USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume I > Part 8
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The largest estate inventoried up to 1647 was that of William Whiting. In addition to interests in England, Pistaquay, Va., Waranoke and Long Island, he had at home: In wampum, £39,105; ammunition, £7, 10 shillings; 2 racoon coats, 1 wolf-skin coat; 4 bear skins; 3 moose skins; beaver, moose and wampum, £250; hoes, hatchets, shoes, nails, pins, paper, bottles, brass ladles, brushes, bells, thimbles, boxes, knives, scissors, combs, jewsharps, brass kettles and the like; in dry-goods, shag cotton, stockings, hollands, twenty-five yards of green tammy and 13 pieces of duffles. His house and lands in Hartford were worth £400, and property in Windsor, £300. Total inventory, £42,854.
Training days were no less important than fair days. John Adams counted them among the factors which made New Eng- land. It gave the men their only opportunity for coming together without thought of business or routine work-but, in those days preceding a century of wars, not without a very definite purpose, which purpose was literal and direct protection of home. The rank of commissioned officer was one of the highest honors. From the first year, as has been noted, there had been guns and ammunition in every house and frequent drilling, by specific com- mand of the General Court. After the war Mason was made commander-in-chief for the colony with rank of major. The fed- eral Government, in its records, dates the beginning of the pres- ent military establishment from the law of 1739 when the militia of all the state was organized into regiments and brigades. Organization was perfected in 1637 and the only war in the state was won; all after that was a development.
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The code of 1650 formally provided for military affairs. All men between the ages of 16 and 66 must keep in a state of pre- paredness and must train each month except in winter-time. After 1654, there was general muster every other year. There were pikemen wearing padded corselets as protection against arrows, and musketeers. In 1680 there were 835 trained infan- trymen and sixty horsemen. On training days, after morning inspections and the afternoon reviews, the ladies entertained most hospitably. Every house was thrown open. The only mu- sical instruments allowed were drums, fifes, trumpets and jews- harps. Nothing was known of dancing, cards, bowls, shuffle- boards and theatricals. On election days and at house-raisings, the social functions were much the same. And as time went on there were picnics in the summer, husking-bees in the fall and straw rides and quilting parties in the winter.
What with the strict regulations on entertaining strangers without permission, the General Court was in duty bound to encourage inns. In 1644 it decreed that each town should have such a place for the accommodation of travelers, and at about the same time it forsook the church as a sessions chamber and met at an inn recently opened at the southwest corner of State and Front streets by Deputy Thomas Ford of Windsor, the first inn in the colony. In 1661 Jeremy Addams had a house and lot of about three acres on Main Street which had been a part of the original property of John Steele. That year he mortgaged it to the colony and was permitted to make an "ordinary" of it on con- dition that he keep it up well. The license was perpetual and irrevocable. From that time for fifty years the General Court had special quarters there. In addition to the regulations pre- viously mentioned for the sale of "strong water," he must be assiduous in attention to any guest.
"He was not to challenge a lordlie authority over him, but clean otherwise, since any man may use the inne as his owne house, and have for monie how great and how little varietie of vittels and what other service himselfe shall think expedient to call for, and have clean sheets to lie in wherein no man had been lodged since they came from the landresse, and have a servante to kindle his fire and one to pull on his boots and make them clean, and have the hoste and hostess to visit him, and to eat with the hoste, or at a common table if he pleases, or eat in his chamber, commanding what meat
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he will according to his appetite. Yea, the kitchen being open to him to order the meat to be dressed as he liketh it best."
