History of Litchfield county, Connecticut, Part 118

Author: J.W. Lewis & Company (Philadelphia, Pa.)
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1532

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John Garnsey being new signers, and the General Assembly granted it, and so the new community scored one in their effort at independence. The following is the act of the Assembly, as recorded in the colonial records :

" Upon the memorial of Henry Cook, Barnabas Ford, and others, in- habitants of the town of Waterbury, showing to this assembly the diffi- culty that they lye under in attending the public worship in said towa, & that said town, in their meeting in said Waterbury, Sept. 29th, 1736, upon application made to them, grauted to the memorialists liberty for themselves & others that should live within two miles and a half of the dwelling-house of sd Barnabae Ford to bire a gospel minister in the months of Dec., Jan., & Feb., with exemption from any ministerial charges in the town Soc. in said time, & said liberty was granted by said town for 3 years next after said meeting,-praying thus assembly that the vote of said town might be confirmed with them, &c. Whereupon the assembly order and enact that during sd three months granted by the towa of Waterbury to the memorialists in the three years then next en- suing, the memorialists shall he exempted from paying any charges to the support of the minister in said town society, provided they maiotaio a gospel minister amongst themselves.

" Oct. Session, 1737."

"GEORGE WYLLYS, Sec.

This act of the General Assembly was the first charter of the town of Plymouth. It was the first official recognition of it as a distinct community, and from it all the rest of its full investment as a town naturally follows. The dwelling-house of Barnabas Ford, here specified as the centre and landmark of the new community, stood on the street leading past the academy, in what is now Thomaston, on the west side of the road, about where the academy stands. There was a spring of water near it by the roadside, which doubtless determined the site of the house, as it did the location of the dwellings of many of the early settlers, before they had time to dig wells, at which spring the boys who went to church in later years on "The Hill" used to drink, as they footed it back and forth from Thomaston Hill, in the hot sum- mer days.

Mr. Ford was the first clerk of the society when it came to be organized, and appears, from the many deeds bearing his name, to have been an extensive owner of lands in the vicinity. His body lies in the old burying-ground (in Thomaston). His tombstone bears this inscription :

" Here lyethi ye Body of Barnabas Ford ; he dyed March yo 10, 1746, in yo 63 year of his age."

Encouraged by this initial success, the northern people petitioned the General Assembly at the next May session (1738) for exemption from ministerial charges " for such time only as they had the word dispensed." The petitioners represent that they live, the nearest seven miles, the greater part eight, and many nine or ten miles from the meeting-house, on the way to which they were obliged to cross the river, often deep, and dangerous, nine times. The signers number nineteen. The names of Jeremiah Peck (afterwards first deacon of the church), Caleb Thomaston, afterwards one of the most prominent members of the society, and who gave the name to Thomaston Hill, and others, ap- pearing for the first time. This application was de-

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nied, but at the October session following it was re- newed, twenty-three signing. They say that the three years' privilege which had been granted them expires the February ensuing, and ask that it may be extended for two years. They allege that they have a population of one hundred and thirty-nine; that to get to meeting at the town centre they have · to remove bars and open gates at ten different places.

At this time the only road to Waterbury from the northern quarter was a path through the fields, guarded by bars and gates between the different in- closures. The present river road was not constructed and opened as a public highway till 1802, and was considered a great undertaking in its time. A cart bridge-the early settlers had no other vehicles- was built across the river in Northbury in 1747-48, the town voting twenty-two pounds in money, old tender, to be paid when the bridge should be com- pleted. The last-mentioned petition was granted by the General Assembly at the October session, 1738. The following is the act of the Assembly :

" Upon the memorial of John Sutlif and others living in north or north- eastern part of Waterbury, showing that they live at a great distance from the publick worship in said town and their difficulty in attending there- on by reason thereof, and praying for liberty to hire the gospel preached among them for the space of two years, to be computed from February next, with exemption from paying ministerial charges to said towa for such time ouly as they are able to hire the gospel preached among them, Resolved, By this Assembly that the memorialists shall thereby have granted unto them the liberty of hiring the gospel preached among them for the space of two years, to commence aud be computed from February next, with exemption from paying ministerial charges to said town for such time ouly as they hire the gospel preached among them. " GEORGE WYLLYS, Secretary.

"October session, 1738."

This act, it will be noticed, designates the me- morialists as "living in the north or northeastern part" of the town. Hitherto it has been north or northwestern, indicating the movement of the settle- ment to the east side of the river.

