USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Berlin > History of Berlin, Connecticut > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24
96
HISTORY OF BERLIN
Lt. Joseph Beckley, born 1695, grandson of Richard, the settler, married October 23, 1723, Mary Judd (deceased of John North of Far) who was the mother of his seventeen children. She died April 16, 1750, aged forty-eight years.
I read somewhere the latter statement, but cannot now give the reference and have not the date. This Joseph Beckley received permission to build his house on condition that he would keep a public house. He was licensed as a taverner, 1733, 34, 42.
Dr. Horatio Gridley in his history stated that a public house was kept there by the descendants of Richard Beckley for seventy-eight years in succession and that it was the first inn between Hartford and New Haven.
Inn-keepers of those days were of the best and most respected families ; they often held positions of trust as town officers.
Miss Abigail Pattison told me that Hepzibah Wilcox was renowned for her goodness and kindness of heart. She adopted a son of Dr. Austin, who died when quite young. On his gravestone in Maple Cemetery is inscribed "Our Little Lamb."
One day in war time a company of soldiers, almost starved, came along and stopped at the Beckley tavern. Hepzibah had a cow killed as quickly as possible and gave them a hearty dinner. It was her son Silas Beckley who strained himself carrying water from a spring for the horses of a company of soldiers, so that he was an invalid the rest of his life. "Silas Beckley died October 1, 1823, after a distressing sickness of forty-three years, age 57 years." (Inscription at Beckley.)
The eldest son of David and Hepzibah Beckley, David Beck- ley, Jr., born March 31, 1765, and his wife, Eunice Williams, born 1759, were grandparents of Mr. William Bulkley.
There was great excitement when about the time of the Battle of Bunker Hill, General Washington and his Staff put up at the Beckley House over night. It was said that Eunice Williams helped to set the table for their supper.
George Washington must have traveled with a large supply of elm tree switches, and we like to believe the story that the great elm tree directly in front of the house was planted by
97
DANIEL WILCOX
him at the time of this visit. The tree stands, but the house was torn down by Dick Beckley, the last in town to bear the name.
David Beckley and Hepzibah, his wife, joined the Kensing- ton church May 5, 1764.
Luther Beckley, born October 11, 1778, died January 1, 1841; son of David and Hepzibah; married, 1803, Sally Flagg, daughter of Solomon Flagg. They lived in one half of the old tavern, where their seventeen children were born. He was appointed town clerk and they came down street to live in the old Riley house opposite the present Mechanics Hall. Toward the end of his life he lay in bed while his wife worked hard to support the family by taking boarders. Grand- parents of the first wife of Charles Risley (Mrs. Orpha Edward's story).
Patience Wilcox, thirteenth and youngest child of Daniel and Sarah White Wilcox, born January 4, 1760, died Sep- tember 21, 1810, aged fifty-one; married Eli Barnes; died June 18, 1815, aged 61.
The Barnes family came from Long Island with other refugees in war time, when the British took possession of the Island. They fled in such haste that the Barneses brought along, unbaked, a batch of bread that had been set to rise.
One child, Jemima, was born to Patience Wilcox and Eli Barnes. She married Samuel Kelsey, brother of Stephen Wilcox's wife, Mary.
Ezekiel Kelsey, father of Samuel, lived at the North end of Hubbard Street in East Berlin near the foot of Gravel Hill, where remains of the cellar may be seen. He had five or more children; two married in East Hartford. Elizabeth was the wife of landlord Amos Kirby. She used to play the violin for dancing parties.
Miss Isadore Kelsey said that her great-grandfather, Capt. Eli Barnes, built the house which she occupies on the east cor- ner of Main Street (formerly called East Street), where the Middletown road passes east toward the mill, and that her grandmother Jemima was ten years old at that time. They
7
1
98
HISTORY OF BERLIN
lived at first in the house of Patience's brother Daniel, who died in the army. Miss Kelsey said her grandmother Jemima would have been 127 years old if living in 1906. This, as I reckon it, would make her born in 1779.
