USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1928, Volume II > Part 42
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The church edifice rose superior to all quarrels and was the progenitor of one of the most beautiful, and the society the pro- genitor of one of the strongest, in New England. The first meet- ing-house, of about 1640, was probably a few rods south of the present one; in the 1650s it was built over and favored with a bell which was recast and used in the new building, fifty feet square, which was erected in 1685. Ample funds were forthcom- ing for the third house on the same site and this structure was a worthy predecessor of that of today. Horse sheds were pro- vided for the accommodation of worshipers from over the river, who did not have a separate parish till 1693, and in course of time there was a belfry and a clock and school accommodations, though the taxable property had been limited to the First Society after the parishes of Newington (1712) and Stepney (1722) had been set off.
And it is well to get ahead of the story of the town as a whole to chronicle the conception of the fourth and present edifice. Col. John Chester, Col. Elizur Goodrich and Capt. Thomas Welles in 1760 were the committee that had charge of the construction
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which continued for four years. It was fashioned after "Old South" in Boston. The material was brick and it was placed "4 rods northwestward" of the old church. To pay for it the taxes were heavy, a loan was made, and finally onions, the town's staple crop, were taken at three pence a bunch. Accessories were added during and after the Revolution,-a new bell, a "good clock equal to that now in Farmington Old Society, with three faces," the south portico, new pulpit, another new bell, electric lights, beauti- ful windows and internal rearrangements. The predecessor of the brick chapel north of the church was a wooden structure in the basement of which were a private school at one end, the town fire engine and the hearse. The chapel of still more modern times, a place for Sunday school and social assemblage, housed the Weth- ersfield Society Library, including the Rose Library.
Wethersfield's demonstration of the perils to which the settlers of all three of the plantations were exposed, along with the Pequot war which followed are made a part of the general history. The accompanying picture of the plantation in early days is by Jared B. Standish of Wethersfield after a careful study of the subject. It presents the northern section near the present cove, the church in the distance, and gives a glimpse of the home, on the corner of High and Fort (now Prison) streets, of William Swaine, gentle- man, one of whose daughters was murdered and the two others carried off by the Pequots. Of the six men and one woman who were slain the name of only one is known, Abraham Finch, prob- ably one of Oldham's men. Sachem Sowheag of the Sequins, who had gone to live in Mettabesett (Middletown) because of a fall- ing-out with the purchasers of his land, was accused of having harbored the Pequots. The matter was referred to the Massa- chusetts General Court which advised that the English had not treated Sowheag well and that he had resorted to his only known means of punishment; therefore both sides should forgive and be forgiven and a commission was sent to treat with Sowheag. This was a very different kind of a decision from that when John Old- ham was murdered and swift vengeance was meted out. Yet, when the recorded evidence is studied with care, both actions by the court were reasonable. Sowheag later lived in the southwest- ern part of the town. One of the Indians known to have been in
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(From drawing by J. B. Standish. )
WETHERSFIELD, 1640
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the murderous party was apprehended in New Haven by Lieu- tenant Seeley in 1639 and was tried, convicted and executed.
The performances of the Connecticut River described in the early part of the general history have materially changed the ter- ritory of the town since the settlement, as the foreground of Mr. Standish's sketch indicates. There was a wide common on the bank of the river which here made its westerly curve, and in the picture are indicated the first landing place and the sites of the early warehouses. As the river changed in the way previously described there was left only the wide Wethersfield Cove with a narrow outlet into the river. Curving again in the deep alluvial soil, it first made Wright's Island (off Great Meadow) practically a part of the mainland and then cut through the middle of it, car- ried it away entirely and made its channel through Beaver Meadow on its way to Middletown. Pennywise Island above the cove became a part of the mainland, and the promontory east of it, caused by the former bend, was taken into the cove. Keeney's Cove, directly opposite Wethersfield Cove, was formed during these changes, at a point where had been only firm land. Pewter Pot Brook which had emptied into the river north of the present cove on the east side thereafter emptied into the north end of the cove.
After Wright's Island became in effect a part of the mainland, the petition of the owner, James Wright, that it be set off to Glas- tonbury was granted by the Legislature in 1792, and as result of several settlements of line some 350 acres of Wethersfield in 1870 was on the east side of the river and about 80 acres of Glaston- bury on the west side. Tax and other controversies continued, a court committee set bounds like those of 1792, Wethersfield wished the Legislature to approve this by enactment, Glastonbury op- posed and a wearied Legislature decreed in 1874 that the river be the dividing line.
