USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > New Haven, a book recording the varied activities of the author in his efforts over many years to promote the welfare of the city of his adoption since 1883, together with some researches into its storied past and many illustrations > Part 37
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The guard of the camp, on that dark, dreary night, Had a murderous will; had a murderous will. They took him and bore him afar from the shore, To a hut on the hill; to a hut on the hill.
The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrained, The cruel gen'ral; the cruel gen'ral ;
His errand from camp, of the ends to be gained, And said that was all; and said that was all.
They took him and bound him and bore him away, Down the hill's grassy side; down the hill's grassy side 'Twas there the base hirelings in royal array, His cause did deride; his cause did deride.
Five minutes were given, short moments, no more, For him to repent; for him to repent; He pray'd for his mother, he ask'd not another ; To Heaven he went; to Heaven he went.
The faith of a martyr, the tragedy shew'd, As he trod the last stage; as he trod the last stage. And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood, As his words do presage; as his words do presage.
"Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe, Go frighten the slave; go frighten the slave; Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe. No fears for the brave; no fears for the brave."
XLIX.
THE HALE BUILDING TRADITION: A BACK- GROUND OF FINE HOUSING.
When Mr. Taft made his pilgrimage to the birth-place of Nathan Hale in the fall of 1916 (it was on the 21st of Octo- ber), he expressed great surprise that Deacon Hale (1717- 1802) should have built so fine a house in so remote a locality, and he asked where the money to build it came from! I could only answer the question by saying that Deacon Hale left behind him a reputation for being a great "driver," and that, as far as I knew, his farm and his boys were his only sources of income. After his death it was said, "No man ever worked so hard for both worlds as Richard Hale."
For my own part, I, too, had often wondered how it was that Deacon Hale had built one of the best houses in the entire township at the time he built it,-a house that served as a model for a larger and finer house, built just before the cen- tury closed, by Judge Jeremiah Ripley, on Ripley Hill, still one of the chief architectural ornaments of Tolland County. It pleases me now to discover that in building such a fine home,-half mansion and half farmhouse,-Deacon Hale was only carrying forward the building tradition of his family. His father, Samuel Hale (1687-1724?) of Newburyport, was a carpenter. His grandfather, the Rev. John Hale (1637- 1700, Harvard 1657), had a long and successful pastorate in Beverly, Massachusetts, and built there in 1693 a notable house, still one of the landmarks of the locality, although now much altered. Deacon Hale's maternal great-grandfather, the Rev. James Noyes (1608-1656), who matriculated at Braze- noze, Oxon 1627, but did not remain to graduate, came to New England in 1634 and settled in Newbury, where he built a house so substantial that it is still standing and lived in, --- one of the very few houses which have anywhere survived
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from the beginnings of our Colonial era to show us the charm and picturesqueness and practicability of steep-pitched roofs. Deacon Hale, who was himself born in Newburyport, was undoubtedly familiar with his Grandfather Hale's house in Beverly, and almost surely with his Great-Grandfather Noyes' house in Newbury.
Unfortunately, the house of the Deacon's brother, Major Samuel Hale (1718-1807, Harvard 1740), of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was burned in the "Great Fire" which devas- tated that place in 1813. No picture or description of the house exists. I know no more than that it stood on the site of the Custom House and, therefore, in a central location. If it corresponded in any measure to Major Hale's position in that community of fine houses, it must have sustained the family tradition of housing. Major Hale's silver-hilted sword carried by him at the Siege of Louisburg, his commission signed by Sir William Pepperell, and the muster-roll of his Company, are cherished by one of his descendants. He "was the well-known head of the leading school in that Colony and was addressed as 'Major,' on account of his rank and services at Cape Breton and the Siege of Louisburg" (John- ston, p. 40). After graduation from Yale in the early fall of 1773, Nathan visited his uncle, Major Hale, in Portsmouth, where his visit was long remembered, such was the charm of his person and personality. A year later he wrote (we hope his "bread and butter" letter was promptly dispatched on his arrival home) his uncle a dutiful and very informing letter fortunately preserved-(Johnston, pp. 49-50).
The house in Portsmouth of Major Hale's son, Judge Samuel Hale, a shipbuilder and owner and also a leading citizen, is described to me as a large, three-story house on Court Street, with a fine garden and grounds which extended back of the house to the water's edge. The scenic paper in one of the front rooms of this house has been preserved.
