USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Hartford > History of the Second church of Christ in Hartford > Part 6
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1 Bancroft's Hist., vol. 2: pp. 51-61.
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History of the Church
strict and almost military discipline, which goes far to ex- plain their efforts to regulate all social and personal life by acts of legislation in State and Church.
In the documents of this period one phrase often occurs that has in it a distinct note of pathos, - "a wilderness condition " ! Many of the inhabitants of Hartford, in this period, had come from peaceful hamlets and happy home- steads, from thriving parishes and venerable churches, and from a social condition of comparative culture in England, to encounter all the obstacles and privations involved in making homes and gaining a livelihood and planting the institutions of government, religion, and education in a virgin land, dense with forests in which known and un- known enemies lurked, and severe in its summer heats and wintry cold. They had left behind them all material luxu- ries, and many material conveniences and comforts. To those born here, and to their young children, this "wilder- ness condition " was none the less a trying one. One thinks with tender pity, but with supreme honor, of what the women of Hartford, older and younger, must have endured and suffered. Here, then, on either side of the Little River which flowed through the sloping fields, shrinking to go far from the Great River or far from the settlement, for fear of savages and wild beasts, the little company of the Hartford hamlet was gathered. The church was the central institution. The meeting-house, some portion of which may have been used as an arsenal, was the conspicuous, though rude edifice. Near it, in the common square, were other structures, significant of the existence of sinners as of saints in the plantation, - the jail, the stocks, the pillory, the whip- ping post. The burial ground, originally near this same square, had been transferred to the spot in the rear of the First Church.
The home-lots were, for the most, along what are now Front, Arch, Main, Elm, Buckingham, Governor, and Wash- ington streets. How did they live? What were their houses and their domestic utensils and furniture? How
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69
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were they clad, and whence were clothes procured ? What industries occupied their hands, what commerce and trade had they, and what books and means of intellectual culture did they possess ? What were their religious usages ?
Some interesting contemporaneous testimony, touching some of these questions, is to be found in a series of answers given in 1680 to questions forwarded here by the English government.1
The buildings were generally of wood, though some were of brick and stone, and many of "good strength and comeliness for a wilderness." The original log-huts, covered with axe-hewn boards and shingles, had given way to framed houses " two storeys high," with large, square rooms above and below, and a huge chimney in the center. The rooms were low, showing the beams overhead and the posts in the corners. The best houses were doubtless well finished in wood, but most were bare and cheerless, and along the streets were many inferior and extremely rude dwellings con- taining few rooms, scant furniture, and little glazing. The conveniences for housekeeping were comparatively few and rude. A scrutiny of the inventories of estates satisfies one of this. These inventories are often extremely particular, itemizing every article in each room of the house, and thus enabling one to judge correctly of the furniture in parlor, hall, chamber, or kitchen. Thomas Hooker's house, an ex- ceptionally commodious and well-furnished one, had a new and an old parlor, chambers above, a hall with chamber above, and a kitchen. The new parlor was furnished with three chairs, two stools, six cushions, a clock, a safe, a table, and window curtains.
The hall contained a chest of drawers, and in it two dozen dishes, a pewter flagon, basins, candlestick, and saucers. The hall chamber contained a trunk of linen, twenty pairs of sheets, eight table cloths, five dozen nap- kins, several towels, a bedstead, two trunks, a chest, and a chair. In the kitchen were brass kettles, pots, chafing
1 Col. Rec., 3 : 296.
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History of the Church
dishes, skillets, skimmers, and mortar ; several iron pans, kettles, and skillets ; two spits and a jack ; gridirons and andirons ; a roaster and a warming-pan, two porringers, and seven pewter dishes. Stoves were of course unknown, as were carpets. But as late as 1680, most of the houses were destitute of many things which Mr. Hooker's dwelling con- tained. Feather beds, bolsters, and pillows were a neces- sity. Without them the good people must have frozen while sleeping through the wintry nights. Window and bed curtains were common, because necessary. There were few chairs, and stools, benches, and settles were used.
The people had flaxen sheets and napkins. The spin- ning wheels were not idle, and there was some coarse cloth made. Napkins were numerous for the reason that table- forks were not in use. There was earthen and wooden- ware, there were pewter pots, plates, porringers, and flag- ons, there were mixed metal spoons, but porcelain and sil- ver were rare, even among those not reckoned poor.1 The kitchen was ordinarily the "living" room. The pewter plates and flagons stood in burnished array on the dresser. There was a shelf one side of the chimney, on which a few books, dingy without and gloomy within, were stored. The un-neglected Bible, with its carefully kept family register, reposed near at hand. The high-backed settle stood against the wall ready to be drawn up before the fire, when the
1 Through the courtesy of my friend and neighbor, Dr. Irving W. Lyon, I have been permitted to insert here a few notes taken from the proof-pages of his admir- able volume, recently published, on colonial furniture, etc.
