History of Fairfield County, Connecticut : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 176

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 176

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" Nor did the zealous disciples of the new faith cease with merely publishing the new gospel. They were hotter still with zeal to mend the old; they went mad for reform. They renounced the old min-

istry and meetings and worship, and at once assailed and wished to supplant the civil government which sustained them. So officious were they that the chureh felt called upon, in self-defense, to enter an earnest protest; and the central government were obliged either to vacate or justify their authority. .

" Daniel Seofield, then marshal for Stamford and vicinity, authorized by the Governor's writ, took a posse of his neighbors and started for the western side of the town, now Greenwich, to arrest one Thomas Marshall, who for some time had been insulting and outraging the majesty of the government. They found him at the house of Rieliard Crabb, who was also lying under charge of serious misearriages.

"The arrest was made, but not without an attempt at interference by Mr. Crabb, and a torrent of abuse from his enraged wife. Both of these sympathizers, with the vagrant heretic, were put under arrest and bound over to the next court of magistrates, to be held in New Haven in May, 1658. At the appointed time Mr. Crabb and his aeeusers appeared in eourt. The witnesses against him were the party who had assisted in the arrest of Marshall, and also Mr. Bishop, pastor of the church in Stamford. The court informed him that he must now answer for his several miscarriages : for his many elamorous and reproach- ful speeches against the ministry, government, and officers ; for negleeting the meetings of the Sabbath by himself and his wife, for whose offenses, as they were justified by himself, he must be responsible.

" William Oliver, one of the arresting party, testified that when they came to Mr. Crabb's to arrest Mar- shall and scize the Quaker books which were sup- posed to be in Mr. Crabb's possession, Madame Crabb retreated to another room and closed the door against them. Nor would she yield until the door had been forced open by violence.

"Then followed an exciting scene. The plucky woman who would not open the door of her castle now could not shut her mouth ; nor could the utmost expostulations of her more plaeable husband, united with the utmost array of governmental authority before her, do it. Neither the one nor the other, nor both united, could intimidate the zealous defender of her personal rights. We may never recover the en- tire speech which that audience were required to hear. It had not been written, and there was no time for the stenographer to be called. It had no formal exor- dium, fashioned after the calm rules of rhetoric ; there were probably but few of those well-rounded periods which give so mueh dignity to diseourse, and the peroration was doubtless as abrupt and pithy as the rest.

" The door being opened the way was clear for her, and she used it, apparently, without help or hin- drance, and we may be assured that she had no list- less or sleepy auditors to the very end.

"'Is this your fasting and praying ?' breaks forth the impassioned woman, as she fastens her searching

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glance upon the marshal and his attendants. 'Do ye thus rob us and break into our houses ? How can you Stamford men expect the blessing of God? Will He bear with your mean hypocrisy? You have taken away our lands withont right. You have basely wronged us, and let me tell yon what I see without your hireling priests' help : the vengeance of God Almighty will burst upon yon. And when it comes your priest can't help you. He is as Baal's priest, and is no better than the rest of you. Ye are all the enemies of God and God's saints, and their blood shall be on your souls forever.'

"Fastening her sharp eye on Goodman Bell, the same who from the first had been a pillar in the Stam- ford church, and who had now come over with the marshal, hoping by his fraternal intercession to win back the estranged and now perverse hearts of his erring brother and sister, she continned her bitter in- vective : 'Thou arch-traitor and hypocrite, thou vil- lainous liar, God's wrath is on you and shall burn hotter and hotter on your godless children. Out on you ! poor priest-ridden fool !'

