USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 33
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Hinsdale had its share of Indian troubles. On June 24, 1746, twenty Indians killed William Robbins and James Barker, and captured Daniel How and John Beeman, while they were at work in the meadows. In 1747, Bridgeman's Fort was burned, several persons were killed, and others were taken as captives to Canada. On July 3, of that year, an attack was made upon the gristmill but the. Indians were driven off by Colonel Willard by word of mouth - his loudly repeated orders to attack the Indians caused them to flee. Jonathan Sawtell was captured in the following Oc- tober, and on June 16, 1748, John Frost, Nathan French and Joseph Richardson were killed while crossing the Connecticut to Fort Dummer, and seven other men were captured.
On September 3, 1753, the charter of Hinsdale was granted to Ebenezer Alexander and his ninety-four associates, and on Sep- tember 26, of the same year, the charter was altered, and the ter- ritory included in the original charter was made into two towns, both called Hinsdale, the dividing line being the Connecticut River. Among the first officers of Hinsdale, New Hampshire, were Daniel Shattuck, John Evans and Benoni Wright, selectmen ;
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Ebenezer Hinsdell, Esq., town clerk; Sergeant Caleb How, con- stable; and Peter Evans, tithingman. In 1755, two years after the charter was granted, John Hardiclay and John Alexander were -killed and Jonathan Colby was captured by Indians.
The first Church of Hinsdale was Congregational. It was or- ganized in 1763, but the meeting-house was built in 1760. The Rev. Bunker Gay was the first minister and for forty-seven years he was the faithful pastor of the people. The parish in- cluded the portions of the town on both sides of the Connecticut
SOUTH VERNON. (Massachusetts and Vermont on line.)
River, so Mr. Gay was the first minister of Vernon as well as of Hinsdale. When the State of Vermont was created, the portion of the town that is now Vernon was cut off from the parish. This left the Hinsdale parish in a somewhat weakened condition, in re- gard to members and finances. Mr. Gay died in 1815, at the age of eighty.
The first meeting-house built in Vernon was in 1802. It was situated on the hill between the two Salmon Brooks - Upper and Lower - and was used by the Congregationalists and the Baptists, each congregation having charge of the service in alternate months.
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Vernon was for many years notable as a sort of Yankee Gretna Green, where runaway couples resorted to have themselves mar- ried in defiance of parental, or other opposition, by the genial Dr. Cyrus Washburn, who was a Justice of the Peace in Vernon for fifty-six years. Dr. Washburn performed the marriage ceremony for 853 couples. He used many different forms for performing this ceremony, all of them being his own invention. They were generally long, for they included verse as well as the usual ques- tions put to the bride and groom as to their willingness to love, honor and obey. One of his forms began with the following lines :
Parties and relatives, being agreed, To solemn joyous rites we will proceed. Worthy and much respected Groom and Bride, That you by nuptial ties may be allied, In preparation for the endearing bands, In token of united hearts, join hands.
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BRATTLEBORO.
N OT quite thirty years after the building of Fort Dummer, the Charter of Brattleboro was granted in 1753, by George the Second, to Samuel Allen, William Brattle, Isaac Bradish, Ebenezer Bradish, William Bowls, William Bar- rett, Thomas Blanchard, Thomas Blanchard, Jr., Oliver and Jeremiah Coleman, Daniel Emerton ; Sampson, Joseph, Samuel, and Benjamin French; William Fessenden, Jacob Fletcher, William Gammage, John Hicks, Abner Hasey, Thomas Hastings, Ben- jamin Lynde, William and Abel Laurence, William Lee, Mather Livermore, William Manning, Edward Marrett, Jr., Andrew Oliver, Jr., Stephen Palmer, Stephen Palmer, Jr., Daniel and Caleb Prentice, Peter and Stephen Powers, James Read, Ebenezer Smith, Thomas Sherren, Jonathan Sprague, Ebenezer Steadman, Samuel Searl, Corelius Woodbury ; William, Sampson and Oliver Willard ; Moses Wright, Jacob Wendell, Owen and John Warland and James Whitemore.
An extensive tract of land was reserved for Governor Benning Wentworth and land was set aside for The Society for the Propo- gation of the Gospel, for the first settled minister, for the minister of the Established Church of England, and a tract of fifty rods square about Fort Dummer was set off as fort land.