The common across the river had been laid out as Naubuc Farms as early as 1639 and the 35,000 acres over there became the town of Glastonbury in 1690. An error in running the north- ern line left an interval between that town and East Hartford, to which both of those towns laid claim till adjustment was made. Even then a small triangular section at the river edge was left
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unaccounted for and ever since has been an odd appendix of Wethersfield. Stepney Parish which was to be made Rocky Hill in 1843 and the West Farms which was to be made Newington in 1873 early became individual communities in a way elsewhere described. The original settlement was around the meeting-house, along Broad Street to the south, where the Broad Street Green ever since has been, connecting with the meeting-house square by a lane; along Rose Lane southwesterly toward Beaver Brook and along High Street, from which the Hartford road branched to the common at the southeast corner of Wethersfield Cove. At the cove and at Rocky Hill commerce developed. The "fort" or forti- fied house, which was never palisaded though once there was a vote for it, was near where the State Prison stands on the edge of the cove. The road thence to the Hartford road was "Fort Road."
Like Windsor and Farmington Wethersfield became the mother of towns some of them not adjoining. Those early dis- sensions-so difficult today for dwellers in the town to realize- may have had something to do with emigration so far as Stam- ford. For the Milford and Branford migrations there was more reason. Good men went-among them Lieutenant Seeley to New Haven; Rev. John Sherman, Rev. Peter Prudden, Robert Treat (governor-to-be) and Jonathan Law (also governor-to-be) to Mil- ford. John Sherman, ancestor of Gen. William T. Sherman, and Senator John Sherman, having declined the position of "teacher" in the church, was recalled to Watertown to succeed Rev. Mr. Phillips as pastor there. Cotton Mather jots down that he was the father of twenty-six children, by two wives, and at his death in 1685 Mather wrote these lines (in Latin) :
"In Sherman's lowly tomb are lain The heart of Paul and Euclid's brain."
Rev. Richard Denton, who had acquired much land, had been the one who held the "multitude" of four together and in 1641 had found the opportunity to act on the suggestion to depart-for Stamford. He took the majority with him, or thirty-three, in- cluding Samuel Sherman. They more than doubled Stamford's population, but in three years, wearying of New Haven's regula- tions that only church members could vote, they removed with their pastor to Hempstead, Long Island. Matthew Mitchell, one of the number, may have taken the town books, for he had been
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town recorder by vote of the people which vote did not meet with the approval of the General Court, due to Chaplin's disturbance. His life exemplifies some of the hardships of colonial days. He was fifty when he came from England to Concord. There his house was burned; at Saybrook his son-in-law was tortured to death by the Indians and two of his farm-hands murdered; in Wethersfield, seeking peace, he found turmoil; his home in Stam- ford was burned, the considerable property he had accumulated was swept away, and he died of painful disease at age fifty-six.
With this removal of the "multitude," Wethersfield was en- abled to form a church of her own, continuing as the original. Rev. Henry Smith, ancestor of Gov. John Cotton Smith and of Rev. Richard Mather, was chosen pastor. Chaplin made his life miserable. In its impartiality in administering justice, the Gen- eral Court fined Chaplin £10 for signing a writing "tending to the defamation" of Mr. Smith. The story of that runs thus: By 1643 the church dissension reached such a pass that the General Court intervened and suggested Mr. Smith's resignation, "if that could be according to God." In November, after studying evi- dence, it was agreed that the accusations against the clergyman were unjust and the signers of them should be fined, Chaplin, the chief; if anybody should "renew any of the former com- plaints," he should be fined £10. Mr. Smith's successor was John Russell, Jr., son-in-law of "Worshipful" John Talcott of the whole county. Mr. Russell was a stern church disciplinarian, like Rev. Timothy Edwards in East Windsor. In the course of a lawsuit in which Lieut. John Hollister (ancestor of the historian) was interested, Hollister expressed a criticism of the minister, for which the minister excommunicated him and refused reasons. The town and some of the church members turned upon the min- ister, telling the court that he was "rash and sinful" and not a regular pastor. Hollister obtained an order that Mr. Russell ex- plain. Instead he went to Hadley with Elder Goodwin of Hart- ford who had seceded from the First Church; of the fifty-nine signers of the agreement to quit Hartford, twenty were from Wethersfield.