"Springing next upon John Waterbury, who had also accompanied the marshal to aid in the dispensa- tion of justice, she administers to him a similar casti- gation. Then she tries the force of her cutting re- proaches and sharp retorts npon the marshal, for selling himself to do the dirty work of the God- forsaken government at New Haven, and of the over- reaching and heaven-defying and priest-cursed crew in Stanford. Then she assailed George Slawson, that exemplary member of the church, a peacemaker, and one whom all delighted to honor, and poured upon him her heaviest abuse. He had hoped to qniet her irritability, and in his most winning way had most gently expostulated with her, reminding her of the former days in which she had walked joyfully and hopefully with God's people in Stamford, and in which she had counted the communion of saints there the most precious of all hier earthly blessings. He ventured to express the hope that they might again welcome her to their fellowship in the old church, and that she might again listen there to the same gospel in which she had once testified her great in- terest. This was carrying his persuasion too far. It seemed to kindle her intensest ire. She was now for once pnt to it for words rapid enough or hot enough to express her rage. Every possibility of indignant resentment in her soul was taxed to its ntmost. Scorn and rage and defiance seemed struggling together in her utterance for the mastery over each other, and they seem to have ended the attempt at her reconcili- ation. It was a settler to that well-meant parley in which her womanly temper rejoiced in securing the

last word. 'Never, never, shall I or mine trouble your Stamford meeting more. I shall die first. My soul shall never be cast away to the devil so easily as that ;' and, with uplifted hands, she invoked on their heads the most sudden and the direst vengeance which heaven could inflict. When she had exhausted herself in these rapid maledictions, she called for drink to revive her strength; and the ministers of the law could do no more than go through the ceremony of binding her, with her husband, over to the court.

"On the narration of the case before the court, as just stated, the Governor, Francis Newman, informed Mr. Crabb that these were notorious doings, not to be allowed. Mr. Crabb, for his wife, it appears, had not obeyed the summons to attend the conrt, attempted an apology. He could not manage his wife. He did not justify her evil way, but he would have the court understand her case. She was a well-bred English woman, a zealous professor of religion from her child- hood, 'but when she is suddenly surprised she hath not power to restrain her passion.'

"To all this the worshipful Governor made answer : ' that what he had said did greatly aggravate her mis- carryings, for if she have been a great professonr it was certain she had been an ill practiser, in which you have countenanced her and borne her up, which may be accounted yours, as having falne into evills of the like nature yourself, revileling Mr. Bishopp as a priest of Baal and ye members as liars, and yt Mr. Bishopp preached for filthy luere.'

" Mr. Crabb vainly attempted to explain away or deny what abundant testimonies corroborated. Mr. Bishop, the pastor of the church, had been so sorely tried that he 'could not contine at Stamford unless some course be taken to remove and reform such grievances.' Mr. Bell felt that an end of all govern- ment had come if the ministers of justice were to be so opposed and insulted with impunity. The ‘citi- zens of Stamford wished the court to preserve the peace among them, maintain the ordinances of reli- gion and government, and encourage their minister.' To all which Mr. Crabb made no further plea. The conrt sentenced him to pay a fine of thirty pounds, and give bonds to the amount of one hundred pounds for his good behavior, and that he make public ac- knowledgments at Stamford to the satisfaction of Francis Bell and others whom he had abused. The remainder of the sentence is missing, and so we shall probably never know what disposition the court made of the sharp-tongued Madame Crabb who was really the chief offender in the case.

" No other case of conflict with the Quakers, which was deemed worthy a publie prosecution, seems to have occurred in Stamford or its vicinity."

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HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

CHAPTER LXXI. STAMFORD (Continued).

MISCELLANEOUS.

The Stamford Advocate-The Stamford Herald-Stamford Borough- Stamford National Bank-The First National Bank-The Stamford Savings-Bank-Citizens' Savings-Bank-Woodland Cemetery-Fire De- partment-Yale Lock-Manufacturing Company-The H. W. Collender & Co. Billiard-Table Manufactory-St. Jolin, Hoyt & Co .- E. L. Nicoll & Co .- Other Manufactories-Ship Canal-New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad-New Canaan and Stamford Railroad-Union Lodge, F. and A. M .- Rittenhouse Chapter, No. 11, R. A. M .- Wash- ington Council, No. 6, Royal and Select Masters-Physicians-Lawyers -Educational.

THE STAMFORD ADVOCATE.

