USA > Connecticut > In olde Connecticut; being a record of quaint, curious and romantic happenings there in colonial times and later > Part 10
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"The statue was deposited in Governor Wol- cott's apple orchard, and ladies of the first rank and fortune-among them Laura and Mary Wol- cott, the fair daughters of the Governor-engaged in the enterprise. It was rough work for hands unaccustomed to labor; curls were tangled and fair faces flushed, and tender fingers were blis- tered by the molten lead, but they persevered, and at sunset a conical mound of forty-two thousand and eighty-eight cartridges (as is learned from a paper left by Governor Wolcott himself) attested to the skill and fidelity with which they labored. There was a grim sort of humor, fully appreci- ated, no doubt, by the stern Governor and his associates, in this making King George's statue into bullets wherewith to mow down the battalions of King George's army."
Across the way from Governor Wolcott's is the mansion house of Judge Tapping Reeve, where Lafayette and Rochambeau were entertained in May, 1777, and which was the home of Aaron Burr while a resident of Litchfield. Burr's only sister, to whom he was deeply attached, the wife of Judge Reeve, was then mistress of the mansion, and he came hither to engage in the study of the law fresh from his theological controversy with
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Dr. Bellamy, who lived in Bethlehem, but seven miles distant. Here he passed a year or more, studying a little law, paying court to the village beauties, and hunting and fishing in the adjacent woods and waters, and from here he set out with his friend Ogden to join the Continental army before Boston, and later for the heroic march with Arnold through the wilderness to Quebec. While absent on this expedition he wrote several inter- esting letters to his sister which are still preserved in the village.
A few years after Burr's departure Litchfield welcomed another American of ominous fame- John C. Calhoun-who passed almost three years of his checkered career in this classic village, and here nursed those gloomy, disorganizing fancies which this generation has seen ripen into bitter fruit. Perhaps the golden legends of the village center about two ancient mansions in North Street, one the home of Judge Gould, where the students of the famous Litchfield Law School met for reci- tation; the other the square-built, aggressive-look- ing structure which was the seat of Miss Sarah Pierce's no less famous Young Ladies' Seminary. These two schools drew their students from every part of the Union, and gave to the village a na-
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tional fame. Miss Pierce's school was estab- lished in 1792, and was very successful from the first-due, a cynical observer would insist, to the fact, patent to marriageable maidens and manag- ing mammas, of the existence in the village of a law school which numbered among its students one hundred of the most eligible young men of the country. Considering the strict laws which then governed the relations of the sexes, it is somewhat strange that the schools should have been placed so near to each other-with only a narrow yard intervening; but this was probably the result of accident rather than of design; cer- tain it is that a handkerchief waved from the rear windows of Miss Pierce's establishment would have been at once perceived in Judge Reeve's recitation room, nor could the Romeos and Ju- liets of the day have met but few obstacles in ar- ranging their stolen interviews; yet so salutary was the moral atmosphere of the village, and so nice the sense of honor and purity implanted in the breasts of these young people, that not a breath of scandal arose against them-not even a moon- light escapade occurred to mar the harmony of their social relations.
In one of the ancient mansions of the village,
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jealously guarded from the common eye, was shown me a most interesting collection of old let- ters and documents, some of them even possess- ing historical importance. The ancient packet, when opened, exhaled a faint odor of lavender, and the paper had taken on a yellowish tinge with the lapse of a hundred years. None of the letters was inclosed in an envelope, but each was folded and sealed with a wafer which was stamped with the seal of the writer; some of them had been sent by private hand, others by the post, and on these a fee of twenty-five cents had been collected. Most of them were addressed to the lady by whom they were preserved and from whom they have descended to the present possessor; others had been directed to her father, a once famous college president, and to her husband, a former Chief Justice, and were from men of the first rank in Church and State; several were from her brother, written when a soldier in the Continental army, but by far the larger number were from female friends and correspondents. These last were so delicate in sentiment and so gracefully and fluently expressed as to effectually explode the theory advanced by some modern pedants that but little attention was paid to the culture of
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the female intellect in the days of our grand- mothers.
