USA > Connecticut > In olde Connecticut; being a record of quaint, curious and romantic happenings there in colonial times and later > Part 3
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For this exploit Major Tallmadge was honored with an autograph letter of thanks from General Washington, and with a complimentary resolution from Congress. It was not the first nor the last time that this gallant officer made use of the whaleboat service to annoy the enemy. Very early in the war he had opened a secret corre- spondence for Washington with the Whigs of Long Island, and kept one or more boats constantly em- ployed in this service. In 1777 a band of Tory
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marauders had established themselves, under the protection of a strongly fortified post erected by the British, on a promonotory between Hunting- ton and Oyster Bay, whence they would steal out in their boats and commit depredations on the Connecticut coast. Tallmadge, learning of the retreat of this horde of bandits, determined to break it up, and on the 5th of September, 1777, embarked with 130 men at Shippan's Point, near Stamford, at eight o'clock in the evening, landed at Lloyd's Neck, captured the entire party, and returned to Stamford before morning dawned; and again in October, 1781, he embarked his forces at Norwalk and captured and burned Fort Slongo at Tredwell's Bank, near Smithtown, bringing off a number of prisoners and a piece of artillery.
Captain Caleb Brewster of Fairfield was an- other Continental officer who figures largely in the records of the whaleboat service. In 1781 he captured an armed boat with her crew on the Sound, and brought both safely into Fairfield, and on the 7th of December, 1782, was the hero of one of the most famous and desperate encounters of the privateersmen, which is still spoken of in Fairfield as the "boat fight." On the morning of that day several of the enemy's armed boats
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were seen proceeding down the Sound, and Cap- tain Brewster, with his hardy veterans, at once put out from Fairfield to intercept them. Forcing his boats into the midst of the enemy's fleet, a hand to hand conflict ensued, so deadly that in twenty minutes nearly every man on both sides was either killed or wounded, the gallant captain himself be- ing pierced by a rifle ball through the shoulder. Two of the enemy's boats were captured in this affair, the others succeeding in making their es- cape. This gallant act brought the captain the plaudits of his countrymen, and a pension for life from Congress. In a year his wound had so far recovered that he was ready for active service again, and took command of an expedition for capturing the Fox, a British armed vessel that had been stationed in the Sound to prevent the roam- ing of the privateersmen, and had long been a source of annoyance to them. On a dark night- the 9th of March, 1783-the boats left Fairfield, and stealing upon the Fox as she lay at anchor, captain and men leaped on board with fixed bay- onets, and in two minutes the vessel was at their mercy. Captain Johnson of the Fox and two of his men were killed and several wounded, while of the patriots not a person was injured. After
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the war Captain Brewster was commander of the revenue cutter of the district of New York for a number of years. He died at Black Rock, Fair- field, February 13, 1827, aged seventy-nine years.
But the operations of the whaleboatmen were not always of an offensive character; they were sometimes obliged to act on the defensive-but generally, even in such cases, with credit to them- selves. Early in March, 1780, a band of seven men, commanded by one Alexander Graham, a · · deserter from the American army, but who then bore a commission from General Howe, authoriz- ing him to recruit Connecticut Tories for the Brit- ish army, landed on the coast at or near Branford, and marched inland to the house of Captain Eben- ezer Dayton in Bethany, a merchant, who had been obliged to flee from Long Island to escape the persecutions of the Tories. In the absence of the Captain they broke into the house, and de- stroyed or carried off nearly five thousand pounds worth of property. From this place they pro- ceeded to Middlebury where they were secreted in the cellar of a Tory family for several days, and afterward to Oxford, where they lay several days longer in a barn. At length, leaving their retreat here, they passed through Derby, and down
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the Housatonic to Stratford, where they took a whaleboat and set out for Long Island. Their passage through Derby had been discovered, how- ever, and two whaleboats with their crews, under command of Captains Clark and Harvey, started in pursuit, and after a brisk cháse succeeded in overhauling the marauders just as they were en- tering the British lines. They were brought back in triumph, tried and condemned-Graham, the commander, to be hanged, and the others to the tender mercies of the old Newgate.
