USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Farmington > History of New Britain, with sketches of Farmington and Berlin, Connecticut. 1640-1889 > Part 4
USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Berlin > History of New Britain, with sketches of Farmington and Berlin, Connecticut. 1640-1889 > Part 4
USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > New Britain > History of New Britain, with sketches of Farmington and Berlin, Connecticut. 1640-1889 > Part 4
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45
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NEW BRITAIN, 1750-1800.
Woodruff, and other families living north of them, belonged to the West Wethersfield society previous to 1754, and that part of New Britain was in the town of Wethersfield.
James Judd, one of the sons of Benjamin, was living at the homestead with his father. He was about thirty- seven years old, and owner of the saw-mill which was near the intersection of North Street and Stanley Street, and long known as Judd's mill. Benjamin Judd's youngest son, Nathan, about thirty-five years old when the society was formed, lived on the north corner of East Main and East streets. An older son, Uriah, had married his second wife, Mercy Seymour, a grand-daughter of the Captain Seymour who began the settlement at Christian Lane, and was living at the corner of East Main and Stanley streets .*
Captain Stephen Lee, one of the patriarchs of the Great Swamp Society, and one of the seven pillars of the church formed in Great Swamp in 1712, had his home on East Street, near the Judds, and his farm extended from East Street to Main Street, lying north of East Main Street. He had been a noted leader in the Great Swamp Society, and he was also one of the most active men to secure the organi- zation of the New Britain Society, his name often heading the petitions to the General Court. He died at the age of eighty-seven, the year before the act of incorporation was passed, but his widow, eighty-five years old, was still living at the homestead, and she became a member of the First Church when it was organized, in 1758. His youngest son, Josiah Lee, inherited from his father half of the homestead and half of all the land belonging to his father. He was forty-three years old when the society was organized, and had been married six or seven years. He lived for a few years at the homestead, and then at the " Skinner House," still stand- ing (1889) on East Street. He was chosen deacon of the church, April 1, 1763, to supply the vacancy caused by the death of Major Paterson. The oldest son of Captain Stephen Lee, Isaac, became a physician, and lived in Middletown, but * See biographical sketches. 4
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HISTORY OF NEW BRITAIN, ETC.
by his father's will he received half of the homestead of his father, and half of the farm. This became the property of. Stephen Lee, son of Dr. Isaac Lee, and grandson of Captain Stephen Lee. He bought his uncle's half of the homestead, and made the place his home until his removal to Lenox, Mass., in 1777. This noted place was sold to Elijah Hinsdale, and was later known as the " Hinsdale House," while the home of Josiah Lee, the "Skinner House," was sold first to John Richards, then to John Hinsdale, and finally to Rev. Newton Skinner. At the time the society was organized, these two houses were among the largest and grandest in New Britain.
A short distance south of the Lees was the residence of William Paterson, a sturdy Presbyterian, native of Ireland. Near him lived Ladwick Hotchkiss, a blacksmith from New Haven. His shop on the east side of East Street was, next to Thomas Richards's of Stanley Quarter, the oldest blacksmith's shop in New Britain. In the immediate vicinity, on East Street, was the home of the Smiths, Joseph, Sr., and his sons, Joseph, Jr., Jedediah, and Elijah. Joseph Smith, Jr., was forty-four years old when the society was formed. He was at the time considered to be a man of wealth, kept a tavern, and was prominent in society. He was generally known as " Landlord Smith." His oldest son, Elnathan, had one of the first stores in New Britain ; . it was on East Street, near his father's tavern. Jedediah and Elijah Smith were younger than Joseph, but were both married and living near their brother.
A short distance south of the Smiths, near the intersec- tion of East Street and Kelsey Street, John Kelsey was living on the south side of the highway. Further south, on a high- way extending east from the site of the town house, Joseph Woodruff, John Woodruff and his son, Simmons Woodruff, had their homes, a part of their farms being taken from the east end of the highway which they had bought of the town committee. The remainder of this highway was long ago given up by the town and fenced up. Near the south end of
43
NEW BRITAIN, 1750-1800.
East Street, Robert Booth and Adonijah Lewis* were living near each other, and but a short distance from the boundary line between Berlin and New Britain. Opposite the Lewis homestead was the home of Ebenezer Gilbert. There were possibly one or two other houses near the south end of East Street, for this street was, in 1754, one of the most im- portant streets in New Britain. Its residents were the most influential persons in the parish, and the cluster of houses near the tavern and store of the Smiths, and the residences of the Lees and Judds, was the most like a village of any part of New Britain.