At this session of the General Assembly, October, 1738, the society of Westbury, now Watertown, was constituted. Already in 1686, at the May session of the General Court, Waterbury had been invested with town privileges and given its present name by the fol- lowing act :

" This court grants that Mattuck shall be and belong to the county of Hartford, and the name of the plantation shall for the future be Water- bury." May 13, 1686.

Encouraged by their past successes, and influenced doubtless by the example of Westbury Society, the northern people the next year (1739) again move on the General Assembly ; this time to be constituted an independent ecclesiastical society, with the rights and privileges of the same. At the October session of that year they send to the General Assembly, by John Sutliff and Moses Blakeslee, agents, a memorial repre- senting that the people are

" Desirous ef being made a society, with the privilegee of s society, that they may settle a gospel minister among them and have God's Word preached and ordinances administered; and having prayed said old 60- ciety in said Waterbury to give them certain bounds, and obtained a vote

that the said old society will not oppose them, etc., as by the vote may appear. Sept. 18, 1739.

" Whereupon the memorialists humbly pray that the honorable A6- sembly would appoint a committee and send them to view their circum- stances, and state the line between said old society and said inh: bitants and make return," etc.

Appended to the memorial are the following names : John Sutliff, William Reddington, Moses Blakeslee, Amos Mathews, John Bronson, Noah Dangborn, John Warner, Matthew Reddington, Daniel Potter, Bar- nabas Ford, Samuel Curtis, Jos. Clark, Jr., Joseph Clark, Jacob Blakeslee, Henry Cook, Daniel Curtis, Obadiah Warner, Thomas Blakeslee, Zacharialı San- ford, Gideon Allen, Caleb Humaston, Samuel Frost, Jolın Garnsey, John How, John Sutliff, Jr., Jeremiah Peck.

The town, evidently tired of resisting those so de- termined to be an independent community, makes no opposition to the application, and it is granted. A committee of the General Assembly, consisting of Capt. Thomas Miles, Mr. Stephen Hotchkiss, and Capt. Jonathan Thompson, all of Wallingford, was appointed

"To come and view their Circe. and state a line between Said inhab- itaats and the first Society in said Waterbury ; to hear fully all parties concerned on the premises, as well the first Society in said Waterbury as the said inhabitants living in the sortherly parts of said town, and report to this assembly."

This committee came and heard the parties, and decided on the bounds, and on their report to the General Assembly the following act of incorporation was passed :

" Whereas upon the memorial of the Northern inhabitants of the town of Waterbury, in New Haven County, representing to this Assembly their great distance from the publick worship in said Waterbury, and praying to become a distinct parish, and for a committee to fix and ascer- tain their parochial bounds, the Assembly did appoint Mesers, Thomas Miles, Stephen Hotchkiss, and Joseph Thompson to be a committee to view the circumstances of said memorialiste, to ascertain their parochial bounds, and to make their report in the premises to this Assembly ; and whereas the said committee hath now reported to this Assembly that they, haviog viewed and duly inquired into the circumstances of the said inhabitants, do find them able and sufficient to bear parish charges and become a distinct parish, or Society, within the following limits (Viz.): Beginning at the North West corner of the First Society in said Waterbury and the North Easterly corner of Westbury Society at two White Oak trees known by the name of Two Brothers, theo running South Easterly by the West Branch until it comes into the river; then by the river until it comes where Spruce Brook emptyeth itself into the river a little below Upson's Island. Then from the mouth of said brook & straight line to the falls of Hancock's Broek, and from thence a straight line to the South side of Mr. Noyes' farm, lying partly on a hill by the name of Grassy Hill; and from thence a due East line to Farm- ington line; then North by said Farmington line to Harwinton bounds; then by Harwinton bounds and Litchfield bounde to the bounds first mentioned; bounding, South ou said Waterbury First Society; East on Farmington bounde; North, part on Harwinton and part on Litchfield bounds; and west on said Westbury Society; as by their report on file dated October 25th, 1739."

"Resolved by this Assembly that the said memorialiets within the lint- its above specified and described be and become a separate and distinct Society, or Parish, and that they shall have and be invested with all the powers and privileges wherewith other parishes within this colony are endowed, and shall be known and called by the Parish of Northbury. "Oct. session, 1739.

"GEO. WYLLYS, Sec."

And so, after four applications to the town, and five to the General Assembly, the new community at

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last gained its end, and Northbury went on the roll of the ecclesiastical societies of Connecticut.

