USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 35
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After Mr. Leavitt was dismissed, the Rev. Jonathan Moore preached for two or three years, but was not settled over the Church. In January, 1767, the Rev. Thomas Fessenden was ordained and was the minister for thirty-eight years.
WESTMINSTER.
T OWNSHIP No. I, as Westminster was first called, was granted by the General Court of Massachusetts, in 1736, to proprietors from Taunton and Norton, Massachu- setts; and from Ashford and Killingly, Connecticut ; Joseph Tis- dale, of Taunton, heading the list of grantees. In the early days, the town was as often called Taunton, as No. I. On November 9, 1752, it was incorporated as Westminster by the Province of New Hampshire.
Richard Ellis built a house and cultivated several acres of land, in 1739, and soon he was followed by a few other settlers, but the breaking out of King George's War caused them to abandon the place. Another attempt to settle the town was made in 1751, but the Indian attack on Charlestown, New Hampshire, caused it to be again abandoned, some time in 1754 or '55. In 1761, a per- manent settlement was effected and ten years later, in 1771, West- minster was the largest town in eastern Vermont, so far as popu- lation was concerned. The early history of Westminster was not materially different from the other neighboring towns, until the beginning of the period immediately preceding the Revolution. On March 13, 1775, Westminster was the scene of one of the most exciting incidents of that distressing and frenzied period, and the murder of William French by Tories was the first life sacrificed in Vermont, in defence of the principles which culmi- nated on July 4, 1776, in the Declaration of Independence.
The Courts at this time were still officered by "King's men " and justice was administered (?) by Tory judges, in Vermont -- as the territory concerned became later -- but the people felt that they could not longer trust their interests and themselves to the kind of justice dealt out by the enemies of the Colonies. Ver- mont at this time was under the jurisdiction of New York.
The County Court was to convene on March 14, 1775, in West- minster. The Patriots were so greatly excited that trouble was feared should the court convene with a King's Judge on the bench. Sometime before March 14, forty Patriots, of Rockingham,
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went to Chester, the home of Judge Thomas Chandler, to urge him not to attend the court. Judge Chandler agreed with the Patriots but said, as there was a murder case it would be necessary to hear that, but no other business should be transacted. One of the Patriots told Judge Chandler it had been rumored that Sheriff William Paterson would be present with an armed posse and that blood would be shed. The Judge promised that no arms should be carried by the Sheriff or his men. The associate judges and the court officers were anxious that the King's dignity should be maintained by holding the Court the same as usual.
The Patriots were determined that there should be no court. Hearing that the Court House was to be taken possession of and guards placed at the doors, the Patriots, or Whigs, of Rocking- ham arrived in Westminster on the morning of March 13 - the day before Court was to convene- and decided that they would take possession of the Court House. The forty Whigs from Rockingham were joined by about sixty other Whigs, all of whom were armed with clubs from Captain Azariah Wright's wood- pile. At four o'clock in the afternoon of March 13, 1775, this company of 100 Patriots entered, and took possession of the Court House. Not long after four o'clock, Sheriff Paterson with an armed posse- thirty-five of whom were Brattleboro Tories - arrived before the Court House and ordered the " rioters " to dis- perse. Not a sound came from the Court House so he ordered the King's proclamation to be read, and threatened "to blow a lane through them" if they had not dispersed within fifteen minutes.
To this the Whigs replied, that the Sheriff and his men might enter the Court House if they would leave their arms outside. One of the Whigs declared that they desired peace and asked if the Sheriff and his men had come for war. The Tory clerk of the court, Samuel Gale, flourished his pistol and declared he would hold no parley with them save with that. The Tories with- drew and three of the Whigs went out to them in the hope of settling matters so that a conflict might be avoided, but without success.
At seven o'clock in the evening Colonel Chandler - the Chief Judge of the Court, with whom the Rockingham Whigs had held an interview - arrived and was admitted to the Court, and the
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conditions were explained to him. Judge Chandler said, that the Sheriff and his men were not armed with his consent ; that he would disarm them; that the Whigs should occupy the Court House till the morning, when the Court would be convened with- out arms and he would hear all they had to say. The Whigs then left a guard at the Court House and the others returned to their homes, or to those of some of their neighbors.
