USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Berlin > History of Berlin, Connecticut > Part 5
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II. CATHARINE M. (1840-1914). See Foreword.
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THE NORTH FAMILY
loved to steal out there to hear them tell their stories, but this was not allowed, they were called back and kept with their father and mother in the "middle room." The large circle of cousins delighted in visiting at Uncle Reuben's. They said Aunt Huldah always put her best foot foremost, and truly she did make an attractive home there. To her it was, as she said, the "Garden of Eden."
Besides the Middletown Sentinel, for secular news, and the Puritan and Recorder and Evangelical Magazine for Sunday reading, the Boston Cultivator, with its weekly budget of advice for better ways of managing farm work, brought also word of the latest improved fruits and flowers for the garden.
A large, square plat of ground, southeast from the house, was guarded from dogs, cats, and chickens by a close picket fence. Here stately sun flowers, flaunting princess feather, and great, red poppies elbowed corn and beans. Along the fence were currant bushes, and prickly gooseberries, and thorny raspber- ries, with beds of strawberries and asparagus. From the cor- ners tansy, motherwort, sage, catnip, and trailing hops, cut and dried for winter, eased many a pain. Aromatic fennel, dill, and caraway furnished meeting seed fresh from June to October, and dry from October to June again. Did you ever feel around, under the tufts of the pew cushions in the old church, with your little fingers for stray fennel seeds ?
In the center of the garden was a great, spreading pear tree, that bore bushels of fruit, small, sour, puckery, and hard at the core; but the sauce! After the boys married their wives had to "do up" a large stone jar full of those pears every year.
In the southwest corner a tall tacamahac or balsam-poplar scat- tered sweet, sticky buds to be made into healing salve. Up the balsam climbed a scarlet trumpet creeper, grown from a root given to Huldah by her sister Hepsy when she lived at the Dr. Brandegee place. Mulberry and cherry trees rivaled the honeysuckle for the attention of the birds and gay flowers- bee-balm, marigolds, butter-and-eggs, four-o'clocks, flowering almond, dahlias, portulaca, flower-de-luce, 'stertions and every- thing that anybody else grew, were found in this garden.
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One winter's day Wallace, the hired man, who had never seen a dahlia root, brought all the tubers up from the cellar and boiled them for his dinner.
West of the house was the apple orchard. There was one tree called the "bitter sweet," m! m! drawn from the brick oven, at supper time, those apples were like nectar. Handy, at the foot of the cellar stairs, was a sleigh body, yellow striped with black, that might have come out of the ark, and almost as big, filled with apples for winter use, and every time the cellar door was opened up came a whiff of fragrance from those apples.
All along the fences were peach trees, pears, cherries, and plums. Peaches were so abundant that they were fed to the swine.
As the sun nears the western hills, let us follow the lane-way south of the house. First, on the left hand, are the bee hives. Go softly here, those bees are vicious; once they came out and stung an innocent child. She ran screaming back to the house to her grandmother, who sent Josiah down the hill to get some mud, from a puddle in the road, for a plaster. In the lane, on the west side, we take out a fence rail and step over into the field to test the watermelons.
On the other side we halt to see how the walnuts are coming on. Two famous, great trees stand here in the open meadow. The shells, from one, chock full of buttery meat, are so thin that the children crack them with their teeth.
Now, at the end, we let down the bars and call "Co, co." Soon, from distant, shady corners of the great pasture, come the cows, eager for milking time. There was no patent separator for the cream of this dairy, but if you had once tasted the butter that "came" in that old barrel churn, it would make your mouth water to-day to think of it. Dr. Gridley always wanted Mrs. Reuben North's butter as long as she had it to spare.
And the cheese,-for this, a big tub full of sweet milk was required, and so Mrs. North and Mrs. Normand Wilcox, across the way, took turns about and put their milkings together. In the long shed room, in the southeast corner, was the cheese press, and up in the southwest chamber, on shelves, row upon row of
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THE NORTH FAMILY
cheeses were placed to ripen-turned every day and rubbed with butter, until, sweet, mellow, and nutty, they would, to use Edward North's expression, almost set one longing to be mites.