NEARLY fifty-two years ago the first paper printed in Stamford saw the light. For nearly two centuries previously white men had occupied the ancient domains of the Rippowams, and the original handful of settlers from old Wethersfield had slowly increased, with comparatively few accessions from outside, until in 1829 between three and four thousand in- habitants were included in the then limits of Stam- ford. Though so near the commercial metropolis of New York, whose great stride in material progress was attracting the attention of the world, Stamford's associations and traditions made it as strictly a type of a New England Puritau village as could be found in the bosom of the old Bay State herself. But the day of modern progress was even then dawning, and the native shrewdness and sturdy virtues, which had been propagated on this soil, were beginning to be stirred by the pulses of a wider activity. Many of Stamford's energetic youth were longing to enter the business arena in the metropolis, and many sons of Stamford, who afterwards became wealthy and lead- ing merchants, date the first beginning of their race for fortune at about the period of which we speak. Steamboat communication had begun to supplant the stage-coach and the packet-sloops in the passenger traffic to New York, and, with a closer association with the throbbing and busy city, Stamford itself began to wake from its Rip Van Winkle slumber, to be stirred by the first low wash of the waves of mod- ern progress that were soon to become a tide of resist- less force.

It was appropriately at a period like this that the local newspaper made its appearance. Mr. William Henry Holly was then, as he was for many years afterwards, one of the most familiar figures on the stage of village activity. He it was who first started the local newspaper, and who conducted it about fifteen years. Much of the space' he devoted to the doings of Congress when in session, to national poli- tics, and no inconsiderable portion was given to for- eign news, which at that time was peculiarly inter- esting to Americans by the gallant struggle for Greek independence. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were the big guns of American politics, and their doings and sayings filled a large space in the prints

of the day. The Anti-Masonic excitement was in full blast in New York, and affected Connecticut, too, for more than once the village streets witnessed some- thing approaching a riot when Anti-Masonic emissa- ries undertook to make public speeches. Stamford's rapid transit to New York was by stage to "Saw Pitts," otherwise Portchester, and thence by a crude steamer which plied between that hamlet and the city. The boat was run by one Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose name and fame as a steamboat manager and railroad king afterwards spread over both continents.

In 1830, when the Advocate was a year old, the borough government was organzined, with Simeon Minor, father of ex-Governor William T. Minor, as first warden.

Following Mr. Holly's proprietorship came that of Mr. Edgar Hoyt, during whose editorial career the railroad was completed, introducing at once a new and powerful energy into village life, and opening the way for a large influx of population from outside. Mr. Hoyt held the editorial office about a dozen years, and was followed by Mr. William T. Campbell, who con- ducted the paper from 1860 to 1867. The paper has been in the hands of its present publishers, William W. Gillespie & Co., thirteen years, and during that period it has been enlarged three times, and its facili- ties have been increased in a more than corresponding degree. During the latter decade almost every modern improvement known to the " art preservative" has been added to the concern ; a brick building of ample size, exclusively for the purposes of its business, has been erected near the post-office, and furnished with steam-power.

How well the paper is appreciated in the commu- nity may be judged from the score or more of congrat- ulatory letters written by the leading citizens and professional men of the town on the occasion of its celebrating its semi-centennial, Aug. 29, 1879. All of these letters expressed in the most profuse language the warmest appreciation of the efforts of the present proprietors to furnish a paper worthy of the town, and in keeping with the " age in which we live."

The size of the paper at present is twenty-nine by forty-five, having thirty-six columns twenty-seven inches long. It is Republican in politics since the birth of that party, and is strenuous in its advocacy of liberty and justice to every citizen. For over fifty-one years it has been the most comprehensive and faithful historian of the village, borough, and town. The marriages and deaths, the triumphs, the disasters, the onward march of progress, the notable events of every kind are all to be found recorded in its pages. The names that appear in its early numbers in business advertisements, or as active in local affairs, are, most of them, now to be found on the memorial stones in our cemeteries. A journal so long and so closely identified with this community, and which has demonstrated its capacity to keep pace with the general progress, has surely strong

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elaims upon public interest and support, and it is worthy of note, as showing the strong hold the Advocate has on the community with which it has grown up, that half a dozen attempts have been made to estab- lish rival papers in the same community, but eaeh at- tempt, save its present contemporary, met with signal failure.

