USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 7
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The western territory was apportioned in 1638 among twenty of the original grantees, a total of 500 acres. One portion of the southwest division west of Sigourney Street went to John Haynes of which 100 acres were sold to his son, Rev. Joseph Haynes, in- cluding the Nook Farm. This descended to his son, Judge John Haynes, and in 1713, on the death of the judge, was inventoried at £100. Descendants of the Haynes family today have a resi- dence in the Nook Farm section.
Before these apportionments were made, the original proprie- tors had come together to determine who among the legal "inhab- itants" had the rights of proprietors in the original land- whether those who had shared in the taxation or only the stock- holders in the settlement undertaking. Not all the early settlers were technically proprietors nor yet all the "inhabitants;" having arrived later, these others received their grants "by courtesy." It was necessary to work out a new method of preserving land records since these men were the first owners to hold, distribute and devise. Title must be established in some way hitherto un- known to the Englishmen. Hence the law that each owner make public record. The land was allotted according to agreement entered in the town book January 13, 1639 (O. S.). From 160 acres to John Haynes, the individual amounts ran down to six for William Pratt and others.
The first step toward establishing a town farm for the poor was taken in March, 1640, when twenty acres were set apart for the purpose east of the river. The town had been very careful to guard against impecunious strangers. In 1636 the heads of fam- ilies were forbidden to entertain newcomers without the consent of the selectmen. No unmarried men without a servant could keep house except by permission. In 1639 anyone entertaining a
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stranger without consent of the selectmen became liable for any cost or trouble to the town. Among those coming from England were not a few who were attracted by the trading possibilities, and not meeting with success they became dependents. The head of every family was held strictly responsible for the conduct of everyone under his roof. By 1667 the Assembly voted to prohibit the entertaining of strangers and anyone ordered away and not obeying became subject to fine and corporal punishment, because of "unjust disturbance" made by certain newcomers. The pur- pose was to prevent public charges. Until 1773 the court alone decided all differences relative to strangers and to providing for the poor; that year it passed the whole matter over to the towns to decide and to bear the burden.
With this same intent to prevent brawling and to check pov- erty, local and colonial regulations of traffic in liquor were adopted. Complaints had multiplied till in 1647 the court pro- hibited anyone's drinking in a public house for more than half an hour, nor could "strong water" be sold to anyone outside without written permission. Restrictive legislation was useless. In 1654 the court greatly lamented the disgrace and danger drunkenness was bringing upon the colony. All selling or giving to Indians was forbidden and a universal high price was set on sales to any- one. The Ludlow code forbade "licensed persons" to suffer pat- rons to drink to excess, "viz., above one-half pint of wyne for one person at one time," to drink more than half an hour or after nine in the evening. Travelers were excepted. When David Porter of Hartford was drowned, the bill paid included expenses for recovery and burial of the body, including liquor for those who dived for him, for those who brought him home and for the jury of inquest. Eight gallons and three quarts of wine and a barrel of cider were bought for the funeral. His winding sheet and coffin cost 30 shillings, but the liquors cost more than twice that sum. Like funeral methods were continued until well into the nineteenth century in certain localities and then there was protest against so inhospitable reformation. One old gentleman is quoted as having lamented that "temperance had done for funerals." In 1654 the court ordered that the excessively per- nicious rum that was coming in from the West Indies be con- fiscated. And in general, the whole category of prohibitions was exhausted-in those days a century before the clergy themselves
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drank at installations and everyone drank on training days. In 1727 the General Assembly in a resolution deplored the "ruina- tion and debauchery" but continued that upon consideration of "a memorial of the Reverend Trustees of Yale College," it was granted that the "impost income from Rhum for a year be for the use, benefit and support of the College."
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Founders of the world's "Insurance City," they had an eye to fire prevention. In each house, under inspection of one detailed for that purpose, a fireplace was almost a room unto itself, walled in and ceiled with stone cleverly hewn by hands that had known no such toil at home. A little later on, after one or two frights, chimney sweeps were appointed and every house must have a bucket and a ladder, just as each householder must have fire- arms and powder.