The table dishes of our early colonial ancestors were chiefly pewter and wooden, with some alchemy, earthen, china, glass, and silverware. Tin and latten dishes were also in use, but rather for culinary purposes.
After the middle of the century, white earthenware, blue and painted dishes are not nnfrequently met with. Chinaware is mentioned in the inventories as early as 1641, and continues to reappear, at short intervals, and in small amounts, till the early part of the eighteenth century.
The earliest known mention of forks is at Boston, in 1669.
Coffee and chocolate are mentioned as early as 1670, but their domestic use was later, not earlier than 1683. In 1712, Richard Lord of Hartford is credited. in an inventory, with two coffee dishes.
The earliest mention of the household use of tea is in 1695. But it was not much used, even by the wealthier folk, until considerably later.
71
Hartford People Two Hundred Years Ago
weather should be cold. Suspended from the ceiling or walls hung dried venison, flitches of bacon, dried fruit, or whatever might so be laid up for use. There was the hearthstone, supporting mighty andirons, above and beyond which yawned the vast, cavernous fireplace with its swing- ing crane. Therein, in frosty weather, crackled and roared and flamed great fires of long, large wood, by which the roasting and toasting were done, and around which, on win- ter evenings, much of such merriment as was permissible went on among the boys and girls and lads and lassies. The fire was kept alive in the embers until morning, or if in some dwelling, the rain or snow coming down the great chimney during the night, extinguished it, there was labor with flint or friction, or toil of early travel to some neigh- bor's dwelling for needful fire. One side of the fireplace was the vast oven for use on baking-days, and closets abounded over and about the well-stocked mantel-piece. In the kitchen, too, if not in the hall, would be seen mus- kets, pistols, swords, pikes, and corslets.
Great care was taken to prevent the burning of build- ings, as the frequent appointment of chimney-viewers shows. For food, they had abundance of game and fowl, fish, and fruit. Indian meal prepared in the form of bread or porridge was ever in order. Beef, as well as pork, was by this time plentiful. Puddings of prodigious size and mysterious composition were common. Potatoes were as yet unknown. Wheat and rye and barley and peas grew in their fields, and their gardens were fruitful in vegetables.
One " plain supper, but of exceeding relish," is de- scribed : "Warm rye loaves with butter and honey, and bowls of sweet milk, and roasted apples."
They drank cider and beer and sirups and cordials of their own manufacture ; rum and wine of importation, as could be afforded, and under regulation of law, smoked tobacco.
Their chief means for procuring clothing, save as they
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History of the Church
converted the skins of deer, raccoon, wolf, and beaver to such use, was by sending the produce of their agriculture to Boston, and bartering it there for cloth. They raised wheat, rye, barley, peas, Indian corn, hemp, and flax. They made cider, perry, deal boards, and staves. They raised what tobacco they needed. No ports of the colony were free, and little was brought to them from abroad. Now and then a shipment was made to Barbadoes, or other "Caribian islands," and bartered there for sugar, cotton, wool, and rum. Occasionally a vessel would sail to Ma- deira or Fayal, and return with wine. In 1680, there were about twenty petty merchants in the colony. "There are few servants among us, and less slaves, not above thirty in the colony." Now and then a ship from Barbadoes would bring back a black man or two. Such were sold at the rate of about £22 each. There were four or five seventh- day men in the colony, and about as many Quakers. The Quakers had been roughly discouraged from settling here. Money was scarce, and labor dear. Laborers were paid two shillings, or two and sixpence a day. Wheat was four shillings a bushel, pork and beef about threepence a pound, and butter brought sixpence.
" We are a poor people," is the pathetic confession. " For the most part we do labor in tilling the ground, and by the time a year's travail and labor hath gathered some small parcel of provisions, it is transported to Boston, and there half a crown will not produce so much goods of any sort as tenpence will in England." Blastings and mildews, visitations from an offended God, damaged their wheat. Strange worms devoured their peas. Their conflicts with the Indians had involved them in heavy debt, and so they toiled on under heavy burdens.
The good people had their own superstitious notions and trials. The appearance of comets in the sky created alarm in many minds, and even the ministers regarded such appearances with apprehension, and connected them with
73
Hartford People Two Hundred Years Ago
visitations of drought, war, and pestilence. Occasionally a house would be dolefully beset with Satan's imps. Strange disturbances and noises would occur which some thought might be accounted for by natural tricks of subtlety and cunning, but by others were regarded as due to Indian sorceries and devilish enchantment, of which a great store of stories was on hand. The doctor of physic (if a keen student of natural things, and not particularly pious), might acquire the reputation of a wizard, and his friendly inter- course with the Indians for the purpose of studying their character and customs, would expose him to the suspicion of many, as in unhallowed league with heathen conjurors.