The Barneses kept a public house, with bar, and a ballroom in the south chamber. The land on which the house was built was a part of the mile-square farm owned by Daniel Wilcox.
When Patience died, on February 29, 1836, her brother Jacob, who settled her estate, sold her silver teaspoons to Allen Flagg, who gave them to his two daughters.
Miss Ida Wilcox is a great-great-granddaughter of Patience Wilcox and she would like to see those spoons.
Miss Kelsey said that when her grandmother Jemima was a little girl the family went into Upper Houses to attend church. From 1703 to 1790 East Berlin belonged to Upper Houses Ecclesiastical Society and were obliged to pay church taxes there.
(See Vol. 1, page 230, Private Laws of Connecticut, Resolve of May, 1790, annexing a part of Upper Houses in Middletown to Worthington Society in Berlin.)
Resolved by this Assembly that all that part of the second or Upper Houses lying in the Town of said Berlin, excepting the farm or lot of land on which said Israel Wilcox now lives is hereby annexed to and from henceforth shall be and remain a part of the said Society of Worthington. Provided always that nothing in this resolve contained, shall be construed to prevent the second or Upper Houses Society from collecting at such society rates or taxes as are now laid or due from said petitioners, or from any other person liable to pay such taxes.
The East Berlin Mill was built in 1771 by David Sage, Jr., Daniel Wilcox, Jr., and Josiah Wilcox, on land of Daniel Wilcox, Sr.
It was at first built as a carding mill and for spinning cotton and woolen yarn which was put out to women of the neighbor- hood to be woven into blankets and men's cloth. Deacon Frederic North remembered taking wool there to be spun into yarn.
·
"GRANDMA HULDAH " Mrs. Reuben North
BIRTHPLACE OF LYNDA AND HULDAH WILCOX IN EAST BERLIN House built by Josiah Wilcox about 1779
99
DANIEL WILCOX
Josiah Wilcox, eighth child of Daniel and Sarah White Wilcox, born March 31, 1750, died September, 1835. Married, first, Elizabeth Treat, from Gen. Treat; married, second, 1779, Huldah Savage, daughter of John; married, third, Naomi Kirby, died 1837.
By deed of date February 14, 1775, Daniel Wilcox for paternal love and affection gave to his son Josiah six acres of land with house and barn thereon, bounded east on highway, south on Israel Wilcox's land, "west on my own land."
His house stands at the south end of Main Street, east of Berlin, on the west side of the way south of the Mildrum house, just north of the stream of water which crosses the road there. Large quantities of cider brandy were made by Josiah Wilcox. On the east side of the road was a cider mill where apples were crushed by a large wheel run by horse power which went round and round in a trough. The distillery was in a lot, south of the house, where the foundations may still be seen. Later the cider mill on the east side was abandoned and another was built south of the distillery. Deacon Alfred North pre- served for a long time a large record book of sales of cider brandy made by his grandfather. A while since I destroyed the book, thinking the business was almost disreputable.
Samuel Wilcox, son of Josiah, built the brick house, now owned by Fred M. North in East Berlin. He married Rhoda North and removed to Ohio, where his descendants have pros- pered. Occasionally a letter comes from them asking for information of their Connecticut ancestors.
Robert Wilcox, who married the "Sweet Singer of Michi- gan," is a descendant of Josiah Wilcox.
Olive Wilcox, daughter of Josiah, married in 1800 James Booth of New Britain and was mother of Horace Booth. Shortly before Mr. Booth died I called to see him. He told me that his mother had a string of gold beads. One day a pedlar, who went by the name of Squeaking Lease, came to the house and told Olive that the beads needed something done to them by a jeweler. She allowed him to take the string away, and that was the last she ever saw of her beads.
100
HISTORY OF BERLIN
Four of our D. A. R. members come from Josiah Wilcox.
