USA > Connecticut > In olde Connecticut; being a record of quaint, curious and romantic happenings there in colonial times and later > Part 11
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meet the views of the white traders and dissolute characters who, as early as 1738, had pressed into the valley, and they proceeded to drive away the missionaries. They first poisoned the minds of the Indians against them, and then a little later accused them of being in league with the French and drove them from the valley. Rauch and his companions fled to the Moravian settlements at Bethlehem, Pa., and quite a number of their In- dian converts went with them.
The Government of Connecticut pursued a just and liberal policy toward those of them who re- mained. When the township of Kent was formed, two large reservations were granted them-one in the valley on the east side of the river, and the other of some 2,000 acres among the mountains. They were placed under the religious care of the church in Kent. The common schools, when es- tablished, were freely open to them. When com- plaints of the white man's aggressions were made to the General Court, a committee was appointed and justice was generally done. For a hundred years they have been surrounded by an industri- ous and law-abiding community; yet their course has been so steadily downward that they are now on the verge of extinction. Indolence, drunken-
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ness, and intermarriage with negroes and the lower class of whites are largely responsible for this. Their improvidence was such that as early as 1752 they had sold all the planting lands in the valley. In 1757 they had become so incapa- ble of maintaining themselves that the colony ap- pointed an overseer, to whom their property was committed, and who was charged with their over- sight and maintenance. From that time forward the affairs of the tribe have been administered by an agent of the State. In a petition of 1786 they admit their ignorance and inability to take care of themselves, and implore the continued assist- ance of the whites. Their number is stated in this petition to be males 36, females 35-of whom 20 were children.
In 1801 they were spoken of as being reduced to "35 idle, intemperate beings who cultivated only six acres of ground." They had then some 1,200 or 1,500 acres of mountain land, which re- mained in their possession chiefly because they were unable to sell it, and as the debts of the tribe, from sickness and other causes, were then pressing, Abraham Fuller, the overseer, petitioned that this land might be sold, the proceeds to be applied to discharging the debts, and the surplus,
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if any, invested as a permanent fund. The land sold for £1,300, and the money was applied as the petition suggested except that £200 was used in building six cottages for the Indians. In 1846 the overseer reported ten Indians of pure blood and thirty half-breeds under his care.
Wishing to judge for myself of the present con- dition of the tribe, I one day sought an interview with the overseer, Mr. Henry Roberts, who lives at Gaylordville, a little village in the town of New Milford, and was invited to accompany him on a visit to the Indian village. On setting out a large, loaf-shaped mountain in the north, some three miles distant, was pointed out as Schaghticoke Mountain. I shall not soon forget the beautiful tints of its autumn foliage. Our road lay along the left bank of the river over little foothills of the valley, between meadows and pastures, and little patches of forest. The valley walls contract as you go northward, so that your experience is much like riding into the mouth of a funnel. After following the river for two and one-half miles we crossed it by a firm, single-span bridge, swept around the point of the mountain by a road that overhung the river, passed five little brown cot- tages, one of them deserted, and drew up at the
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home of Vinie, the Queen of the Schaghticokes- Queen by inheritance, she being a great-grand- daughter of Mawwehu, the Pequot chief. Vinie received us very affably. She is a tall, angular woman showing few traces of Indian blood, and was clad in a clean calico gown and apron of the same material. According to her own account, she is seventy-five years of age, although her neigh- bors say that she is several years older. There is no carpet on the floor of her cottage. Its furniture consists of a cooking stove, three or four chairs, a clock, a basket, two dogs-a big and a little one-and a shaving-horse where she prepares the splints for her baskets. A pair of rude stairs leads to a loft above. Questioned concerning the origin of her people, the Queen gave a very interesting and correct account of the founding of the tribe. She remembered hearing her grandmother tell many Indian tales and traditions-love stories, "booger" stories, exploits of heroes in war and the chase-but could not remember them suffi- ciently well to narrate them for her visitors' bene- fit. Asked why her people did not retain the habits and language of the Indians, she said that they had lived so long among the white folk that they loved white folk's ways. Asked how many
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in number her people were, she said she "could not tell; they were scattered like grasshoppers." Pressed for an answer, she replied, "About forty, I suppose." Vinie is a member of the Congrega- tional Church in Kent, and her pastor reports her as living up to the average standard. She has been busy and industrious all her life, weaving baskets, cultivating the acre or two of land about her dwelling, and has relied very little on the fund for support. Her mother was a white woman. She has a half-sister, Rachel, who sometimes shares her abode and who is full blood.