Near the lower end of Stanley Street, Phineas Judd, then nearly forty years of age, a son of Deacon Anthony, the first deacon of the Great Swamp parish, was living at the home of his father; and Daniel Dewey, eight years older, was living at the homestead of his father, a little further south on the same street. These families on the south end of East Street and Stanley Street constituted a smaller neighbor- hood somewhat segregated from the families further north, there being quite an interval, especially on Stanley Street, not occupied with buildings, and a portion of it woodland. On the division of the Great Swamp Society into districts, or " squaddams," for school purposes, in 1718, these families were assigned to the division northward of Gilbird's River, while all the people north of Deacon Anthony Judd and John Woodruff constituted a separate division or district.
In the southwest part of the new society was another cluster of farm houses and farms known as Hart Quarter. Judah Hart, a son of Deacon John Hart of Kensington, and a great-grandson of the John Hart of Farmington, who was burned to death in his own house, had settled in Hart Quarter, nearly twenty years before the New Britain Society was organized. His house was the west side of the road leading from Berlin to Plainville, nearly opposite the site of
* The house occupied by Adonijah Lewis, and previously by his father, Jonathan Lewis, is supposed to have been the first house of the Great Swamp Parish within the limits of New Britain.
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HISTORY OF NEW BRITAIN, ETC.
the old school house in the Southwest District. He was about forty-five years old when the society was incorporated. His oldest son, Elias, had married in 1753, and was living in the house with his father. Deacon Elijah Hart, son of Deacon Thomas Hart, of the Kensington Church, had a large farm in Hart Quarter. He was a neighbor of Judah Hart, living a few rods south, with his large family. His oldest son, the second Deacon Elijah Hart of New Britain, at this time nineteen years of age, married a few years later, and located to the southwest of his father; but in middle life he built the large house on the Kensington road near the mills, which he and his son owned. Seven of the sons of the senior Deacon Elijah Hart became members of the First Church, and all but one of them located in New Britain, not far from their father's home. A short distance from the homes and farms of the Harts, John Lankton, afterwards Captain of the Farmington train band, was living in 1755.
On West Main Street, a few rods west of the present rail- way crossing, Moses Andrews, who had recently moved from Newington, was living in a house built by his wife's brother, Joseph Root. About a mile west of this place, Hezekiah Andrews, a few years later, built a large house which he oc- cupied, and near it he had a saw-mill on Pond River. Further north on this stream, and near the present town line, was a fulling mill known in 1754 as " the old fulling mill."
The home of Thomas Hart on West Main Street, a half mile west of the Center, was built about the same time as that of Hezekiah Andrews, and a few years afterwards two or three other houses were located in the west part of the society. In the northwest part of the place, near Horse Plain, Gideon Griswold had a large farm and was living on or near the Farmington Road, a mile north of the Center. Between this road and the Stanley Road were two or three houses and farms occupied by Robert Woodruff and John and Thomas Lusk.
The center of the society, or that portion of New Britain which constituted the borough in 1850 to 1870, and which
1
45
NEW BRITAIN, 1750-1800.
now comprises the most thickly settled and chief business part of the city, was not occupied until some years after Stanley Quarter, East Street, and Hart Quarter had been peopled by thrifty farmers and were becoming the centers of social life. About 1746, nearly sixty years after the settle- ment at Christian Lane was commenced, and the east part of New Britain was occupied, Nathan Booth, the eldest son of Robert Booth of Great Swamp, made a clearing and built his house where the South Church now stands. The land in the vicinity of his house was, at that time, quite uneven, and much of it low, but it was made suitable for tillage or meadow, and became good farm land. He had inherited some property from his father, and he became a large land holder, and one of the wealthiest men in the parish. Soon after he had his house and other buildings erected, his brother-in-law, Joshua Mather, a descendant of the Suffield and Windsor Mathers, also made his home in New Britain, near the present southeast corner of Main and Park streets. The house he built was afterwards known as the " Sugden House," from Thomas Sugden, a deserter from the British army, who married Mr. Mather's granddaughter, and lived 'in the house after her grandfather's death.
