USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Berlin > History of Berlin > Part 19
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Mr. William Sage and his family lived in the Dr. Ward place quite a number of years. Miss Hattie Sage says she is sure that her mother told her that Mr. Johns built the house. Mrs. Johns fell down the chamber stairs and was so severely injured that she died. Her inscription on her tombstone in the East Berlin cemetery reads as follows :
* See pp. 223-224.
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JOHNS In memory of Sophia, second daughter of the Rev'd Thomas Harmer, author of Observations on divers passages of Seripture, illustrating them by travels in the East, and wife of Rev'd Evans Johns, minister of this parish. She landed at New York on the 12th of May 1801 and died in consequence of a fatal fall on the 28th of August 1808.
When Miss Sage was a little girl she lost a kitten under the attic roof and in her efforts to rescue it, she drew out a diary, dated Hartford, January 1, 1811. It was the journal of a school boy and was ended January 13. The name "Johns" is on the cover, but the first name is obliterated. It is supposed to have been written by Thomas Johns. The language is good for a boy, and shows that his speech had not been corrupted by association with country school children.
He speaks often of Dr. Bacon, with whom he evidently boarded, and of watering, feeding, and riding the doctor's horse. A few extracts from the journal may be of interest :
Jan 1st Was made to stay some time after school
Jan 2nd Walked about the streets and looked at some boys
Jan 3rd Bought a roll of candy went to school and had a scuffle read Don Quixote
Jan 4th In came Father, so I walked about a mile and had a chat with him ate my supper read a little in Don Quixote then wrote my Journal then cut some bread and cheese after the Doctor came home and I talked with him first on diet and then on the difference between English and Latin grammar
Saturday Jan 5th Got up into the Dove-House went and rode on sleds rode back and forth in the streets all the afternoon threw snow at the boys read a chapter in the Bible, then attended prayers
Jan 7th Studied a lesson in Virgil which we construed and passed Jan 8th School being done I came home got three apples and ate them
Saturday Jan 12th Went to school in the afternoon took some recreation . . slid down hill with the boys
Sunday Jan 13th Got up this morning late went to meeting twice then spent the night in study Amen and Amen
Mr. Bulkeley says that Allen North, the father of Philip North, lived in the old corner, near the south schoolhouse, but
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that he was not a stonecutter, it was Almeron Bacon who had a marble yard at that place.
The mention of Crazy Lois brought to mind other stories about her. When the school children passed her house she used to go to the front door and say, "Pretty little children, pretty little children !" Then, as she clasped her hands and they scampered away, she would repeat, "See the little birds fly, see the little birds fly."
Miss Julia Roys, who formerly lived in East Berlin, remem- bers that when a little girl she came up to visit Harriet Bulkeley, and that she was taken to see Lois as one of the sights of the village. They looked in at the door of a room, where Lois was in bed, with a large pitcher filled with clover blossoms and daisies near her side.
After the mother died there was no one to care for Lois, and she was taken to the town farm. Toward the end of her life she had a severe illness. Her reason, that had been shattered in youth, was now perfectly restored, but all the years from childhood to old age were a blank. Dr. Brandegee attended her in that sickness, and one day he noticed that she looked intently at her hands. When he asked her what was the matter with them, she replied, "Why, they look like an old woman's hands."
Going on south from the Maple Cemetery we come to the Sage farm. There was once a cigar factory in the south part of the house belonging to this estate. Across the road in the apple orchard the Burt brothers manufactured percussion caps, but the industry came to a sudden end one day in an explosion which damaged the premises and killed one boy, the son of Philip North. This factory is still a portion of Atwater's eider mill.
At a town meeting held April 10, 1796, it was voted "that the Seleetmen of Berlin lay out the proposed road a little north of Capt. David Sage's dwelling house, westerly to the road near where Israel Fuller now lives."
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Follow this road a short distance and on the north side you will come to a house now owned by the florist and carpenter A. A. Welden. This place was for many years the home of the Piper family. Luther Piper, Sr., and his son Luther, were coopers. Besides making large quantities of barrels for cement manufactured by the Moores, of Kensington, they supplied all the community with hogsheads, water barrels and eider barrels, barrels for pounding clothes, pork and soap barrels.
