USA > Connecticut > New London County > Norwich > History of Norwich, Connecticut: from its possession by the Indians, to the year 1866 > Part 51
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f Capt. Lester died Aug. 20, 1810, aged 42.
# Charles Miner of Wilkesbarre.
§ Jesse Brown, in the early part of the Revolutionary war, was in the service of the State as an express agent and confidential messenger. Before the conclusion of the war he built his house on the Plain, next to that of Dudley Woodbridge, and occupied it for many years as a hotel. It is now the residence of Mr. Moses Pierce, but the building has been repeatedly varied and improved, till it retains but a slight resem- blance to the old hotel
Mr. Vernett, who married the daughter of Mr. Brown, introduced into the garden of this house, about the year 1809, a species of grape not before cultivated in this
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Many a gallant hunting-party with hounds and servants started from the town-plot in those days.
President Adams was accustomed to stop at Norwich on his journeys to and from the seat of government, and his arrival always drew forth some lively exhibition of respect. The Norwich Packet informs us that on Wednesday evening, Aug. 1, 1797, John Adams and lady arrived in town. "The matross company came out to welcome them in full uniform, and fired a federal salute of 16 guns. They proceeded the next day to Prov- idence, a large company on horseback attending them out of town."
Mr. Brown was also a stage contractor. The communication with Bos- ton was three times a week, the stage arriving on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Sunday, it came by way of Providence and New Lon- don, leaving the latter place at 8 o'clock A. M., and arriving at Norwich Green about noon,-the stage-horn often sounding just as the audience issued from the church after morning service. This indicates a phase of public opinion different from that of 1720, when the Rogerenes were arrested for traveling on the Sabbath .*
Several merchants in the town-plot were at this period actively engaged in the purchase of horses, cattle, and country produce. Droves of horses and mules, and all the bustle of loaded teams and lowing herds, trampling out the grass and blocking up the ways, were spectacles of frequent occur- rence in those streets, which for the last half-century have been distin- guished only for rural beauty and quiet comfort.
The town-plot was not only the center of business, but also of fashion and gaiety. Bean Hill had its grand society. Lord Bellasize, an English nobleman, rusticated for a season on the hill, and though mingling but little with the inhabitants, contributed to the spectacles of the town by driving about in a handsome chariot with black servants in livery, and rousing the country echoes by fox-hunting.
Of the causes which led this nobleman into temporary seclusion in America, his neighbors were ignorant. An advertisement in the Norwich Packet gives us a memento of his residence here.
region. It was propagated from this vine into other gardens, was highly prized, and popularly called the Vernett grape. It is not known where Mr. Vernett obtained it, but it is supposed to be identieal with the Isabella. The original vine planted by Mr. Vernett still flourishes where it was set, and bears well, though upwards of fifty years old.
Mr. Brown removed with the Vernett family to Wilkesbarre, Penn., where he died in January, 1816, aged 63.
* The desecration was not however allowed without protest. In June, 1799, Joshua Lathrop and others sent a memorial to the Legislature, asking for a prohibitory aet against the running of the stages on the Sabbath ; but the committee to whom the petition was referred, reported that the existing laws, if duly executed, were sufficient to remedy the evil.
33
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Ran away from the subscriber a negro servant named Jean Lonis. Whoever will take np said Negro and return him to his master shall have one cent reward, but no charges paid. All persons are forbid trusting him on account of the subscriber.
BELASIZE.
Norwich, June 30, 1798.
These sources of excitement and interest, with the popularity of the schools, the residence of the governor, the frequent visits of public func- tionaries, and the prevalence of social dinners and tea-parties, made Bean Hill, the Meeting-House Green, and Round the Square, the brilliant part of the town .*
It is remarkable that so much gaiety, excitement and social enjoyment should have existed in conjunction with early hours, industrious habits, moderate expenditure, and strict propriety of manners. The noon-bell and the evening-bell still retained their authority. Twelve o'clock sum- moned families to the dinner-table, and nine o'clock sent them to repose.
Samuel Trumbull established a circulating library about the year 1793, which was gradually increased to 420 volumes, comprising the popular reading of the day, plays, novels, travels, essays, histories, sermons. Mr. Trumbull removed subsequently to Stonington Point, where, in Septem- ber, 1798, he issued the first number of a weekly newspaper called "A Journal of the Times."
