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 6
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within the said province," which goes to confirm the supposition that they resided in Massachusetts before coming to Branford.
The name as signed by Nathaniel to the power of attorney, was written " Suthief," which was likely the original spelling of the name. In 1723, the two brothers, John and Nathaniel. set- tled on Haddam quarter, having the permission of the town of Haddam to attend public worship still in Durham; and from there John came to Northbury - Nathaniel remaining a perma- nent and prominent inhabitant of Durham. John settled on the west side of the river below the "Spruces," his house being on the spot where Johnathan Warner now lives ; a supply of good water being handy in the brook, fed from springs, that runs on the north side at the foot of the knoll on which the house stood. He came to own all the land west as far as the " Hemlocks " and between Cemetery Hill on the north and the Knife Shop village on the south ; the tract being known as " Sutliff Swamp." He also owned the mill privilege at what is now known as the Woolen mill ; having a grist mill there, the first one in the town. and so he became the pioneer miller of the town.
An original will of his is in existence in the possession of Bennett Sutliff, dated March 3, 1740-41, bearing his signature, and those of Samuel Todd, the first pastor of the Northbury church and "Mercey," his wife, and Caleb Humaston, as wit- nesses. This will was superseded by a later one, on which his estate was settled, but which differed from this only in one or two minor points. In this will he says, " Being in ye Exercise of my reason and understanding Touching yt worldly estate where- with it hath pleased God to bless me, I Demise and dispose of ye Same In The following manner." He then goes on to bequeathe unto his " well beloved wife Hannah " one-third part of his movable estate, and the use of one-third part of his real estate during her natural life. To his son John he gives all the land lying on the north side of the highway running through his farm (the old Waterbury and Litchfield road), and to his other son, Abel, the land lying on the south side of the same. To John he gives " a horse, having liberty to choose, also a bridle and saddle, and my hunting gun and pistol and sword." To Abel a horse, "having liberty to choose after John hath chosen, also a bridle and saddle, a gun and pistol." His sword was doubtless the one he carried as captain before coming to North- bury. The two-thirds of his movable estate not given to his wife he gives to his eight daughters, the six already named and Martha and Dinah. His farming utensils he gives to his sons, and also his " corn mill with the land on which ve s'd mill standeth, which (land) I bought of Capt. Thomas Judd of Waterbury," reserving to his wife " one-third part of ye profit of ye toll of s'd mill to be at her dispose During her natural life." He appointed his two sons executors of his will.
Of these sons, John was the sixth deacon of the Northbury church, being chosen in 1744. He lived and kept tavern in the house where Wm. A. Leigh, the stone-cutter now lives, the present house being the one he built. There is a tradition, that
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in digging the well, when they got down to the rock, instead of drilling and blasting in the way now usual, they filled the hole with wood, and having thus heated the rock, split it by pouring vinegar on it, which if I remember, was the way in which Hannibal is said to have split the rocks in cutting a way in his march over the Alps. At any rate Mr Leigh tells me that the rock at the bottom of the well is thus cracked without drill hole, and that the water flows in through the fissure. Deacon John Sutliff died January 29, 1790, aged seventy-six years, as his stone, in the old burying ground in Thomaston records, being thus born in 1714, and six years older than his brother Abel.
John, Jr., married first Anne Ives, daughter of Thomas Ives, of New Haven, July 12, 1741. She had one child, John the 3d, born March 21, 1743, and died August 5, 1746, aged 3. Her grave with the stone plainly marked is in the old burying ground in Thomaston, next but one to her husband's; the intervening grave being that of his second wife, Martha Bassett, the daughter of Samuel Bassett, of New Haven, married April 9, 1747, by whom he had five children. He had a third wife, Esther, who survived him. He was in the old French and Indian war, enter- ing as lieutenant and coming out as captain.
Abel married Sarah, the daughter of Barnabas Ford, and had four children, Dinah, Abel, Darius and Lucas. He died September 26, 1776. John, Sr., died October 14, 1752, aged seventy-eight years. His wife Hannah died November 9, 1761. Both are doubtless buried in the old Thomaston ground, though their gravestones do not remain.
