USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 5
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There was much devastation at Pequot (New London) har- bor, and altogether the warriors of Sassacus were thoroughly aroused. They would have brought the Narragansetts into alli- ance had it not been for Roger Williams. Gardiner put his fort in readiness for an attack. Two of the garrison, Butterfield and Tilly, were caught in the fields and suffered death by torture.
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Outbuildings were burned and the fort was besieged through the winter. In March Gardiner was wounded while escaping with his men from an ambush. This news in Hartford caused the has- tening of twenty men to the fort under Capt. John Mason of Windsor who had been a soldier with Miles Standish, Underhill and Gardiner under Fairfax in Holland. Forthwith the Indians turned toward the weakened river towns. Sowheag, the old chieftain at Mettabesset (Middletown) who had sold land to the Wethersfield settlers and who had been banished after a quarrel over the sale, was induced to join with the Pequots. April 23 they stole upon Wethersfield and killed six men and three women. Two daughters of Abraham Swain were carried down river in canoes that Gardiner might be witness to the Indian victory, but a cannon ball dispersed the craft. The Dutch later rescued the girls in Pequot harbor.
In a letter to Governor Vane the Connecticut magistrates deprecated his course of action and begged for assistance in defending the weak settlements. Arrival of a few Massachusetts men at Saybrook enabled Mason and his contingent to return to take over the home defense which Ludlow had been conducting. From Uncas, now at Podunk fort with twenty-five of his Mohe- gans who had followed him from the Pequot land, the colonists learned of the general preparations Sassacus had been making.
Eight days after the Wethersfield massacre, the General Court held its second session, Ludlow presiding. Their total popula- tion was about 350, their able-bodied men not over 100. With annihilation confronting them, there was but one alternative. Attempted flight would mean death in the wilderness; of food they had little and none could be had by boat or from the soil or forests while the Indians lay in ambush; the local Indians in their terror were likely to become hostile; their own men were too few and inexperienced for forest warfare; averse as they were to bloodshed, the preservation of their women and children de- manded that they find the lair of their enemy and destroy him.
The brief record says that it was ordered that there be an offensive war and that ninety men be levied on the plantations- Hartford 42, Windsor 30, and Wethersfield 18, under Captain Mason's command, Robert Seeley of Wethersfield, lieutenant, and the oldest sergeant next in rank. Rev. Samuel Stone was ap- pointed chaplain by the captain. Mr. Hooker wrote Governor
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Winthrop-and sundry critics of later years should have read it: "Against our minds, being constrained by necessity The Indians here, our friends, were so importunate with us to make war presently that unless we attempted something we would have delivered our persons into contempt of base fear and cow- ardice and caused them to turn enemies against us."
Accompanied by Uncas and his followers, they embarked in their pink, pinnace and shallop, after a blessing by Mr. Hooker. The scanty rations were supplemented by "one good hogshead of beer for the captain, minister and sick," and "if there be only three or four gallons of strong water, two gallons of sack." Mr. Pynchon furnished the shallop. The agony, terror and privations of those left at home were described in a letter to Pynchon, re- gretting that men could not be sent from Springfield, written by Ludlow, who was in command of the home defense. At Windsor a palisade was built north of the Tunxis, with the church in the center, "the veritable shrine of Windsor history and romance." Uncas and his men, increased to seventy, left the slow ships on the river to scout, and on their way met a band of the Pequots of whom they killed seven. Nevertheless, before Gardiner would be convinced of his loyalty, he had to go out from the Saybrook fort, kill four others and bring in a prisoner, who proved to be a former garrison interpreter and now was a spy. Uncas was per- mitted to put him to death by torture.
Underhill and twenty men joined Mason at the fort, thus releasing an equal number to return to the settlement, the peril of which was grave. The home government-as governments sometimes will-planned the strategy of the expedition, suggest- ing a direct attack upon the enemy's main fort. Once out on the Sound, Mason told his men they would go around and attack from the east, hoping to surprise. Some counseled obedience to the government instructions, but when the chaplain prayed over the subject and announced next morning that Mason's plan was the right one, there was cheerful acquiescence. They reached the coast near Point Judith May 21, but were detained there two days, the first because it was Sunday and the second because of high seas. At the council wigwam of Canonicus of the Narra- gansetts, his nephew Miantonomoh expressed his doubts of the success of so small a body but gave permission to pass, and a number of his men following them were later urged by Mason to
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stand by and see what the English could do. This was not fool- hardiness, as some have said; a purpose of the expedition was to overawe the natives, and Mason, with his handful of wholly un- trained men, must be bold.
