USA > Connecticut > New London County > Norwich > History of Norwich, Connecticut: from its possession by the Indians, to the year 1866 > Part 42
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424
HISTORY OF NORWICH.
Capt. Jared Tracy served as a commissary during the siege of Boston, and subsequently fought the enemy upon the sea. After the war he went into the West India trade, and died at Demarara in 1790. William G. Tracy, an early and prominent settler at Whitestown, New York, was his son.
Capt. Simeon Huntington commanded a company in Col. Huntington's regiment, and served through the first two campaigns of the war. He was a man of bold, adventurous spirit, and had taken a conspicuous part in resistance to the stamp act. He died in 1817, aged 77.
Capt. Elisha Prior, of Norwich, was in the garrison at Fort Griswold when it was stormed by the British, and received a severe wound. He died at Sag Harbor, Long Island, in 1817.
Lieut. Andrew Griswold, of Durkee's regiment, was wounded at the battle of Germantown by a ball in the knee, and made a cripple for life. He lay for ten montlis in the hospital at Reading, Penn., and was after- ward only able to perform light service in camp and fortress. But he still clung to the army, and when the war closed, was at West Point. He died at Norwich in 1827, at the age of 72.
Capt. Richard Lamb, a native of Leicester, Mass., served during most of the war in the Connecticut militia, and was stationed at Danbury, and at Fishkill, N. Y. He belonged to a company of artificers, and recruited for this company at Norwich in September, 1777. After the conclusion of the war, he came to Norwich, married the sister of Lieut. Andrew Griswold, and became a permanent inhabitant of the place. He died in 1810.
Capt. Andrew Lathrop commanded a company in 1776, and was on duty in New York.
The brothers Asa and Arunah Waterman took an active part in the war as soldiers, agents, and commissaries.
Captains Asa Kingsbury and Ebenezer Hartshorn, John Ellis and Joshua Barker, all of the West Farms, were in the service for longer or shorter periods.
Ebenezer and Simon Perkins, not brothers, but both of the Newent fam- ily, were Revolutionary captains.
Lieut. Nathaniel Kirtland, of Newent, was killed in battle Oct. 12, 1777.
425
HISTORY OF NORWICH.
Lieut. Charles Fanning has been already mentioned, but merits a more emphatic notice. He was an ensign of the 4th Connecticut battalion in 1776, was often referred to as one of the town's quota during the war, and is on the roll of continental officers that served till the army was dis- banded.
It would be a pleasing task to register the names and memorials of all those old soldiers and patriots of Norwich to whom later generations are so much indebted; but after the most diligent gleaning, only a few indi- viduals can be named. The town covered a large area. It furnished a throng of volunteers at the opening of the war, and its regular quota afterwards. But we have no muster-roll of the men, and respecting many of the officers nothing is recovered beyond a casual reference in the rela- tion of incidental matters, or the record of a death .*
The highest honor belongs to those who served during the whole war. The following have an undoubted claim to this distinction, as various pub- lic records and returns show that half-pay during life, and bounty lands, were awarded to them by the government on that account.
Rev. John Ellis, chaplain. Brig. Gen. Jedidiah Huntington. Lieut. Col. Ebenezer Huntington. Major Benjamin Throop.
Lieut. Charles Fanning.
James Hyde.
Andrew Griswold.
Silas Goodell.
66 Jacob Kingsbury.t
Preston was so near to Norwich, and its military companies were so often united with those of the latter, that the names of its prominent offi- cers slide easily into our history. Colonels John Tyler and Samuel Mott, Majors Nathan Peters, Jeremiah Halsey and Edward Mott, Capts. Sam- uel Capron and Jacob Meech, were some of the patriots and soldiers from that town who breasted the first waters of the Revolution, and were often afterwards in the field during the war.
Major Peters enlisted as an ensign in the company of Capt. Edward Mott, immediately after the battle of Lexington, and soon rose to the rank of captain. In 1777 he was appointed brigade-major in the Rhode Island campaign under General Tyler, and performed several other tours of detached service during the war.
* One of the last lingering soldiers of the old war, in the town plot, was Joshua Yeomans, who died Aug. 8, 1835, aged 83.
t Saffel's Records of Rev. War.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
Happening to be at home on furlough in September, 1781, when the British made a deseent upon New London, with characteristic ardor he rushed to the scene of action, and was the first person who entered Groton Fort after it had been deserted and a train laid for its destruction by the British troops. Hovering in the vicinity, he scarcely waited for them to leave the premises before he cautiously entered the fort, and with water from the pump extinguished the train which had been laid to cause an explosion of the magazine. In five minutes more the whole would have been a heap of ruins, under which the dead and dying would have been buried.