The old pioneer was a man of note in his day. He was one of the foremost men in Northbury, as he had been in Durham. His estate was entered in the Waterbury grand list of 1737, at £91 4s. At his death it inventoried, the land at £1, 330, the balance of the estate at £645 17s, Thomas Blakeslee and Jacob Blakeslee being the appraisers. There is a cane, in the posses- sion of John Sutliff, of Bristol, the fifth John, marked on a silver band just under the knob, "Capt. John Sutlief, 1765"-marked by our John the 2d, the Deacon-which the family tradition says was brought over from England, and has been handed down from John to John in the family line to the presentholder.
John the 3d, son of the deacon, was afflicted with a mining passion which became a monomania. For years he worked at mining just below the Spruces, the hole where he entered still remaining.
He had twelve children, and was the first to come to meet- ing on the Hill in a wheeled vehicle ; Mrs. Hart remembering the long wagon in which he used to bring his whole family up the long hill. With such families nowadays, the meeting houses would be filled as they were of old.
The next settlers after John Sutliff were Samuel Towner, Elnathan Taylor, and Johnathan Cook, these three coming before the close of 1731.
Of Samuel Towner this only is known. His name disap- pears from the Northbury petitions with that of May, 1738, and
SOME OF THE PIONEERS.
he is found in Goshen in 1740 He probably went up there in the spring of 1739. A good many settlers were attracted to that town in the expectation that it would be made the county seat, when a county should be formed ; an expectation justified by its central position in the county, but which in the event was des- tined to be disappointed. Mr. Towner was a man of large means for the time, his estate being entered in the Waterbury grand list of 1737 at £88; only one of the " pioneers," Joli Sutliff, rating above him. Where he lived here is not known. From Goshen he went, in 1750, to Dutchess County, N. Y., and in 1786-7, moved back to Goshen, where his descendants remained, and whence they spread.
Of Elnathan Taylor this only is known, that he owned the land now constituting the old burying ground in Thomaston, and that he deeded it to the inhabitants of the town of Water- bury for that use, in 1735. His name does not appear in the grand list of 1737, nor in any petition of the " up river inhabi- tants," after the town meeting of September 29, 1736. He probably left soon after that date. Where he went to is not known. His house, as we learn from the deed of the burying ground, was " on the plain," by the burying ground or a little southward of it.
Johnathan Foot's name I must pass over, with simply say- ing that he died in 1754; and that in his will, which is on record in the probate office in Woodbury -- as are all the wills of the pioneers, Waterbury being at that time in the Woodbury probate district-he mentions an island, known as " Welton's Island," as " lying up the river." Where that island is I cannot learn. Knowing its location, we should from it have some idea where Mr. Foot lived.
Isaac Castle was a native of Woodbury. He was the son of Isaac, and the grandson of Henry, one of the emigrants from Stratford to Woodbury in the settlement of the latter town. He was baptized August 9, 1707, but was born earlier, as his brother Samuel, next younger, was baptized the same day with him. He married, January 21, 1723, Tapher, the daughter and oldest child of John Warner, one of the earliest settlers of Westbury, the first physician of that society, and on the organization of the church, chosen one of its first deacons; the uncle of Deacon John Warner, third deacon of the Northbury church. Mr. Castle lemoved from Woodbury to Westbury in 1725, his first child being born in the latter place in August of that year. He came to Northbury as early as 1736, his name being signed to the first petition of the Northbury inhabitants for winter privileges. Sep- tember 29, 1736. In John How's deed of the first public ground, he describes the land as "taken off the land I had of Isaac Castle." His first wife, by whom he had five children. Ashel, Sarah, Mary, Lydia, and Abisbai, born respectively, in 1725. '27, '30, '35, and '38, died soon after he came to Northbury. He married for his second wife, December 21, 1740, Lydia. daughter of Richard Scott, " of Sunderland." by whom he had eight children, Tapher, Elizabeth, Isaac, Nehitable, Richard.
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Daniel, Amasa, and Jedidah, born respectively, in 1741, '43, '45, '47, '49, '51, '55, and '57, making the whole number of his chil dren thirteen. Ashel, his eldest son, married a daughter of Gideon Allen, another of the pioneers. Where his house stood is not known, the surmise that it stood on the east side of the river, being only a surmise, from the circumstance that the hill between Thomaston and Plymouth was formerly called " Castles' Hill," but this name was given to the hill from the fact that four Castle brothers lived on it, and in the distribution of the high- ways for working, as was the custom, each settler taking a section to keep in repair, these brothers took the long hill, and it was from this called "the Castles' hill." In the list of Water- bury estates of 1737, Mr. Castle is entered £41. When he died or where he was buried is not known.