In 1680 Addams surrendered the property to satisfy the mort- gage, yet arrangement was made so that two years later he trans- ferred all his rights, by "turf and twig," to his son-in-law Zach- ary Sanford. At Adams' death in 1685 the colony formally sold the inn to Sanford, the court continuing to sit there. When San- ford died in 1713 it passed to his daughter Sarah, wife of Jona- than Bunce. Mr. Bunce dying in 1717, the property passed to Samuel Flagg, husband of Sarah Bunce, who in 1733 replaced it by the famous Black Horse Tavern, nearer the present street line, for fifty years the most celebrated hostlery in the county, or until Mr. Flagg's death and the dedication of the wonderful Bunch of Grapes Tavern, kept for many years by the redoubt- able tory David Bull near the present corner of Main and Asylum streets. Capt. John Chevenard, Flagg's son-in-law, inherited the property which remained in his family till sold for the site of the Universalist Church in 1859, from which society the Travelers Insurance Company bought it in 1905 for the site of the first of its series of massive buildings. There was significance in the name of the new owner of the spot once set apart for travelers. On Mr. Bunce's death the court removed to Caleb Williamson's new tavern which was on the site of the Travelers' old building on Prospect Street, later the property of Oliver Wolcott, Jr., sec- retary of the treasury under Washington and Adams and after- ward governor.
VII AMERICA'S FIRST FEDERATION
UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND-THE GREAT BOUNDARY WAR- INDIAN PROBLEMS-EXECUTION OF MIANTONOMOH-ARBITRATION OVER DUTCH CLAIMS-HISTORY OF THE FORT.
It is said truly that the whole history of Connecticut is the history of representative government. This distinction is em- phasized again in the organizing of the United Colonies of New England. Action which had been interrupted by the Pequot war and the boundary dispute was completed September 7, 1643, when the representatives of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecti- cut and New Haven signed articles of agreement. The document, though differing in some fundamentals due to its earlier date, and in its seventeenth-century religious cast, is strikingly sug- gestive of the confederation of the United States in 1781. It was the first pact of the sort in America. Each colony retained its autonomy, on Hooker's suggestion and against the idea of Winthrop of Massachusetts, and was to be represented by two commissioners.
Provisions were that a three-fourths vote was enough to settle all "affairs of war and peace leagues" and apportion contribu- tions of men and supplies; if three-fourths were not obtainable, there should be reference to the respective legislatures; there also should be purpose to maintain peace and justice between col- onies and towards the Indians. If any colony violated the agree- ment, the extent of offense and remedy should be determined by the others. Saybrook was represented at the meetings that adopted the articles, Colonel Fenwick being present as a Con- necticut commissioner. It probably was understood that before the next annual session that prospective colony would pass to Connecticut by purchase of Warwick Patent rights. The price paid was £1,600.
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The Hamilton rights were a peculiar incident, entirely ignored till years afterward. Before the surrendering of pat- ents to the King, the lords composing the Council of Plymouth determined to divide the seacoast of New England among them- selves. The division in 1635 absorbed nearly all the previous grants. The portion allotted to the Marquis of Hamilton was sixty miles square, extending along the shore from the Narra- gansett River to the mouth of the Connecticut and thence north- ward. Seven weeks after that the council went out of existence. Owing to the excitements in England, nothing was done under this grant. The claim was not revived till after the granting of the Connecticut charter in 1662. Connecticut maintained that the claim was valueless originally and was now outlawed. And such was the decision of the King and council in 1697.
Two items in the purchase of the Warwick Patent subjected Massachusetts and Connecticut to wranglings which were to con- tinue through long years. One was the recognition of the War- wick boundary which brought Springfield and Waranoke (West- field) within the Connecticut line, and the other was that for ten years Fenwick should have a right to collect an export duty on certain articles that came down the river. As has been told, the Bay Colony never had accepted the Warwick line, which ran a little south of present Worcester; Connecticut insisted on "War- ronoco" and Springfield. In 1642 Massachusetts had sent two amateur surveyors to run the line, Woodward and Saffery. Their line included everything down to Windsor, embracing territory where Pynchon had been promoting settlements, and altogether what now constitutes thirteen townships. The Congress of the colonies sustained the Springfield contention pending proof, and decided likewise the next year as to duties. It was the same in the next three annual congresses-Plymouth and New Haven conducting the hearings as disinterested parties. Massachusetts called for the original patent. Connecticut had only a verified copy, the originals not to be found. Embarrassment ensued. It finally was ordered to produce the copy the following year and also to take steps toward a settlement, always acting in a "way of peace and love." Massachusetts maintained that she had fixed the boundary long before, on understanding with Fenwick, but would go over it again if Connecticut would pay the bill. Con- necticut would consent to pay but half.
