USA > Connecticut > In olde Connecticut; being a record of quaint, curious and romantic happenings there in colonial times and later > Part 12
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clusive rights and privileges of Fulton and Living- ston had been conveyed. The complaint further alleged that the Fulton Steamboat Company had - then two steamboats plying on the waters lying between New York and New London, and that there were no other boats whatever "employed in the navigation from any part of the State of New York to any place without the said State and ly- ing on the Sound aforesaid." Having recited these facts, the petitioners next remind the Court that by virtue of the Constitution and laws of the United States, they have the right to navigate any of the waters of New York, and particularly those used in the navigation between New York and other States; which right was denied them by the acts mentioned, and by the threats of enforcement made by the Fulton Steamboat Company; also, that they could not have recourse to the common law, as the moment their vessel entered the waters of New York, it was liable to seizure and practi- cal confiscation; and they therefore prayed for a writ of injunction restraining the Fulton Steam- boat Company from bringing any action or suit in any court of the State of New York, under color of the said acts, until the right of the peti- tioners should be fully ascertained. They also
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prayed for an order directing the Fulton Steam- boat Company to appear, and show cause why the injunction should not be granted.
John L. Sullivan was the inventor and patentee of a steam engine of a different character from that employed by Fulton in his boats. His peti- tion for an injunction was brought on the advice of Roger Sherman, who, in September, 1819, for- warded him a very elaborate opinion, advising an injunction, which now lies before me. It appears by a letter to Judge Sherman from Henry D. Sedg- wick, Esq., of New York, dated October 11, 1819, that the petition was met by the defendants with a demurrer, assigning as causes that the complain- ants had not made a case entitling them to relief; that the bill contained no equity; that the ques- tion was proper only for a court of law; that com- plainants had an adequate remedy at law, and that before filing the bill the case should have been tried at law; and, sixth, that none of the adminis- trators or next of kin of Fulton and Livingston were made parties to the suit; Sedgwick adds that he does not believe the assigned causes of de- murrer sufficient.
The case was one of the causes celebrès of the day, and awakened wide interest, but ultimately
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ended in a breaking of the monopoly by the courts. On looking over these time-stained documents the query is suggested, what would be thought now of a corporation that claimed and held the exclusive control of the commerce of the Hudson and of Long Island Sound ?- for this was practically the privilege of the Fulton Steamboat Company in 1819.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PROBATE JUDGE AND THE TOWN CLERK
IN the quiet Connecticut village whence we write, there are three great men-the minis- ter, the doctor and the judge of probate. All other men may sit in the "store" of evenings, "swap" stories, and discuss their neighbors, but these three by the very dignity of their office are foresworn. The judge is nearing the age limit of seventy, slender, grizzled, with a typical New Eng- land face. He wears a tall hat, long frock coat, , and trousers of sober hue, a little shiny from long wear.
His house-just across the common from the village tavern, our domicile-with its lofty portico supported by fluted pillars, its carved front door with brass knocker, wide cornice and dormer win- dows, is most imposing. The judge's office occu- pies an L on the left of the main structure, and communicates with his sitting room by a door cut through the dividing partition so that he can step
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into his office these days without exposing himself to the nipping air. His office is sui generis. Nothing like it is to be found outside of New -England. There is an iron safe where wills and inventories for a hundred years back are kept, copied into huge, parchment-bound tomes, a book- . case filled with law books, quaint old armchairs with claw feet, an ancient desk with pigeon-holes full of papers, and a huge Franklin stove, which on a January day with the thermometer ten de- grees below zero, has a capacity for radiating com- fort undreamed of by those who sit beside its de- generate successors. The judge will burn nothing but hickory, and "Pete," his man of all work, cuts without orders every year two of the giants in the hickory grove beyond the calf pasture to fill the stove's capacious maw.