Daniel Curtiss came from Wallingford, of which town, his father, Isaac Curtiss, was one of the original proprietors. He was born August 7, 1707. His mother was Abigail Tuttle. The Connecticut Curtisses are descended from William Curtiss, who came over from England in 1632, landing at Scituate, Mass., from which place he removed, first to Roxbury, Mass., then to Stratford, Conn., whence the Wallingford Curtisses came to that town. In November, 1679, the town "granted to Neh. Royce, Isaac Curtiss, each 3 acres, and Nathaniel How and Isaac Royce, each 2 acres, and all at ' dog's misery,'" this latter locality being a swampy tract, in which wild animals when hunted took refuge, and which was so thick, tangled and miry, that the dogs of the hunters were tormented in their attempts to get at the game, whence its name, "dog's misery." In this action of the town we come upon the names of others of the pioneer settlers of Northbury. This "dog's misery," it seems, was the occasion of misery not to the dogs only, but also to their owners, as appears by a petition to the town, bearing date of March 16, 1696, and commencing as follows: " We whose names are underwritten, being in some mesure sencable of ye mezery of Contention and yt there is too much of it in our Town and one part of it is about dogs mezery, which may liasard Charge to ye Town, if not timely prevented, &c." Signed by Nehemiah Royce, the grandfather of our Phineas Royce, Nathaniel How, of the family of our John How, Isaac Curtiss and others. Mr. Curtiss was one of the earliest settlers of Northbury. He came with a family, his wife's name being "Lettice," and they bringing with them two children, Ebenezer and Jotham. Their third child, Jesse, was the first child born in Northbury, the date of his birth being September 22, 1733 ; Samuel How, reported the first child born here, not being born here, but in Wallingford. He had other children born here as follows : Abigail in 1735, Lucy in '37, Isaac in '40, Sarah in '42, Ruth in '44, Lettice in '46, and Daniel in '48, ten in all. He died November 25, 1750, in the forty-third year of his age, leav- ing an estate appraised by John Humaston, Caleb Humaston and John Bronson, at £4,468 12s, being the largest estate left by any of the pioneers, that of Caleb Humaston being next.
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The estate of Mr. Curtiss was entered in the Waterbury list of 1737, at £33. By what process he managed to increase this in a little over twenty years to £4,500, it would be interesting to know, especially with a family of ten children on his hands. Perhaps the Lord helped him out as a reward for his domestic faithfulness.
Mr. Curtiss was a prominent man in the new community. In extending a call to Rev. Mr. Todd to be their pastor, he was appointed with Moses Blakeslee and Jeremiah Peck (chosen the two first deacons) to convey the call to Mr. Todd, and receive his answer. In the military line, he attained as early as 1745 to the distinction of lieutenant, by which title he was afterwards known. He lies buried in the old ground on the Hill, his grave- stone bearing the following inscription :
" Here lies ye Body of Lieut. Daniel Curtiss, he died Novbr ye 25th, 1750, in ye 43d year of his age. Mortals attend to learn your end." His wife lies buried beside him, having died the year before him, in the thirty-ninth year of her age.
Ebenezer Elwell came from Branford, with a family, in 1732. Seven of his children were born before he came to Northbury, the first born here, Anne, being entered in the Waterbury records as his " Sth," "born Dec. 5th, 1733," and so being the second child, and first girl born in Northbury ; thus taking the head over Experience Blakeslee, daughter of Capt. Thomas, whom tradition has reported as the first female child born in Northbury, but who was not born till January 3, 1734-5. His ninth and last child was Samuel, born April 27, 1736. His other children, born before coming here, were Ebenezer. Mark, Johnathan, Catherine, Judith and Lydia, and one whose name I do not learn. His wife, Catherine, died January 9. 1743-4; and he married again in 1744, Hannah, daughter of Edmund Scott, of Waterbury. He died December 24. 1754. Where he lived. or where he was buried, I have not been able to learn. Among the bequests of his will-which was witnessed by Rev. Mr. Todd and John How, being doubtless written by Mr. Todd-was " land on the east side of the river," appraised at £284, to Ebenezer, and " land on the west side of the river," appraised at £1,242, to Mark. His daughter Catherine. or " Catrine " as her name was written, was married to Abraham Luddington ; Judith to James Curtiss ; and Lydia to Nathaniel Barnes. To Anne, unmarried at the date of his death, her father, to console her doubtless for the lack of a husband, made the following bequest : "I do will and bequeathe to my daughter Anne, my great Brass Kettle, to be her own " -- a rare treasure in those days, and which likely secured her a husband as soon as the bequest was known. Mr. Elwell's property was entered in the Waterbury grand list of 1737, at £74. so that he too had prospered in his worldly estate.
