USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield County centennial celebration > Part 2
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Wilt thou, Almighty God, smile on the services of this occa- sion. May they be to the praise and glory of Thy name. And may Thy grace be magnified in richly blessing this great col- lection of natives of the same State, and of the same County. And may we all be enabled to live in such a manner, as to be
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OPENING EXERCISES-PRAYER.
prepared to meet together in the great assembly, and celebrate Thy praise in an undying song.
Regard in mercy, Our Heavenly Father, all the inhabitants of this State, and of this nation. Prosper all interests, civil, liter- ary, religious, and charitable, of the land; and show mercy, grace, and salvation, to all the dying children of men. And hasten that blessed period, when the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be seven- fold, as the light of seven days. And to the Father, the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, shall be the glory forever. AMEN !
ADDRESS,
DELIVERED AT LITCHFIELD, CONN.,
ON TIIE OCCASION OF THE
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, 1851.
BY
JUDGE CHURCH.
JUDGE CHURCH'S ADDRESS.
THE Hon. SAMUEL CHURCH, LL. D., Chief Justice of the State, was then introduced to the audience, who commenced the delivery of his Oration. When about half through a recess was taken until 2 o'clock, P. M., when the address was resumed and finished, - occupying about two hours and a half, which is as follows :
FELLOW-CITIZENS :
I have no leisure now to offer apologies for my unadvised con- sent to appear before you, in this position, on the present oeea- sion. Deelining years, and the constant pressure of other duties, should have exeused me.
My residence of sixty-six years from my nativity in this County, and an acquaintance of half a century, of some intimacy, with the events which have transpired, and with the men who have acted in them here, and having been placed within tradi- tional reach of our early history, I suppose, has induced the eall upon me to address you. In doing this, I shall make no drafts upon the imagination, but speak to you in the simple idiom of truthful narrative.
Among the most ancient and pleasant of New England usages, has been the annual gathering of children and brethren around the parental board on a Thanksgiving day. The scene we now witness reminds me of it. Litchfield County,-our venerable parent, now waning into the age of an hundred years, has called us here, to exchange our mutual greetings, to see that she still lives and thrives, and hopes to live another century.
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ADDRESS.
A little display of vanity on the part of such a parent, thus surrounded by her children, may be expected ; but speaking by me, her representative, it shall not be excessive. She must say something of herself-of her birth and parentage-of her early life and progress, and of the scenes through which she has pass- ed. She may be indulged a little in speaking of the children she has borne or reared, and how they have got along in the world. To tell of such as she has lost, and over whose loss she has mourned ; and in the indulgence of an honest parent's pride, she may boast somewhat of many who survive, and who have all through this wide country made her name and her family res- pected.
We meet not alone in this relation, but we come together as brethren, and many of us after long years of separation and ab- sence, to revive the memories and associations of former years.
Some of you come to visit the graves of parents and friends- to look again into the mansions where the cradle of your infancy was rocked, or upon the old foundations where they stood-to look again upon the favorite tree, now full grown, which your young arms clasped so often in the climbing, or upon the great rock upon and around which many a young gambol was perform- ed. You come to enter again, perhaps, the consecrated temples at whose altars the good man stood who sprinkled you with the waters of baptism, and from whose lips you learned the lessons which have guided your footsteps in all your after life.
These are but some of the pages in the history of early life, which it is pleasant after the lapse of years to re-peruse. And now, if the spirits of these dead can pierce the cloud which hides our view of heaven, they look down with a smile of love upon your errand here ; and when you shall leave us on the morrow, many of you will feel in truth, as did the patriot Greek, " mori- ens reminiscitur Argos."
