USA > Connecticut > New London County > Norwich > History of Norwich, Connecticut: from its possession by the Indians, to the year 1866 > Part 50
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Capt. Z. P. Burnham was a ship-master of many years experience, beginning with 1790. He had retired from the sea to mercantile pur- suits, but was persuaded to make one more voyage, and left the coast, bound for Teneriffe, March 10, 1810, after which no tidings of vessel or crew were ever received .* His fate seemed a duplicate of that of his uncle, whose name he bore,-Capt. Zebulon Perkins having perished before the Revolutionary war, in a similar way.
The same darkness rests upon the fate of Capt. Elisha Leffingwell. He left New London for the Gulf of Mexico in October, 1825, and is supposed to have foundered at sea. He was 47 years of age. His eldest son perished with him, in his 15th year.
* Capt. Burnham was about 44 years of age. His relict, the oldest daughter of Elisha Hyde, Esq., second Mayor of the City, born Oct. 11, 1776, is still living, and resides with her son, Elisha Hyde Burnham, at Newstead, N. Y. She has been 65 years a widow.
CHAPTER XL.
EMIGRATION.
WE have already adverted to the emigration from New London county to Nova Scotia. A fair proportion of these settlers went from Norwich, but no list of names or families has been obtained.
Several of the first proprietors of the townships of Canaan and Leba- non in New Hampshire were from Norwich and its neighborhood. Leb- anon was surveyed in 1761, by a party of seven or eight men who spent the winter there in a temporary hut reared in the wilderness, laying out farms and clearing the way for regular habitations. Lands in this north- ern province were at first purchased on speculation. Andrew Perkins, among others, obtained the title to large tracts in Canaan, Hanover, and Cardigan. These proprietors sold out in smaller sections or farms to actual settlers. Chapman, Harris, Hyde, Lathrop, Post, Tracy, and other names indigenous to the Nine-miles-square, were transplanted to parts of New Hampshire and Vermont at various periods between 1760 and 1800.
Norwich in Vermont owes its name to the retrospective tenderness of some of these emigrants for their former home. Capt. Jedidiah Hyde gave name to Hyde Park in Vermont.
Elisha Tracy, about the year 1790, was largely interested in the pur- chase and sale of lands in the neighborhood of Chelsea, Vt. Several families from Norwich removed thither, and probably gave the name of Chelsea to the place.
Norwich in Massachusetts, settled a few years before the Revolution, also testifies by its name to the original home of some of its most conspic- uous founders. The first Congregational minister was Rev. Stephen Tracy, a native of our Norwich. John Kirtland, a useful and influential member of the young community, went from Newent society.
The Wyoming valley of Pennsylvania collected a quota of its early inhabitants from Norwich. This fine tract of land, twenty miles in length and three in breadth, with the noble Susquehanna winding through it was in ancient times the favorite seat of the Delaware tribe of Indians. Con- necticut claimed the jurisdiction, as it lay within the bounds of her orig-
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inal charter, and the natives having become few and scattered, two com- panies were formed for the purchase, exploration and settlement of the country.
The Susquehanna Company, which was organized at Windham in 1753,* consisted of several hundred subscribers. This Company made the Wyoming purchase of the Six Nations, at a council held at Albany in 1754. The Delaware Company purchased a tract east of this, extending to the Delaware river.
The first settlements at Wyoming were broken up and a part of the emigrants slaughtered by the Pennamites, or settlers under the claim of Pennsylvania. It is not known that any of these first adventurers were from Norwich.
In 1768, five townships were laid out, and each granted to forty persons who engaged "to man their rights," that is, make actual settlements upon them. These were afterwards named Wilkesbarre, Hanover, Kingston, (at first called Forty-town,) Plymouth, and Pittston, comprising the heart of the valley. To settle these towns, a large emigration went from Con- necticut. Among the leading men were Zebulon Butler from Lyme, Na- than Denison from Stonington, and John Durkee from Norwich,-each accompanied by a party gathered from his neighborhood.
These measures, so far as Norwich was interested, were the result of individual enterprise. The only allusion to the western lands, on the town records, is the following :
Sept. 12, 1769. Voted to apply for a grant of 20 miles square of the Colony lands lying west of, and adjoining to, the Susquehannah Purchase with ample right to pur- chase the native right to said lands .- Samuel Huntington to act as agent.
The pioneers to these western wilds encountered great obstacles, and were so repeatedly broken up, or harrassed by the Pennamites, that a few were discouraged and returned to their old homes, but the greater part remained firm at their posts, and at length obtained quiet possession of the country.