There was to be no waiting for the Massachusetts men who sent word they were at Providence. The boats and Surgeon Thomas Pell of Saybrook were ordered back to Pequot harbor while the men pressed on to reach the nearer of the two forts, the one at Mystic, to which, it developed, Sassacus had sent most of his warriors to have a war dance, celebrating the cowardice of Mason in passing by Pequot harbor. They were to start on the warpath the next day. Their cries and their chants were heard by the English pickets around the campfire two miles away where the English were asleep after an exhausting march of two days under a blazing sun. At dawn May 26, Chaplain Stone of- fered prayer and Mason advanced cautiously, he with Lieutenant Seeley and half his force toward one entrance of the stockade, Underhill toward the one at the opposite corner. A dog barked, an Indian cried, "The English!" a volley was fired through the spaces between the logs of the stockade. Mason thrust aside the brush screen at the entrance and, risking everything for sur- prise, charged in. From the wigwams came volleys of arrows at close range, wounding few, however, because of "special Provi- dence," Mason wrote. The struggle now hand to hand, the tide was turning against the white men. An arrow well aimed at Mason's face was checked only by the cutting of the bowstring by William Hayden of Windsor (whose sword is now in the pos- session of the Connecticut Historical Society). As the last des- perate recourse Mason applied the torch to the wigwams, Under- hill did likewise; the men, withdrawn, were posted around the stockade to prevent escape, the Mohegans back of them. Seven broke through the line, seven were captured and the rest-150, according to Winthrop,-including a very few squaws and chil- dren, were killed. The casualties among the seventy-seven white men were two killed and twenty wounded.
A few volleys dispersed a party coming from the other fort while Mason was making his way to the boats which had come into the harbor, Patrick and his forty Massachusetts men aboard them. The Indians burned the other fort and fled westward, except a few who were disposed of by Captain Stoughton and 120
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Massachusetts men after Mason had embarked his wounded and part of his men. With the remainder, Mason took the trail for Saybrook. In the hour of thanksgiving at home, the victorious commander and thirty men, joined by Ludlow, were sent to assist Stoughton in overtaking the Pequots with hope of preventing their return. Most of the fugitives were surrounded in a swamp at Sasco (near Southport) and after a fierce fight were annihi- lated or captured. Sassacus and a few others broke through and reached the Mohawks in New York, from whom soon came their scalps as a token of good will on the part of those who had been awed. The prisoners were disposed of as slaves. Not only had this colony been saved but the story of the white men's prowess traveled fast among the tribes with results that were salutary along the seaboard.
Both Connecticut and Massachusetts believed the conquered Pequot territory belonged to them. But they were affable. When Massachusetts gave the younger Winthrop Fisher's Island, Connecticut congratulated him, and again when he acquired property around present New London. Winthrop proved to be a good Connecticut man and Connecticut finally became the re- cognized possessor of the Pequot country. Immediately after the war, the first treaty in America was signed at Hartford, October 1, 1638, by John Haynes, Roger Ludlow and Edward Hopkins for Connecticut, Miantonomoh for the Narragansetts and Uncas for the Mohegans by which quarrels should be referred to the Eng- lish who would take up arms against any dissenter from their decision; Mohegans and Narragansetts were to destroy Pequots found guilty of bloodshed and bring their heads to the magis- trates. The 200 survivors of the Pequots were to be distributed among the Narragansetts, the East Nehantics and the Mohe- gans, all three of which tribes should pay annual tribute, to be collected from the conquered; their territory was to be consid- ered the property of Connecticut.