Sheriff Paterson added to his posse all the Tories in the neigh- borhood, and went to the Court House just before midnight, on March 13, 1775, and demanded admittance, stating that he would enter quietly if possible, by force if he must. The small guard of Whigs repulsed the Sheriff's men twice, when he gave the order to fire. The first volley was high; the second filled that passionate, fiery young patriot, William French, full of bullets, one of which passed through his head and caused his death the next day. The fight in the Court House was fierce for a brief time, but as the Whigs only had clubs to defend themselves, against the swords and firearms of the Tories, it was soon over.
The prisoners were cruelly treated, but the Tories reserved their most savage, barbaric, devilish cruelty for young William French, who lay dying, with one bullet through his brain and four other bullets in different parts of his body. They dragged him over the ground to the jail and as he lay gasping and writhing in his death agony, the Tories laughed at and mocked him, and cracked jokes over the contortions and twitching of his dying body.
It will be shown in the chapter on Claremont that the Tory, Colonel Peters and that other Tory, the Rev. Ranna Crositt, both of Claremont, New Hampshire, wrote letters in which they told of the cruelty and insults they and their fellow Tories had re- ceived, at the hands of the Rebels in Vermont and New Hamp- shire. But the letters of these two Tories were written in 1778 and 1779. four years after the Tories had taught the Rebels how to act the part of savage barbarians at Westminster Court House, when they harried and tortured the Patriot, William French, in his dying moments.
The news of the fight, and the murder of William French, spread so rapidly that by noon of the following day - March 14, 1775-400 Patriots had assembled in Westminster, many of them being from New Hampshire; among them being Captain Ben- jamin Bellows and his company from Walpole. The Patriots
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were nearly mad with excitement and sorrow at the cruelty of the Tories, and demanded that the murderers of French should be killed and the Court House burnt, but Captain Bellows proved his reputation for wisdom, calmness and presence of mind in a trying emergency, by persuading the Patriots to wait, and let lawful vengeance punish the murderers.
Judge Thomas Chandler, and Bildad Easton, deputy sheriff ; Captain Benjamin Burt, Thomas Sergeant, Oliver Wells, Joseph Willard and John Morse, Tories, who had all been confined in jail, were admitted to bail on March 17. Sheriff William Paterson and his deputy Benjamin Gorton ; Samuel Gale, Judge Noah Sabin, Judge Benjamin Butterfield, Richard Hill and William Williams, were all sent to the jail in Northampton to await trial. After two weeks, they were taken to New York, and the Revolution being at its hottest, the case seems to have been dropped.
CHARLESTOWN.
T HE grant of Township No. 4-by which numeral Charles- town was known for many years - was made by Massa- chusetts in which Colony it was then supposed to be, about five years before the first settlement was made in 1740, by the brothers Samuel, David and Stephen Farnsworth, who came from Lunenburg - Fitchburg - Massachusetts, and were born in Groton, Massachusetts. They were joined soon after they had made their pitch, by Moses Willard, one of their Lunenburg neighbors; Obadiah Sartwell, Isaac Parker and his sons, of Groton ; John Hastings, of Hatfield, Massachusetts, and Phineas Stevens, of Rutland, Massachusetts. This Township No. 4 was the only Connecticut River settlement in 1740, with the exception of Fort Dummer, which was on the other side of the river in the southern portion of Vermont. There was no settlement of any kind between Township No. 4 and Canada. So, not only was it exposed to attack by Indians from Canada, but it was especially exposed, as the route chiefly used by the French and Indians be- tween Canada and the Connecticut River settlements - Lake Champlain, Otter Creek and Black River - ended just above Charlestown, at the mouth of Black River, where it enters the Connecticut River.
Of the original proprietors, the only ones who became set- tlers were Stephen Farnsworth, Captain Phineas Stevens, and Lieutenant Ephraim Wetherbe, the other proprietors having sold nearly all of their property, which they had obtained by grant, in Township No. 4, or Charlestown, as it was called later. The danger from Indians made the growth of Charlestown very slow and four years after the first settlement, in 1744, there were but ten families there.