The next cottage south of the Queen's is occu- pied by George Cogswell, his wife and four chil- dren. The husband is partly negro, the wife full Indian. The next dwelling, a few yards south, is the home of an eccentric individual known lo- cally as Hen Pan. He prides himself on his un- mixed blood, and in scorn of his neighbor's race- mixing propensities has marked on his chimney in large letters "I. AM. O. K." His brother, Jim Pan, who has a white wife and two children, shares his cottage. Of the two other dwellings on the reservation one is occupied by Mrs. Kilson, a widow, an industrious and capable woman, the mother of nine children, of whom only one re-
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mains with her, and the other by Value Kilson, who has a wife and four children. The ancient burying-ground of the Schaghticokes-a triangu- lar piece of ground inclosed by a dilapidated board fence-adjoins Value's cottage. The graves are mostly marked by wooden head-boards, and many have not even this memorial. The ground is sit- uated directly under a cliff, over which a mountain brook tumbles.
The present overseer has been five years in of- fice, and, being a firm, as well as a humane, man, has somewhat improved the financial condition of the tribe. He has aimed to make them as far as possible self-supporting, and the fund in his hands has shown a steady yearly increase. He has the sole charge of the tribe, invests their money to the best advantage, gives them orders on the country merchants for necessary articles which they are unable to procure for themselves, and furnishes them with medicine and medical attendance when sick. Each year he returns three reports of his stewardship-one to the Secretary of State, one to the District Court of Litchfield county, and a third to the Town Clerk of Kent. From his last report (September, 1881) I learn that the present reservation comprises three hundred acres of land,
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six dwelling houses (one unoccupied) and three stores, the whole valued at $3,500. The fund now amounts to $5,427.45, an increase in five years of some $628.
Mr. Roberts can make no exact return of the . present number of the tribe, as its members are widely scattered, but places their probable num- ber at fifty. Of these, however, but three or four are of unmixed Indian blood.
CHAPTER XVI
GREENFIELD HILL, A ONCE FAMOUS VILLAGE
N Y OW and then the pilgrim chances on a nook of such quiet beauty and serenity as to sug- gest that earthly paradise which has filled so many poet's dreams. Such a place is the little hamlet from which I write. Let one imagine a green common, well shaded, with an ancient church and weather-beaten academy on one side and several fine old country houses on the other, placed on the summit of a hill overlooking several miles of green meadows and the Sound, and he has a pic- ture of this Arcadia, which is known in local par- lance as "the Hill." All about it is a mass of greenery-green pastures, meadows, forests, corn- fields-only in the grain fields does this prevailing color change. The prevailing color appears, too, we have remarked, in the local nomenclature, Green Farms and Greenfield being the names of two hamlets at our doors. There is a fine old country seat here-the Bronson estate-which was
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the objective point of the Tally-ho coach in one of its outings a few summers ago, a fact which, for the first time in many years, gave the little village a generous notice in the daily press.
We find here a polite and agreeable society, the legacy of a somewhat notable past; the courtesy and flavor of good old Dr. Dwight's day still re- main. For the village was once the home of that eminent divine; the parish was his first charge; in the old academy which has been mentioned, his famous school was kept; and tucked away in cupboards and secretaries of the old colonial houses we find now and then a time-stained and moldy copy of his still more famous poem, "Greenfield Hill" - a poem in which rural delights, grave historical events and prophetic visions are blended with considerable poetic skill and ingenuity. We had the pleasure of handling one of these, a small volume in homely binding, as was the fashion of books in 1794. The poem is in seven parts. We have copied the heads of the arguments: I. The Prospect. II. The Flour- ishing Village. III. The burning of Fairfield. IV. The Destruction of the Pequots. V. The
Clergyman's Advice to the Villagers. VI. The Farmer's Advice to the Villagers. VII. The
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Vision, or Prospect of the Future Happiness of America.
