an act of Congress, for pensions for Revolutionary soldiers, by means of a series of articles published in the Con- necticut Courant, was of such a nature, that, although the masses, who disapproved of the act, were on the verge of revolt, a majority of the members elected to the Legislature in April, 1784, were supporters of the Congressional act. His successful efforts were so highly regarded that Governor Jonathan Trumbull thanked Dr. Webster personally, for what he had done.
That the Constitution of the United States was written and adopted may be traced to a pamphlet that he wrote in the winter of 1784-5, entitled ; " Sketches of American Policy " in which the
Compendious Dationsin
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FIRST WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY.
first definite proposal for a Constitution of the United States, to take the place of the "Articles of Confederation ", was first suggested in public print. To Dr. Webster may also be traced the copyright laws, for in 1785, he journeyed through the south- ern states presenting petitions to the several Legislatures for the passage of such laws.
From 1784, to 1788, he was lecturing Baltimore, Philadelphia and in the principal Atlantic-coast cities, and teaching in Phila- delphia. In 1788, he published the American Magazine, in New York, for one year. In 1789, he married the daughter of William Greenleaf, of Boston, and returned to Hartford to practice law. In 1793, he became the champion of the Washington administra-
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tion by starting a newspaper in support of it. That paper became The Commercial Advertiser. From that time, his literary labors increased, as did his publications. They included politics, inter- national diplomacy, hygiene, finance and history. In 1798, he went to New Haven and resided there for fourteen years. In 1812, he left New Haven for Amherst, Massachusetts, and lived there for ten years, when he returned to New Haven. Another matter of national importance, in educational interests this time, may be traced to Dr. Webster. While living in Amherst he was chiefly instrumental in the founding of an Academy, which later became Amherst College. He received the degree of LL.D. from Yale in 1823.
In 1823, he had been at work upon his greatest literary pro- duction for sixteen years, for it was in 1807, that he began his Dictionary. Dr. Webster spent several months in Paris, and at the University of Cambridge, in England, in 1824, and it was in Cambridge that the great work was finished. Writers in those days were more apt to appreciate the seriousness of pro- ducing a volume than they are now. Books were comparatively scarce and authors were few. This made the production of a book - especially such a volume as Webster's Dictionary - a much more notable and serious event than it would be now. At any rate, Dr. Webster was much affected when his great work was finally finished, as will be seen from the following extract from a letter that he wrote to Dr. Thomas Miner, in 1836:
When I finished my copy, I was sitting at my table in Cambridge, England, January, 1825. When I arrived at the last word, I was seized with a tremor, that made it difficult to proceed. I however summoned up strength to finish the work, and then walking about the room, I soon .recovered.
EAST HARTFORD.
E AST HARTFORD, originally a part of Hartford, was the home of the man who had as much to do with the settle- ment of the Connecticut Valley as any man in New Eng- land, probably more. This was Wahqinnacut, a leader of the Podunk Indians, who went to Boston and Plymouth in 1631, to urge the English to come to the beautiful valley, with its rich meadows, its fur-bearing animals and its fish, to settle. As has
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been shown elsewhere, this invitation was due to a desire on the . part of the River Indians to secure the friendship of the English, whose superior intelligence and more deadly weapons would be a powerful help against their natural enemies.
The Podunks had a stronghold on Fort Hill, near the main street and to the east of it. They lived peaceably enough with their white neighbors till Philip's War, when they joined that intelligent and warlike chief and were either killed or dispersed. A few individuals of the tribe lived on the Hockanum River, in 1745, but by 1760, even they had disappeared.