The names of those who served in the war have been obtained so far as possible by James Shepard of New Britain and are:
Hartford-Thomas Barnes, Peter Blacthford, Thomas Blatch- ley, William Blumfield, John Bronson, Thomas Bull, Thomas Bunce, John Clark, Michael Clark, William Cornwell, Capt. John Cullick, Sergeant Philip Davis, Michael Disbrough, Edward Elmer, * Zachariah Field, Richard Goodman, Thomas and Samuel
6-VOL. 1
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Hale, John Hall, Stephen Hart, William Hayden, John Hills, John Holloway, John Ince, Michael Jennings, Benjamin Munn, Thomas Munson, Thomas Olcott, Michael Olmstead,* Richard Olmstead, William Parker, William Phillips, John Pierce, William Pratt, John Purkas, Thomas Root, Robert Sanford, Arthur Smith, Thomas Stanton, George Steele, John Stanley (age 13), Thomas Spencer, John Stone, Henry Walkley, John Warner, Samuel Whitehead.
Windsor-Sergeant Benedict Alvord, Thomas Barber, Thomas Buckland, George Chappell, John Dyer, James Eggleston, Nath- aniel Gillett, Thomas Gridley, John (?) Hedge, Capt. John Mason, Richard Osborne, Sergeant Nicholas Palmer, Thomas Parsons, Edward Pattison, Sergeant Thomas Staires, Aaron Stark, Thomas Stiles, William Thrall.
Wethersfield-John Clark, William Comstock, William Cross, Ensign William Goodrich, Thomas Hollybut, Jeremy Jagger, John Johnson, Nathaniel Merriman*, Sergeant John Nott, Wil- liam Palmer, Robert Park, John Plumb, Robert Rose, Jr., Lieut. Robert Seeley, Samuel Sherman, Henry Smith, Samuel Smith, Thomas Standish, Sergeant Thomas Tibballs, Thomas Tracey, William Treat, Jacob Waterhouse, Richard Westcott.
Saybrook-John Gallop, Jr .* , Lieut. Lion Gardiner, Edward Lay, Capt. John Underhill, Rev. John Higginson, Saybrook chap- lain, John Woods.
(Those marked [*] also served in King Philip's war.)
To the Hartford soldiers the people of the plantation set off the land given them by the grateful Indians-the site of their village in the north meadows-thereafter known as Soldiers Field. There had been no question of pay when the levy of troops was made; it was then a question of existence pure and simple. In the following September the General Court fixed a rate based on one shilling a day for common soldiers for the three weeks and five days, or twelve days for those who served only at Mystic fort, Sundays not included. A levy of £620 was made pro rata on the three plantations to defray the expenses of the war and it was ordered that the plantations must provide fifty "costlets" (corselets of heavy cotton cloth) and have them subject to inspec- tion. Mason was appointed military officer with pay of £40 a year. All above 16 years of age were required to appear before
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him for training ten days a year, and a magazine of powder and shot was to be maintained in each plantation. The first and very necessitous military organization was thus kept up, and such has been continued without break from that day to this. One immediate result was the protection which enabled New Haven colony to be developed.
V
THE CONSTITUTION FRAMED
HOOKER'S SERMON AND LUDLOW'S SKILL-EVIDENCE OF PRIORITY-OF AND BY THE PEOPLE-PYNCHON'S DEFECTION-HARTFORD'S NAME- THE LAWS.
It was only the culmination of progress toward the Constitu- tion that was interrupted by the Pequot war and other exigen- cies. The leaders were of the same mind as when the provisional agreement was formulated by them in the Massachusetts Gen- eral Court, and the exigencies were strengthening the spirit of the people. Analytical history, in sequence, instead of a disor- derly collection of narratives in the first place, would have pre- vented the false but long popular conceptions that the Constitu- tion was an outburst of public sentiment in 1639 and a creation of the three towns. Unmistakably, as has here been written, there had been steady growth. So sturdy was it that its first notable shoot had been put forth in this provisional agreement with the Warwick patentees in the frigid atmosphere of the gov- ernment of the Bay Colony itself. Had it been otherwise, the end of that first year named in the agreement would have been the occasion of reopening of old discussions and adjustment of lines. Instead, as has been noted, the provisional General Court kept on as a matter of course and moved for the crushing of the Pequots. Its records are silent-as though considered of passing consequence-but the list of members shows there had been a popular election, since Hartford's South Side had been recog- nized by the choice of Thomas Welles in place of William West- wood as one of Hartford's two "committees." And so the court was carried on till the next need could be met.