About Dr. Dwight's pastorate village memories naturally cluster. He became pastor here in 1783, after a most precocious boyhood. It is said of him . that he read the Bible at four, studied Latin by himself at six, and was fitted for college at eight. In 1765, at the age of thirteen, he entered Yale College, was graduated at seventeen, and became a tutor in his college at nineteen. In 1777 he en- tered the Revolutionary army as chaplain, where, like his friend Joel Barlow, he exerted a happier influence on the soldiers by his lyrics than by his sermons. It was after leaving the army that he assumed charge of the church at Greenfield Hill. There are old residents in the village who still re- member the Doctor, who died at New Haven in 1817. Our most pleasant employment is to sit under a venerable elm near the common with one of these worthy old gentlemen, and listen to tales of the former glory of the village.
"Dr. Dwight, " he began, on our first interview, " came here on a very insufficient salary, and to eke it out he opened an academy for young people. Over yonder there stood a little brown shop where Gershom Hubbell dressed leather and then fash-
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ioned it into breeches of excellent cut and work- manship, while his daughter was noted for her skill as a glovemaker. This shop the Doctor se- cured, and his first school session was opened there as early as 1784, if not earlier. The Acad- emy was built for him in 1785 or 1786, and after that his school rapidly became one of the most famous in the country. He had an ambition to be thought one of the best educators of the day. His boys, intended for Yale, were better fitted, it is said, than those of any other graduate. Schol- · ars soon began to come from all parts of the world to study under him. In the early class were two Livingstons from Hudson River; Dubois, from France; Charles H. Pond, who later became Lieu- tenant-Governor of Connecticut; Joel R. Poin- sett, Minister to Mexico and Secretary of War; two Capers from South Carolina, and Henry Bald- win, afterward a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. Contemporary with these was a class of young ladies-the three Misses Burr, of Fairfield; Miss Young, of Bridgeport; Sally Nichols, of Newtown, and others-said to have been a class of remarkable beauty. A little ro- mance came of this juxtaposition, too, for in the Fairfield records you will find recorded the mar-
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riage of Abigail Burr to William Henry Capers, of the parish of St. Helena, S. C.
"In the school there were two daily sessions of three hours each. Wednesday was a red-letter day: in the afternoon the boys declaimed, after which came a spelling-bee, the winners being let out a quarter of an hour before the others as a reward. In the evening the Doctor lectured on theology-lectures which he afterward published in a volume. In private life Doctor Dwight was very genial and hospitable, and kept open house; he was so famous, too, that many travelers and gentlemen of distinction would come to Greenfield to call on him. But those days passed, and have never come again. On the death of President Stiles, of Yale College, Doctor Dwight was called to the Presidency, and removed thither in 1795."
"An old tavern stood on that corner," said the same narrator, as we joined him another day un- der the elms, "that some of you clever young men might make something of if you would dig out the facts. It was kept by Joseph Bulkley at the time Doctor Dwight lived in Greenfield, and some famous men were entertained there first and last. Talleyrand and the Spanish Min- ister (whose name I forget) once dined there. It
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was a famous resort for the judges and lawyers when the County Court was in session at Fairfield; such men as Chief Justice Reeve, Uriah Tracy, "and Gideon Granger have often been its guests. Rufus King, our Minister to England; Joel Bar- low, our Minister to France, with his wife, who was a sister of Judge Henry Baldwin; Gen. Rufus Putnam, of Ohio, and many others, I have myself seen there. They don't have such merrymakings now as used to be held in the old tavern. In win- ter there was a dance about once a month, with Mose Sturges to fiddle, and wine and plum cake for the feast. Dr. Dwight usually made it a point to come in, take a glass of wine and a piece of cake, tell a good story, and withdraw at a decorous hour. "
Sometimes a spasm of activity seizes us, and we explore the surrounding country; I might have said the neighboring wilderness. Five miles west is the valley of the Saugatuck, and by following it a few yards above where the Greenfield road strikes it, we enter a deep, romantic gorge, which would have excited the raptures of many a trav- eler ere this had it been placed in Nevada or Ari- zona. There is a dark wooded mountain on the right, and on the left, fifty feet down, at the foot
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of a precipice, the river tumbling and foaming over ledges of rock. We follow the brawling stream for two miles through thick woods, without seeing a vestige of human habitation save a charcoal- burner's deserted hut, or meeting anyone except the charcoal man on his huge spreading wagon of coal, bound to market, and then come suddenly on a little hamlet of neatly painted houses clus- tered about several low workshops on the bank of the river. The place, we learned, was called the Forge. This wildness, it must be remembered, was within four or five miles of the belt of popu- lous communities which skirt the Connecticut shore of the Sound.