Major Peters died in 1824, aged 79.
Dr. Philip Turner of Norwich merits an honorable notice, as a surgeon of the Revolutionary period. He entered the Provincial army in 1758, when only twenty years of age, as an assistant surgeon, and served upon the northern frontier, against the French. He lost none of his patriotic ardor in after life, but offered his services to his country in 1775, and was with the army at Roxbury and in the arduous campaigns in New York and Pennsylvania. As a hospital surgeon, no man in the country stood before him. Gen. Jedidiah Huntington said of him :
"Doctor Turner is blessed with a natural insight into wounds and a dexterity in treating them peculiar to himself."
He retired from the service in 1778, returning to his former miscella- neous duties as a druggist, physician and surgeon. His skill as a surgical operator was so well understood that he was often summoned to manage critical eases, not only from points far back in the country, but from New York and Philadelphia.
In the year 1800 he removed to New York, where he had charge of the government hospitals, and there died in 1815.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
INOCULATION. DIVISION OF THE TOWN. REVIEW OF WEST FARMS, PAUTI- PAUG, NEW CONCORD, NEWENT, HANOVER, AND LONG SOCIETIES.
THE eight societies into which the area of Norwich was divided, in the main drew well together, being usually harmonious in opinion on all the great questions of morality, liberty, and the public good. The violent disputes which at various periods have agitated the town, although some- times sectional, have more frequently resulted from clashing interests in regard to property, privilege, and partizanship.
In 1760, a conflict was begun with respect to inoculation for the small pox, which came very near being interminable. Individuals had been agitating the question for many years, and it was now proposed to the town in this form, viz .: Will the town approve of Dr. Elisha Lord's pro- ceeding to inoculate for the small pox, under any regulations whatever ? The vote was in the negative. The subject was resumed again and again, with the same result. The popular feeling was excited almost to violence whenever the faculty brought up the question.
In 1773, Dr. Philip Turner and Dr. Jonathan Loomis opened a hos- pital for inoculation on an island in the Sound, off Stonington, but the inhabitants on the main-land strenuously opposing the system, and the hos- tility deepening, they were obliged to relinquish even this island project. In August, 1774, Dr. Loomis was arrested and committed to prison on the charge of having communicated the infection of small pox by inocula- tion to two persons in Stonington. He escaped from his cell after a few days confinement, and the Norwich jail-keeper, Sims Edgerton, advertised him and offered a reward for his apprehension, as would have been done in the case of a notorious criminal.
Dr. Elisha Tracy also, though well known in this part of the colony, for an honorable and skillful physician, was presented by the grand-jury as guilty of a cognizable offence in communicating the small pox to certain individuals by inoculation, and held to answer for the same before the county court in a bond of £60. These facts suffice to show the ignorance, prejudice and fierce excitement with which the great discovery of Jenner was greeted in this district.
428
HISTORY OF NORWICH.
Early in 1787, Drs. Elihu Marvin and Philemon Tracy made an effort to obtain permission to open a hospital somewhere in the purlieus of the town, to be under the control of the selectmen, but this was negatived in the ratio of two to one. A second effort was made the same year, with a result overwhelming in discouragement,-eight against them to one in their favor.
These energetic physicians, though foiled in their application to the town authorities, persevered in their great object. They secured a beau- tiful and retired situation on the bank of the river, in that part of the Mohegan reservation known as Massapeag, and another on the Adgate farm, both in the town of Montville, and at length brought their theory into successful practice: Jeremiah Rogers and David H. Jewett of Mont- ville being their associates.
The tide had begun to turn, and in 1792 a special town meeting was warned to consider the subject, under the expectation that a vote would be obtained to permit inoculation within the limits of the town. This hope was disappointed ; the opposition was vehement; a majority were in favor of the motion, but the law required two-thirds of the voices present, and it was lost,-yeas 56, nays 35. The conflict continued three years longer.