An act of George II, in 1738, had fixed the boundary between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and when the line was run in 1741, Charlestown, Walpole, Westmoreland and Chesterfield, were found to be in New Hampshire, and the settlers of Charles- town found themselves in a predicament. The Province of New
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Hampshire absolutely refused to do anything towards the de- fence of the settlement against the French and Indians. The General Court claimed that it was so remote from the thickly populated portion of the Province on the sea coast, that it was not much matter what became of the settlement, and that the people could not be further burdened by the expense of sending soldiers and supplies to No. 4, in addition to the already heavy burden of taxation. The New Hampshire authorities intimated, that, as the Connecticut River was the highway between Canada and Massachusetts, it was the duty of Massachusetts to garrison the river settlements, even if they were in New Hampshire. Charles- town was therefore obliged to struggle on alone, far in the north and exposed to possible annihilation at any moment. And they struggled on alone for the men who settled Charlestown were among the founders of that breed of men, in New Hampshire and Vermont, who, in the Revolution, tramped alone, 300 miles through an unknown forest to offer their services in the war for Independence.
Realizing that the time was not far distant when there would be war between Great Britain and France, they began prepara- tions for their defence the third year after the settlement of the Farnsworth brothers. On November 24, 1743, a meeting was held in the home of John Spafford, Jr., with David Farnsworth, Moses Willard, Captain Phineas Stevens, Isaac Parker, Jr., Oba- diah Sartwell, John Avery and Charles Holden present. They de- cided upon the building of a fort, and they were obliged to build it at their own expense, and 'such an undertaking, in a settlement of but ten families, was great. New Hampshire, their own Prov- ince, had refused all help for the selfish reason, that being so far from the seat of government and the chief settlements in the eastern portion of the Province, it made little difference whether the people of Charlestown were murdered or not ; and Massachu- setts did not feel called upon to spend its public money for the good of another government. But later, when Massachusetts found how necessary it was for the protection of its own river towns, that Colony gave much needed assistance by garrisoning the fort in Charlestown, and other forts to the north of the Mas- sachusetts line.
As was usual, when any work of the nature of a fort was to
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be taken in hand, the advice of Colonel John Stoddard, of North- ampton, was obtained the same as it had been twenty years earlier, when Fort Dummer was built near the Massachusetts line in the Town of Brattleboro. The exterior walls of the fort inclosed an area of three-quarters of an acre. The walls were massive and were made of large, square-hewn timbers laid horizontally. The fort was so constructed, that even should Indians or French suc- ceed in entering the inclosed square, those in the fort would still be as safe as when they were on the outside. In the area in-
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STEVENS HOUSE, CHARLESTOWN.
closed by the fort were the houses of Captain John Spafford, Captain Phineas Stevens, Lieutenant Moses Willard, Lieutenant Ephraim Wetherbe and John Hastings. All of these houses had been purchased by the Town. They were moved up to the inner wall of the fort, and a new house added to the number, that was built in the north-west corner against the inner walls of the fort. On the north, the side of probable attack, a strong stockade was put up of logs a foot in diameter and twelve feet above the ground. The houses purchased from the men named were called
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Province Houses. Being against the inner wall of the fort ac- cess to and from them was had, and they were provided with all known means of barricading and defence against an enemy that should succeed in forcing an entrance to the inclosure. The fort had been finished but a few weeks when the news reached Boston, and later Charlestown, that Great Britain had declared war upon France.
