History of Fairfield County, Connecticut : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 163

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 163

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" But, whatever the fact may be as to our larger cities, it cannot be doubted that all over New England at least there has been a quiet but earnest and steady march of civilization, especially within the last forty years. The war of 1812 was disastrous to our part of the country,-dis- astrous, I firmly believe, to our whole country. In New England it checked the natural progress of society, it impoverished the people, it debased their manners, it corrupted their hearts. Let others vaunt the glory of war: I shall venture to say what I have seen and known. We have now had forty years of peace, and the happy advances I havo no- ticed, bringing increased light and comfort in at every door, rich or poor, to bless the inhabitants, are its legitimate fruits. The inherent tendeney of our New England society is to improvement : give us peace, giving us tranquillity, and, with the blessing of God, we shall continue to advance.

" You will not suppose mne to say that government ean do nothing: the prosperity of which I speak is in a great measure imputable to the encouragement given, for a series of years, to our domestic industry. When farming absorbed society, a large part of the year was lost, or worse than lost, because tavern-haunting, tippling, and gambling were the chief resources of men in the dead and dreary winter months. Man- nfactures gave profitable occupation during this inclement period. For- merly the markets were remote, and we all know, from the records of universal history, that farmers, without the stimulus of ready markets, sink into indolence and indifference. The protection, the eneourage- ment, the stimulating of any of our manufacturing and mechanical in- dustry created home markets in every valley, along every stream, thus rousing the taste, energy, and ambition of the farmers within reach of thesc pervading influences. Ridgefield is not, strictly speaking, a man- ufacturing town, but the beneficent operation of the multiplying and diversifying of the occupations of society has reached this, as it has every other town and village in the State, actually transforming the con- dition of the people by increasing their wealth, multiplying their con- forts, enlarging their minds, elevating their sentiments,-in short, in- creasing their happiness.

"The importance of the fact I state-the progress and improvement of the country towns-is plain, when we consider that here and not in the great cities-New York or Boston or Philadelphia-are the hope, strength, and glory of our nation. Here, in the smaller towns and vil- lages, are indeed the majority of the people, and here there is a weight of sober thought, just judgment, and virtuous feeling that will serve as rudder and ballast to our country, whatever weather may betide.

" As I have so recently traveled through some of the finest and most renowned portions of the European continent, I find myself constantly comparing the towns and villages which I see here with these foreign lands. One thing is clear,-that there are in Continental Europe no such country towns and villages as those of New England and some other portions of this country. Not only the exterior, but the interior, is totally different. The villages there resemble the squalid suburbs of a city ; the people are like their houses,-poor and subservient, narrow in intellect, feeling, and habits of thought. I know twenty towns in France having from two to ten thousand inhabitants where, if you except the prefects, mayors, notaries, and a few other persons in each place, there is scarcely a family that rises to the least independence of thought, or even a moderate elevation of character. All the power, all the thought, all the genius, all the expanse of intellect, are centered at Paris. The blood of the country is drawn to this seat and eentre, leaving the limbs and members cold and pulseless as those of a corpse.

" How different is it in this country. The life, vigor, power, of these United States are diffused through a thousand veins and arteries over the whole people, every limb nourished, every member invigorated. New York, Philadelphia, and Boston do not give law to this country ; that comes from the people, the majority of whom resemble those I have described at Ridgefield,-farmers, mechanics, manufacturers, merchants, independent in their eirenmstances and sober, religions, virtuous in their habits of thought and conduct. I mako allowance for the sinister in- fluence of vice, which abounds in some places ; for the debasing effects of lemagogism in our politicians ; for the corruption of selfish and degrad- ing interests cast into the general current of public feeling and opinion ; I admit that these sometimes make the nation swerve for a time from the path of wisdom, but the wandering is neither wide nor long. The pre- ponderating uational mind is just and sound, and if danger comes it will manifest its power and avert it.

: " But I must close this long letter, and with it bid adieu to my birth-

place. Farewell to Ridgefield! Its soil is indeed stubborn, its climate severe, its creed rigid, yet where is the landscape more smiling, the sky more glorious, the earth more cheering? Where is society more kindly, neighborhood more equal, life more tranqnil ? Where is the sentiment of humanity higher, life more blest? Where else can you find two thou- sand country-people with the refinements of the city, their farms un- mortgaged, their speech unblemished with oaths, their breath uncon- taminated with aleohol, their poor-honse without a single native pauper ?

