History of Fairfield County, Connecticut : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 162

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) comp. cn
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co.
Number of Pages: 1572

USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > History of Fairfield County, Connecticut : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 162

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"Innnediately after my arrival, waiting only to deposit my carpet-bag in my room, I set out to visit our house,-our former home. As I came near I saw that the footpath we had worn across Dencon Benedict's lot to shorten the distance from the street had given place to a highway. I entered this, and was approaching the object of my visit, when I was overtaken by a young man walking with a long stride.

"' Whose house is this on the hill?' said I.

""' It is mine,' was tho reply.

"' Indeed! You must have a fine view from your upper windows?'

"'Yes, the view is fanions, and the house itself is somewhat noted. It was built by Petor Parley, and here he lived many years.'

" By this time wo had reached the place. The stranger, after I had looked at the premises a few moments said, 'Perhaps you would like to ascend the hill to the north, from which the view is very extensive?' I gave assent, and we went thither, soon finding ourselves in the old Kee- ler lot, on tho top of High Ridge, so familiar to our youthful rambles. With all tho vividness of my early recollections, I really had no adequate idea of tho beauty of the scene as now presented to us. The circle of viow was indeed less than I had imagined, for I once thought it immeuse, but the objects were more striking, more vividly tinted, more pictur- esquely disposed. Long Island Sound, which extends for sixty miles before tho eye, except as it is hidden here and there by intercepting bills and trees, seems nearer than it did to the inexperienced vision of my childhood. I could distinguish the different kinds of vessels on the water and the island itself, stretched out in a long blue line beyond, presented its cloud-liko tissues of forest, alternating with patches of yellow sand- banks along the shoro. I could distinctly indicate the site of Norwalk, and the spires peering through the mass of trees to the castward spoke suggestive of the beautiful towus and villages tlmt line the northern bauks of the Sound.

" West Mountain seemed nearer and less imposing than I had imagined, but the sea of mountains beyond, terminating in the Highlands of the Hudson, more than fulfilled my remembrances. The scene has no abrupt and startling grandeur from this point of view, but in that kind of beauty which consists in blending the peace and quietude of culti- vated valleys with the sublimity of mountains-all in the enchantment of distance, and all wantled with the vivid hues of summer-it equals the fairest scenes in Italy. The deep-blue velvet which is thrown over our Northern lundsenpes differs, indeed, from the reddish purple of the Apennines, but it is in all things as poetic, as stimulating to the imagin- ation, as available to the painter, as suggestive to the poet,-to all, in- doed, who feel and appreciate the truly beautiful. As I gazed upon this lovely sceno, how did the memories of early days come back clothed in tho romanco of childhood ! I had then no iden of distance beyond these mountains, no conception of landscape beauty, no idea of picturesque sublimity, that surpassed what was familiar to me here. Indeed. all nay first measures of grandeur and beauty in nature were formed upon these glorious models now before me. Ilow often have I stood upon this mound nt the approach of sunset and gazed in speechless wonder upon yonder mountains, glowing as they were in the flood of sapphire which

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HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

was then poured upon them ? I pray you to excuse my constant refer- ence to foreign lands, but as I have just left them, it is natural to make comparisons with these objects familiar to my childhood, Let me say, then, that no sunsets surpass our own in splendor, nor have I seeu any- thing to cqual them in brilliancy when the retiring orb of day, as if to shed glory upon his departure, pours his rays upon the ontstretched fleece of clonds, and these reflect their blaze upon the mountain land- scape below. Then for a brief space, as you know, the heavens seem a canopy of burnished gold, and the earth beneath a kingdom robed iu purple velvet and crowned with rubies aud sapphires. In Italy the sun- set sky has its enchantments, but while these perhaps surpass the same exhibitions of nature in our climate in respect to a certain tranquil soft- ness and exquisite blending of rainbow hues, they are still inferior in gorgeons splendor to the scenes which I have been describing.

" Having taken a hasty but earnest view of the grand panorama of High Ridge, I returned with my guide to the house. I feigned thirst and begged a glass of water. This was readily given, and I tasted .once more the nectar of our ' old oaken bucket.' After glancing round and making a few observations, I thanked my attendant-who, by the way, had no suspicion that I knew the place as well as himself-for his cour- tesy, and took my leave and returned to the hotel. My emotions upou thus visiting our early home, so full of the liveliest associations, it would be utterly in vain to attempt to describe.