Sunday mornings the house was vocal with song. The father led the choir in church and the boys all helped. Alfred sang bass, and Samuel carried the tenor. Reuben played the violin ; one he kept for that service, a sort of sacred fiddle, which he would never allow anyone to use for dancing tunes. Josiah played the flute so acceptably that the church gave him one with silver keys. He also studied the piano with the first Mrs. Joseph Whittlesey, and under her instruction he played the old church organ. The mother boasted that she fitted out twenty- one from her home, every Sunday for church.
The young people, who had to walk, struck into the woods west of the Ward place and followed a well-beaten path, across lots, that came out by Colonel Bulkeley's ledge. In summer time, to keep their nicely blacked shoes clean, they carried them, with their stockings, in their hands until they reached the village.
Reuben North was one of the first in town to take a stand for temperance, but when haying time came the men would not work without some liquid refreshment stronger than ginger and molasses stirred with water, and Alfred was sent up street with a jug for New England rum.
Reuben North, Jr., in his dairy under date February 27, 1838, writes :
Attended a temperance meeting at the chapel. . Mr. Cary (principal of Academy) thought it was worse to drink cider than to drink brandy. Dr. Gridley thought we drank too much of every- thing. Mr .- (a clergyman) thought a man had a right to drink a little wine or cider at his own discretion.
An incident helps us to a date relating to the work in the old pistol factory. The Rev. James McDonald was settled here from April 1, 1835, to November 27, 1837. One day as he drove over the bridge by the shop he called out "Making guns to kill people with!" "No," replied Mr. North, with indigna-
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HISTORY OF BERLIN
tion, "I am making guns to save life !" Possibly this remark of the minister's set the sons to thinking that the business was not a proper one for Christians. They seemed to be prejudiced against it, and not one of them, so far as is known, kept any memento of the place more belligerent than a pair of tongs or a tuning fork.
The size of the factory is unknown but it had two stories above the basement and was entered from the street. Work was discontinued there in the winter of 1842-3. As has been said, "It is strange how fast a building goes to decay when out of touch with humanity."
Twelve years or so later Deacon Alfred North went into the shop one day and, upstairs, a beam on which he stepped, broke and he fell to the lower story astride another beam, which for- tunately held and saved him from being dashed upon the rocks below. The factory was still standing in the winter of 1856-7 and George S. North, a grandson, went all over it. When his grandmother knew what the boy had done she was frightened and told him never to go in there again. Then he stood on the bridge and threw stones at the windows, and that hurt her feelings. Many tools and scraps of iron were lying all about at that time. Soon afterwards a flood came and carried off dam, shop and all. The pond was a favorite swimming place for boys, and in winter the young people of the village liked to go there to skate, for the reason that they could warm themselves by the shop fires.
Back in 1826 Reuben North had paid for his farm and was prosperous, when a friend, for whom he had given his name as security for a large amount, failed in business. Compelled to face the obligation he covered his property with mortgages, and from that time on, with broken health, it was a struggle to pay interest money and make ends meet. However, "he did the best he could for his boys." Edward and Josiah were educated at Hamilton College, and the others had what advantages were afforded by the district schools and the Worthington Academy.
Reuben North died April 4, 1853, aged sixty-seven years. Huldah, his wife, remained on the homestead for awhile, but it
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THE NORTH FAMILY
was lonely for her there, and she went to live with a favorite niece, Mrs. Emily North Mckay, in East Berlin, where she died September 11, 1865, aged seventy-six years. At her grave on the hill, Rev. Wilder Smith, who conducted the service, spoke these words :
In bringing this aged mother to this place, we have brought her past the home of her birth, past the home she entered as a bride, and from the home of her old age, and have laid her down in this, her last resting place, no more to be disturbed until the morning of the Resurrection.
Of the seven sons in this family Alfred, the eldest, died January 14, 1894, at the age of eighty-two years.
Samuel, social, cheerful and large hearted, died April 30, 1878, at the age of sixty-four years, in Middle Haddam where, for fourteen years, he was deacon of the Congregational church.
Reuben, who was a very religious young man, was a favorite with the young people for his musical ability and pleasant man- ners. He died of consumption November 22, 1844.