" Daniel Webster once said, jocosely, that New Hampshire is a good place to come from > it seems to me, in all sincerity, that Ridgefield is a good place to go to. Should I ever return there to end my days, this may be my epitaph :

"My faults forgotten, and my sins forgiven, Let this, my tranquil birthplace, be my grave : As in my youth I deem'd it nearest heaven, So here I give to God the breath he gave. "Yours cver, S. G. G."

SARAH BISHOP, THE HIERMITESS.

" Three-quarters of a century ago," says Rev. Mr. Teller, "there was sometimes to be seen in the village a strange-appearing old woman, familiarly known as Sarah Bishop. Her whole appearance was to the last degree peculiar. Poorly clad, her form slightly bent, her face pale and eareworn, her brow wrinkled and nearly hidden by long locks of gray hair, which were allowed to fall carelessly over it, her step quiek and agilc,-she would seem to glide rather than walk through the town street in quest of such articles of food as were absolutely indispensable to the sustenance of the body, or a few crumbs of that spiritual bread which is no less indispensable to the life of the soul. She is said to have reminded one more of a visitant from the spirit-world than of a being of actual flesh and blood.

" Her home-if home it could be called-was situ- ated on one of the southeastern declivities of West Mountain, about four miles northwest from the village of Ridgefield, and just inside the town limits of Salem. It was formed in part by a mass of projeeting rock, and in part by pieces of bark and limbs of trees thrown up by her own hands for a covering.

"No name could better apply to her than hermitess. She was no mere amateur recluse : she was actually shut off from all society. Her dwelling-place was one difficult to find, and her reticence covered alike all the ineidents of her past life and her present thought. She repelled almost with sternness, rather than courted, the sympathy even of those of her own sex. She loved solitude; she did not feign a prefer- ence for it.

" The tradition concerning this singular woman is that during the Revolutionary war she lived with her parents on Long Island; but, her father's house hav- ing been at that time burned and she greatly wronged by a British officer, she left her home and wandered about till she discovered this lonely spot and the half- formed cave, from which she could not only overlook the Sound, but which on a clear day enabled her to feast her cyes upon the very hills and valleys which surrounded the home of her childhood.

" The first piece of poetry ever published by S. G.

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RIDGEFIELD.

Goodrich (Peter Parley) had this hermitess for its subject. It ran as follows :

"' For many a year the mountain lag Was a theme of village wonder, For she mado hor home in the dizzy crag Where the caglo bore his phinder.

"' Up the beetling eliff she was seen at night Like a ghost to glide away ; But she came again with the morning light From the forest wild and gray.

" Her face was wrinkled, and passionless seem'd As her bosom, all blasted and dead, And her colorless eye like an icicle gleamed, Yet ne sorrow er sympathy shed.

"'IIer long snewy locks, as the winter drift, On the wind were back ward cast, And her shriveled form glided by so swift You had said 'twere a ghost that pass'd.

" HIer honse was a cave in a giddy reck That o'erhung a lonesome vale, And 'twas deeply scarr'd'by the lightning-shock, And swept by the vengeful gale.

"' As alone on the cliff she musingly sato Tho fox at her fingers would snap; The crow would sit on her suew-white pate, And the rattlesnake coil in her lap.

" The night-hawk look'd down with a welcome cyo As he stoop'd in his airy swing, And the haughty eagle hover'd so nigh As to fan her long locks with his wing.

"' But when Winter roll'd dark his sullen wave From the west with gusty sheck, Old Sarah, deserted, crept cold to ber cave, And slept withont bed in her rock,

"' No fire illumined her dismal den, Yet a tatter'd Bible she read ; For she saw in the dark with a wizard ken, And talk'd wish the troubled dead.

"' And often she muttered a foreign name With curses too fearful to tell, And a tale of horror, of madness and shame, She told to the walls of her cell !'