Speaking of soap brings to mind an industry once practiced by every family, of which the following description has been given by an old lady: "Ashes, bones, and refuse fat were carefully hoarded through the year. In the spring a large hogshead, set on a low platform, was filled with ashes, over which water was poured. The lye thus formed was collected in pails from holes bored through the lower part of the hogs- head. A large iron or brass kettle was filled with the soap grease, and set over a fire, sometimes kindled in the yard. The strong lye was poured into the kettle and the whole mass was boiled until the soap 'came,' which was known when it 'spun aprons' from a stick lifted from the kettle." One family in town, noted for slackness, threw away all their ashes until spring came and the soap barrel was empty. Then they burned all the wood they could pile on the fireplace, day and night, for the sake of the ashes.
That this industry was not so innocent as may appear, is shown by the records of burial in the Beckley Quarter Ceme- tery, one of which reads as follows :
In memory of Sally North, daughter of Joseph and Rhoda North, who died July 16, 1818 æ 27 Killed instantly by the fall of a hogshead of ashes.
Hot soap was no mean weapon in the hands of a woman.
Miss Fannie Robbins tells a story of her grandmother who, when she was twelve years old, was left at home alone one day to keep the house and to watch a kettle of soap that was boiling over a fire in the back yard. On the table in the kitchen was a baking of bread just out of the brick oven. A company of men,
15
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straggling along the road, stopped and went prowling about the premises. Miss Robbins thinks she was told that they were Indians, but her sister thought they were British soldiers. Whichever they were, one of the men stepped into the kitchen and helped himself to a loaf of bread; then another followed and took a loaf; as a third started forward, the brave girl, with her heart in her mouth, spoke up, and said, "My mistress will not like it to have you take her bread, she wants it for her chil- dren, and if you take another loaf I will throw a piggin of hot soap on you." And off they went. (A piggin was a wooden pail with one stave left higher than the rest for a handle.)
Mr. George H. Sage has kindly given the following account of his ancestral home and its occupants :
BERLIN, CONN., Jan. 29th, 1906.
My dear Miss North: It is a pleasure to reply to your request for a history of our farm house. The Sage house was built about the year 1720 by Captain David Sage, (son of John and grandson of David who settled in Middletown in 1652,) who, with his twin brother Benjamin, came to Berlin from Middletown. It might be well to add here that Benjamin's house built at the same time, stood below David's and just south of the Clark place. Benjamin Sage married Mary Allen of Berlin, and died in 1734; his house has long since disappeared.
Captain David married Bathsheba Judd of Berlin and they had four sons and four daughters. One son, Deacon Jedediah, married Sarah Marcy of Berlin and remained on the present Sage farm. Another son, Zadoch, lived almost directly across the road from Benjamin, and the old well is now near the site of the house, a few rods north of where the brick schoolhouse stood. As time went by the Sage house was filled with the deacon's four sons and three daughters, so Captain David moved into the house built by his brother Benjamin and was ninety-three years old when the road was built west toward Mr. Welden's. I believe Jedediah was deacon of the Second Congregational church for twenty-seven years. He died in 1826 aged eighty-nine years.
Colonel Erastus, his son, married Elinor Dickenson of Berlin and succeeded to the farm where ten children were born to them, my
THE SAGE HOMESTEAD ( Bullt nbont 1220 by Capt. David Sage
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father, Henry, being the one who stayed at home. I have my grand- father's papers among which is his appointment by the General Assembly to be Colonel of the 4th Regiment of cavalry in the militia and signed by Oliver Wolcott Esq., as governor, and dated the 31st day of May 1819.
The property has been in the family about 186 years, and for five generations. The house has been added to from time to time, but the original has been well preserved with its huge stone chimney, four fireplaces, brick ovens, and the hewn white oak timbers formning the framework are as solid today as when they were raised almost two hundred years ago.
Yours sincerely,
GEO. H. SAGE.
It will be remembered that, when a few years since Mr. George H. Sage purchased the property on which he built his new house, there stood on the lot, close to the street, embowered in lilac bushes, a large, old, dilapidated, brown house. Zenas Richardson and Vashti Norton were married in 1807 and that house was their home. Zenas was a shoemaker and in his business he employed quite a number of apprentices.
The Richardsons lost a little son in 1810. His inscription reads thus :
In memory of Orenzo, Son of Zenas & Vashti Richardson who died April 6th 1810 aged 8 days.
In the morning it looked promising,
In the evening it lay withering.
