USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Sherman > Historical landmarks in the town of Sherman, Connecticut > Part 2
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day a night of rest in the great, curtained four-poster of some country tavern?
Another place which should be kept in memory is the level field at the center in front of Charles McDonald's house, where training and general muster were held. Ac- cording to the New England custom, every man was compelled to train for the militia under penalty of fine, and each town had its company, which was annually reviewed and drilled. In the words of an old-time song :
"The first Monday in May Is Training Day, And nothing can be grander ; Brother Bill Is corporill, And father, he's commander."
In the autumn came regimental training or general muster, held in a different place each year, a regular circuit being made of the towns in the district. Town and dis- trict officers and sometimes state officers were there, as well as many spectators, in- cluding the families of the military men and guests from out of town. In 1830 general muster was held in Sherman. The stirring sounds of fife and drum, the superb horses of the officers, the gorgeous uniforms of the men-red-banded blue coats, white trous- ers, and stiff cockade hats-and the march- ing and counter-marching and maneuvers of the battlefield must have made a real pageant to the quiet little town. Each com- pany sent rations for its men, and for the officers a sumptuous feast was spread in the
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nearby tavern; General Hinman, Connecti- cut's commander of militia, being chief guest of honor. No picture of Training Day would be complete without mention of the gingerbread, which was as indispensable to Training Day as firecrackers to Fourth of July. In the memory of those who have known the festival still linger visions of those squares of gingerbread, creased across the top, glazed with molasses, sweet, spicy, and delicious.
Like all Puritan towns, Sherman had a whipping posts and stocks, standing on the green near the center church, and used within the memory of one now living, Mrs. Sherwood, who tells of seeing, in her child- hood, a man tied to the post and whipped for the offence of stealing. The theft was not large, but "stealing was stealing in those days," and the punishment vigorously in- flicted by the inflexible old magistrate, Squire Beardsley. Mrs. Sherwood was but a child when the last transgressor was whipped at the post, yet the shrinking, cringing figure, turning and twisting under the smarting blows, is still a vivid picture after ninety years have passed. This same Squire Beardsley exacted the lawful fine for swearing, one dollar for every oath. There is a story told of one man who was so angry over the fine that he swore the harder; the old squire, however,, waited quietly until he subsided, and then cooly collected a pen- alty of three or four dollars for the second · outbreak. .
The early church and schoolhouse are al-
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ways landmarks in a new community, and though these have long ago been replaced in Sherman by more modern buildings, memory pictures of them still remain. The old church, across the road from the present Union Church at the center, was a typical Puritan house of worship-large, bare, un- heated, each pew square and roomy with a door at the end and a seat around the sides. In the high gallery sat the singers, bass in the south gallery, treble in the north, and tenor and counter together in the west. Everybody went to church in early days and the great meeting-house, holding prob- ably five or six hundred people, was well filled Sunday after Sunday. On foot, in . lumber wagons, and on horseback the people came, to listen to two hour-long sermons, one at ten o'clock, the other at one. In winter they brought their foot-stoves and filled them in the noon intermission with coals from the neighboring houses, where they ate their luncheons. Over their lun- cheons they discussed the sermon thought- fully and reverently, with real interest and understanding, for theology was the topic of the people. The beautiful ministry of the beloved pastor, Rev. Maltby Gelston, is a cherished part of Sherman church history.
Those were the days of a Puritan Sab- bath. From the going down of the sun on Saturday to the going down of the sun on Sunday, no unnecessary work was done, neither bootblacking nor shaving, nor need- less cooking ; no riding or driving permitted save the trip to church. Children were
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brought up in strictest regard for the Sab- bath, and any infringement on their part was ventured in fear and trembling. Three little Sherman people, going out into the orchard for apples one Puritan Sabbath day, though they wanted the apples very, very much, thought they must surely be as naughty as the mocking Hebrew children who said unto Elisha, "Go up, thou bald- head," and so they set the youngest one, the little brother, to keep watch for the bears and give warning if they came out of the wood.
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Quaint as the old-time church was the first schoolhouse, with its rows of hard, straight slab benches on three sides of the room, its rough counters, parallel with the benches, for the children's books, and its great stone fireplace at the end. The school was large, made up of three-year-old babies learning their letters and grown young people mastering the problems of Daboll's arithmetic and the constructions of the Eng- lish reader. The mantle of Job must have been sorely needed by the young teacher, who received the princely salary of seventy- five cents or one dollar a week, and who taught, summer and winter, six days out of seven, with only one half-holiday in a fort- night and only four weeks vacation in the year. She had moral as well as mental charge of her little flock, and misdemeanors were promptly reported to her for punish- ment. Coming into this old-time school- house one day, a little three-year-old, who is a Chicago multi-millionaire now, solemnly
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affirmed that one of the boys had been swearing. The teacher, grieved and sur- prised, asked what the boy had said, and the child answered, in a low, shocked voice:
"Mudpuddle !"
