USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Danbury > History of Danbury, Conn., 1684-1896 > Part 47
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In 1857 he was nominated for Congress and was defeated. In 1859 he was again nominated. It was not then common in New England for candidates to address the people in their own behalf. Mr. Ferry yielded reluctantly to the request of the convention which nominated him, and spoke in every town in the district. The contest was considered a doubtful one, but Mr. Ferry was elected by a handsome majority, and the result was attributed in great measure to his own speeches. Mr. Ferry was in many respects remarkable as a public speaker. He possessed a fine taste, and when the occasion required it, could prepare addresses of much literary merit. .
In the autumn of 1859, before taking his seat in Congress, Mr. Ferry made a public profession of religion by uniting with the First Congregational Church of Norwalk, and the profession of his faith was not with him a matter of mere form. He was a man emphatically of growth in religious character as well as intellectual power and breadth to the day of his death.
While he was a member of the National House of Representa- tives he delivered two elaborate speeches on the slavery question
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and the threatened secession of the Southern States, in which he ably set forth and defended the principles of the Republican Party, and was a member of the celebrated committee of thirty- three on the state of the Union. In 1861 he was again nominated for Congress, and was defeated.
Being in Washington at the breaking out of the Civil War, he enlisted in a volunteer battalion for the temporary defence of the seat of government, and served until troops were obtained from the North. He was soon after tendered and accepted the command of the Fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers. He was afterward promoted to be brigadier-general, and served through the war with an honorable though not brilliant record.
Returning in 1865 to his profession, he was a year later chosen United States Senator for the term commencing in 1867, and was re-elected in 1872. The limits of this notice will not admit an outline of his senatorial career. Many questions of grave im- portance, growing out of the late war, demanded the attention of Congress. Corruption was rife in many departments of the public service.
The conventional usages of the Senate restrained Mr. Ferry at first from taking a prominent part in the debates, and in the spring of 1869 an insidious disease, ultimately fatal, attacked his spine, and gradually impaired his physical powers, so that in the latter part of his career he could not mingle in the discus- sions to the extent that he would have desired. He was, how- ever, always at his post of duty, and a laborious worker on com- mittees, where he had a prominent place ; and he spoke fre- quently, at first in more elaborate efforts, but afterward generally in off-hand powerful arguments, inspired by his earnest and posi- tive convictions, and remarkable for compactness, brevity, and effective force. He came to be regarded as one of the ablest members of the Senate, and his acknowledged uprightness, inde- pendence, and intellectual power combined to give him an influ- ence in that body hardly surpassed by any in his time. He died with no blot on his good name, and no man ever suspected his integrity or questioned his purity or his personal honor.
Phineas Taylor Barnum.
Ephraim Barnum 2d, grandson of Thomas 2d, born 1733 ; mar- ried 1753, Keziah Covell, by whom he had ten children. He
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married, 2d, February, 1776, Mrs. Rachel Starr Beebe, daughter of Jonathan and Rachel (Taylor) Starr, and widow of Jonathan Beebe, of Danbury. They had five children, among them Philo, born 1778 ; married Polly Fairchild, of Newtown, Conn., who died in 1808, leaving five children. He then married Irene Taylor, daughter of Phineas and Molly (Sherwood) Taylor, of Bethel, and among the five children of this marriage was Phineas Taylor (born July 5th, 1810).
His paternal grandfather was a captain in the Revolutionary War. His father was tailor, farmer, and sometimes hotel-keeper, and Phineas drove cows to pasture, weeded garden, ploughed fields, made hay, and when possible went to school. Later on he became clerk in a country store established by his father.
In 1826 he went to the city of Brooklyn as clerk in the store of Oliver Taylor ; in 1827 he opened a porter-house in New York, and in 1829 married Charity, daughter of Benjamin Wright and Hannah (Sturges) Hallett. The same year he had a fruit and confectionery store in his grandfather's carriage-house in Bethel, and also had on hand " a lottery business, and was auc- tioneer in the book trade."
In July, 1831, with his uncle, Alanson Taylor, he opened a country store in Bethel. In October the nephew bought out the uncle's interest, and also in October (19th) he issued the first copy of the Herald of Freedom.