The remedy for such peril suggested by the Indians was that they cease to build houses but instead live in wigwams. To this the settlers were as deaf as they were to instructions the natives gave in the use of the stone mortar and pestle for crushing the corn the natives had taught them to raise. "Mass production" was as much the cry then as it is today. The energetic but not always smooth-tempered Matthew Allyn opened the way for Con- necticut industries by building a saw and grist mill in 1636 on Kiln Brook near its junction with Little River, and his name was given to an island near that point. After nine years Allyn had a falling-out with the church, removed to Windsor and there bought the original Plymouth property. One of his descendants gave the Corning fountain which stands about where Allyn's Island was, now a part of Bushnell Park. Before leaving, Allyn had supplemented his mill with another at the low falls near pres- ent Hudson Street. Parts of the dam he built, over which the water flowed for many generations of mills, down to Daniels' of modern times, were found when the park board cleared up the stream recently. And by vote a bridge twelve feet wide was thrown across the river, in Allyn's time, below the dam and near the palisade, at a point which was to become the mercantile center. When in 1656 greater facilities were required, the town voted for a new mill there and combined with Edward Hopkins,
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general benefactor, to build one, the cost to be borne by the inhab- itants according to their proprietary interest in the mills-shares to pass by deed or will and the mills to be run by a committee. In 1819, after the shares had been bought up and passed on to various individuals, they became (Ira) Todd's Mills and included a clothiers' and carding mill. A finishing mill, conducted by Reuben Wadsworth and James Taylor, located on the south bank, was bought by Todd. Part interest in this he sold to Leonard Daniels who by 1838 had acquired interests owned by others, except that which had been bequeathed by William Stanley to the South Church.
The only rival of this section as a mill center in the seven- teenth century was the mill a short distance above Allyn's mill, near where the State Armory is now. It was built by John Allen and John Bidwell in 1681 for grinding and sawing. Main- tained and enlarged by successive owners it acquired the name of Imlay's Mills from William H. Imlay, who owned the plant in 1820.
Hardly second in importance to meal and lumber were bricks. Most of the early towns of the county found that the soil was well adapted for the making of them. For a long time there was no better place for the manufacture than on Kiln Brook, north of the present railroad station and not far from Allyn's mill. The land was swampy and the little stream was an aid. Individuals went there and made their brick as others would go into the for- est and cut their wood. In 1685 the court gave Evan Davy right to establish a kiln in the highway southwest of where the Capitol stands and near the site of John Allen's mill. There was a swale at that point both sides of the stream, with a brook running in from the south.
Forest and stream were teeming with the best kind of food, but few of the Englishmen knew much about hunting or fishing. They were dependent mostly upon the Indians for food of that kind and also for hides, the need of which was immediately ap- parent, since their clothing was ill adapted for frontier toil. The hides were made into trousers, jackets and caps and their value can be judged by the law providing for a fine in case the good wife's knife slipped when cutting to pattern. It is not to be won- dered at that in 1641 the General Court ordered that hemp and flax be planted by every family and also that cotton be imported.
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That was the same year that it was prescribed that all hides must be carefully cured and also that no calves should be slaughtered without consent of the town officials. Another twenty years and there were public inspectors of woollen yarn in each town, and, what is more, the price to be paid weavers for yarn was fixed. Then cotton was mixed with the yarn. Fulling mills began to spring up along many streams later in the century. One of the largest of them was in Burnside, owned by William Pitkin.
