USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 34
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* recommended to the people of the new state to assemble in their respective towns and choose representatives to meet at Windsor on July 2, to form a constitution and elect delegates to congress, did Brattleboro take any part, but rather, on June 16, in full town meeting, voted not to accept or approve the proceedings of the late convention, July 2, at Windsor. And
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SCENE NEAR BRATTLEBORO.
BRATTLEBORO. 42I
in August, when an attempt was made to take the sense of the voters as to the new state, the report from Brattleboro was, that out of a vote of 166, all but one expressed a dissent from the pretended state of Vermont.
So great was the opposition of Brattleboro and two or three other towns, that Brigadier General Ethan Allen came over from the west side of the mountains with a goodly number of Green Mountain Boys, all armed and equipped to aid the civil officers of this region in their efforts to enforce the authority of the state of Vermont. They arrested all but one of the military officers of Brattleboro, together with some in Putney and some in Westminster, took them as prisoners to the court, then in session at Westminster, where they were tried, found guilty, and fined each from two to forty pounds sterling and costs, for their opposition to the state of Vermont.
The general sentiment of the town [Brattleboro] now began to turn from New York and to set in favor of Vermont, though it was not till 1781, that she sent delegates or representatives to the Vermont Assembly. But although jurisdiction had now passed from New York to Vermont, some of the people still adhered so stoutly to the former state as to make it necessary to give the Governor power to raise men to assist the sheriffs in their efforts to enforce the authority of the state. By his direction General Ethan Allen came over from the other side of the moun- tain with 250 men to Marlboro, September 9, 1782, where he was rein- forced by nearly as many more from several of the neigboring towns. The next morning detachments of men were sent to Brattleboro. Halifax, and Guilford, to arrest such Yorkites as were leading the rebellion, and take them to headquarters. Allen, himself, with the larger part of his force, went to Guilford, the stronghold of the offenders, where, towards the close of day the detachments came in with the prisoners. In the evening, Allen, with his troops and prisoners, started for Brattleboro, hoping to arrive there that night, but he had not gone far when he was fired upon by a company of forty-six Guilfordites, who had stationed themselves in a hiding place by the side of the road, over which the Vermonters would have to pass. Upon this, Allen returned to Guilford and made proclama- tion to the people that he would give no quarter to any man, woman or child who should oppose him; and unless the inhabitants of Guilford should peacefully submit to the authority of Vermont, he would lay their town as desolate as Sodom and Gomorrah; after which he was suffered to go on his way to Brattleboro without further molestation. Starting the next day with twenty or more prisoners from Brattleboro for Westminster, he gave orders to kill, without quarter, any one who should fire upon his men. Arriving at the court in Westminster, several of the prisoners, being tried by the jury for treason, were condemned and sentenced to be im- prisoned until the fourth of the next October, in the county jail and then banished from the state, not to return on penalty of death; and that all their goods, chattels and estate should be seized and sold as forfeited to the use of the state.
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WESTMORELAND.
W ESTMORELAND was one of the earliest settlements on the Connecticut River, in New Hampshire. Some- time previous to the year 1741, Daniel How had be- come familiar with the desirability of that portion of the Con- necticut Valley, which later became Westmoreland, as a place for settlement - because of the fertility of the extensive meadows there - he having been a member of a surveying party.
In 1741, Daniel and Nehemiah How, Jeremiah Phips, Jethro Wheeler and their families left Northfield, Massachusetts, in canoes for the Great Meadows, by way of the Connecticut River. They made their pitches and built their log homes upon land that was known as the Parker farm something more than one hundred years later. They arrived in the spring, and Daniel How immediately began the erection of a small fort or blockhouse, in which he and the other settlers could take refuge in case of attack by Indians or the French. These first settlers were joined by other families as time went on, but the increase in population was very slow for several years, on account of King George's War in 1744. When hostilities ceased, about 1760, the settlement increased in population rapidly, and by 1767, it con- tained nearly 400 inhabitants.
While the settlers were in constant dread of Indians for many years, and were several times attacked by them, still, they were not harassed by them to so great an extent as were the settle- ments to the north and south and across the Connecticut in Ver- mont. Just why this was so is not easily understood, for the Great Meadows was a favorite resort with the Indians while on their way to kill and burn, in the Massachusetts settlements, and on the return journey with scalps and prisoners.