Two of these epistles I am permitted to publish. The first is an ancient love letter, dated more than a hundred years ago, written by a former Chief Justice of Connecticut to the lady whom he after- ward married, and is of a class always interesting. It reads as follows:
"My Lovely Sallie: When I was in New Haven I wrote to you by your Aunt Fannie, which I sup- pose you have received before this time; if you have not this will serve to inform you that I did, and that I am never forgetful of my dear Sallie. The bearer is going this minute, and I cannot detain him. I did not know until a moment ago that he was going, and can therefore only inform you that I am well, and of that which you very well know, that I want to see my charmer. If you remember, I informed you that I had in my possession a letter which I had never sent, and which I now enclose to supply the defects of this. If Aaron is with you, give him my kindest love. "I propose to come to Fairfield as soon as I hear that you are got there."
The second letter is from Jonathan Edwards to
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Aaron Burr, the honored president of Princeton College, and father of the better known man of the same name. It is dated May 5, 1752, some two months before the marriage of President Burr to Esther Edwards. The finances of Princeton College were then in a crippled state, and Presi- dent Burr had been untiring in his efforts to place it on a solid financial foundation. He had written, pleaded, preached for it, had even made several journeys into New England seeking contributions in its behalf, and was now meditating a journey to Great Britain on a similar errand. Concerning this project, in answer to one from President Burr, Mr. Edwards wrote the following letter:
"SHEFFIELD, May 6, 1752.
"Rev. and Dear Sir: I thank you for your favor by Williams your pupil, and also for your other letter rec'd before. My not answering them be- fore now was not in the least owing to want of resolution, or any disposition to uphold any mis- understanding, but partly from the multitude of affairs which have continually pressed my mind, which yet would not have prevented my writing if I had known of any good opportunity. I heard nothing of Mr. Josiah Williams going away in
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the winter till after he had gone; if I had I should doubtless have wrote by him. As to the affair of the report of what you said concerning my book on the 'Terms of Communion,' &c., from the credit I give your representation, I fully believe you have been misrepresented, and therefore don't think it worth while to make an uproar in tracing the matter to the original.
"I would pray you to give your mind no further uneasiness about the matter, as though anything remained with me to occasion disaffection; I as- sure you there is nothing of that nature. You are pleased to ask my thoughts concerning your pro- posed voyage to Great Britain for the sake of New Jersey College. You have those nearer to you than myself, as well informed of the circumstances and necessities of the College, that are vastly more able and in fitter circumstances to advise you- Governor Belcher and the trustees in particular. There doubtless might great advantages be ob- tained by your going to England and Scotland and spending about a year in Great Britain, more than by all letters that could be written; the only doubt is whether the College won't extremely suf- fer by your being so long absent, but of that I am not a fit person to judge. One thing I will ven-
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ture to give you my thoughts on, namely: that since you have not had the smallpox, if you find a skillful and prudent physician under whose care you can put yourself, you would take the small- pox by inoculation before you go, after properly preparing your body for it by physic and diet. . If you go to Great Britain I shall be ready to do my utmost to further the designs of your going in my next letter to Scotland. Mr. Wright can inform you something of the state of things in Stockbridge. You may perhaps do much to promote our affairs in London; but I hope to write to you again about these matters before you go. In the mean time, asking your prayers, I am, dear sir,
"Your friend and brother, " JONATHAN EDWARDS.
The foregoing letter forms a part of the unwrit- ten history of Princeton College, and ought to be preserved in the archives of that institution.
CHAPTER XV
MINING IN CONNECTICUT
N OT long ago a paragraph went the rounds of the press announcing the formation of a syndicate of capitalists in Wallingford and New Haven for the purpose of boring for coal in Con- necticut. The announcement brought a smile of derision to the faces of many, no doubt, yet these capitalists are not wholly without reason for the belief that coal in quantity may be found there. The thrifty little State has made more progress in agriculture and manufacture than in mining, it is true, yet the mineral wealth within her borders is remarkable, as was shown to my satisfaction recently by a gentleman largely interested in the coal-mining experiment above referred to, whose knowledge of the State's mineral resources is varied and comprehensive.
