USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 2
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891
Bankers' Trust Company, Farmington Ave., Hartford
891
The Emanuel Synagogue, Hartford
897
Second Church of Christ, Scientist, Hartford
897
In the Flood of 1927
903
The Flood of November, 1927
903
Willie O. Burr, 1843-1921
907
Frederick C. Penfield
911
Hartford County Building, 1929
921
Bushnell Memorial, Hartford
921
A. Everett Austin, Jr.
927
Map of Hartford County, 1927
935
Palisado Green, Windsor
939
Dr. Henry R. Stiles
943
Lieutenant Walter Fyler Homestead, Windsor, 1640
947
Ellsworth House, Windsor
947
Oldest Tombstone in Connecticut
951
Henry Wolcott Tombstone, Windsor
951
General Roger Newberry
955
John Fitch, 1675
959
John Fitch High School, Windsor
959
First Congregational Church, Windsor
967
E. Rowland Sill's Home, Windsor
967
The Old Meeting-House, South Windsor
975
The Old Wolcott Homestead, South Windsor
975
Old Grant Mansion, East Windsor
985
Enfield Ridge
1005
Capt. Jonathan Sheldon House, West Suffield, 1926
1015
Kent Memorial Library, Suffield
1015
Suffield's Quarter Millenial, 1920
1019
Typical Tobacco Plantation
1039
The Phelps Mansion, Simsbury
1042
Home of Senator Geo. P. McLean, Simsbury
1044
Senator George P. McLean at his home, Simsbury.
1044
Sweet Farmhouse, hotel and store, Granby, 1875
1047
Edward H. Sears
1057
Sarah Whitman Hooker house, West Hartford
1063
Congregational Church, West Hartford
1063
William H. Hall
1067
William H. Hall High School, West Hartford
1067
Noah Webster
1071
Noah Webster's Birthplace, West Hartford
1071
Town Hall and Noah Webster Library, West Hartford
1075
The West Hartford Trust Co., West Hartford
1079
Center, West Hartford 1079
The Whitman House, Farmington 1083 1
Congregational Church, Farmington
1087
Farmington Village Library
1087
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xxvi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
General Cowles House, Farmington
1091
The Admiral Cowles House, "Old Gate," Farmington
1091
Original Tower on Talcott Mountain
1105
Office of American Hardware Company, New Britain
1123
Main Street, New Britain, look.ng north 1123
New Britain's World War Memorial
1129
Memorial to Soldiers and Sailors, New Britain
1129
Commercial Trust Company, New Britain
1133
Post Office, New Britain
1133
State Normal School, New Britain
1137
Rev. Lucyan Bojnowski
1141
Vocational High School, New Britain
1141
The "Triangle," New Britain
1147
Soldiers' Monument, New Britain
1147
John B. Talcott
1151
Library of the New Britain Institute, New Britain
1151
Elihu Burritt
1157
The John Cooke House, Plainville
1177
The John Hamblin House, Plainville
1177
Deacon Roderick Stanley
1181
Plainville in the '60s
1181
The Ellen French School, Plainville, 1863
1185
Residence of Gov. John H. Trumbull, Plainville
1189
Governor Trumbull's trophy and Equipment room
1189
Plainville, from Sunset Rock, 1928
1195
Southington Congregational Church
1205
Southington Public Library
1205
Southington Center in the 1830s and 1840s
1211
Bristol National Bank, Bristol, 1927
1221
Bristol Trust Company, Bristol
1221
World War Memorial and High School, Bristol
1225
Rockwell Park, Bristol
1225
Corner of Main and North Main Streets, Bristol, 1895
1229
St. Joseph's Church, Bristol
1233
Congregational Church, Federal Hill, Bristol
1233
The Brown Inn, Burlington
1241
"The Old Leather Man"
1245
Sites of Homes of Some Early East Hartford Settlers
1251
St. John's Church, East Hartford
1257
Center District School, Main Street, East Hartford 1 1 1
1257
The Cheney Homestead, South Manchester
1281
South Manchester High School.
1281
The Pines, Manchester (Wickham Residence)
1285
Congregational Church, Wethersfield
1301
The "Leonard Chester" Table-Stone, with inscription
1301
Wethersfield, 1640
1305
Rev. Elisha Williams
1313
Rev. George L. Clark
1313
The Michael Griswold House in Back Lane, Wethersfield.