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Thus they haggled along till the next century. There were threats of appeal to the King and Council but fear of disaster to both deterred. In 1713 a line was agreed upon by which Massa- chusetts retained jurisdiction over towns which it had planted, with their original bounds intact, and the line ran between Wind- sor and Suffield until the Revolution, though never acceptable to the immediate residents. For compensation to Connecticut, Massachusetts gave 105,793 acres of untaken land in present Pelham, Belchertown and Ware, which Connecticut sold at about 2 cents an acre and gave Yale £500 of the £683 received. Sims- bury (Granby) and Westfield kept their old boundaries but Suf- field received a strip a mile wide between these two. Suffield men were disappointed not only because they saw such an un- gainly jog to the westward but because they believed the moun- tains retained by Simsbury (as obtained under its original grant from Connecticut) were rich in copper ore. Massachusetts hear- ing this complaint agreed in 1732 to let them have the present town of Southwick six miles square as an equivalent to what they had been granted originally by Massachusetts. Christopher J. Lawton bought it of them for a song. The bounds on the Sims- bury (Granby) side were reestablished later on. As to the north- ern line, the portion of Westfield running down into Connecticut and lying between a mountain toward the east and the Conga- muck ponds was given to Springfield; the remainder, including the chief part of the ponds (now Southwick), to Westfield. A Southwick boundary commission was sent in 1793 to settle a dispute over this, dating from 1774. Massachusetts wanted the whole of the section as compensation for towns she had lost. In 1803-4 a compromise was effected by which Connecticut held a slice of Southwick and Massachusetts the land west of the ponds. "Rising's Notch" was thereafter to worry every schoolboy draw- ing his map of the New England states and to remain forever as a conspicuous memorial of disagreement between mother and daughter colonies. There is further reminder today in the con- flict between state fishing laws at the point where the boundary line cuts the ponds.
To go back to the main issue: It early appeared obvious that by the compromise of 1713 Connecticut had yielded too much, for Enfield, Suffield and Woodstock, in which were many supposedly Connecticut people, were above the line as established. At length
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Enfield helped precipitate matters when she openly rebelled against taxation in two colonies and elected Capt. Eliphalet Pease and Capt. Elijah Williams representatives to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1749. Suffield, led by Capt. Phineas Lyman, was doing likewise. Arguments proving ineffective, Connecticut finally received the representatives and assumed jurisdiction, but Massachusetts persisted till 1804, to the great confusion of local government and with the argument that she had paid for this territory when she gave Connecticut the "equivalent" land to sell.
In retaliation for the Saybrook duties, Massachusetts threat- ened to levy a tax on exports from Boston but yielded to protests from other colonies, and the Saybrook collections ceased.
Particularly was the colony Congress to act upon matters re- lating to the Indians. Since the Pequot war Uncas had reigned supreme along the Thames River and other chieftains were jeal- ous.
When a Narragansett in 1643 hurled a knife at him and wounded him near the heart, he reported to the Massachusetts authorities, in accord with the stipulations of the treaty of 1638 that Indians bring all matters of disagreement to the white men. Miantonomoh was ordered to appear with the accused. After decision that the man be turned over to Uncas, the stalwart Mi- antonomoh, who hitherto had been greatly respected by the white men, obtained permission to take the prisoner to his home first and then killed him on the way. Soon afterward Uncas and a small party of Mohegans were attacked and one was killed by fol- lowers of Sequassen who was a relative of Miantonomoh's. On Uncas' appeal to the magistrates at Hartford, he was told that since the white men were not especially concerned, Uncas could handle the situation himself. Thereupon Uncas attacked Se- quin's village in the South Meadows, as that section had come to be designated, killed seven, wounded others and burned wigwams.