The several Connecticut colonies thus established at Wyoming, were organized March 2, 1770, into one town, or district, called Westmoreland, and attached to Litchfield county. It remained for eight or nine years under the jurisdiction of Connecticut ; deriving its laws from the colony, and sending representatives to its assembly. Before 1775, it contained 2,000 inhabitants.
On the monument in Wyoming, erected in memory of the victims of Indian and tory cruelty in the fatal attack of July 3, 1778, the names of Durkee, Ransom, Waterman, Avery, Crocker, Hammond, Marshall,
* Miner's History of Wyoming.
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Palmer, Reynolds, and others, indicate their origin, and remind us of our ancient towns-people .*
The original proprietors of Warwick and Bedford in Pennsylvania were from Norwich. The former of these towns was surveyed by Zachariah Lathrop in 1773.
The committee of the first and second Delaware purchases were Eben- ezer Baldwin, Jabez Fitch, Joseph Griswold, Isaac Tracy, Elisha Tracy, Nehemiah Waterman, and Dudley Woodbridge, all of Norwich. Azariah Lathrop was a large proprietor of the township of Huntington, in the first Delaware purchase.
The Wyoming settlements were devastated and almost destroyed dur- ing the Revolutionary war, and remained for a long period in a disturbed and hazardous condition. Various companies and different races of men struggled for several years with one another and with the wolves, pan- thers, and poisonous serpents, for the possession of this fertile valley.
From 1795 to 1800, there existed in Connecticut a mania for emigra- tion. The reports of explorers and the letters written home by pioneers, while they spoke of innumerable hardships and privations, only increased the thirst for adventure. Yet emigration at this period was a serious undertaking, and friend bade adieu to friend with almost as much solem- nity as at the gates of another world. To say of one, "He has removed to the Susquehannah country,"-"Started for Muskingum,"-"Gone to the Genesees,"-were vague and mysterious announcements, almost equiv- alent to a departure for another planet. But still the romance of the en- terprise threw a veil over its discomforts.
Elisha Hyde and Elisha Tracy were largely interested in the Susque- hannah purchase, and made several visits to the country for the sale and survey of lands. Andrew Tracy, secretary of the Delaware Company, sold his farm and his mills and dwelling-house on Bean Hill, and removed in 1798. Other emigrants to Luzerne, of that early period, were Colonel Eleazar Blackman and Jolın Robinson of Lebanon, Jabez Hyde of Frank- lin, and Andrew Beaumont of Bozrahı.
A considerable company went with Col. Ezekiel Hyde in 1799, and established themselves at Rindan on the Wyalusing. Enoch Reynolds opened the first assortment of goods at that place. He was afterward an officer of the Treasury Department at Washington. Lathrops, Birchards and other Norwich families settled upon the Wyalusing and at Ruby.
Capt. Peleg Tracy and his brother Leonard, and Capt. Joseph Chap- man, a revolutionary patriot and ship-master, were men of note and influ- ence among the emigrants.
Even the women that belonged to these parties were sustained above fear and discouragement by a spirit of chivalric determination. Lydia
* Peck's Wyoming, p. 385.
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Chapman, a daughter of Capt. Joseph, went out in the year 1800, with her younger brothers, to join her father. She was the only female in a considerable party of emigrants, and was sixteen days on the journey, in the variable, damp, restless atmosphere of a February without snow. Not a murmur escaped her, and her noble patience and cheerful hope animated and sustained her companions. She afterwards married a Norwich emi- grant, G. W. Trott, a physician of Wilkesbarre .* Her brothers, Isaac A. and Edward Chapman, were men of more than common talent. Ed- ward, though he died young, had exhibited proofs of poetical genius. He is the author of the well-known song,-
" Columbia's shores are wild and wide."
From this brief survey of the Wyoming emigrants the name of Charles Miner must not be omitted. Born under the shadow of Meeting-house Hill, Feb. 1, 1780; the son of a revolutionary soldier, educated at the Lathrop school on the Plain; social in disposition, with a vigorous, inquir- ing mind, he carried with him to Wyoming and ever retained a vivid im- pression of what Norwich was at the beginning of the century.t
He learned the printer's trade with Col. Samuel Green in the Gazette office at New London, and after his settlement in Pennsylvania, united with his brother Asher, who had preceded him in emigrating to the Wy- oming valley, in publishing the "Lucerne County Federalist." This paper, which they established in Wilkesbarre in 1801, was continued for thirteen years. Mr. Chas. Miner was afterward editor of "The Gleaner," and still later of the "Village Record," published at Westchester. The Gleaner was enriched with a series of discursive essays, "From the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe," which came from Mr. Miner's pen. He is also the author of an interesting History of Wyoming, published at Phil- adelphia in 1845, and was a member of Congress from Westchester dis- trict from 1825 to 1829.