The valley of the Mill River, two miles east, is equally wild and romantic. In one of its spurs (a huge mass of ledges and precipitous rocks, in itself well worthy a visit) is a great natural or ar- tificial curiosity, which has long puzzled the curi- ous. It is a deep, smooth round hole in the rock of from twelve to sixteen quarts capacity. Tradi- tion ascribes its origin to the Indians of the valley. It is certain that it was used by them for genera- tions as a mortar in which to pound the corn raised on the adjacent lowlands; and whole fam- ilies must have gathered there, for the rock about
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the mortar is worn smooth by the tread of many feet.
If we drive southward we enter on different scenes. Here are farms in the highest state of cultivation, with buildings and lawns denoting both wealth and taste on the part of the owners. It is the home of the onion-grower. Nothing seems to grow but onions between Greenfield Hill and the sea. We pass many fields of five to ten acres each, and hear of growers who raise all the way from ten to twenty-five acres of the pungent bulbs.
CHAPTER XVII
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT RAILROAD
TH HE law papers and many private papers of the Hon. Roger Sherman, one of the most prominent jurists of his day, are now in posses- sion of the Fairfield County Historical Society in Bridgeport. Among them is a series of interest- ing documents, showing in a vivid way the violent opposition encountered by the now dominant rail- road in making its way into this conservative region.
The first passenger railroad constructed in the United States was the Baltimore and Ohio, a sec- tion of which was formally opened July 4, 1828, the first locomotive for it being built by Peter Cooper in Baltimore. The second was the Mo- hawk and Hudson, from Albany to Schenectady, opened in 1830. By 1833 the fever of railroad building had extended into Connecticut, and on the first Wednesday of May, 1833, the Connecti- cut Legislature constituted as a body politic and
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corporate the Hartford and New Haven Railroad, with power to "locate, construct, and fully com- plete a single, double, or treble railroad or way" from Hartford to the navigable waters of New Ha- ven Harbor. This was the first railroad opened in the State, although the "Boston, Norwich and New London " had been chartered the May pre- vious. It is significant of the slow and halting manner in which its projectors felt their way, so to speak, that it was empowered to use as motors "the power and force of steam, of animals, or of any mechanical or other power or any combina- tion of them." It is difficult to believe that only fifty years have elapsed since this project startled the sleepy villages strung along the turnpikes that then connected the capital cities of Connecticut, and that there are men still living along the route who remember the commotion it raised. Almost everyone, except its promoters, opposed it, on gen- eral principles, from the natural conservatism of rural residents, and utter ignorance of the nature and scope of the proposed way. But there were three different classes-shrewd men, who opposed it from interest, with full knowledge, probably, of its possibilities, and these were the directors and stockholders of the turnpikes, the managers of the
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steamboat lines, that on the breaking of the Ful- ton-Livingston monopoly had sprung up, and were enjoying a lucrative carrying trade with a score of points on the Sound, and the farmers through whose land the proposed route would pass.