Westmoreland was originally granted, as Township No. 2, by the General Court of Massachusetts, and was incorporated as Westmoreland, in 1752. by Governor Wentworth. The first select- men of Westmoreland were Heber Miller, Archelaus Temple and Waitstill Scott ; Job Chamberlain and Daniel Carlisle were the
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first constables ; Abial Eddy and Lieutenant Isaac Stone were the first tithingmen ; and Heber Miller was the first town clerk.
The meeting-house was built in 1762, on the north-east corner of. the North Cemetery; the society was organized on November ' 7, 1764, and the Rev. William Goddard was ordained as the first minister of the Church. The eight inhabitants composing the society were Amos Davis, Abner How, Joshua Hyde, Jona- than Houghton, Samuel Minot. Joseph Pierce, Joshua Warren and Daniel Warren. The meeting-house was moved to Parkhill, in the autumn of 1779.
The settlers were greatly excited and horrified to find, in 1784, that there was a Quaker in their midst. They regarded his pres- ence as being so great a menace to the moral and spiritual safety of the community that the Town appointed a committee, consisting of fifteen persons, on July 7, 1784, to see to it that the " Shaking Quaker " was sent out of town.
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WALPOLE.
W ALPOLE was incorporated by charter of George II, through Governor Benning Wentworth, in February, 1752. The proprietors were Colonel Benjamin Bel- lows, Theodore Atkinson, Colonel Josiah Blanchard and sixty- seven other men. The charter required, that, within five years from its date - 1752 - each proprietor should have cultivated five of every fifty acres of land he owned, and that he should continue to improve and cultivate his land. Failure to do so meant the loss of his property. No one was permitted to cut pine trees that were fit for ship's masts for the British Navy, without a special permit to do so. For a violation of this provision there was a punish- ment inflicted. But the conditions of the charter were not fulfilled for nine years on account of the danger to life and property in that part of the Connecticut Valley, due to the frequent depreda- tions of the Indians, whom the French paid liberally for prisoners, and for scalps. The first actual English settler was John Kil- burne, in 1749.
Colonel Benjamin Bellows built his house in 1752, and moved his family to Walpole in 1753. The house which was used as fort was in the form of the letter L, with the combined frontage of the two branches about one hundred feet in length. The width of the fort was twenty feet. It was strongly built of hewn logs banked with earth, and was surrounded by palisades. The first meeting of the Town of Walpole was held toward the last of March, 1752, with Colonel Bellows moderator. At this meeting Theodore Atkinson, Joseph Blanchard and Benjamin Bellows were chosen as the first selectmen of Walpole, and at the next meeting, in 1753, they were again chosen as selectmen. At the meeting of 1754, Sam Johnson acted as moderator and Benjamin Bellows, Sam Johnson and Robert Powker were chosen as select- men ; Colonel Willard as town clerk; Enoch Cook, constable and surveyor of highways. Colonel Bellows was strong in all those characteristics, which combined, made him one of the most desir- able and prominent men among the pioneers of New Hampshire.
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But he was weak in his " book larnin '," as may be seen from his entry in the Town records, that they chose "Enoch Cook Servayer of hie Ways". The Colonel's son Benjamin Bellows, Jr., evi- dently had received a liberal education. Benjamin Jr., was town clerk when he was but nineteen years old and continued in that office for more than thirty years, with but two breaks of a year each - 1778 and 1782. There was no gristmill in Walpole for several years after the first settlers built their homes. Colonel Bellows-who seems to have been the only purveyor of necessities in the tiny community, as well as the temporal head of it - used to take his grain to Northampton in boats to have it ground. While there, he bought all kinds of provisions needful in his own and his neighbors' families. But as soon as he could obtain men who were competent to build a mill, he had one put up on Blan- chard's Brook, at the falls on that stream. This mill did the grinding for the settlers for ten or twelve miles away, and must have been a source of great profit to the Bellows family. It seems that the members of the Bellows family were, for many years, not only the grinders of grist, but that they dominated society, Church, politics and finance, in Walpole and the surrounding towns. While there is reason to believe that the yoke of the Bellows family was light and pleasant to bear, it was worn, seemingly, without any idea on the part of those who wore it that they could cast it off.