As, unfortunately, he lacked the experience which induces caution, he was immediately plunged into hot waters of litiga- tion, and finally sentenced to pay on one suit a fine of $100, and be imprisoned in the jail for sixty days. He had a good room, lived well, had continual visits from friends, edited his paper as usual, and received large accessions to the subscription lists. When the sixty days were ended he received an ovation, and after a sumptuous dinner, with toasts and speeches, an ode and oration, in a coach drawn by six horses, accompanied by a band of music, forty horsemen, sixty carriages of citizens, and the marshal and orators of the day, amid roar of cannon and cheers of a multitude, Mr. Barnum rode to his home in Bethel, where the band played " Home, Sweet Home," and the procession re- turned to Danbury. His editorial career was one of continual contest, but he persevered in the publication of the Herald of Freedom until the spring of 1835, when it was sold.
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In 1841 he bought the American Museum in New York City, and had found his vocation.
The career of Mr. Barnum as showman and lecturer is too well known to need record here.
Bridgeport, the city of his adoption, is indebted to him for a gift of many acres toward enlarging and beautifying Seaside Park, and for the Barnum Institute of Science and History, which was his last gift, and was formally presented to the city on February 18th, 1893.
Mr. Barnum also gave to Tufts College, Massachusetts, $100,000, with which was erected and stocked the Barnum Museum of Natural History. Mr. Barnum was Mayor of Bridge- port, a member of the Legislature four times, President of the Pequonnock National Bank of Bridgeport, President of the Bridgeport Hospital, and the Bridgeport Water Company.
In 1876 Mr. Barnum wrote a book of fiction founded on fact, entitled " The Adventures of Lion Jack ; or, How Menageries are Made," which was dedicated to the boys of America.
In the summer of 1881 Mr. Barnum presented to Bethel, his birthplace, a bronze fountain eighteen feet high, which was made in Germany ; the design, a Triton of heroic size spouting water from an uplifted horn. At the unveiling of the fountain many speeches were made, among them an impromptu one by Mr. Barnum, which, as a good description of the days of old as well as his own history, we quote entire :
"My Friends : Among all the varied scenes of an active and eventful life, crowded with strange incidents of struggle and excitement, of joy and sorrow, taking me often through foreign lands and bringing me face to face with the king in his palace and the peasant in his turf-covered hut, I have invariably cher- ished with the most affectionate remembrance the place of my birth-the old village meeting-house, without steeple or bell, where in the square family pew I sweltered in summer and shiv- ered through my Sunday-school lessons in winter, and the old schoolhouse, where the ferule, the birchen rod and rattan did active duty, of which I deserved and received a liberal share. I am surprised to find that I can distinctly remember events which occurred before I was four years old.
" To-day, as the events and scenes of my boyhood crowd upon my memory, I become a child again. I am playing tag and
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hide-and-seek with John Hoyt and Bill Shepard, Eli Ferry, Ben Beebe, Willis Judd, 'Dil' Benedict, Rans. Seeley, and many other boys whose names rise up in my memory with the fresh- ness of yesterday. My parents called me Taylor, ignoring the name Phineas, although my maternal grandfather gave me a great reward, even Ivy Island, for bearing it. Boys of my own age called me Tale Barnum.
"I can see as if but yesterday our hard-working mothers hetchelling their flax, carding their tow and wool, spinning, reeling, and weaving it into fabrics for bedding and clothing for all the family of both sexes. The same good mothers did the knitting, darning, mending, washing, ironing, cooking, soap and candle making, picked the geese, milked the cows, made butter and cheese, and did many other things for the support of the family.
" We babies of 1810, when at home, were dressed in tow frocks, and the garments of our elders were not much superior, except on Sunday, when they wore their 'go-to-meeting clothes' of homespun and linsey-woolsey.
" Rain-water was caught and used for washing, while that for drinking and cooking was drawn from wells, with their 'old oaken bucket,' long poles, and well-sweeps.
" Fire was kept over night by banking up the brands in ashes in the fireplace, and if it went out, one neighbor would visit another about daybreak the next morning with a pair of tongs to borrow a coal of fire to kindle with. Our candles were tallow, home-made, with dark tow wicks. In summer nearly all retired to rest at early dark without lighting a candle, except on ex- traordinary occasions. Home-made soft-soap was used for wash- ing hands and faces and everything else. The children of fam- ilies in ordinary circumstances ate their meals on trenchers (wooden plates).
" As I grew older our family and others got an extravagant streak, discarded the trenchers, and rose to the dignity of pewter plates and leaden spoons. Tin peddlers, who travelled through the country with their wagons, supplied these and other luxuries. Our food consisted chiefly of boiled and baked beans, bean por- ridge, coarse rye bread, apple-sauce, hasty pudding eaten in milk, of which we all had plenty. The elder portion of the family ate meat twice a day, had plenty of vegetables, fish of
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their own catching, and occasionally big clams, which were cheap in those days, and shad in their season. These were brought from Norwalk and Bridgeport by fish and clam ped- dlers. Uncle Caleb Morgan, of Wolfpits, or Puppytown, was our only butcher. He peddled his meat through Bethel once a week. It consisted mostly of veal, lamb, mutton, or fresh pork, seldom bringing more than one kind at a time. Probably he did not have beef oftener than once a month.
