USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 37
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his case was disposed of. In the years from 1775 to 1780, there were but five new inhabitants. They were Asaph Butler, Abra- ham Downer, Samuel Lewis, Levi Stevens and John White. Butler and Stevens were on the first board of selectmen.
Between the years 1780, and 1784, the increase in population was, in comparison, rapid. Among those who took a more promi- nent part in the public life of the town and the state were Waters Chilson, Ambrose Cushman, John Bennett, Edward Goodwin, Oliver Chamberlain, Thomas Dunphy, Thomas Hutchins, Josiah Hatch, Joseph Hubbard, Oliver Diggins, Daniel and Josiah Dartt, Abijah White, Nathaniel Stoughton, Stephen Steel ; Clark, David, Henry and John Tolles; Samuel Newton, Joseph Mason, Daniel Graves, Colonel Elijah Robinson, Thomas Prentice, Gershom Clark, Captain John Williams, Joseph Joslin, Gideon Lyman, Daniel Babcock, Asa Field, Samuel Cummings, David Polk, John Hill, Elijah Cady, Amos Boynton, Gideon Chapin, David Paulk, Benjamin Warner, Samuel Sherman, Jonathan Nye, Colonel John Boynton, and Levi Field.
Chilson and Joseph Hubbard were Weathersfield's first Justices of the Peace. In 1781, Goodwin owned and operated the only gristmill in the town. Dorcas, daughter of Eliphalet Spafford, one of the settlers of 1772, was the first white child born in Weathersfield. The first Town Meeting was held in the home of Garshom Tuttle, on May II, 1772. 'Squire Stevens who issued the warrant for this meeting wrote the date -" IIth May Ana- dominy, 1772".
When George III decided that the New Hampshire Grants (Vermont) were within the jurisdiction of New York, Weathers- field was more fortunate than some other towns for the Governor of New York, because of petition from the inhabitants of Weathersfield, granted the territory to them. This was practi- cally a confirmation of the original grant from Wentworth and saved the inhabitants of Weathersfield from the land grabbing habit acquired by the "Yorkers". While the surveyors and agents of the "Yorkers " were dispossessing some and trying to dispossess all of the original proprietors, settlers and inhabitants, Weathersfield settlers were not troubled because of the New York grant they had received. It was but natural therefore, that when the people of the vast territory (which the ignorance and partial-
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ity of Great Britain's German King, George III, had given to New York) known as the New Hampshire Grants proposed in 1777, to organize the Grants into a new and independent State, the people of Weathersfield voted to remain within the jurisdic- tion of New York, until the proper authority had annulled the authority and jurisdiction of New York.
Weathersfield's greatest population was in the decade beginning with 1820, when it was 2,301, but before 1830, there was a de- crease which slowly continued to the present time.
From the year of the settlement down to 1785, the people of Weathersfield, who wished to attend Church, were obliged to cross the Connecticut River to Claremont, New Hampshire, with the few exceptions on which the Rev. James Treadwell preached in Weathersfield, from 1779, to 1783. In 1785, the Rev. Dan: Foster became the first settled minister in Weathersfield. His salary was £45 yearly, to be paid, one-third in cash and two- thirds in beef, pork and wheat. His salary was to be increased £5 yearly till it amounted to £75, and it included his firewood or, if he preferred, £5 extra yearly in place of the wood. The Town placed a penalty of £100 upon itself in case it did not live up to its agreement with Mr. Foster. A parsonage was built in that year at an expense of £60, but there was no meeting-house till several years later when the first one was built at Weathersfield Center. Mr. Foster was minister till 1799, and on February 10, 1802, the Rev. James Converse was ordained.
The Converse family originated in Navarre where the name was spelled Coigniers. The first member of the family to go to England was Roger de Coigniers, toward the end of the reign of William the Conqueror, as is shown by the records in Battle Abbey which was built by William. The Rev. James Converse was of the twenty-second generation from Roger, who was ap- pointed Constable of Durham Castle by William. The name was Anglicized in spelling to Conyers and finally to Convers and Converse. In the troublous times between the Romanists and Protestants, the Coigniers family were Huguenots. At the massacre on St. Bartholomew's day, 1572, Pierre Coigniers, see- ing his kinsman, the famous Protesant, Admiral Coligny mur- dered, fled to England and settled in Essex.