The judge of probate is in a special sense the "little father" of the people of his district. For forty years it has been his duty to declare persons legally dead, and to turn over all they died pos- sessed of, to the legatees-if they left a will-or to the next of kin, if they died intestate. To him widows look for an allowance during the settle- ment of their husbands' estates; to him minor children appeal that a whole or a part of their
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portion of their father's estate may be sold and the proceeds devoted to their support; he is the custodian of all wills, inventories and distributions of estates, counsellor in all questions of law affect- ing wills and the final disposal of property; a magistrate to hear and decide all claims against estates where the inventory thereof does not ex- ceed $2,000.
A desire to gather some scattered threads of family history led us to consult the leather-clad volumes in the judge's safe, and many of the long cold days of last winter were passed in his office. One day a family party drove up in carriages, men and women alighted, and filed into the judge's office, legatees under the will or kindred of one of the solid men of the town who had just died, gathered to listen to the reading of the will.
At such times and when he is holding court, the judge appears at his best. He was more care- fully brushed than usual this time, his manner was more judicial and consolatory, as befitted so sad and solemn an occasion. The faces of the party were a study. Some knew they had been ignored, some that they had been remembered; others evidently were quite uncertain what the in- strument had in store for them. The reading was
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soon over, however, and the party filed out, some faces radiant, others depressed or defiant, as if promising a future contest.
"Another time there drove up in a mud-bespat- tered carriage that had brought him from the sta- tion, four miles away, a small, modest appearing gentleman with a legal air, who proved to be one of the greatest lawyers of the metropolis. He wished to find the parentage of his great-grand- mother, Huldah May, who had been born in the . old town a hundred years before, but the record of whose birth could not be found, in either the town records (in possession of the town clerk) or in the parish records of the Prime Ancient So- ciety, held by the clerk of the Congregational Church in the village, although a standing offer of $500 for the entry had been made by him the year before.
At the close of the Revolution, the victorious Whigs having banished the Tories and confiscated their estates, were so incensed against anything of English savor that they refused to keep the vital statistics of their towns because it was the custom in England to do so; consequently from 1781 to 1830 the genealogist finds the most maddening and deplorable hiatus in the volumes that recorded the
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The Probate Judge and the Town Clerk 239
births and deaths of the rural towns, and which before that historic struggle were kept with praise- worthy fidelity.
Nothing annoys the judge more than the curi- osity of the villagers at every death as to whether or no the deceased left a will-if he did, as to who were the legatees, and the amount of his estate, and a persistent quizzing of him in order to find out. He parries questioners quite skillfully, how- ever, by reminding them that the records in ques- tion may be examined by anyone during the legal hours.
The town clerk is another worthy of our village community. His office must have been instituted away back in the twilight of the race when men, growing out of the family and tribal relation, be- . gan to found organized communities and needed an official to record their doings. Here the town clerk has also been our neighbor. He is the beau ideal of a scholar-tall, bent, thin-visaged, and stoop-shouldered from long poring over his rec- ords. Fidelity to duty is stamped on every linea- ment. He has no office hours. You are free to examine the records in his office from seven o'clock in the morning until ten at night. He rarely goes out, except to the Congregational Church-of
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which he is one of the pillars-on Sundays, and to town meetings. All his remaining hours are spent among his huge tomes, writing, or turning over musty leaves in search of some elusive Amin- adab or Ebenezer, Charity or Patience, or Esther, ancestor or ancestress of some gentle enthusiast across the Continent maybe, who needs but this missing link to complete a family tree.
For fifty successive years at the annual town. meetings his fellow citizens have elected him their town clerk, and this without his having expressed the slightest desire for a reelection. His father served fifty years before him. He has a son to whom it may descend, for the townspeople seem- ingly look on the office as hereditary. The town clerk lacks that reverence and respect accorded his fellow official, the judge of probate, because of the latter's judicial capacity. For keeping its records the town pays its clerk the munificent salary of fifty dollars per year. But this by no means rep- resents the total of his income, for there are many fees and perquisites-so much for recording a deed; so much for administering an oath; so much for a certified copy of any instrument in his office, so much for searching the records; so that on the whole he gets a very tidy salary out
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of it. We are of opinion that his largest gains come from those genealogically inclined. There would be more return but that his conscience will permit him to charge but fifty cents an hour for his services.