John Judd, a son of Deacon Anthony Judd, of the Great Swamp Society, who had been a friend and neighbor of Nathan Booth in their childhood and youth, and who was but three years older, soon after Booth was established in his home, built near the corner of West Main and Washington streets, and occupied a farm lying principally on West Main Street. Colonel Isaac. Lee, a son of Dr. Isaac Lee of Middletown, and a grandson of Captain Stephen Lee of East Street and Great Swamp memory, built on the east side of North Main Street, near the foot of Dublin Hill, about 1745. The house is still standing and known as the "Lee House." This house was placed on the west end of the Captain Stephen Lee farm, and Colonel Isaac Lee owned the land ou the north side of East Main Street, and both east and west of Main Street. Three of these persons living on or near Main Street, and those liv-
46
HISTORY OF NEW BRITAIN, ETC.
ing on West Main Street and in Hart Quarter, had retained their connection with the First Ecclesiastical Society in Farmington, and paid their ministerial taxes to that society.
In 1752, Nathan Booth, John Judd, Joshua Mather, Judah Hart, Elijah Hart, and Moses Andrews, with three or four of the residents of Blue Hills, petitioned the General Assembly to be set to the Kensington or Great Swamp Society. The petition was not granted at the time, but these persons appear afterwards to have joined the Kensington Society, for when the First Church in New Britain was organized in 1758, they all united with it from the Kensington Church. Nathan . Booth had married a daughter of Dr. Steele of the Great Swamp parish ; John Judd had married Mary Burnham, daughter of Rev. William Burnham, the minister of the Kensington Church, and Joshua Mather had married Hannah, a sister of Nathan Booth ; it was therefore quite reasonable that these families, so intimately connected with each other, and having so strong ties in the Great Swamp parish, should prefer to pay their ministerial dues there and belong there. Elijah Hart and Judah Hart were also both from Kensington, but belonged to the ecclesiastical society in Farmington, and seemed to prefer to have their ecclesiastical connection transferred to the parish which had been their first home. .
As, however, the residents of Stanley Street and East Street, as far north as Benjamin Judd, had, for several years, been petitioning for liberty to have preaching in the part of the parish within the limits of New Britain, and then for a separate society ; and as a petition for the latter purpose, bearing the same date as the petition of Nathan Booth and others, was presented to the same General Assembly, the inference is strong, that the residents of the central and west parts of New Britain had been induced to make common cause with their brethren of East Street in efforts to secure, if possible, a division of the society. Their object was attained, for, two years afterwards, the New Britain Society was organized, and from this time, 1754, the interests of the different parts of the society became drawn more closely to-
47
NEW BRITAIN, 1750-1800.
gether, and the place gradually became unified in action, and to some extent in thought and feeling. The people, with the exception of four or five families in the center, were living in Stanley Quarter, on East Street, and the Stanley Road, or in Hart Quarter.
The land in the center was in places uneven, some of it quite rocky, other parts wet and swampy, and most of it sup- posed to be unfavorable to cultivation. The stream from the west flowed across Main Street near the Baptist church, and then north of the west end of Church Street into the bushy swamp back or east. of Main Street. A small stream from Walnut Hill, during a portion of the year, flowed across Main Street, near the site of the High School building, and thence into the swamp and united with the former stream. From these and the springs around the swamp, was formed a brook of considerable size, which flowed northerly and then north- easterly, crossing East Main Street near the south end of Hartford Avenue, and supplying Judd's mill-pond with water. The saw-mill located there was, for a time, the prin- cipal one in the place, and was capable of sawing, during the year, the lumber needed in New Britain and some for export.
A deep ravine extended across Main Street south of the South Church, and still further south on South Main Street, deep gullies and hummocks made the street dangerous to travel in the night. On the south green was a high ledge of trap rocks nearly filling the open space between South Main and Kensington Streets, and extending southerly on Roberts' farm for a considerable distance. There was another high ledge of rocks south of East Main Street, and east of the brook which crossed it; another ledge north of this street extended past Judd's mills and formed a steep hill on Stanley Street .* Elm, Chestnut, Orchard, Pearl, and other streets to the south and east; Arch, Walnut, and the streets to the south and west of them, had not been opened. East Street was the principal road to and from the Kensington Society,
* These ledges existed in part until after the city was incorporated.