A stranger who looks upon the map of Connecticut, sees at its north-west corner a darkly shaded section, extending over almost the entire limits of this County, indicating, as he believes, a re- gion of mountains and rocks-of bleak and frozen barrens .* He
* Litchfield County is the large Northwestern county of Connecticut ; averaging about thirty-three iniles in length, with about twenty-seven miles in breadth ; bounding North on Berkshire County, Mass., and West on New York. The present number of towns is twenty-
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ADDRESS.
turns his eye from it, satisfied that this is one of the waste places of the State -- affording nothing pleasant for the residence of men. Hc examines much more complacently the map of the coast and the navigable streams. But let the stranger leave the map, and come and see ! He will find the mountains which he anticipated -- but he will find streams also. IIe will find the forests too, or the verdant hill-sides where they have been ; and he will see the cattle on a thousand hills, and hear the bleating flocks in many a dale and glen, and he will breathe an atmosphere of health and buoyancy, which the dwellers in the city and on the plain know little of. Let him come, and we will show him that men live here, and women to?, over whom it would be ridiculous for the city population to boast : a yeomanry well fitted to sustain the institutions of a free country. We will show him living, moving men ; but more than this, we will point out to him where, among these hills, were born or reared, or now repose in the grave, many of the men of whom he has read and heard, whose names have gone gloriously into their country's history, or who are now al- most every where giving an honorable name to the County of Litchfield, and doing service to our State or nation.
The extensive and fertile plains of the Western country may yield richer harvests than we can reap ; the slave population of the South may relieve the planter from the toil experienced by a Northern farmer ; and the golden regions of California may sooner fill the pockets with the precious metals ;-- and all this may stand in strong contrast with what has been often called the rough and barren region of Litchfield hills. But the distinguish- ing traits of a New England country, which we love so well, are not there to give sublimity to the landscape, fragrance and health to the mountain atmosphere, and energy and enterprise to mind and character.
Not many years ago, I was descending the last hill in Norfolk in a stage-coach, in company with a lady of the West, whose for-
two. The towns of lIartland and Southbury which originally belonged to it, were annexed to other counties more that 40 years since.
The surface of the County is hilly, some parts mountainous, and is the most elevated County in the State. It is watered by numerous lakes, and by the Housatonic, Naugatuck, and Shepauge Rivers, furnishing much valuable water-power, which is extensively used by the thriving manufacturing establishments. The Housatonie and Naugatuck Railroads pass through the County on the vallies of the streams bearing those names.
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mer residence had been in that town. As we came down upon the valley of the Housatonic, with a full heart and suffused eyes, she exclaimed, " Oh, how I love these hills and streams ! How much more pleasant they are to me than the dull prairies and the sluggish and turbid waters of the Western country." It was an eulogy, which if not often expressed, the truth of it has been a thousand times felt, before.
Our Indian predecessors found but few spots among the hills of this County, which invited their fixed residence. Here was no place for the culture of maize and beans, the chief articles of the Indian's vegetable food. Their settlements were chiefly con- fined to the valley of the Housatonic, with small scattered clans at Woodbury and Sharon. The Scaticoke tribe, at Kent, was the last which remained among us. It was taken under the pro- tection of the Colony and State ; its lands secured for its sup- port. These Indians have wasted down to a few individuals, who, I believe, still remain near their fathers' sepulchers, and re- mind us that a native tribe once existed there.
We now sec but little to prove that the original American race ever inhabited here. It left no monuments but a few arrow-heads, which are even now occasionally discovered near its former homes and upon its former hunting grounds,-and a sculptured female figure made of stone, not many years ago was found in this town, and is now deposited at Yale College.
There are other monuments, to be sure, of a later race of In- dians ; but they are of the white man's workmanship,-the quit- claim deeds of the Indians' title to their lands ! These are found in several of the Towns in the County, and upon the public re- cords, signed with marks uncouth, and names unspeakable, and executed with all the solemn mockery of legal forms .- These are still referred to, as evidence of fair purchase! Our laws have sedulously protected the minor and the married woman from the consequences of their best considered acts ; but a deed from an Indian, who knew neither the value of the land he was required to relinquish, nor the amount of the consideration he was to re- ceive for it, nor the import or effect of the paper upon which he scribbled his mark, has been called a fair purchase !
The hill-lands of this County were only traversed by the In- dians as the common hunting grounds of the tribes which inhab-
V
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ADDRESS.
ited the valleys of the Tunxis and Connecticut rivers on the cast- ern, and the valley of the Housatonic on the western side.