The society was thus authorized, but it did not yet exist. The inhabitants themselves alone could give it existence. The General Assembly had built the ship, but left it on the stocks. Those who were to sail in it alone could launch it. This they proceeded to do. In accordance with the law for parish action, three of the inhabitants-viz., John Sutliff, Ebenezer Richason, and Barnabas Ford-made 'application to Thomas Clark, one of the justices of Waterbury, who issued his warning to those living within the specified bounds, in the following form :

"Whereas the law provides that when parishes or any three of the io- habitants of the society applying to any assistant or justice of the peace, shall by a warrant by him issued out ward all the inhabitants within the bounds of the society, &c.

"These are therefore in his majesty's name to warn each and every person within the bounds of Waterbury, known as Northbury, the third society in said Waterbury to attend a society meeting, and have them elect and choose a moderator and society clerk and other necessary busi- Dess as they shall have need of, to appear upon the 20th of this inatant November, at eight of the clock in the morning, at the house they meet in. Dated io aaid Waterbury, this 10th day of November, Anno Domini 1739.

" Signed, per THOS. CLARK, " Justice of the Peace.

" JOHN SUTLIFF,

" EBENEZER RICHARDSON,

" BARNABAS FORD,

"Inhabitants of said society."

In response to this warning, the inhabitants met on the day designated, and organized the society by the choice of John Sutliff, Moderator ; Barnabas Ford, Clerk ; and Moses Blakeslee, John Sutliff, and Eben- ezer Richason, Society Committee. The place where they met, designated in the warning as "the house they meet in," was a building which several of the in- habitants had built the year before by subscription for common public uses, and which they jointly owned as " proprietors." It stood on a knoll, since leveled, about in the centre of the park in Thomaston. The land on which it stood was given by Rev. Mr. South- mayd, and deedcd to John Sutliff, Ebenezer Rich- ason, John How, Thomas Blakeslee, Barnabas Ford, and the rest of the inhabitants living within two miles and a half of Barnabas Ford's new dwelling-house. It is described in the deed as "One acre near said Ford's dwelling-house in Waterbury, on which in- habitants have already set up a house under the de- nomination of a said house for the said inhabitants to meet in to carry on the public worship of God on the Sabbath." The building was a very plain one, and was known in later years as the " church house." The widow of Rev. Luther Hart remembers attend- ing meeting in it in her girlhood, and that her brother, on coming home, told one of the family that " he had been to meeting and it was in a barn."

The original record of the first meeting of the society is in existence, with the other early records of the society. It is in the handwriting of Barnabas Ford.

The society thus organized, the next thing was to choose a minister. This it did not take long to do. At the meeting at which the society was organized, after appointing officers and providing for "ye cost of ye commeete." "Att ye same meeting," the record continues, "we maid choise of Mr. Saml. todd to be our minister." The choice was by a " major," not a "universal" vote. The call of the society does not seem to have been conveyed immediately to Mr. Todd, as in March following, at a meeting of the so- ciety, Moses Blakeslee, Jeremiah Peck, and Daniel Curtis were appointed a committe "carry ye societies call to Mr. Samuel Todd, in order to reseve his an- swer." On this call, Mr. Todd returned the follow- ing answer :

" NORTHBURY, March ye 3, 1739-40.

"Mr. JEREMIAH PECK, MOSES BLASLEE, DANIEL CURTISS, Comita, having reseeved your call & proposals in behalf of ye sosiate to settle with you in ye work of ye ministry, & having waid & considered them, I declare myself willing upon them to settle with them in ye work of y'a ministry, provided they proseed to a regular ordination upon or before ye eight day of May next, & pray God you may be a blessing to me and I to you.

"SAML TODD."

The spelling of this record is probably to be cred- ited to the recording clerk rather than to the minis- ter. The society, which had adjourned till afternoon to receive Mr. Todd's answer, meeting again at half- past one, voted : "To prosed in ye ordination of Mr. Samuel Todd upon ye 7th day of May next, ensuing ye date hereof," and Mr. Jeremiah Peck, Daniel Cur- tis, John Warner, Moses Blakeslee, and Thomas Blakeslee were chosen a committee "to prosecute yo design, in order to an ordination." Accordingly, on the 7th of May, Mr. Todd was ordained first min- ister of the northerly society, as by the following rec- ord entered in the records of the New Haven East Association :

" At a Council of Elders & Messengers regularly convened at North- bury, the third society of Waterbury, May ", 1740, for the ordination of Mr. Samuel Todd to the work of the Gospel Ministry there.