Stephen Wilcox, sixth son of Daniel and Sarah Wilcox, born October 19, 1746, died December 22, 1843, aged ninety-seven years. He married January 31, 1771 (?), Mary Kelsey (daughter of Ezekiel Kelsey), who died October 22, 1836, aged eighty-seven years.
Mrs. Emma Penfield Botsford, whose husband was a descend- ant of Stephen Wilcox, said there used to be in the family an obituary of him, which began: "An Old Revolutionary Soldier Gone." Daniel Wilcox in 1777 deeded to his son Stephen Wilcox, of Middletown, for love and affection, six acres of land with house and barn thereon.
Stephen Wilcox and his wife were received to the communion of the Worthington Congregational Church by letter from Upper Houses.
Stephen Wilcox, son of Stephen, built the brick house stand- ing on the corner where the Stoney Swamp road turns to go up Savage Hill.
The two sons of Stephen Wilcox, Jr., went to Springfield about 1822 where they set up the first stove and tin store in that vicinity. They had the Wilcox gift of making money and prospered in business.
The house built by Stephen Wilcox, Sr., is now the pleasant home of the Misses Carrie and Hattie Mildrum.
Samuel Hart, brother of Mrs. Emma Hart Willard, married Mary Wilcox, daughter of Stephen Wilcox and his wife, Mary Kelsey, and four of our Daughters of the American Revolution members claim Mary Wilcox Hart as a grandmother. Mrs. Cowles has her silver teaspoons.
Mrs. Cowles has a cousin in this same generation from Stephen Wilcox, Miss Harriet Lyman, a fine musician, who has worked out a musical staff, so that the notes are alike on the bass and treble clefs. If adopted it will save no end of trouble for children learning to read music.
We all know Mr. Arthur Upson, a Christian lawyer of New Britain, a descendant of Stephen Wilcox. Mr. Upson has a cousin in the same line, a brother of Miss Harriet Lyman, the
101
DANIEL WILCOX
musician, Hon. Edward S. Lyman, who is one of the most prominent lawyers in central Alabama, employed as corpora- tion lawyer for the L. & W. R. R. C., Judge of the County Court, ex-mayor of his city, and has been a member of the State Legislature.
Samuel Wilcox, tenth child of Daniel and Sarah Wilcox, born September 12, 1753, died March 12, 1832, married May 28, 1778, Phoebe Dowd. (Ancestors of Mr. Frank Wilcox.)
Their house was moved a few rods south of its original site, where it was owned and occupied many years by the family of Willys Dowd. Mrs. Dowd was a very efficient woman, and she brought up a large family of fine sons and daughters. She said that when her children were old enough to go to church, she took every one of them out into the lobby and took her slipper to them.
Huldah Wilcox, seventh child of Daniel and Sarah Wilcox, born May 24, 1748, married Jeremiah Bacon of Westfield, and we do not know anything about her life except that Mr. Frank Starr says her first husband died and that she married, second, Joseph Porter.
Sarah Wilcox, second child of Daniel and Sarah Wilcox, born December 31, 1739, married Jedediah North.
Their house, at the north end of Berlin Street, was moved back from under the two large maple trees, and turned into a barn for Golden Ridge Creamery.
When they first set up housekeeping there the wolves used to come down from the ledge and carry off the pigs so that they had to be shut up in the barn over night for safety.
Sarah Wilcox and Jedediah North had eight children. Sarah, the mother, died at age thirty-six, when her last child was born.
Levi, the second son, enlisted in the Revolutionary War at the age of sixteen. He was taken prisoner by the British and on shipboard was compelled to fight against his own countrymen. His story was that the blood ran ankle deep on
102
HISTORY OF BERLIN
deck. In prison he was fed on rice, and he never wanted to see rice again. He was set at making tools and repairing weapons, and at the close of the war, by advice of an English soldier who befriended him, he sent in to the British govern- ment a bill for skilled services. The bill was allowed and he received $1,200, with which he built his house in East Berlin. He married his cousin, Rachel White, and they had twelve children, all of whom lived to the age of sixty-six or over.