It being easier to travel by sea than by land, seamanship soon developed and with it traffic with neighboring colonies and the remote Indies. Imports included the new American thing, to- bacco, and that created an evil almost as reprehensible as rum. One of the early enactments prohibited the "drinking" of tobacco except that grown within the "liberties." There is difference of opinion as to the meaning of the words thus used, while the list of substitutes for Jamaica rum after it was tabooed has not been revealed. Previously it had been ordered that young people should not use tobacco and the length of time one could smoke was limited. In 1647 the age limit was fixed at twenty except when doctors furnished a certificate. No smoking was allowed on the roads or in the fields unless one were on a journey of at least forty miles. One could smoke at dinner, not more than once a day and then not in company with anyone unless the other smoked.
Doctors' certificates were not easy to obtain. Rev. Samuel Stone was not the only one who lamented the lack of medical advisers. No one could practice without a permit from the Gen- eral Court; from its inception Connecticut has been watchful over the public health. The first doctor was Bray Rosseter of Windsor, admitted in 1636, and it was to him that Mr. Stone had to go in 1656. Hartford paid the bill of £10 for "pissick." The next year Mr. Stone made it a condition of his returning from Boston to Hartford that an able physician be engaged to settle there, if it were possible to get one. Not that Dr. Rosseter was not a capable man; he was magistrate and town clerk and he performed the first autopsy ever recorded in New England, but he was too far away. By the records it would appear that Hart- ford had an official physician in the person of Dr. Thomas Lord who in 1652 had been licensed and had been given a schedule of fees he could charge in addition to the bonus of £15 a year from
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the county. The fees were: For visits in Hartford, 12 pence; in Windsor, 5 shillings; in Wethersfield, 3 shillings, and in Farm- ington, 6 shillings. He died in Wethersfield in 1662. Governor John Winthrop, Jr., himself was a physician of parts but he gave more time to affairs of state than to medicine.
The great shipping industry which was to develop began with the action of the General Court in 1642 when it authorized the river towns to cooperate in building a ship, probably at Hartford. The next mention of a ship is in 1649 when the court authorized Samuel Smith and other owners to get enough pipestaves, or barrel staves, from outside the town to freight "the ship" on its first voyage. The ship was probably built by Thomas Deming of Wethersfield who had been granted privileges at the cove in that town where ship-building was carried on till recent years. The name of his ship was the Tryall. The traffic in pipestaves was most profitable for many years for all the towns. While England was the best market for the noble masts the county could fur- nish, the West Indies was the best for the staves; they were exchanged for hogsheads of molasses and sugar and for some ports rum.
The increasing traffic likewise brought in luxuries and finer- ies of which the women long had been deprived. Soon it came about that the court was obliged to take cognizance of the com- plaint from the different towns or churches; women were com- ing to meeting in apparel that was scandalous; from outward appearances it was difficult to distinguish those in the back pews from those entitled to sit farther forward. "Sad stuff" was the chief material for gowns. One woman wrote to a friend: "She have 3 pieces of stuff but I think there is one you would like for yourself. It is pretty sad stuff but it have a thread of white in it." Legislation restored the equilibrium. Now and then a Negro appeared as a servant in the families of the well-to-do, having been bought in the Indies or in southern ports. Seats in the church gallery were reserved for them.
Foreign trade was beginning to bring strangers whose char- acter had not been molded in the same way that the original con- gregation's had been. The first "Americanization" by those who so recently had originated that name had to be severe. There were no precedents or societies, no psychological, humanitarian, or other data to guide. Under a patent for "lords and gentle-
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men," their one rule had been admission by authorities who ex- amined applicants as to their honorable intent, their inclination to work and their regard for the Bible, the book only recently available for the people. From the beginning to the present the publishers have reported that book the "best seller," but that earliest period cannot be excepted-one must judge-from the general statement that it is not the best read and comprehended. New England was proceeding to lay the foundations of its repu- tation for making laws, by the people, and then compelling sub- mission to them by all who would remain within the gates.