" It was now Saturday evening, which I spent quietly with my host and his family in talking over old times. In the morning I rose early, for it seemed a sin to waste such hours as these, Standing on the north- ern stoop of the Keeler tavern, I looked upon the beautiful landscape bounded by the Redding and Danbury hills and saw the glorious march of morning over the scene. The weather was clear, and the serenity of the Sabbath was in the breadth of nature; even the breezy morn soon subsided into stillness, as if the voice of God hallowed it. The birds seemed to know that He rested on this seventh day. As the sun came up the fluttering leaves sank into repose; no voice of lowing herd or baying hound broke over the hills. All was silent and motionless in the street ; everything seemed to feel that solemn command, 'Remember the Sabbath day,'-save only a strapping Shanghai cock in Mr. Lewis' yard over the way, which strutted, crowed, and chased the hens like a very Mormon, evidently caring for none of these things.

" At nine o'clock the first bell rang. The first stroke told me that it was not the same to which my childish ear was accustomed. Upon in- quiry, I learned that on a certain Fourth of July some ten years back it was rung so merrily as to be cracked! Hlad any one asked me who was likely to have done this, I should have said J . . . . H . .. . . , and he indeed it was. With a good-will, however, quite characteristic of him, he caused it to be replaced by a new one, and, though its tone is deeper and even more melodious than the old one, I felt disappointed, and a shade of sadness came over my mind.

"On going into the meeting-house, I found it to be totally changed. The pulpit, instead of being at the west, was at the north, and the gal- leries had been transposed to suit this new arrangement. The Puritan pine color of the pews had given way to white paint. The good old oaken floor was covered by Kidderminster carpets. The choir, instead of being distributed into four parts and placed on different sides of the gallery, was all packed together in a heap. Instead of Dencon Hawley for chor- ister, there was a young man who ' kuew not Joseph,' and in lieu of a pitch-pipe to give the key there was a melodeon to lead the choir. In- stead of 'Mear,' 'Old Hundred,' 'Aylesbury,' 'Montgomery,' or 'New Durham,'-songs full of piety and pathos, and in which the whole con- gregation simultaneously joined,-they sang modern tunes whose name and measure I did not know. The performance was artistic and skillful, but it seemed to lack the unction of a hearty echo from the bosom of the assembly, as was the saiutly custom auiong the fathers.

"The congregation was no less changed than the place itself, for, re- member, I had not been in this building for five and forty years. The patriarchs of my boyhood-Deacon Olmstead, Deacon Benedict, Deacon Hawley, Granther Baldwin, 'Squire Keeler, Nathan Smith-were not there, nor were their types iu their places. A few gray-haired men I saw having dim and fleeting semblances to these Anakim of my youth- ful imagination, but who they were I could not tell I afterwards heard that most of them were the companions of my early days, now grown to manhood and bearing the impress of their parentage blent with ves- tiges of their youth, thus at once inciting and baffling my curiosity. For the most part, however, the assembly was composed of a new generation. In several instances I felt a strange sort of embarrassment as to whether the person I saw was the boy grown up or the papa grown down. It produces a very odd confusion of ideas to realize in an old man before you the playmate of your childhood whom you had forgotten for forty

years, but who in that time has been trudging along in life at the same pace as yourself. At first everything looked belittled, degenerated in dimensions. The house seemed small, the galleries low, the pulpit mean. The people appeared Lilliputian. These impressions soon passed off, and I began to recognize a few persons around me. William Hawley is just as you would have expected,-his hair white as snow, his countenance mild, refined, cheerful, though marked with threescore and ten. Irad Hawley, though he has his residence in 'Fifth Avenue,' spends his suni- mers here, and begius now to look like his father the deacon. I thought I discovered Gen. King in an erect and martial form in one of the pews, but it proved to be huis son Joshua, who now occupies the family mansion and worthily stands at the head of the house. As I came out of church I was greeted with mauy hearty shakes of the hand, but in most cases I could with difficulty remember those who thus claimed recognition.