" Eldera present,

" The Rovd Mess. Samuel Whittlesey, Wallingford.

" The Revd Mess. Samuel Hall, Cheshire.

" The Revd Mess. Isaac Stiles, North Haven.

" The Revd Mess. Mark Leavenworth, Waterbury.

" Messengers from the churches :

" Mr. Jacob Johnson, Wallingford.

" Mr. John Gallord, Cheshire.

" Deacon Todd. North Haven.

" Timothy Hopkins, Esq., Waterbury.

" Deacon John Warner, Westbury.

" At which council Mr. Whittlesey was chosen moderator, Mr. Leavon- worth scribe. Then Mr. Todd was examined and approved. Then voted that Mr. Hall should preach; Mr. Whittlesey Introduce the affair by takIng n vote of the church, etc., and also should make the prayer before the charge and give the charge; thal Mr. Stiles should make the prayer after the charge, and Mr. Leaven worth give the right hand of fellowship. According to which, Mr. Todd was ordalned with Imposition of the handa of the Presbytery.

" Test : MARK LEAVENWORTH, Scribe."

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HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

CHAPTER XLIX. PLYMOUTH (Continued).

Congregational Church, Plymouth-Congregational Church, Terryville -St. Peter's Church, Plymouth.

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHI, PLYMOUTII.

THIS church was founded May 17, 1740. Mr. Todd, its first pastor, was born in North Haven, March 6, 1716-17, the seventh child and fifth son of Samuel and Mary (Tole) Todd, and grandson of Christopher and Grace Todd, early immigrants to the New Haven colony. The early records of the North Haven Church are imperfect, but Mr. Todd doubtless united with it during the pastorate of Rev. Isaac Stiles, father of President Stiles, of Yale. His family were of a reli- gious character, as is proved by preserved relations or memorials of its members, in the days when each church member wrote out his or her confession of faith ; that of his sister Susannah, afterwards wife of Caleb Humaston, recounts the wickedness of her re- bellion against God, and how, when awakened to a sense of her sin, the counsels of Rev. Mr. Stiles and the death of an aunt were blessed to her conversion.

Mr. Todd graduated at Yale, under President Wil- liams, in 1734, at the age of seventeen, six of the four- teen in his class becoming ministers. A lately dis- covered document shows that he received and rejected a call to another church before he was ordained at Northbury, May 7, 1740. Eight months before he had married Mercy, daughter of Peter Evans, of Northfield, near New Haven, and he brought her on a pillion behind him, or on another horse, into this wilderness, where there was a small, feeble, scattered, but devoted flock, situated somewhat similar to the first Pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass. There were only bridle-paths through the woods then, and the streams had to be forded, the first cart bridge across the Nau- gatuck, at Thomaston, not being built till after 1747. The forests were hardly broken by the scattered clear- ings, and the impending war with Spain and France might bring down the Indians at any moment on the frontier settlements. Within the memory of most of the settlers they had so descended thirty years before and killed a man named Hall on Mount Toby, John Scott and his two boys being captured on Hancox meadow about that time and carried to Canada ; Mrs. Scott's own mother, sister, and brother's family had been previously slain in the Deerfield massacre in 1704. Even so late as 1722 one Harris had been shot and scalped by Indians while working in a field at Litchfield, and in 1730 five houses in that new settle- ment were surrounded with palisades, while soldiers guarded the people at their work and Sabbath wor- ship.

Mr. Todd's promised home was not begun on his arrival, and he set up his house on Town Hill, where the cellar hole is now seen in the lot near Elam

Fenn's, and where three old apple-trees are pointed ont as of an orchard set out by him ; this was near his good deacon's, Moses Blakeslee, who had lately arrived from New Haven with his fourteen children. A spring flows near the old cellar hole, where tradi- tion says Mr. Todd's first child, little Alathea, was drowned ; Mr. Hillard has found the tombstone of her sister Lucy, who died June 9, 1752, and an un- marked grave near it is doubtless the little Alathea's, said to be the first person buried there. After two or three years' delay, the society built Mr. Todd a house in Thomaston, which stood at the top of the hill where Mrs. Williams built later, on the old road running north, which turned off from the river road at Mr. Grilley's corner. One living remembers the house, afterwards called the old maid's house, as three maiden sisters lived there. It is not known how long he lived there, but he moved on the hill when the church was there and the people lived here ; he had moved before 1746-47, for Barnabas Ford's will, dated Jan. 27, 1746, disposes of twenty-three acres on Bear Hill which he had of Mr. Todd, and in the deed of this green, Dec. 3, 1747, it was described as butting east on Mr. Todd's land. His house here was in the garden this side of Riley Ives' honse, and is remembered by the old people as the Evans House, where Eli Terry, the father of elock-making, began housekeeping with one chair apiece for himself and wife, and one cup and saucer. Mr. Todd's second child was Mary, who married Obed Foot, of this parish, and, on his death, Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, of Heath, Mass. Mr. Todd had eleven children, there being two Alatheas and two Lucys.

