USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume II > Part 32
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Beckley himself was a strong church man and a juror in the Particular Court. His domain centered in present Berlin when in 1671 Wethersfield voted to divide among its householders land a mile wide along the Farmington boundary. What Beckley lost was made up to him in the Rocky Hill region. Other grants made by the town were for mill privileges and for Pastor Woodbridge next to the Hartford line. Wethersfield originally had paid Sow- heag for an indefinite amount of land to the west and about this time was paying again, like the other colonies, for reasons nowhere vouchsafed. The petition of the "West Farmers" for a separate parish was not presented till 1712, by men of the still prominent names of Buck, Churchill, Boardman, Whaples, Wil- lard, Camp, Whittlesey, Hurlburt and Deming. The Beckleyites opposed but in vain. The seemingly conventional disagreement over the church site caused the southern portion to join the Great Swamp Society and the West Society was united with Stanley Quarter of Farmington, the Beckleyites or southerners to help build the church for the "uppers." The plan also included add- ing a part of Farmington South Society to the northern part of West Society, against which the westerners remonstrated, but the Beckley group carried their point-with result that there were better foundations for Newington, a church was built and Wethersfield's distinguished Elisha Williams was called for pas- tor. The church was a little southeast of the modern one. When the minister-colonel accepted the rectorship of Yale in 1726, he was succeeded by Rev. Joshua Backus and he, in 1741, by Joshua Belden. The former was a chaplain at the siege of Louisburg where he worked among the sick till death overtook him in 1746.
In this period Capt. Martin Kellogg began his residence here. At the time of the massacre at Deerfield, Mass., in 1704, he and his father and brothers had been carried into captivity by the Indians from Canada. Eight years later he escaped, having meantime acquired such knowledge of the Indian lan- guage that his services as an interpreter were in demand, and started a school for Indians. This resulted in establishing a school in 1750 at Stockbridge, Mass., supported by Connecticut
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and Massachusetts, where effort was made to have one of the number of Indian youths who were brought there succeed in get- ting into college. He continued teaching after he returned to Newington in his old age. For some years he was prominent as a resident of Wethersfield where he had married the daughter of Stephen Chester. He was living in the house built for his friend and former colleague in the General Assembly, Rev. Mr. Wil- liams, when he died in 1753.
Another incident of the times was the building by Deacon Charles Churchill-like Kellogg a leader in the militia-of a mansion in the south part of the town which today excites as much admiration as it did in 1754 when it set the colonists agape with its several fireplaces and ovens large enough to take in an ox. Tradition says that Captain Churchill papered one of the rooms with the depreciated currency he received for supplies furnished the army.
Continued agitation by the Beckleyites in that part of West Society known as Kensington (Berlin) resulted in the loss to Newington of the Stanley and Beckley quarters. The uncer- tainty of Kensington in 1753 as to whether it continue as one society or split into two compelled recourse to the General Assembly. None other than Jonathan Trumbull was chairman of the committee that heard the arguments for and against add- ing parts of Newington, Farmington, Middletown and Meriden to Kensington Parish so that Kensington might have several par- ishes. Newington insisted that it was so small already that it could not afford to lose Stanley Quarter. While the committee decided that Kensington might have three parishes it awarded Newington £60 for what it lost and created the new society of "New Breton"-north of Kensington and west of Wethersfield (Newington). Further changes were made in 1772 when Worthington was cut off from Kensington. Beckley Quarter was retained by the East Society of Worthington. Berlin was incorporated in 1785 and Beckley Quarter went with it as a part of Worthington Society. Yet as the Beckley school district cov- ered more territory than the "Quarter," the east part of the orig- inal Beckley district went to Rocky Hill.
On the incorporation of Berlin in 1785, its lines were so defi- nitely marked that it did not seem possible there could be
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further changing. But ere long Solomon Beckley and others in the corner of Wethersfield complained that they did not know which church they could go to, and the upshot was that the Beck- ley petition prevailed over Newington's objections and the Assembly gave Worthington parish a tract which met the peti- tioners' desires, and Worthington set up two school districts. Then the Newington school district was merged in the town of Wethersfield in 1856, but simultaneously the Legislature was putting an end to some of this unrest by declaring that school societies must be in the towns where their schools were located. That gave Beckley school to Berlin, and also the "Island" dis- trict. But in 1862 the Newington Society was reestablished and in such way as to embrace all but the First Society of Wethersfield -rather as though the worm had turned. It took the old Worth- ington Society, which was within these new boundaries, away from Berlin.