"Many families kept sheep, pigs, and poultry, and one or more cows. They had plenty of plain, substantial food. Droves of hogs ran at large in the streets of Bethel. When one of the neighbors wanted to feed his hogs, he went out into the street and called 'Pig !' which was pretty sure to bring in all the other hogs in the neighborhood.
" I remember one man, called ' Old Chambers,' who had no trouble in this respect, and he was the only one excepted from it. He had a peculiar way of getting his hogs from the general drove. When he wanted them, he would go out into the street and shout, 'Hoot ! hoot ! hoot !' At this cry all the hogs but his own would run away ; but they understood the cry, and would stand still and take the meal.
" Our dinners several times each week consisted of ' pot luck,' which was corned beef, salt pork, and vegetables, all boiled together in the same big iron pot hanging from the crane, which was supplied with iron hooks and trammels and swung in and out of the huge fireplace. In the same pot with the salt pork, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, beets, carrots, cabbage, and some- times onions was placed an Indian pudding, consisting of plain Indian meal mixed in water, pretty thick, salted and poured into a home-made brown linen bag, which was tied at the top.
" When dinner was ready the Indian pudding was first taken from the pot, slipped out of the bag, and eaten with molasses. Then followed the ' pot luck.' I confess I like to this day the old-fashioned ' boiled dinner,' but doubt whether I should relish a sweetened desert before my meat.
" Rows of sausages, called 'links,' hung in the garret, were dried, and lasted all winter. I remember them well, and the treat it was when a boy to have one of these links to take to school to eat. At noon we children would gather about the great fireplace, and having cut a long stick, would push the
P. T. BARNUM.
A CORNER IN BETHEL VILLAGE, TAKEN FROM BARBER'S HISTORY, PRINTED, 1836.
THE FIRST FIRE ENGINE BROUGHT TO DANBURY. BOUGHT BY BETHEL VILLAGE, 1820.
HOUSE BUILT BY CAPT. DANIEL HICKOK, OF BETHEL, ABOUT 1760.
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sharpened end through the link, giving it a sort of cat-tail appearance. The link we would hold in the fire until it was cooked, and would then devour it with a keen relish.
" There were but few wagons or carriages in Bethel when I was a boy. Our grists of grain were taken to the mill in bags on horseback, and the women rode to church on Sundays and around the country on week days on horseback, usually on a cushion called a pillion, fastened behind the saddle, the hus- band, father, brother, or lover riding in front on the saddle. The country doctor visited his patients on horseback, carrying his saddle-bags, containing calomel, jalap, Epsom salts, lancet, and turnkey, those being the principal aids in relieving the sick. Nearly every person, sick or well, was bled every spring.
" Teeth were pulled with a turnkey, and a dreadful instrument it was in looks and terrible in execution. I can remember that once I had a convenient toothache. Like many other boys, I had occasions when school was distasteful to me, and hunting for birch or berries, or going after fish, were more of a delight than the struggle after knowledge. This toothache struck in on a Monday morning, in ample time to cover the school hour. I was in great pain, and held on to my jaw with a severe grip. My mother's sympathetic nature permitted me to stay at home with the pain. My father was of rather sterner stuff. He did not discover that I was out of school until the second day. When he found out the trouble, he wanted to see the tooth. I pointed out one, and he examined it carefully. He said it was a perfectly sound tooth, but he didn't doubt but it pained very much and must be dreadful to bear, but he would have some- thing done for it. He gave me a note to Dr. 'Tyle' Taylor. Dr. Tyle read the note, looked at the tooth, and then, getting down the dreadful turnkey, growled : 'Sit down there and I'll have that tooth out of there, or I'll yank your young head off !' I did not wait for the remedy, but left for home at the top of my speed, and have not had the toothache since.
" I was born in an old-fashioned house on Elm Street, where the great elm-tree now stands. This tree looked as large to me then as it does now. My father, early one morning, discovering an eagle perched near the top of this tree, shot it. When it struck the ground, he found it was one of his turkeys.
" Uncle Sam Taylor, the father of Dr. Tyler, Melissa, Hannah,
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and Rachel, lived on the other side of the street, farther west.