"The discourse was very clever and thoroughly orthodox, as it should be, for I found that the Confession aud Covenant of 1750 were still in force, just as our father left them. Even the Eleventh Article stands as it was : ' You believe that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a day of judgment, in which God will judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ; when the righteous shall be acquitted and received to eternal life, and the wicked shall be sentenced to everlasting fire, pre- pared for the devil and his augels.'

" I was, I confess, not a little shocked to hear the account the minister gave of the church-members, for he declared that they were full of evil thoughts, envy, jealousy, revenge, and all uncharitableness. IIe said he knew all about it, and could testify that they were a great deal worse than the world in general believed or conceived them to be. Indeed, he affirmed that it took a real experimental Christian to understand how totally de- praved they were. I was consoled at finding that this was uot the settled minister (Mr. Clark), but a missionary accustomed to preach in certain lost places in that awful Babylon called New York. Perhaps the sermon was adapted to the people it was designed for, but it seemed ill suited to the latitude and longitude of such a quaint, primitive parish as Ridge- field, which is without an oyster-cellar, a livery-stable, a grog-shop, a lawyer, a broker, a drunkard, or a profane swearer.

" This circumstance reminded me of an itinerant Boanerges who in lis migrations half a century ago through Western New York was re- quested to prepare a sermon to be preached at the execution of an Indian, who had been convicted of murder and was speedily to be hung. This lie complied with, but the convict escaped, and the ceremony did not take place. The preacher, however, not liking to have so good a thing lost, delivered it the next Sabbath to a pious congregation in the Western Reserve, where he chanced to be, stating that it was composed for a hanging, but, as that did not take place, he would preach it now, pre- suming that it would be found appropriate to the occasion !

" In the afternoon we had a begging sermon from a young converted Jew. who undertook to prove that his tribe was the most interesting in the world and their conversion the first step towards the millennium. After the sermon they took up a contribution to aid him in getting an education ; he also sold a little story-book of his conversion at twelve and a half cents a copy, for the benefit of his converted sister. I have no objection to Jews, converted or unconverted, but I must say that my reverence for the house of God is such that I do not like to hear there the chink of copper which generally prevails in a contribution-box. Even that of silver and gold has no melody for me in such a place. It always reminds me painfully of those vulgar pigeon-dealers who were so summarily and so properly scourged out of the Temple.

" The old dilapidated Episcopal church which you remember on the main street-a church not only without a bishop, but without a congre- gation-has given place to a new edifice and stated services, with a large and respectable body of worshipers. The Methodists, who were wont to assemble fifty years ago in Dr. Baker's kitchen, have put up a new house, white and bright and erowded every Sabbath with attentive listeners. This church numbers two hundred members, and is the largest in the place. Though in its origin it seemed to thrive upon the outcasts of so- ciety, its people are now as respectable as those of any other religious society in the town. No longer do they choose to worship in barns, school-houses, and by-places; no longer do they affect leanness, long faces, and loose, uncombed hair ; no longer do they cherish bad gram- mar, low idioms, and the euphony of a nasal twang in preaching. Their place of worship is in good taste and good keeping ; their dress is comely and in the fashion of the day. The preacher is a man of education, re- finement, and dignity, and he and the Rev. Mr. Clark, our father's suc- cessor, exchange pulpits, and call each other Brother ! Has not the good time come ?

"On Monday morning I took a wide range over the town with Joslnia King, who, by the way, is not only the successor, but in some things the

659

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repetition, of his father. He represents him in person, as I have already intimated, and has many of his qualities. He has remodeled the grounds around the old family mansion, amplifying and embellishing them with much judgment. The house itself is unchanged, except by paint and the introduction of certain articles of furniture and tasteful decorations, -testimonials of the proprietor's repeated visits to Europe. Here, being a bachelor, he has gathered some of his nieces, and here he receives the members of the King dynasty down to the third generation, all seeming to rogard it as the Jerusalem of the family. The summer gathering is delightful, bringing hitler the refinements of the best society of New York, Philadelphia, and other places. Here I spent some pleasant hours, meeting, of course, many of the neighbors, who como to see me with almost as much curiosity as if I had been the veritable Joyce lleth.