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HISTORY OF NEW BRITAIN, ETC.
but Stanley and Main streets were used between Berlin and Farmington. Park Street was unknown, except as a crooked lane turning south and meeting Stanley Street by the way of Whiting Street. West Main Street was a crooked road going over the hill where the park is now, and there were few other streets opened until some years later. With the exception of Booth and Mather's farms south and southwest of the center, John Judd's on the west and Colonel Lee's on . the northeast, most of the central part, or business portion of the city, as it is now, which was not rock or low marshy land, was woodland, some of it quite heavily timbered. Por- tions of these forests, as the woods where Washington Street is and west of it, the woods where Chestnut Street is, extend- ing north and south of it, the woods of Whiting Street and of Grove Hill, were standing within the memory of many per- sons now living.
On the organization of the New Britain Society in 1754, a partial survey of the parish was made. After the committee of the County Court had fixed the site for the first meeting house near one of the northern ledges by Judd's mills, several of the roads were altered and new highways opened to make access to the meeting-house more feasible. The principal highways, as first located, were very wide, and permitted considerable alterations in the traveled paths without en- croaching on private land. Some of the land included in these wide highways was exchanged for other land for roads, and some of it was sold or granted to individuals for services rendered, or for gratuities, as the "ministers' grants." Special committees were appointed by the town of Farming- ton for exchanging highways in New Britain. At the time the society was incorporated in 1754, and from that time until the church was organized, and a pastor secured in 1758, New Britain was evidently a small struggling parish, com- posed of scattered farms and homes, the principal residences being gathered into three small hamlets at quite a distance from each other, and from other settlements. The few resi- dents had been accustomed to worship in three different
49
NEW BRITAIN, 1750-1800.
parishes several miles apart. The roads were crooked and uneven, and, at some seasons of the year, very bad. The efforts to build a meeting-house, rude as it was, heavily taxed the people. The prospects of success were so forbidding that four years of earnest effort had failed to secure them a pas- tor, then deemed of prime importance, even for material prosperity. But new conditions and circumstances were soon to have a new effect on the growth and prosperity of the place.
It was not long after the location of the first meeting house, as near as possible to the center of travel of the three hamlets -Stanley Quarter, East Street, and Hart Quarter - that the few families on or near Main Street began to have neighbors near them. The four men who had occupied farms on this street, previous to the organization of the New Britain Society, were all men of influence. They were ac- tive both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs, and each had a son married and settled on the street, or near his father's home, with a family of children growing up, before that father's death. These sons were men of influence, some of them leaders in the parish and town.
Joshua Mather, who lived near the junction of Main and South Main streets, was several years older than either of the other pioneers of this part of the parish, and his son, David, was the oldest of the next generation who made his home on the street. He was married three years after the society was organized, and he settled just south of Osgood Hill. He was one of the first board of selectmen of the town of Berlin, was for many years one of the school visitors of New Britain and a member of the standing committee of the church.
Colonel Isaac Lee, the next in age of the first four resi- dents of the center, about 1768 built for his oldest son, Theodore, a house on Main Street, on the site now occupied by the Stanley Building, Nos. 326-340. For some reason, Theodore Lee did not occupy this house, but settled in Torringford, and the house became the home of James
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HISTORY OF NEW BRITAIN, ETC.
Booth, who married his wife from Torringford in 1775 .* This James Booth was the eldest son of Nathan Booth, who had built the first house in the center, on the site of the South church. Nathan Booth, Jr., the second son of Nathan, Sr., had, in 1773, married the eldest daughter of Ebenezer Smith, and made his home on the west side of the Stanley Road, nearly half a mile north of the meeting-house. Joseph Booth, a younger son of Nathan, Sr., was married two years after James, and was provided with a home on Dublin Hill. This was the only house on the hill for many
OLD LEE HOUSE .ยก
years, and overlooked most of the territory now included in the business part of New Britain. The second son of Colonel Lee, Isaac Lee, Jr., was married in 1773. For about thirty years he lived in the house with his father, which was enlarged to accommodate both families. He inherited his father's homestead, the old Lee house, near McCabe's Block, and owned a large farm occupying the northern part of the present business portion of the city. He gave the land upon which the second edifice of the First
* This house was moved to Walnut Street and is still standing.
t The old Lee House is the oldest building on Main Street. It was occupied by Colonel Isaac Lee or his son for nearly one hundred years.
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NEW BRITAIN, 1750-1800.
