History of New London county, Connecticut : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 119

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1317

USA > Connecticut > New London County > History of New London county, Connecticut : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 119

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Council of Safety, or "War Council."-The General Assembly, May session, 1775, established a Council of Safety to assist the Governor in the gen- eral conduct of the war, in raising, equipping, and di- recting the troops, and in supplying "every matter and thing that should be needful for the defense of the colony." The following gentlemen composed this Council,1 viz. : Hon. Matthew Griswold, of Lyme, Deputy Governor ; Eliphalet Dyer, Jedediah Elder- kin, and Nathaniel Wales, Jr., of Windham; Wmn. Williams and Joshua West, of Lebanon ; and Jabez Huntington, Samuel Huntington, and Benjamin Huntington, all of Norwich.

This Council held its first meeting June 7, 1775, at the War Office, in Lebanon, Governor Trumbull and

every member of the Council being present. Stuart says (p. 626) that it appears from a memorandum in Governor Trumbull's handwriting that he was per- sonally present at 913 sessions of this Council during the war ; but Hinman, late Secretary of State, in his " War of the Revolution," compiled from the State records and archives in his official custody, states (p. 321) that this Council held over 1200 sessions; and he gives the minutes of the proceedings at 371 sessions, held from June 7, above, to May 6, 1778, the first three years only of the war. Of these sessions, 355, about 96 per cent. of all, were held at Lebanon, 14 at Hartford, and 1 each at New Haven and Norwich. If the same proportion of these sessions were held at Lebanon during the war, as is more than probable, there were about 1145 sessions of this great, important, and illustrious Council held under the hum- ble roof of that old War Office, still standing among us, every rafter and every shingle which covers it on all sides, from roof-tree to sill, radiant in memory with the glorious light of our morning of liberty.

The threshold of that humble build- ing has thrilled to the tread of Wash- ington, of Lafayette, of Count Rocham. beau, of the Marquis de Chastellux, 0: Baron de Montesquieu, of the Duke de Lauzun, of Admiral Tiernay, of Gens Sullivan, Knox, Putnam, Parsons, Spencer, of the fiery Samuel Adams, of John Adams, of John Jay, o: Thomas Jefferson, and of Benjamin Franklin (whose recreant son, William, the Tory Governor of New Jer- sey, was also here, but as a prisoner), and a host o other high worthies and patriots, bearing messages o fate and destiny, and taking high council together ir "the days that tried men's souls." There it stands and there let it stand !- preserved with sacred care a public charge !- forever set apart from all ignoble o: common uses !- a consecrated Memorial ! !

The Trumbull Family .- The original spelling o Trumbull is believed to have been Turnbull, and i: said to have been derived from the following circum stance. One of the early kings of Scotland, while hunting in the forest, was closely pursued by an en raged bull. A young Scot, seeing the peril of his sov ereign, dashed in before the infuriated animal, seizec him by the horns, adroitly turned him aside, and the king escaped. The grateful monarch sent at once fo. the daring young Scot, knighted him by the name o Turn-Bull, granted him an estate near Peebles, and a coat of arms bearing the device of three bulls' heads with the motto "Fortuna facet audaci." This coa of arms is still perpetuated in the American branch of the Trumbull family, and in the war of Ameri ean independence it was demonstrated to the English

1 Stuart's Note, p. 203, in his " Life of Governor Trumbull," is an error. The gentlemen therein named were not the "Council of Safety," but the regular "Council of Assistants," or State Senate.

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LEBANON.

"John Bull" that the Lebanon branch at least had fair title to the "Turn-Bull" name and coat of arms.

John Trumbull, the ancestor of the Connecticut Trumbull family, came from Cumberland County, England, and settled in Rowley, Essex County, Mass. John, Jr., his second son, was made a freeman there in 1640, a deacon of the church in 1686, a lieutenant of the militia in 1689, and soon after removed with his family to Suffield, now in this State, but then claimed by Massachusetts. He, John, Jr., of Suffield, had four sons, viz .: John, Joseph, Ammi, and Be- noni.

John, the eldest son of John, Jr., of Suffield, was a distinguished clergyman, settled in Watertown, Conn., and was the father of John, the poet and celebrated author of "McFingal" and other works.