" Mr. Goodrich further says of her ('Recollections of a Lifetime,' vol. i. p: 293) :

"'In my rambles among the mountains I have seen her passing through the forest or sitting silent as a statue upon the prostrate trunk of a tree, or perchance upon a stone or monnd, scarcely to be distin- gnished from the inanimate objects-wood, earth, and rock-around her. She had a sense ot propriety as to personal appearance, for when she visited the town she was decently though poorly clad; when alone in the wilderness she seemed little more than a squalid mass of rags. My excur- sions frequently brought me within the wild precinets of her solitary den. Several times I have paid a visit to tho spot, and In two instances found her at home. A place more desolate in its general outline, more ab- solutely given up to the wilderness of nature, it is impossible to conceive. Her cave was a hollow in the rock about six feet square. Except n few rags and an old basin, it was without furniture, her bed being the floor of the cave and her pillow a projecting point of the rock. It was en- tered by a natural door about three feet wide and four feet high, and was closed in severe weather only by pieces of bark. At a distance of a few feet was a cleft, where she kept a supply of roots and nuts which she gathered, and the food that was given hor. She was reputed to have a sceret depository, where she kept a quantity of antique dresses, several of them of rich silks and apparently suited to fashionable life, though I tbiuk this was an exaggeration, At a little distance down tho ledgo there was a fine spring of water, in the vicinity of which she was often found in fair weather.

"'There was no attempt, either in or around the spot, to bestow upon it an air of convenience or comfort. A small space of cleared ground

was occupied by a few thriftlers peach-trees, and in summer a patch of starveling beans, cheminbers, and potatoes. Up two or three of the ad- jacent forest-trees there clambered luxurlant grapevines, highly produc- tive In their season. With the exception of these feeble inarks of culti- vation, all was left ghastly and savage as nature made it. The trees, standing. npon the top of the cliff and exposed to the shock of the tem- pest, were bent and stooping towards the valley, their limbs contorted and their roots clinging, as with an ngonizing grasp, into the rifts of the rocky upon which they stood. Many of them were hoary with age and hollow with decay; others were stripped of their leaves by the blasts, and others still grooved and splintered by the lightning. The valley below, enriched with the decay of centuries and fed with molsture from the surrounding hills, was a wild paradise of towering ouke and other giants of the vegetable kingdom, with a rank undergrowth of tangled shrubs. In the distance, to the east, the gathered streams spread out into a beautiful expanse of water called Long Pond.

"' A place at once so secluded and so wild was, of course, the chosen haunt of birds, beasts, and reptiles. The eagle built her nest and reared her young in the clefts of the rocks ; foxes found shelter in the caverne, and serpents reveled alike in the dry hollows of the cliffs and the dank reeesses of the valley. The hermitess had made companionship with these brute tenants of the wood. The birds had become so familiar with her that they seemed to heed her almost as little as if she had been a stone. The fox fearlessly pursued his hunt and his gambols in her presence. The rattlesnake hushed his monitory signal as he approached her. Such things, at least, were entertained by the popular belief. It was said, indeed, that she had domesticated a particular rattlesnake, and that be paid her daily visits. She was accustomed-so said the legend- to bring him milk from tho villages, which he devoured with great relish.

"' During the winter she was confined for several months to her cell. At that period she lived npon roots and nuts, which she had laid in for the season. She had no fire, and, deserted even by her brute companions, she was absolutely alone, save that she seemed to hold communion with the invisible world. She appeared to have no sense of solitude, no weari- ness at the slow lapse of days and months; night had no darkness, the tempest no terror, winter no desolation, for her. When spring returned she came down from her mountain a mere shadow, each year her form more bent, her limbs muore thin and wasted, her hair more blanched, her eye more colorless.'

" In the year 1810 this strange life ended, and ended in a manner sadly in keeping with all which had preceded it. One stormy night she left the house of a Mr. Wilson, living where Mr. Timothy Jones now lives, some two miles away, to return by a nearer route across the fields to her own wretched den. A few days after, mueh anxiety having been felt as to her condition, search was made for her. Not finding her in the cave, those in search started down across the fields towards the house at which she had been last seen. They had proceeded but a little way before they discovered her lifeless body literally wedged in between masses of rocks. She had never reached her home. The things which the kind neiglibor had given her were with her. In attempt- ing to climb the steep and rocky hillside she had missed her footing and perisled.

" The neighbors and friends took up her body, and, having prepared for it the grave, buried it in the old burying-ground connected with the Episcopal church, North Salem .. No stone marks the spot where her body rests, but the old eave, still to be seen in the mountain-side, will keep fresh and green her memory, while that of many who lived in affluence and died greatly lamented shall have perished."

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662

HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

CHAPTER LXV.