Edward North, now affectionately known as "Old Greek,"* united with the Second Congregational Church of Berlin in 1831, at the age of eleven years. He fitted for college partly under Ariel Parish at the Worthington Academy, and graduated from Hamilton, as valedictorian, in 1841. Two years later he was elected Professor of Ancient Languages in Hamilton, and when, in 1901, he resigned the chair of "Greek and Greek Literature," he had covered a term of fifty-seven years in the service of the college. He died at his home on College Hill, September 13, 1903, aged eighty-three years. His son, Dr. S. N. D. North, also a graduate of Hamilton, class of 1869, is well known as Director of the Census, and as head of the "North Tariff Com- mission," recently sent abroad by President Roosevelt for a conference with the German Tariff Commission.
Gladys North, a daughter of S. N. D. North, is a member of the "Olive Mead Quartette."
* Cf. "Old Greek: An Old Time Professor in an Old Fashioned College." By S. N. D. North. New York, 1905.
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Simeon North, the fifth son, died as the result of an accident, January 20, 1842, at the age of twenty years. He went one winter day upon Lamentation to help bring home some firewood. On the way down the mountain the sled slipped and overturned, so that he was caught and crushed under the weight of the load.
Frederic North, once leader of the choir, and superintendent of the Sunday school, and many years deacon of the Second Congregational Church, in Berlin, died September 17, 1897, aged seventy-three years.
Josiah Wilcox North graduated from Hamilton College in 1848, and from Yale Divinity School in 1852. He went West as a Home Missionary and held pastorates at Geneseo and Como, Ill. His health failed and he was abliged to abandon his profession. He died December 13, 1882, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.
Josiah was never punished when a child, for the reason that he never did anything that merited punishment. His mother said the only thing he was set about was that he would have a clean collar every day.
NOTE. An incident is here given to show Dr. Edward North's tact in dealing with his young men. One morning, as he entered his class room, he saw upon the black board, a very clever caricature of himself, drawn by an artist student. He looked at it a moment, then turned and said "Young gentlemen, will you please rub that out; one is enough."
The question has been asked how, in the days when no sturdy handmaidens came from across the seas to knock at our doors, work was done in families like the Norths. In this particular household, homeless girls were sometimes taken, or bound until of age, and trained in all the mysteries of domestic science, until fitted to conduct homes of their own-and they were all married.
A document, written in 1812, shows that the selectmen of Berlin indentured to Reuben North, a poor child, whose parents did not provide for her, under these conditions :
She was pledged to "obey all his lawful commands" and "to serve him faithfully until she arrive at the age of eighteen
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THE NORTH FAMILY
years." He in turn agreed to provide her with "sufficient meat, drink washing lodging Cloathing and Phisick," and at the end of the time "to give her two good suits of Cloaths one suitable for every day wear the other for Holy days."
It was a rule in old times for a girl to have a pillow case full of stockings in readiness for her marriage. Mrs. North told one of her young women that for every pair of stockings she would knit for herself, she would furnish the yarn and knit another pair to put with them. The girl replied, "My Bible tells me to take no thought for the morrow."
Sometimes it was a sister, or a cousin who lent a helping hand ; one, the eldest of the family of eight daughters, came in her youth, and staid on year after year, honored as the mother's trusted assistant, until she was well past forty. Then a widower hailed from New York State, in search of a wife to care for himself; his four daughters-one bedridden; his three sons- one crazy, and his twenty cows. Some one expatiated to him upon the virtues of Aunt Patience and it was a sorry day for the "tribe of Reuben"-that August 5, 1833, when he carried her away as his bride. Her wages, carefully treasured for a rainy day, went to pay off a mortgage on the farm "out there," and her husband was grateful to be free from debt. She worked like a slave, but the family all loved her, and she did not die an "old maid."
She is recorded on earth as having "no children."
Widow Landers used to come from Middletown Upper Houses to nurse in time of sickness. She took snuff and used a colored handkerchief; and there was an "Aunt Mattie Savage" who came for long visits. She was harmlessly deranged, and at night she would place by the side of her bed a row of chairs. She said the "Bill Witches" came in the night and sat in them.
Young women who had learned the tailor's trade came by the week with patterns and shears and goose and made up clothing for the men and boys. One girl, who sometimes worked for a man tailor, laughed in her sleeve at an evening party, when she heard a young man say that he would never wear a coat made by a woman. She sewed every stitch of the coat he had on his back at the time.