It is tradition, that up to the end of the wars with France in the Colonies, about 1760, there was not a family in the settlements bordering the Connecticut River, in Vermont and New Hamp- shire, of which one or more members had not been killed by Indians. Sometime in the summer of 1755, two men, named Twitchel and Flynt, were killed by Indians while out in the woods. The Indians scalped one of the men and cut out the heart of the other.
On August 17, 1775, a most desperate and courageous defence of a home took place, when John Kilburn and his son John, William Peak and his son, Kilburn's wife and daughter Hetty, successfully defended their home again nearly 400 Indians. The four men were returning at noon from work in the fields, or woods, for their dinner, when they discovered a large company of Indians in hiding. The men ran for the house and made all pos-
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sible preparations for a siege. The Indians did not make their attack upon the Kilburn home then. They knew that Colonel Benjamin Bellows and several of his men were busy at the grist- . mill, about a mile distant on Blanchard's Brook, and they thought it better to kill the men at the mill first so they could not give assistance, or obtain reinforcements, when they heard the firing at Kilburn's house. The Indians felt sure of the Kilburn family, for it was bottled up in the house. Soon after Kilburn and his companions had barricaded the house, they saw the Indians cautiously emerge from the thicket and proceed towards the grist- mill. They counted them and found there were 197, and it became known later, that about as many more were in ambush near Cold River. At the same time that the Indians were going toward the mill, Colonel Bellows and some thirty of his men, were returning toward the little settlement with some dogs be- longing to the Colonel, which gave warning that all was not right. The Colonel was notable for his coolness and presence of mind in times of danger. He ordered his men to drop the sacks of meal they were all carrying, to crawl up a slight hill and upon signal, to suddenly rise, yell, and drop to the ground out of sight. This program was carried out to the letter. As soon as the settlers yelled the Indians came from their hiding places and then the settlers poured in a volley that sent them on a run for the tall timber, without having fired a gun. Colonel Bellows and his men then hastened to tlie Colonel's fortified house.
The Indians, knowing that a well fortified house manned by thirty resolute men under command of such a man as was Colonel Benjamin Bellows, was impossible to take, turned their attention to the Kilburn home. Philip, the leader of the Indians, who had received kindness and hospitality from Kilburn the previous summer, called upon him to surrender, promising if he would do so, " good quarter ". But John Kilburn was not the kind of man who accepted quarter when his fighting blood was aroused, es- pecially from Indians. After a brief consultation the attack was begun by the majority of the Indians and those who were not occupied in it killed the cattle and destroyed whatever property they could find. Every one inside the house was cool and de- termined, none more so than Mrs. Kilburn and her daughter
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Hetty. The men had several guns and had poured their powder from their horns into hats, so that they could load more rapidly, and the women helped to load the guns. As the supply of powder and bullets was not great, the men shot only when they were sure of killing. If a "dead Indian is a good Indian ", Kilburn and his son and Peak and his son manufactured a great many good Indians for Kiehtan's beautiful country in the "South- west ", that day. Some idea of the fearful odds against which those four men and two women had to contend, may be had from the fact, that when the bullets began to give out, the women hung blankets from the rafters under the roof to catch the bullets which penetrated the roof, that were fired by the Indians. These they gathered, melted and made into new bullets. The attack lasted for six hours. By the time the sun had disappeared the last of the Indians was on his way to Canada. Walpole was never again troubled by Indians. Peak was wounded in his hip and died five days later from blood poisoning. John Kilburn died in the eighty-fifth year of his age, in 1789. John, Jr., re- moved to Shrewsbury, Vermont, where he died in 1822.
It is odd, and certainly most interesting, that the story of this splendid defence of a home, was confirmed many years afterward by an old Indian who had been in the attacking party. A descend- ant of the Blanchards of Walpole who was living in New York State, became acquainted with this old Indian, Joshark, who was but nineteen years old when the fight took place. Joshark re- lated the incidents of the fight and told where and how their leader, Chief Philip, was buried. Many years later, when the Cheshire Railroad was built, an Indian grave was dug up which corresponded in every particular with the description given by Joshark, even to the finding of a large flat stone over a skeleton of great size, and Philip was notable for his gigantic stature.