RIDGEFIELD (Continued). ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.#

The Congregational Church-St. Stephen's Church-Methodist Episcopal Church-Congregational Church of Ridgebury-Protestaut Episcopal Church of Ridgebury.

CONGREGATIONAL CIIURCH.

THE Congregational Church was the first Christian organization of the town. Under date of October, 1712, the following act of General Assembly then convened at Hartford is recorded :

" Upon the petition of the Inhabitants of the Town of Ridgefield, re- questing that the charges for the maintenance of the ministry in the said town of Ridgefield may be levied in equal proportion upon all the lands belonging to the several proprietors in the said Town,

"This Assembly order that all lands lying in the Township of Ridge- field be taxed in proportion for four years towards the settling and main- taining of the ministry in the said town of Ridgefield."

As early as 1713 the Rev. Thomas Hawley, of Northampton, had come to the young settlement as a preacher of the gospel. There were doubtless others who had preceded him as occasional supplies, but as the earliest records of the church were destroyed many years ago, the names of such and their terms of service are lost.

In the year 1714, General Assembly granted "unto the inhabitants of the Town of Ridgefield to imbody into Church Estate and settle an orthodox minister among them."

Rev. Thomas Hawley was probably formally settled over the church as its pastor in the same year, and continued his labors among them until the time of his death, which occurred on the 8th of November, 1738, in the forty-ninth year of his age. Mr. Hawley was a graduate of Harvard College and the ancestor of the families of the same name, so well known in the town. He held for a number of years many of the important offices of the town, and gained a repu- tation for energy and ability, originating and direct- ing many of the enterprises of the early settlers.

The year following the death of Mr. Hawley, Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll, a native of Stratford, Conn., was invited to settle in the gospel ministry. This invita- tion Mr. Ingersoll accepted, and was duly installed on the 8th of August, 1739. Previous to coming to Ridgefield he resided for some time in Newark, N. J., and was licensed by the Presbytery of New Jersey at Elizabethtown, Feb. 15, 1738.

At the meeting of the Western Consociation, Fair- field County, which installed Mr. Ingersoll, there were present the following ministers : Rev. Robert Stur- geon, Rev. Moses Dickinson, Rev. Ebenezer Wright, Rev. John Goodsell, Rev. Ephraim Bostwick, Rev. William Gaylord. Delegates : From Bedford, Capt. Jonathan Miller; Norwalk, John Copp, Esq .; Stam-

ford, Abraham Davenport; Greenfield, Benjamin Banks; Wilton, Benjamin Hickox, Esq .; Green's Farms, Samuel Couch, Esq.

Rev. Mr. Goodsell offered the first prayer and gave the right hand of fellowship. Rev. Mr. Dickinson preached the sermon and offered the prayer of ordina- tion. Rev. Mr. Sturgeon gave the charge, and Rev. Mr. Todd, who had been invited to sit with the coun- cil, offered the closing prayer.

Mr. Ingersoll was a graduate of Yale College, and a man of a fine mind and a good heart. He served the church with great faithfulness until his death, which occurred Oct. 2, 1778, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

In the year 1758, Mr. Ingersoll joined the colonial troops as chaplain, on Lake Champlain. He is said to have exerted an excellent influence in the army, and to have been highly respected by the soldiers.

Mr. Hawley and Mr. Ingersoll were buried in the Titicus Cemetery. The stones which mark their graves bear the following inseriptions :

"Here lyes buried the body of ye Rev. Thomas Hauley Pastor of ye Church at Ridgefield Nov. ye 8, 1738 Aged 42 Years."

" In Memory of the Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll, Pastor of ye 1st Church in Ridgefield who Deceased Oct. 2. A.D. 1778 in ye 65. Year of his Age, & 40th of his Ministry."

After the death of Mr. Ingersoll there seems to have been a vacancy of eight years, during which time the pulpit was in part supplied by Rev. Justice Mitchell, who, in January, 1783, was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church of New Canaan, and in part by Rev. Izrahial Wetmore and Rev. Everitt, as the following receipts will show :

" RIDGEFIELD, Dec. 27, 1781. " Recd of the Gentle the Society's Committee Nine Bushels of Wheat being in full for nine Dollars sent Parson Everitt.

"PETER BYVANCK."

" RIDGEFIELD, Oct. ye 5th, 1786.