The inhabitants of Charlestown were not visited by Indians or the French till April 19, 1746, when forty French and Indians, finding Captain Jolin Spafford, Lieutenant Isaac Parker and Stephen Farnsworth returning to the settlement from the saw- mill with a load of lumber, captured them. These three men were taken to Canada and later were exchanged or ransomed and sent to Boston. Two weeks later Seth Putnam was killed by Indians and two of the Indians were killed by the small guard of soldiers stationed at the fort, under command of Major Josiah Willard. Massachusetts had already discovered the importance of Charles- town as a frontier, fortified settlement and had sent soldiers to garrison the place. A few weeks after the murder of Seth Put- nam, Captain Daniel Paine and a troop of mounted men arrived at the Charlestown fort. Curiosity led them to visit the scene of the killing of Putnam, accompanied by some of the settlers, about twenty men in all. On the way they ran into an ambush of Indians and not having arms for their defence with them, Ensign Obadiah Sartwell, of Charlestown, was captured ; Samuel Farnsworth, of Charlestown, was killed and Elijah Allen, Peter Perin, Aaron Lyon and Joseph Massey, of Captain Paine's com- mand were killed. More men would undoubtedly have been killed or captured had not Captain Stevens, who was in command of the men in the fort, rushed to the rescue. Farnsworth was not killed by an Indian, but by one of the soldiers who accidentally shot him instead of the Indian with whom Farnsworth was having a hand-to-hand struggle. Ensign Sartwell returned to Charles- town, in August, 1747. A few days after this fight the garrison was strengthened by the arrival of Captain Ephraim Brown with his company from Sudbury, Massachusetts.
The inhabitants of Charlestown were left in peace till June 19, 1746, when Captain Stevens and Captain Brown with fifty men, were ambushed by Indians while they were in the woods
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looking for the company-horses. The English soldiers and set- tlers were the victors in this fight. Besides having the advan- tage of firing the first volley, they fought with so great fierce- ness that many of the Indians were killed and the remainder utterly routed, notwithstanding the fact that the Indians were about three to each one of the English. The flight of the Indians was so hurried that they left a quantity of arms, ammunition and blankets, all of which were sold for £40, old tenor. Jedediah Winchell was the only one of the soldiers to be killed. This
GOV. HUBBARD HOUSE, CHARLESTOWN.
fight took place about a mile out from the fort, on the old meadow road and has long been known as Ambush Hill, the hill being but a low elevation above the general level of the meadow. There was another period of several weeks during which no Indians were seen, and in the meantime, Captain Joseph How arrived from Marlboro, with thirty-eight men to relieve Captain Brown.
On August 3, 1746, the peculiar actions of the dogs of the set- tlement - which were only to be seen when they scented In- dians - gave the inhabitants and garrison warning that the enemy was near. A few men were sent to investigate and if possible
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locate the enemy. The Indians saved them trouble by shooting Ebenezer Philips, just as he passed beyond the gate of the fort. The other men succeeded in re-entering the fort. The Indians surrounded the fort for two days, trying in every way to gain possession of it, but the settlers had built so well and so strongly that they at last gave up the attempt to take it, and went away.
The time for reaping the grain having arrived, Captain Stevens and sixty men went to the Great Meadow to act as guard to the reapers, on August 5, 1746, and when they returned to the fort, on August 8, they found that Indians had taken ad- vantage of their absence to kill nearly all of the cattle, hogs and horses of the settlers, and sixteen horses belonging to the soldiers. The Indians had also burnt the mills, and all but one of the houses outside of the fort. The next day, a company arrived for the relief of the one under command of Captain Brown, and a little later reinforcements arrived with provisions for the garrison, un- der command of Captain Winchester. This ended Indian attacks upon Charlestown for the year 1746.
Late in the autumn, Massachusetts withdrew the soldiers who had been stationed in the fort and, as the greater number of their cattle had been killed and but little opportunity to raise crops had been given, the settlers buried their valuables and abandoned their homes and went to Groton, Leominster and Lunenburg, Massa- chusetts, leaving six men to guard the fort till the winter set in. Fortunately, the winter of 1746 and '47 was so cold that the aban- doned settlement was not visited by the enemy.
Captain Phineas Stevens-one of the earliest settlers of Charlestown-and a number of gentlemen of Massachusetts, fully appreciating the great importance of maintaining strong frontier forts, especially to the north, finally succeeded in convincing the Massachusetts Legislature that it must furnish money and men for the frontier forts. Captain Stevens, of Charlestown, an ex- perienced soldier and Indian fighter, strongly advised that the more important of the frontier forts - among them being Charles- town - should be garrisoned by a large number of men, that an aggressive war against the French and Indians might be begun, instead of being simply on the defensive, as in the past. His idea was to send strong scouting parties to a considerable dis- tance up the several routes used by the French and their Indian
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friends to reach the Connecticut River settlements. Captain Stevens' advice was not fully carried out, but Governor Shirley did assign Captain Stevens and thirty soldiers to the fort at Charlestown. He arrived there on March 27, 1747, and found the abandoned settlement and fort just as the six men, who had remained there till the winter had set in, left them. There is an interesting item in his report in regard to the condition of the fort, which is at the same time most aggravating, for it is in- complete. It is, that he found a spaniel and a cat within the fort, but he did not say anything about how they kept alive during all those months in which the fort was without human occupants.