Of late years the Stamford Advocate has become a familiar name in nearly every newspaper office of the country, its articles, paragraphs, metrieals, etc., being frequently and widely copied.

The following lines were written by one of the edi- tors and published in its semi-centennial number :

FIFTY YEARS OF AGE.

Hail to the Advocate's half-hundred years, Whose history on its pages bright appears ! Hail to the clustering memories of its youth, Its sturdy age made vigorous by truth !

How oft in days gone by its voice was heard Praising good deeds and chiding those who erred; Ringing glad notes with every marriage-bell, Voicing the public moan with every funeral knell ; Giving to honest worth its meed of praise, Placing on victor's brows the wreath of bays; Boldly denonncing wrong in every form, Maintaining right in sunshine and in storm ; Pointing the way where civic virtue lies, Exposing frand in every shrewd disguise ; Recording on its comprehensive page Each act and actor on the local stage. Impartially it notices as well The boozy drunkard and the village belle ; The pulpit orator, whose piercing voice Alarms the sinner, makes the saint rejoice ; The lawyer's eloquence, whose power can light The shades of black and make it seem as white ; The doctor's triumphs over earthly ills (But never mentions those he blindly kills) : The schoolboy's spoken piece, the gossip's hint, Are both next morning in the local print.

. All things are there,-the little and the big, The price of stocks, the weight of Jones's pig; The coming circus, or the minstrel show, The churchi fairs that for free puffs always go; The politician, with his axe to grind, Who, gaining office, drops you from his mind ; The angry man, who " wants to know, you know, Who wrote that piece" that riles his temper so; The " setter" in the village grocery-store, Crammed with all modern and ancient lore, Withont whose wisdom how the world was run Is one of the strangest things beneath the sun ; The man who, guilty of some flagrant sin, Begs of the editor " not to put it in ;" The tortured husband, tired of household strife, At last resolves to advertise his wife; The patient mother of a wayward son Seeking to hide the deeds his hands have done ; The happy father's self-approving joy, Telling the world about his " twelve-pound boy ;" The farmer who has raised the biggest beet ; The man who wants to open a new street, And for his scheme demands a warm defense,

To fill his pocket at the town's expense ; The man who thinks the town its rights should barter, And hear the burden of a city charter ; And he, most patriotic of us all, Who volunteers for legislative hall. His only wish to serve the public ends. But still he packs the canens with his friends.

These all have played their parts upon the stage Whose footlight is the journalistic page, That beams with equal glow upon the scene Whether the acting noble is or mean. Our fifty printed volumes sure must fell If our own part was acted ill or well.

THE STAMFORD HERALD.

The Herald is the younger of the two newspapers in Stamford, having been established in 1875; but although second in point of years, it is not considered by any means the least in standing and influence. It attracted no little attention in its very first issue for the soundness and thoroughly practical character of its editorials, and its abundant, spicily-written local inatter. Such was the favor with which it was re- ceived that its circulation increased with a rapidity not common to local papers, soon approximating that of its much older rival in the field, and now it claims -and Rowell's "Newspaper Directory" gives it-an average publication of as many copies per week as its competitor. Its neat typographical appearance and tasty make-up have elicited many favorable com- ments from its contemporaries, and they have given it the title of "model local newspaper.". On special occasions the Herald has showed marked enterprise, employing stenographers at heavy cost when it was necessary for full and accurate reports. Large extra editions at such times have been circulated.

The Herald makes the claim of " aiming to repre- sent thoroughly the beautiful little eity where it is located," and of striving to advance in every possible way the interests of Stamford. The general opinion seems to be that the claim is well substantiated. One of its directory-heads is "City Government," there being given under it the list of borough officers. At first the words were thought to be an error, and the editor's attention was called to the matter. But he persisted in retaining the title, and has steadily ad- vanced the idea that a town of the size and impor- tanee of Stamford-larger and possessed of greater wealth than some of the cities of the State, being the seventh on the "grand list"-should be a city in name as well as in fact. Finally, and chiefly through the influence of the Herald, a charter incorporating the "City of Stamford" was granted by the State Legis- lature in 1879. When the question of a city or no city was submitted to the people, however, mistaken but well-meaning "old fogyism" prevailed, and the measure was defeated for a time. As it was, congrat- ulations to the new "city" __ "the eleventh in the State"-began to pour in, Stamford receiving more attention from the press of Connecticut than it had in the previous twenty-five years of its history.