The first settlers of this County did not meet the Indian here in his unspoiled native character. The race was dispirited and submissive-probably made up of fugitives from the aggressions of the early English emigrants on the coast,-the successors of more spirited tribes, which, to avoid contact with the whites, had migrated onward toward the setting sun. These Indians were like the ivy of the forest, which displays all its beauties in the shade, but droops and refuses to flourish in the open sunshine.
Previous to the accession of James II. to the throne of Eng- land, and before our chartered rights were threatened by the ar- rival of Sir Edmund Andros, the territory now comprising the County of Litchfield was very little known to the Colonial Gov- ernment at Hartford. The town of Woodbury, then large in ex- tent, had been occupied some years earlier than this, by Rev. Mr. Walker's congregation, from Stratford. The other parts of the County were noticed only as a wilderness, and denominated the Western Lands. Still it was supposed, that at some time they might be, to some extent, inhabited and worth something. At any rate, they were believed to be worth the pains of keeping out of the way of the new government of Sir Edmund, which was then apprehended to be near. To avoid his authority over these lands, and to preserve them for a future and better time of dispo- sal, they were granted, by the Assembly of the Colony, to the towns of Hartford and Windsor, in 1686,-at least, so much of them as lay cast of the Housatonic river. I do not stop to exam- ine the moral quality of this grant, which may be reasonably doubted; and it was soon after followed by the usual conse- quences of grants, denominated by lawyers, constructively fraudu- lent-dispute and contention.
Upon the accession of William and Mary, in 1688, and after the Colony Charter had found its way back from the hollow oak to the Secretary's office, the Colonial Assembly attempted to re- sume this grant, and to reclaim the title of these lands for the Colony. This was resisted by the towns of Hartford and Wind- sor, which relied upon the inviolability of plighted faith and pub- lic grants. The towns not only denied the right, but actually resisted the power of the Assembly, in the resumption of their
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ADDRESS.
solemn deed. This produced riots and attempts to break the jail in Hartford, in which several of the resisting inhabitants of Hartford and Windsor were confined.
It would be found difficult for the Jurists of the present day, educated in the principles of Constitutional Law, to justify the Assembly in the recision of its own grant, and it can not but ex- cite a little surprise, that the politicians of that day, who had not yet ceased to complain of the mother country for its attempts, by writs of quo warranto, to seize our charter, should so soon be en- gaged, and without the forms of law, too, in attempts of a kindred character against their own grantees. No wonder that resistance followed, and it was more than half successful, as it resulted in a compromise, which confirmed to the elaimants under the towns the lands in the town of Litchfield and a part of the town of New Milford. The other portions of the territory were intended to be equally divided between the Colony and the claiming towns. Thus Torrington, Barkhamsted, Colebrook, and a part of Har- winton, were appropriated to Windsor ; Hartland, Winchester, New Hartford, and the other part of Harwinton, were relinquish- ed to Hartford ; and the remaining lands in dispute, now consti- tuting the towns of Norfolk, Goshen, Canaan, Kent, Sharon and Salisbury, were retained by the Colony. These claims having at length been adjusted, the western lands began to be explored, and their facilities for cultivation to be known.
Woodbury, as I have before suggested, by several years our el- der sister in this new family of towns, began its settlement in 1674. The Church at Stratford had been in contention, and the Rev. Mr. Walker, with a portion of that Church and people, removed to the fertile region of Pomperauge, soon distinguished by the name of Woodbury, and then including, beside the present town, also the region composing the towns of Southbury, Bethlem and Rox- bury.
Pomperauge is said to have felt some of the effects of Philip's war-enough, at least, to add another to the many thrilling scenes of Indian depredation, so well drawn by the author of Mount Hope.