Queer names ! Other sons who came to the Richardsons were Andrew, Darius, and Nelson.
Zebulun Richardson lived in this neighborhood; was he the father of Zenas ?
When the Hartford and New Haven turnpike was laid out in 1800 the town voted to make the road four rods wide in front of Zebulun Richardson's by taking one rod off from his front yard.
The Nortons were large landholders and Vashti inherited from her father, Andrew Norton, a piece of ground that
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extended across the east side of the old part of the south ceme- tery which adjoined her house lot.
As we retrace our steps southward let us learn more about the old places. When Zenas Richardson gave up shoemaking, his shop on the Geo. H. Sage place was used for the manufac- ture of tinware. If we stop at William Moore's, opposite the old Atwood place, now Bert Hart's, and dig into his bank we shall turn out quantities of tin chips. Mr. Moore's house was once a tinshop conducted by Fred Squires. Mr. Squires went to Rhode Island, before 1835, and the story is that he was one of the leaders there in Governor Dorr's rebellion.
Russell Clark came to Berlin in 1828 and purchased the farm south of the Sage homestead. His children were: Hope S., John, Luther, Sarah C., and Rozilla. Hope was a pupil at Worthington Academy, when Mr. Parish was principal. At the age of seventeen she taught the south district school. Her sister Sarah, twelve years old, attended the school and was made to mind. Hope was married when eighteen and went to New York to live. She married, second, the Rev. S. H. Beale. They live at Camden, Me. Mr. Beale is ninety years old.
Sarah C. Clark was married to the Rev. Nathan Coleman. During the Civil War they taught at the south-at Norfolk, Va., in 1864, and near Petersburg in 1865. Mr. Coleman taught at one time in the Worthington Academy. He was an enthusiastic naturalist and never tired of talking with his pupils about flowers and insects, of which he made an extensive col- lection. Mrs. Coleman lives with her sister, Mrs. Beale, in Maine. Russell Clark died January 14, 1855, aged sixty-three years. His inscription reads: "Help Lord for the godly man ceaseth, for the faithful fail from among the children of men."
Elbert J. Clark was not a son of Russell. He came from Westfield, married Rozilla Clark, and succeeded her father in charge of the farm. He died December 3, 1887, aged seventy- eight, and the property is now owned by Charles M. Jarvis.
At a meeting of the inhabitants of the Town of Berlin held April 22, 1805, liberty was granted the southwest district in
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Worthington to erect a schoolhouse on the old road a little south of Zadoc Sage's dwelling house, near a stake set for said house, and the selectmen were "impowered" to set off a suit- able yard to accommodate said schoolhouse.
This site was on the east side of the way, just north of the little stream that crosses the road where the horses love to drink. It is not known how the children had been accommodated since the sale of their brick schoolhouse on the Jarvis corner, in 1802.
The new schoolhouse was a frame building. Some time about 1835 it was sold to Luther Piper, who moved it over to his place and used it for a cooper's shop. It was replaced by a brick building which was burned about fifteen years ago.
At that same town meeting of April 22, 1805, the selectmen were "Impowered" to dispose of the old road leading by Esq. Hosford's, beginning a little south of Zadoc Sage's, near the stake set to build a schoolhouse. This old road extended to a road that ran easterly and westerly by Mr. Edwards' barn.
Mr. E. I. Clark says that when Mr. Henry Sage had charge of the town roads, he used to tell him about a road that once ran across the lots back of Deacon Hosford's and came out a few rods east of Mr. Clark's house. Its course could be traced at that time. On the corner next south of the schoolhouse lived Samuel Bishop, who was a house painter. There were many large old cherry trees in his yard and people from far and near used to go to gather fruit from those trees. Mr. Bishop died in 1856, aged ninety-one. The old house was torn down long since, and the new schoolhouse stands on the place.
Samuel Bishop, Jr., lived on the corner opposite his father and made shoes, which he sold in New York. He employed ten or twelve workmen, and in winter carried the shoes to market in his sleigh. Mr. E. I. Clark says that one morning, when the sleighing was particularly fine, Mr. Bishop started early with his load, and drove the entire distance, reaching New York at evening of the same day.
On the same side of the highway, farther south, we come to the house once owned by Walter Edwards, the father of Miss
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Martha Edwards, a well-known visitor in town. Mr. Edwards kept a dozen young men busy in his shoe factory at that place. The property is now owned by Henry Hollister.
