USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Plymouth > History of the town of Plymouth, Connecticut : with an account of the centennial celebration May 14 and 15, 1895 : also a sketch of Plymouth, Ohio, settled by local families > Part 2
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T "HE Centennial celebration of the incorporation of the town of Plymouth, Tuesday and Wednesday, May 14 and 15, 1895, may lead the reader unfamiliar with its history to believe that no settlement of its territory existed prior to 1795. If such an impression should prevail it would be misleading. The landing of the Pilgrims occurred at Plymouth, Mass .. in 1620, and in 1634 the first settlement was made in Con- necticut. This was at Wethersfield, Windsor and Hartford. In 1640 some of the inhabitants removed to Farmington, being the first in the state to go away from navigable waters. As early as 1657 a party on a hunting excursion had penetrated the wilderness as far as the Naugatuck valley, making the first known discovery of this territory 248 years ago. The party found what they thought to be a mine of black lead. and applied to the Tunxis tribe of Indians, who were the original proprietors of the town, for the right to work it. which right was conveyed to them in a deed, now recorded in Farmington.
This is believed to be the earliest title of the white men to the region. It embraces the entire territory of the town of Plymouth, the traditional site of the lead mine being a little north of the Harwinton line, on the east side half a mile back of the highway running past the house of Alfred Cleveland, in the woods. The marks are still apparent of rock-blasting, which could only have been for mining purposes. There is a spring which from time immemorial has borne the name of the Lead- Mine Spring. No immediate settlement seems to have re- sulted from this discovery. The anticipations of wealth to be derived from the mine were not realized and it was abandoned. The original settlement of the valley was begun down the river. at what was first known as Mattatuck, and afterwards as Waterbury. The interval on which that city stands seems not
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTHI.
11
Main Street, Terryville.
Four Corners, Terryville.
1%
Terryville School Children, 1860.
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EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH.
to have been discovered by white men till some sixteen years after the lead-mine deed was given, the first recorded report of it bearing the date of October 6, 1673.
The early history of the town of Waterbury, in which Plymouth was originally included, has been fully written and need not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that the General Court, upon the report of its " viewing " committee, granting the petition of the Farmington people, authorized "the settin of a plantation at Mattatuck," and appointed a committee " to regu- late and order it." This the committee proceeded to do. Articles of association and agreement, bearing the date of June 6, 1674, were drawn up and signed by the proposed settlers. A site was selected for the village; and after a delay of three years, caused by the great Indian war of New England, known as " King Philip's war," in 1677 a settlement was begun.
At the outset, the committee of the General Court appointed to superintend the settlement ordered that, "for benefit of Christian duties and defense against enemies," the inhabitants of the new plantation " should settle near together." Accordingly, prior to the year 1700, all the inhabitants lived in the town center or immediate neighborhood. But as the lands at the center were taken up the new settlers had to find room in the remote parts of the town. It is not till 1725 or 1730 that there is any trace of settlers in the northern part, and here the history of Plymouth as a distinct community begins.
The first settler of the town, so far as known, was Henry Cook. He came with a family about 1728 and had a farm on the west bank of the river not far from the Litchfield boundary. He was the grandson of Henry Cook of Salem, Mass . before 1640. He had a grandson Lemuel, who was one of the last pensioners on the roll of the Revolutionary war, and who lived to be over 102 years old. John Sutliff appears to have been the next settler. He came with a family from Branford about 1730 and built on the west side of the river on what is known as the West Branch. These two men are mentioned in a vote of the town of Canterbury, December 14, 1730, providing outside schools, as living at " Wooster Swamp," a term by which all the northern and northwestern part of the town was designated.
Mr. Sutliff was a leading man in all the early history of the new community. After him came Thomas Blakeslee, North- bury's first " captain," an office in that day second in rank and honor only to that of minister; Isaac Castle from Westbury ; Barnabas Ford, the chief land owner, from Wallingford ; Gideon Allen from Guilford; John Humaston from North Haven ; Eben- ezer Richason from Canterbury; Samuel Towner, Ebenezer Elwell, Jonathan Foot and others. These were called " up river " or "northern people," by the inhabitants of the center of the town, and they soon began to organize as a distinct com- munity.