At a town meeting on the 8th of October, 1795, a full vote was given, granting liberty to Drs. Tracy and James W. Whiting to open a hospital for inoculation the following April, in such place and subject to such reg- ulations as the civil authority should deem proper. Accordingly, the next year, the house of John Allen, within a mile of the court-house, was occu- pied as a hospital, by permission of the selectmen, and after this there was no controversy on the subject.
Division of the Town.
The division of the town took place in 1786. This was accomplished in the most amicable manner, by mutual consultation and concurrence.
A town meeting was convened, and drafts of two memorials to the General Assembly were presented : one by Nathaniel Kingsbury, asking that the three parishes of West Farms, New Concord and Pautipaug might be made a distinct town; and the other by Joseph Perkins, that Newent, Hanover and a part of Long Society might be made a distinct town. Against the first only one vote was given, and against the other not a single voice was raised. The representatives of the town were directed to lay the two memorials before the Assembly, and to state the amicable manner in which the affair had been managed.
The General Committee appointed on the division consisted of four
429
HISTORY OF NORWICH.
persons, viz., Capt. Ebenezer Baldwin, Deacon Joseph Bushnell, Samuel Leffingwell, and Capt. Andrew Perkins. The repeated consultations of this committee with committees of the various societies, resulted in the . formation of four towns instead of three. First Society and Chelsea, to constitute the town of Norwich; Hanover and Newent, another town ; West and Eighth Societies, a third ; and New Concord a town by itself.
East Society was to be annexed to Preston,-the middle waters of the Thames, Shetucket and Quinebaug constituting the eastern boundary-line of Norwich.
These proceedings were readily sanctioned by the Legislature, and the three new towns incorporated at the May session the same year, under the names of Lisbon, Franklin, and Bozrah.
The old town continued to convene once a year, to settle accounts and adjust claims, until 1791, when they had their last meeting.
In 1861, the town of Sprague, comprising a part of Lisbon and Frank- lin, was incorporated, and as the western part of both Preston and Gris- wold originally belonged to Norwich, there are now five whole towns and parts of two others within the limits of the nine-miles-square.
The division of the town was undoubtedly a wise and salutary measure. But an historian who has hitherto considered the nine-miles-square as a beautiful whole, can not but sigh to see the integrity of his province de- stroyed, and may be allowed to linger awhile over those relinquished soci- eties which will henceforward have a distinct history of their own.
Second Society: West Farms, or Franklin.
The settlements in this society were almost coeval with those in the town-plot. Farms were here laid out to the first proprietors, and passed into the hands of their sons, who became actual residents. Hence the names of Lathrop, Hyde, Abel, Birchard, Tracy, Edgerton, Huntington, Waterman, are the earliest in Franklin.
But with the next generation new names are introduced. Armstrong, Hartshorn, Hazen, Johnson, Kingsbury, Ladd, Marshall, Metcalf, Rudd, and others, appear before 1700, or soon after that period. The enlarged population and thriving condition of this part of the township in a short time rendered a separate ecclesiastical organization both desirable and easy of accomplishment. A plea for it was presented to the town author- ities in 1710, but after conference on the subject it was then deferred. In 1716 we find this brief record of the division :
" The West-farmers are freely allowed to become a Society."
The church was organized Jan. 4, 1718, with eight members, viz.,
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
Henry Willes, David Hartshorn, Joseph Kingsbury, Sen., Joseph Kings- bury, Jr., Nathaniel Rudd, Thomas Hazen, Samuel Edgerton, and Samuel Ladd. Mr. Willes was ordained pastor of the church, Oct. 8th of the same year ; David Hartshorn and Joseph Kingsbury, Sen., were chosen deacons.
Before the ordination took place, a house of worship was erected on Meeting-house Hill, 40 feet by 35, and 18 feet between joints. The frame of the edifice grew upon the hill, but the interior paneling, with "the pul- pit, seats and canopee," were relics of the old church in the town-plot.
In 1721 this church was favored with a great revival, which raised the number of members to sixty-eight, the whole population of the society not then exceeding 400 persons. A halcyon period followed; but in 1745 the society became involved in a controversy, long and obstinate, which seems to have originated in a difference of opinion with respect to a new house of worship-where it should stand, how it should be built, and what should be its form and size.