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In the long, east shed-room of the North house was a remark- able washing machine, invented, 1808-10, by Reuben North. It was a cumbersome affair, with heavy pounders in a round bottom box. A pulley tackle passed outside to which, on Monday mornings, a horse was attached and made to do the great wash- ings. When the boys grew up they hated the sight of this machine and without regard to the feelings of their father, they managed to get it out to the barn. A duplicate of this washer was to be made for Benjamin Wilcox in 1810.
The large back extension of the old North house was torn away in the fifties, and the place has changed ownership several times. Of the garden not a vestige remains. The great shag- barks in the meadow, while still in vigor, fell victims to the steam sawmill in 1885. Trees grown from a handful of the thin shelled nuts, planted by Edward North on his grounds at Clin- ton, have been in bearing many years. Even the fireplace brasses and front door latch with the fine brass knocker disap- peared. Strange to say this knocker has recently been found down in Guilford, Conn., and an effort has been made to obtain it for the collection of antiques to be exhibited at Jamestown.
The farm is now occupied by John Hanson and his family from Sweden.
By deed of December 10, 1807, Simeon North "for love and affection" conveyed to his son Reuben the place next east of his own dwelling house, described as "containing one rood of land with the dwelling house thereon standing, that is now occupied by Simeon Strickland." "The above land and house is to be estimated at $150 toward said Reuben's portion." No pre- vious deed of this house can be found and the inference is that it was built by S. North to be used by tenants.
Leverett Moss occupied the place for a number of years. Afterward somebody lived there whose companions were fox- hounds and chicken thieves. One night in a drunken brawl he shot and nearly killed a man. For this crime he served a term in the state prison. Then Minot Piper, father of six boys,
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purchased the property and repaired the house. The premises are now owned by Wm. E. S. Turner.
Orrin C. Clark of East Berlin, a grandson of Simeon Strick- land, gives the following account of him :
Born in Glastonbury, March 25th, 1755, he enlisted in the Revolu- tionary war-marched from East Hartford-served six months as private under Captain Rowley, Colonel Waterbury and General Gates, and one year as private under Captain Miles and Colonel Canfield. He built galleys at Gainsborough, was in the battles of Ticonderoga and Skeinesborough and was discharged at Ticonderoga.
He returned to Glastonbury and later removed to Middletown. In 1834 he moved to the Ward house (next west of Spruce Brook), and died there June 25, 1836, at the age of eighty-one years and three months. After his death, his wife, Mary Strick- land, and her daughter, Ruth Strickland Clark, moved to the old King house, the second west of the Ward place. Mary Strickland died there October 29, 1839, aged eighty-eight years and five months. She was buried beside her husband in the hill cemetery across the way.
Simeon Strickland was employed in the North pistol factory in 1811, as shown by credit given him for work. His name appears in the "Connecticut Men of the Revolution," as a pensioner in 1832.
Daniel Clark, the husband of Ruth Strickland Clark, died in Philadelphia, February 23, 1831, and she came back to Berlin with her children. In her old age she lived with her daughter, Mrs. Mary Ann Richardson. She died in the John Lee house, west of the village hotel, June 14, 1885, aged ninety-three years. Her grave is in Maple Cemetery.
Speaking of the loss of memory, Mrs. Clark said she never forgot when told that anyone was sick or in trouble. Born in 1792, at Glastonbury, she was quite young when the family came to Berlin. She remembered the first wife of Simeon North very well, and the little Lucy, whose short life of two years and three months ended in 1806. When Lucy was two years old her mother had a severe illness and she was taken over to stay with the Stricklands. Mrs. Clark said she was a "cute
1
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little thing" and they became very fond of her. When Mrs. North was recovering Lucy was taken back home and her mother cried because the baby clung to Mrs. Strickland and refused to go to her.
Housekeepers of the present day, whose tables are supplied all winter with fruits and vegetables, canned at home, or brought fresh from the South, can hardly realize the longing for green food that came over some of the old people before their garden sauce was ready for use.
Dandelion leaves, plantain, dock, mustard, shepherd's purse, and milkweed, boiled with a generous piece of salt pork, made an appetizing dinner, and besides all those herbs were "good for the blood." In the last winter of Mrs. Clark's life she told a neighbor that she prayed to live until spring so that she might have a dish of greens. With the first April showers the neigh- bor was seen out in her yard, a tin dipper in one hand and a knife in the other, stooping here and there. When asked what she was about, she replied "I am answering Grandma Clark's prayer."