New Milford next followed in the course of settlement. This commenced in 1707. Its inerease of population was slow until 1716, when Rev. Daniel Boardman, from Wethersfield, was or-
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ADDRESS.
dained as the first minister. This gentleman was the ancestor of the several distinguished families and individuals of the same name, who have since been and now are residents of that town. His influence over the Indian tribe and its Sachem in that vi- cinity, was powerful and restraining, and so much confidence had this good man and his family in the fidelity of his Indian friends, it is said, that when his lady was earnestly warned to fly from a threatened savage attack, she coolly replied, that she would go as soon as she had put things to rights about her house, and had knit round to her seam needle! The original white in- habitants were emigrants from Milford, from which it derives its name.
Emigrants from the Manor of Livingston, in the New York Colony, made Indian purchases and began a settlement at Wea- togue, in Salisbury, as early as 1720. After the sale of the township in 1737, the population increased rapidly,-coming in from the towns of Lebanon, Litchfield, and many other places, so that it was duly organized in 1741, and settled its minister, Rev. Jonathan Lee, in 1744.
The first inhabitants of Litchfield came under the Hartford and Windsor title, in 1721, and chiefly from Hartford, Windsor and Lebanon. This territory, and a large lake in its south-west section, was known as Bantam. Whether it was so called by the Indians, has been doubted, and is not well settled.
The settlement of the other towns commenced soon after, and progressed steadily, yet slowly. The town of Colebrook was the last enrolled in this fraternity, and settled its first minister, Rev. Jonathan Edwards, in 1795. Rev. Rufus Babcock, a Baptist minister, had, for some time before this, resided and officiated in the town.
One general characteristic marked the whole population; it was gathered chiefly from the towns already settled in the Colony, and with but few emigrants from Massachusetts. Our immedi- ate ancestors were religious men, and religion was the ruling ele- ment ; but it would be a mistake to suppose that it absorbed all others.
I shall not detain you with an eulogium on Puritan character. This may be found stereotyped every where-not only in books and speeches, but much more accurately in its influence and
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ADDRESS.
effects, not in New England alone, but throughout this nation. Our American ancestors were Englishmen, descendants of the same men, and inheritors of the same principles, by which Magna Charta was established at Runny-mede. -- They were Anglo-Sax- ons, inspired with the same spirit of independence which has marked them every where, and especially through the long period of well defined English history, and which is destined in its fur- ther developments to give tone and impress to the political and religious institutions of Christendom. So much has been said and written of the Puritans, I have sometimes thought that some believe that they were a distinct race, and perhaps of a dif- ferent complexion and language from their other countrymen ; whereas, they were only Englishmen, generally of the Plebian caste, and with more of the energies and many of the frailties and imperfections common to humanity. If our first settlers here cherished more firmly the religious elements of their character than any other, the spirit of independence to which I have alluded developed another-the love of money, and an ingenuity in grat- ifying it.
Since the extent and resources of this County have been better known, the wonder is often expressed, how such an unpromising region as this County could have invited a population at first ; but herein we misconceive the condition of our fathers. Here, as they supposed, was the last land to be explored and occupied in their day. They had no where else to go, and the growing population of the cast, as well as the barren soil of the coast, im- pelled them westward. Of the north, beyond the Massachusetts Colony, nothing was known ; only Canada and the frozen regions of Nova Scotia had been heard of. On the west was another Colony, but a different people ; and still beyond, was an unknown realm, possessed by savage men, of whom New England had seen enough ; and not inuch behind this, according to the geog- raphy of that day, was the Western Ocean, referred to in the Charter. A visible hand of Providence seems to have guided our fathers' goings. Had the valley of the Susquehanna been known to them then, they would but the sooner have furnished the history of the massacre of Wyoming.
If there were here the extensive and almost impenetrable ever- glade of the Green-Woods, the high hills of Goshen, Litchfield
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ADDRESS.
and Cornwall, and heavy forests every where-these were trifles then in the way of a New England man's calculation, and had been ever since the people of the May Flower and the Arabella and their descendants had been crowding their way back among the forests. These, and a thousand other obstacles, were sur- mounted, with hardly a suspicion that they were obstacles at all, and every township began ere long to exhibit a well ordered, or- ganized society.