" The old schoolhouse stood near where Asel Beebe's house now stands. Captain Noah Ferry lived where George Clapp afterward resided, and 'Squire Ben Hoyt lived at the foot of Hoyt's Hill. Phineas Judd and his sons, Silliman, Willis, and Almon, with a daughter Sarah and one other daughter, lived on the top of Hoyt's Hill. Beyond him, in Wolfpits, lived Eleazer Taylor, Charles and Ledowick Dart, Uncle Caleb Morgan, the two Samuel Judds-the eldest of whom, on account of his swarthy complexion, was called ' Black Sam'-Abel Hoyt, the father of Starr, Joshua, Warren, Giles, and several daugh- ters.
" On the Wildcat Road lived Captain Eli Taylor, Seth An- drews, and others of that family, Uncle Jabez Taylor and his sons, Oliver, Elias, George, Davis, etc .; Uncle Martin, a quaint old man in knee-breeches, who kept a pair of hounds, and Deacons Elihud Taylor, Ephraim Barnum, and Ira Benedict ; Silas Hickok, Daniel Taylor, and his son Benedict, Ammon Taylor, Starr Benedict and his son Cyril, Fyler Dibble, Taylor Dibble, and others.
"In Bethel village lived my grandfather, Phineas Taylor, called ' Uncle Phin.,' and his sons, 'lawyer Ed.' and Alanson, his daughters, Irena (my mother) and Laura, who married Aaron Nichols ; Deacon Nathan Seeley and his children, Aaron, Isaac, Seth, Joanna, Frederick, George, Hannah, Harry, and Ransom ; Dr. Samuel Banks, Asel, Lemuel, and Eli Beebe ; Oliver Shepard and his children, among whom I remember William Augustus, Frederick, Charles, Andrew, George, Charlotte, and Mary ; Starr Ferry and his brothers, Sherman and Philander, and Starr's son, Hon O. S. Ferry. Uncle Daniel Barnum, father of Daniel, Jr., for whom I scraped horns for 10 cents per hundred ; Lucinda, who married Zerah Benedict, father of Dibble, Andrew, Julia, and other daughters, Jerusha and Anna, the latter of whom married John Benedict, brother of Zerah, and Ammon Benedict, who married my half-sister Irena. My other half- sister, Minerva, married Ezekiel Drew. 'Squire Tom Taylor, one of whose daughters married Seth Seeley ; another, Eliza, married Laurens P. Hickok, of Union College, a brother of Tim- othy B., and whose father, Ebenezer Hickok, I well remember.
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Also Silas Hickok and his sons, Andrew and George ; our presi- dent of to-day, Ethel T. Farnam ; George and John Clapp, Hiram Weed, Harry Preston, and Benjamin Durant.
" In Grassy Plain lived Ebenezer Taylor, called ' Uncle Neze,' father of Joseph, Lewis, Eleazer, Czar, and several daughters, one of whom married my old friend, Almon Price. In the same neighborhood lived Amos Wheeler with his mother and sisters, Jerusha and Mary ; also Zadock Starr, Jabez and Eliakim Trow- bridge, Hugh, Matthew, and George Starr, and Levi Benedict. My uncle, Deacon Peter Barnum, resided near by, also David P. Nichols with his mother and sister. In Old Lane, between Grassy Plain and Bethel, lived Deacon Daniel Hickok, a very old deaf man, who for several years before his death sat in the pulpit in order to hear the services. Noah Hubbell lived in Old Lane, and Jabez and Samuel Trowbridge lived at the south end of Grassy Plain Street.
" In Plumtrees I remember Uncle Thad. Williams, the father of Jenks, Thad., Isaac, Ira, John, Whipple, Welcome, and some daughters. North of Mr. Thad. Williams lived Pliny Barnum, who with his family removed to Ohio in 1818. Their travelling two-horse wagon, covered with a brown linen top, drove into Bethel village, where all their neighbors and friends met them to say good-by. Men and women cried like children at the thought that this family was to make a journey of from four to six weeks, exposed to the perils of the great Western wilderness. Near Pliny Barnum lived Asel and Ira Barnum, and my grand- father, Ephraim Barnum, who was a captain in the Revolu- tionary War. My uncles, Noah S. Barnum, Samuel and Abel, Barnum, Jonathan Couch, John Benedict, Benjamin Hoyt, with son of same name, Gilead Ambler, Joseph Hitchcock, Benajah Benedict, Thaddeus Starr, the father of Hannah and Rebecca. The latter married Timothy Hollister. John Dibble and my cousin, Ephraim Barnum, lived in the same locality.