1321
Academy Hall, Wethersfield
1321
Main Street, Wethersfield
1327
Largest Elm in the U. S., near Wethersfield Common
1327
First Church of Christ, Glastonbury
1341
Glastonbury's Civic Center
1341
World War Memorial, Glastonbury
1349
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Elihu Burritt Monument, Franklin Square Park, New Britain
1157
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1
HARTFORD COUNTY CONNECTICUT
I
FIRST STEPS TOWARD FREE GOVERNMENT
CONDITIONS IN ENGLAND-INDIAN INVITATIONS TO PILGRIMS AND PURI- TANS-THE DUTCH GAINING GROUND IN "CHAMPAIGN" COUNTRY- ENGLISH LEADERS APPEAR-FIRST HOUSE IN WINDSOR.
On the eve of the tri-centennial of the birth of American democracy there is a demand, now world-wide, for its story. What were the circumstances, what the antecedents and causes, what the kind of people whose minds conceived this remarkable document of free government? These are some of the questions from afar and from those newly come to make their homes under this government. Patient research of more than a century, in ancient chests and musty archives, in docu- ments and books, continuing up to the present generation, has supplied the material for answer. Each consequential item has been found, each knotty problem has been solved, and all have been tested by experts, till now at this anniversary it remains to bring the very last of them into one account, simple in char- acter but retaining that dramatic and often romantic touch which simplicity alone can give. For him who would trace the research, a bibliography accompanies this writing.
Hartford County has fame in other ways, has other claims as a favored locality, other joys in being a unit in a greater democ- racy, and moves onward with new ambitions, but it is for this distinction in the eyes of the nations, especially since the treaty of Versailles, that it first must meet inquiry. The little group of settlers adopting their "Fundamental Orders," or Constitu-
3-VOL. 1
1
2
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
tion, has been taken as marking the real beginning of the move- ment by and for the people. An English lord had drafted a form of government for the Carolinas, based upon advanced principles but adhering to class distinctions; the Virginians with their House of Burgesses in 1619 and constitution in 1621 had aimed at government by representation but under, by and with royal consent through a governor appointed by the Crown; the Pilgrims in the Mayflower had agreed upon rules for and by themselves, under royalty, and Massachusetts Bay had a church- limited method. All denoted progress-progress toward final free government; hence we should trace the steps back further, though not, herein, to the sophistries of Plato or the failure in Rome. The gropings must have begun with civilization.
In England-coming on after King John and the Magna Charta-when Henry VIII changed one form of "established" religion for another with himself the calculating head of it, when sovereigns followed who did not have appreciation of the Anglo- Saxon spirit of liberty, schisms were begotten. Through subse- quent reigns, the old spark, fanned by Calvin in the brief days of Edward VI the one Puritan King, was kept down by blows, prison and banishment, but it was not quenched. The English translation of the Bible appeared in James' time, as an instru- ment of hierarchy-in reality as food and strength for the oppressed. And through this seventeenth century, it must be kept in mind, the Bible was like the "latest book" among people who had but few at best. Charles I took a long step farther in tyranny than had the vain and headstrong James. In him the warm, southern Guise blood drove out the faintest conception of the ideals of old England. Laud, a fit tool at hand, was made primate so that the King might better strain away from free- dom in religion to the kind of Catholicism he had in mind. The kind, inasmuch as it was a cloak to power, was as repugnant to those of Romish faith as it was to the Protestants, now gaining their distinctive name. It became the lot of Puritans and Pil- grims, under test of fire, to develop the saving grace for the people. They were not always unfortunate.
Cabot in 1498 had espied the shores of New England. Under the European rule set by the Church of Rome when there were vast areas untrodden by white men, the land thereafter belonged to England to utilize. In the days of abundance of land, it was
3
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
neglected till there was at least similitude of need, and the King would extend his domains before it was too late. The richest but never suspected fruit of this materialistic revival of inter- est in America was to be the furnishing of a place of refuge for the oppressed. James' first grant, in 1606, was to the mer- cantile corporations of London and the "West" of England, and his others, in 1609 and 1612, yielded thrilling experience in Virginia. Then, in 1628, at odds with the London company, he turned to the lords and gentlemen of Plymouth ("West" com- pany) and as a stronger barrier against the French of the north granted its representatives, forty of the wealthiest nobles who were to be known as the Council of Plymouth, a charter for the whole territory between the fortieth and the forty-eighth par- allels, with unlimited power of legislating, for the "governing" of New England. Finally, and also through providence or by unwitting act of human progress, a charter from the Plymouth company, confirmed by King Charles almost at the moment he was abolishing his Parliament, gave Massachusetts Bay Colony its momentous rights.