The ministers had libraries which, according to the in- ventories of their estates, were of considerable value. The chief men may also have possessed many and costly vol- umes. But the people generally had few books, and what they had, the Bible excepted, were dull and sombre. Over the sunniest and sweetest portions of the Bible lay a veil thicker than any with which audacious women sometimes dared to screen their faces. As Bunyan died in 1688, and eleven editions and 100,000 copies of his allegory were sold before that time, the Pilgrim's Progress may have been in Hartford homes before 1689. But it is highly improbable that a single copy of Shakspeare or Milton's poems had reached this town. So far as is known, there was not a copy of either of these authors in Massachusetts before 1700. Not until twenty-three years later did the library of Harvard College contain the works of Addison, Dryden, Pope, Locke, Steele, and Swift. Spenser's Fairie Queen was unknown here. There were sermons and theological treat- ises, and some histories. The Bay Psalm Book, the first book produced within the present limits of the United States, appeared in 1640, and had a wide circulation. It was a metrical version of the Psalter, done into English from the Hebrew by ministers of Massachusetts. These worthy gentlemen deemed that "God's altar needs no pol-
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History of the Church
ishing," and in their endeavor to put the words of David into English verse "with great fidelity," they succeeded in spilling out all the poetry of the original. The Bay Psalm Book, once so highly regarded for its verse, resembles the Psalter very much as a given number of cords of crooked wood resembles the forest trees before they were chopped down, cut up, and piled together. The verses of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) may have circulated here. She was the first person who put forth a volume of poems in Bos- ton. Her "Divine and Moral Meditations," in prose, were also in print. Reverend Michael Wigglesworth, of whom mention has already been made, obtained great popularity by his "Day of Doom," which, no doubt, was read in this vicinity. This dreadful doggerel only chops up into verse- form the current theology, and has no more poetry in it than a wheelbarrow. Mr. Wigglesworth was one of the men who inveighed against the wearing of long hair by men, and affected to believe that the gay apparel and pretty head-dresses of the "weaker vessels" would yet provoke God's blazing wrath and prove the ruin of the country.
There was no literature, properly speaking, in the col- onies that the people generally had access to, or of which they knew anything. It is not strange that possessing active minds, they everywhere strove together in theolog- ical or ecclesiastical controversy. How isolated they were ! with few roads or bridges, with few books and no papers, and shut up to the " variety of ministerial gifts " for their in- tellectual nourishment. Thought and discussion turned so exclusively in upon local interests and abstract questions could but become narrow and litigious. It is no wonder that now and then a good woman, like the wife of Rev. Samuel Stone, " smoaked out her days in the darkness of melancholy," as Mr. Hooker said.
But there is another aspect of this matter. These peo- ple were neither dull nor ignorant. As a self-governing people they had weighty things to consider and debate, both
75
Hartford People Two Hundred Years Ago
as concerned their internal affairs and their relations with the mother country and neighboring colonies. Their town meeting was a democratic debating society as well as little legislature. There is abundant evidence, not only of their sagacity, but of their ability to express themselves clearly and forcibly. Their letters are racy and quaint, and their records and journals are made in homely, sinewy English. Their more formal addresses to the English court are admir- ably composed. What they lacked in surface culture they more than made good in originality. Best of all they had the saving spirit in them to encourage learning. They pro- vided that "learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers."
In 1677 the General Court gave orders that if any county town should neglect to keep up a Latin school it should pay a fine of fro to the next town in the county that would en- · gage to keep up such a school, and the same sum should be so annually paid "until they come up to the attendance of this order." Such life could not be very sombre nor morose, for it had health, and there is joy in health. The people had singularities and severities, and these were manifest in the forms of legislation as well as in manners, opinions, and habits, but the rough husk contained the rich seed-grain of all that is most precious and most permanent in our domes- tic, educational, political, and religious institutions. Beneath the rugged exterior, which partook somewhat of the austeri- ty of their "wilderness condition," was a large, good, free humanity.
Certain relations in " Margaret's Smith's Journal," 1 may not be literally true, but they admit the reader to the hearths and homes of New England in 1678-79, and introduce him to a variety of people among whom are many educated, culti- vated, and charming men and women. They are true as setting forth the existence of many persons whose eyes and ears were open to the beauties and harmonies of the wilder- 1 Whittier's Prose Works, vol. I.