Several parts of Ohio, even before 1790, were sprinkled over with names familiar to this neighborhood, viz., Adgate, Armstrong, Hartshorn, Kinsman, Kingsbury, Leffingwell, Perkins, Tracy. Marietta in her be- ginning obtained some of her most efficient settlers from Norwich. Dud-
* The wife of the Hon. G. W. Woodward is their danghter and only child.
t See Letter of Charles Miner in Appendix to Norwich Jubilee, for a graphic sketch of Norwich up-town. Mr. Miner visited Norwich in 1839, with his son. The old dwell- ing-house in which he had been reared was gone, but he went up the hill on the slope of which it had stood, saying he must look for the Brown Thrasher's nest that he left there.
# While this work has been going through the press, his death has been announced. " Hon. Charles Miner died at Wilkesbarre, Oct. 26th, 1865, in the 86th year of his age."
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ley Woodbridge went thither in 1788, and though afterward returning for a season, removed with his family in 1794 .* Elijah Backus was another early inhabitant of note and influence, who went from Norwich.
The beautiful town of Norwich in Chenango county, N. Y., is another place to which our Norwich between the rivers stood sponsor. Preston in the same county joins Norwich, and was originally a part of it, acting over again the old neighborhood of our Norwich and Preston. Oxford, also in Chenango county, derived some of its founders from the same fountain-head. Dr. Benjamin Butler in the year 1800 advertised twenty farms for sale within two or three miles of Oxford court-house.
In May, 1798, a vessel sailed from Stonington for Albany, with families gathered from neighboring towns, that were on the way to found new homes in the Unadilla region.
The pleasure and convenience of keeping up an intercourse between these emigrants to the West and the friends and possessions left behind, led to the inauguration of a peculiar species of vehicle, viz .:
HARTSHORN'S STAGE-WAGON.
This was a ponderous house-like machine on wheels, drawn by six horses, which made six or eight regular trips per year to Chemung, Ger- man Flats, &c., carrying passengers, letters, and freight. Its arrival at Franklin and Norwich was hailed with enthusiasm, as it was sure to bring intelligence from distant friends. The letters sent home were filled with interesting narratives of hardships endured and dangers encountered, with many a cheering episode relating to jovial parties and rural pas- times .¡
The Western Reserve, called also New Connecticut, was a territory , belonging to the State of Connecticut, which lay on Lake Erie, west of Pennsylvania. It contained three millions of acres. The Fire-Lands, comprising the western portion of 500,000 acres, had been granted by the State to those towns in Connecticut which suffered from the torch of the enemy during the Revolutionary war. In 1786 the General Assembly passed an act to survey and dispose of the remainder of the territory. Hon. Benjamin Huntington of Norwich was one of the three commission-
* He died at Marietta, in 1823, at the age of 76. His children were all natives of Norwich. Dudley, the oldest son, died at Marietta in 1853. The second son, Hon. Wm. Woodbridge of Detroit, was Governor of Michigan in 1839, and U. S. Senator from 1841 to 1847.
i The Norwich Packet published an account of a terrific combat between four men and a bear, which took place June 6th, 1797, at Norwich, the 16th township on the Una- dilla river. The four men were Doctor Dan Foote, Enoch Marvin and his son, and a hired man. Three of them were badly wounded, but the animal was finally conquered, and weighed when dressed, 260 lbs.
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ers appointed for this business. In 1795, it was sold to a Land Company organized for this object, and under their management the whole three millions of acres, then an almost unbroken wilderness, was surveyed and distributed into townships and farms, and offered to settlers on easy terms. This territory now forms a tier of counties in the northern part of Ohio. The settlement commenced in 1796.
General Joseph Williams of Norwich was a prominent member of this Land Company. Daniel L. Coit, another of the original purchasers, devoted time, labor, means and influence to promote the settlement of the country, and made repeated visits thither, undismayed by the long and wearisome journey. Among the new towns founded, Williamsfield and Coitsville perpetuate the names of these patrons.