This was no missionary field, after the manner of modern new settlements. Every little Colony, as it became organized and extended from town to town, either took its minister along with it, or called him soon after. He became one with his people, wedded to them almost by sacramental bonds, indissoluble. A Primus inter pares, he settled on his own domain, appropriated to his use by the proprietors of every town, and he cultivated with his own hands his own soil, and at his death was laid down among his parishioners and neighbors in the common cemetery, with little of monumental extravagance to distinguish his resting place. The meeting-house was soon seen at the central point of each town, modestly elevated above surrounding buildings, and by its side the school-house, as its nursling child or younger sis- ter, and the minister and the master were the oracles of cach community. The development of the Christian man, spiritual, intellectual and physical, was the necessary result of such an or- ganization of society as this.
The original settlers of this County were removed two or three generations from the first emigrants from England, and some of the more harsh peculiarities of that race may well be supposed, ere this time, to have become modified, or to have subsided en- tirely. If a little of the spirit of Arch-Bishop Laud, transgress- ing the boundaries of Realm and Church, had found its way over the ocean, and was developed under a new condition of society here, it is not to be wondered at; it was the spirit of the age, though none the better for that, and none the more excusable, whether seen in Laud or Mather-in a Royal Parliament, or a Colonial Assembly.
Less of these peculiarities appeared in Connecticut than in Massachusetts ; and at the late period when this County was set- tled, the sense of oppression inflicted by the mother country,
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ADDRESS.
whether real or fancied, was a little forgotten, and of course neither Quakers, Prayer Books nor Christmas were the object of penal legislation. A more tolerant, and of course a better spirit, came with our fathers into this County, than had before existed elsewhere in the Colony, and, if I mistake not, it has ever since been producing here its legitimate effects, and in some degree has distinguished the character and the action of Litchfield County throughout its entire history, as many facts could be made to prove.
Before the year 1751, this territory had been attached to dif- ferent Counties-most of it to the County of Hartford ; the towns of Sharon and Salisbury to the County of New Haven ; and many of the carly titles and of probate proceedings of several of the towns, before their organization or incorporation, may be found on the records of more early settled towns. The first settlements of estates in Canaan are recorded in Woodbury, and many early deeds are on record in the office of the Secretary in Hartford.
In 1751, the condition of the population of these towns was such as to demand the organization of a new County, and the sub- ject was extensively discussed at the town meetings. As is always true, on such occasions, a diversity of opinions as well as the or- dinary amount of excited feeling existed, regarding the location of the shire town. Cornwall and Canaan made their claims and had their advocates-but the chief contest was between Litchfield and Goshen. The latter town was supposed to occupy the geo- graphical center, and many persons had settled there in expecta- tion that that would become the fixed seat of justice, and, among others, Oliver Wolcott, afterward Governor of the State. But at the October session of the General Court in 1751, the new County was established with Litchfield as the County Town, under the name of Litchfield County.
Litchfield County, associated with the thought of one hundred years ago ! A brief space in a nation's history ; but such an hundred years !- more eventful than any other since the intro- duction of our Holy Religion into the world. This name speaks to us of home and all the hallowed memories of youth and years beyond our reach,-of our truant frolics, our school boy trials, our youthful aspirations and hopes ; and, perhaps, of more ten- der and romantic sympathies ; and many will recall the misgiv-
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ADDRESS .
ings, and yet the stern resolves, with which they commenced the various avocations of life in which they have since been engaged. And from this point, too, we look back to ties which once bound us to parents, brothers, companions, friends-then strong-now sundered ! and which have been breaking and breaking, until many of us find ourselves standing, almost alone, amidst what a few years ago was an unborn generation.
Litchfield County ! Go where you will through this broad country, and speak aloud this name, and you will hear a response, " That is my own, my native land." It will come from some whom you will find in the halls of Legislation, in the Pulpit, on the Bench, at the Bar, by the sick man's couch, in the marts of Trade, by the Plow, or as wandering spirits in some of the tried or untried experiments of life. And sure I am, that there is not to be found a son of this County, be his residence ever so remote, who would not feel humbled to learn that this name was to be no longer heard among the civil divisions of his native State.
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