Later, Judge Hale removed to Barrington, where he built a substantial house, still standing in somewhat altered form. Judge Hale's son, Hon. Samuel Hale, inherited the Court
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THE HALE BUILDING TRADITION
Street house, together with a great store of furnishings, includ- ing an old secretary which, after traveling to Boston and back and suffering a long period of storage, was sold in 1911 at auction with other goods. Dealers have long noses, none too sensitive consciences, and the fancied security of storage has often proved a snare. Heirlooms have often been lost to families well able and anxious to keep them through the easy apathy-paved avenue of storage. When will people learn that a valued piece of furniture is only safe when in one's own possession and under one's watchful eye!
Imagine the excitement of the purchaser of the much trav- elled secretary to find that it contained a secret drawer, and in that drawer to discover the long-lost letter referred to in Stuart's "Life of Hale," commenting upon the article on the capture and hanging of Nathan published in the Essex Journal of February 13, 1777.
The letter was written, as appears from an examination of the letter itself, on March 28, 1777, by Deacon Richard Hale to his brother, Major Samuel Hale of Portsmouth, in response to the Major's letter to the Deacon of February 17, 1776. Major Hale's letter was unfortunately not preserved but its purport is clear from Deacon Hale's reply. He wrote :
"You desired me to inform you about my son Nathan you have doubt- less seen the Newberry Port paper that gives the account of the conduct of our kinsman Samll Hale toward him in [New] York as to our kinsman being here in his way to [New] York it is a mistake but as to his conduct tord my son at [New] York Mr. Cleveland of Capean [Cape Ann] first reported it near us I sopose on his way from the Armey where he had been Chapling home as was Probley true. betraied he doubtless was by some body he was executed about the 22nd of Sepetember last by the aconts we have had. A Child I sot much by but he is gone." (Johnston's "Nathan Hale 1776," pp. 195-196.)
This pathetic letter, hard reading, no doubt, for Major Hale, must have been hidden away by him, or by some member of his immediate family, in the secret drawer of the secretary, not so much for safekeeping as for its poignant bearing upon the embarrassing and much bruited about story of Hale's betrayal by his cousin Samuel of Portsmouth (Major Hale's
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Tory nephew), as published in the Essex Journal of February 13, 1777. Major Hale died in 1807. After his death, as I judge, the secretary came into the possession of his son, Judge Samuel Hale, and was removed to his Court Street house, and so escaped the great fire of 1813, which ravaged Portsmouth and burned the Major's house, together with his "account books and most of his papers." Thus it happened that this letter, so carefully hidden away by Major Hale, or by some member of his family, was providentially preserved, to become one of the most pathetic and in a way one of the most informative of all of the documents in Nathan Hale's history. Major Samuel died, as already stated, in 1807. Nearly thirty years later, on September 21, 1836, his son, Hon. William Hale (1765-1848), for six years a member of Congress from New Hampshire, wrote in refutation of the story of Nathan's betrayal by his cousin, "Samuel the Tory." The letter was addressed to Cyrus Bradley of Hanover, N. H., who was then collecting material for a Life of Hale, never written, alas. Bradley came into. the field early enough to have gathered much material now irretrievably lost.
In this letter, the Hon. William Hale, then a man of seventy- one, said in part :
"And I well recollect the great excitement of my father when he saw in a Newburyport newspaper [William was at this time only twelve years old] an account alledging that Capt. Hale was betrayed at New York by his cousin, and his determination to fully investigate the subject. He wrote to his brother, Capt. Hale's father, at Coventry, and received a letter in reply, which, with the result of other inquiries, fully satisfied him that the . account of Captain Hale's being betrayed by his cousin was wholly without foundation. This letter [i. e., the long-lost letter] I have seen, and regret that it is not now to be found. My youngest sister lived upon the spot my father occupied in Portsmouth, and at the great fire in Portsmouth [1813], her house was burnt, with my father's account books and most of his papers." (Stuart's "Hale," 2d ed. pp. 261-262.)
The last sentence of William Hale's letter warrants the infer- ence that he supposed that Deacon Hale's letter of Feb. 17, 1776, was burned with Major Hale's papers in 1813.