Puritans and Separatists had suffered much. The Puritans were not opposed to the Established Church itself and hoped to work reforms within, in accord with their strict tenets. The Separatists, who were in the minority, sought freedom of thought and of form of worship and could find it only in secret assem- blages outside the church circles. To many of them, like the Pilgrims who came to New England, the name Separatists was obnoxious. In argument against it for those at Plymouth and Salem, Edward Winslow in England declared that they were not for separation but simply could not approve corruption or a communion of worthy and unworthy; the primitive churches were the "only pattern." There was special desire to avoid suspicion of "Browneism," the worst kind of separatism in the eyes of the royal court. Robert Browne, with his secret meet- ings, had been a particular thorn in the flesh. Pastor John Robinson had warned the Pilgrims against the name, which he considered a brand to make religion odious to the Christians.
The thought that Plymouth people had not heeded his warn- ing is by many supposed to have been the reason why relations between Massachusetts and Plymouth were not more cordial from the beginning. The Winthrop party, when starting for
4
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
America, took pains to broadcast their request-to the "gover- nor and company" and the rest of their "brethren in and of the Church of England"-for prayers and the "removal of suspicions and misconstructions of their intentions," and declared: "We esteem it our honour to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our deare mother. * We leave it not, therefore, as loathing the milk wherewith we were nourished there." Infer- ence is fairly supported that there was little practical difference of sentiment between Puritans and Pilgrims in America. Both were Congregational, but in England, the members of the first Congregational Church in history, the Southwark in London, were imprisoned after their secrecy had been penetrated in 1632. The Puritans were cautious. Even so, Sir Richard Saltonstall with other leaders had to appear before the council to clear him- self of suspicion, and earnest entreaties to be careful were sent over to the Bay.
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This brings us close to those who were to locate at Windsor, the northern of the "Constitution towns," in 1633. These Pil- grim fugitives to Holland, after the war with Spain had ceased, were of humble antecedents, few having the culture of Pastor Robinson or of Elder William Brewster who, withal, had retained friendly relations with men of good station at home and is the ancestor of several Hartford County families. To them, what- ever the issues, the Reformation, the break with the Holy See, had more religious meaning than it had with King Henry. They relished a king as supreme head of a church no more than they would have relished a pope. In Leyden they were not hounded. But when another war cloud appeared on their European horizon, they sought safety in far Virginia, to which end Brew- ster was able to secure patent rights for them from the London (Virginia) company.
Those who could be accommodated, leaving Pastor Robinson behind to assemble still more, sailed in the Mayflower in 1620 but, by adversity of winds, reached Cape Cod instead of Dela- ware Bay. Thus having no rights for organization under their Virginia charter, they signed the compact which gave their lead- ers formal recognition but, while creating a sub-"body politic,"
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(Copyrighted by Harry A. Wright, Springfield, Massachusetts)
DUTCH MAP OF CONNECTICUT, 1650
Drawn by N. Visscher from map of Jasper Danker and used in Van der Donk's "De- scription of New Netherlands." 1656. "Versche" (fresh), Connecticut River; "Pisners Cleyne Val," Pynchon's Little Falls (Warehouse Point); "Voynser," Windsor (east side); "Herfort," Hartford; "Fort de Goede hoop," Dutch Point; "Watertuyn," Water- town (Wethersfield's east side); "Weeters Velt," Wethersfield (west side); "Stratfort," "Milfort," "Nieuhaven," "Gilfort," along the shore. Names of Indian groups, including
"Conittekock," in larger print.
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7
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
was not a constitution. The English came to America with their families to make homes, colonize; the motive of the Dutch was commerce with the natives and to exploit resources. But what with being compelled to go heavily in debt to buy their charter privileges finally, the Pilgrims became not unlike the Dutch in their immediate anxiety to acquire something more than sub- sistence.