The harbor of Stamford had never received from time immemorial any aid from the United States government, although the commercial interests of the town and other Sound ports urgently required a lighthouse at its dangerous entrance and a deepening of the channel. Soon after the publication of the

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HISTORY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

Herald was begun the editor took up the subject of harbor improvement, and so frequently was it brought to the attention of the people and the members of Congress from the Fourth District, and so persist- ently kept before them in the columns of the paper, that, as a result in great part of the Herald's efforts, an appropriation of seven thousand dollars was granted at the last session of Congress for a lighthouse off the harbor. Next spring (1881) it will be erected there .* A further appropriation for improving the channel, insuring navigation to ordinary vessels at any stage of the tide will be urged by the same paper when Congress again assembles.

Three years ago the question of prohibition of the liquor traffic-a traffic which had assumed alarming proportions in Stamford-was brought to the serious consideration of the people by the Rev. Dr. Buckley and other true-hearted men who had the public wel- fare at heart. The Herald at once threw the whole weight of its influence on the side of no license and the right, the side of law and order, and has battled unflinchingly for the cause ever since, making many friends by its course, as well as not a few enemies. Stamford for those three years has given a majority for prohibition at each election, and the power of rum has been seriously crippled.

In politics the Herald is conservative and inde- pendent, and its editor is not afraid to point out the faults of either party, and does not hesitate to com- mend in both what is worthy of commendation. Briefly, the Herald is on the side of the good and the right, in favor of progress, reform, and whatever will advance the interests of the people; it is a paper live and true, and well supported because worthy of sup- port.

GEORGE BAKER.

George Baker, editor and proprietor of the Stamford Herald, is forty-three years old, and was born at Green's Farms, town of Fairfield, in this county. He passed the usual course of instruction in the public schools, and received a thorough academic education in one of the best seminaries in the State. When but seventeen years old he began to teach school, and, giving marked acceptance to parents and scholars, continued in this vocation until he was twenty-five, when he became a merchant in Southport and married Miss Emily Jones, of Poundridge, N. Y. Not very long thereafter Mr. Baker, with others, founded a paper which they named the Southport Chronicle. Mr. Baker became editor and continued to hold that position for two years, when the paper was sold to a stock company. Mr. Baker had previous to this time quite an exten- sive experience as newspaper correspondent, and was at home at once in the editor's chair. He learned the practical part of the printing business "at the case" and press, under able instruction, in the Chronicle and

other offices. After disposing of the Chronicle, Mr. Baker soon removed to Federalsburg, Md., where he established the Maryland Courier. Under his propri- etorship and able editing the Courier soon took a front place in the ranks of the Peninsular press. The health of his family became seriously affected by cli- matic influences, and after a few years' residence he found it necessary to bring them from Maryland to the health-giving air of the North. He chose Stam- ford as his residence, and the establishment of the Herald was the result.

Mr. Baker is a large man, of fine physique, pleasing address, unblemished moral character, and high social

Geoffaner.

standing. As an editor he is courtcous, but fearless in denouncing wrongs and rascalities of any kind. From this characteristic, his editorial career has not been free from personal attacks in cases where "the coat fitted" but too well. These, however, do not seem to have altered his course of conduct, but he has kept on in the even tenor of his way undisturbed. It is to be hoped that he may continue for many years in the profession where he can give his ripcst years and fullest powers to the cause of improvement.

Mr. Baker's early religious training was in the Methodist Church, his father having been for many years a prominent official in that denomination. He was a member of that Church when he became a resident of Maryland, and united with it there. But the ideas prevalent among Methodists in the South being of rather too demonstrative a character, he

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History of Fairfield County, Connecticut : with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 176

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