Jedediah Norton, grandfather of the late Henry Norton and of his brother Philip Norton, came to Berlin from Wallingford. He married in 1764 Achsah Norton, sister of Tabitha, heroine of "The Stolen Bride."
Going toward Meriden, the road beyond the Walter Edwards place divides for a distance of about three-quarters of a mile. Keep to the right of the little cemetery in the triangle, on past the house built by Deacon Edward C. Hall, and just before the ways unite we come to the Henry Norton farm. This was the home of Jedediah Norton and Achsah, his wife. They began their married life in a small house a little south of the present fine, large residence, the ell part of which, it is believed, was built by Jedediah .* It was said that while on a visit to some city, Mr. Norton heard an organ, which so delighted him that he determined to have one in his own church at Berlin.
At a meeting of the Worthington Church, held November 1, 1791, it was
Voted that the thanks of this society be given to our friend Mr. Jedediah Norton for so distinguished a mark of his good will in giving us an elegant organ and erecting it in the meeting house at his own expense, and we do hereby appoint Solomon Dunham and Amos Hosford, a committee in behalf of this society to present this our thanks to said Mr. Norton, and liberty is hereby granted to the prudential committee to affix the said organ in the front gallery of our meeting house.
The dedication of the organ was announced in the Hartford Courant thus :
ORGAN.
The public are hereby notified that Mr. Josiah Leavitt of Boston, organ builder hath lately been employed to construct an ORGAN for Worthington parish, which is completed and set up in the Meet- ing-house. The Organ will be opened by said Leavitt on Thursday
* Cf. next page.
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the 8th of November instant, at which time a sermon will be preached on the occasion, and Music will be performed.
After the exercises there will be a collection for the benefit of said builder.
" The exercise will begin at 1 o'clock P. M. Worthington, Nov. 1, 1792.
Mr. Norton did not long enjoy the sweet music of his gift. He died in 1794, aged eighty-two. Unfortunately the "front gallery" proved to be in that part of the meeting house which was destroyed by fire in 1848, and the organ was ruined beyond repair.
Directly east of the Nortons, across the point made by the coming together of the two roads, lived Abraham Wright, Revo- lutionary soldier and tavern keeper. According to Mr. George Sage his house was opened to the public for four years from 1797, and again for two years from 1814. Mr. Wright died in 1825, aged eighty-seven.
The main part of the large Norton house was built by the late Henry Norton after his marriage, May 22, 1825. The ell of the house was built-not by Jedediah Norton-but by his son Samuel. In the orchard opposite this house there was once a tin-shop.
Jonathan Edwards, who lived on the road which was closed, over west of the Edward Hall place, had a son, Joseph, who settled on a farm in Meriden. Joseph had a pretty daughter, Phebe, who was married to Samuel Norton, June 22, 1789. They had ten children. He used to say that it was as easy to save money and get rich with ten children as with only one.
When he was courting his wife he told her she need never put her hands into hot water, or do any work, that he had money enough to hire help. One day afterwards, when surrounded by her little family, she reminded him of what he had said about putting her hands into hot water. In his droll way he answered : "Well, you need not do it, you can cool the water."
Her granddaughters remember that in her old age her hands were as soft and white as those of a child. She boasted that in all her married life she had never onee been obliged to lift the
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dinner pot from the crane-some one was always ready to do it for her. One of those old iron kettles filled with pot luck for such a household as hers was no light weight.
Samuel Norton was a Revolutionary soldier. He died Octo- ber 27, 1832, aged seventy-three. Phebe, his wife, died August 13, 1854, aged eighty-four.
George Norton, son of Samuel and Phebe, died in 1829, at the age of twenty, while a student at the Vermont Academy of Medicine.
Josiah Norton, son of Jedediah and Achsah Norton, was a graduate of Yale, class of 1768. He went to Vermont, where he had a large family which was located in Castleton and its vicinity. Old deeds and memoranda in the family show that they were interested in a township in Vermont named Norton, which may have attracted him there for settlement. His mother, Achsah Norton, after the death of her husband, Jede- diah Norton, in 1794, went to Vermont. Her gravestone at Castleton bears this inscription :
Erected to the memory of the widow Achsah Norton, who died Aug. 8th, 1805, aged 84 years.
Fourscore revolving suns had past,
When Christ, my Saviour, called me home at last.
CHAPTER XI.