But this was not the first white ownership of the territory included in Brattleboro. About sixty-five years before the grant- ing of the charter, in 1687, the Northfield, Massachusetts, settlers purchased a large tract of land from the Squakheag Indians, who gave a deed of the land. This purchase extended from the Northfield line to West River - Wantastiquet the Indians called it - and included about three-fifths of the present Town of Brat- tleboro. Again, about 1713, a portion of the territory later com- prising Brattleboro was disposed of, this time by grant of the Massachusetts General Court.
An account of the error in fixing the boundary between Massa- chusetts and Connecticut has been given under the captions of Suffield and Enfield, Connecticut. As compensation for the land taken by Massachusetts, that Colony gave to Connecticut territory
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that was called "Equivalent Lands". This territory was on the west side of the Connecticut River and was partly bounded by the north line of Putney, and the south line of Brattleboro, Ver- mont: Connecticut sold the " Equivalent " in 1716, to a company of sixteen men for a sum equal to $2,274, which was given to Yale College. By a division and allotment that was made by the six- teen proprietors, in 1718, a portion of the "Equivalent " became the property of William Dummer, for whom Fort Dummer was
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named; and another portion went to Colonel William Brattle, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose name is perpetuated in Brattleboro. Colonel Brattle had the courage to be on the un- popular side just before the Revolution, and as Tories were even less tolerated in Vermont than elsewhere, he fled to Nova Scotia when the war began. Afterward, his heirs attempted to recover his confiscated estate, but it is hardly necessary to say, without success.
Fort Dummer was garrisoned by forty men, a part of that number being English and the others what were called Western Indians, possibly the Housatonic Indians who were always
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friendly to the English. It was the duty of these skilled woods- men to go on scouting trips as far north as West River, north- west to Otter Creek, and east as far as Mount Monadnunk. The enemy they were on the watch for and hoped never to find, were the French and their good friends and co-religionists, the Canadian Indians, a part of whom were renegades from the Mo- hawk Tribe of the Five Nations.
Sufficient fertile land was set apart and plowed for the support of the Western Indians and their families. Colonel John Stod- dard, of Northampton, Massachusetts, had general charge of the work at Fort Dummer, and Lieutenant Timothy Dwight, also of Northampton, was assigned to oversee the work of building the blockhouse.
Colonel John Stoddard was the most expert military engineer, of the first half of the eighteenth century, in New England ; he was one of the most prominent lawyers and judges of Massa- chusetts; and one of the wealthiest men of New England. Col- onel Stoddard was born on February 17, 1682. He entered Har- vard and was graduated in 1701, and then studied law in North- ampton. His military and civil offices and honors were numerous. He was Colonel of a regiment and Superintendent of Defences ; Judge of Probate, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and a member of the Governor's Council. His death occurred while in attendance at the General Court in Boston on June 19, 1748. He left a fortune -expressed in dollars - of $180,000, a vast sum in those days. His gold watch, the first one owned in Northampton, was appraised in settling his estate, at about $800.
The builders of the fort were four carpenters and twelve soldiers who had two ox-teams for hauling the felled trees to the site of the blockhouse. Northampton was again drawn upon for a man (which was quite proper for it is in "The East, where we raise men" and Northampton is rather near to the center of the East) to take charge of another portion of the work at Fort Dummer. This time a chaplain was desired and the matter of selecting a man for the chaplaincy was referred to a committee of ministers and the committee chose the Rev. Daniel Dwight, of Northampton, who also acted as missionary to the Indians. Mr. Dwight was succeeded by the Rev. Ebenezer Hins-
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dell as chaplain, in 1730. Early in the seventies of seventeen hun- dred, the fort was abandoned and became the property of its last commander, Captain Willard.
Governor Benning Wentworth gave Brattleboro its charter in the name of George the Second, in 1753, but no permanent settlement was made till after the French War was over, in 1760, except the few log houses built close to Fort Dummer. When all fear of the French ended with the capture of Quebec, settlements were rather quickly populated, for the land along the river was fertile and the waterpower of the many brooks and streams were numerous in those days, before the forest had been cut off in the way of " good business ".