No unimportant place in the annals of the whale- boat service of the Revolution belongs to Captain Marriner of Harlem and Captain Hyler of New Brunswick. In an old time-stained copy of the "Naval Magazine," printed nearly sixty years ago, is to be found a very interesting and gossipy ac- count of these famous chieftains, communicated by General Jeremiah Johnson, himself a revolu- tionary veteran and privy to the facts which he relates. I give the article nearly entire:
"Hyler and Marriner cruised between Egg Har- bor and Staten Island. Hyler took several ships and levied contributions on the New York fisher- men on the fishing banks. He frequently visited Long Island. He took a Hessian Major at night
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from the house of Michael Bergen at Gowanus, when his soldiers were encamped near the house. He surprised and took a sergeant's guard at Ca- narsie from the house of their Captain, Schenck. The guards were at supper, and their muskets standing in the hall, when Hyler entered with his men. He seized the arms, and, after jesting with the guards, he borrowed the silver spoons for his family; took a few other articles, with all the mus- kets, and made one prisoner. He sent the guard to report themselves to Colonel Axtell, and re- turned to New Jersey. Captain Hyler also paid a visit to Colonel Lott at Flatlands. The Colonel was known to be rich; his money and his person were the objects desired. He was surprised in his house and taken. His cupboard was searched for money, and some silver found; and, on further search, two bags supposed to contain guineas were discovered. These, with the silver, the Colonel and two of his negroes, were taken to New Bruns- wick. In the morning, on the passage up the Raritan, the captain and crew agreed to count and divide the guineas. The bags were opened, when, to the mortification of the crew, they found the bags contained only halfpennies belonging to the church of Flatlands; and the Colonel also dis-
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covered that his guineas were safe at home. The crew were disappointed in their Scotch prize. They, however, determined to make the most of the adventure; they took the Colonel and his ne- groes to New Brunswick, where they compelled him to ransom his negroes, and then permitted him to return home on parole. Captain Hyler also took a corvette of twenty guns about nine o'clock at night in Coney Island Bay. The ship lay at anchor, bound for Halifax, to complete her crew. The night was dark; one of the boats with muf- fled oars was rowed up close under the stern of the ship, where the officers were to be seen at a game of cards in the cabin, and no watch on deck. The spy-boat then fell astern to her consort and reported, when orders were passed to board. The boats were rowed up silently-the ship boarded instantly on both sides-and not a man was in- jured. The officers were confined in the cabin and the crew below. The Captain ordered the officers and crew to be taken out of the ship, well fettered and placed in the whaleboats. After- wards a few articles were taken from the ship and she was set on fire, when Captain Hyler left her with his prisoners from New Brunswick.
"My informant, one of the men who took the
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ship, stated that the captain of the corvette wept as they were crossing the Bay, and reproached himself for permitting one of his Majesty's ships to be surprised and taken by 'two d-d egg shells,' and he added that there were $40,000 on board the burning vessel, which Captain Hyler and his crew deserved for their gallant enterprise. The booty however was lost.
"After the notorious refugee Lippincott had barbarously murdered Captain Huddy at Sandy Hook, General Washington was very anxious to have the murderer secured. He had been de- manded from the British General and his surrender refused. Retaliation was decided on by General Washington. Young Asgill was to be the innocent victim to atone for the death of Captain Huddy. He was saved by the mediation of the Queen of France. Captain Hyler determined to take Lippin- cott. On inquiry he found that he resided in a well known house in Broad street, New York. Dressed and equipped like a man-of-war press- gang, he left the Kills with one boat after dark, and arrived at Whitehall about nine o'clock. Here he left his boat in charge of three men, and then passed to the residence of Lippincott, where he inquired for him, and found he was absent and
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gone to a cockpit. Captain Hyler thus failed in the object of his pursuit and visit to the city. He returned to his boat with his press-gang, and left "Whitehall; but finding a sloop lying at anchor off the Battery from the West Indies laden with rum, he took the vessel, cut her cable, set her sails, and with a northeast wind sailed to Elizabethtown Point, and before daylight had landed from her, and secured, forty hogsheads of rum. He then burned the sloop to prevent her recapture.