Up to its incorporation in 1783, the history of East Hartford was largely the history of Hartford. Joseph O. Goodwin gives the following list of names, as being among the more prominent of the early settlers, on the east side of the Connecticut. In that portion of East Hartford known as Hockanum - Richard Risley, who died in 1648; Edward Andrews, who settled near the mouth of the Hockanum River, about 1657; William Hills, who was wounded by Indians in 1675. Thomas Burnham, a lawyer who was made a freeman in 1657, settled in the district known as Podunk; William Pitkin, the founder of the family of that name, who became prominent in the affairs of the Colony, settled there about 1659. John Bidwell, who ran a sawmill in partnership with Joseph Bull, at Burnside, settled about 1669; William Warren, whose house was on Main street, below the Hockanum River, was made a freeman in 1665; Sergeant Samuel Gaines, 1667; Lieutenant John Meakins, before 1669; Richard Case, who was made a freeman in 1671 ; Thomas Trill, a soldier of the Narragansett War, was the first person to be buried in the old Center Burying Ground; Obadiah Wood, also a soldier of 1675; whose gravestone was the first in the same cemetery ; William Buckland, previous to 1678; James Forbes, in that por- tion of the town known as Scotland, till 1865, when it became Burnside, settled there in 1688; William Roberts, about 1688 - he married the daughter of James Forbes; Deacon Timothy Cowles, whose house was on the east side of Main street, just south of Gilman's Brock; Deacon Joseph Olmsted, whose house was on Prospect street, in 1699.
In the spring of 1694, the people of East Hartford petitioned to be made a separate society and in the autumn their petition
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was granted, and Church was known as the Third Ecclesiastical Society of Hartford. The society, or parish, included the present Towns of East Hartford and Manchester. As was the case in nearly all new Churches, the meetings were first held in one or another of the homes. There seems to have been nothing done in regard to building a church until December 29, 1699, when the records show that a committee was appointed to oversee the work being done on the meeting-house. Seats were put in and the interior finished in 1707, and in 1713, a gallery was added. The same year the meeting-house was started, in 1699, a house for the minister was built. The Rev. John Reed preached to the people for several years, but he was not settled over the parish, although he was asked to become its minister.
On March 30, 1705, the Rev. Samuel Woodbridge was ordained and so became the first settled minister of the East Hartford Church. He was paid £60 a year and was given £25 with which to finish the parsonage, the understanding being that he should remain as their minister for life. Mr. Woodbridge was a graduate of Harvard. He was a man of ability and was possessed of qualities which commanded the respect and affec- tion of his people. Notwithstanding this fact, for some unac- countable reason, when his health failed, in 1736, the people refused to pay his salary and only did pay it when forced to do so by the General Court. In 1734, Mr. Woodbridge was selected for the honor of preaching the election sermon. About 1740, the first church building was taken down and a new church built upon its site. Mr. Woodbridge died on June 9, 1746, at the age of sixty-three.
The Rev. Eliphalet Williams was the second minister. His pastorate continued from 1748, to 1803. He was chosen to preach the election sermon of 1769, and in October of the same year, he preached the funeral sermon of Governor Pitkin. Another honor that was conferred upon him was the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1801, the Rev. Dr. Andrew Yates, of Sche- nectady, New York, was ordained aş Dr. Williams' assistant. Dr. Yates was a descendant of Joseph Yates who settled in Albany in 1664. Dr. Yates was greatly opposed to the use of alcohol as a beverage and although few of the ministers of his day agreed with
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him, he was never backward in stating his convictions in regard to its use. But at the same time, he was liberal and broad-minded, and although he would not drink anything containing alcohol, he did not condemn others who disagreed with him. A story is told of him in East Hartford, that on one occasion when there was a meeting of clergymen in his house, Dr. Yates produced the usual variety of liquor with the remark; " Brethren, here is rum, gin, brandy and laudanum, all poison; help yourselves ". Dr. Yates left the Church in 1814, to fill the chair of Moral and Mental Philosophy at Union College, Schenectady, where he had previously been professor of Greek and Latin.