The meeting-house was built, square and stately, on the site of the old one, but the troubled waters were not assuaged. A portion of the con- gregation withdrew, and in 1749 Mr. Willes was dismissed, after a min- istry of thirty-one years. He never settled elsewhere or changed his residence, but still continued to preach occasionally, and died in his old home, Sept. 9, 1758, aged 68 .*
His successor in office, Mr. John Ellis, a native of Cambridge, Mass., was ordained Sept. 6, 1753, in the face of a strong oppposition, not arising from personal dislike of the candidate, but a deep settled aversion to the ecclesiastical laws of the colony in regard to building meeting-houses and supporting ministers,-a dissent that led to a still further disruption of the society.
On the first organization of Col. Jedidiah Huntington's patriotic regi- ment in 1776, Mr. Ellis was appointed its chaplain, and with the consent of his people went immediately into the army. In 1779, having decided to remain in the field, he asked and obtained a dismission from his charge at home, and continued in the service as chaplain till peace was established and the army disbanded. His name is on the roll of those who were enti- tled to half-pay during life, as having served to the end of the war,t-a rare if not a solitary instance of a chaplain who continued on duty in camp and field through the seven years of conflict.
No church records are to be found of the ministry of Mr. Ellis,-an
* Mr. Willes was a native of Windham, and graduated at Yale in 1715. His wife was Martha, daughter of John Kirtland of Saybrook. She survived him, and died in 1773. They had nine children.
Saffel's Records of Rev. War, p. 418.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
interval occurring of thirty-three years in which there is neither registry of admissions, baptisms, marriages, or death.
In 1785, Mr. Ellis was installed over a church at Rehoboth, but at the end of ten years resigned his charge, and returned to Franklin, where he died Oct. 19, 1805, in the 79th year of his age .*
Rev. Samuel Nott, the third minister of West Farms, was ordained March 13, 1782. The church then consisted of 72 members : 35 males and 37 females. His pastorate was of seventy years duration, and he performed its duties almost to the end. In him a feeble and sickly youth was gradually hardened into executive health and drawn out into a com- fortable if not vigorous old age. This was in great part due to the life- sustaining energy of an ever-active but equable flow of the mental facul- ties, and a natural cheeriness of disposition.
Dr. Nott was born at Saybrook, Jan. 23, 1754, and died at Franklin, May 26, 1852, wanting four months of being 98. In a sermon preached on the 60th anniversary of his ordination, he stated that he had not dur- ing his pastorate been detained from his duties by indisposition but eleven Sabbaths, and five of these were in consequence of a slight injury upon his right hand.
" My hand and life (he says) were for some time in great danger. The Rev. Wil- liam Woodbridge, a classmate and very particular friend, preached for me four Sab- baths, and on the fifth lay dead in my house, being suddenly called to give an account of his stewardship."
The Rev. Mr. McEwen, in his funeral sermon on the death of Dr. Nott, said of him :
"Until his 94th year his venerable form was always seen among his assembled brethren, and in their discussions and services uuto that age he stood manfully in his lot."
The ministry of the first three pastors of Franklin extended over a period of 134 years, including two vacant intervals of three years each.
Rev. Samuel Nott of Franklin, and Rev. Eliphalet Nott, D. D., of Union College, Schenectady, were brothers, and sons of Stephen Nott of Saybrook, who was a descendant of John Nott, one of the first settlers of Wethersfield. Their mother was Deborah Selden of Lyme.
Rev. George J. Harrison was ordained colleague with Dr. Nott, March 13, 1849, and on Dr. Nott's death, became sole pastor. He was dismissed at his own request, in October, 1851. His successor, after a short inter- val, was Rev. Jared R. Avery.
The present pastor is Rev. Franklin C. Jones, a son of Rev. E. C. Jones of Southbury, Ct. He was ordained Feb. 5, 1863.
* " He has no memorial to tell future generations where his body lies." Nott's Half Century Sermon.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
The meeting-house erected in 1745 stood upon the same elevated site occupied by its predecessor, commanding an extensive prospect of wood- lands and cultivated farms. For a hundred years it crowned and beauti- fied the hill, its altar-fires never going out until a third house of worship was prepared to continue the sacred services at the same place.