There are perhaps thirty portly leather-covered volumes which must be examined in making these researches. These are records of births, mar- riages and deaths, going back to 1670; the earli- est are still quite legible. There are some curious things about them, for instance the births of the several children in a family are all recorded at the same time, having evidently been brought in by the father, who copied them from his family Bible, and generally prefaced them by giving the marriage of himself and wife. Some dates are given "to the best of my knowledge and belief." Whether there was a law making this obligatory, is not known. They occur during the term of of- fice of one clerk only, and may have been brought in at his request. Some of the town clerks were of a frugal turn of mind, and used old account books and ledgers for registers. These are quite valuable to the snapper up of unconsidered trifles, as showing the value of articles in common use at that time.
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It is very interesting to the town-bred man to sit in the clerk's office and study the callers. Some few are townspeople, but the majority are students of family. We had no idea before of the interest taken in genealogical studies by our fellow Ameri- cans. There are men and women, old and young, of all sorts and conditions, but most of them, of course, of culture and some amount of wealth. For 250 years the old town has been pouring her best blood and brawn into the insatiate maw of the cities and of the great West, and the de- scendants of these "pilgrims" are now coming back to the mother town to learn whence they came. The old official is very patient with them, for he is a genealogical enthusiast himself, and is often able to give them a clue or a fresh scent, when the chase seemed hopeless. He has never been known to accept a fee for this particular ser- vice, although many have been tendered. When visitors have exhausted the records of his office, he sends them to his neighbor, the judge of pro- bate, across the street, and to the slender, spec- tacled young man on his right, who acts as clerk of the Prime Ancient Society, and has one thin volume of baptisms, marriages, and deaths going back to 1670, which contains more names
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than all the town clerk's portly volumes com- bined.
We witnessed in his office, one January after- noon, a somewhat pathetic incident. A farmer with wrinkled face and shoulders bent with toil, came in to have a deed recorded. "At last, 'squire, " cried he, his face radiant and eyes beam- ing, "I have got the old place clear. Here's the last quitclaim deed from brother Hiram, away out in New Zealand. All the other heirs quitclaimed long ago. Rob is in San Francisco, Tom in Rio Janeiro, Harriet in Iowa-how we are scattered! He sends back my check for $500, too-his share- says he's got more than he can manage now, and to use it in keeping the old place up. Says if he should happen to lose his pile, he'll come back and board it out. Rather handsome of Hi, wasn't it ?"
The old clerk agrees that it was, and, taking down a dusty docket, proceeds to record the deed therein.
It is at town meetings, however, that our friend appears to most advantage. It is then made ap- parent to every voter that he has the town busi- ness at his fingers' ends; that he is the one who oils the wheels of the town's machinery, so that they run smoothly. He sits at a small desk on
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the right hand of the moderator, a little below the raised dais on which the latter stands. The mod- erator, portly, florid, with basso profundo voice, and grandiloquent manner, is a figurehead merely. Anyone can see that his prompter and whole de- pendence in bringing forward the different heads of the town business, is the calm, modest, spectacled man at his right. The latter records only the mo- tions, resolutions and votes; to take down the fiery eloquence, the witticisms, the tales that point a moral, the impassioned appeals, the verbal flay- ings of this forum of the people, would require as nimble a stenographer as those who serve in the Capitol at Washington. The town clerk never speaks of himself; he never seeks to influence leg- islation-it is his to record, and he performs the function so acceptably that no rival appears in the field against him.
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A History of Amherst College. Regular edition, 12mo, cloth, illustrated. Price $1.50 (postage 15 cents). Special edition, only 100 printed. 8vo, cloth, hand-made paper and signed by the author. Price $10.00 net.
Armorial Families. One volume, folio, bound in buck- ram, with gilt top. Price, fourth edition, $40.00 net. Fifth edition, $50.00 net.
The Blood Royal of Britain. In one volume, folio, 650 pages. Japanese Vellum, $50.00 net.