The reader may judge how far Deacon Hale's letter sup- ports his nephew's recollection of it. Although the Deacon's
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letter is faulty in spelling and capitalization, it is clear and well composed and conveys a sense of simplicity, sincerity and poise which makes us think highly of its author. It is, moreover, carefully written not to offend the brother, who had brought up and educated their suspected nephew "Samuel the Tory." Although careful not to state as true, what he did not know of his own knowledge, it is plain to me at least that the Deacon believed his son had been betrayed in New York by his cousin Samuel. Enoch Hale picked up the same story in October, 1776, when he went to Camp to learn the details of Nathan's fate.
The Hale family circle in Coventry believed, as elsewhere appears in this volume, that Hale was betrayed by his cousin Samuel Hale (1746-1787, Harv. C. 1766), who, in the fore- part of 1776, fled to New York and put himself under the protection of Sir William Howe. He was appointed Deputy Commissary of Prisoners and presumably was so engaged when Hale entered the city in September, 1776, as a spy-not under an assumed name, be it noted, but under his own- immortal now-Nathan Hale. The two men must have met to know each other in the fall of 1773, when Nathan visited his Uncle Samuel in Portsmouth, where his cousin Samuel was practicing law. There's nothing improbable in the story, which dates back to Hale's capture and execution, that Samuel Hale recognized his cousin Nathan in New York and betrayed him.
Having thus availed myself of the antiquarian's privilege of digression, I return to the Hale family tradition of housing carried on by the Deacon's sons also. The Rev. Enoch Hale (1753-1837, Yale 1773), soon after he took charge of the church in West Hampton, Massachusetts, which he shepherded for over half a century, built himself a house on the same generous and gentlemanly plan as his father's house in Coven- try, and the Rev. David Hale (1761-1822), Deacon Hale's eighth son, who was settled over the church in Lisbon (not on the Tagus but near our Connecticut Thames) soon after his graduation from Yale in 1785, built there, in 1795, a substan- tial house of the central chimney type. He occupied it until
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his return in 1804, as the books say, "to the family estate" in Coventry, where he combined the functions of farmer and school-teacher, and indulged his ruling passion for order, a passion bordering, I fancy, on that brand of Calvinistic tyranny which came so easily to ministers of the "Standing Order." When the compiler restored the Coventry mansion, the removal of unnumbered layers of wall-paper in the north- east room on the ground floor, disclosed the old black-board on the plastering. This was the Rev. David's school-room and is now so known. The house he built in Lisbon is to-day occupied by the minister of the old Newent Church, who writes enthusiastically of its five fine fireplaces and its paneled rooms. As one who occupied the house twenty-five years ago said only last summer, "This old house is better to-day than ever in its history,-than the day David Hale finished it." The present occupant of the house has made the place famous for its flowers, and calls it "Pilgrim Gardens." I think David Hale would have liked that !
Deacon Hale's daughter Joanna (an honored name in the Hale family ) (1764-1838), who married Dr. Nathan Howard (1761-1838) of Coventry (Y. C. Hon. M.D. 1818), lived in a house of the central chimney type not far from her father's,- one of those simple but ample houses which achieve dignity by a balance of proportions, the secret of which seems to have been lost with the rugged virtues of their builders.
I have not looked into the Hale housing tradition further than this, but Deacon Hale, the builder of the present house, was connected, both on his father's side and on his mother's side, with people of education and position, and it is clear to my mind that, in building his fine house, he was only sustain- ing a family tradition. The house is, to be sure, in no way ornate, but it is everywhere marked by soundness of design and construction. The masonry of the cellar walls and of the massive corbelled piers that support the chimneys remains to testify to the stability of the builder's character, and gives the compiler this opportunity to "exalt his horn."
And so having returned, at the end of these rambling pil-
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grimages, to our starting point, the Deacon's house in Coven- try, I am constrained to conclude with a quotation I came upon soon after I came into the ownership of the mansion at the Birth-Place, then vacant and neglected, and deserted by all save the ghostly tenantry of all abandoned old houses. The quotation provides a partly literal and wholly spiritual descrip- tion of the house as I found it.
