USA > Connecticut > New London County > Norwich > History of Norwich, Connecticut, from its settlement in 1660, to January 1845 > Part 24
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* This incident gave rise to a little poem, by Brainerd, called " The Captain " Though but a fragmentary production, it is very graphic and highly finished.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
The rock formations in and around Norwich, are all primitive, consisting of gneiss, hornblende and gran- ite ; of inferior quality for building, and of little use except for walls, cellars and wells.
The valleys between the hills appear to form parts of an irregular alluvial plain. The late Daniel L. Coit Esq., a gentleman of intelligence and accurate observation, conjectured that this plain might have been at some distant period the bottom of a lake, which by the recession of the waters, or other violent cause, had been much changed in its aspect. This plain appears in an unbroken form between the town and landing, .. but it extends in an irregular and broken condition to Bean Hill, and it appears also on the west side of the Yantic, and on the south-west of the cove below the falls. It is distinguished by sand, loose gravel, and rounded small stones, entirely different in geological structure from the hills adjacent, and intimating a sec- ondary formation. No rocks similar to those which mark the hills, are found on the plains, and the termi- nation of the two regions is in some spots so abrupt, that Mr. Coit supposed some violent cause must have produced this effect, and that probably the bed of the Yantic, if not of the Shetucket, was once as elevated as the plain, and the lake received its waters. The - point of land, east of Mr. R. Hubbard's dwelling- house, seems to have been left by an eddy passing round the hill, and rushing into the basin below. It is worthy of note that the Great Plain, Sachem's Plain, and Chelsea Plain, are all on the same water level.
On the north side of Waweekus Hill, the descent is gradual, and rocks are scattered along the declivity. This primitive formation continues to the north, the rocks being occasionally found in the lots, even after the ground has become level, until it meets the allu-
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
vion in the third lot in the rear of the residence of Gen. William Williams. Beyond this there is not a rock to be found through the plain, and the earth a foot or two below the surface is composed of gravel and rounded stones.
The well at the dwelling-house of the late Rev. Mr. Mitchell, the first opened on the plain, was dug forty- two feet, and through the whole of this depth, the earth was composed of gravel and rounded stones, from the smallest size to those of one or two pounds weight, without a drop of water until they reached the depth of thirty-seven or thirty-eight fect, after which water was very abundant. The gravel was undoubt- edly too loose to contain water, which was not found until the alluvion was pierced through and the primi- tive formation reached, on which it rests. It is believed that similar appearances have been presented in digging all the other wells on the plain.
The scarcity of stone on the plains, formerly led to the cultivation of prim hedges, as being less expensive and more elegant than any other fence, and at one period many fields and gardens were surrounded with these beautiful hedges. Almost every homestead between the Arnold house, and the wharf bridge, was adorned with them, so that they were considered one of the peculiarities of the town. But from some causes, not well ascertained, there was a general failure of prim [Ligustrum vulgare, Lin :] throughout the coun- try, about the period of the revolutionary war, and it has since been comparatively a rare shrub. Popular opinion sportively attributes the decay to the fact that the Rogerene Quakers were whipped with prim withs ; and it was long maintained that the shrub could never again be made to flourish in the soil. It is not known that this deluded people endured any flagellation in the
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
town subsequent to that of 1726, and the hedges flourish- ed in all their beauty for forty years afterwards ; so that it is difficult to conceive how this idea orignated. How- ever that may be, some recent experiments show that this mysterious sympathy with Quakerism has become extinct, and Norwich may yet recover her ancient rep- utation in this line.
Few towns are better accommodated with gardens than Norwich, or receive greater returns for their culti- vation. The soil is suitable for the production of most kinds of fruit and vegetables. It is more moist on the sides of the hills than on the plains, and they bear the drought better, but are more backward. Home lots that are well attended, produce fine crops of grass. Fruit is abundant; though plumbs and cherries are often much injured by insects, and almost all fruit- bearing trees have suffered from their ravages. There is a small insect that deposites its eggs in punctures upon the young branches ; and when the maggot is hatched, it feeds upon the wood and eats its way out, leaving a swollen excrescence, which destroys the fer- tility of the branch. Such at least appears to be the process. But a still greater enemy to the garden, is the rose slug, which has vastly increased during the last half century, and has been very destructive both to fruits and shrubs.
Within a few years the vergaloo pear has very much degenerated, but the canse is not ascertained. The canker worm has not been very troublesome since the year 1794, at which time it was very injurious. In the month of June of that year, there was a remarkably cold and tedious storm, which seemed to drive them away for that season; for they were very numerous on the trees the day before the storm, and none to be found after it. The storm could have only operated in
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
hastening their departure for the season. Dr. Dwight supposes them to have received their death blow throughout this region, in the month of March, 1795, while in the miller state.
DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH.
Norwich consists of an assemblage of villages along the banks of the Yantic and Shetucket, with a broad extent of woods and barren heights, interspersed with farms moderately fertile, spreading like wings to the N. E. and S. W. The villages are six. The most northern is a small manufacturing village, called Yan- ticville, and consisting principally of families connect- ed with the large flannel and carpet factories under the agency of Erastus Williams Esq. There is one quite ancient house in this group, formerly owned by Eli- jah Backus Esq., and still the residence of the family.