In all the early New England towns the first movements toward distinct organization were in the direction of church
ยท
HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.
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Old Carriage Shop, Plymouth Hill.
Plymouth Hill School House.
First Iron Bridge Over the Naugatuck.
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EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH.
privileges. The earliest organization was ecclesiastical. The first public body organized was the church. The first public building erected was the meeting house. The first public officer provided for was the minister. As an old writer says: " In the first settlement of New England, when the people judged their number competent to obtain a minister, they then severally seated themselves, but not before, it being as unnatural for a New England man to live without the minister as for a smith to work his torge without a fire."
The earliest history of Plymouth therefore, is the history of the church. No sooner had the "northern" inhabitants become numerous and strong enough to do something independ- ently for themselves than they began to move for independent religious provision, to which by law they were required to pay taxes for the minister's support. At first, in 1732, they joined themselves with the northwestern inhabitants, now Watertown, in the endeavor to obtain independent " winter privileges"-that is the privilege of hiring a minister to preach among them during the winter months. with exemption during the period from parish rates at the center. Soon after the settlement west of the river, settlers began to locate on the hills east, and before long the west side settlers found it for their advantage to combine with their east side brethren and the united sections began to act together as one community.
In 1737 they opened their campaign for independence. In October of that year, Henry Cook, Ebenezer Elwell and Samuel Towner, on the ground of their living so far from the meeting house, requested the town to allow them and others to hire preaching the ensuing winter and to abate their parish rates while they should thus hire. The town curtly voted "to do nothing in the case." Two years later, September 27, 1736, Thomas Blakeslee, Henry Cook, Jonathan Cook, John How, Jonathan Foot, John Sutliff, Jr., Samuel Towner, Samuel Frost, Barnabas Ford, Ebenezer Elwell, Gideon Allen, Isaac Castle, Daniel Curtis, and John Humaston, fourteen in number, united in a touching appeal to the town. The appeal did not prevail.
The petitioners did not give up. Indeed it seems from some after action that the town at this meeting did take some action in their favor. But whatever it was the town either recalled or denied it, and the privileges asked for were refused. A month later, October 26, 1736, the request was repeated in writing as before, signed by twelve persons. asking that all living " within two and one-half miles of Barnabas Ford's new dwelling house " be allowed the privilege of hiring for three years, three months in a year - December, January and February-with exemption from ministerial rates from the center for the time. The town voted to grant the request. But as before. either through misunderstanding or change of view on the part of the town, the proposed exemption was denied and the "up river" people were back where they were before.
At a town meeting the next spring, April IS. 1737, "it was
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH
Terryville Watering Trough.
Main Street, Terryville.
Street in Terryville.
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EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH.
asked whether the said northern inhabitants shall be exempt from ministerial charge by the town for so much time as they shall hire a gospel minister among them, in addition to a grant made them September 29," and an answer was given by a vote in the negative. Still the northern people did not give it up. Despairing of the consent of the town, they now, at the May session, 1737, applied direct to the General Assembly, which in these days was supreme in affairs of church as well as state. They state they live "on a tract of land about five miles square. whereof Barnabas Ford's dwelling house is the center; that the town voted, September 29, 1736, that they might have a minister for three months for three years, with exemption from ministerial charges the said term ; that they had supplied a preacher and are now obliged to pay rates." They asked winter privileges, and the usual exemption from taxes. The petitioners are sixteen in number, the same as those who signed the petition to the town on September 29, except that three new names, those of Amos Matthews, Ebenezer Richason and Phineas Royce appear, and Jonathan Cook's does not. The town resisted the application and it was denied.
At the October session of the same year, however, the peti- tion was renewed. The General Assembly granted it and so the new community scored one in their effort at independence. This act of the General Assembly was the first charter of the town of Plymouth. It was the first official recognition of it as a distinct community, and from it all the rest of its full investment as a town naturally follows.