" Pay the Red Izrahiah Wetmore Twenty Seven pounds Eleven Shil- lings, and four pence Lawfull Money on Demaud with Interest at Six per cent per annum, for which this is our order.

" SOCIETYS COMMITTEE.

"To BENJAMIN SMITH, Treasurer of the first Society in Ridgfield."

On the 6th of July, 1786, Rev. Samuel Goodrich, of Durham, of this State, was ordained and installed as. pastor of the church. The services on this occasion are said to have been of unusual interest. The father of the newly-settled pastor preached the sermon and gave the charge, both to his son and to the church. The venerable appearance of the aged, gray-haired father was in striking contrast with the youthful and almost boyish appearance of the son. It was age and experience counseling youth and inexperience. It was .

* The " Ecclesiastical History" of Ridgefield is taken from Rev. D. T. Teller's excellent " History of Ridgefield."

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RIDGEFIELD.

a man of God who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and was ready to depart, casting his mantle upon the shoulders of another just entering upon the work.

Mr. Goodrich served the church as its pastor for upwards of twenty-five years. He was dismissed Jan. 22, 1811, at his own request, and on the 29th of May, 1811, he was installed at Worthington, a parish in the town of Berlin, in this State. He was the father of Samuel G. Goodrich, the renowed Peter Parley, whose sketch of Ridgefield, written in 1855, the reader will find elsewhere in this work. Mr. Goodrich also was the author of a manuscript history of the town, which was written and lodged in the library of the Athenaeum at Hartford, in the year 1800, extracts from which we have also given.

The labors of Mr. Goodrich were eminently blessed, and the church during his ministry enjoyed many seasons of revival, and large additions were made to it. He was for several years a trustee of the Mission- ary Society of Connecticut, and a director of the Con- necticut Bible Society, in both of which he manifested a warm interest. He died at Berlin, Conn., April 19, 1835, aged seventy-two years.

After the dismissal of Mr. Goodrich the church was again destitute of a settled pastor for several years. Rev. Jonathan Bartlett supplied the pulpit from 1811 to 1814, and was succeeded by Rev. John Noyes, who supplied from 1814 to 1817. During Mr. Bartlett's ministry he proposed to the society to raise a fund, the annual income of which should be appropriated for the support of the preaching of the gospel, and, as an encouragement to the undertaking, he gener- ously gave to the society the sum of fifty dollars. As the result of this effort the permanent fund of the so- ciety at the present time is eight thousand dollars.

On the 2d of February, 1817, the church invited the Rev. Samuel M. Phelps to become their pastor, and Consociation was convened on the 20th day of March following for the purpose of his installation in June following, and Mr. Phelps was by them reg- ularly installed as their minister, according to the usages and custom of said Presbytery. Mr. Phelps continued his labors here until the month of Decem- ber, 1829, when he was by the members of the Pres- bytery aforesaid regularly dismissed, and his ministry in this place ceased.

The church, at a regular meeting held on the 31st day of March, 1831, with great unanimity rescindcd their vote of secession passed Feb. 24, 1817, and be- came reunited to the Consociation of the Western District of Fairfield County, and on the same day they invited the Rev. Charles G. Selleck, of Darien, to become their pastor, and he was ordained and in- stalled on the 25th day of May, 1831. Mr. Selleck's ministry continned until the 6th day of September, 1837. During it the church enjoyed three precious scasons of religious interest,-viz., in 1831, 1832, and 1833,-and as the fruits thereof about one hundred

and eighty persons were added to the church. Mr. Selleck is still living. A few years since, at an ad- vanced age, he removed to Florida and made for him- self a home, where he still resides.

On the 18th of January, 1838, the church and so- ciety invited the Rev. Joseph Fuller to settle among them, and on the 27th of February following the Consociation met, and Mr. Fuller was regularly in- stalled as their pastor. His ministry continued about four years, in which time the church enjoyed another season of revival, and about sixty persons united with it. On the 17th of May, 1842, by the united request of Mr. Fuller and the church, the Consociation met, and Mr. Fuller was dismissed from his pastoral charge.

After the dismissal of Mr. Fuller the church was without a settled pastor for seventeen months, during which time the pulpit was regularly supplied, and an interesting work of grace ensued, by which about twenty, mostly young persons, united themselves to the church by profession.

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History of Fairfield County, Connecticut : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 163

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