The enraged Miantonomoh now appeared before Governor Haynes, who assured him that no encouragement would be given the Mohegans and again said it was not a white men's affair. From their intimate knowledge of the red men the authorities must have apprehended that there always would be quarrels among them but no serious outbreak. An appeal to the Massa-
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chusetts governor brought similar response. Word came to the English that Miantonomoh had resolved to take revenge upon both the Mohegans and the whites and Connecticut asked, but in vain, that Massachusetts send reinforcements to Saybrook. Mi- antonomoh started on the war path with 600 braves. Uncas was ready near present Norwich with 400 Mohegans. He called Miantonomoh for a parley at which he proposed that they two fight it out alone. Upon Miantonomoh's scorning the proposi- tion, Uncas gave a signal, his followers rushed upon the enemy and drove them from the field. Weighted down with an armor a white man had given him, Miantonomoh was overtaken and brought to Uncas. By Indian custom and by the decision of the whites that they would not interfere, Uncas could kill the Narra- gansett, but instead, influenced by a letter he had seen from a white man, he brought his prisoner before the magistrates in Hartford. Their conclusion was that it was a case for the new colony Congress to consider. During the months preceding the annual session in September, Uncas kept the haughty leader under guard in pursuance of Miantonomoh's own request. Un- doubtedly the Podunk fort in East Hartford was the place of im- prisonment. The congress could not agree that death penalty should be inflicted but before rendering decision sought the opin- ion of a committee of clergymen who were attending a synod at that time. This committee of five saw in the evidence that Mian- tonomoh had designs against the white men as well as against Uncas and found that by rules of justice and the word of the Bible he should be put to death. Sentence was withheld till the representatives at the session could reach home in safety, the forests then teeming with friends of the powerful chieftain.
According to the records of the Congress, Uncas was directed to take the prisoner "to the next part of his (Uncas's) own gov- ernment and there put him to death." Although in compara- tively recent years a monument was erected near Norwich, in Sachem's Field, to mark the place of execution, it may be doubted that Uncas ventured to conduct his captive so far through wild territory which it was believed was infested with hostiles. The records show an addition to Governor Winthrop's report, read- ing, "And that the Indians might know that the English did ap- prove it, they sent twelve or fourteen musketeers home with Onkus to abide a time with him for his defense, if need should
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be." Some may not consider it probable that the English would have exposed their men to attack and also would have taken the chances of bringing on another war by sending them so far. In fact only four musketeers accompanied the Indians. Podunk fort was as much Uncas's "home" as was any other locality; his preference always had been to be near the chief seat of the white men at Hartford. To quote further from the ancient record : As soon as Uncas and his party were "in the next part of his own government" Uncas's brother stole up behind Miantonomoh and cleaved his head with a hatchet.
Sequassen later was betrayed by a New Haven Indian he was said to have hired to assassinate Governor Haynes and others and fled, but was permitted to return in 1650.
The colonial Congress was not distinctively successful in handling Indian affairs, for reasons which research does not re- veal. The colonists themselves made effort to civilize them and to teach their children, but Farmington was the only town where there was a measure of success. Roger Williams of Rhode Island, their most faithful friend, called them the "dregs of mankind. . . . There is no fear of God before their eyes, and all the cords that ever bound the barbarians to foreigners were made of self and covetousness." John Eliot, the great "apostle to the Indians," while attending a church council in Hartford, is said to have preached to the Podunks in their own language. To his appeal to accept Christianity, the story has it, they replied fiercely that the whites had taken their land and now wished to make servants of them. The Indians' conception of a land sale seemed to be, as Major Mason expressed it in the great suit in later years concerning ownership of Mohegan lands which had been made over to him by Uncas's heirs and which he had trans- ferred to the colony, was that they disposed of the right to fish and hunt on the land but never gave possession of the soil.
Twelve years after the historic Miantonomoh tragedy, a Po- dunk Indian killed one of Sequassen's sachems and one-eyed Tan- tinomo, then ruler of the Podunks, refused to give up the mur- derer. Sequassen called in Uncas who had had similar and vari- ous complaints against Tantinomo and, pursuant to the earlier agreements, Uncas went to the General Court with it, saying that Sequassen wanted ten Podunks in satisfaction and that the Po- dunks had offered only wampum. Sequassen would compromise
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on six men, but the court was wearied and bade them limit the requirement to only one man and finally to depart in peace and keep it, leastwise on the west side of the river, and under no condition to harm the white men's property. Uncas became will- ing to accept the murderer without the others.