The first American ancestor of the family was Deacon Edward
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Converse who was born in Wakerly, England, in January, 1590. He came to America in one of the ships of Winthrop's fleet, in 1630, and settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He died in Woburn, Massachusetts, in August, 1663. The General Court of Massachusetts, granted to Deacon Converse a monopoly of the first ferry between Boston and Charlestown. Deacon Converse was a selectmen of Charlestown from 1635 to 1640 .. He was a member of the Commission appointed to settle Woburn, Massa- chusetts, in which town he settled and was a selectman, from 1644 to 1663, the year of his death. He was one of the founders of the Congregational Church of Woburn and one of its deacons.
Deacon Edward Converse's son, Ensign James Converse, was prominent in the military affairs of Massachusetts ; his grandson was Joshua; his great-grandson was Joseph - whose daughter married Levi Mead and so became the grandmother of Larkin G. Mead; and his great-great-grandson was the Rev. James Con- verse, minister of the Weathersfield Church.
The Rev. James Converse was born in Bedford, Massachusetts, on July 26, 1772. He was a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1799, and studied for the ministry in Rindge, New Hampshire, under the Rev. Dr. Seth Payson. He was ordained as minister of the Weathersfield Congregational Church, on February 10, 1802, and continued as minister of the parish till his death, on January 14, 1839. Mr. Converse was married twice. His first wife was Mehitable Cogswell, daughter of William Cogswell, of Marlboro, Massachusetts, whom he married on June 17, 1802. Mrs. Converse died on April 10, 1810. His second wife was Charlotte White, whom he married on January 18, 1813. Mr. Converse was a Representative in the Vermont Legislature in 1819, and he served as State Chaplain for one term.
A sawmill was built in the hamlet called Amsden, on Mill Creek, in 1782, by Levi Sterns; and a few years later, a saw- and grist- mill was built by a man named Culver and improved later by Joseph Spafford. In Weathersfield village, Captain John Wil- liams built a gristmill, in 1798, which he sold to his son, J. R. Williams, and Nahum Duncan, in 1805.
From about 1800, down to 1825, Weathersfield Center, where the first Church was organized, was a busy, prosperous little vil- lage, but as time went on, the railroads and the better oppor-
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tunities elsewhere for making money depopulated the Center - just as similar causes depopulated many charming and prosperous Yankee villages ---- till now it is hardly a hamlet.
In 1789, the Legislature granted permission to John Hubbard to.manage a lottery, that he might raise thereby the sum of £150 for the erection of a brewery. In 1791, a similar act permitted Hubbard and Abraham Downer to have a lottery to raise £200 more for the brewery.
CLAREMONT.
A BOUT ten years before the settlement of Claremont, a hunter and trapper of fame in his line, named Eastman, left the Town of Killingworth for a long journey up the Connecticut River in search of fur-bearing animals. At Sugar River and its tiny tributaries, in Claremont, he found beavers and otters in great numbers. Eastman extended his trapping as far as what is now Newport, and returned to Connecticut with a large number of valuable skins. He gave a glowing description of the country and of the rich harvest of pelts that could be ob- tained there, to his fellow townsmen and after disposing of his pelts returned to the same locality for more trapping, but he was never heard of or seen again. His skeleton was found near Mink Brook, however, by some of his Killingworth neighbors who had gone to Newport to settle. It was believed that he had been killed by Indians who were jealous of his success as a trapper.
The first settlement was made in 1762, two years before the charter was granted, by David Lynde and Moses Spafford, and at different times in the following five years a few other honte- makers joined them and cleared land and built very primitive cabins of logs in the warm months, and returned to their homes when the cold weather set in. The greater number of these clear- ings were made in the western portion of the town, along Sugar River, which was so called from the great number of sugar maples upon its banks.
Claremont was granted by Governor Benning Wentworth to Josiah Willard, Samuel Ashley and sixty-eight other men, in 1764, and like the other grants made by Wentworth, there were reservations of land for himself; for the Society for the Propaga- tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; for the Church of England; for the first minister to be settled, and for education.