A boy who was bound out ran away in the fall. In answer to the question why he had left his place he said, "They kept me on grass all summer and I was afraid they would feed me on hay all winter."
The house next east of that occupied, in 1807, by Simeon Strickland, is supposed to have been built by Elisha Cheney. It was occupied in 1830-32 by John North whose wife was Harriet Cheney. Their two younger daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, were born there. The place came into the possession of Elishama Brandegee and was purchased by William Dyer, who, in 1855, sold it with two acres of land for $350, to Harriet Deming, who made a home for her sister, Mrs. Emily Wright, and for her brother, Lewis Deming. They were all short of stature, so that they were known as "The Lilliputians." Sim- ple, honest and industrious they managed to make a living. Mrs. Wright went out washing. She would never slight her work but would keep at her tubs from early morning until eight or nine o'clock at night and all for fifty cents
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THE NORTH FAMILY
a day. She carried her own sustenance in a tin pail and was never known to eat a mouthful at the tables of those for whom she labored. She had a perfect horror of the poorhouse and declared that she would never be taken there alive. One summer she lived with with her husband, Trout Wright, in Kensington, under a shanty of boards that they set up, with their stove outside. She said "I tell my husband that we are like the Saviour. We have no place to lay our heads." She always wore a short dress above her ankles and walked with a funny little dog trot. Sometimes the boys, to scare her, would fire off a gun, and she would drop in the road as if dead.
One morning when she came up to Mrs. William Riley's to work she was full of indignation, because as she climbed into the wagon and sat on the high seat, humped over to keep her balance, her feet dangling, some boys called out "toad on a harrer." She said, "I gave 'em as good as they sent, I told 'em they showed their broughtage up." The family came from Wethersfield and Mrs. Wright used to say that George Washington was a friend of her father's, and that he used to consult with him.
Dwight E. Bowers remembers that the sisters used to make an excellent salve, of which one of the ingredients was obtained from frogs, and boys were paid in salve for all the frogs they brought in. They suspected afterward that the sisters had an Epicurean taste for frogs' legs.
The house, besides its human occupants, was filled with cats and hens. Mrs. Wright said the chickens always came out to greet her on her return from work-first the rooster and then the hens, all in a row, followed.
Lewis, the brother, was very pious. He had little, twitching, black eyes. He said he had a wife when he was young, but she stepped on a rolling cob and fell and hurt herself so that she died. He was often seen in the fields collecting medicinal plants, which he sold to the herb doctors. He used to carry great bun- dles of them to Hartford, and he also supplied the saloons there with fresh peppermint for the making of mint juleps. He would come to the door and, in a faint, piping voice, explain that he could not speak loud because he had the liver complaint.
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Harriet died July 12, 1875, at the age of seventy-nine years, and was buried in the graveyard on the hill. Lewis then had to go to the town house. He used to come up to Dr. Brandegee to have his hair cut. The house was purchased by Alfred Lloyd Bowers and has been vacant for many years.
CHAPTER III.
The Hart Families of Lower Lane, Their Ancestors, Descend- ants, and Dwelling Places .- Abby Pattison and Her Ancestor Edward Pattison, the First Manufacturer of Tin-ware in America .- Emma Hart Willard and Her Work.
By "Mac" and "O" you'll surely know True Irishmen, they say, But if they lack both O and Mac, No Irishmen are they.
"Mac" means son, "O" means grandson.
The Hart family originated in Ireland. Through various transitions from Airt, O'h-Airt, O'Hairt, O'Harte, and Harte comes the Americanized name of Hart.
John O'Hart of Dublin, Fellow of the Royal Historical and Archeological Association of Ireland, published, in 1877, a wonderfully complete genealogy of the O'Harts which bears this title
IRISH PEDIGREES OR
THE ORIGEN AND STEM OF THE IRISH NATION.
This work, which represents the research of a lifetime, carries the O'Hart pedigree, family by family, name by name, back through 114 sole monarchs of Ireland, and through long lines of kings and queens of Scotland and England, back to the Garden of Eden. Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ire- land, comes in this family in the 136th generation from Adam. Milesius, the last of the pre-historic invaders of Ireland, was the progenitor of those 114 Irish monarchs and of the royal families mentioned. He married Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh Nectoni-
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