" Captain Marriner resided many years at Har- lem and on Ward's Island after the war. He was a man of eccentric character, witty and ingenious, and abounding in anecdotes; but he had his faults. He had been taken by the British, was on parole in King's County, and quartered with Rem Van- pelt of New Utrecht. The prisoners among the officers had the liberty of the four southern towns of the county. Many of them frequented Dr. Van Buren's Tavern in Flatbush. Here our captain's sarcastic wit in conversation with Major Sher- brook of the British army led to abusive language from the Major to the prisoner. After some time Marriner was exchanged, when he determined to capture Major Sherbrook. Colonel Matthews (Mayor of New York), Colonel Axtell and a Major
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Bache, who all resided in Flatbush, were noted and abusive Tories, and obnoxious to the Ameri- can officers. For the purpose of carrying his de- sign into execution, he repaired to New Brunswick and procured a whaleboat. This he manned with a crew of well armed volunteers, with whom he proceeded to New Utrecht, and landed on the beach at Bath, about half-past nine o'clock in the evening. Leaving two men in charge of the boat, with the rest of the crew he marched unmolested to Flatbush church, where he divided his men into four squads, assigning a house to each; each party or squad was provided with a heavy post to break in the doors. All was silent in the village. Cap- tain Marriner selected the house of George Mar- tence, where his friend, the Major, quartered, for himself; the other parties proceeded to their as- signed houses. Time was given to each to arrive at its destination; and it was agreed that when Marriner struck his door the others were to break in theirs, and repair to the church with their prisoners. The doors were broken at the same time. Marriner found the Major behind a large chimney in the garret where he had hidden him- self; and where he surrendered in the presence of his landlady who lit the way for Marriner. The
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Major was permitted to take his small-clothes in his hand, and thus was marched to the church where the parties assembled. Mr. Bache was taken. Cols. Axtell and Matthews being at New York escaped capture. The parties marched with their prisoners unmolested to their boat and re- turned safe to New Brunswick. This event took place about midsummer on a fair moonlight night. "Captain Marriner also paid Simon Cortelyou of New Utrecht a visit; and took him to New . Brunswick as a return for his uncivil conduct to the American prisoners. He took his tankard and several articles also which he neglected to return. After Captain Marriner's visit to Flatbush, four inhabitants of New Utrecht were taken separately, and separately imprisoned in the Provost, in New York, on suspicion of having been connected with Marriner in his enterprise, viz., Colonel Van Brunt, his brother Adrian Van Brunt, Rem Vanpelt, and his brother Art Vanpelt."
As the war progressed, the boldness and adven- turous spirit of the privateersmen increased, until towards the close, the entrances to New York were in a state of blockade, which even armed vessels did not always attempt to force singly. The Narrows and the Sound swarmed with whaleboats. The
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fishing industry on which the inhabitants of New York greatly depended for food, and which was a main source of supply to the beleaguered garrison, was almost wholly broken up. The fisheries had always been a matter of concern to the merchants, and annual bounties were paid to the vessels bring- ing in the largest quantities of deep-sea fish.
The Shrewsbury banks, a favorite fishing ground, and the main source of supply to the New York market, were jealously watched. In the safe cover of the Shrewsbury River, Hyler lay in wait to pounce upon the adventurous or unwary who cast a line or dragged a net within its assumed juris- diction. Unlike the British Admiral on the sta- tion, he granted no passes for illicit trade, but took his toll in another fashion. On one occasion it is related of him that he captured two fishing ves- sels which he ransomed at one hundred dollars each, and within the week recaptured one of the same boats, which had again ventured within his reach. Such was the frequency of these captures that the Tory merchants who revived the Chamber of Commerce during the war, made application to Admiral Arbuthnot for "the protection of the fishermen employed on the banks of Shrewsbury." The Admiral purchased a vessel mounting twelve
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carriage guns and requested that the city would man her, but the seamen placed little faith in the promises from British naval officers, and hesitated to enter a service, the exit of which was as hopeless as from the Inferno of Dante. The "hot press" was the terror of American sailors before and after the war; indeed, till Hull and Decatur and Preble laid an injunction upon it at the cannon's mouth.