Here then were three districts, Worthington, Beckley and Island, functioning in Newington but centrally located in Ber- lin. The southeast Newington district found itself subject to abnormal taxation. This was remedied by effort from 1876 to 1880-after incorporation-by splitting the old Beckley district, and the southeast district was made to include all the territory in Newington which had been part of the Berlin Beckley district. Existence of the Newington School Society had ended in 1872; also part of the Wethersfield First Society, which had been within the Newington borders, had been abolished and Newing- ton town had jurisdiction over both. School consolidation in 1898 made districts all one with boundaries co-terminous with the town's. In Berlin, Worthington and Beckley districts also ceased changing on that date. In 1829 the Newington Educa- tional Society established an "academy" which flourished for twenty-five years. Rev. Dr. Joab Brace had a private school during his ministry from 1804 to 1855.
Today, W. H. Mandrey, superintendent of schools, looks after the Northeast School, the Junction, the Elm Hill and Maple Hill (where annexation to New Britain is being agitated), the Cen- ter and pupils who have been assembling in rooms in the town hall and in the portable schools till the much-needed Junior High School is this year an accomplished fact. This fine building at
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the Center, south side of Cedar Street, houses the executive offices, has seven class rooms, gymnasium, auditorium, library and all accessories. Congestion, especially in the Center School, is relieved. The cost of the building and furnishings was $110,000.
The settlers of 1671, mostly from Farmington and including Joseph Andrus, Daniel and John Andrus and John Slead, had to wait till 1712 to become a distinct parish, their complaint about toiling over the Cedar Mountain ridge summer and winter at last prevailing. The troubles in setting up the meeting-house have been related. The selection of a site for the second one, in 1784, aroused new controversy which involved the County Court and the General Assembly, with decision in 1797 in favor of the Old Green, an ideal location as can be seen today. Malcontents there were, however; they banded together and in 1798 built Grace Church opposite the little cemetery. It was not a convenient site, expenses were heavy, old sores were healing; the parishioners re- turned to the mother church and in 1826 the church was sold. A second parish was formed in 1860 and in 1874 the cornerstone of the new Grace Church was laid. During the rectorate of Rev. Jared Strong in the '80s, the church was thoroughly established.
Before Rev. Dr. Brace entered upon his pastorate, Rev. Aaron Cleveland "supplied." In 1804 he preached the Fourth of July celebration sermon prior to the "temperate regalement" at which "a number of patriotic toasts were drunk" and their dispersement "at 6 o'clock witnessed their decorum and good order." Mr. Cleveland's son, Richard F. Cleveland, was the father of Presi- dent Grover Cleveland.
The Methodists, after several attempts to form a society, were joined by some disaffected members of the Congregational Church in 1834, during the pastorate of Origen Wells, and a small church was built. In 1870 the church was sold and the members joined with the Methodists in New Britain.
There have been grist and saw mills and in 1838 Gen. Mar- tin Kellogg, Daniel Willard, 3d, and John M. Belden established a satinet mill. This was burned and not rebuilt. The business of brick-making at Clayton has been kept up very successfully.
As a parish of Wethersfield, this section bore itself well in the
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various wars, and in the French-Indian wars Capt. Eliphalet Whittelsey and Capt. John Patterson (referred to in the New Britain history) were from the Stanley Quarter section. In 1776 there were but 467 people in the then Newington and 100 men, or practically every adult male, was in the service. Capt. Charles Churchill and Capt. Martin Kellogg, 3d, were officers. Capt. Kellogg was a son of the instructor of the Indians. Capt. Roger Welles served throughout the war. He was a descendant of Ensign Roger Welles who had served in the East Indies cam- paign. At the siege of Yorktown he was in the detachment un- der command of Col. Alexander Hamilton to whom Washington had given the honor of making the first assault upon a certain re- doubt. Welles' one hundred men, all six feet tall, were in the van in this brilliant affair just preceding the surrender of Corn- wallis. Welles was wounded in the thigh. Lafayette, Hamil- ton's immediate superior, in appreciation of his valor presented a sword to the young captain. After the war, Welles was a briga- dier-general in the militia and Kellogg a major-general.