Benjamin Moore was the first settler, in 1757. He built where the " Summer Retreat " for women was later built. The year after he settled he was killed by Indians and his wife and children were taken as captives to Canada, where they remained till 1760, when Colonel Peter Schuyler ransomed them. In 1762, Colonel John Sergeant built his house to the north of West River on the road to Dummerston. In that year, 1762, Major John Arms and Colonel Samuel Wells, both of Deerfield, settled in Brattleboro. Major Arms built and kept a tavern that became very popular, on the site of the "Summer Retreat " and Colonel Wells built his house to the west of the Major's. They were followed by Eben- ezer Fisher and Dr. Henry Wells. Dr. Wells was the first physi- cian in Brattleboro and its first town clerk. He came from New York in 1767, and built his house upon a farm of 1,000 acres, south-east of Meeting-house Hill. The house, which was large and comfortable, was torn down in 1875. Another who was an early settler was John Alexander. At the time Mr. Moore, the first settler, was killed and his family made captives by the Indians - when they burnt Bridgeman's Fort in what is now Vernon - Alexander was a boy of about ten. He was hunting for the cows belonging to the fort and so escaped being captured. Alexander was notable, even as a boy, for his bravery and great strength. The year after the burning of Bridgeman's Fort, when he was but eleven, he found a she-bear and two cubs not far from his home. They were prizes too good to be lost as they would furnish meat and valuable skins. As his father was away from home John took down the old gun and going to where he had seen
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the bears, he shot the old one and caught the two cubs, with the help of a companion. At the age of seventeen, he was in the army in the French War, under General Amherst. When Ti- conderoga was captured he was present with his company, and later. he was in the Patriot army at the surrender of Burgoyne. Mr. Alexander's strength and endurance was shown one day, in later life, when going to the woods to make maple sugar. He carried his camp-kit, provisions for four days, knapsack, a huge iron kettle for boiling the sap, and two sap-buckets, for more than three miles, over the snow on snowshoes. He lived to the age of ninety, his death occurring in 1828.
In 1771, Stephen Greenleaf moved from Boston, where he had kept a store, to Brattleboro. He continued the occupation of merchant in Brattleboro, his store being situated in Main street. It was the first store of that village. He bought Judge Wells' farm of 800 acres and built the second sawmill of the town in what is now Centerville, in 1772. Mr. Greenleaf's son Stephen was a youth of thirteen when the father left Boston for Brattle- boro, so he may be considered a son of that town. Stephen, the son, became a man of prominence and was possessed of un- tiring energy and determination. These characteristics were shown in his youth by the manner in which he obtained his educa- tion. His school was the broad hearthstone in front of the open fireplace; his teacher was himself. It was said of him in later life, that whatever he attempted he accomplished, and with credit to himself. Major Greenleaf was clerk of the town from 1799, to 1844, and his records were in writing that was as easy to read as print. He died at the age of ninety-two, in 1850.
Another of Brattleboro's adopted sons was the Hon. John Noyes. Mr. Noyes was born in Atkinson, New Hampshire, in April, 1764, and at the age of thirty-four he moved to Brattleboro. Mr. Noves was of the fifth generation from Nicholas Noyes, one of the first settlers of Massachusetts. Mr. Noyes was gradu- ated at Dartmouth College and remained there as a tutor while Daniel Webster was an undergraduate. Several years later, when Webster was attending a reception at Dartmouth, John H. Noyes, a son of Mr. Noyes the tutor, who was then an undergraduate, was introduced to Webster, who showed the high regard he had for the father by saying to the son; " I wish I could do as much
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good for you as your father did for me ". The Noyes family was notable in the early days for the number of ministers in it so it was but natural that John should inherit the inclination. While tutoring at Dartmouth he studied for the ministry, but, as his health was such that he was unsuited- for that profession, he was obliged to give up the idea of becoming a minister. He continued to teach and was for several years in charge of the Chesterfield Academy, in New Hampshire. In 1800, he went to Brattleboro and in partnership with General Mann opened a general store in West
SITE OF FORT DUMMER, BRATTLEBORO, NOW VERNON,
Brattleboro. General Mann's daughter married General R. B. Marcy, and his granddaughter married General George B. Mc- Clellan. . The Hon. Austin Birchard, of Fayetteville, Vermont, was, in his youth, a clerk in their store. The business of the firm grew to great proportions and branches were established in Whitingham and Wilmington, under the firm name of Noyes, Mann & Hayes. In 1804, Mr. Noyes married Miss Polly Hayes, the eldest daughter of Rutherford Hayes, Sr. Mr. Noyes was in the Legislature for two terms and in 1815, was in Congress
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as the representative of the southern district of Vermont. In 1817, he removed to Dummerston and lived there till 1821, when he retired from business and purchased a farm in Putney. Mr. Noyes' eldest daughter married Larkin G. Mead, the father of the sculptor. His death occurred in October, 1841. The son, John H. Noyes, to whom Webster spoke so highly of his father, was the founder of the Oneida Community in New York.