Capt. Joseph, the second son of John, Jr., of Suf- field, went from Suffield to Simsbury, Conn., about 1703, when twenty-four years of age, and soon after married Hannah, the daughter of John Highley, Esq., of Simsbury, and thence in 1704 came to Lebanon, and settled as a farmer and merchant on the corner near the church, on the spot where the house of Asher P. Smith now stands. He was distinguished for high integrity and great enterprise as a merchant, active in all the local affairs of the church and the town, and for many years captain of the train-band. He was the father of Jonathan, the "war Governor," and was the founder of the Lebanon branch of the family. He was born in Rowley, Mass., 1679, and died in Lebanon, 16th June, 1755, in the seventy-seventh year of his age; and his wife Hannah, born in Wind- sor, Conn., 22d April, 1683, died at Lebanon, 8th of November, 1768, in the eighty-sixth year of her age. They had eight children, four sons and four daugh- ters, viz .: Joseph, born 27th March, 1705, married Sarah Bulkley, 20th November, 1727 (lost at sea June, 1733, leaving two children, Sarah and Kate) ; John -; Jonathan, 12th October, 1710, the " war Governor ;" Mary, 21st August, 1713 ; Hannah, 1715, died an infant ; Hannah, again, 18th September, 1717 ; Abigail, 9th March, 1719; and David, 8th September, 1723, drowned in a mill-pond in Lebanon, 9th July, 1740, aged seventeen, while home on his college vaca- tion.

Ammi, the third son of John of. Suffield, settled, a substantial farmer, in East Windsor, Conn.

Benoni, the youngest son of John of Suffield, set- tled in Hebron, Conn., a farmer and merchant, and was the father of Benjamin Trumbull, D.D., the well- known historian, to whom this State is so much in- debted for his able early history of Connecticut. Dr. Trumbull was settled over the church in North Ha- ven, Conn. The birth of two children of Benoni Trumbull and wife Sarah are recorded in Lebanon, viz. : Sarah, born 26th August, 1710, and Benjamin, 11th May, 1712.

THE WAR GOVERNOR AND HIS FAMILY .- Jona- than Trumbull, the war Governor, and third son of

Capt. Joseph, was born in Lebanon on the 12th day of October, 1710, O. S., in the house which then stood on the south corner, near the church, where the A. P. Smith house now stands.

In addition to the village school, he was probably a pupil of the Rev. Samuel Welles, then pastor of the First Church, and in 1723, at the early age of thirteen years, he entered Harvard College, whence in 1727 he graduated with honorable distinction, especially in mathematics and the classics, although then only sev- enteen years old. On leaving college he entered upon the study of divinity and theology with the Rev. Solo- mon Williams, D.D., of Lebanon, who had succeeded Mr. Welles as pastor of the First Church ; was soon licensed to preach, though yet a minor, and after preaching for a short at Colchester, was invited by that town to become their settled pastor. But while he was considering this call an event occurred which changed entirely his whole career and the purpose of his life.

In June, 1733, his elder brother, Joseph, then the partner in business with his father, sailed for London on a commercial adventure in a ship which, with its entire lading, was owned by the firm, but no tidings of that brother, ship, or cargo reached the family evermore. For a time there was a forlorn hope that the ship might have been captured by the Algerine pirates who then infested the seas and held for ran- som, but even this hope soon withered and died. The stricken father, doubly bereaved by the loss of his first-born son and of his property by a single blow, appealed to his next son, Jonathan, to come to his aid and rescue. Nor was that appeal in vain. His call to settle in the ministry at Colchester was declined, and he entered at once upon the task of settling the estate of his lost brother and of relieving the embar- rassments of his father, and thus commenced his career as a merchant, which he ever after continued with eminence and success.

This change in his calling rendered his already strongly-marked abilities more available in the civil service of the public, and, as if conscious of the pro- phetic shadow of that future destiny for which Provi- dence was preparing him, he applied himself every spare hour he could gain from his other great labors to the study of law and civil jurisprudence. In 1733, when less than twenty-three years of age, he was chosen by his native town one of the deputies to the General Court at its May session, and from this on -- ward to May, 1754, the town repeated that choice for fourteen sessions. May session, 1739, when under twenty-nine years of age, he was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives, and again filled the same office in 1752 and 1754. In 1740 he was chosen by the freemen of the colony to the post of assistant and member of the Council of the colony, and re- elected to the same important office until he was chosen Lieutenant-Governor in 1766 (except four years while judge of the Superior Court), serving as

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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

assistant twenty-two years. In 1745 he was chosen assistant judge of Windham County Court (Lebanon then belonging to Windham County), and in 1746 chief judge of that court, which office he held by an- nual elections for seventeen years. In 1749 he was chosen judge of probate for Windham District, and continued in that office nineteen years. In 1765 he was chosen assistant judge of the Superior Court of the colony, and in 1766 was elected Deputy Governor, and re-elected annually until 1770, and during this period of four years he held also the office of chief justice of the Superior and Supreme Courts, and as such discharged with ability the high functions of that office.