The success of his library led the way to a collection of more solid works. In 1796, a committee of the citizens of the town-plot organized a Library Association. A subscription was taken up, and 250 volumes selected from the choicest stores of English literature, were purchased for a beginning.
This library continued in operation about forty years, and though never much enlarged beyond the original stock, circulated thoroughly among the steady-habited residents of the old part of the town, contributing to the intellectual culture of the young and the refreshment of more mature minds.
In 1797, Jolin and Consider Sterry were book-sellers and book-binders. These men were brothers, both of marked intellect and good executive capacity, the one devoting his leisure moments to the duties of a Baptist elder, and the other to the improvement of the method of taking lunar observations. They soon added to their establishment a marble paper manufactory and the publication of a newspaper, viz., "The True Repub- lican," first issued in 1804.
Norwich was at this time favored in her physicians. Dr. Jonathan Marsh, who died in 1798, was not only a successful bone-setter, but skill-
* Advertisement in the Norwich Packet, 1791 :
" The Ladies and Gentlemen of Norwich are informed that the Theatre will be opened at the Court House this evening with the tragedy of Donglas."
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ful in other cases of surgery, and according to cotemporary authority, "ever ready to exercise his skill for the relief of the distressed and the destitute."
Doctors Philip Turner and Philemon Tracy were men of high profes- sional merit, the one more particularly valued in cases of surgery, and the other in those of disease. They had generally some young student under their instruction, visiting and practising with them. Dr. John Turner was a worthy pupil and successor of his father. Another son, William Pitt Turner, also a surgeon by profession, was one of those sportive and orig- inal characters that give a lively zest to the social circle. The professional circular of Benjamin Butler, M. D., issued in 1787, announces that he had been "regularly educated by the learned Doctor Philip Turner in the sciences of Physick and Surgery."
The Turner house in Norwich stood against a back-ground of rocks, overshadowed with trees. The office near by was one of the noted local- ities of the place, regarded by children with a kind of shivering admira- tion, as containing a secret closet, where an anatomy known as old Jock's bones was kept, and winning the attention of travelers by its sign on which was painted a picture of the Good Samaritan raising up the wounded man while the Priest and Levite passed on with averted eyes .*
The principal students of Dr. Tracy were Asher and Abel Huntington,. brothers,-the former settling in Chenango county, N. Y., and the latter at East Hampton, L. I .; Benajah P. Bailey of Griswold ; Peter Allen, who emigrated to Olio; and Richard P. Tracy, the son of the practi -. tioner, now and for forty years past a physician in Norwich-town. The professional life of the three Tracys, father, son, and grandson, covers a period of one hundred and twenty-three years, all passed in the same parish : an instance of stability not common among a people so restless and excitable as the Americans.
The town was indebted for various public improvements to the influence and liberality of Dr. Joshua Lathrop and Capt. William Hubbard. They were particularly instrumental in opening streets and improving the high -. ways both of town and landing. The former gave at one time $300 to be laid out on the road around the north side of the central plot, while Capt. Hubbard caused the old pathway through the grove to be widened and cleared of rocks and incumbering trees.
Tradition depicts the wild beauty of this ancient lane in such vivid colors that we are almost led to regret the improvement. It was a wind- ing cart-path along the river-bank, overarched with lofty trees and crossed by a rapid stream, where the teamsters paused in a hot summer's day to
* At the bi-centennial gathering in 1859, this old sign was exhibited, and also a powder-horn engraved with figures of beasts and birds and bearing this inscription :
" Doct. Philip Turner. His horn. Fort Edward 1758."
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
refresh themselves and their cattle in the shade. The young people were shy of this dark lane in the evening. Yet evenings there, at the proper season, were not without their entertainments : whippoorwills sang in the trees, and wherever a spot of open meadow appeared, the whole air was in a glow with the sparkle of fire-flies.
A considerable lustre was thrown upon the town-plot by its being the residence of the Hon. Samuel Huntington, Governor of the State. He was not a native of the town, but had early settled in the place as an attorney. His wife was a daughter of the Rev. Ebenezer Devotion, of Windham : a lady without any pretensions to style or fashion, but amiable and discreet. It was long remembered that in a white short gown, stuff petticoat, a clean muslin apron, and nicely starched cap, she would take her knitting and go out by two o'clock in the afternoon to take tea uncere- moniously with some respectable neighbor, perhaps the butcher's or black- smith's wife. But this was early in her married life, before Mr. Hunt- ington was President of Congress, or Governor of Connecticut. These offices made a higher style of housekeeping appropriate, and in later days the movements of Mrs. Huntington in leaving town or returning home became matters of publie notoriety, and she was saluted whenever she appeared in public, with ceremonious courtesy .* After the Revolution, the Governor built a new house, elegant and spacious, and lived in quiet dignity.