It would take too much time to tell of the ministers, mis- sionaries, doctors, college professors, and teachers, who have descended from Sarah Wilcox.
CHAPTER V.
The Porter Family .- Edmund Kidder, the Centenarian .- The Lee Family.
Joseph Porter, Jr., born in 1702, son of Joseph and Hannah (Buell) Porter of Hartford, grandson of John and Mary (Stanley) Porter, and great-grandson of John Porter,* settler, in 1639, at Windsor, married, in 1733, Joanna Dodd of Hart- ford. They came to Great Swamp, where he was active in church affairs. In 1733, when a vote of twelve pence a pound
* Mrs. F. A. North of Germantown, Pa., has contributed the following information about the Porter families in America. Some of the data was obtained originally from Miss Catharine North's papers, especially the part about the first American John Porter and his twelve children. Incidentally, Miss North herself was a direct descendant of Samuel Porter, the fifth child of John Porter of Windsor. It may not be out of place to introduce this information here:
John Porter, born between 1590 and 1595 in Wraxhall, Parish of Kenil- worth, Warwickshire, England, embarked at London, with his family, for America, arriving at Dorchester, Mass., May 30, 1630. He died 1648 at Windsor. His wife Rose died 1648 or 1649. There were twelve children: John, b. 1618; Thomas, b. 1620; Sarah, 1622; Anna, 1624; Samuel, 1626; Rebecca, 1628; Mary, 1630; Rose, 1632; Joseph, 1634; Nathaniel, 1638; James, 1640; and Hannah, 1642.
(Joseph Porter, who came to Great Swamp, was a descendant of the eldest son of the first John Porter.)
Samuel Porter married, in 1659, Hannah Stanley, daughter of Thomas Stanley.
Hezekiah Porter, b. 1665, their son, married Hannah Cowles.
Timothy Porter, their son, married Hannah Goodwin.
Aaron Porter, their son, married Rhoda Sage.
Isaac Porter, b. 1755, their son, married Hepzibah North.
Olive Porter, 1782, married Richard Wilcox.
Mary Olive Wilcox, 1812, married Alfred North. Catharine M. North, 1840.
Among the descendants of Samuel Porter and Hannah Stanley were Israel Putnam, Clarence Steadman, U. S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Thomas W. Higginson, and John Brown.
104
HISTORY OF BERLIN
was laid for building a new meeting house, he was appointed to collect the tax.
Mr. Burnham was in ill health for a long time before his death, and the people began early to look about for candidates to preach "on probation" with view of settlement.
In 1742 Joseph Porter went to Stratford and brought up a Mr. Judson, who assisted Mr. Burnham and boarded with the Porters. The society voted £7. 16s. as compensation to Mr. Porter for his journey to Stratford, and for entertaining Mr. Judson, and his horse.
Mr. Burnham rallied so that he continued to preach until near his last days. From 1750 for more than six years the church was without a settled minister.
Mr. Samuel Clark of "Elizabeth town" was installed as the successor of Mr. Burnham, July 14, 1756. When the society was divided he chose to go with the Kensington parish and remained with that church until his death, November 6, 1775.
The records of the church, as placed in the hands of Mr. Clark at the time of his settlement, were in his words "very imperfect and broken." A little girl said, "Papa, I have cleaned out your pocket book for you, I burned up all those old dirty papers, and put back just the clean ones." Her father nearly fainted. Those old papers were his family records that never could be replaced. Mr. Burnham's statistics, if he kept them, have never been found, possibly some neat housekeeper threw them into the fire. Mr. Clark proceeded at once to make a list of "Such as were members when I came."
In this list of 1756 were the names of Joseph Porter and his wife Hannah (Joanna ?). Their son Samuel Porter, born June 1, 1750, married June 14, 1779, Mindwell Griswold, of Windsor. She died in 1810 and he married, second, 1812, widow Elizabeth Percival, mother of the poet, James G. Percival. Mrs. Percival had another son, Oswin. At his death, about 1870, the family was extinct. A bureau full of his mother's personal belongings was sold at public auction from the house next south of the old Worthington church.