In 1770 he was elected Governor, which office he thereafter continued to hold by annual re-elections until he declined, in 1783, any further election after that year,-a period of fourteen more eventful and important years than any other in the history of this country.

In addition to the vast and incessant duties which the war of the Revolution heaped upon him as chief commander of all the military forces of the State, he was also, by a special act of the General Assembly in 1775, made chief officer of all the naval forces of the State, and the whole power of raising volunteers, granting letters of marque and reprisal to privateers and commissions to regular officers, of furnishing sup- plies and equipments, and of establishing prize courts and settling prize claims devolved on him, and was most ably and efficiently exercised during the whole war. Among the very large number of war-vessels fitted out by this State two notedly successful ones bore his own honored name, viz., the frigate "Trum- bull" and the audacious privateer " Governor Trum- bull," the latter bearing aloft on her pennant the Trumbull motto, " Fortuna facet audaci." Two frig- ates were also built and equipped under his special direction, at the request of Congress, for the national service ; one of them, of thirty-six guns, was built on the Thames, and the other, of twenty-eight guns, at Chatham, on the Connecticut. His eminent fitness and aptitude in marine affairs were the providential fruits of his long familiarity, as a merchant and for- eign trader, with every detail of the building and equipment of ships and vessels, and now the ripened fruits of this long experience were happily available to his country in its hour of impending peril.

His business career in merchandising commenced, as we have seen, in 1733, as the partner of his father ; afterwards for several years alone ; tlien from 1755 to 1764 the firm was Williams, Trumbull & Pitkin, with branches at Norwich, East Haddam, and Wethers- field ; then from 1764 the firm was Trumbull, Fitch & Trumbull, the partners being himself, his son Jo- seph, and Eleazur Fitch, of Lebanon, which contin- ued until he retired from active mercantile pursuits, but a few years before his death. His commercial transactions extended to the West Indies, England,

and Holland, exporting home produce and importing foreign commodities in exchange, chiefly in ships and vessels owned wholly or in part by his firm, and having agencies and correspondents in the marts of each of these countries.

To facilitate the home exchange of these commodi- ties he at one time, by permission of the General Assembly, established in Lebanon a county fair or mart, which for many years was held at stated times on the village green, and was attended by distant merchants and country traders, and by the farmers from this and neighboring towns, at which large crowds were gathered and large purchases and sales were made.

In all the transactions of his eventful life Governor Trumbull was a remarkable man, and in the public service of his State and his country became one of the most distinguished, reliable, and efficient of her great leaders and wise counselors. Washington him- self leaned upon and confided in him, as one of his wisest and truest supporters, throughout the whole trying scenes of our Revolutionary struggle. It was to the zeal and fertile resources of "Brother Jona- than" that he ever turned for supplies to the army, and for " the sinews of war" in every dark and try- ing emergency. The phrase "we must consult Brother Jonathan," used by Gen. Washington when he first took command of the army at Cambridge, was so often uttered by him afterwards that it became a by- word among his staff, and spread through the army and the country. "Brother Jonathan" thus became a national, generic name for an American every where, as is that of " John Bull" for an Englishman, and thus it will live to forever perpetuate his honored name.

In the carliest part of the controversy between Great Britain and the American colonies, Governor Trumbull had ever been conspicuous for his steadfast zeal and patriotism in the cause of American liberty, and when the war broke out this son of Lebanon, among all the Governors of the then thirteen colo- nies, was the only one who stood stanch to the American cause. Governor Thomas Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, his old friend and classmate in college, proved shamefully recreant; Governors John Went- worth, of New Hampshire, Joseph Wanton, of Rhode Island, William Tryon, of New York, William Frank- lin, of New Jersey, John Penn, Governor both of Pennsylvania and Delaware, Robert Eden, of Mary- land, Lord Dunmore, of Virginia, Joseph Martin, of North Carolina, Lord William Campbell, of South Carolina, and James Wright, of Georgia, all favored, more or less openly and actively, the British cause. But their Tory councils and their authority were spurned by an indignant people, and many of them were forced to seek safety under British protection. The bold and firm position of Governor Trumbull brought down upon him the especial wrath of the British government. He was denounced as "the rebel Governor," and a price set upon his head.