Nearly all of the proprietors were non-residents. Of the seventy to whom the land was granted only Samuel Ashley, his son Samuel, and Oliver Ashley became inhabitants. The pro- prietors offered inducements to settlers in 1767, and as a result
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some families came to Claremont from several Connecticut towns, chiefly from Farmington, Hebron and Colchester.
By 1769, the first settlers, and those who followed them and had made clearings and built rude cabins, did not return to their homes for the winter months. They had so far progressed witin their clearings and the building of substantial loghouses, that they sent for their families. The first wedding in Claremont was that of Barnabas Ellis and Elizabeth Spencer. The minister, the Rev. Bulkley Olcott, came from Charlestown - which was settled twenty-two years before Claremont - and as there was no road between the two settlements, the bride's brother acted as the minister's guide and also as the bearer of some new rum for the occasion. Being the first wedding, it was an event of great im- portance in the lives of the settlers. The marriage took place in the largest of the log houses - a pretentious affair for those days as it included three rooms and a chamber under the roof - with the entire population present. Major Otis Waite in his admirable, exhaustive and very entertaining history of Claremont, gives the following description of this first wedding :
The guests were seated upon benches, stools, and blocks of wood. In front of the happy pair was a stand upon which a Bible, hymn book, and a full tumbler of the beverage provided. The parties being in order the minister approached the stand, and with becoming dignity took up the tumbler - of rum - and after a generous sip of its contents, said: "I wish you joy, my friends, on this occasion." A chapter from the Bible was read, a hymn was sung,-the minister reading a line and those present singing each line as read. The marriage knot was then solemnly and · duly tied, a long prayer offered and the ceremony was complete. Then followed toasts, jokes, and merriment, interspersed with black-strap.
Barnabas Ellis became one of the most prominent men of his day. In civil life he filled, with credit to himself and satisfaction to his fellow townsmen, several offices. In the Revolution he was a lieutenant and was with Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, in 1775, and took part in the Battle of Bennington, in August, 1777. His farm was on Town Hill and is still owned by one of his descendants.
One of the settlers who came from Farmington, Connecticut, as a result of the inducements offered by the proprietors in 1767, was Benjamin Tyler, a typical Connecticut Yankee, whose in-
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genuity was unlimited. He could do, and did do, nearly every- thing from his share of populating New England to mending a broken gun, building and running a mill and serving as a town official. Being a millwright, the proprietors gave him the water- power on Sugar River and two acres of land for a mill yard, on condition that he build a mill and maintain it for ten years.
Benjamin Tyler was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, in Feb- ruary, 1732, where he married Mahitabel Andrews, and later moved to Farmington, where his seven children were born. In the spring of 1767, he came to Claremont and in the summer fol- lowing he built a dam on the river at West Claremont, which later became the site of the Jarvis dam. This was the first mill dam in the town. In the spring of 1768, having returned to Farmington, he started on an ox-sled over the snow and the ice on the Connecticut River, with his family and household goo.is for Claremont. While on the way to Claremont he was honored by his future fellow townsmen by being elected as one of the selectmen. The Tylers were snow-bound for several days at Montague, Massachusetts, and that fact demonstrated his ingenu- ity referred to, as he paid for the board and lodging of himself and his family at the tavern in Montague, by making a pair of cartwheels for the landlord. In the summer of 1768, Mr. Tyler built a gristmill and a sawmill on the north bank of Sugar River, and then began to grind grain for the settlers in Claremont and for many miles about, the grists being brought to his mill on the backs of the farmers. He also sawed lumber and built, or super- intended the building of, many of the first framed houses and barns in the town. The house he built for himself was the largest in town at that time.
· The early settlers were about equally divided in their religious beliefs, half of them being Churchmen and the other half Con- gregationalists, but as the population increased the Congrega- tionalists were soon in the majority. This was no doubt due to the fact that so many of the inhabitants came from Connecticut, where the people did not confess their creed to be, in one Catholic and Apostolic Church, but in one Orthodox and Congregational Church.
On April 28, 1769, the Churchmen of Claremont wrote to the Clergy and Missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of
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the Gospel in Foreign Parts, who were to meet in New Milford, Connecticut, stating their great need of a teacher. "We believe ", they said, " that a good school lays the foundation for a sober, godly and righteous life; and since Samuel Cole, Esq., has been employed in keeping school and is an inhabitant and proprietor among us (whose character and qualifications some of you know well) we humbly desire you would be pleased to represent our state to the venerable Society, and endeavor that he may be ap- pointed Catechist and Schoolmaster among us a few years till we have got over the first difficulties and hardships of a wild, unculti- vated country."