105
THE PORTER FAMILY
Among the articles were an immense green silk bonnet with a great, black lace, embroidered veil and fine hand-woven linen sheets. A beautiful bead handbag was struck off to a pack peddler who chanced along. Colonel William Bulkeley was the auctioneer.
William Bulkeley, Jr., bought a chest with its contents. In it, besides a lot of old books, was a piece of metal, black as iron, which proved to be a masonic jewel, of silver, worn as a watch charm. In size it is two and one-quarter inches long, one and three-quarter inches wide. Around the edge in front is a motto, with number and name of owner, as follows:
AMOR HONOR ET JUSTITIA A. M. 5791, JAMES PERCI- VAL JUNR.
On the back appears the motto :
IN THE LORD IS ALL OUR TRUST.
Under skull and cross bones is a coffin, on which are the words "Memento Mori." Both sides are covered with masonic emblems exquisitely engraved.
Dr. James Percival, father of James G., was Worshipful Master of Harmony Lodge, 1797-1801, which then met in Berlin.
Rev. J. T. Pettee, of Meriden, who has examined this jewel, says that the number, 5791, corresponds with 1791 of the Christian era, and it shows that Dr. Percival wore the badge sixteen years before his death, January 21, 1807.
In the course of time the Burnham parsonage and farm came into possession of Samuel Porter. Of the eleven children born there, to him and his wife, Mindwell, nine lived to maturity. Their names were Samuel, Nathaniel, Mindwell, Almira, Laura, Norman, Joanna, Chloe and Sophia.
Samuel, born November 22, 1780, settled in Philadelphia. Three of the sisters, Mindwell, second wife of Jesse Hart, Almira, wife of Blakeslee Barnes, and Sophia, who was mar- ried late in life to Joseph Camp of Newington, left in widow-
106
HISTORY OF BERLIN
hood, joined forces and kept house at the Squire Daniel Dunbar place, on Worthington Street.
Joanna was married to John Ariadne Hart, botanist and physician. He practiced in Berlin for awhile before his removal to Natchez, where he died of yellow fever October 23, 1822, aged thirty-two years.
Sophia, born February 19, 1797, went to Natchez with her sister, and afterwards taught school in Philadelphia. She used to say that while there she took lessons on the piano, and had learned to play "Robin Adair," when, somehow, it hap- pened that she got married and that ended it. She died at Newington, October 21, 1891, at the age of ninety-four. In her latter years she did not know the faces of her lifelong neighbors, but to the last she could make a beautiful prayer.
Norman Porter, born December 12, 1789, married in 1823, Abby Galpin, daughter of Col. Joseph Galpin, half sister of Mrs. Seth Deming, and a lovely woman she was. Their wedding journey was to Lexington, Ky., the first part of the way by stage, then over the mountains they had to ride on the backs of mules. When the time came for them to return they rode all the way on horseback.
Mr. Porter, in his business as merchant at Lexington, gained what was considered, in his day, a small fortune.
The town records at New Britain show that in 1824-5 Nor- man Porter bought out the right of the other heirs in his father's estate. The deeds were signed by Mindwell Hart and Jesse Hart, Chloe Peck and Everard Peck, and Almira Barnes, all of Berlin; by Samuel Porter of Philadelphia, Joanna Hart and Sophia Porter of Natchez, and by Norman Porter of Lexington.
A life interest in the place was reserved for the father, Samuel, who died January 22, 1838, aged eighty-eight years. Then Norman, who had come back to his native town, planned to built a new house, finer than any to be seen in this region. He decided to use the homestead site, and wished to tear down the old house, but his sisters, who loved the place, begged him to move it off, and to please them he consented. The way was
107
THE PORTER FAMILY
narrow and the house was wide. It stuck fast in the road and remained there several weeks. Finally, however, it was landed on the new site, opposite the Berlin town house, where it stands to this day. The work of removal cost more than the house was worth when settled, except for the sentiment.