Up to 1817, nothing as luxurious and worldly as stoves, for heating the church, had been thought of in East Hart- ford, but in that year they were put in. As there was no chimney the stovepipe was run out of the windows. Many persons disapproved of the stoves strongly, and some went so far as to let their imaginations run astray. They com- plained that the great heat from the stoves caused their heads to ache and that many of the women's large back combs, which were then so fashionable, were warped by the heat. When it was discovered that the headaches and warped combs were caused by stoves in which no fires had yet been lighted, the opponents of the exhibition of world- liness had nothing more to say.
In 1708, the people of East Hartford agitated the subject of public schools. In 1710, the Rev. Samuel Woodbridge, Samuel Wells and William Pitkin, were appointed to take charge of school matters and to hire a teacher, and a school- house was built. In 1718, there were two schools. One was south of Hockanum River and the other, to the north, was on Main street, just south of Prospect street. The teacher taught in both schools, dividing his time equally between them. Up to 1730, the parents who had children in school paid a small amount toward the support of the teacher, and furnished the wood for heating the school-house, but in 1730 the whole expense of the schools was paid by the society. At Burnside - then called Scotland - the first school was organized in 1735, and the second, in 1748.
The first mills for sawing logs and grinding grain were
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started in 1639, by John Crow and William Goodwin, to the north of the lower falls of the Hockanum, at Burnside. This place was later called Pitkin's Falls, because the mills and water-power were acquired by the family of that name. They also acquired the adjoining mill-sites, and at the lower falls they had a fulling mill. John Bidwell and Joseph Bull built a sawmill at the middle falls, in 1669, and in 1690, the Pitkins had a fulling mill there. About one hundred years later, in 1784, besides the fulling done, paper was manufactured in the mill. This old mill site is now occupied by the East Hartford Manufacturing Company for the making of fine writing-paper. John Allyn owned a sawmill a mile to the east of Burnside, in 1671. He also had a grant of 100 acres surrounding his mill and the right to cut timber on the commons. In 1747, Colonel Joseph Pitkin had a forge on this site, but in 1750, the British Government stopped iron working in the Colonies. As Joseph O. Goodwin remarks, in his history of East Hartford, " By a grim sort of justice the power was turned to the manufacture of gunpowder, to be used against the home government, in 1775 and in 1812". An odd kind of compensation was made to William Pitkin for his losses in the manufacture of powder to be used in the Revolution. It was the exclusive right to manufacture snuff in Connecticut for fourteen years. Possibly it was thought, that as he had lost money in manufacturing one kind of powder that was explosive, it would only be fair to let him recuperate by making another kind of powder that would produce explosions. After the Revolution the forge was resumed. This historic water-power was owned by the Hartford Manilla Company. Corporal John Gilbert built a sawmill in South Manchester, on Hop Brook, in 1673.
East Hartford's first tavern was kept by John Sadler, in 1638, at Hockanum. Philip Smith kept a tavern in 1710, near the south-ferry road. Thomas Olcott had a tavern at Hop Brook, South Manchester, in 1711; and Benjamin's Tavern, at the corner of Main and Orchard streets, was a popular stage house in the Revolution.
In very early times, the militia of East Hartford was known
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as " The Rag-toes ", from the fact that members of the com- pany met for training in various and weird garments and often bare-footed. As many of the bare-foots had acquired "stun " bruises, splinters and cuts, they frequently appeared with the injured member done up in a rag, which held a plantain leaf against the sore place. In 1653, the General Court ordered that the inhabitants should meet at the call of William Hill for training. As time passed, the cornstalks and hoe handles and the mixed garments and lack of interest were replaced by muskets, uniforms and enthusiasm. In 1755, East Hartford sent a company to Crown Point, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel John Pitkin. In 1775, a company of forty-nine officers and men was organized and sent to Rox- bury, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel George Pitkin. Sev- eral of the men of the company later volunteered for longer service in the Continental army. Among those who served the Colony in the struggle for Independence on the sea, was Captain Gideon Olmsted, who, with three fellow prisoners on the British sloop "Active ", overpowered the officers and crew and captured the vessel and took it into port. In 1781, when Count Rochambeau was on his way with an army of 15,000 men from Newport, to join Washington on the Hud- son, he stopped at East Hartford and was entertained in the Elisha Pitkin Mansion, the army camping on the field to the north of Silver Lane, which was so called from the "hard money " of the French soldiers. On his return east, in 1782, the Count again stopped at East Hartford.