A choice old picture is treasured in the memory of those who can recall to mind this ancient church and its surroundings as it appeared on the Sabbath in the days of the venerable Dr. Nott. Horses and vehicles of various sorts are assembled on the hill-top. Inside of the church all is sombre, plain and antique. The house is square, and the pews are square. There is an entrance in front and at either end, with aisles leading from each and crossing at the center. The pulpit is at the side. The pew- frames and gallery fronts resemble lace bobbins. The sound-board, bearing in large figures the date of 1745, the pulpit and pulpit-window are carved and painted in colors. The pulpit cushions are of gray velvet, with heavy black tassels, and when the wind comes in through the broken casements, they wave like a hearse pall. One must have seen it filled with its varied congregation, and surmounted with the thin and pallid face of its venerable pastor, and have heard his tremulous voice uttering the customary strains of exhortation and warning, in order to obtain the most striking impression of a country congregation of the genuine old Puritan stamp.
But ninety years is an extended date for the old wooden structures of America, and in 1836 this primitive church gave place to a third sacred edifice built on the same site. This also was abandoned and removed in 1863,-a fourth church, in the modern style of architecture, having been completed near by, in a less bleak position, somewhat lower upon the hill. It is a neat and graceful building, calculated for an audience of about 300 people, and furnished with the first church-bell ever sounded on that ancient hill. A parsonage was the same year ereeted on the site that had been occupied by three successive sanctuaries of the society.
Pautipaug, or Eighth Society.
The small company that broke away from the West Farms church between 1745 and 1750, formed a new organization, and in 1758 settled the Rev. Mr. Ives as their pastor. The society was not incorporated and legally accepted as a society until after the formation of the Seventh or Hanover Society, and therefore ranked as the Eighth, although a church upon the platform recognized by the government was established here earlier than at Hanover. These ecclesiastical societies were the districts, or legal subdivisions of towns in Connecticut, in its earlier days, when the
433
HISTORY OF NORWICH.
people were all of one sect. The existence of other denominations ren- ders them obsolete.
Mr. Ives removed to Munson, Mass. in 1770, and the history of the church sinks into oblivion. It does not appear that they had any other pastor, nor do we find any account of what became of the church or con- gregation.
The Separatists organized a church in this society in 1747, and Thomas Denison was ordained as its pastor. It became extinct in about twelve years.
In the early part of the present century, a free church was erected here by the voluntary contributions of individuals. Not only were the seats free, but the pulpit was open for all denominations of Christians to occupy. It was, however, generally improved by the Methodists. It is now dis- used, and the bell has been transferred to the Congregational church.
When the two societies of West Farms and Pautipaug were united to form a town, the proposition to give it the name of Franklin is believed to have originated with Jacob Kingsbury, Esq. This gentleman was Inspector-General in the army of the United States, and served his coun- try faithfully both in the army and navy for a period of forty years. He was a descendant of Deacon Joseph Kingsbury, one of the first pillars of the West Farms church. At the commencement of the Revolution, he repaired to Roxbury, and entered the army as a volunteer, being then only eighteen years of age. He continued in the service until the close of the second war with the British, in 1815. He was a member of the old society of the Cincinnati. His death took place at Franklin, in 1837; he was then eighty-one years of age. One of his descendants, Lieut. Charles E. Kingsbury, a youth of eighteen, died at Fort Mellon, in East Florida, eleven days before him. So near together fall the green tree and the dry.
Franklin was for a long period nearly stationary in its population,-or rather, gradually decreasing from the effects of emigration. It was de- voted to farming, and had no considerable village, and no manufacturing establishment except a woollen factory on Beaver Brook. The extent of the town was about five miles by four.
1810-1161.
POPULATION. 1840-1000. 1860-2358.
1830-1194. 1850- 895.
Between 1856 and 1860, the village of Baltic sprung up like magic in the eastern part of Franklin, and has expanded into the flourishing town of Sprague. This new organization took off the north-eastern part of Franklin, assumed one-half of the town debt, and the charge of all the
28
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
poor, save one. A census was taken of the town after the separation, which gave the following result : 763 inhabitants, 178 electors, and 157 families.
New Concord, or Fourth Society.
The fourth ecclesiastical society was recognized by the Legislature in 1733. Permission had been given to the planters to form a parish by themselves in 1715, but being unable to support a minister, they were not regularly organized until eighteen years afterward, when they took the name of New-Concord, and were released from all obligation to support the ministry of the First Society, on condition of maintaining a gospel minister at least six months in the year.
The northern part of the present town,-that part which lies in the bend of the Yantie,-was included in the West Farms parish, and the bounds between the two societies were to be : the river, the brook that runs out of it, the Cranberry Pond, the Cranberry Pond brook, the great swamp, the dark swamp, and the miry swamp. It might be difficult at the present day to run the line from these data.
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