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All the family of Governor Trumbull were distin- guished for remarkable ability, and all destined to a remarkable career. Each of his four sons were con- spicuous in the Revolutionary war for patriotic zeal and devotion, and the husbands of his two daugh- ters were equally conspicuous. His wife, Faith, the daugliter of the Rev. John Robinson, of Duxbury, Mass., whom he married on the 9th day of December, 1735, when she was but seventeen years old, was, in moral and mental endowments and greatness of soul, a fitting mate for her illustrious husband. She was born in Duxbury, 11th December, 1718, O.S., and died in Lebanon, 29th May, 1780, aged sixty-one. The Governor, born in Lebanon, 12th October, 1710, died there, " full of years and honors," on the 17th day of August, 1785, at five o'clock P.M., aged seventy- five. Their children were Joseph, born March 11, 1737, was commissary-general of Washington's army ; Jonathan, Jr., born March 26, 1740, was paymaster in Washington's army, and afterwards Governor of this State ; Faith, born Jan. 25, 1743, married Gen. Jede- diah Huntington, of Revolutionary army ; Mary, born July 16, 1745, married William Williams, signer of Declaration of Independence; David, born Feb. 5, 1751, was assistant commissary, etc., and father of Governor Joseph ; John, born June 6, 1756, was aide- de-camp to Washington, and the renowned painter.

The following further brief notice of the remarka- ble career of each of these six children will be found interesting.

Joseph, eldest son of the war Governor, had at the breaking out of the war been for several years chiefly residing in Norwich, in the business branch there of his father's firm. His native town still continued, however, to send him to the General Assembly as her representative. In his own town, and also in Nor- wich, he was prominent in all measures of opposition to British oppression. In April, 1775, the General Assembly appointed him State commissary-general, and soon after, in the same year, he was appointed by Congress the first commissary-general of the Amer- ican army, an office then of the highest importance to the cause, and bringing with it a crushing weight of perplexing labor and responsibility. For these duties he was eminently fitted by his great natural fertility in resources and his thorough training in the school of his father's wide commercial transac- tions. He continued in this office until July, 1778, when, broken down with his unremitted ardor in these duties, he returned home for a short rest, but it was too late. His vigorous constitution and vital powers had been fatally overstrained. On arriving at Nor- wich, his anxious friends carefully conveyed him to the house of his father, in Lebanon, where, on the 23d day of July, 1778, at the age of forty-one years, he sunk into his final rest, a martyr to the cause of his country.

He married Amelia Dyer, but left no children.

Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., second son of the Goy- 32

ernor, married Eunice Backus, daughter of Ebenezer of Norwich, March 26, 1767, and has on the records of Lebanon the births of the following children : Jonathan, born Dec. 24, 1767, died young; Faith, Feb. 1, 1769, married Daniel Wadsworth, of Hart- ford, left no children; Mary, Dec. 27, 1777, died in infancy ; Harriet, Sept. 2, 1783, married Prof. Ben- jamin Silliman, Yale College, Sept. 17, 1809; and Maria, Feb. 14, 1785, married Henry Hudson, Esq., of Hartford. He graduated at Hartford in 1759, withi unusual reputation, and gave early assurance of a useful and patriotic career. At the opening of the Revolutionary war in 1775 he was appointed by the Continental Congress paymaster-general of the north- ern department of the army under Washington, and in April, 1781, succeeded Hamilton as private secre- tary and first aide to Gen. Washington, serving in this post until near the close of the war. He had been before, and was for several years later, a member of the State Legislature, and was twice Speaker of the House, and from 1796 to 1809-fourteen years-he was annually elected one of the twelve of the Coun- cil of Assistants of the State under the charter, and as such a member of the Senate, or " Upper House." In 1790 he was chosen a representative in Congress from this State, and in 1791 was Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and continued in that office until 1794, when he was elected to the United States Senate. In 1796 he was elected Lieu- tenant-Governor, and in 1798 Governor of the State, and was annually re-elected to this office for eleven years, and until his death in 1809. While holding this office he was also chief judge of the Supreme Court of Errors of the State, as the records of that court show. The many and highly honorable and responsible public positions to which he was called, and the confidence of his fellow-citizens which he so long enjoyed, afford the best and most satisfying evi- dence of his great abilities and integrity of character. He died in Lebanon, the 7th of August, 1809, aged sixty-nine years.