Ecclesiastical Society was built, and in other ways man- ifested his liberality to the church and to the parish.
John Judd, a son of John Judd, Sr., was a few years older than Isaac Lee, but was a companion and contem- porary of all the second generation mentioned as living in New Britain. He was married in 1769, and then had his home a few rods west of his father, on West Main Street. Seth Judd, a younger brother of John, was married three years later, but soon after went into the army, and was accidentally shot in camp in the war of the revolution.
About the time that these young men, who had been born near the center of the parish, were starting in life, near the homes of their parents, a person who, by himself and his descendants, was to have an important influence upon New Britain, was also induced to make his home in the same vicinity. Among the first settlers of Farmington was John North, who, with his, son Thomas, became influential in the church and society. Thomas North, Jr., a grandson of John, became one of the early inhabitants of Great Swamp, and was one of the seven pillars of the church organized there in 1712. A grandson of Thomas North, Jr., James North, who was but six years old when the New Britain Society was organized, and but ten years old at the time of his father's death, came to New Britain to learn the blacksmith's trade in the shop of John Richards of Stanley Quarter. While an apprentice with Mr. Richards he became acquainted with the families in the center, and particularly in the family of John Judd, who had married Mary Burnham, a daughter of North's former pastor in Great Swamp.
Mary Judd, the older daughter of John and Mary Burnham Judd, was married to Colonel Gad. Stanley, a neighbor of Richards, while James North was learning his trade. Her brother, Seth, married Lydia, a daughter of Richards, after North's apprenticeship had closed, and while he was working at his trade as a journeyman. James North was a few years younger than Colonel Stanley, or
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HISTORY OF NEW BRITAIN, ETC.
Seth Judd's wife, but was older than Seth, and a few months older than Colonel Stanley's wife. He was wel- comed to both homes as an intelligent, popular young man, and in 1774 married Rhoda Judd, sister of Mary Judd Stanley and Seth Judd, and thus became connected with two of the most influential families in the parish. Soon after his marriage he built the house in which he after- wards lived and died. It was on the east side of Main Street, nearly opposite Myrtle, and was the first house on that side of the street between East Main and South Main streets. This house remained on the original site, occupied most of the time after Mr. North's death by his family or descendants, until 1884, when it was removed to make room for business blocks.
James North had his blacksmith's shop at first near the home of his father-in-law, on West Main Street, but in a few years he removed it to Main Street, near his residence. This shop was for many years the only blacksmith's shop near the center of the place. Here a number of young men afterwards noted in the parish learned their trade. The place became a rendezvous where the farmers gathered, not only to have their tools repaired and horses shod, but to discuss questions of civil and ecclesiastical polity, and the general news of the day.
Jonathan Belden, a son of Ezra Belden, and two years younger than James North, was married the same year as North, and soon after built a house on the west side of Stanley Street, nearly west of his father's home on East Street. He was a carpenter by trade, but had a large farm, including the tract occupied by Chestnut Street, east of the railway, the land both sides of it, and on both sides of Stanley Street. A part of his farm was at that time heavily timbered. This homestead afterwards was owned by Seth Lewis, and then by Edmund Steele. A portion of this farm near the house has been known as the " Steele farm," and the gardens of the Steele Brothers.
At the close of the revolutionary war, the residents of
.
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NEW BRITAIN, 1750-1800.
New Britain, on Main Street, were Nathan Booth, who was living at the house he originally built, near the site of the South church ; Isaac Lee, at the old Lee house, near McCabe's Block; James North, at the Henry North place, opposite the east end of Myrtle Street; James Booth, in a house built by Isaac Lee, on the site of the Stanley building, and Isaac Lee, Jr., who was living with his father in the " Lee House." Nathan Booth, then sixty years of age, and Colonel Isaac Lee, sixty five years old, were the two men remaining of the four original settlers of the center. Isaac Lee, Jr., the youngest son living of Col. Isaac Lee, was but twenty-nine years old. He had married a daughter of Nathan Booth, and in 1781 had three children. James North and James Booth were each thirty three years of age, married, and had each three children. John Judd, Jr., two years older than James North and James Booth, was living on West Main Street, his house standing on the site more recently occupied by the residence of Charles Blakeslee. He had three children living at the close of the revolutionary war. His father, John Judd, Sr., died three days before the surrender of Cornwallis.
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