This worthy couple had no children of their own, but children always gathered around them. Though he was wise and sedate, and she quiet and thrifty, yet lurking beneath a grave exterior, both had large hearts and that sunny benevolence of disposition that attracts the young, and delights in the interchange of favors with them, giving care and counsel, for cheer and fervid feeling.
Before the Revolutionary war, Mr. Huntington had generally some two or three young law-students with him ; his nephew, Nathaniel Hunting- ton, and the beautiful Betsey Devotion,t the belle of Windham, also
* From the Norwich Packet, Dec. 21, 1779 :
" On Wednesday last, set off from this place for the city of Philadelphia, the lady of Samuel Huntington, Esq., President of Congress. She was escorted out of town by a number of ladies and gentlemen of the first character."
t A younger sister of Mrs. Huntington, and not her niece, as stated in the former history of Norwich. The two young persons mentioned, died young. In a Life of Aaron Burr, (not Parton's,) Vol. I., a letter is quoted, written from Norwich by Jon- athan Bellamy, one of the young men who studied law with Mr. Huntington, in which the writer alludes to the void made in their pleasant circle by the death of Natty Hunt- ington. The Norwich Packet of Dec. 8, 1774, speaks of him also as a great loss to the community, and adds, " a great concourse of people attended his obsequies." He was in his 24th year. Elizabeth Devotion, Mrs. Huntington's sister, died March 8, 1775, aged 23.
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spent much of their time in his family ; the house therefore naturally became the center of attraction to the young and happy of that joyous neighborhood. '
After the social chat and merry game of the parlor had taken their turn, they would frequently repair to the kitchen, and dance away till the oak floor shone under their feet, and the pewter quivered upon the dres- sers. These pastimes, however, had little in them of the nature of a ball ; there were no expensive dresses, no collations, no late hours. They sel- dom lasted beyond nine o'clock. According to the good old custom of Norwich, the ringing of the bell at that hour broke up all meetings, dis- persed all parties, put an end to all discussions, and sent all visitors quietly to their homes and their beds.
Governor Huntington was born at Windham, July 3, 1731. His father, Nathaniel Huntington, was by trade both a farmer and a clothier. He gave a liberal education to three of his sons, who devoted themselves to the Christian ministry ; but Samuel, being designed for a mechanic, was apprenticed to a cooper, and fully served out his time.
Roger Wolcott, the chief-justice, Samuel Huntington, and Roger Sher- man, three of Connecticut's noblemen, all began life with tilling the soil, or working at some mechanical art.
Mr. Huntington's mind was naturally acute and investigating, and his thirst for mental improvement so great as to surmount all obstacles. From observation, from men, and from books, he was always collecting informa- tion, and he soon abandoned manual labor for study. He was self-educa- ted,-went to no college, attended no distinguished school, sat at the feet of no great master, but yet acquired a competent knowledge of law, bor- rowing the necessary books of Col. Jedidiah Elderkin, and was readily admitted to the bar. He settled in Norwich in 1760, and soon became useful and eminent in his profession. He frequently represented the town in the colonial assembly, was active in many ways as a citizen, agent for the town in several cases, and forward in promoting public improvements. He was appointed King's Attorney, and afterward Assistant Judge of the Superior Court. In 1775, he was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, and served as President of that honorable body during the ses- sions of 1779 and 1780. While in Congress, his seat on the benchi was kept vacant for him, and he resumed it in 1781. He held various other important offices, such as Chief Justice of the State and Lieutenant Gov- ernor, and in 1786 was elected Governor, and annually re-elected by the freemen, with singular unanimity, until his death, which took place at Norwich, Jan. 5, 1796.
He was honored with the degree of LL. D. both by Yale and Dart- mouth.