Five of the church who did not go with the pastor-following precedent-and two more by declaration in 1661 formed a church society, admitted new members and were recognized by the Gen-
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eral Court as a continuance of the original society. Meantime Wethersfield men were off to help found Norwich, New London, and Woodstock. John Cotton, Jr., son of the distinguished Boston minister, was pastor from 1660 to 1663 when he was succeeded by Joseph Haynes, son of Governor Haynes. When the next year he accepted a call to Hartford's First Church, Gershom Bulkeley came from New London and intense history of another sort was made. For here was a remarkable character, blending the sweet with the bitter, the gentle with the contumacious. There was three years' discussion of his salary before he reached the pulpit. He was provided with a colleague, the unfortunate son of Rev. Samuel Stone of the Hartford church who fell victim to strong drink and was drowned. Mr. Bulkeley came of a family of min- isters and himself was the ancestor of men distinguished as states- men and business men. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1636 and graduated at Harvard in 1655, he married the daughter of President Chauncey of that college, began preaching in New Lon- don and had had disagreements there when he accepted the Weth- ersfield call. He was a man of wide learning, with a leaning toward chemistry and the law. His settlement was 150 acres and his house on the site of Robert Seeley's on Broad Street. The church was enjoying a period of peace when King Philip's war filled the colonists with terror. His knowledge of surgical science caused Mr. Bulkeley to be appointed surgeon and chaplain of the colony's forces. At the great swamp fight and in the terrible retirement therefrom he became exhausted and never fully re- covered from the consequences, though he continued on active duty till Major Talcott had driven the last of the hostiles out of Western Massachusetts. (In that war, several of the men who had migrated from Wethersfield to Hadley were valiant and some of them gave their lives.)
Following the war, Mr. Bulkeley set up a grist mill at Divi- dend (in the southeastern part of the town) and was given an- other 150 acres. Asking to be dismissed from his clerical position because his voice had failed he devoted his attention to the prac- tice of medicine. On Governor Andros' seeking to combine the New England colonies under his control in 1667, Dr. Bulkeley, John Talcott, John Allyn and Samuel Talcott expressed forcefully their loyalty to the Crown as represented by Andros. After the restoration of charter government in 1689, Wethersfield at first
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refused to send deputies to the new Assembly and subsequently certain of its men were sufficiently rebellious to warrant the im- position of fines. Of four "listers" who were arrested, the wealthy Samuel Smith was so pugnacious in the presence of the General Court that Gov. John Talcott, hero of the war, clapped his hand to his sword and cried, "If I put on my harness I will master these rebellious fellows and make them pay their dues." Still the "list- ers" would not pay; they would have gone to jail had not their friends stepped in and settled. In 1692 Dr. Bulkeley addressed Governor Fletcher of New York in a paper condemning Connecti- cut's "pretended" government; in book form, entitled "Will and Doom," this was widely circulated in England for the royal cause. The doctor died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Thomas Treat, in Glastonbury at the age of seventy-seven, and over his grave in the Wethersfield cemetery the tablet is inscribed :
"He was honorable in his descent, of rare abilities, extra- ordinary industry, excellent in learning, master of many lan- guages, exquisite in his skill in divinity, physic and the law ; of most exemplary and Christian life. In certam spem beatae resurrectionis repositus."
Hon. Morgan G. Bulkeley and his brother, Lieut. Gov. William H. Bulkeley, were lineal descendants through Rev. John Bulkeley whom President Chauncey of Harvard rated as one of "the three most eminent for strength of genius and powers of mind that New England had then produced." John's daughter Sarah be- came the wife of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull; his son John married Mary Gardiner, whence Governor Bulkeley got his middle name, tracing back to Lion Gardiner of Saybrook fort.