Rutherford Hayes was the first, or one of the first blacksmiths of Brattleboro. He arrived in that town from New Haven, Con- necticut, in 1778, at the age of twenty-one. The little settlement was most anxious for a man of his trade and in order that he might begin work as soon as possible, they organized that Yankee institution of neighborliness a " bee ". The ground was cleared of the deep snow ; timber was felled; logs hewn and the shop built, and smoke was rolling from the chimney in less than four weeks after his arrival. The first American ancestor of the name was George Hayes who came from Scotland and was a settler in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1682. On his mother's side, Rutherford Hayes was descended from the Rev. John Russell, the first minister of Hadley, Massachusetts. Rutherford was born in Branford, Connecticut, in July, 1756, and in 1773, he removed to New Haven with his father, Ezekiel Hayes. He was a good work- man, energetic and conscientious in his youth, and in later life was described by one of his neighbors as a jolly, honest, kindly, religious man who might well be regarded as a model by his descendants. When he had lived to the allotted age of man he became a teetotaler. It was probably from him that his descendant who became President of the United States, inherited his tee- totalism, which an antagonistic press attributed to parsimony. Rutherford Hayes' wife, Chloe Smith, was born in Hadley, Mas- sachusetts, in November, 1762, whence her parents moved to Brattleboro where she was married to Rutherford in her seven- teenth year, in 1779. This girl developed a noble character and was possessed of great energy and strength of will. They had three sons and six daughters, all of whom were honored and useful members in the community in which they lived. Besides the occupation of blacksmith, Mr. Hayes was a farmer and tavern keeper. The eldest son, Deacon Russell Hayes, lived on the farm and devoted himself to his parents, and the interests of the Church
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and Academy of his native town. The second son, Rutherford, Jr., was a successful business man. He moved to Ohio, in 1817; where his son Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States, was born after his father's death. The youngest son, William R. Hayes, was graduated from Yale with honors and studied law with Judge Dagget, of New Haven. It was the eldest daughter of Rutherford Hayes who married the Hon. John Noyes.
The first settled minister of Brattleboro was the Rev. Abner Reeve, of Hadley, Massachusetts. Mr. Reeve was a descendant of Sergeant John Nott who settled in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1640, through the eldest daughter of Sergeant Nott who mar- ried Robert Reeve. Tapping Reeve, a son of Brattleboro's first minister, became a judge and a founder of the famous Law School of Litchfield.
However delightful the native of the Green Mountain State may be socially, or how great his cultivation and refinement may be, when he is occupied with a trade, or any affair in which money is concerned, his whole being undergoes a change for the time ; the very expression of countenance changes and until he " comes to ", and casts off his artificial and resumes his natural being he is not a pleasant companion. In the agreement with the Rev. Abner Reeve in regard to his settlement and salary, this trade-and- dicker side was strikingly shown by the members of the Brattle- boro Church.
It will be remembered that the Charter of the Town set aside a certain portion of land for the first settled minister of the place. On September 23, 1774, the Town voted, among other things; " that the said Mr. Reeve by virtue thereof be not entitled to any land in this town given by public authority to the first settled minister ".
Quoting Henry Burnam, the historian of Brattleboro, he says ; " The next vote states the amount of salary, and how it shall be paid, in barter, &c., all showing sharp practice, and a disposi- tion, on the part of the town, to obtain the gospel with the least possible expense."
Mr. Reeve replied, that he accepted their proposition if it was not their intention to destroy his claim and right to the land granted to the first settler minister. The Town replied that it did not intend to destroy his claim to the land, but, in the final struggle
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to shake off the trade-and-dicker character and return to their natural condition, the people of the town added, that it was not their intention to add any strength to his right to the land.