Wheeler W. Williams, who went from Norwich, built in 1799, with his partner, Major Wyatt, the first grist-mill and saw-mill in the Western Reserve. A greater benefit could scarcely have been conferred upon this new country at that time. The towns of Norwich, Huntington, Kinsman and Kirtland, in this range of territory, indicate by their names the origin of some of their first settlers. Col. Simon Perkins of Lisbon, a Revolu- tionary officer, removed with his family to Warren, Ohio.
The IIon. Samuel Huntington, one of the most distinguished of these emigrants to the Western Reserve, left Norwich with his family in May, 1801, and settled first at Cleveland, but afterwards at Painesville, where his children and descendants still reside. The new country found in him a useful and efficient magistrate. He was Colonel of the militia, Judge of the Supreme Court, and Governor of the State from 1808 to 1810. He held also a great variety of other offices, by which he promoted the public welfare, and merits the honor of being reckoned among the found- ers of Ohio. He died at Painesville, June 8, 1817, aged 49.
The first settlements upon these wild lands were made by small bodies of emigrants, scattered at considerable distances from each other, some amid dense woods, and others near the Indian borders. Consequently they suffered much from the horrors of the wilderness, as well as for want of food and clothing. Wonderful were the accounts occasionally received concerning their hardships and adventures ; more thrilling even than the first experience of the early settlers at Wyoming .* Governor Hunting- ton, while riding through the woods, was attacked by a pack of wolves,
* The following incident was related in a letter sent home by a family that had removed to the banks of the Muskingum. Two young women who had newly arrived in the settlement, were out gathering berries. They had never heard the war-whoop, and a young man who was their companion proposed to amuse them with a sample. He had no sooner uttered the terrible cry, than to their great consternation it was an- swered by another whoop, prolonged and loud, from a distant hill, and a moment after- ward by still another from the depth of the forest. The affrighted party hastened back to the protection of their fort.
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from which he only escaped by the fleetness of his horse. A party of young people gathering berries near the Muskingum, suddenly alarmed by sounds of the war-whoop rising from the thickets near them, retreated in wild dismay to the protection of their fort. A cabin was buried by the snow, and three days elapsed before the family was extricated. A boy kidnapped by the Indians, had become almost a man before he was re- leased. The tomahawk and scalping-knife, savage beasts and deadly ser- pents, figured largely in these tales.
CHAPTER XLI.
MISCELLANIES. BEAN HILL. THE TOWN PLOT. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
AFTER the Revolutionary war, and onward into the next century, the Town-plot or First Society continued to be the center of influence and activity, resonant with the hum of business and the clamor of mechanical operations. Upon Bean Hill, Witter's and Hyde's taverns displayed their signs, and several flourishing stands of dry-goods and groceries, offered for sale by Daniel Rodman, Col. Rogers, Samuel Woodbridge, &e., kept the platform lively with shopping and social activity. Here also, in a bend of the Yantic, a saw-mill, grist-mill and oil-mill were grouped to- gether and known as Tracy's mills, but sold by the proprietor, Andrew Tracy, upon his removal to Pennsylvania in 1798, to Hyde & Hosmer. Capt. Joseph Hosmer, of this firm, died in 1805.
Samuel Woodbridge was afterward of the firm of Woodbridge & Snow, at the Landing. The old stand on Bean Hill, where he and his father-in- law, Col. Rogers, had traded, was advertised for sale several years later, with this brief recommendation,-Money has been made there, and can be again.
Aaron Cleveland, a man of wonderful versatility of talent, was another noted dweller upon the hill. He carried on the hat business, but at the same time wrote poems, essays, lectures and sermons upon all the prom- inent subjects of the day, social, political, and religious. His speeches in public and his private harangues, his exhortations at meetings and his stirring articles in the newspapers, were always thrown in to swell the current in favor of religious truth and human freedom.
The Hydes and Huntingtons of Bean Hill, with a sprinkling of Water- mans and Tracys, were sufficient of themselves to form a community. Capt. James Hyde, born in 1707, had a family of five sons and one daughi- ter. One of the sons was the Rev. Simeon Ilyde, who settled in the min- istry at Deerfield, N. J. The others, Ebenezer, James, Eliab, and Abial, with the daughter Abiah, who married Aaron Cleveland, occupied neigh- boring homesteads, and are all well remembered by many now on the stage of life. The father lived to be 87, with these four sons quietly flourishing around him,-blameless men, and excellent citizens. None of them emi- grated ; all lived into the present century, and all lie buried in Norwich.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
The four Huntington brothers, sons of Dea. Simon, were also dwellers upon the hill, or on neighboring farms, and have a similar history. Far different has it been with the children of these grave householders. As they grew up to manhood, they took wing and flew away to other boweries, and the descendants are scattered from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Erastus, the youngest of the Huntington brothers, had nine sons; six of these removed to Cincinnati.