"The rocks of Connecticut abound in veins of mineral," he began, " some of them exceedingly rare-in fact, seven minerals entirely new to
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science were once found in a single ledge in the western part of the State. Merchantable mica, a rare commodity, has been taken by the hundred pounds from the feldspar beds of Ridgefield. Asbestos has been found in the limestone quarries in Redding. Jonathan Trumbull, the Revolu- tionary Governor of Connecticut, supplied his troops with lead taken partly from a mine in Middletown. Many engineers would be surprised to learn that a vein of cobalt has been successfully worked in this State. It was opened in Chatham, near Middletown, about 1762, by Dr. Stephannes, a German chemist, and large quantities of ore were shipped in casks to Germany or England-no one knew exactly where, it being the Doctor's whim to keep his movements as secret as possible. If you follow up that singular trap formation which begins with the East and West Rocks at New Haven and stretches northward to Massachusetts, you will find it honeycombed with holes dug by prospectors for the precious metals, and at Sims- bury, in this range, you will see an immense cavern, with shafts, galleries and chambers, ex- cavated before the Revolution for the rich hoards of copper they contained. This mine later be- came famous as the Newgate, the State prison of
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Connecticut. Several veins of lead and copper have been discovered and superficially worked in the hills of Plymouth, in the Naugatuck Valley. " If we pass westward over the hills separating this valley from that of the Shepaug, a branch of the Housatonic, we find in ancient Woodbury a rich mineral field. Mr. Cothren in his history of that town gives the following list of minerals actually discovered there, or in its immediate vicinity: iron, ocher, Fuller's-earth, agates, prehnite, epidote, chalcedony, purple quartz, plumbago, magnetic iron pyrites, albite, white copperas, dyalogyte, triplite, gypsum, kyanite, mesotype, andalusite, spar, hornblende, botryoidal chalidocrase, garnet, dolomite, bitumen, opal, chrichtonite, mispickel, yellow copper pyrites, coal, mica and spathic or steel ore. This latter merits a further description. It is one of the most remarkable mineral deposits in the country. The mine is up the Shepaug, some six miles above its confluence with the Housatonic, and is marked by the great grimy stack of an iron furnace. It is on a hill some 350 feet high, and has a shaft about 150 feet deep. The ore is harder than calcareous spar, and may be smelted into the very best German steel. In fact, it is the only ore in this
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country that can compete with ore from the German mines. An analysis shows protoxide of iron 57 to 60, carbonic acid 34 to 36, with traces of lime, manganese and magnesia. It was first opened in 1750 for silver, and worked for that metal till a shaft 125 feet deep had been sunk, when it was abandoned. It has been worked to some extent within the last twenty- five years for spathic ore, and has produced steel of excellent quality, but the title is unfortu- nately in dispute, and has been for some years in the courts.
"The marble quarries of New Preston are no doubt well known to you, and the same might be said of the famous Salisbury iron-ore beds. As one goes up the Housatonic Valley, he strikes at Kent the first furnace supplied with ore from this district. There are one or two more furnaces at Cornwall Bridge, one at Lime Rock, two or three in Canaan. Seen at night, with the flames pouring from their great black stacks, they add not a little to the picturesqueness of that exceed- ingly interesting region. Three ore beds-the Old Hill, Davis and Chatfield-supply all of them and are situated on the east slope of the Taghkanic range, near the village of Salisbury.
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These ore beds are the furthest remove from one's idea of iron mines, being simply huge openings, several acres in extent, in the sides of the green, grassy hills peculiar to that region. The ore is brown hematite of the best quality; the iron it makes is the best produced in the United States, and is made up into car wheels and other articles requiring the toughest and most malleable metal. Its quality is shown by the fact that early in the Revolution, Governor Jonathan Trumbull caused a foundry to be erected in Salisbury, and there cast from this iron, cannon, cannon balls, and other munitions for the patriot troops.
"Lower down the Housatonic Valley, at Sandy Hook in Newtown, we have a gold mine which was worked by British soldiers in the Revolution, and casks of its ore sent to England for treat- ment. From one pound of its ore seventy-two cents in gold and eleven in silver were taken, if the assayer is to be believed.