Rev. John Rowlandson of Lancaster, Massachusetts, colleague, succeeded Mr. Bulkeley in the pastorate. A book he published, describing the experiences of Mrs. Rowlandson and her two chil- dren in their long captivity among the Indians, after her home had been attacked and one of her children killed during King Philip's war and while her husband was absent, is an historical document of high merit. Probably because of her courage and disposition, she was treated with utmost consideration by her cap- tors who were burning and slaughtering as they could. Rev. John Woodbridge, of the family of ministers, preached till 1691. Rev. William Partridge followed, after whom came Stephen Mix- 1693 to 1738. He established a family of note, and in a peculiar
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way. Immediately after his ordination, he went to Northampton, Massachusetts, to find a wife and called upon Rev. Solomon Stod- dard for advice. Mr. Stoddard presented his three daughters and withdrew. Mr. Mix selected the oldest, Mary, to apprise of his errand. She begged for time. He acceded by going to the next room to smoke his pipe with her father. After the second pipeful he sent her word he was ready to hear from her. The reply was a request for more time. He told her she could write. Soon after that this letter came :
"Rev. Stephen Mix. "Yes.
"Northampton, 1696.
"Mary Stoddard."
Among his descendants were Chief Justice Stephen Mix Mitch- ell of Wethersfield and Donald G. Mitchell ("Ik Marvel") of New Haven. For Rev. John Lockwood (pastor from 1740 to 1772) one of the most beautiful houses was built by subscription. At that time he had refused the presidency of Princeton and also of Yale. Rev. Elisha Williams is mentioned further on. Rev. John Marsh, LL. D., Harvard, was a tutor at Harvard when he was ordained in 1774. He wrote that Wethersfield was "a very focus of intellectual and polished society." He preached before Wash- ington and Rochambeau and dined with the general several times. Rev. Dr. Caleb Jewett Tenney (1821-1840) received highest hon- ors in a class at Dartmouth which included Daniel Webster. In later days, Rev. George Larkin Clark, a graduate of Amherst, Yale Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary, came to Wethersfield from Farmington in 1900 and continued till his death in 1919. He was born in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, in 1849. Amherst gave him the honorary degree of M. A. in 1917. He wrote a uniquely descriptive history of Connecticut, "Notions of a Yankee Parson" and the life of Silas Deane. The present pastor is Rev. John Barstow.
Preeminently is it true that in a town like this the history of the original church is largely the history of the town. The his- tory of the other churches is an essential to the picture of the town as a part of the state. An outcome of the Great Awakening and the Half-Covenant movement was the differentiation of the Sep-
REV. ELISHA WILLIAMS Wethersfield, May 28, 1752
REV. GEORGE L. CLARK (1849-1912) Historian and Pastor of Wethersfield Congregational Church
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aratists, developing here into the forming of the Baptist church society in 1782 which built its first place of worship in 1816. Its services are now held in Legion Hall which is the former church built in 1876, made over for the American Legion after the World war. The renowned Jesse Lee preached the first Methodist ser- mon in the town in 1790; the society became a part of the "circuit" in 1821 and three years later built a church which was recon- structed in 1882. This place of worship is on South Main Street near Grange Hall. The first Episcopal services were held in Academy Hall in 1868 and Trinity Church was built in 1871, the chapel in 1873. The location is on High Street, opposite Legion Hall. The Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was established, following mission services in Academy Hall, in 1876. The first structure was on Garden Street; that is now the parish house and the edifice, built in 1881, is on Hartford Avenue.
Next to the men who build the homes and the churches are the men who stand ready to offer their lives in their defense. Hav- ing noted the inharmonious beginnings of Wethersfield, it seems all the more remarkable that the same town should have taken such high rank as a place of religion and culture-as will appear further in the matter of schools,-and for the men it furnished for the wars. The general history of the county has shown how Wethersfield stands in this particular. In the Indian, French and Revolutionary wars no town furnished more prominent men in proportion to population. In the Pequot war, Lieutenant Seeley was second in command. In King Philip's war, the names are conspicuous. There were Sergeant-Major John Chester, Jr., com- manding the county regiment; Captains Stephen Hollister, Sam- uel Talcott, Joshua Robbins, Thomas Welles, Robert Welles, Sam- uel Wolcott, Joseph Steele and Jonathan Robbins, and Lieutenants Thomas Hollister, Samuel Talcott, Jr., Jonathan Boardman, Jon- athan Belden, Benjamin Churchill and David Goodrich. In the lamentable Wood Creek campaign of 1709, Capt. David Goodrich was quartermaster and adjutant of Colonel Whiting's regiment. Many of these men were in the immediately following wars, pro- moted, and new names were those of Theodore Welles (Glaston- bury), colonel of the Sixth Connecticut Militia (John Chester the lieutenant-colonel), Nathaniel Stillman, Josiah Goodrich, Elizur
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Goodrich (colonel), Simeon Backus (chaplain), Elisha Williams (chaplain and colonel for the abortive campaign for the invasion of Canada), Ebenezer Griswold, Christopher Palmer, Eliphalet Whittlesey, Edward Marcy, Thomas Foster, John Shaw, Josiah Griswold, Hezekiah Smith, Josiah Wright, John Patterson, Fran- cis Hollister, Jonathan Robbins, Francis Hollister and Samuel Wright.