"In all parts of the town I was struck with tho evidences of change- gentle, gradual, it is true, but still bespeaking the lapse of half a cen- tury. Along the main street the general outline of things is the same, but in detail all is transformed, or at least modified. Most of the old houses have disappeared, or have undergone such mutations as hardly to be recognized. New and more expensive odifices are scattered here and there. If you ask who are the proprietors, you will be told Dr. Perry, Joshua King, Nathan Smith, but they are not those whom we knew by those names: they are their sons, perhaps their grandsons. Master Stebbins' school-house is swept away, and even the pond across the road, the scene of many a school-day frolic, is evaporated. I am constantly struck with the general desiccation which has passed over the place ; many of the brooks which formed our winter skating- and sliding- places have vanished. I looked in vain for the poel back of Deacon John Benedict's house, which I always imagined to be the scene of the ballad :

"' What shall we have for dinner, Mrs. Bond ? There is beef in the huurder and ducks in the pond : Dill, dill, dill, dill, dilled, Come here and be killed !'

Cel. Bradley's house, that secmed once so awful and so exclusive, is now a dim, rickety, and tenantless edifice, for sale, with all its appurtenances, for twenty-five hundred dollars. Is it not strange to sec this once proud tenement the subject of blight and decay, and that, too, in the midst of general prosperity ? Nor is this all : it has just been the subject of a de- grading hoax. I must tell you the story, for it will show you that the march of progress has invaded even Ridgefield.

" About three days since there appeared in the village a man claiming to be the son-in-law of George Law. In a mysterious manner he agreed to buy the Bradley estate. With equal mystory he contracted to purchase several other houses in the vicinity. It then leaked out that a grand speculation was on foot : there was to be a railroad through Ridgefield ; the town was to be turned into a city, and a hotel resembling the Astor House was to take the place of the okl dilapidated shell now upon the Bradley promises. An electric feeling soon ran through the village, speculation began to swell in the bosom of society. Under this impulse rocks rose, rivers doubled, hills mounted, valleys oscillated. This sober town, anchored in everlasting granite, having defied the shock of ages, now trembled in the hysterical balance of trado.

"Two days passed, and the bubble burst; the puff-ball was punctured ; the sham son-in-law of George Law was discovered to be a lawless son of a pauper of Danbury. All his operations were, in fact, a hoax. At twelve o'clock on Saturday night he was seized and taken from his bed by an independent corps under Capt. Lynch. They tied him fast to a buttonwood-tree in the main street, called the Liborty Pole.

"' No man e'cr felt the halter draw In good opinion of the law.'

At all events, the prisoner dcemod it a great incongruity to use an in- stitution consecrated to the rights of man and the cause of freedom for the purpose of depriving him of the power to seek happiness in his own way : so about ten o'clock on Sunday morning, finding it unpleasant to be in this situation while the people wout by, shaking their heads, on their way to church, he managed to get out his penknife, cut his cords, and make a bee-line for South Salem.

"Farther on, proceeding northward, I found that Dr. Baker's old house-its kitchen the cradle of Ridgefield Methodism-had departed, and two or three modern edifices were near its site, Master Stebbins' house, from its elevated position nt the head of the street, seeming like the guardian genius of the place, still stands, venerable aliko from its dun complexion, its antiquo form, and its historical remembrances. Its days may be set at a hundred years, and hence it is an antiquity in our brief chronology. It almost saw the birth of Ridgefield: it has prob- ably looked down upon tho building of every other edifice in the street.

It presided over the fight of 1777. Close by, Arnold's horse was shot under him, and he, according to tradition, made a flying leap over a slx- barred gate and escaped. Near Its threshold the British cannon was planted which sent a ball into the northeastern corner-post of Squire Keeler's tavern, and which, covered up by a sliding shlugle, as a relic too precions for the open air, Is still to be seen therc.