Bean Hill, now called Westville, was the northern limit of the Town Plot ; many of the descendants of the first settlers reside here on the old homesteads ; Hydes, Backuses, Huntingtons, &c. There is a Meth- odist Church, a pottery and satinet factory in this part of the town.
The Town, a central section, locally so called, is principally built around an undivided square, occupied by the burying yard and some fine meadows. This was once the principal seat of business, but now forms a delightful residence for persons withdrawn from the active pursuits of life. The inhabitants have been from the first settlement, distinguished for sobriety, love of order, good sense and intelligence. The site on which it is built is very irregular and much broken, consisting of a narrow, picturesque valley, following
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
the windings of the Yantic. Here, upon the Plain, stands the First Society meeting-house; no other sector denom- ination have ever had a house for worship in this part of the town. The court-house, since the removal of the courts to the Landing, has been occupied for a school, the old jail was taken down, the post- office transferred to another location, the taverns shut up, and the peace and quiet of the "Happy Valley" now broods over this charming plain, once the seat of so much activity and business.
Between the Town Plot and the City, but included within the limits of the latter, is that beautiful part of Norwich called the Little Plain : the Mohegan Plain would be a more appropriate designation, since this spot appears to have been the favorite resort of the Mohegan Sachems-beloved and venerated by them above all others, and chosen for their last resting place, where removed from all inferior society, they might repose among their kindred in royal seclusion. The castern side of the plain is skirted by a rocky wood- land ridge ; the western is bordered by the upper part of the Falls Village. On the north-west, where it approaches the Yantic, and the low meadows called Noman's Acre, a rural cemetery has been recently laid ont. It was consecrated in July, 1844; the services being performed by a union of all denominations of Christians in town. The location is beautiful, and when " the young trees shall entwine their roots with the sacred dust,"' and overshadow the grassy mounds and sculptured monuments of the future dead, it will be an ornament to the city, and a hallowed place of resort to its inhabitants.
On this plain, and in its vicinity are many elegant private mansions-a small, but tasteful church, and the Indian burial ground shaded by a grove of trees,
L
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
between whose shafts rises the granite obelisk that commemorates the name of Uncas. The corner stone of this monument was laid by President Jackson in 1833. The obelisk was contributed by the ladies of Norwich, and the whole enterprise completed and com- memorated July 4, 1842.
It is not known for how long a period before Uncas, the Mohegans had brought their sachems to this place for interment, but it is generally supposed that at the time of the settlement, the graves covered a couple of acres, and that the whole plain was originally chosen for the royal cemetery. If the dust of the old Sachems could rise up bodily from their graves, said an aged man, I have no doubt but we should see them ascend- ing here and there, far towards the centre of the plain.
The Falls Village lies in a hollow bend of the Yan- tic, just where it rushes over the rocks through a wind- ing channel into the cove of the Thames. It is wholly of manufacturing growth, and with the exception of an ancient woollen factory and oil mill, and Mr. Elijah Lathrop's dwelling-house, has been entirely built since 1S22.
Chelsea, now Norwich City, is singularly romantic in its situation. Its very streets are declivities, and its buildings are in tiers one above another. It is built" just upon the point of land where the Shetucket meets the Thames; its lower streets have either been won from the water, or blasted out of the rock. The first view of it from the river below is very striking; it appears and disappears in the windings of the river, as if a drop curtain had shut it out from view. As you approach it by water at night, the lights from the houses high up the hill, seem to be suspended in the air. Chelsea has now seven churches.
Leaving the extreme point between the rivers and
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HISTORY OF NORWICHI.
tracing the Shetucket towards the east, we should have found, at the close of the last century and the begin- ning of this, a low miry place little better than a swamp, and considered by the citizens the least desira- ble of all their suburbs. This place was swept over every spring by the Shetucket, which deposited there all its ice, mud and rubbish. It was commonly called Swallow-all. The brook that runs through it bears that designation in the town records so long ago as almost to render it classic. Yet both the origin and the orthog- raphy of the name is doubtful. If derived, as some say, from the swallows, who used to make their holes in the high banks adjoining, it should be written Swal- low-Hall. But if, as is most probable, the name is derived from the situation as the receptacle of the She- tucket, the popular designation is correct.
This tract is now changed in almost every feature. The river is restrained by embankments within proper limits ; the brook has almost disappeared ; the low and marshy spots have been filled up; the rail-cars pass like flying caravans along the brink of the river ; two respectable churches have been built in the valley ; and almost every trace of the ancient Swallow-all is obliterated from the fertile gardens and pleasant man- sions of East Chelsea.
Pursning our course for about half a mile along the Shetucket, we come to Greeneville, the youngest of the Norwich group of villages, and owing its existence entirely to the Water Power Company.
This company was incorporated in 1829, for the pur- pose of preparing a certain portion of the waters of the Quinebaug and Shetucket, for use to manufacturing establishments. Their capital is $80.000.