Walpole had its tithingmen, whose duty it was to break the strict New England " Sabbath ", while seeing to it that no one else broke it. Walpole also had its deer-reeve, whose duty it was to see that no deer were killed out of season. Deer were plenti- ful, but as they were the chief source of fresh meat, the people thus early had the good sense to prevent their unnecessary slaugh- ter. In 1762, the first road in Walpole was laid out from the southern line of Charleston to the northern line of Westmoreland.
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Walpole, like its sister towns of the lower Connecticut Valley, protected its religious, social and financial interests by voting, in 1772, " That the constable warn out of town, every person that comes in, that has no estate in town ".
The part taken by the men of Walpole in the Revolution was most creditable and at least two of them - General Benjamin Bel- lows and Colonel Christopher Webber -gained military distinc- tion. The day after receiving the news of the Battle of Lexington, General Benjamin Bellows, Colonel John Bellows, his brother, Thomas Sparhawk and thirty-two other men of the town, started for Roxbury. This is but a sample of the spirit shown by the men of Walpole during the war. But the men at the front were not the only patriots, for those who were obliged to remain at home deliberately voted to tax themselves that money might be appropriated for the families of the men who were in the army.
General Bellows was chiefly useful to the Colonies as a raiser and organizer of troops for the regular army. At the same time, when he was in the field, he showed himself to be an excellent officer. That there were no Tories in Walpole emphasizes the general spirit of patriotism in that town.
Benjamin Bellows' estate included seven or eight thousand acres of land in Walpole and several other towns, besides property in several villages. His great house, known as the Fort, was the scene of almost constant hospitality. The number of his imme- diate household was large, a whole beef being consumed weekly, in fact his manner of life and his establishment was more like that of a baron and a baronial hall of feudal days than a fortified house in a back-woods settlement of New England. The farm- hands and servants ate in a room below stairs, while the family and the guests were above in the dining room. This was unusual in those days even in the larger villages. As he produced on this property everything required for food and clothing, he needed to be the man of affairs that he was. Among other necessaries, he made 400 barrels of cider and pickled twenty barrels of pork each year. The great number of salmon to be found in the lower Con- necticut River has been mentioned in several places and they were equally abundant at the falls by Walpole. Salmon were so com- mon that the Colonel's hired men refused to have that delicious fish oftener than three times a week.
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WALPOLE. 429
Just previous to 1785, the subject of building a bridge across the Connecticut River was broached. No settlement is too tiny and no city too far advanced in civilization, not to contain those wise-fools who cry impossible and scoff at every form of progress that is beyond their horizon, and as their horizon is the tip of their noses and their overhanging eyebrows, everything is beyond it, save their own conceit. So, when it was proposed to bridge the Connecticut the idea was laughed at and seemingly the laugh- ter of the settlement's wise men was regarded by the men of Wal- pole as proof that it could not be done, for the bridge was built by a man from Rindge. Colonel Enoch Hale moved from Rindge to Walpole in 1784. He obtained a charter from the Legislature for building and maintaining a tollbridge. Colonel Hale then built his bridge just below the principal fall at Bellows Falls, and tradition says that it was the first bridge across the Connecticut River. The bridge was fifty feet above the river and 360 feet between abutments. From 1785, to 1796, it was the only bridge crossing the Connecticut between New Hampshire and Vermont.