The nature and extent of this opposition is ad- mirably shown in a memorial addressed to the Legislature of 1832, evidently drawn up by Judge Sherman, and signed by Simeon Baldwin, J. Wood, Roger M. Sherman, Wm. Bristol, and Epaphroditus Champion, "overseers of turnpike stock." There are two remarkable things about this document-that it could be dated so recently as fifty years ago, and the prescience of its authors in so clearly foretelling the evils likely to result to the public from the exclusive privileges granted such corporations. I insert the document for its picturesque and historic interest :
"Your memorialists, to their very great sur- prise, have lately been informed that a petition is now pending before your honorable body which has been referred to a joint committee of both houses for the incorporation of a railroad from Hartford to New Haven. However beneficial in general such improvement may be, it is very cer- tain that they may be adopted under such circum-
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stances as to produce more harm than good, and may result in great injury and injustice to private property. A railroad is a monopoly in a peculiar sense. On a canal or turnpike every citizen has a perfect right to use his own vehicles-not so on a railroad. The carriages upon that must all be- long to the proprietors of the road, or run by their especial permission, and must be subject to one superintendence. In the monopoly now contem- plated your memorialists are informed and be- lieve that, although no names appear on petition but those of the citizens of this State, yet a great majority of the interest is to be owned and held by strangers, citizens of other States, proprietors in those great and overwhelming establishments of steamboats and railroads which now monopo- lize the conveyance of passengers between the cities of New York and Philadelphia, and are en- deavoring to seize the exclusive right through this State and Long Island Sound, and unite the whole with such additions as they may hereafter acquire under one power. Should they, by the aid of leg- islative grants and immense and increasing wealth, extend into Massachusetts and reach the capital of New England, a traveler who would enjoy the advantages of a conveyance between Boston and
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Washington must submit to such terms as they please to prescribe. No line of steamboats not connected with that company could partake of the right of conveying passengers on these long and frequented routes. A passenger entered at Bos- ton or Hartford for Philadelphia or Washington would pay his fare at the commencement of his journey, and be lost to every intermediate convey- ance. Thus all competition would be put down, and the great sums now invested by and exten- sively divided among our citizens, tending to cheap- ness and convenience as well as to equality of rights and privileges, would be annihilated, and the expense of traveling would depend on the will and pleasure of that united interest which would find its advantage in the highest possible rates of fare.
"By the grant now contemplated, four turnpike companies between New Haven and Hartford, in which many widows, orphans and persons in mod- erate circumstances have invested their property, the steam navigation from Hartford to New York, the steamboats between the latter city and New Haven, and many other of the vested interests of our own citizens would be utterly destroyed."
All of the memorialists had investments in some
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of these establishments, and they humbly prayed in behalf of themselves and others in like circum- stances, that the charter might not be granted.
- We are apt to speak of monopolies as of mod- ern growth, but that called "The Fulton Steam- boat Company, " which certain "acts" of the New York Legislature had created, far exceeded in powers and privileges any known in our day. A petition found among the papers goes on to re- cite various acts, forming precedents, under which it had grown up: First, the act of 1787, giving to John Fitch the sole right of employing and navi- gating for a limited time all vessels on New York waters impelled by steam; second, the act of 1798, withdrawing the exclusive right given to Fitch, bestowing it on Robert Livingston, and extend- ing the time to twenty years; third, the act of 1803, extending the time to twenty years from that date, and including Robert Fulton as one of the privileged; fourth, the act of 1808, provid- ing that whenever Livingston, Fulton, and such persons as they should associate with them, should place on this line additional boats, each one so added should prolong the term of exclu- sive privilege by five years, such terms in toto, however, not to exceed thirty years; fifth, the act
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of 1811, making it possible for the persons named in the act or their associates to seize any boat, not having their license, found in waters under the jurisdiction of New York, and to condemn them as though the same had been taken forcibly and wrongfully out of their possession, and forbid- ding the owners of such boat to obtain any writ of injunction to navigate, employ or remove them out of the jurisdiction of the court during the pen- dency of the trial of such seizure. The petition then goes on to recite that Livingston and Fulton had complied with the various provisions of the acts in question, and had become possessed of the privileges conferred; that they had since died, but that previous to their death, they had sold to Jo- siah Ogden Hoffman, Cadwallader D. Colden and William Cutting, the exclusive right, so far as they possessed it, to navigate the waters of the East River in the State of New York, "or the Sound commonly called Long Island Sound," by means of steam or fire, and also a right to the exclusive use of the inventions of Fulton and Livingston; that the former gentlemen, with their associates, had since been incorporated by the Legislature of New York as the Fulton Steamboat Company, to which, by sundry assignments or conveyances, all the ex-
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