"Maisons anciennes aux volets un peu retombants et disjoints, châteaux solitaires dans les vallons, combien en est-il à travers les campagnes de France, qui, le long de leur passé, ont abrité de telles éminentes tragédies ! Sacrifices, dévouements, piété, profonds dialogues intérieurs, volontés libérées des mobiles ordinaires du monde, haute sagesse acquise dans les larmes, tout ne s'est pas évaporé sur l'heure : une empreinte est demeurée, un parfum de légende et de respect. Endroits élus, joyaux disséminés aux replis des provinces, dépositaires des plus purs débris du passé, du plus précieux héritage, du plus secret, du plus réservé, dont le langage est capa- ble encore de façonner lentement des âmes à leur sagesse sévère et à de graves renoncements."
Emile Clermont's Laure, Paris, 1913, p. 2.
To the builder of the mansion-farmhouse on the Birth- Place, the writer proposes to place in the Congregational Meet- ing-House, in the village of South Coventry, an engraved brass tablet inscribed :
To the Glory of God and in Memory of Richard Hale Esqr., 1717-1802. Sometime a Deacon of this Church, Justice of the Peace, Member of the General Assembly, An Active Patriot throughout the War of Independence, and of Captain Nathan Hale, his son, who was born in this town June 6, 1755, and "resign'd his life a sacrifice to his Country's liberty at New York, Sept. 22d, 1776, Etatis 22d"
"A son I set much by and he is gone"*
Was there, I wonder, a Hale tradition of housing, or did all these fine Hale houses just happen? I prefer to think that a certain sense of the dignity of life, rather than the pride of it, led them to build these honest houses, amply proportioned and fine with the grave beauty of solidity and fitness.
* The tablet was unveiled in the meeting-house on Sunday, June 13th, 1926, with suitable services, before a large concourse, crowding the building.
L.
LIEUTENANT ELISHA BOSTWICK'S DESCRIPTION OF HALE'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE: AN ACCOUNT OF ITS DISCOVERY IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE PENSION BUREAU IN WASHINGTON.
An admirer of Nathan Hale all my life and a student of his story for many years, it was my great good fortune to bring to light and to the attention of the public a detailed description of his personal appearance and characteristics written by one who knew him well, a comrade-in-arms. I here refer to the wonderfully vivid account of Hale which concludes the personal reminiscences of Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick, of New Milford, written on his commission as a Second Lieutenant in Colonel Charles Webb's regiment, and ultimately filed by him with his application for a pension as a soldier of the Revolu- tionary War, nearly one hundred years ago.
Curiously enough, the document, which must now be regarded as one of the most important in Hale's history, lay forgotten and unnoticed for almost a century. On account of its importance, I hope I may be pardoned for briefly rehearsing the circumstances attendant upon my bringing it to light.
It was in late November, 1914. I had dined with my friend, Hon. Henry S. Graves, sometime National Forester, at his home in Cleveland Park, near Washington. He drove me back to the Cosmos Club, where I found my brother, the late Henry A. Seymour, Jr., sitting before a grate fire with Captain Hoes (Roswell Randall Hoes, Chaplain Corps, U. S. Navy, retired), an enthusiastic antiquarian and collector. My brother was neither; his passion was sailing and sailboats. He soon relinquished his seat before the fire and went home, and I sat and talked with Hoes until midnight,-chiefly of his particular interests, not mine. I recall that at that time he was
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collecting material about John Vanderlyn, the portrait-painter, and I was able to add to his list a canvas unknown to him,- the portrait, done in 1816, of James Hillhouse, the Patriot (1754-1832, Yale Coll. 1773), of New Haven, a college class- mate and correspondent of Nathan Hale.
It was midnight when we rose. My companion went into the Club writing-room to make some notes about the Hillhouse canvas and soon came out into the hall where I was waiting to say good-night. We were standing by a long sofa when I turned and said to him, "Hoes, you got your leg over first and I haven't been able to ride my [hobby ] horse at all " "What's on your mind ?" he replied. "Nathan Hale," I said, "and if, in your researches, you should chance to come upon even the smallest item bearing on Hale and his story, you must promise to let me know." Thereupon he dropped on the sofa, exclaim- ing, "The best thing I have up my sleeve is a personal descrip- tion of Nathan Hale by a Revolutionary officer who knew him. I found it only the other day in the pension file of the officer, while searching for something else." Said he, "I believe it is the only authentic detailed description of Hale's personal appearance in existence. The worst of it is I did not take the name of the pensioner nor the number of the file, and as I have just fallen out with Miss Blank, the custodian of the records, I do not see how I can direct you to the file." The conflict between the Captain and the custodian did not surprise me !! Such things are of frequent occurrence. The antiquarian often becomes a veritable pest to the custodian.