General Welles (1753-1795), born in the house just north of the state prison in Wethersfield then occupied by Gen. L. R. Welles and owned by the Welles family from the time Governor Welles bought it, was sixth in descent from the governor and on his mother's side was a descendant of Governors Welles, Pitkin and Saltonstall. Graduating at Yale in 1775, he was a school teacher in Wethersfield when the war came, and entered the serv- ice as a lieutenant in Col. S. B. Webb's regiment. He was a member of the Legislature from 1790 till his death. Martin Welles (1787-1863), Yale 1806, for several years judge of the County Court, and representative, clerk, speaker and senator in the Legislature, was a son of General Welles.
In the war of 1812, Levi Lusk was a brigadier in the state forces, later major-general. Forty men from the parish were on duty at New London under Capt. Joseph Camp who subse- quently was a colonel. General Lusk was a member of the Con- stitutional Convention of 1818.
In the Civil war Newington was represented by 58 men. In the Spanish war, again there was a Roger Welles, the third of the name and family for war duty. He was born in 1862, the son of Roger and Mercy Delano (Aiken) Welles, and was gradu- ated at the United States Naval Academy in 1884. He was a
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lieutenant in the Spanish war, serving on the McArthur, Vermont and Wasp at different times, and later participating in the Philip- pine campaign. A captain at the outbreak of the World war, he was appointed temporarily rear-admiral in July, 1918, and fully commissioned the following July. As vice-admiral he subse- quently had command of the fleets in European waters, retiring with the rank of rear-admiral in 1926. His medals include: French Legion of Honor ; Belgian Grand Officer, Order of Leopold II; Japanese Second Order of the Rising Sun, and United States Navy Cross. Early in his career he was on the Columbian expe- dition to Venezuela and made an ethnological collection for which he was awarded certificate and medal.
Record of the Newington men who served in the World war is fittingly preserved in bronze letters on a huge boulder placed in 1928 on the green at the Center a hundred feet north of the junc- tion of Cedar and Main streets.
When Newington acquired its independence as a town in 1871, there was no opposition on the part of Wethersfield whose people appreciated the justice of the demand. There had been some opposition of a political nature in Newington. Accordingly both parties named Roger Welles, a pronounced advocate for separation, for the Legislature and the combined vote showing only an insignificant number against him, the action of the Legis- lature was prompt. At the first town meeting, held in the Meth- odist Church, John S. Kirkham was elected clerk, John C. Tracy treasurer and Joseph J. Francis, Albert S. Hunn, Charles K. Atwood, Roger Welles, Jacob Dix, Jedediah Deming and Robert O. Joyner selectmen. The town forthwith put itself in order, with a town hall (and a grammar school in it) and better roads and bridges. There is a station on the Hartford division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad; Newington and Clayton stations on the Highland division, and the electric road between Hartford and Bristol. The grand list is $6,000,000.
The Newington Home for Crippled Children, now a state in- stitution, is delightfully located here. There are several large dairy and stock farms and the general charm of the place bring's back many who from time to time have gone forth into the world. One such whose death occurred this year, 1928, was Frank D.
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Root, Washington correspondent and member of the editorial staff of the New York Times for forty years, and associate editor of the Independent, a descendant of Judge Jesse Root who figures conspicuously in the general history of the county. It was one of the first communities in the state to have a library. The first one, promoted by Rev. Joshua Belden, was in existence prior to 1750 as the Book Company. By bequest of Jedediah Deming in 1787, a free library, known as the Charity Library, was started, provided mostly with theological books in accordance with the will. About 1800 the Social Library was inaugurated. The next formal one was in 1877 under the auspices of the Young People's Library Association. The present Newington Public Library, of which Ida L. Kellogg is librarian, was opened in the town hall in 1895.