"The calling over of these names, though scores of former friends are omitted, reminds me of the good woman who was piously reading from the New Testament to her dying husband, to comfort him in his last moments. The clergyman entered the sick-room and heard her devoutly reading from the first chapter of Matthew, ' Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas,' etc. I hope the genealogy of our Bethelites,
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imperfect as I have given it, may be at least as edifying as the reading of that chapter to the dying man.
"I remember seeing my father and our neighbors put through military drill every day by Captain Noah Ferry, in 1814, for the war with Great Britain of 1812-15. My uncles, aunts, and others, when I was a child, often spoke of ravages of Indians from which their ancestors had suffered, and numbers of them remembered and described the burning of Danbury by the Brit- ish in 1777.
"One season I attended the private school of Laurens P. Hickok (now Professor Hickok), in which his sweetheart, Eliza Taylor, was also a scholar. One day he threw a ruler at my head. I dodged, and it struck Eliza in the face. He quietly apologized, and said she might apply that to some other time when she might deserve it. He and his wife are still living in Andover, Mass., a happy, gray-haired old couple of eighty or more.
"Eliza's father, Esquire Tom Taylor, sometimes wore white- topped boots. He was a large, majestic-looking man of great will force, and was considered the richest man in Bethel. Mr. Eli Judd was marked second in point of wealth.
"Every year I took $12 to Esquire Tom Taylor to pay the interest on a two-hundred-dollar note which my father owed to him. I also carried annually $4.50 to Eli Judd for interest on a seventy-five-dollar note, which he held against my father. As these wealthy men quietly turned over each note filed away in a small package till they found the note of my father, and then endorsed the interest thereon, I trembled with awe to think that I stood in the presence of such wonderfully rich men. It was estimated that the richer of them was actually worth $3000 !
" Esquire Tom made quite a revolution here by one act. He got two yards of figured carpet to put down in front of his bed in the winter, because the bare board floor was too cold for his feet while he was dressing. This was a big event in the social life of that day, and Esquire Tom was thought to be putting on airs which his great wealth alone permitted.
" When I was but ten years old newspapers came only once a week. The man who brought us the week's papers came up from Norwalk, and drove through this section with newspapers for subscribers and pins and needles for customers. He was
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called Uncle Silliman. I can remember well his weekly visit through Bethel and his queer cry. On coming to a house or village he would shout, 'News ! News ! The Lord reigns !' One time he passed our schoolhouse when a snowstorm was pre- vailing. He shouted, 'News ! News ! The Lord reigns-and snows a little.'
" It took two days and sometimes more to reach New York from Bethel or Danbury. My father drove a freight or market wagon from Bethel to Norwalk. Stage passengers for New York took sloops at Norwalk, sometimes arriving in New York the next morning, but were often detained by adverse winds several days.
" Everybody had barrels of cider in their cellars, and drank cider-spirits called ' gumption.' Professors of religion and the clergy all drank liquor. They drank it in all the hat and comb shops ; the farmers had it at hay and harvest time. Every sort of excuse was made for being treated. A new journeyman must give a pint or quart of rum to pay his footing. If a man had a new coat, he must ' sponge ' it by treating. Even at funerals the clergy, mourners, and friends drank liquor. At public vendues the auctioneer held a bottle of liquor in his hand, and when bid- ding lagged he would cry, 'A dram to the next bidder ; ' the bid would be raised a cent, and the bidder would take his dram boldly and be the envy of most of the others.
" The public whipping-post and imprisonment for debt both flourished in Bethel in my youthful days. Suicides were buried at cross-roads.
" How blessed are we to live in a more charitable and enlight- ened age, to enjoy the comforts and conveniences of modern times, and to realize that the world is continually growing wiser and better !
" I sincerely congratulate my native village on her character for temperance, industry, and other good qualities. I intend soon to come to visit the various localities near Bethel where as a boy I drove cows, rode horse to plough for 10 cents per day, gathered chestnuts, went to mill, and worked in garden and meadow.
"I am desirous once more to see those places bearing the euphonious names of Toad-Hole, Fenner's Rocks, Puppytown, Wolfpits, Chestnut Ridge, Great Hill, Wildcat, Shelter Rock,
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Great Pasture, Stony Hill, Beaver Brook, Plumtrees, East Swamp, and above, and more than all, I am anxious to rest my eyes once more on that noble, blessed, historical Ivy Island.
" And now, my friends, I take very great pleasure in present- ing this fountain to the town and borough of Bethel, as a small evidence of the love which I bear them and the respect which I feel for my successors, the present and future citizens of my native village."
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