The stocks, the wooden horse and sitting on the gallows plat- form had been sufficient corrective till the new element came in with indiscriminate trade and the need for more workers and extension of colony bounds. To apply a stronger arm for law, the General Court in 1640 ordered the building of a house of cor- rection. It was located in the Meeting-house Yard near the cor- ner of present State and Market streets, twenty-four feet by six- teen, with a cellar and dungeon. Some of the prisoners worked to maintain themselves and provided their own furnishings. Criminals from all parts of the colony were confined there; those who were to be executed were taken to Gallows Hill, or Rocky Hill, near where Trinity College is located. The percentage of ordinary offenders and criminals could not have been excessive, for there was no enlargement of the building till 1664 or after the colony came to include the whole present state. When the re- formatory methods began to develop early in the next century, the General Court voted for a colony workhouse for "rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and other lewd, idle, dissolute, pro- fane and disorderly persons." This included rebellious children and slanderers. The penalty for slander always was severe.
The workhouse was built in 1727 at the southwest corner of Pearl and Trumbull streets, where the inmates immediately be- gan to complain that punishment was excessive because the build- ing was "so retired and in back part of the town, so seldom fre- quented by any inhabitants." It was not self-supporting and therefore in 1742 Hartford County was directed to transfer its inmates to the jail. There they remained till the workhouse plan was revived in 1750, one building in each county. The former building was brought into service again, a new jail was built on the south part of the lot and the old one was sold. A yard was
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built around the whole when British prisoners were confined there in 1776. In 1792 a new county jail was built on the same site. On the upper floors was a tavern, called "City Hall," for paying-inmates, and also rooms for committee meetings. In 1836 this building was sold to Case, Tiffany and Company who in 1866 replaced it with their large building for printing and bind- ing, now in turn torn down after the present Case, Lockwood and Brainard Company has erected another new building adjoining on the south. The new jail, built in 1837 at a point on Pearl Street (No. 60 then) a little to the west of the old site, was occu- pied till the present structure on Seyms Street was built in 1874.
Reference has been made to the watchfulness of the church, natural enough when we keep in mind why these settlers took desperate chances and came to America. The often criticised regulations were more liberal than in any other colony. A man had the suffrage whether or no he was a church member. And yet there were certain stipulations he must observe or these prison doors would yawn for him. Of course he had no vote in church matters, but he must pay tax for the support of the church. The minister's stipend must be paid; neglect of that aroused the General Court, as is illustrated in the history of Simsbury, given elsewhere. There were fines for not attending church,-3 shillings for absence from regular services, 5 shillings for absence from service on fasting days and for thanksgiving. Nor could one attend any but the regular church under penalty of a fine of £5, and civil authorities must see to it that all churches were regular. There were church services most of the day Sun- days and a service on Tuesday, which likewise was the day for punishment in the stocks, when the culprits might be seen by all.
Along this line of church influence and church support may be found the reason for the now much discussed distinction of New England for the number of its towns and villages so near together, and for the exceptional proportion of descendants who have remained on the original soil. It is plainly written in the real history of every one of Hartford County's towns. These settlers were accustomed to short distances and anything but rocky, forest trails. When inspired by an ideal, 300 of them could march 150 miles from Boston to Hartford; they were averse to walking or riding three miles to church on Sunday- and, let us add, under legal compulsion. Their idea of the neces-
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sary size of a farm was in reverse ratio. A hundred acres was none too much; consequently there were many in every settle- ment who would travel out into the forest a few miles, acquire title on small payment to proprietors or Indians, and soon, over an area of a few hundred acres, there would be another settle- ment. In would come a petition to the General Court for "winter privileges," or the right to hold services somewhere in their neighborhood through the severe winter months, their leader to be such as the parent church should designate, if there was no one among themselves. In time there would be application to form a church and build, thereby saving travel the year around. Only on approval of the parent society was this granted. The choice of a site must be satisfactory to the court. If the settlers them- selves were fully agreed, decision by the court was a matter of form. But the chances were that the dozen or fifteen adventur- ers were of different minds. Oddly enough the site usually selected was on the top of a hill; the tapering spires of old New England churches today stand out like so many liberty poles and add to the country's charm. It is prehistoric to set a temple on a hill. Disagreement over what would be the real center as the community grew started feuds that might last lifetimes. A spe- cial committee of the General Court-usually headed by Wor- shipful John Talcott in Hartford County-was kept busy decid- ing these disputes. Frequently it was necessary to bring the full power of the court into action before building could begin at the site designated.