The descendants of those energetic ship-masters, Jared and Frederick Tracy, in like manner, leaving Norwich in their youth, may be traced to many varied scenes of active business life : to Vermont, Utica, Whites- boro, Boston, New York, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Porto Rico.
Capt. Arunahı Waterman and his three sons, Thomas, Azariah, and Joseph, removed with their families, about the year 1801, to Johnson, Vermont.
Descendants of Ebenezer Thomas, (who came from Duxbury and set- tled in the town-plot about 1730,) may likewise be traced to far distant homes in the west and south .*
Before leaving this district, we would notice that Miron Winslow opened a retail store on Bean Hill in June, 1811. This was the Rev. Dr. Winslow, missionary for forty-five years in Ceylon and Madras, who resided in Norwich a few years before entering into the service of the American Board, and was here married to his first wife, Harriet W. La- throp, a native of the place, Jan. 11, 1819.
The town green, with its meeting-house, court-house, post-office, jail, flag-staff or liberty-tree, three taverns, and four or five stores, was the center where all the excitements of the town culminated. The principal traders were John Perit,t Gardner Carpenter, and Dudley Woodbridge .; The last-mentioned,-" next door east of the meeting-house,"-was suc- ceeded in 1793 by Carew & Huntington, the firm changing in 1800 to Joseph & C. P. Huntington. On or near the green were also two print- ing-offices, each with a book-shop and bindery annexed, and each issuing a weekly newspaper. One of these establishments (Hubbard's) was re-
* Edward Thomas, a grandson of Ebenezer, born at Norwich in 1793, has been for the last forty years a resident in Augusta, Ga.
t Mr. Perit came to Norwich in 1771, and here his two sons, John W. Perit, for many years a merchant of Philadelphia, engaged in the China trade, and Pelatiah Perit, late President of the New York Chamber of Commerce, were born. Mr. Perit removed to Philadelphia in 1790.
# Dudley and Samuel Woodbridge were sons of Dr. Dudley Woodbridge of Ston- ington. The two brothers settled in Norwich about 1770, and married into the families of Elijah Backns and Zabdiel Rogers. Their mother, Mrs. Sarah Woodbridge, died on Bean Hill in 1796. Dudley removed to Marietta, and there lied in 1823, aged 76. The children of both the brothers,-Dudley had six, and Samuel nine,-were born in Norwich.
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moved to Chelsea in 1798. Simon Carew had also a book-shop and bindery near the green.
Further east in the town-plot were the firms of Samuel Huntington, nephew of the Governor, who removed to Ohio in 1801; of Andrew & Zachariah Huntington, Avery & Tracy, Coit & Lathrop, Lathrop & Eells, Christopher Leffingwell & Son, (succeeded in 1801 by Joseph H. Strong,) Tracy & Coit ;* and near Chelsea Plain, Thomas Fanning. In short, retail stores and workshops dotted the whole way from Bean Hill to Chel- sea. Twenty trades are said to have been in thriving operation on the town street. Leffingwell's Row, built after 1790, originally comprised six or eight tenements, all occupied by mechanics. Harland's watch-factory was a noted establishment. Capt. Timothy Lester, an ingenious mechanic of this neighborhood, possessed a native bent for the mechanic arts, and was skillful in reducing principles to practical tests. He constructed the model of a new machine to be used in the hemp manufacture, which was patented and found to be of great use in its peculiar sphere .; In 1790, Dr. Joshua Lathrop commenced the cotton manufacture in a building near his store, setting in operation six jennies, six looms, and a carding-machine. To use the words of one who was himself a part of what he described,- "Norwich up-town was a bee-hive."}
Lathrop's tavern on the Green had an assembly-room where public fes- tivities were held, such as anniversaries, balls, and dinners.
Peck's tavern on the other side of the Green was overshadowed by a large elm tree, among whose central boughs an arbor was formed and seats arranged, to which, on public days, friendly groups resorted and had refreshments served,-a plank gallery being extended from a window of the house to the bower, as a means of access.
Brown's hotel was famous for good dinners, and was patronized by gentlemen boarders. Merchants from the West Indies came there at intervals, and were always ready for excursions and out-door amusements.§
* This firm began in 1780, and continued without change twenty-five years. The partners were Uriah Tracy and Joseph Coit. No descendants of cither of these men now remain. Mr. Coit was never married, and the only son of Mr. Tracy dicd in 1834 without posterity.
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