The New Hampshire Journal and Farmers' Museum was started in 1793, by Isaiah Thomas and David Carlisle as its pub- lishers. Joseph Dennie was its editor two years later. The Museum as it was generally called, was the origin of one of the most famous literary-bohemian clubs of the time. Among its contributors were Chief Justice Royal Tyler, of Brattleboro; Isaac Story, David Everett, and Thomas G. Fessenden. These men, with Dennie the editor, Samuel Hunt, Roger Vose and Samuel West, the latter of Keen, formed the club. This was a brilliant, clever crowd which congregated in the tavern in Walpole, kept by Major Asa Bullard. Other notables who, although not members of the literary club, often joined the jolly crowd, were Drs. Spaulding and Heillman, Alpheus Moore, Jeremiah Mason and, not the least important, because he provided the feast for the body as well as helped in providing the feast for the mind, was the landlord, Major Bullard. And what a time they had with wine, and cards and song and biting wit. While this century has men of equal cleverness and brilliancy, this century does not know anything of those literary clubs that met in taverns, nor does it possess anything like them. Those liberally educated men of gentle birth who composed the literary clubs of Walpole and
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SITE OF THE FIRST BRIDGE ACROSS THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. Built by Colonel Enoch Hale, of Rindge, N. II., between Walpole and Bellows Falls, in 1785.
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other New England towns had no distractions as do the same kind of men of to-day, who dissipate their brilliancy in a dozen places during the week to scores of delighted companions, while those fellows of old-days concentrated themselves among them- · selves, for men of their stamp were few and so each was de- pendent upon his fellows for companionship. Money was a ne- cessity in those days, not a luxury, so an excess of it did not produce heartburn for those who lacked it, as a lack of it so often does in this century. But mental attainments were a luxury in 1790, and those literary clubs were but striking illustrations of the old saw, that birds of a color chum in bunches.
Royal Tyler was born in Boston, in 1757, and inherited wealth and refinement as well as an unusually brilliant intellect. He entered Harvard at the age of fifteen and was graduated in 1776. The year after his graduation, when he was twenty, he called, one day, at the home of Mrs. Joseph Pierce Palmer in Boston. ·Mrs. Palmer was holding her infant daughter, Mary, in her arms and Tyler, taking the child, declared that she would one day be his wife, and such she became. Soon after being graduated, both Harvard and Yale conferred the degree of A.B. upon him. In 1779, he was admitted to the bar. He was a brilliant lawyer, a fine soldier and a notable literatus. His chief production was a play called " The Contrast ". It was put upon the stage of the Park Theatre in New York in 1789, and proved to be a great success, having a run of several weeks. In the summer of 1790, Colonel Tyler went to Windsor, Vermont, while the Supreme Court was in session and remained there till January of the fol- lowing year, when he settled permanently in Guilford-at that time the largest village in Vermont - to the south of Brattleboro and originally a part of that town. It was while he was living in Guilford that he married the grown-up infant, Mary Palmer, who was about twenty, the wedding taking place in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Joseph Dennie, editor of The Museum, was also a Bostonian, a graduate of Harvard and a lawyer. He was born in August, 1768, and was graduated in 1790. The law possessed no attrac- tions for him, so he soon gave up practicing it and devoted hini- self to literature. He first wrote for newspapers and then was on the staff of The Tablet, a weekly published in Boston.
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In 1795, he went to Walpole, at the age of twenty-seven, and became editor of The Museum. His essays were elegant in style and notable for their keen and refined humor. They were copied in publications all over the country. The publishers of The Museum failed in 1798, and Dennie, finding himself out of employment, tried politics for a living by running for Con- gress, but was defeated. In ISO1, he was editor and part owner of the Portfolio, a monthly literary magazine. published in Philadelphia. He was its editor till his death in 1812.
Roger Vose, another member of the literary club, came very near to being a Bostonian for he was born in Milton, Massa- chusetts, in 1763. He too was a graduate of Harvard - in the class with Dennie, 1790 -and a lawyer: In 1793, he went to Walpole to live and married Rebecca Bellows, a daughter of Colonel John Bellows, in 1801. He was Judge of Probate in Cheshire County for many years and was the first member of Congress from Walpole. Mr. Vose was not particularly notable as a lawyer or writer, but his keen sense of humor and quick wit made him famous, at home and in Congress.
The first Church of Walpole was organized in 1757, but the first minister, the Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, was not ordained till June, 1761. His pastorate was short, ending in 1764 when he was dismissed by the Church. The cause of his dismissal is not given in the records. except one fact and that is, that a mein- ber of his Church saw him, one day, astride of his horse with one end of a rope tied to the pommel of his saddle, and the other end about the neck of a female slave who had run away.
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