Mrs. Huntington died June 4, 1794. After the decease of the two
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interesting relatives before mentioned, they had adopted and educated two children of the Governor's brother, the Rev. Joseph Huntington of Cov- entry. These were Samuel and Fanny Huntington, who lived with their revered relatives as children with parents, affectionately and happily. They were present to soothe their last hours, to close their dying eyes, and to place their remains in the tomb.
The daughter married the Rev. E. D. Griffin, President of Williams- town College : the son removed to Ohio, and served that State in various important offices.
Governor Huntington preserved to the last those habits of simplicity with which he began life. In the published journal of the Marquis de Chastellux, he speaks of Mr. Huntington, who was then President of Congress, with marked respect. The Marquis was a Major-General in the French army that came to our assistance. While at Philadelphia, in December, 1780, he called upon Mr. Huntington, in company with the French ambassador, and observes, "We found him in his cabinet, lighted by a single candle. This simplicity reminded me of Fabricius and the Philopemens." At another time he dined with him, in company with several other French gentlemen of distinction, and adds : "Mrs. Hunting- ton, a good-looking, lusty woman, but not young, did the honors of the table, that is to say, helped every body, without saying a word." This silence must surely be attributed to ignorance of the language of the gay cavaliers, and not to any deficiency of good manners or conversational power.
Mr. Huntington was of the middle size, dignified in his manners, even to formality ; reserved in popular intercourse, but in the domestic circle pleasing and communicative ; his complexion swarthy, his eye vivid and penetrating. One who was long an inmate of his family, said : "I never heard a frivolous observation from him; his conversation ever turned to something of a practical nature ; he was moderate and circumspect in all his movements, and delivered his sentiments in few but weighty words."
He was eminently a religious man : as ready to officiate at a conference meeting, or to make a prayer and read the Scriptures when called upon in a public assembly, or to breathe counsel and consolation by the bedside of the dying, as to plead before a judge, or to preside in Congress.
This sketch can not be better concluded, than with the earnest wish breathed by a contemporary panegyrist,-"May Connecticut never want a man of equal worth to preside in her councils, guard her interests, and diffuse prosperity through her towns."
Elisha Hyde, Roger Griswold and Asa Spalding were at this time prominent men in the community, as attorneys and public officers. Nor- wich never had a trio of barristers more able and more varied in their
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
characteristics : Griswold, keen and impetuous ; Spalding, cool and plain- spoken even to bluntness ; and Hyde, witty, conciliating, and popular.
A considerable branch of the business of the day was the sale and pur- chase of public securities. They were in good demand, and coin was freely offered for them. These securities consisted of bounty lands, mil- itary rights, indents, continental certificates, loan-office certificates, final settlements, state notes, soldier notes, pay-table orders, and various other pledges that had supplied the place of money during the war.
Roger Griswold settled in Norwich when first admitted to the bar in 1783, and soon acquired distinction as an able advocate and vigilant pub- lic officer, quick and efficient in carrying out the laws, and rigid in exact- ing obedience. After his marriage, he purchased the dwelling-house on the Green, vacated by Dudley Woodbridge upon his removal to the West, and made it his residence until he left Norwich and returned to his native town, Lyme, which was in 1798 .*
It is an interesting fact that he came back to Norwich to die. He was elected Governor of Connecticut in May, 1811, and re elected the suc- ceeding year. For several years he had been afflicted with a disease of the heart, which at intervals caused him great suffering. It increased so rapidly, that in the summer of 1812, he was removed to Norwich, that lie might try the effect of a change of air, and at the same time have the benefit of advice from Dr. Tracy, in whose skill as a physician he had great confidence. But neither air nor medicine could do more for him than alleviate the paroxysms of his distress, and he died Oct. 25, 1812, aged 50.
Asa Spalding was born in Canterbury in 1757; graduated at Yale in 1779 ; studied law with Judge Adams of Litchfield, and settled in Nor- wich as an attorney in 1782. He was without patrimony or any special patronage, but by the force of native ability, sound judgment, and integ- rity, he acquired an extensive law practice, sustained various offices of trust and honor, and by diligence, accompanied with strict economy in his domestic affairs, amassed a handsome property. At the time of his deatlı in 1811, he was reckoned one of the richest men in the eastern part of Connecticut.
Yet it was then no easy matter to grow rich in the practice of the law. The price for managing a case before the common pleas varied only from six to thirty shillings, and before the superior court from six to fifty-four shillings.