The Brewster Genealogy. Two volumes, 8vo, cloth, 500 pages each, illustrated. Price, before publication, $10.00 net, per set.
British Family names: Their Origin and Meaning. 8vo, cloth, $4.00 net.
William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Illustrated. 100 copies for America. Price $10.00 net.
The Chaffee Genealogy. Svo, cloth, illustrated. Price $10.00 net.
Biographical Memorial of Daniel Butterfield.
Concerning Genealogies. 12mo, cloth, gilt top. Price 75 cents net.
In Olde Connecticut. 12mo, cloth. gilt top. Price $1.25 net. The Ancestry of Leander Howard Crall. Quarto, cloth, with numerous illustrations. Price $30.00 net.
Derby Genealogy. Octavo, cloth. Price $4.00.
Grafton Chart Index. The Chart Index alone, 50 cents net; 12 copies for $5.50. The Chart Index, Cover, and Notebook, $1.25; 12 copies for $13.00. Additional sections of the notebook, 25 cents net; 12 copies for $2.50.
Grafton Genealogical Notebook, American form. Price 25 cents net. 12 copies $2.50.
Historic Hadley, Massachusetts. 12mo, cloth, illus- trated. Price $1.00 net.
Chronicle of Henry VIIIth. Two volumes, large octavo, with photogravure frontispieces, buckram, gilt top. 100 sets for sale in America. Price $12.00 net.
The Hills Family in America. Svo, cloth, gilt top. Price $8.00 net.
Arms and Pedigree of Kingdon-Gould of New York. Quarto, boards. Price $10.00 net. Full levant, $25.00 net. How to Decipher and Study Old Manuscripts. 12mo, cloth. Price $2.25 net.
The Jacobite Peerage. Small folio, canvas, gilt top, thirty copies for America. Price $15.00 net.
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King Philip's War. 12mo, cloth, illustrated. Price $2.00 net.
Life of Col. Richard Lathers. Price $5.00 net.
Middletown Upper Houses. 8vo, cloth. Price before publication, $5.00 net.
List of Emigrant Ministers to America. 8vo, cloth. Price $3.00 net.
History of the Ohio Society of New York. Octavo, -cloth. Price $5.00 net.
Benjamin Franklin Newcomer, A Memorial.
The Norris Genealogy. Octavo, cloth, 64 pages, frontis- piece. Price $3.00 net.
The Plantagenet Roll. Folio, cloth, about 550 pages. Price $45.00 net.
The History of Redding, Connecticut. New edition. 8vo, cloth, illustrated. Price $5.00 net.
The Right to Bear Arms. 12mo, cloth. Price $3.00 net.
The Prindle Genealogy. Octavo, cloth, illustrated. Price $5.00 net.
The Rix Family in America. Octavo, cloth, illustrated, 250 pages. Price $5.00 net.
Register of Christ Church, Middlesex, Virginia. Folio, 341 pages, cloth. Price $5.00 net.
Register of the Colonial Dames of New York.
Register of Saint Peter's Parish, New Kent County, Virginia. Svo, 187 pages, cloth. Price $5.00 net
The Sension - St. John Genealogy. Octavo, cloth, illustrated. Price $9.00 net.
Arms and Pedigree of Seymour of Payson, Illinois. Quarto, boards. Price $10.00 net. Full levant, $25.00 net.
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The Tyler Genealogy. Compiled from the Manuscripts of the late W. I. Tyler Brigham, BY THE GRAFTON PRESS GENEALOGICAL DEPARTMENT. 2 vols., 8vo., cloth, illustrated. Price $20.00.
The History of Ancient Wethersfield, Connecticut. º vols., folio, cloth, gilt top, uncut. Price $25.00 net.
Tryphena Ely White's Journal. 19mo, cloth, illustrated, 250 copies. Price $1.00 net.
Vestry Book of Saint Peter's Parish, New Kent County, Virginia. Svo, 242 pages, cloth. Price 5.00 net.
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