The first rector to officiate at a service of the Episcopal Church in Claremont was the Rev. Samuel Peters, of Hebron, Connecti- cut, a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
The Rev. Mr. Peters was evidently one of that variety of rec- tors of the Church of England, not scarce in those days, who lacked in sympathy, was fond of his stomach and body as well as his soul, and was incapable of distinguishing a diamond till the lapidary had removed its rough exterior. This was shown in his account of his journey through the river towns of Vermont and New Hampshire in 1770. He said of them :
Yet in both are several thousand souls, who live without the means of grace, destitute of knowledge, laden down with ignorance and covered with poverty.
Under similar conditions, a Jesuit missionary or a minister of the Congregational Church would have seen the diamonds and would have been thankful that he had been given the opportunity to cut and polish the gems. In those days, the Rector, the Priest and the Minister were, undoubtedly, equally good Christians, but one of them had the knack of concealing it.
Although Mr. Peters did not mention the fact in his narrative -- possibly he was not proud of organizing a Church with such ignorant poverty covered parishioners - he did organize a Church in Claremont in 1771. The Episcopal Church in Claremont -- and doubtless in other northern New England towns - had a very great struggle with adversity. It was not the Church of the people. It was the Church that the people had forsaken their homes in Great Britain to be rid of, so it is not difficult to imag- ine how great a struggle the Churchmen of Claremont had to
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keep their parish alive. That it did survive, is an evidence of the sincerity and noble courage of the parishioners.
The Rev. Ranna Crositt, the opposite of Mr. Peters, became rector, about 1773, or a little earlier. He must have lived upon faith and good works. Certainly his salary would not purchase an existence for himself alone, with enough left over to bury his family after it had died from starvation. His salary at the start was £30 paid by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In 1777, the people of the parish agreed to pay hin an additional £30, but in 1778, they were obliged to reduce it to £15. The inability of the Church to support the rector may be the better understood, when it is known, that the people were obliged to pay their rate towards the support of the Orthodox, the True, the Congregational minister. So it is easily seen that their re- ligion was a great and expensive luxury and that while their rector was barely existing, the Congregational minister was living.
The clergy and laity of the Established Church of England in New Hampshire and Vermont were inclined to be Tories. Many were self-avowed Tories, and they paid a heavy penalty for their loyalty to the King. While it seems strange that their short- sightedness prevented them from seeing that the spirit of the British colonists in America, especially in New England, was ir- resistible and would be satisfied with nothing less than Inde- pendence once the war was begun, their faithfulness to their prin- ciple and their King was as admirable as the patriotism of the Rebels. Letters from Colonel John Peters to his brother the Rev. Samuel Peters, the organizer of the Episcopal Church of Claremont, and from the rector of that Church, the Rev. Ranna Crositt, to the Society give information that shows how dearly they paid for their loyalty. Colonel Peters says in his letter of July 20, 1778;
Rev. Dr. Wheelock, President of Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, in conjunction with Deacon Bayley, Mr. Morey, and Mr. Hurd, all justices of the peace, put an end to the Church of England in this State, so early as 1775. They seized me, Captain Peters and all the judges of Cumber- land, Gloucester, the Rev. Mr. Crositt and Mr. Cole, and all the Church people for 200 miles up the river, and confined us in close gaols, after beat- ing and drawing us through water and mud. Here we lay sometime and were to continue in prison until we abjured the king and signed the league and covenant. Many died; one was Captain Peters' son. We were
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removed from the gaol and confined in private houses at our own expense. Captain Peters and myself were guarded by twelve rebel soldiers, while sick in bed, and we paid dearly for the honor; and others fared in like manner. *
* Captain Peters has been tried by court-martial and or- dered to be shot for refusing to lead his company against the King's troops. He was afterward reprieved, but still in gaol, and was ruined both in health and property; Crositt and Cole * * * had more insults than any of the loyalists, because they had been servants of the Society, which, under pretense (as the rebels say) of propagating religion, had propagated loyalty, in opposition to the liberties of America.