They purchased four hundred and sixty acres of land, extending nearly three miles in length each side of the
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
Shetucket, in Norwich and Preston. They built a dam of solid and costly masonry, and dug a canal wider than the Erie, (forty-five feet wide and nine feet deep) and seven-eights of a mile in length. Four factories were very soon erected between the canal and the river, and leased out upon productive terms. Other mill seats have been sold and leased, but they have still on hand a large amount of water power unsold, sufficient, it is supposed, to carry in the whole sixty thousand spindles. The water is abundant even in the dryest seasons, and the company claim that there is none to be found in the union, taking the advantageous position and other facilities into consideration, which is worth intrinsically more per thousand spindles than this. The village of Greeneville was laid out by this company, and the land sold and leased on advantage- ous terms.
Greeneville is noted for its excellent common schools ; and where education and mental improvement receive a proper degree of attention, the chief objection to large manufacturing establishments is obviated. The popu- lation, consisting perhaps of fifteen hundred persons, comprises but one school district. They have two neat and convenient school-houses, built upon a modern plan, and the schools are kept without interruption from year to year, and funds are annually provided sufficient to bring the means of instruction within the reach of each individual.
In the eastern part of Norwich, in a bend of the She- tucket, is a plain, which ever since the settlement of Norwich, has gone by the name of Sachem's Plain. It is so called in the first grants of land made in that quarter, and the traditions both of whites and Mohe- gans concur in saying, that here the Sachem Miantino-
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
moh was captured by Uncas, and to this place being brought back, here he was slain and buried.
On the 4th of July, 1841, a considerable concourse of people, young and old, principally from the village of Greeneville, celebrated by a festival, the erection of a monumental stone to the memory of the Narragan- sett chief. It is a block of granite, eight feet high, and about five feet square upon the base. It is placed as near to the spot where he was buried, as could be ascertained, and bears this inscription :
MIANTONIMOH 1843.
This monument was erected principally through the exertions of William C. Gilman Esq. It was conse- crated by prayer and libations of pure water from a neighboring spring, where perhaps the Sachem had often slacked his thirst, and cooled his heated brow, on his marches through the wilderness towards the seat of his rival, Uncas.
The prosperity of Norwich being based upon sub- stantial grounds, must necessarily be of an enduring character. A large tract of country finds it a conven- ient port through which to transact business with New York. Agencies are established for the sale of manu- factured goods of various kinds, and even of the raw material, and an extensive trade, wholesale and retail, is carried on in coal, lumber, groceries and dry goods. It is easy of access, midway on the great thoroughfare from New York to Boston. and business can be done here in a cheap, safe, and expeditious manner. Its own manufactures are varied and important, employ- ing a large number of minds and hands, and its rivers and streamlets afford an almost inexhaustible supply of
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
water power, by which they may be increased to any number and amount.
We may also enumerate among the sources of pros- perity, the excellent schools of Norwich, the pictur- esque beauty of its scenery, the affability, ardor and liberality of its inhabitants, and the readiness with which they enter into plans of improvement, and con- cur in all attempts to make the routine of life happy, and mend the manners as well as the heart. From year to year the inhabitants have a variety of temper- ance and Sabbath school festivals, agricultural shows, meetings of societies, and out-door parties. The beau- tiful plains of Norwich have been the scene of many of these innocent festivities. And in this connection, the name of one of the most liberal promoters of such scenes may be mentioned, Charles Rockwell Esq. ; a gentleman who has done much in various ways to ben- efit his native town, and whose countenance, encour- agement, and active aid are never withheld, when the cause of religion is to be advanced, the wants of the poor relieved, the minds of the ignorant enlightened, and the hearts of children made happy.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH.
STATISTICS OF MANUFACTURES.
The following Statistics of a few of the manufacturing establish- ments of Norwich, was obtained from the proprietors themselves. The list is far from being complete, and is in fact but the commence- inent of one ; but further statements were not obtained in time for this publication.
NAME.
KINDS OF GOODS. HANDS. AMOUNT ANN.
Shetucket Co.
Cotton (colored goods,) 200 about $175,000
Chelsea Man. Co.
Paper, (various kinds,) 100
260,000
R. & A. H. Hubbard,
Paper, 50 100,000
Culver & Mickle,
Paper, 10
30,000
WVm. H. Pease,
Paper, 9
25,000
Kennedy,
Cotton Mill, 50
75,000
Wm. H. Coit,
Carpets, 35 35,000
Wm. A. Buckingham,
Carpets,
40 for labor, 10,000
value, 45,000
Falls Mills,
Cotton, (colored goods), 150
100,000
N. H. Eddy & Co.
Satinet, 20
30,000
Norwich Foundry,
Foundry & machinery, 35
25,000
Kennedy & Tillinghast,
Cotton, . 65
75,000
Adams & Kennedy,
Twine,
20
30,000
J. W. Shepherd,
Sash and Blind, 20
30.000
Rogers & Baker,
Sash, Blind and Doors, 12 Bedsteads, 11
10,000
Yantic Man. Co.
Flannels,
110 wool, 150,000 11.s.
make 500,000 yals.
C. W. Rockwell's Mill,
Cassimers, 50
$100,000
35,000
Henry Allen,
6029 1
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