"The old house I found embowered in trees, some-primeval chun- spreading their wide branches protectingly over the roof, stoop, and fore- ground ; others, sugar-maples, upright, syunnetrical, and deeply verdant, as is the wont of these beautiful children of our American forest. (ither trees-apples, pears, peaches, and plums, bending with fruit-occupled the orchard-grounds back of the house. The garden at the left seemed a jubilee of tomatoes, beets, squashes, onions, cucumbers, beans, and pumpkins. A vinc of the latter had invaded a peach-tree, and a huge oval pumpkin, deeply ribbed and now emerging from its bronze hue into a golden yellow, swung aloft as if to prochain the victory. By the porch was a thick clambering grapevine, presenting its purple bunches almost to your mouth as you enter the door. I knocked, and Anne Stebbins, my former schoolmate, let me in. She was still a maiden, in strange contrast to the prolific and progressive state of all around. She did not know me, but when I told her how I once saw her climb through the opening in the school-house wall overhead, and suggested the blue-nlxed hne of her stockings, she rallied and gave me a hearty welcome.

"You will no doubt in some degree comprehend the feelings with which I rambled over these scenes of our boyhood, and you will forgive, if you cannot approve, the length of this random episte. I will tres- pass but little further upon your patience. I must repeat that the gen- eral aspect of the town, in respect to its roads, churches, houses, lands, all show a general progress in wealth, taste, and refinement. Nor is this advance in civilization merely external. William Hawley, a most competent judge, as he has been the leading merchant of the place for forty years, mentioned some striking evidences of this. At the begin- ning of this century most of the farmers were in debt and a large part of their lands were under mortgage; now not four farms in the place are thus oncumbered. Then it was the custom for the men to spend a good deal of their time, and especially in winter, at the stores and tav- erns in tippling and small gambling; this practice has ceased. Drunk- enness, profane swearing, Sabbath-breaking, noisy night-rows, which were common, are now almost wholly unknown. There aro but two town paupers, and these are not indigenous. Education is better, higher in its standard, and is nearly universal. Ideas of comfort in the modes of life are more elevated, tho houses aro improved, the furniture is more convenient and more abundant. That religion has not lost its hold on the conscience is evident from the fact that three flourishing churches exist ; that the duties of patriotism are not forgotten is evinced by a universal attendance at tho polls ou election-days; at the same time, it is clear that religious and political discussions have lost their acerbity, thus leaving the feeling of good neighborhood moro general and the tono of humanity in all things more exalted.

" Is thero not encouragement, hope, in these things? for Ridgefield is not alone in this forward march of society. It is in the general tide of prosperity, economical, social, and moral, but an example of what has been going on all over New England,-perhaps over the whole country. We hear a great deal of the iniquities in the larger cities, but society even there is not worse than formerly : these places-their houses, streets, prisons, brothels-are exhausted as by an air-pump of all their doings, good and bad, and the seething mass of details is doled out day after day by the penny press to appease the hunger and thirst of society for excite- ment. Thus what was once hidden is now thrown open, und seems mul- tiplicd and magnified by a dozen powerful lenses, euch making the most of it and seeking to outdo all others in dressing up the show for the pub- lic taste. If you will make the comparison, you will see that now tip- ping over an omnibus or the foundering of a ferry-boat takes up more space in a newspaper than did six murders or a dozen confingratious fifty years ngo. Then the world's doings could be dispatched iu a weekly folio of four pages, with Pica type ; now they require forty pages of Bre- vier every day. Our population is increased,-doubled, quadrupled if you please, but tho newspaper press has enlarged its functions a thou- sand fold. It costs more paper and print to determine whether a police- man of New York was born in England or the United States than are usually consumed in telling the story of tho Revolutionary war. This institution-tho Press-has, in fact, becomo a microscope and a mirror, soeing all, magnifying all, reflecting all, until at last it requires a steady brain to discover in its shifting and passing panoramas the sober, simple truth. So far as the subject of which I am writing is concerned, I am satisfied that if our cities seem more corrupt than formerly, it is only in appearance and not in reality. If we hear more about the vices of so-

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HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

ciety, it is because, in the first place, things are more exposed to the pub- lic view, and, in the next place, the moral standards are higher, and hence these evils are made the subject of louder and more noticeable comment. These obvious objections will solve whatever difficulty there may be in adopting iny conclusions.

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History of Fairfield County, Connecticut : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 162

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) comp. cn Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co. Number of Pages: 1572

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) comp. cn
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co.
Number of Pages: 1572