The Rev. Mr. Crositt's letter was written in New York, on June 6, 1779.
I arrived in this city last Sunday, by permission, with a flag, and am to return in a few days * * I have been by the committee confined as a prisoner, in the town of Claremont, ever since the 12th of April, 1775; yet God has preserved me from the people. * * * The numbers of my parishioners and communicants in Claremont are increased, but I have been ' cruelly distressed with fines for refusing entirely to fight against the King. In sundry places where I used to officiate, the church- people are all dwindled away. Some have fled to the King's army for protection, some were banished; and many died.
Mr. Crositt left the Church in 1785, and was appointed as chaplain at Sidney, Cape Breton Island, where he died in 1815. After Mr. Crositt left, in 1785, the Church had no rector for several years, but the services were continued by Ebenezer Rice, a layreader, who also kept the records of the parish. In 1785, the Church had a pewter Communion service which was in use till 1822.
In 1787, the Rev. Abraham Towlinson officiated for seven months, and in 1788, the Rev. Solomon Blakeslee became rector, with a salary of £52, the use of the parish land, or glebe, and the back rents due on that property. Mr. Blakeslee must have been an unusually eloquent and persuasive preacher for the member- ship of the Church was greatly increased and on one occasion, thirty Congregational families became Churchmen, or, as a promi- nent inhabitant of Old Saybrook, who was weary of paying taxes for the support of the Congregational minister and wished to avoid it by "signing off ", expressed it; "I hereby renounce the Christian religion that I may join the Episcopal Church ".
In 1794, the Church was incorporated as Union Church, by the Legislature. On May 13 of that year, a most extraordinary
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proposal was made by the Congregationalists to the Episcopalians. It was that a Congregational minister, named Whiting, should be employed by both denominations as a minister-rector. While the Congregationalists and Episcopalians were of one mind in regard to creed and church doctrines, they were widely separated in Church government form of service. How the Rev. Mr. Whiting could serve two such masters, without a prick of conscience, is a mystery. As there had been a great many families who had proselyted from the meeting-house to the Church, this proposal may have been a clever bit of ecclesiastical politics; an attempt to win them back, but if it was, it did not succeed. The com- mittee appointed, or chosen, from the Church to confer with a committee from the Meeting-house, was composed of, Bill Barnes, Ebenezer Rice, Ambrose Crositt, David Dodge, Sanford Kings- bury, John W. Russell and Captain George Hubbard. This com- mittee agreed to the proposal with the stipulations, that the Rev. Mr. White, having been ordained according to the rites of the Congregational Church, should also receive Episcopal ordination, and that he should officiate alternately at the church and the meeting-house. The Congregationalists refused to accept the terms. As the stipulations were entirely fair ; as they were just, and even less than could be expected; as nothing was said in regard to the Sacraments and Church government; the refusal of the Congregationalists makes it seem as if their proposal was entirely due to shrewd ecclesiastical politics. In 1795, the Rev. Daniel Barber became rector of the Church. Mr. Barber was a proselyte, or a convert, or was in some other way induced to give up Congregationalism for Episcopacy. In 1818 Mr. Barber was dismissed from Union Parish because he had again discovered the error of his ways and faith and this time had been proselyted, or converted or in some other way wheedled into the Roman Catholic Church. The Rev. Daniel Barber, minister-rector-priest died in 1834, but just what his religious belief was after that, is, of course, only to be guessed at.
Soon after the settlement of the town, in 1762, the Con- gregationalists held public worship in one or another of the homes, and in 1767, Samuel Cole, a graduate of Yale, was ap- pointed their reader by the settlers. In 1771, Thomas Gustin took steps to interest the people in the settlement of a minister and in February, 1772, the Rev. George Wheaton was settled
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as the first minister, but the records do not show that there was an organized Church at that time. There is much that is humor- cus in the Rev. Mr. Wheaton's brief acceptance of his call to the pastorate of the Claremont Congregational Church, but of course, the good young man was entirely ignorant of it. His acceptance is addressed to "The Church of Christ and other Inhabitants of the town of Claremont". The "Other Inhabitants " doubtless being Indians, Episcopalians and Baptists.
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