"But, to return to our own special undertak- ing. The working of all the veins I have named has been entirely superficial-the work of men without capital, skill or experience. Our project proposes to make use of all the appliances which capital can command, and prove the question
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once for all whether there is a paying bed of coal, and perhaps iron, underlying our bitumi- nous shales. We have formed a syndicate and have nearly succeeded in raising $15,000 in $2.50 shares (6,000 shares), representing a capital stock (should the enterprise prove successful) of $120,000 at $20 per share. We have leased a tract of fifteen hundred acres of land in Durham, a town adjoining Wallingford on the east, and propose to explore it for coal with the modern diamond drill. We have chosen this neighbor- hood because here are strong indications of coal. Perhaps you would like to read the report of a well-known geologist who has recently examined this tract for us.
"Prof. Forrest Shepard writes: 'I have visited and examined your leased mineral lands in the township of Durham, Conn., and find surface indications for coal-seams superior to those I found in North Carolina, where within about 200 yards of a trap-ridge I discovered an excellent coal-seam of about six feet in thickness; even better than the surface indications I found at Chesterfield, Va., where at a depth of 700 feet, coal 30 feet in thickness based on hard granite, was struck, which has led to a vast coal trade.
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ยท I hope a test will be made on your prop- erty, in places pointed out, by boring, for the satisfaction of the public, and to settle the ques- tion whether we have a good coal deposit so near home.'"
This conversation was brought to the writer's mind afresh a few days since by a two days' ride through one of the prettiest portions of Con- necticut, which brought to notice much of this newly-discovered mineral wealth of which our friend had spoken. The ride embraced the towns of Ridgefield, Redding, Bethel and Newtown, which stretch across the northern portion of Fair- field County, from the New York State line to the Housatonic.
We first visited Branchville in Ridgefield, a little station on the Danbury and Norwalk Rail- road, some twelve miles above Norwalk, and nota- ble as the place where, in 1877, a remarkable group of minerals, entirely new to science, was discovered. A deep feldspar quarry, from which several thousand tons of the finest feldspar have been shipped, now occupies the place where they were taken out, which is on the lower slope of a hill rising steeply up into granite crags. The man to whom belongs the credit of first introducing
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them to science, was the Rev. John Dickinson, who at the time was pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Redding. Mr. Dickin- son's account of the discovery, which we had heard before visiting the place, was quite in- teresting. "I was," said he, "one day ram- bling among the Branchville ledges, when I dis- covered in Fillow's field and on the walls, a min- eral entirely new to me, and, as I believed, to science. I selected several specimens, and left .some at Columbia College and some with Pro- fessor Brush, of Yale.
"Brush was incredulous-some of the Branch- ville specimens had before been taken by the elder Dana without result-but in a few days I got a letter from him asking for more; then shortly after I met him on the cars, on his way to Branch- ville, and found him enthusiastic. He had opened the vein, had found albite, microcline, and new minerals that promised wonderful re- sults. Well, the matter was followed up until seven entirely new minerals were discovered and described in the scientific journals, viz .: First, Eosphorite, chemically akin to phosphorite; sec- ond, Triploidite; third, Dickinsonite; fourth, Lithiophilite; fifth, Reddingite; sixth, Fairfieldite,
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and seventh, Fillowite. All mineralogists agreed that this was a colossal discovery; there were, however, other remarkable features connected with it. Some twenty-five different known min- erals were found in the pocket, many of them occurring in unique forms. We found mica, for instance, in globular form; curved mica we call it; and specimens sent to twenty prominent mineralogists in various parts of the world elicited the fact that they had never before known it to occur in that form. Again there is a mineral known as spodumene, which contains lithia, and occurs usually in small crystals; but here a crystal was found eight feet long, sixteen inches wide and between four and five thick. Another rare feature was that this spodumene had been pseudomorphed into another rare mineral known as cymatolite, which also appeared in large crystals." Profes- sors Brush and Dana, in the "American Journal of Science and Arts," for July, 1878, gave an in- teresting account of the discovery and description of the minerals found by them on a visit to this spot.