The dwelling house of Barnabas Ford, here specified as the center and landmark of the new community. stood on the street leading past the academy in what is now Thomaston, on the west side of the road, about where the academy stands. There was a spring of water near it by the roadside, which doubtless determined the site of the house, as it did the location of the dwellings of many of the early settlers, before they had time to dig wells, at which spring the boys who went to church in later years on " The Hill" used to drink, as they footed it back and forth from Thomaston in the hot summer days.
Mr. Ford was the first clerk of the society when it came to be organized, and appears from the many deeds bearing his name, to have been an extensive owner of lands in the vicinity. His body lies in the old burying ground (Thomaston). His tombstone bears this inscription: "Here lyeth ve body of Barnabas Ford ; he died March ye 10, 1746. in ye 53 year of his age."
Encouraged by this initial success, the northern people petitioned the General Assembly at the next May session ( 1738) for exemption from ministerial charges " for such time only as they had the word dispensed." The petitioners represent that they live, the nearest seven miles, the greater part eight. and many nine or ten miles from the meeting house, on the way to which they were obliged to cross the river, often deep and dangerous, nine times. The signers number nineteen. The
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.
Official Sheep Marks.
Smith Homestead, Plymouth Center.
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EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH.
names of Jeremiah Peck, afterwards first deacon of the church, Caleb Humaston, afterwards one of the most prominent men- bers of the society, and who gave the name to Humaston Hill, and others appearing for the first time. This application was denied, but at the October session following it was renewed, twenty-three signing. They say that the three years' privilege which had been granted them expires the February ensuing, and ask that it may be extended for two years. They allege they have a population of 139; that to get to meeting at the town center they have to remove bars and open gates at ten different places.
At this time the only road to Waterbury from the northern quarter was a path through the fields, guarded by bars and gates between the different inclosures. The present river road was not constructed and opened as a highway till ISo2, and was considered a great undertaking in its time. A cart bridge- the early settlers had no other vehicles-was built across the river in Northbury in 1747-48, the town voting twenty-two pounds in. money, old tender, to be paid when the bridge should be completed. The last mentioned petition was granted in 1738.
The act designated the memorialists as " living in the north or northeastern part" of the town. Hitherto it has been north or northwestern, indicating the movement of the settlement to the east side of the river.
At this session of the General Assembly, October, 1738, the society of Westbury, now Watertown, was constituted. Already, in 1686, at the May session of the General Court, Waterbury had been invested with town privileges and given its present name.
Encouraged by their past successes, and influenced doubtless by the example of Westbury Society, the northern people the next year (1739) again moved on the General Assembly, this time to be constituted an independent ecclesiastical society, with the rights and privileges of the same. The town, evidently tired of resisting those so determined to be an independent community, makes no opposition to the application, and it is granted. A committee of the General Assembly was appointed, heard the parties and decided on the bounds, and on their report to the General Assembly the following act of incorporation was passed :
" Whereas, upon the memorial of the northern inhabitants of the town of Waterbury, in New Haven County, representing to this assembly their great distance from the publick worship in said Waterbury, and praying to become a distinct parish, and for a committee to fix their parochial 'ounds, the Assembly did appoint Messrs. Thomas Miles, Stephen Hotchkiss, and Joseph Thompson to be a committee to view the circumstances of said memorialists, to ascertain their parochial bounds, and to make their report in the premises to this Assembly : and whereas the said committee hath now reported to this Assembly that they having viewed and duly, inquired into the circumstances of the said inhabitants, do find them sufficient to bear parish charges
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.
Town Building, Plymouth Center.
TOWN-JALA
Town Hall, Terryville
T
Interior of Town Hall.
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EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH.
and become a distinct parish, or society, with the following limits, viz. : Beginning at the northwest of the First Society in said Waterbury and the northeasterly corner of Westbury Society at two white oak trees known by the name of Two Brothers, then running southeasterly by the West Branch until it comes into the river ; then by the river until it comes where Spruce Brook emptyeth itself into the river a little below Upson's Island. Then from the mouth of said brook a straight line to the falls of Hancock's Brook, and from thence a straight line to the south side of Mr. Noyes' farm, lying partly on a hill by the name of Grassy Hill ; and from thence a due east line to Farmington line ; then north by said Farmington line to Harwinton bounds ; then by Harwinton bounds and Litchfield bounds to bounds first mentioned; bounding, south on said Waterbury First Society ; east on Farmington bounds ; north, part on Harwinton and part on Litchfield bounds ; and west on said Westbury Society ; as by their report on file dated October 25, 1739.