The Pitkin family has been one of the most prominent in Hartford County for 250 years. The first American an- cestor of that name was William Pitkin, who was born in Marylebone, then a suburb and now a part of London, Eng- land, in 1635. In 1659, he arrived in Hartford and in 1660, was a school teacher there. In 1661, he purchased land on the "east side " and in 1664, was appointed Attorney for the Colony. With the exception of a few months, he was a member of the General Court from 1675 to 1690. His wife was Hannah Goodwin, daughter of Ozias Goodwin.
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MANCHESTER.
P REVIOUS to 1823, Manchester was a part of Hartford. The territory included in the bounds of Manchester was originally a part .of the hunting ground of Chief Joshua, of the Niantics. He sold it to Major Talcott as the agent of the Town of Hartford. The Chief died before the transfer was made, but his administrators, Captain James Fitch and Thomas Buck- ingham, deeded the property to the selectmen of Hartford in 1682. This tract was five miles wide from east to west and from this fact it was known for ninety years as "Five Miles ".
The first settlement of Manchester was made near Hop Brook in the western portion of the town. The settlement was of sufficient size, or at least importance, in 1711, for the appointment of Thomas Olcott as tavern keeper. This little settlement seems to have been on a highway to Hartford from the east, over which droves of cattle were driven on the way to Hartford. A general division of the land took place in 1731, and by 1753, the land was all taken up and occupied.
The exclusive privilege of making glass was granted to Elisha and William Pitkin and Samuel Bishop, in 1783, for a period of twenty-five years. They built a glassworks, the picturesque ruins of which are still in existence. In 1794, the Hartford and Boston Turnpike was opened. This had the effect of increasing the general prosperity of Manchester, as the Boston and Providence stages passed over it on their way to New York. The tavern kept by Deodat Woodbridge, and after him by his son, Dudley Woodbridge, was famous in its day and a favorite house for rest and entertainment. It was frequently patronized by men prominent in the pro- fession of law and by officers of Washington's army. Wash- ington stopped there once and made the daughter of the pro- prietor an object greatly envied by her young associates, because of the fact that she had, in response to his request, given the great soldier, statesman and patriot a glass of water.
Timothy Cheney, the somewhat famous maker of the old- fashioned, tall, wooden clocks - wooden as to works as well as case- was one of the brothers of that name to whom
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John Fitch, the inventor of the steam-boat, apprenticed him- self to learn the clockmaking trade and was only taught to tinker with brass. But however unfairly Cheney may have treated Fitch, his clocks were reliable and the person who owns one to-day possesses something of considerable value. " Five Miles " for some reason was from an early date a . manufacturing and inventing center. It may have been due to the waterpower which attracted millwrights who, in turn, attracted mechanics possessed of inventive genius. Ben- jamin Lyman made the first cast-iron plows in Connecticut, thus doing away with the old-fashioned wooden plow shod with iron. He was the first maker of anything approaching a light weight pleasure carriage, and by so doing greatly re- duced the profits of the makers of pillions, for before his light-weight wagons the woman had to ride in oxcarts or on pillions. The second papermill in Connecticut was built at Union Village on the Hockanum River. Watson and Led- yard made the paper on which the Connecticut Courant was printed at the beginning of the Revolution. The first suc- cessful cottonmill in Connecticut was built in 1794, in Union Village. This business was regarded as hazardous, for very little was known about it on this side of the ocean. The machinery was made by an English mechanic, on the princi- ples of Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning- jenny. This mill was one of the wonders and persons came from considerable distances to see it work.
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