The town has its individual fire districts. That at the center is planning a new Fire Department building on Main Street. Petitions for a town hall building and fire stations at the Center and at Maple are in abeyance because of the movement for the annexation of Maple Hill and Elm Hill districts by New Britain and also because of the proposal to include the Center in the Greater Hartford plan. The Maple Hill Water Company, re- cently incorporated, to supply both of the hill districts, has been sold to the Maple Hill district. Under the Greater Hartford plan, to be acted upon by the Legislature in 1929, the small towns will connect with Hartford's sewage disposal system, and New- ington will be saved much of the expense that was contemplated.
cos
BERLIN : KENSINGTON
This frontier confusion of parishes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as just described in the Newington history, is well illustrated by the present map of the town of Berlin. Its irregular boundaries are a memorial to those old days. At the southeast corner, near where Sergeant Beckley located, just north of the Middlesex County line and near the short Rocky Hill line, is the station Beckley on the branch of the main railroad running from New Britain on the northwest to Middletown away to the southeast. The boundary then runs southerly and westerly along
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the steps made at the northwest corner of the Middlesex County line to the high and suggestively named Lamentation Mountain which marks the junction of Middlesex, New Haven and Hart- ford counties; thence with more southerly steps westward to the edge of the Hanging Hills of Meriden in New Haven County, where a sharp turn is made to the north, following Southington's eastern line to New Britain, crossing Ragged Mountain on the way; then along the reasonably straight south line of New Britain from Shuttle Meadow Reservoir east to where the Newington line makes a south jog, and this it follows till it comes back to the Rocky Hill starting point. Nearly 16,000 acres are included.
The traveler on practically every train on the main line of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad hears the cry "Ber- lin Junction," and sees a few shop buildings and tracks running directly north to New Britain, whose suburbs and factory towers are in sight, and due east to East Berlin on the way southeasterly to Middletown to make connection there with the New Haven- Willimantic-Boston branch, now in effect discontinued. He sees nothing of the beautiful region westward around Turkey Hill, Hart Ponds and Sabetha Brook in the Kensington section, or of the land to the south along Belcher Brook, tributary of Middle- town's Mettabeset, and nothing of the cherished "street" to the east which is Berlin, on the state highway from Hartford to New Haven. There is room within these boundaries for colonial homesteads, suburban residences, fair grounds, agriculture and industries, all in their respective places. The post offices for the total of about 5,000 inhabitants number four-Berlin, East Ber- lin, Beckley and Kensington. At East Berlin, jewels are made; at Berlin Junction, iron bridges and buildings and pressed brick, and at Kensington envelopes, paper bags, boxes and various metal goods, together with macaroni. From the intervening section comes the choice produce for the large nearby city mar- kets. The grand list is $8,000,000 and the tax rate low. There is a savings bank at Kensington, incorporated in 1873, with de- posits of approximately $8,000,000, of which Maj. Frank L. Wil- cox, member of one of the old families and prominent in banking and insurance in Hartford, is president.
Thus is that harmony in evidence which so vainly was sought for in the days of the settlers. The first church society, founded
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in 1705, was the Second Society of Farmington and included New Britain's share in Great Swamp, as Farmington called the rich low land. This the General Assembly named Kensington by re- quest of the parishioners in 1722. In 1718, after Beckley Quar- ter had experienced changes in jurisdiction, that quarter acquired the northwest corner of Middletown, which brought in such fami- lies as the Wilcoxes, Savages, Sages and Johnsons. The distance to the church on Christian Lane in Kensington was indeed con- siderable; the desire to have the second edifice more central pre- cipitated one of the series of dissensions. The Assembly com- manded a large building near the present East Berlin station, to be built by Hartford men, and in return received successive peti- tions till in 1745 Kensington was divided, as told, and in 1758 the New Britain church was formed. This left the original church, of which Rev. William Burnham was still pastor, with only sev- enty-four members. As late as 1771 the membership, then num- bering 137, besought the Assembly to assuage their distress by asking three Massachusetts men to give advice. This resulted in the formation of the West Society, Kensington, and the East Society, named Worthington in honor of Col. John Worthington of the commission, a resident of Springfield. The new Kensing- ton church was dedicated in 1774 and the site became permanent for the First Society of Berlin, with Benoni Clark of Waterbury (Yale 1750) as pastor. (His colleague and successor, Royal Robbins of Wethersfield, Yale 1806, wrote history textbooks for colleges.) The Worthington or Second Church was formed in 1772 and the edifice, in the north part of Berlin Street, was dedi- cated two years later. This was burned in 1848 together with an organ given for it by Jedediah Norton in 1791, believed to be the first church organ in the state. The remains of the church were made over into a town hall and schoolhouse. The new church was built in 1851.