" Resolved by this Assembly that the said memorialists within the limits above specified and described be and become a distinct society, or parish, and that they shall have and be invested with all the powers, privileges wherewith other parishes within this colony are endowed, and shall be known and called by the Parish of Northbury.
"October session, 1739.
GEO. WYLLYS, Sec."
And so, after four applications to the town, and five to the General Assembly, the new community at last gained its end, and Northbury went on the roll of the ecclesiastical societies of Connecticut.
The society was thus organized but it did not exist vet. The General Assembly had built the ship but left it on the stocks. Those who were to sail in it alone could launch it. This they proceeded to do. In accordance with the law for parish action, three of the inhabitants, viz., John Sutliff, Ebene- zer Richason, and Barnabas Ford, made application to Thomas Clark, one of the justices of Waterbury, who issued his warning to those who lived within the specified bounds. In response the inhabitants met on the day designated and organized the society by the choice of John Sutliff, moderator, Barnabas Ford, clerk, and Moses Blakeslee, John Sutliff, and Ebenezer Richason, society committee. The place where they met, designated in the warning as " the house they meet in," was a building which several of the inhabitants had erected the year before by subscrip- tion for common public uses, and which they jointly owned as "proprietors." It stood on a knoll, since leveled, about in the center of the park in Thomaston. The land on which it stood was given by Rev. Mr. Southmayd and deeded to John Sutliff. Ebenezer Richason, John How, Thomas Blakeslee, Barnabas Ford, and the rest of the inhabitants living within two and one- half miles of Barnabas Ford's new dwelling house. It is de- scribed in the deed as " one acre near said Ford's dwelling house
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.
Rev. Luther Hart.
Mrs. Luther Hart
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EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH.
in Waterbury, on which inhabitants have already set up a house for the said inhabitants to meet in to carry on the public worship of God on the Sabbath." The building was a very plain one and was known in later years as the " church house."
The original record of the first meeting of the society is in existence, with the other early records of the society. It is in the handwriting of Barnabas Ford.
The society thus organized, the next thing was to choose a minister, and Rev. Samuel Todd was selected. Accordingly on the 7th of May Mr. Todd was ordained first minister of the northerly society. He was born in North Haven, March 6. 1716-17, the seventh child and fifth son of Samuel and Mary (Tole) Todd, and grandson of Christopher and Grace Todd, early immigrants to the New Haven colony. The early records of the North Haven Church are imperfect, but Mr. Todd doubt- less united with it during the pastorate of Rev. Isaac Stiles,
--
First Congregational Church.
father of President Stiles, of Yale. His family were of a relig- ious character, as is proved by preserved relations or memorials of its members, in the days when each church member wrote out his or her confession of faith; that of his sister Susannah, after- wards wife of Caleb Humaston, recounts the wickedness of her rebellion against God, and how, when awakened to the sense of her sin, the counsels of Rev. Mr. Stiles and the death of an aunt were blessed to her conversion.
Mr. Todd graduated at Yale, under President Williams, in 1734, at the age of seventeen, six of the fourteen in his class becoming ministers. A lately discovered document shows that he received and rejected a call to another church before he was ordained at Northbury, May 7, 1740. Eight months before he had married Mercy, daughter of Peter Evans, of Northfield, near New Haven, and he brought her on a pillion behind him, or on another horse, into this wilderness, where there was a small.
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTHI.
Rev. I. P. Warren.
Rev. Ephraim I yman.
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EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH.
feeble, scattered, but devoted flock, situated somewhat similar to the first Pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass. There were only bridle- paths through the woods then, and the streams had to be forded, the first cart bridge across the Naugatuck, at Thomaston, not being built till after 1747.