The Council of New England, newly organized in England, looked upon them with favor rather than as trespassers when they were unable to push on to Virginia. Governor Bradford and Edward Winslow (other ancestors of Hartford County peo- ple of today) and ten others were allowed six years' monopoly of trade in order that they might get rid of the debt and secure newcomers from Leyden. They pushed their trading posts to Maine, where the earliest but brief English settlement in Amer- ica had been made (at Sagadhoc in 1607), and lent attentive ear to the Indian Wahginnacutt who came in 1628 with his descrip- tion of Connecticut Valley possibilities. After Winslow himself that same year had verified the Indian's statements, he and Brad- ford proposed to Governor Winthrop of the Bay colony that they follow up. Winthrop, with no such pressure of debt upon his colonists, was not convinced about a land "all champaign but very stony and full of Indians." But in 1631 individual traders had had success in that region, going by boat, and in 1633 John Oldham, against whom the New England Council had warned them as a turbulent character, with three others treked through the forests. If the authorities themselves would gain prece- dence there must be no delay. (Thus early was it Plymouth's ambition to have Windsor antedate Wethersfield, creating an issue never yet settled to the satisfaction of all).
Moreover, the Dutch outposts were creeping up. The men from New Amsterdam frankly had told the Pilgrims that there was good prospect in this quarter and they themselves had started a trading post at present Hartford in 1623, under direc- tion of Jacob Van Corlear. They held claim to Long Island, whence came the choicest wampum. A dove of peace bore to Plymouth a letter of faith and of invocation of old friendship which Bradford accepted as "testimony of love" but with firm reminder of territory covered by English patent. The Dutch replied that the authorization to the Dutch West India Trading
8
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
Company was from the States General and they would defend it, after which they sent a messenger of high station, with mili- tary splendor. De Rassières was received "with the noise of trumpets" and returned home to New Amsterdam, incidentally with a written description of Plymouth of much historical value and specifically with an agreement for mutual trade. But the warning that the Dutch should "clear their title" and the Dutch response that the English should allow time for the home gov- ernments to confer were followed by signs of aggression on both sides and by request from the Dutch that their home govern- ment send over forty soldiers for defense. Governor Van Twiller quoted Holland's rights by Hudson's discoveries in 1609 and Admiral Block's voyage of exploration up the Connecticut in 1614; the English stood for Cabot's voyage in 1498 and for the royal grants in 1606. The Dutch bought land at Saybrook in 1632, set up the standard of the States General and in June, 1633, bought twenty acres around their post at the House of Hope, present Hartford.
Ere long the good and ever active ship Blessing, from Win- throp of Massachusetts, had sailed into New Amsterdam har- bor, its commander had shown Van Twiller his colony's author- ity from the King, the Dutch standard at Saybrook had been replaced by a mocking fool's emblem, and Lieut. William Holmes of Plymouth had sailed defiantly by the hurriedly constructed "fort" with two guns at the House of Hope (Connecticut's first fortification) to set up on September 26, 1633, Connecticut's first frame house at Matianuck or present Windsor, he having brought the frame of the house in his boat. Considering the times, these events were as rapid as those in Europe in August, 1914.
And other incidents leading up to the situation in 1633 must be kept in mind. In Indian councils the advent of a new class of traders had been under discussion. The Dutch were not the favorites if for no other reason than that they had recognized the obstreperous and usurping Pequot tribe from near present New London. The results of this will be considered after more formally introducing the new and powerful factor in Hartford County and in all American history-the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Plymouth Council of New England was inefficient in
Nieuw Nederlandt .
l' Fort nieuw Amsterdam op de Manhatans,
VIEW OF FORT AMSTERDAM (NEW YORK)
This the menace to the Constitution settlements. The picture (Hudson River in the foreground) is copied from an ancient engraving made in Holland. The fort was erected in 1623 and was finished by Governor Van Twiller in accord with this drawing in 1635.
11
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
America and unpopular in England, destined to have a stormy and brief career. Roger Conant, agent of the New England Plymouth, remained firm in the purpose to make a home at the Bay for religious exiles and selected Salem as the place. A revival of interest in the west of England in 1627 resulted in earnest cooperation by men of influence; the Earl of Warwick, member of the council, secured the assent of Ferdinando Gorges, governor general of New England and founder of the council, and on March 19, 1628, the council granted a charter, a body politic, for the "governor and company of the Massachusetts Bay." The grantees included Sir Henry Roswell, Sir John Young and John Endicott (governor); they added to their number Sir Richard Saltonstall, Theophilus Eaton, William Pynchon and others. Years later King Charles declared "the principle and foundation of the charter was freedom of liberty of conscience." That was true and it was because he denied it to them in England that lovers of freedom, of high or low degree, of the Puritan party or not, fled by hundreds to the new country. That such a grant was affirmed is indicative of the power of those now arousing for the coming war in the cause of liberty. It was a victory which opened the way to the drafting of Connecticut's Constitution.