Again quoting Mr. Burham; "It is an old saying, and became an adage, ' Corporations have no souls'. In dealing with another pastor in this town, some years later, we see another proof of the truthfulness of this old adage. With a package of bills paid to the pastor, by the proper officer of the society, were two coun- terfeit bills. The society refused to make the matter right, because the pastor was paid with the veritable money obtained from subscribers for his support, and the collector could not tell from whom the bad bills came. * * All knew the poor * minister would pocket the loss rather than appeal to the law ". Trouble in the Church caused the resignation of Mr. Reeve in 1792. His death occurred at the age of ninety, in 1798.
The strenuous times in Vermont over the claim of New York to the New Hampshire grants has been most delightfully told in " The Green Mountain Boys", and by Roland Robinson in some of his short stories of the times when Ethan Allen and Seth Warner applied their famous "birch seals " to the backs of the hated "Yorkers". The Rev. Louis Grout has described the stirring times of the "New Hampshire Grants" days, and the part taken in them by Brattleboro, as follows:
by reason of the indefinite, ambiguous, and even conflicting boundaries of territories claimed variously by New Hampshire, Massachu- setts and New York, the seeds of much bitter controversy had been sown by an indiscriminate granting of lands to various parties in all this region- some by the Dutch at Albany, some by the French, and some by the sev- eral Colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York. As early as 1763, Benning Wentworth, acting under a royal commission as Governor of New Hampshire, (he had been told by the King, that the Province of New Hampshire extended westward till it met his other governments, that is, to a line extending from Lake Champlain south to the western line of Massachusetts), in the king's name had granted 138 townships west of the Connecticut River which were now generally known as the " New Hampshire grants ". This being more than New York could brook, Lieutenant-Governor Tryon, of that Province, referred the settlement of the boundary question to George III., who, in Council of July 20, 1764, decided that the western bank of the Connecticut River should thereafter be regarded as the boundary line between the Province of New Hampshire and that of New York. At this decision the colonists were much surprised
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and displeased; but supposing it meant nothing more than a change of jurisdiction, yielded at first a peaceful submission. But soon finding them- selves much mistaken, in that the Governor of New York was ignoring their rights and claims, making grants of their land to others, or de- manding enormous patent fees for confirming the grants they held, they stoutly demurred; indeed, many of the towns soon entered upon a state of open rebellion. Attempts to eject farmers from lands they had paid for and from improvements they had made led to many a scene of per- sonal violence. Some were kidnapped and carried to jail for attempting to protect and defend the farms they had paid for and the homes they had made.
For a time, however, not a few, especially of the later settlers, who had their grants from New York, or had paid the fees required for con- firmation of grants already acquired, took sides with that state [New York]. When the boundary line was fixed at the Connecticut River, in 1764, what is now Vermont became a part of Albany County (New York). Then, in 1768, what are now Windsor and Windham Counties, were made into one and called Cumberland; and *
* Brattleboro was organ- ized; John Arms, Esq., being chosen moderator, Dr. Henry Wells, clerk, and other citizens appointed to other offices such as were required by the Province of New York. As yet the proclivities of Brattleboro were toward New York. When Lieutenant Leonard Spaulding, who had been con- fined in Westminster jail, on the charge of having uttered treasonable words against the king, was released, in November, 1774, by a committee assisted by a concourse of freeborn neighbors and friends from Dummers- ton, Putney and other towns * * Brattleboro was not in it.
in March, 1775, the high sheriff of the county, coming to Brattleboro for men to "assist him in keeping the peace and suppressing the rioters" [the rioters being the farmers who would not be ejected from their prop- erty by the New York authorities] readily found no less than thirty-five men ready to go back with him to the court house. Nor was it long before one William French, a freeborn citizen of Brattleboro, who, with others, had come there to tell their grievances, was shot dead. And yet again we see what were the proclivities of Brattleboro, on this question in those days, in that she had no delegates in either of the two meetings, of the general convention of the delegates of the state, one, of fifty-one dele- gates, on July 24, 1776, at Dorset, and another, an adjourned meeting, on January 15, 1777, at Westminster, where it was "voted unanimously, that the district of land, commonly called 'New Hampshire Grants,' be a new and separate state, and for the future conduct themselves as such." Nor yet again, when this meeting adjourned to meet in Windsor, * *-
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