Trout Streams of Berlin .- The Peach Orchard.
Over northwest of Belcher's tavern springs a stream of water called Belcher's brook. This stream runs northerly, nearly parallel with the "Old road," into Old Fly and out again- farther north winding about a little, so that the railroad crosses it twice; thence onward-always in sight of the dwelling houses-across Norton Street, west of Lower Lane, on through the pasture where Aunt Abby Pattison's cows used to drink, and where the herons stand on one leg, in meditation, wonder- ing where Aunt Abby and her house and her cows have gone. Still onward the stream runs to a point west, and midward, of the Lower Lane extension, where it takes a turn about, and goes south a little way as if to take a parting look at itself ; then it winds toward the north again; turns eastward, runs under the "South bridge," and about four hundred feet farther, into the lot recently sold by Francis Deming. Here the big Mattabessett, just in from under the "North bridge," makes a swoop southerly, opens its mouth, and takes in the little Belcher brook, at the finish of its four-mile race.
The springs from which Blue Hills brook has its source in Kensington are on the Norris Peck farm now owned by his son, Langdon J. Peck.
Running north, this stream crosses the road, east of Blue Hills schoolhouse corner. Dr. Brandegee, when driving over this road, used always to let his horse stop and drink. He said horses would drink there, whether they were thirsty or not. the water was so sweet.
East of the stream, on the north side of that road, was once a large white house, for many years the dwelling of Deacon Asaph Smith and his wife, who was known familiarly as "Aunt Abby Smith." On account of some dissatisfaction at home they used to come over this side to church. The white-topped carriage,
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in which they drove on Sundays, is still remembered. That was back in the forties. After the death of her husband in 1865, Mrs. Smith purchased the house on Berlin Street now owned by Mrs. Wm. B. Pierce.
By economy she accumulated a considerable property, which caused her much anxious thought, as to its disposition. She made so many wills that she learned to draw her own. Once she bequeathed several hundred dollars to the Worthington Ecclesiastical Society, but when she detected what she con- sidered a growing tendency to extravagance in dress of the church members and in the conduct of church affairs she revoked that bequest. She used to say that she never in all her life had a dress that cost over fifty cents a yard. She kept her place as neat as a pin, by the labor of her own hands. The village school children were greatly amused when they saw her, seated in a rocking chair, painting her front fence.
Blue Hills brook keeps on its way, northeasterly, through Kensington, until near the home of the Misses Bauer; there it turns due east, crosses the road, bounds the north side of a pasture owned by heirs of the late James B. Reed, and joins Belcher brook at a point about four hundred feet southwesterly from the Lower Lane bridges.
Any boy within a radius of a mile will direct you to the famous "Swimming hole" a short distance away, in the Matta- bessett. You will see the boy, a dozen of him, the first hot day next summer, on his way there, with a towel, and perchance a piece of soap, bulging his pocket, and you may hear his screams of laughter, as you pass along the road by the Bridge Cemetery.
A short distance east of the springs, at the head of Blue Hills brook, on the same Norris Peck farm, are other springs-the source of a third stream, called "Crooked Brook." This stream goes northeasterly through Kensington and crosses the Parish line south of "Norton's Pond" so called, where it furnished power for the saw mill that was burned in the fall of 1905. Thence the current is swift, eastward, to a point back of the Samuel Durand farm, now owned by Huber Bushnell. There it joins Belcher brook.
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In Mr. Thomas's lot on a few rods farther north is a pool called "Silver Hole," where the children love to bathe in summer time. Many years ago this pool was a favorite resort of Sylvia Norton, and it was named for her, "Sylvia Hole."
The water of Crooked brook, like that of Blue Hills brook, is singularly pure and sweet. There is nothing finer in this part of the country. Its fall is rapid, and it would seem to be a simple question of mechanical engineering to bring that water to Worthington Street.
Section 2527 of the Connecticut statutes, 1884, reads as follows :
The sum of three thousand dollars is hereby appropriated for the artificial propagation of fish in the waters of this State.
The Legislature of 1905 appropriated, for the two years ending September 30, 1907, eight thousand dollars, for propaga- tion of game and fish, with the additional sum of three thousand dollars for care and repair of state fish hatcheries, and all property of the state connected with the propagation of fish. Any one wishing to stock a brook or a pond with fish can obtain the young fry by application to the State Fish Commissioner.
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