Faith Trumbull, eldest daughter of the Governor, married, May, 1766, Jedediah Huntington, of Nor- wich, as before stated. "She, too," says Stuart, " had a Revolutionary destiny to fulfill, one of singular and startling import. She was to become the wife of Col. Huntington, afterwards a general in the army under Washington; was to follow her husband and a fav- orite brother (John) to the 'camp around Boston,' and reached there, not to see a formidable army, as she expected, in quiet though watchful quarters, but just as the thunders of Bunker Hill broke over a scene of horrible carnage, which, alarming hier deep and affectionate nature for the safety of those most dear to her, drove her into madness and to a speedy death." This terrible battle of June 17, 1775, the first shock of war, was in full view from the camp at Cambridge, from whence it was witnessed by this young wife, the smoke and roar of the conflict envel-

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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.

oping with its frightful pall the whole camp. As soon after as possible she was tenderly removed to Leba- non, but the shock proved fatal, and she died at Ded- ham, on the 24th day of November following, aged thirty-two years and ten months. She left one child only, Jabez, born September, 1767, who was after- wards president of the Norwich Bank.

Gen. Huntington, her husband, born in Norwich, Ang. 4, 1743, a graduate of Cambridge, 1763, was in July, 1775, appointed colonel of the famous Eighth Regiment of Connecticut troops raised for the war. This regiment was finally equipped in scarlet uni- forms, and in the battle of Long Island, Aug. 27, 1776, fought with such desperate bravery that six captains, six lieutenants, twenty-one sergeants, two drummers, and one hundred and twenty-six rank and file were among the dead and missing after the battle.1

In 1777, Col. Huntington ro-e to the rank of briga- dier-general, which rank he held until near the close of the war, when he became a major-general. He was afterwards vice-president of the Order of Cincin- nati, high sheriff of New London County, judge of probate for the district of Norwich, first alderman of the city, and representative of the town of Norwich; State treasurer in 1788; in 1789 was appointed United States revenue collector for the district of Eastern Connecticut, and August 11th of that year he re- moved to New London and entered upon the duties of his office, in which he continued until his death, Sept. 25, 1818, nearly thirty years.

Mary Trumbull, second daughter of the Governor, married Hon. William Williams, of Lebanon, Feb. 14, 1771, afterwards one of the signers of the immortal Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, and the last survivor of the four signers from this State. He was born in Lebanon, April 8, 1731, one of the five sons of Rev. Solomon Williams, who for fifty-four years was pastor of the First Society in this town.

One of these sons, Eliphalet, was the settled pastor in East Hartford for about the same number of years. Another son, Ezekiel, was high sheriff of Hartford County for more than thirty years. He himself was . the town clerk of Lebanon forty-five years, being first chosen in 1752, at the age of twenty-one years, and the next year, 1757, was chosen to represent the town in the General Assembly, and (with a few rare excep- tions, when holding other and higher offices, and when he was a member of the Continental Congress) was continued in this office until 1784. He was a valuable and leading member of the House, often chosen its clerk, and nine times its Speaker, filling the chair always with dignity and high ability. In 1776 he was chosen by the electors of the State at large one of the assistants, and transferred to the "Upper House," to which office he was twenty-four times annually re-elected. It was recorded of him what probably can be said of no other man, that for

more than ninety sessions, regular and special, he was scarcely absent from his seat in the General As- sembly, excepting when he was a member of the Con- tinental Congress in 1776 and 1777. He was a mem- ber of the Council of Safety, which annually met at Lebanon during the war, and an active, efficient, and patriotic selectman of the town during that period in promoting war measures.

At the age of sixteen he entered Harvard College, and after graduating studied theology with his father a few years, but joined the English and Continental forces in the old French war on the staff of his cousin, Col. Ephraim Williams, who commanded a regiment. In the fierce battle at the head of Lake George, in September, 1755, Col. Williams was shot through the head by an Indian and killed ; but the French forces were defeated, and their commander, the Baron Dies- kau, wounded and taken prisoner. Soon after young Williams returned to Lebanon, and continued his res- idence here ever after until his death on the 2d day of August, 1811, in the eighty-first year of his age. They had three children,-two sons and a daughter, -who, with his widow, were all living at his death. His widow, Mary, died in Lebanon, Feb. 9, 1831, aged eighty-five years and eight months. Their children were Solomon, born Jan. 6, 1772; Faith, Sept. 29, 1774; and William T., March 2, 1779.

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History of New London county, Connecticut : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 119

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1317

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1317