Barnabas Ford was, in more senses than one, the " head centre " of the new community. His "new dwelling house" was the centre of the circuit of two and a half miles radins, which the early petitions specified as the proposed limit of the
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HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH.
independent winter privileges asked for ; and he appears to have been the chief land owner of the early settlement, being satisfied, tradition says, with no less than "all the land that lay next to his." He came from Wallingford in the spring of 1736, having come to that town from New Haven about 1718. He brought with him a family of five children, viz., Ebenezer, Cephas, Enos, Sarah and Mary, and there were born to him here, Zillah, and Abel, the latter January 29, 1737-8. His calling, as specified in a deed given by Daniel Tuttle, of Wallingford, bearing date of 1720, was that of " Gentleman Taylor." He had a brother Benjamin, who also was a " Weavor." The family thus seems to have been in the clothier line, Barnabas being the pioneer
tailor of Northbury There was another brother in New Haven, Matthew, a "husbandman." The spring before coming here, April 12, 1735, Mr. Ford bought of "Joseph Chittenden, of Waterbury, husbandman," "for and in consideration of one hundred and fifty pounds money, well and truely paid, a certaine piece or parcell of Land, lying and being in s'd Waterbury, con- taining forty-five acres and a half acre, as the same lyeth butted and bounded Northerly by the common land, easterly in part by Joseph Hurlburt's Land, and part by the Highway, westerly, by Common Land, running to a poynt at the South and to a heap of stones which is the bounds, with a small dwelling House." This was the " new dwelling House," which was " the centre of the village we live in," as said the early petitions. This farm and house, Mr. Ford " lett and farm lett" back again to s'd Chittenden "to use and improve for grass and raising of grain as ye s'd Chittenden shall think fitt, until the 30th day of March next ensuing," that is, 1736, with the proviso that "the said Joseph Chittenden is wholly prohibited and forbidden to cut any sort of timber, Small or great upon s'd farm during his living upon s'd farm." The "small dwelling House" mentioned in this deed, which was the first home of the Fords in Northbury, stood not far from where the present academy in Thomaston now stands, the site of it being originally determined, doubtless, by the living spring of water near by, from which, with other springs, a good sized brook used to flow down through the run leading to "Twitch grass meadow," Mrs. Hart remembering that, in her girlhood, her folks used to water their horses in it as they went home to Humaston Hill, after meeting, Sundays. At the spring too, the boys used to slake their thirst, as they footed it, barefoot, to and from meeting on Plymouth Hill. The old chimney stack of the house was still standing in Mrs. Hart's early years, and she said that they used to say that was " Barney Ford's house." To the farm he had of Joseph Chitten- den, he added by purchase of those owning lands adjoining, as John Southmayd, Isaac Castle-who signed with a " mark "- John How, Thomas Clark, and Jeremiah Peck, of Waterbury, Benajah Stone, of " Gilford," Timothy Stanley, of Farmington, and others, until he owned most of the land in what is now the village of Thomaston. At the October session of the General Assembly, 1738, liberty was granted to the "Northerly inhab-
SOME OF THE PIONEERS.
itants" to employ a minister for two years, with exemption from parish rates at the town center for that time. In prospect of the settlement of a minister, Mr. Ford, December 13, 1738, " for the consideration of being freed from the charge of settling the first minister In the north part of the Bounds of Waterbury upon the River," gave to " the said Society and the present inhabitants, two acres of land, to be taken of the North part of my farm, In the following form, viz. : beginning at the Southwest corner of Sam'l Frost's land, etc." This land was part of the " Settle- ment" given Rev. Mr. Todd at his installation as first pastor of the Northbury church. A year and a half later, Mr. Todd sold and deeded back to Mr. Ford an acre and fifty rods of this land, " to be taken of my Home Lott." When the Episcopal church came to be organized in Northbury, Mr. Ford, " in consideration of one hundred pounds money, contributed to me by my neigh- bors, members of the church of England, by and with their advice, for the first of the lands to endow the said church in Northbury," as runs the deed, deeded to the "Society for the Propagation of the gospel in Foreign Parts," the English pro- selyting society, " one piece of land containing forty acres being and lying in said Northbury, eastward from the church, it being the west end of the farm that belonged to Thomas Clark, of Waterbury." The first church property, thus, in each society. came from the land of Mr. Ford. At the organization of the society of Northbury in 1739, he was one of the three, who, as the law required, applied for the issuing of the " worant" warn- ing the first society meeting, and at that meeting he was chosen " Clark for the Sosiaty of Northbury," and the opening records of the society are in his handwriting. "At ye same (first) meating (of the society) it was voted that Jeremiah Peck, Daniel Curtiss and Barnabas Ford, should be freed from ve charge of boulding Mr. Samuel todd's house:" Mr. Ford, for the con- sideration of the two acres given to the society the year before. as the other two, doubtless, for like considerations.