The great revival under President Edwards roused the New England churches from the cold formalism that grew out of the union of Church and State and other causes, and Mr. Todd went to study it at Stock- bridge, probably by the advice of Joseph Bellamy, settled two years before at Bethlehem, a great friend of Edwards, and then in the midst of a religious re- vival, in which every man, woman, and child in the parish was under more or less religious concern. When Mr. Todd returned, established prayer-meet- ings, and labored with souls, many of his congrega- tion rebelled against him, and abandoned his preach- ing. There was also temporal trouble. Two years before the society was organized a building had been built for public purposes, by subscription, west of the river, and owned by subscribers, in which the society was allowed to meet for public worship. That was never the society's meeting-house, for they never owned it; it was built and owned by proprietors, aud occupied by the society for a time by their consent. The society's movement to build a meeting-house was not caused by their being voted out of this building; the society, instead, being voted out of it because it had resolved to build a meeting-house.

The society had been organized Nov. 20, 1739, and a minister installed May 7, 1740; not satisfied with

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the west-side house, the society voted, Oct. 6, 1740, to get the Legislature to set a stake for a meeting-house, as it had none of its own. This was not because, as Bronson says, the churchmen had obtained a majority of the votes and took exclusive possession of the house of worship. A protest of the proprietors of that build- ing to the Legislature has been found in Mr. Satterlee's possession, in which they say that their obligations to Mr. Todd are as much as they can meet ; therefore they ask that the meeting-house be not built at present, but that their house be established as the place for public worship, which is sufficient for the present wants of the society, and is freely offered for its use. The protest is dated Oct. 8, 1740, two days after the vote of the society to build, and is signed by William Ludington, Jonathan Cook, John Sutliff, Sr. and Jr., Barnabas Ford, John How, Isaac Castle, Thomas and Jacob Blasle, Ebenezer Richason, Samuel Jacobs, Caleb Humaston, Phineas Royce, Daniel Curtiss, Gideon Allen, Jeremiah Peck, Sr. and Jr., Ebenezer Elwell, and Samuel Frost. The protest was never sent to the Legislature, but the next May, John Sutliff, Barnabas Ford, and John How, on authority of the proprietors, sent one, saying that they were behind with Mr. Todd's settlement and salary, and praying that further charges respecting a meeting-house be prevented at present. It is evident that the occupa- tion of the west-side house was merely temporary and provisional, the society chaneing to be organized there, as there was no other publie building in the parish limits; it was not regarded as the meeting-house, nor did they intend to remain in it permanently. It was not the society of Wooster Swamp, but of Northbury, which mainly lay east of the river, where it proceeded to build as soon as it was in fair working order.

The west-side settlers naturally objected to the building, because they saw it would be done east of the river, and they tried to persuade the society to remain in their school-house. But when they saw that the society was determined to build and on the east side, a majority (not of the society, for that would have controlled it and defeated the project of building on the east side) of the proprietors of the west-side house (eleven of the nineteen) voted the society out of doors till it should have completed its own house ; then this majority of the proprietors, knowing that the Legisla- ture would not organize an opposition Congregational Church west of the river, formed an Episcopal society. The minority of the proprietors of the west building, though opposed to building a meeting-house cast of the river, yet remained loyal to the society, and were its pillars,-Jeremiah Peck, first deacon, John Sut- lift, Sr. and Jr. (the junior being sixth deacon), Caleb Humaston, and Phineas Royce. The society had its first home on the hill, and here it has always been, nor would an Episcopal society have been formed in Thomaston then if the church had been built there. The conflict was primarily of locality and only sec- ondarily of ecclesiastical order.

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History of Litchfield county, Connecticut, Part 118

Author: J.W. Lewis & Company (Philadelphia, Pa.) Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1532

Author: J.W. Lewis & Company (Philadelphia, Pa.)
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1532