The first pastor of the church was Rev. Nathan Fenn. Among his notable successors was Samuel Goodrich of Durham, father of the writer Samuel G. Goodrich, "Peter Parley." In 1853, Wil- liam DeLoss Love, who was the father of the Hartford clergyman and historian of the same name, was installed.
Methodists began holding services in 1815 and built in Worth- ington in 1830. In 1871 they took the house the Universalists
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had used. In Kensington the Methodists built their house in 1865. Another Methodist society built a chapel in 1876. The Universalists began as the United Brethren in 1829 and as Uni- versalists dedicated their church in 1832. When the society was disbanded the church was sold for a schoolhouse. The Roman Catholic Church was built in 1876, a mission of the New Britain church.
Kensington's application for township was not granted till 1785, and then it was a part of Berlin, which also included parts of Wethersfield, Farmington and Middletown, as has been said. Town meetings were held alternately in the different sections. Separation from Berlin was in 1850. Deacon Alfred North was town clerk from 1844 to 1884.
The schools of the town today are the Worthington, the South, the Ledge, the Kensington grammar, the Selden maintained by a fund, the Blue Hills, the Hubbard (in East Berlin) and the Per- cival, under charge of Mary E. Griswold, superintendent. The chief growth is in the Kensington district. The League of Women Voters makes an award each year to the member of the graduating class obtaining the highest average,-in memory of Adele Murray, former president of the league. Always provided with good schools, there was a time in the earlier part of the nine- teenth century when the town was looked to for furnishing the model for schools. The period began when the academy was established in 1802. Two daughters of Capt. Samuel Hart were first pupils and then teachers. They were to become famous as Emma Hart Willard and Almira Hart Phelps. For a time they had a select school in their father's house on West Street and in- augurated methods which attracted wide attention. Almira in 1813 became principal of the academy and later was called to New Britain for similar work. Emma (1787-1870) went to Troy. Her writings caused the New York Legislature in 1819 to enact the country's first provision for the higher education of her sex and she incorporated the renowned Willard School in Troy which became the mother of hundreds of other schools to prepare women to promote the interests of learning. Both she and her sister also wrote a number of textbooks. The local academy was suc- ceeded in 1831 by the Worthington Academy, teachers in which
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were Ariel Parish who became an eminent educator, and Edward L. Hart who, with his uncle Simeon Hart, later conducted the boys' school in Farmington.
Though the Mettabesett and its tributary Mill River furnished good water power, the town from the first was given more to agri- culture. The Berlin Fair for years was a worthy institution. And the stores at Worthington drew trade from a wide territory, especially that of Elashanna Brandegee.
And yet, in the American world of industry and commerce, modern writers give as much credit to William and Edward Pat- tison as the writers on higher education for women give to Emma Hart Willard, although the only memorials are great concerns built up by salesmanship. These brothers, of Scotch ancestry, came with their sister Anna from County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1740. Their father's death in Massachusetts had left them in straightened circumstances. Being familiar with tinware pro- cesses in Ireland, they risked their first farm earnings on a few sheets of tin they procured from their old home across the water. The pans, pails and plates they turned out, bright and shiney, so delighted their neighbors on West Street that they began to ped- dle, first with handcarts, then on horseback and eventually with wagons that came to be known all through the eastern colonies. Soon several shops were in the business, including those of the Wilcoxes in Berlin. Jedediah and Edward North were making the tools to work the tin. Though the wars had intervened, the production of tinware in this section in 1815-20 was enormous. The "Yankee tin-peddler" took his place in history. But not the wares so much as the new method of salesmanship-establishing route after route and then depots of supplies throughout the land -was the great lesson for American industry, first learned by the clockmakers and then by other manufacturers till Connecticut's name was known everywhere. The Pattisons themselves were swept away by their increasing followers, but, to quote one re- cent writer, they "introduced the principle upon which American industry and business depend today."
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