Further proof of activity in developing the mineral resources of this part of the State is seen in a large frame building standing just across
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the track from the quarry on the line of the branch road leading to Ridgefield. This build- ing, 161 feet by 50, two stories and basement, has been erected and furnished with powerful and costly machinery for the purpose of crushing the quartz, or, more properly, oxide of silicon, found in the neighboring hills. The company owns three quarries within a radius of three miles of the works, and has others at command. The works comprise a kiln in which the stone is first calcined, an engine, chases and rubbing tubs in which, after burning, the silicon is crushed and then ground to a fine powder. The product is used in the arts of making soap and paint, and as glazing for pottery.
For our second day's ride we drove to Bethel, eight miles, and from thence three miles in a southerly direction, to inspect a famous tourma- line rock and a second feldspar quarry recently opened near by. Our road led along the borders of Redding, Bethel and Newtown, and as we drove we were sometimes in one town, sometimes in another. The region is as wild, woody and lonesome as could be imagined, a forest of several square miles in extent, known as Hopewell Woods, covering the craggy, almost mountainous
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hills that here divide the richly cultivated hill slopes of Redding from those of Newtown. A mile's travel through a forest path fairly paved "with glossy brown chestnuts brought us to the quarry, which only began active operations last April, but has already opened a large chasm in the rocky heart of the hill. This vein, we learned, is controlled jointly by the New Jersey Flint and Spar Company and the International Pottery, both of Trenton, New Jersey, and all its stone is shipped there, being hauled three miles and a half by horses to Plumtrees, a way station on the Shepaug Railroad.
Some very interesting specimens have been un- earthed in quarrying here. We saw in Superin- tendent Sloan's office an immense tourmaline crystal, measuring three feet by eighteen inches, and very pretty specimens of beryl, columbite, albite, mica and rose-quartz. Several of these veins of feldspar crop out through the forest, and as the stone, it is said, can be profitably shipped to England, it is possible that a great industry may spring up among these rock-ribbed hills. Coming out, we stopped to view, near the roadside, the tourmaline rock, an object of in- terest for many years to both professional and
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amateur mineralogists. It is an immense granite bowlder stranded on a hilltop, and stuck full, like plums in pudding, of black glistening tourmaline crystals of all shapes, sizes and degrees of bril- liancy. Black fragments and heaps of tourmaline dust at the base of the rock bear witness to the presence and ardor of many prospectors and specimen-hunters.
CHAPTER XVI
THE PEQUOT INDIANS '
TT is a fact little known that a remnant of the once powerful Pequot race still maintains a tribal organization in Connecticut. Schaghticoke, the ancient seat of this people, is situated in the town of Kent under the Schaghticoke Mountain in the middle valley of the Housatonic. It is on the edge of the great bowl-like depression in the hills that make room for the beautiful Kent meadows, and two and one half-miles south of pretty Kent village. The Housatonic flows before it so near that there is barely room for the village between it and the mountain. Schaghticoke con- sists of six little, brown, clap-boarded one-story houses tenanted by some seventeen persons. The reservation of three hundred acres comprises Schaghticoke Mountain, valuable only for its tim- ber, and extends west some two miles to the State of New York. The Indian question excites so much interest just now, that the history of this
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ancient people, Connecticut's dealings with them and its results is not without significance and value. The founder of the Schaghticoke tribe was Mawwehu, a chief of the royal Pequot blood. When that tribe was dispersed by Captain Mason and his men, a fragment, including several mem- bers of the royal family, settled at Dover in New York, some five miles west of Schaghticoke where Mawwehu was born. He had all the ardor of his race for domination, and longed for a people to rule over. On a hunting excursion one day, he discovered the Kent Plains, then uninhabited by man, and determined to found a colony there. He went to his own people, to the Mohegans of the Hudson, the Housatonics and other wander- ing tribes and, gathering them into the valley, formed a community, with himself as head. This was about 1735. In 1736 the tribe numbered one hundred warriors. An interesting episode in its history was the arrival there in 1742 of Christian Henry Rauch, the famous Moravian missionary, who preached to the tribe with success. Maw- wehu and one hundred and fifty of his people were converted; a church was established, and the Indians became sober and industrious. Un- fortunately, this success of the Moravians did not
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