* Gov. Griswold married, Oct. 21, 1788, Fanny, daughter of Col. Zabdiel Rogers. She survived him 51 years, and died at Blackhall, Lyme, Dec. 26, 1863, aged 96 years and 9 months.
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His brother, the late Judge Luther Spalding, about ten years the junior of Asa, settled at Norwich in the practice of the law, in 1797. A third brother, Dr. Rufus Spalding, a physician who had been for many years in practice at Nantucket, also removed to Norwich in 1812,* and the three brothers repose in the same burial-ground.
Dr. Joshua Lathrop died in 1807, at the age of 84. He was the last in Norwich of the ancient race of gentlemen that wore a white wig. This, with the three-cornered hat, the glittering buckles at his knees and in his shoes, the spotless ruffles in his bosom, and the gold-headed cane, made him an object of admiring wonder to young eyes from whose vision such a costume was passing away.
Mrs. Lathrop was a daughter of the Rev. Nathaniel Eells of Stoning- ton. She died July 7, 1833, in her 91st year. Original portraits of this couple, painted in 1774, when one was fifty and the other thirty years of age, are preserved by their descendants.
The partners and successors of Dr. Lathrop were his nephews and sons, and the nephew of his wife, Cushing Eells: the firm changing from Daniel & Joshua Lathrop, to Lathrop & Coit, Coit & Lathrop, Lathrop & Eells. Under this firm the business was transferred to the Landing.
Aaron Cleveland was born at East Haddam, Feb. 3, 1744, but spent all the central and most active part of his life in Norwich. It has been claimed for him that he was the first writer in Connecticut to call in ques- tion the lawfulness of slavery and to argue against it,-a distinction to which he seems to have been justly entitled. Several pointed articles on this subject, that appeared in the columns of the Norwich Packet, are supposed to have come from his pen. In 1775, he published a poem against slavery. In 1779, while a representative of the town, he intro- duced into the Legislature a bill for its abolition. He was probably sent to the Assembly for this very purpose, as the popular sentiment was then in favor of immediate emancipation.
Mr. Cleveland afterward became a Congregational minister, and was settled for a short time at Brampton, Vt., but was dismissed in 1803, and after that time never settled, but was occupied in supplying vacant pulpits. He died at New Haven, Sept. 21, 1815.
His first wife and two young children were interred at Norwich. His second wife was Elizabeth, relict of David Breed, and daughter of Jere- miah Clement.
His second son, Deacon William Cleveland, after a residence of some years in New London and New York, returned to Norwich, and was set
* After the death of Dr. Spalding in 1830, most of his family removed to the West. Rufus P. Spalding, M. C. from Cleveland, Ohio, is his son.
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apart to the office of deacon of the first Congregational Church, April 30, 1812. He was a man of social, amiable temperament, and fervent piety. He died at Black Rock, Aug. 18, 1837, at the residence of his son-in-law, Lewis F. Allen.
The Rev. Charles Cleveland, for many years the excellent city mission- ary of Boston, is another of the sons of Rev. A. P. Cleveland. He was born at Norwich, June 21, 1772, and though now (1865) 93 years of age, has health and energy sufficient to continue his walks of usefulness and visits of mercy.
One of the daughters of Mr. Cleveland married David L. Dodge, and a daughter of the second wife, the youngest of his thirteen children, mar- ried the Rev. Samuel H. Coxe, D. D.
William Hubbard, son of Daniel and Martha (Coit) Hubbard, was an inhabitant of Norwich for about twenty-five years, in business as a branch of the firm of Hubbards & Greene, Boston. He married Lydia, daugli- ter of Joseph Coit of New London, which brought him into the relation- ship of nephew to Doctors Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, the mother of his wife being their sister. An uncommon mortality seems to have blighted his domestic relations. A youthful daughter died in 1770; his first wife in 1778; and soon after his return to Boston in 1788, his second wife was laid in the grave. His oldest son, William, died Sept. 10, 1789, aged 22, and a month later, the oldest son by the second wife, aged nine years. The death of these half-brothers was bewailed in various elegiac verses printed at the time. They were buried each by the side of his mother, one in Norwich and the other in Boston. Joseph, a third son, died May 25, 1790, and was also interred at Norwich in the family group. Before the close of the year, Dec. 28, 1790, Mr. Hubbard's oldest child, Lydia, the young wife of Thomas Lathrop, aged 25 years, was also laid in the grave.
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