In 1782 similar application was made to Admi- ral Graves, who had succeeded Arbuthnot on the station, and the intervention of General Robertson, the military commandant of the city, was invoked " to encourage the fishermen to take fish for a sup- ply to this garrison, and that its commerce may not be annoyed by the privateersmen and whaleboats that infest the narrows. " The newspapers of 1781 are full of Hyler's exploits, which sometimes reached higher game than fishing smacks. In June, he and an associate, Captain Story, in two whaleboats boarded and took the schooner Skip Jack (which mounted six carriage guns besides swivels), at high noon, and burned her in sight of the guard ship and the men of war on the station, and on the same cruise carried off three small trading vessels laden with contraband cattle on the way from the Jersey Tories to New York.
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Captain Adam Hyler was of New Brunswick. He died in the fall of 1782 and was honorably mentioned in the "New Jersey Gazette," for "his many heroic and enterprising acts in an- noying and distressing the enemy."
The whaleboats used on their excursions were formidable enemies. They were upwards of thirty-five feet long, were rowed with eight oars, carried two heavy sails and were armed with a large swivel. They depended on neither wind nor tide for their progress in pursuit or flight.
After the war Captain Marriner resumed his avocation of tavern keeper, in the course of which he occupied several houses in the village of Har- lem, which were in turn a favorite resort of the politicians and military men of the city. He was also largely patronized by the disciples of Izaak Walton, who angled for bass or dropped their line for the tautog in the stirring waters of Hell Gate and its vicinity. Marriner also figures in history as the caterer who provided the dinner for General Washington and his suite, on their visit to the ruins of Fort Washington in 1790. The Com- mander-in-Chief refers to the affair in his journal, under date of July 10 of that year.
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CHAPTER IV
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SAYBROOK AND GUILFORD, 1880
O LD SAYBROOK is almost the only Con- necticut town that boasts nobility for its founders, and a real lord and lady for its first gov- ernors. Almost two hundred and fifty years ago, we learn from the old chroniclers, Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brook, Colonel Fenwick, and “other gentlemen of distinction in England, " procured a patent of the territory "lying west from Narragan- sett River, a hundred and twenty miles on the sea- coast, and from thence in latitude and breadth aforesaid to the South Sea." A quaint old docu- ment, it is said, was this patent, which, after defining in obsolete legal terms, the metes and bounds of the grant, its "privileges and appurte- nances " of woods, uplands, arable lands, mead- ows, pastures, ponds, havens, ports, waters, rivers, adjoining islands, fishings, huntings, fowl- ings, mines, minerals, quarries and precious stones, closed as follows:
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Saybrook and Guilford, 1880
"According to the tenour of his majestie's manor of East Greenwich, in the county of Kent in ye kingdom of England, in free and common soccage, and not in cappitu nor by Knight serv- ice; they yielding and paying therefor to our sov- ereign Lord the King, his heirs and successors, only the fifth part of all the Oar of Gold and Silver which from time to time, and at all times hereafter shall be gotten, had or otherwise obtained."
The first step of the patentees was to plant a settlement in their new possessions, and early in 1635 they deputed John Winthrop, son of the famous Governor Winthrop, to build a fort on Saybrook Point, which should serve as a nucleus for the proposed settlement, and the site of which is still pointed out to the tourist, on a little emi- . nence commanding the mouth of the Connecticut River. This fort is a central form in the history of the State. The waves of Pequot and Narra- gansett warfare rolled about it for almost half a century; several times it was beseiged, and a hun- dred moving tales of ambush and rally, of cap- ture, torture and individual murder are related by the antiquarians of the village concerning it. Only a few days after the fort was begun a Dutch vessel from New Netherlands came hither with
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the view to taking possession of the river, but was driven off by the guns of the fort. From its walls Captain Mason and his men on a May day in 1637 set out for the destruction of Pequot fort and nation at Groton, and here Governor Andros in 1675 made his first attempt against the chartered rights of the colony by sailing up from New York with an armed force and demanding the surrender of the fort.