Small wonder that in 1765, Jared Ingersoll of New Haven, stamp-master under the offensive Stamp Act, could not ride calmly through Wethersfield, even accompanied by Governor Fitch. Here was the first breach of etiquette in the colonies to- wards a King's officer. The gathering band of Sons of Liberty numbered 500 before he had reached the town's tavern. His request that he pause there till he could communicate with the General Assembly in Hartford was granted till patience was exhausted. Told that the throng could wait no longer, he de- clared that the cause was not worth dying for, wrote a resigna- tion and added to it that it was of his own free will; for in Eng- land had he not warned the council that the colonists would not submit? Supper was served after which he was escorted to Hart- ford where, as already recounted, he read his resignation in the presence of the Assembly and plain citizens. General Putnam had a few brusque words with Governor Fitch and the act of Parliament was a dead letter in Connecticut.
Certain writers today, including belittlers of the Connecticut Fundamental Orders and those who do not spare Washington himself, are saying that the Revolution was brought on by back- woods adventurers, reckless frontiersmen and scheming politi- cians, while the lists of Tories reads "like a Blue Book" of the times, have not seen the lists of towns like Wethersfield where the most cultured and those most sacrificial in fighting England's wars were foremost in their opposition to the high-handed acts of Parliament. Before the Lexington Alarm sounded, Broad Street Green was a drill field, and when, two days after the alarm, the order had gone forth for a hundred men-thirty of them from Rocky Hill,-men whom one writer called "men of the first prop- erty," marched away well equipped and trained, under command of John Chester as captain of the company. Martin Kellogg, Charles Welles and John Beckley were the lieutenants and Bar-
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nabas Deane ensign. It was no holiday excursion; out of the ex- perience of preceding seventy years the colonists knew what war meant; they were weary of it, but no man lagged. The return from Lexington was but for the purpose of organizing all the col- onies for the great task.
The intervening capture of Ticonderoga is a part of the gen- eral history of the county as herein set down. On the call for six regiments for the provincial army, Chester's company was a unit of a regiment outside the county, the Second. Samuel B. Webb was first lieutenant, soon to be an aid on Washington's staff. At Bunker Hill, the company, one of the very few in uniform, was thrown in to help cover the retreat and received special commen- dation. The letters of Chester and Webb are among the rare writings that have preserved for us the intimate history of that engagement. In Arnold's Quebec campaign, Quartermaster Ben- jamin Catlin and Ensign James Knowles were captured. The memorable visits of Washington and also of the French comman- ders to the Deane and Webb houses are described in the general history. Chester became major and then colonel in Wadsworth's brigade in 1776. His regiment was one of the last to cross East River after the battle of Long Island. Rendering brilliant service throughout the year, he was compelled by "family concerns" to decline a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Continental Army and re- turn to Wethersfield. Solomon Welles was lieutenant-colonel in Chester's reorganized regiment in 1776. Capt. John Hanmer and a contingent sailed to New York in a sloop on Governor Trumbull's stirring call at the critical hour in August of that year. Chester Welles was a captain in the Eighth and a half- score others were subaltrens. In 1777, Col. S. B. Webb's regi- ment of three years' men rendezvoused in Wethersfield for its march to Peekskill in April. The capture of the colonel on a Long Island expedition is elsewhere recounted.
Sheldon's Light Dragoons attracted a number to their ranks. The dashing Benjamin Tallmadge (later of Litchfield) was their major and Ezekiel P. Belden a captain. In the battalion raised for the immediate defense of the state Howell Woodbridge was lieutenant-colonel. The letters of Capt. Roger Welles describing incidents at the siege of Yorktown (his part in which is mentioned in the Newington section of this history) tell how Lafayette gave
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