July 20, 1629, the ballot was used for the first time in America. The day had been set apart by Endicott "for the choice of a pas- tor and a teacher at Salem." Samuel Skelton and Francis Hig- ginson were elected and "the gravest members of the church" laid hands on them so that they came in by act of the congre- gation and not by clerical authority. The two leaders of certain Episcopal dissenters found in the town, prominent and learned men who would maintain a separate organization, were sent back to England, charged with being "factious and evil-condi- tioned." The argument was that people who had come to escape church conformity could not have conformity practiced in their community.
When the General Court voted to transfer the government of the "plantations" from London to the Bay, John Winthrop and his associates came over and the mother company was reorgan- ized as a commercial corporation. Winthrop kept up the cour- age. He was royalist to the core and against democracy, but a devotee of liberty while desiring that the "least part"-"the
12
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
wiser of the best"-should govern. The "general rumor of this solemn enterprise" moved all England deeply.
But it was the Dorchester ship, the first of the fleet and the one of most interest in this history, that arrived ahead of the Winthrop party's, bearing the first fully organized church. It had sailed from Plymouth March 20, 1630, and on May 30 reached not Salem but Nantasket, where the shipmaster landed the 140 people because he had no pilot. Later they made their way to Matapan, renamed Dorchester. Rev. John White of Dorchester, England, an eminent divine remaining in the established church, had been instrumental in assembling them from the western part of England and in privately forming their church on the eve of their departure. For their spiritual leaders, Rev. John Mav- erick and Rev. John Warham were selected. Mr. Maverick was a graduate of Exeter College and a clergyman in the established church with his home about forty miles from Exeter. Mr. War- ham was the ordained, youthful and very popular minister of a church in Exeter. He was a graduate of Oxford.
Dr. Bray Rosseter and Roger Ludlow were sent as direc- tors by the main company, chosen by the stockholders in London. Ludlow gave promise of being, and long was, one of the foremost of all the immigrants. Born in Dinton, Baycliffe, Wiltshire, in 1590, and having won honors in Balliol College, Oxford, he was preeminent as a lawyer and a scholar. As compared with New England and its possibilities, uncertain England was not a place for a man of his ambitious, restless nature. He hated sycophancy and demanded the right of free thought. Also in the party were three men of military experience, Capt. John Mason, Capt. Rich- ard Southcote and Quartermaster John Smith, who had fought under De Vere in the Palitinate war.
The Winthrop party arrived at Salem June 12 to find famine and disease that chilled their hearts. The groups sought new places for themselves. Saltonstall and others chose Watertown, Pynchon and a few began Roxbury and Winthrop favored first Charlestown and then Boston, the third of the communities named as towns along with Dorchester on September 7. The nucleus of each town was what would now be called a church society and they soon had a selectman system.
With this summary of the purposes and characteristics of the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonists coming to America, with
1
REV. THOMAS HOOKER Statue at Capitol
15
HARTFORD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT
this tracing of the revolt against tyranny in the land of the Magna Charta, and with the introduction of early leaders in the Con- necticut River colonization-Ludlow, Warham, Oldham, Mason, and Pynchon,-there can be better appreciation of the circum- stances and the conditions which confronted the other leaders when they landed. Interest for the present centers in three of them who came in the Griffin September 3, 1633. They were John Haynes, Rev. Thomas Hooker and Rev. John Cotton. Haynes was sacrificing large estates in Hertfordshire and Essex. His son in later years wrote that he "nearly ruined his family" by having in all £8,000 sent him during his twenty years here and £1,000 of his second wife's estate, "so that the children by his first wife suffered exceedingly." He was of a "heavenly" mind, "dear to the people by his benevolent virtues and his disinterested conduct." Cotton, a Cambridge man, was persuasive and genial rather than commanding and shunned democracy because he feared the animal instincts of the mass while claiming "the ulti- mate resolution for the whole body of the people." He went to the Boston church, though not exactly according to his prefer- ence.
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