In 1639 Colonel George Fenwick arrived and . continued to act as Governor of the plantation un- til it was sold to the colony of Connecticut in 1644, the noble owners of the patent having re- linquished their former plan of improving their grant in person. Colonel Fenwick was accom- panied by his wife, Lady Anne Butler, daughter of an English nobleman, the first lady of rank who appears in the colonies, and whose story forms one of the most romantic and interesting episodes in the history of Saybrook. With true wifely devotion she refused to allow her husband to depart for the New World alone, and leaving behind the comforts and refinements of life in the English upper class she followed him hither, and shared with him the perils of Indian warfare and the privations of the wilderness. The brave lady's
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Saybrook and Guilford, 1880
love and devotion cost her dear; she died in 1648, nine years after her arrival, and was buried a few yards southwest of the fort, on a slight eminence known to this day as Tomb Hill. The bereaved husband erected a monument to mark her grave, and soon after sailed away to England, where he figured in history as one of the judges of the un- fortunate King Charles the First. For more than . two hundred years the brave lady's tomb remained amid the bleakness and barrenness of the Point. At length the line of the Connecticut Valley Rail- road was laid out directly through it and, yielding to the exigencies of modern progress, the interest- ing relic was removed. In opening the grave a floss of her bright golden hair was found perfectly preserved; it is now owned by a conductor on the Valley Railroad whose antiquarian tastes led him to appropriate that which no one else valued. The tourist now looks in the village cemetery for the poor lady's cenotaph, a shapeless monument, rudely carved from the red sandstone of the valley, and from some unexplained cause bearing no in- scription whatever, probably because the hard, stern, Puritan spirit forbade to a woman the glow- ing panegyric necessary in order to do justice to ber virtues. This part of Saybrook is now called
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Fenwick, I suppose in her honor, and the large summer hotel. built here in 1871 received its name, Fenwick Hall, probably for the same reason.
- But Saybrook once barely missed an honor greater than any which have been narrated. Over on the south end of the Point-a region of shifting sands and bunches of beach grass, that at the touch of the sea breeze vibrates with the tunes of a hundred ÆEolian harps, and which is now occu- pied only by the hotels and the great lighthouse- a city was once laid out, with streets and squares, a park, a public mart, and wharfs for the shipping; then the colonists began to whisper of the arrival of distinguished strangers, and to scan the distant sea line for an expected sail. The strangers thus looked for, the old chronicles go on to say, were Cromwell, Pym, Hasselrig and Hampden, the four most illustrious commoners in English annals, who at one time had made all preparations to emigrate to the New World, once actually embarking for the voyage, but were driven back by adverse winds, and from some unknown cause were led to aban- don their project; and so the colonists were dis- appointed and the city lots left to return to their original barrenness.
It was at Saybrook that Yale College had its
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Saybrook and Guilford, 1880
birth, and the first fifteen Commencements of the institution were held here; and in this village, in the autumn of 1708, assembled the convention of Puritan ministers which adopted the famous Say- brook Platform. It may be readily imagined that the latter was one of the great events of the village.
The state of the church at that time was such as to awaken the gravest apprehensions. The liberal doctrines of Roger Williams-the most trenchant foe that Calvinism ever encountered- were advancing from the East. Antinomianism, the Anabaptist and Pedobaptist heresies were prevalent. Quakers had been harbored in the colony, and to add to the pressure of foes without there were strifes and wranglings among the churches themselves; and so the Puritan leaders . called a convention of the entire church to meet at Saybrook. The delegates came on horseback from every part of the colony-from Hartford, Simsbury and the East, from Litchfield, Fairfield and the towns and villages between. It was the season of Commencement in the college. The morning after their arrival the convention met. How readily the imagination recalls the scene! The throng of strangers, the pleasant air of bustle and excitement in the village, and then, at the
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stroke of the bell in the ancient church, grave, sober-suited figures come forth from the doors of the villagers. As in a pageant they pass down the village street. On some of the faces under the broad-brimmed hats rests an almost divine benev- olence, on others a grim austerity lowers; there is an earnestness and glow about them that attracts, and a severe dignity that repels. How rebukingly they gaze upon the idle dreamer and scribbler under the elms! How with a look they would have crushed the petted and perfumed striplings of the modern pulpit!
The church doors close upon the retreating forms, and there is framed the platform that is to be the sheet-anchor of the Congregational churches for almost twice a hundred years.
At the risk of prolixity I must speak of another excursion that I made to Guilford, sixteen miles distant. The ancient village is dear to all lovers of poetry as the birthplace of one of the earliest and sweetest of American poets, Fitz-Greene Hal- leck. Here, in 1790, the poet was born, and here he served as a clerk in the village store until called to a position in the counting-room of the Astors; and here, after writing a grand lyric and passing
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