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History of the Church
ness world in which they were living, -who saw in the autumn foliage and in the glowing sunsets and in the clouds of gold and purple, a glory as of God's own mighty Minster ; who heard a grand and solemn organ-music in the wind- swept woods ; who questioned fields and forests, and received answers therefrom, as the sybils did, of old, from rustling leaves and purling brooks ; who found nature an open book abundant with delectable teaching, until the chatter of the blackbirds in the spring meadows seemed more pleasing than the subtleties and disputes of divines ; and in whose hearts, thus touched by the wand of beauty, fountains gushed up, sweeter than the hillside springs of water, and "therein, also, flowers of the summer do blossom all the year long."
And if it be asked, why then did not these gushing fountains overflow into musical measures, and these summer flowers bloom forth into some poetic forms, the answer is to be found, not in the foolish assertion, contradicted by the works of Spencer, Milton, and Bunyan, that Puritanism is essentially incapable of producing poetry, but in the fact that poetic art and literary culture were utterly lacking in the new colonies, as yet.
It is true that theology had pre-empted the field of letters, giving way only to the cultivation, in odd corners, of metrical versions of its doctrines, and frowning upon the conceits of ballads and rhymes as, at best, a waste of time.
But aside from this, and from the almost insuperable difficulty of getting things printed in those days, it must be remembered that poetry is an art as well as an inspiration. It rarely springs up in virgin soil and in new conditions, but is a later growth for which a literary preparation must be made. New England was then an absolutely unliterary land, and destitute of that art and culture which provide the forms in which poetic feeling and inspiration may find poetic expression.
A few peculiarities of social life, as the General Court attempted to regulate it, may be noted.
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Hartford People Two Hundred Years Ago
All young persons under twenty years of age were drilled in some orthodox catechism. Family worship was enjoined, and refractory heads of households were liable to be punished. All persons boarding or sojourning in families must diligently attend the public worship of those families, and submit themselves to domestical government therein.
The irrepressible exuberance of youthful spirits was solemnly watched, and its forthputtings were unsparingly pruned. In 1676, it was ordered by the General Court that all persons thereafter found sporting in the streets or fields, either Saturday night or on the Lord's Day, if even after sun- set, should be liable to a fine of ten shillings for each trans- gression, and, in default of payment, to corporal punish- ment. Excess in apparel was also declared to be unbecoming a "wilderness condition," inconsistent with the Gospel, and likely to corrupt the rising generation. Wherefore it was or- dered that whosoever should wear gold or silver lace, gold or silver buttons, silk ribbons or other superfluous trimmings, or any bone lace above three shillings a yard, or silk scarfs, such, or their husbands, parents, or masters, should be assessed in the list of estates at £150, and pay rates accordingly. But this law was not to apply to magistrates or officers of the col- ony, or to their wives and children, or to commissioned mili- tary officers, or, curiously enough, " to such whose quality and estate have been above the ordinary degree, though now de- cayed!" To say nothing more of legislation, the severe regu- lations, the prescription of duties, and the restriction of in- dividual liberties, the sumptuary enactments, the scrutiny of household and personal life by church and court, the attempt to bring men and women into subjection to one standard of morality and faith, must be regarded from a standpoint in the seventeenth century, and not from our present point of view.
The environment and exigencies of the people at that time must be considered, and it should also be remembered that, in the main, the criminal and sumptuary legislation of
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History of the Church
Connecticut Colony was then but an adaptation of existing English legislation, milder far in the " wilderness condition " than in the mother country. It has been most wisely said by a distinguished writer of our own city,1 that "the student of the social life in early New England is in danger of being mis- led by the laws and the records of courts and churches. . . It is the lawbreakers and the litigious whose names appear oftenest in the court records, and the immoral portions of the congregation claim most space in the church records." An excessive if not exclusive theological training developed the spirit of casuistry whose fruits were baneful. Every known or suspected offender against the laws of chastity and temper- ance was publicly dealt with by the church. All the details were brought to publicity, and often spread upon the church records. Often the Lecture Day was considered the most suitable time for a public announcement of the offense, for an exhortation and warning, and for a commitment of the offender to his punishment. The vigorous and wretched and baneful system of "discipline" then in vogue opened the records to a full description of all manner of offenses, while the virtues of the great majority of the people were unrecorded.
The amusements of the young people in those days were somewhat restricted, but it cannot be questioned that there were various amusements in which the young Puritans took innocent and hearty delight. There were election days and training days, and Thanksgiving days, with their games and sports and feasts and merrymakings. There were house-rais- ings, and jolliest corn-huskings, and picnics, and excursions, and gatherings in the great kitchens around the blazing fire- side, with nuts and apples and cider for cheer, or parties in the best parlors, or wedding festivities which were often protracted and hilarious, or negro "trainings," which af- forded much mirth. It was by no means "all work and no play " for the Hartford lads and lassies of that day, nor
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