The little garrison had but just made itself comfortable, and the houses within the fort-yard homelike, when the dogs showed by their actions that Indians were near. The gate was barred and guarded and everything put in readiness for an attack. One of the men who chafed at waiting, went outside of the fort with one of the dogs to find if there were really Indians about. He had gone but a short way from the fort when he was shot at, and immediately a large force of French and Indians surrounded the fort, the soldier in the meantime returning to the fort slightly wounded.
A defence against a greatly superior number then began, which was worthy to go down into history side by side with the de- fence of Fort Massachusetts by Sergeant Hawks in the same war, an account of which is given in the chapter on Chatham, Connecticut. Both of these defences were of a character to make the Charge of the Light Brigade dwindle to the importance and heroism of a golf match. The Light Brigade had nothing worse to dread than capture by a civilized nation or sudden death, while the defenders of Fort Massachusetts and the Fort at Charlestown had the most horrible torture,- or a debased and horrible exist- ence should their lives be spared - staring them in the face should the enemy capture them. The Light Brigade was made up of ignorant, illiterate fighting-machines who were lacking in the finer feelings of persons of native refinement, and so were brave to the degree of recklessness. The defenders of the two forts were Christians, many of them possessed of refinement and college educations, whose bravery - for these very reasons - would be
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less than that of the veterans of the Brigade, but whose courage was sublime. In the case of Fort Massachusetts, the majority of the defenders were men too ill to stand and a few heroic women. In this respect the defenders of Charlestown had the advantage, for they were all men in perfect physical and spiritual health. In Cæsar's day, he would have written pages about the fights ; in the days of the Danish marauders, or in those of the border warfare in Scotland, poems yards long would have been written about them.
The French set fire to the dry grass and fences and a log
GEN. HUNT HOUSE, CHARLESTOWN.
house outside the fort, in the hope that the fort would catch fire. There was a strong wind and it was not long before the fort was entirely surrounded with flames and dense smoke.
To protect the fort from fire Captain Stevens showed himself to be the equal of Colonel Stoddard, of Northampton, as a mili- tary engineer. He had eleven trenches dug, to a depth consider- ably in excess of a man's height, from inside under the walls of the fort to the outside. In these trenches, outside of the walls, his men could stand and throw water upon the walls in case of
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fire. At night the trenches were manned and the exterior walls well soaked with water, to prevent the possibility of fire from flying sparks or from the arrows, to the heads of which flaming torches of birch bark were fastened. The attack was so constant that the thirty defenders of the fort had not time for eating or sleep till finally, Debeline, the French commander, asked that the fighting be discontinued till morning, when they would hold a parley. Captain Stevens agreed and he and his men obtained some much needed food and rest.
In the morning, General Debeline and sixty men approached with a flag of truce. He sent an officer and two men to the fort, and three men went from the fort to hear what the General had to propose. The General's proposal was most delightfully French in every way. It was, that thirty resolute men in a strongly built, well provisioned fort, should walk out of the fort with all their clothing, and enough provisions done up in their blankets to last them on the long tramp to Canada, and surrender to the white soldiers of His Catholic Majesty of France and to the Red Imps of His Satanic Majesty of Hell; for the honor and glory of him of France, and the entertainment of the Imps of the other place. One can easily imagine the great French soldier drawing in lungfuls of the pure sharp spring air from the White Hills of New Hampshire and the Green Hills of Vermont, and then puffing it out at a high temperature, as he told the Protestant heretics of all the frightful things his greatly superior force, and his co-religionists of the redskins, would do to them should they refuse his liberal terms of surrender.
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