The next morning I made haste to secure from the Commis- sioner of Patents a personal note to the Commissioner of Pensions, who promptly ordered Miss Blank to bring me the file I wished to see, and to allow me to have photographs made under the established rules. Miss Blank had no option now but to produce the desired file, and I soon had in my hands what may be regarded as the most important "find" of recent years bearing on Hale's history.
The second edition of Professor Johnston's "Life of Hale" was just about to issue from the press. I, therefore, held back
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my "find" until that occurred, since I thought that he might have preceded me in the discovery of it and had not taken me into his confidence, though we had had several conferences during the preparation of the revision of his book for the press. When the book came out and I found that I had not been forestalled in my discovery of the Bostwick document I gave my "find" to the press, and had the pleasure of having it acclaimed. Professor Johnston promptly prepared an insert of four pages containing so much of Lieutenant Bostwick's account as related to Hale, and this insert was furnished by the publishers to those who had already secured the book and was incorporated as a supplement in later editions. A reviewer of Professor Johnston's book for the Boston Transcript of March 6, 1915, said,
"Yet the incompleteness of this work is acknowledged by an insert of four pages which contains the most interesting matter in the volume because the freshest. . .
"But it is the little supplement [insert] which rather engages our atten- tion. Here we find the most complete known description of Hale's personal appearance and an account of the finding of a profile of Hale in the Hale homestead which Mr. Seymour recently purchased. The personal description is embodied in the war recollections of one of Hale's fellow officers, Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick, written out on the back and front of his army commission, which Mr. Seymour recovered from the files of the Pension Bureau at Washington. The Bostwick narrative really should have been given in full, as its evidential value is such that it greatly heightens the force of the description of Hale."
Watson Sperry, writing editorially in the Hartford Courant. was equally enthusiastic, saying in part :
This old document is as fresh and vivid as if it were written yester- day .... or during the days when Hale kicked the football over the trees in the old New York Bowery. ... The young man comes before us in these old lines as vigorous and undaunted as on the day when the British hanged him. It was all in the day's work. Hale did not pull back from death even when it faced him in its meanest form. .... So out of this old manuscript the young captain steps again in his immortal youth. He stands just over yonder, with blue eyes and light hair cut short, with straight legs and regular features, of good height and with well set shoulders-a person- able and solid young man, with a body fit for the sports of youth and for the length of days required by old age. . . Military necessity knows nothing of what is glibly labelled dangerous or disgraceful. If a thing has
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to be done, in war, it has to be done, and some brave and capable soul has to do it. .... Thus young Hale died tranquilly for duty's sake, and for Washington's sake, and for this country's sake; and it is thus that he lives in his buoyant and immortal youth, just as he steps out of this old manuscript. He is one of the fortunate few who do not die .... When Sir William Howe ordered him to be strung up he no doubt meant to make an end to the young American captain, but in fact he made the beginning of him. From that moment young Hale passed from an engaging and capable personality into an enduring national symbol.
It is that change that gives to this old manuscript its value and its charm; for it shows us the young man as he was when he went about among men on this earth, not knowing that a hundred millions of people would welcome him again a hundred years later as a living example and symbol of patriotic duty fully performed.
And one there was-his name immortal now- Who died not to the ring of rattling steel, Or battle-march to spirit-stirring drum, But, far from comrades and from friendly camp, Alone upon the scaffold.
The year after recovering Bostwick's account of Hale, I furnished a certified copy of his entire narrative for Mrs. Ellen Morgan Frisbie's brochure, "A Sacrifice of Seventy-Six." (New London, 1915.) That modest pamphlet has long been out of print and I am, therefore, pleased for Bostwick's sake, as well as Hale's, to reprint the document in full here.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR PENSION BUREAU
WASHINGTON, D. C., December 1, 1914.
I, G. M. SALTZGABER, Commissioner of Pensions, do hereby certify that the accompanying pages numbered one (I), to eleven (II), inclusive, are truly copied from the originals on file in the Pension Bureau in the claim for pension of Elisha Bostwick, Revolutionary War, Survivor's File No. 10,376.
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