Obviously newcomers would wish to build within reasonable distance of the church-a literally "established" church. Then yielding to some motive or other, perhaps the result of his own explorations, a man would venture beyond the convenient radius, and the whole process from "winter privileges" on to full town- hood would be repeated. Towns thus made were dear to the descendants who made them; they might not be commercially profitable; many traveled to western homes, but, as the eminent Washington statistician, Ales Hrdlicka, has commented, a record of devotion to ancestral belongings has been established, both by those who never went away and by those who have been away and have returned. Evidence of this in town records, on the muster rolls of all the wars and in the names one hears today is abundant. Therein is a tribute and an enviable asset.
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These people whom the world would know more about than it does were not gregarious. Nothing is more false to history than the old-time conception of the "solemn-visaged Puritan." The visages handed down to us have usually been those of elderly men well worn out by their exhausting pioneer experiences; occa- sionally we have one of the younger type, and the expression is far different. They were intensely sociable and hospitable, let their protective laws be what they would-and they compare most favorably with those of any other peoples of that century. If there was an excuse for getting together, as at a fair, on a training day or an election day, or at a house-raising, and they could satisfy their consciences that it was all a part of the "day's work," they would get up long before daybreak and travel rough miles, horse-back or afoot, to improve it.
It was in the early '40s, when Hartford had a bell-ringer and town crier who an hour before sunrise patrolled the streets and everybody must be up and have a light fifteen minutes after this warning, just as everybody must be ready to go to bed when the curfew bell sounded at 9 o'clock,-it was in as early days as that that the court authorized public market on Wednesdays, for all manner of commodities that could be brought in and for cattle and general merchandise. For years after that, such market was maintained at the southeast corner of Meeting-house Yard. It is conspicuous in our picture of the yard in 1820. Two years later the plan of two fairs a year, in May and September, was inaug- urated by the same paternal court. They furnished the excuse for everybody to come to Hartford.
This was more than a part of the day's work; it was more profitable than the work of many days-perhaps the profit of a whole season. Originally it was a matter of barter and exchange. Beaver skins were the most valuable commodity. Monopoly of trade with Indians was given to certain men in each settlement in order to secure more orderly trade and greater stability of price, and moreover there could be better accounting with the representatives of the patentees who bought the original permis- sion to locate here. What with barter, and with only wampum and skins for currency and with uncertainty as to what articles and especially what colors would most appeal to the savages, it was essential that there be cooperative buying and selling. Fur- ther, the opportunity was offered to dispose of the many home-
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(From Barber's "Historical Collections")
FIRST MEETING-HOUSE BUILT IN CONNECTICUT
(From an old-time engraving)
STATEHOUSE SQUARE IN 1825
View from Main Street. Left: Statehouse, the Hartford Hotel, paint shop and the public market. Right: Central Row, front corner Museum and Times Building, branch of United States Bank, Univer- salist Church (practically the site of Connecticut's earliest church building), grocery and dwelling, at corner of "Ministers' Lane," now Prospect Street.
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made articles in exchange for a season's supply of household essentials.
Edward Hopkins and William Whiting were among the earli- est to whom monopoly in skins and corn was granted. A good hoe could bring them a supply of corn equal to one family's re- quirement for two months, at the end of which time a fresh order of hoes could arrive from England. A bright red bit of raiment or a crude toilet article would rate much higher in Indian barter than shoes or coats or other necessities of civilization. The pur- chasing power of a torn lace frill in Hartford, Conn., was as great as that of a £10 note in Hertford, England. The frill trans- muted into a beaver skin and the skin into a few bales of gay ribbons and beads, the round of profit was begun.
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