Of the high scholarship in those early days much might be said. Modern schools have no more brilliant pupils than the little fellow, trained in this country schoolhouse, who went through Daboll's arithmetic at six, and was called years after by one who knew him in his college course, the bright- est man in Yale.
Firmly laid in the plain bare schoolhouse were the foundations of learning and cul- ture, by bright, conscientious teachers. One who faithfully taught the little ones their A. B. E's and the older ones their rhetoric and logic was afterward Connecticut's wise and honored Governor Andrews.
Perhaps more important than all the rest, because at the root of all, are the early homes, those Puritan homes of vigor and vitality, simplicity and strength, honor and uprightness. Dear to our hearts to-day is the slightest plenishing of a house of the olden time, whether it be the bit of blue china, the heirloom of silver, the fiddleback chair, the grandfather's clock, or the spin- ning-wheel, that has seen the people and the life we can only read and write and wonder about. The very houses are at- tractive, bare and empty though some of them may be. Great fireplaces and capa- cious brick ovens still tell the story of the old-time hospitality, and the great rooms
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seem to thrill even yet with the happy, busy stir of the throng of children who had their work to do even then, and were brought up in the way they should go, trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Some of them worked for the nation in after years, helping to make the world wiser and better and safer, and a few have gained more or less distinction.
Thus Ammi Giddings, born on his grandfather's homestead, living afterward in Ohio, was clerk of the House of Repre- sentatives, member and president pro tem of the Senate, and Justice of the Supreme Court of Montana. Marsh Giddings, who went from Sherman to Michigan in his boy- hood, was appointed Consul General to In- dia by President Grant, but refused the appointment; he was afterward made Gov- ernor of New Mexico, and was said to have filled the trust "with great credit to himself and the people of the territory." Franklin Giddings, born in the old tavern at the center when it was kept by his grand- father, Revilo Fuller, is professor of soci- ology at Columbia University, a man of whom we have a right to be proud. Only the other day a Japanese student in America gave the name of Professor Giddings as one of the six Americans best known and most admired in Japan; when asked which of the six he considered the greatest, he answered: "Professor Giddings." Profes- sor Giddings was invited several years ago to deliver a course of lectures at the Uni- versity of Tokio. Of his sociological books
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at least one has been translated into Japan- ese, French, Russian, Spanish, Bohemian and Hebrew. Philo Penfield Stewart, a grandson of Alexander Stewart, went as a missionary to the Choctaw Indians in Mis- sissippi when he was twenty-three years old, making the horseback journey alone through two thousand miles of wilderness. Though he refused to accept any salary from the Board, he was called the most useful man on the field, his Yankee skill helping in many ways, especially by con- structing a grist mill to grind the corn, which before this the children in the school had pounded in mortars. After coming back to the East he invented the Stewart stove, from which, it is said, everything of value in the modern cooking stove is taken. The story of his struggle and poverty be- fore the stoves were put upon the market, sometimes his only fare being corn meal and water, sounds like the life story of in- ventors the world over. When the tide turned and his hands were filled with money he sought the best possible use for it. So it came about that he founded Oberlin Col- lege, a pioneer institution in co-education, manual training, and open doors to the col- ored race. Oberlin is the mother of twenty other colleges, and more than twenty thou- sand students have gone in and out at her doors and called her blessed. As pioneer missionary, abolitionist, inventor. philan- thropist, and founder of Oberlin, Philo Pen- field Stewart brings lasting honor upon the town of his birth.
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The church and the school and the early homes are our landmarks and our pride. Of the Puritan type and the Puritan stock, they yet belong to a day when Puritanism was mellowing into a broader toleration, though losing none of its grandeur and principle, relaxing a little in judging the neighbor's deed, but abating not at all in the standard set for self.
The Puritan and the Quaker dwelt side by side, one in the valley, the other on the hilltop. In outward forms they differed, but in the great things of men's souls they were not far apart. So long as we who come after them live our faith as they lived theirs, in love to God and goodwill to man, the future of Quaker Hill and of Sherman ' will be as glad and beautiful as the past has been strong and heroic.
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