Mr. Ford died March 10, 1746-7, in the fifty-third year of his age. His will, which is a long and elaborate one, com- mences with the following preamble, illustrative of the style of his time, for nearly all the wills then written, began in about the same way :
"In the name of God amen : the 27th day of January in se year of our Lord 1746. I Barnabas Ford of Northbury, in ve County of New Haven, in his majesties Colony of Connecticut in New England, being weak of body but of sound mind and memory, thanks be to God, and calling to mind my own mortality, and knowing that it is appointed unto men once to die, do ordain this my last will and Testament, that it is to say principally I Give and recommend my soul into ye hands of God that gave it, hoping thro Jesus Christ my Savior to have free pardon of all my sins and to inherit Eternal life. and my body I commit to ye earth to be decently buried at ve discretion of my Executors hereafter named, believing that at ve general Resurrection of ye dead I shall receive the same again by ve
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mighty power of God; and as touching the worldly estate wherewith it hath pleased God to bless me in this life, I Give demise and dispose in the following manner."
To his " well beloved wife, Mary Ford," he gives "ye use and improvement of one-third part of all ye Land in the Farm that my house and Barn stands on in s'd Northbury, together with one-third part of my barn and one-half of my dwelling house, that is the South Westerly end of s'd house &c." To Ebenezer, his eldest son, he gives the other half of the house, etc. To his two sons Cephas and Enos, he gives " the whole of my lot of land known by ye name of my Standley farm, together with forty and three acres upon Bear Hill, which I bought of Mr. Todd, and six acres which I laid out adjoining to it, and the whole of my part of the lot laid out for ye sake of a mine, and the whole of my undivided right in the Common Lands in Waterbury, etc."
Mr. Ford bequeathes three guns to three of his boys; "to my son Ebenezer my old Gun," "to my son Cephas ye Gun that I bought of Mr. Cole," "to my son Enos ye Gun that I bought of Serj't Royce." He was thus well armed. His youngest son Abel, then only eight years old, he probably thought too young to be intrusted with firearms. Mr. Ford's daughter Sarah, had already married Abel Sutliff, the youngest and somewhat shiftless son of the Ist John Sutliff, and from the following note from Thomas Clark, Justice of Waterbury, it would seem that he found difficulty in drawing out of his rich father-in-law all the money he wanted :
"To Mr Barnabas ford Sir your son in law Abel Sutliff' wants to borrow fifty-five shillings if you please to let him have so much and I will wait till June next for it.
THOMAS CLARK."
Whether this intercession prevailed with the obdurate father-in-law or not, does not appear.
Mr. Ford's "well beloved wife. Mary," left by the will in the care of her sons Ebenezer and Abel, seems not to have fared altogether happily at their hands. A controversy manifestly arose between them as to the cost of providing for her, the fol- lowing bill against her being found among the Ford papers :
" Mother Ford Deter for my wifes Looking after Her dress- ing and undressing Her washing baking and Brewing for Her and brother Abel from May in the year 1757 until november in Ad 1758 and some afterwards, itt all amounts to the sum of £6 so do.
Here we see the old woman, helpless in her age, and a subject of quarrel between her two sons. This quarrel about their mother's support was finally left out to arbitrators to deter- mine, and they rendered the following decree :
Northbury May ye 12, 1766.
we the arbitrators in a Case Depending between wid. marah Ford and her Sons Eben'r & abel, being met at ye Dweeling
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SOME OF THE PIONEERS.
house of Eliphalet Hartshorn have Considered ye above s'd case & have agreed that Each of her s'd Sons shall give ye s'd widdow one pound ten Shillings pr annum to be paid in provitions.
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