The sisters used to like to go and look over the rooms, filled with dear associations, but there came a day-the time of Mrs. Camp's last visit there, when, as she stepped over the threshold of the east sitting room door, she turned and said to her com- panion : "Let us go away, it does not look like home here now."
Mrs. Emily (Galpin) Bacon, a niece of Mrs. Norman Porter, remembers that once, when she visited her aunt in the old house, Sophia Porter (Mrs. Camp) led her up into one of the chambers to see the silk worms she was raising. As she fed them their supper of mulberry leaves they made as much noise as a horse champing. In one corner of the room Mrs. Camp showed her how she reeled the silk from the cocoons.
This house was photographed in the nick of time. Soon afterward a carpenter, in want of a job, persuaded the owner to let him cut off the west half. He said there would be lumber enough in it to build another house. It was said that the lumber was of no use when razed, but the proportions of the old parsonage were ruined.
Mrs. Frank D. Jamison, a great-granddaughter of Samuel Porter, after reading the account of the removal of the Burn- ham-Porter house, recalled this story :
The carpenter, when consulted in regard to drawing the house away, advised against it, saying that the building was so old that it would not "pay."
"Can you move it?" asked Mr. Porter.
"Yes," replied the carpenter, "I can move it." "Then move it!" said Mr. Porter, "It is none of your business whether it will pay or not."
Mrs. Jamison's mother, Mrs. Jane Porter Hart Dodd, who, after the death of her father, Jesse Hart, lived with her widowed mother at her grandfather's, remembers that attached to the main house was a long line of back buildings that seemed
108
HISTORY OF BERLIN
interminable to the child. Besides the place piled with many cords of wood for winter fires, there was a room used as a dairy, and another was filled, in autumn, with vegetables and fragrant apples.
Town Clerk William Bulkeley was at the raising of Norman Porter's grand new house. A thunder shower came up that afternoon, and he, with all the other boys, ran into the barn for protection.
Mr. Porter was a fine looking man, erect of carriage, and gentlemanly in bearing; quick of step, energetic and full of business; always doing something, or going somewhere. It is said that he went to Hartford nearly every day. His farm, which he adored, was cultivated for pleasure, not for profit. Here were found all the new fruits and flowers-and labor- saving inventions. Japonicas bloomed in the windows, tulips, lilies and strange new shrubs bordered the walks. Grapes, Isabellas and Catawbas, climbed over arbors; Bartlett pears and Seckels grew in the garden, a delicious revelation to the neighbors, who were welcome to take grafts. Children, who had never seen strawberries growing except in the fields, heard with wonder that over at Mr. Norman Porter's there were beds of cultivated strawberries which bore so full that they were left to decay on the vines. Mrs. Dodd has told us of the con- sternation created when Uncle Norman cooked and ate the fruit of the tomato he brought home from Kentucky.
South of the house was a hot-bed, filled in the spring with "green things growing."
There was a patent gate at the driveway, west of the house, that opened and closed automatically by a series of levers under- neath, as the horses stepped upon and off the platform, that slanted down to the ground on either side.
When Mr. Porter heard that Daniel Buck of Windsor had a wonderful new breed of cows from Island of Alderney, he took his neighbor, Cyrus Root, and drove up to see the cows and the butter. Not long afterward a herd of twenty or thirty of those Alderneys were grazing in the pastures on the Porter farm.
109
THE PORTER FAMILY
The large horse barn, east of the house, was burned after the place came into the possession of Richard Murray.
The field south of the Christian Lane school house, called the Lee lot, came into the possession of Mr. Porter, and when he was about sixty years old he planted it full of apple trees. When asked why, at his time of life, he should set out apple trees, he replied, "I expect to live to send fruit from this orchard to Queen Victoria." He did live to gather a bountiful harvest of apples from what came to be known as the "prize orchard of the state."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.