Tantinomo agreed but instead of delivering the man assem- bled his followers at Fort Hill (in East Hartford). Uncas marched against him with his Mohegans. Finding the position too strong, he sent word that he would bring on the much dreaded Mohawks. This terrified the Connecticut Indians. To add to the terror, a Podunk lodge was burned and Mohawk weapons were found near by. The Podunks sued for peace, gave up the mur- derer and Uncas's prestige was increased.
Incidentally the court's commissioners, when they learned that the Podunks were leaving their homes, "ordered" that Un- cas permit them to return and that the Podunks cease all hostili- ties. Peace prevailed till 1666 when Arramamet of Windsor, whose sway extended over the Podunks, accused Uncas of tres- passing on his far hunting grounds, and both parties went to court. The outcome was an elaborate pledge of friendship signed by all the sachems and a more distinct agreement upon boundary lines. And, further, incidentally, a little later Arra- mamet gave his daughter in marriage to Uncas's third son with a dowry of many acres, entailed so that the property would go down to his daughter's children. Then at his death it was discov- ered that he had willed the land to his sons and the rest of his holdings to his wives.
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Affairs with the Dutch first came before the United Colonies in 1641. They were referred to the International commission of which Rev. Hugh Peters was chairman. The English had begun cultivating land close up to the Dutchmen's, and seemingly be- yond it, since it is recorded that Governor Haynes said it seemed a pity to see good soil going to waste. The Dutch who had not planted much of the ground previously, became equally ambi- tious and the two sides clashed, rather to the disadvantage of the minority. Mr. Peters, who was sent to England, could not get far in negotiations with Holland because his authority was not
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recognized across the channel. Governor Kieft ordered fifty sol- diers to sail from New Amsterdam to protect the House of Hope, but Indians attacked them as they were about to sail and the ex- pedition had to be given up. The Congress of the federation rec- ommended that Hartford allow the Dutch something in excess of the thirty acres that had been stipulated.
In 1650 Peter Stuyvesant had succeeded Kieft as governor. On his representation commissioners of the four colonies met at Hartford that year and reviewed all the documents thoroughly. It was at this time it was revealed that the Dutch deed from the Indians had been lost, but the story of the purchase was given in full. The courteous Stuyvesant who thus had suggested the first international arbitrament in lieu of recourse to arms was thought by contemporaneous writers in both Holland and Eng- land to have been somewhat imposed upon. The main ground of complaint was not the Hartford House of Hope but the right of New Haven to claim rights to the west and south of Greenwich. New Haven had been settled in 1638 under the old 1620 patent for all New England, which included the territory from Phila- delphia to Canada, and she had reached as far as Greenwich, she believed, in her purchases from the Indians. The Dutch resented her trading posts in Maryland and attacked her shipping. The arbitrators selected were all Englishmen, two of them named by Stuyvesant. Their investigations were thorough and fair, but their conclusions were somewhat indefinite.
In their opinion the troubles had been stirred up by the late Governor Kieft who, they found, was of a bellicose disposition. They listened respectfully to the Dutch West India Company's claim to all the territory covered by the English patent up to the Connecticut River and then decided that there should be a boundary line running between Greenwich and Stamford and through Long Island from Oyster Bay southward. As to Hart- ford, there was evidence that the Dutch had conducted them- selves in a lewd and unseemly manner, much to the grievance of the colonists, but it was admitted that they should hold their thirty acres at the House of Hope, the English to have the rest of the land. The treaty which Stuyvesant thus negotiated was rati- fied by the Dutch government in 1656, but many things had hap- pened before that.
The Dutch of New Amsterdam had instigated more trouble
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for New Haven. They had caused Indian outbreaks in the Greenwich section, had made more attacks upon the shipping and in general had forced New Haven in 1653 to take action under the terms of the federation and ask that arms be resorted to by the English. Massachusetts alone had voted against it. Con- necticut and Plymouth so warmly supported New Haven that the federation was on the point of breaking when New Haven's appeal to Cromwell resulted in his sending a fleet in 1654, where- upon Massachusetts coldly consented to the principle but with the mental reservation that she herself would send no soldiers. The timely victory of England over Holland in the war they had been waging made strife in America unnecessary. New Amster- dam was to become New York, and trouble-makers of English blood were to appear there as the years went by.
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