That need was to be the framing of laws. Winslow had said of the Bay: "The people had long desired a body of laws and thought their condition unsafe while so much power rested in the discretion of the magistrates;" * * * "the magistrates and some of the elders" were not "very forward in this matter."
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Simple as the "Fundamental Orders" read today, one can but see that, with no practical pattern to go by, the task of evolving this splendid and eternal simplicity required thought and patience. And there were more immediate needs for the plantations' inhab- itants-the needs of mere physical existence. These are points that must not be forgotten; conditions should be visualized as nearly as possible.
Vaguely, the territory between Wethersfield and Windsor extended easterly to the land of the Mohegans and westerly six miles but later an indefinite distance. Sequassen and his band took up their abode in the south meadows on the land the Dutch said they had bought and where, according to their treaty, some of Sowheag's followers, under Manorlos, had a village and a small fort near the Dutch fort. (Subsequently this land was rented of the Indians, till finally divided between the North and South churches.) From the Indian fort northward extended a strip mentioned in later deeds as Pequot's Heads, where Brainard Field now is. There, according to the Indian custom, the Sequins fastened to poles the scalps of the Pequots they had helped to conquer.
For this wild spot was chosen the name Hartford, following the popular pronunciation of Hertford, one of the most ancient shires in England. This was in honor of Mr. Stone who had come from that place and was a member of St. Andrew's. It proved a worthy choice in sundry ways. For one thing there was held there the first representative meeting in the British Isles, when in 673 the Romans and Britons met and formed the first national English church, under Archbishop Theodore. In this was the inception of Parliament. At Hertford a Saxon king built the first castle to protect his people from the Danes. It remained till William the Conqueror erected on its site one of his great citadels for defense of his realm, the foundations of which are still to be seen. The present castle, built in the seventeenth cen- tury, under the direction of an ancestor of the Newberry family prominent in Windsor history, was always a favorite resort for royalty; many have bestowed costly memorials upon it. There were "Friends of Hertford" as now of Hartford. The red brick building of 1670 was their meeting place and today the store of relics attracts antiquarians. George Fox and William Penn were among those who worshipped there, and also Thomas Dinsdate,
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Penn's grandson, who was the real discoverer of inoculation for smallpox. The town has the right to bear the ancient "standard of honor."
Men of means and men of education, their first thought for a free government and their church, in this new land went forth courageously to fight the Indian murderers and hurried back to resume their equally unaccustomed labors-building their houses and tilling their soil. Elder Goodwin and the few "ad- venturers" had spent the first winter in dugouts. The houses of 1637 were of logs banked up with clay. Even to prepare the places for them required much toil. Primeval trees had to be removed and worked up with such few tools as they had, cart paths had to be cut through the forest, and stones and dirt had to be drawn with such beasts of burden as they had brought with them. Of the homes, Mr. Hooker's was to be the best, yet not so good but that it had to be rebuilt two years later, and the church on the south side of "meeting-house yard" was completed before the builders had a place to rest their heads comfortably. This church likewise was a temporary structure.
Magistrates were obliged to work side by side with the hum- blest "inhabitant" while being relied upon to devise the system of government that should satisfy. In this they were subjected to further hindrance through the calls being made upon the time of their pastor. One of his toilsome expeditions to Boston was to sit in council, in 1637, in the case of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson. Mr. Stone accompanied him. Mrs. Hutchinson had won every- body's esteem by her kindliness and energy, for the well-being of women in particular, when she began preaching that salvation was a personal matter irrespective of church, and also that one who did not get it after trying hard was a hopeless failure in life. Her followers increased daily; excitement ran high. Mr. Hooker was called to preside over the ecclesiastical synod, a duty which kept him and Mr. Stone in Boston for three months. Eventually Mrs. Hutchinson was banished and six years later was killed by Indians during the Dutch disturbances near Green- wich.