Mr. Todd's promised home was not begun on his arrival, and he set up his house on Town Hill, where the cellar hole is now seen in the lot near Jason Fenn's, and where three old apple trees lately stood of an orchard set out by him ; this was near his good deacon's, Moses Blakeslee, who had lately arrived from New Haven with his fourteen children. A spring flows near the old cellar hole, where tradition says Mr. Todd's first child, little Alathea, was drowned; near the tombstone of her sister Lucy, who died June 9, 1752, is an unmarked grave which is doubtless that of little Alathea, said to be the first person buried there. After two or three years' delay, the society built Mr. Todd a house in Thomaston, which stood on the top of the hill where Mrs. Williams built later, on the old road running north, which turned off from the river road at Mr. Grilley's corner. It is not known how long he lived there, but he moved over to Plymouth Hill when the church was there and the people lived here ; he had moved before 1746-47, for Barnabas Ford's will, dated January 27, 1746, disposes of twenty-three acres of Bear Hill which he had of Mr. Todd, and in the deed of this green, December 3, 1747, it was described as butting east on Mr. Todd's land. His house was in the garden this side of Riley Ives' house, and is remembered by the old people as the Evans House, where Eli Terry, the father of clock-making, began housekeep- ing with one chair apiece for himself and wife, and one cup and saucer. Mr. Todd's second daughter was Mary, who married Obed Foot of this parish, and, on his death, Rev. Jonathan Leavitt, of Heath, Mass. Mr. Todd had eleven children, there being two Alatheas and two Lucys.
The great revival under President Edwards roused the New England churches from the cold formalism that grew out of the union of the church and state and other causes, and Mr. Todd went to study it at Stockbridge, probably by the advice of Joseph Bellamy, settled two years before at Bethlehem, a great friend of Edwards, and then in the midst of a religious revival, in which every man, woman, and child in the parish was under more or less religious concern. When Mr. Todd returned. established prayer meetings, and labored with souls, many of his congrega- tion rebelled against him, and abandoned his preaching. There was almost temporal trouble. Two years before the society was organized a building had been erected for public purposes. by sab- scription, west of the river, and owned by subscribers, in which the society was allowed to meet for public worship. That was never the society's meeting house, for they never owned it; it was built and owned by proprietors, and occupied by the society for a time by their consent. The society's movement to build a meeting house was not caused by their being voted out of this
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.
Rev. E. J. Hawes.
Rev. R. C. Learned.
1127778
EARLY SETTLERS OF PLYMOUTH. 35
building ; the society, instead, being voted out of it because it had resolved to build a meeting house.
The society had been organized November 20, 1739, and a minister installed May 7, 1740; not satisfied with the west side house, the society voted, October 6, 1740, to get the legislature to set a stake for a meeting house, as it had none of its own. This was not because, as Bronson says, the churchmen had obtained a majority of the votes and took exclusive possession of the house of worship. A protest of the proprietors of that building to the legislature has been found in Mr. Satterlee's possession, in which they say that their obligations to Mr. Todd are as much as they can meet ; therefore they ask that the meet- ing house be not built for the present, but that their house be established as the place for public worship, which is sufficient for the present wants of the society, and is freely offered for its use. The protest is dated October S, 1740, two days after the vote of the society to build, and is signed by William Ludding- ton, Jonathan Foot, John Sutliff, Sr. and Jr., Barnabas Ford, John How, Isaac Castle, Thomas and Jacob Blakeslee, Ebenezer Richason, Samuel Jacobs, Caleb Humaston, Phineas Royce. Daniel Curtis, Gideon Allen, Jeremiah Peck, Sr. and Jr., Eben- ezer Elwell, and Samuel Frost. The protest was never sent to the legislature, but the next May, John Sutliff, Barnabas Ford, and John How, on authority of the proprietors, sent one, saying that they were behind with Mr. Todd's settlement and salary, and praying that further charges respecting a meeting house be prevented at present. It is evident that the occupation of the west side house was merely temporary and provisional, the society chancing to be organized there, as there was no other public building in the parish limits; it was not regarded as the meeting house, nor did they intend to remain in it permanently. It was not the society of Wooster Swamp, but of Northbury, which mainly lay east of the river, where it proceeded to build as soon as it was in fair working order.
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