Further distraction was caused by the important discussion in 1637 of a federation of Massachusetts and Connecticut, with Plymouth invited to participate. This was the earliest proposi- tion for a union in America. Articles for ratification were drawn
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up in August by some of the Bay magistrates, and in Novem- ber of that year Massachusetts had seemed to consider them in force, even though unratified, since it passed votes relative to Pequot lands with title for Massachusetts and Connecticut,- action which, however, was repudiated in 1641. Details of the federation were not worked out till 1643. In May of busy 1638 a letter on this subject of federating was sent to Winthrop con- cerning a commission composed of Haynes, Pym and John Steele. Pynchon, at the meeting held the next month, expressed Aga- wam's desire to remain under Massachusetts government. Con- necticut commissioners remarked upon the fact that as a com- missioner in 1637 he had expressed apprehension that Agawam would fall within the Bay jurisdiction and thought that his change of heart must be due to a "present pang" caused by the recent censure of Connecticut.
Here was joined an issue that resulted in Agawam's falling out of the category of Constitution towns. Despite the Warwick Patent and his own official connection with the river towns, Pyn- chon came to lean more toward aristocracy. His people obeyed the call for "committees" from each plantation for the election court in Hartford in 1638 but he led his plantation to withdraw that year. The court at that session recognized jurisdiction by giving Pynchon a monopoly of the Indian trade at Agawam and in return Pynchon was to furnish 500 bushels of corn at a fixed rate. Failing in this he was tried in Hartford on a charge of bad faith. Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone, the controversy having been referred to them, found that he had violated his magisterial cath. At the April session he appeared and heard judgment that he had not been so careful as he might be, for which he was fined forty bushels of corn. A generous extension of his monopoly to include beaver skins did not operate as a balm to his wounded feelings. But what is more, he was not impressed with Mr. Hooker's plan for a commonwealth; he agreed with Winthrop that public affairs should not be submitted to the people. Ener- getic and forceful, he built a warehouse and dock at Enfield falls, or at what was to be called Warehouse Point, and altogether was a man of progress along other than governmental lines.
In the fall of 1638, Hooker wrote Winthrop that Connecticut jurisdiction had been recognized in Agawam when it recently had sent a culprit to be punished, and added that if Pynchon
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could engage himself in a civil covenant and disregard it at his pleasure, he must find "a law for it; for it is written in no law or gospel that I ever read. The want of his help troubles me not, nor any man else I can hear of. I do assure you we know him from the bottom to the brim and follow him in all his proceedings and track him in his privy footsteps, only we would have him and all the world to understand he doth not walk in the dark for us." He may have had in mind also his Calvinism which later was to be a source of trouble to Pynchon. Winthrop wrote in his jour- nal that a source of disagreement was that in Connecticut with its untrained civil officers "the main burden for managing of state business fell upon some one or other ministers, (as the phrase and style of their letters will clearly discover)."
February 14, 1639, (after the adoption of the Constitution), Pynchon recorded in Agawam town records an agreement exe- cuted by him creating him a magistrate in that plantation for all cases of justice subject to approval by the Massachusetts General Court. He also wrote a letter about his Connecticut affair for circulation through Connecticut towns, to which the General Court authorized a reply that his course was "very offensive and far unbeseeming one of your quality." The Windsor church dis- ciplined him but he obtained a favorable report when he went to the Roxbury court for a review. It was ten years before Massa- chusetts admitted representation from Agawam to the General Court.
Enough has been told to indicate why sessions of the original General Court were only for meeting the needs of the moment, and why, as yet, no one had presented a formulated plan express- ing the ideas that many were entertaining. Indicative, first, of Mr. Hooker's fearless spirit; second, of traits which had elicited Governor Winthrop's side comment just quoted, and, third, of his strengthening faith that the "despised" would yet come into their own, a brief extract from a letter from him to Governor Winthrop should be given. It was written in the fall of 1638, at the time immigration into the colony was being cut down by adverse propa- ganda to those "on land, to boats approaching land and those around the exchange in London," for the most of which, political and anti-democracy influence back of the Bay colony was held to be measurably responsible. Mr. Hooker wrote :
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"Sir, he wants a nostril that feels not and senses not a schismatical spirit in such a framer of falsifying relations to gratify some persons and satisfy their own ends.
"Do these things argue brotherly love? Do these issue from spirits that either pity the necessities of their brethren or would that the work of God should prosper in their hands? Or rather argue quite the contrary. If these be the ways of God, or that blessing of God do follow them, I never preached God's ways nor knew what belonged to them.
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