USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 2
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Steve and his brothers brought in scented cedar branches and red ber- ries and autumn leaves for decorat-
ing and readied the fireplaces with huge logs.
Shortly after midday relatives and friends of the bride and groom came riding in from Farmington and Wa- terbury, even from Hartford. Rev- erend Jeremiah Curtiss rode up from Southington with the groom and his kinfolk to perform the cere- mony.
There before the great parlor fire- place, William Neal took Anna for his wife. He was dressed in a long linen coat with flaring tails. His vest had big pockets and was trimmed with 'silk and twist.' He wore breeches with silver buckles, worsted hose, and the new-style pointed shoes. Instead of home- spun linen, Anna had on a fine Ducape silk gown, very popular just then, and a lace cap.
In the evening under the candle- light and pine knot torches in metal wall brackets, they feasted on veni- son, wild turkey, ham, succotash, apple butter, pies and cakes, and endless flagons of cider.
There were recitations and the singing of hymns and old favorites. They told fortunes from the antics of the flickering candles, and they roasted nuts and apples over the fire. One game was to put 'prophetic' chestnuts on the andirons, and if one nut, then the other, popped out on the hearth, it was a sign of another marriage. They played hilarious blind man's buff, hunt-the-whistle
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
and thread-the-needle. It was mid- night before the guests started on their long journeys back through the wilderness.
Ebenezer nodded with satisfac- tion at all the work Mabel and the girls had done to make this a real wedding. It was a fitting inaugura- tion of their new home and their new life.
For Thanksgiving, Steve went up to the bogs near Lake Compounce to gather cranberries. This was a day, not of gaiety, but of prayer and fasting, and this year, now that the new house had been finished and they even had good neighbors, Ebenezer believed they had much to give worshipful thanks for. Not until after the proper religious observances was the great feast spread.
Winter snows swept in upon them, but they already had the win- dows boarded up and wood stacked high for the fireplaces.
At last another Spring rolled around. Manross returned with his wife Esther and their seven chil- dren. Two others had died in Leb- anon. The youngest was only two years old, but one of the girls and Bishop, known as 'Bish,' and Nehe- miah Junior were about Steve's age, which made trips into the woods more fun.
More newcomers pushed through the wilderness. Daniel and Na-
thaniel Messenger from Litchfield drifted through the forest, guns in hand, to look for a likely place to settle. Daniel and his two sons, Sam- uel and Nehemiah, chose the deep woods of Harwinton, and soon built a road down from Litchfield to con- nect with the Chippins Hill trail.
Nathaniel Messenger preferred the Pequabuck. In May of 1729, when the first trees were leafing out, he bought seventy-two acres on the King's Road above Manross, put up a house, and was joined by his wife, Sarah Smith, and her newborn child.
That same month of May, Benja- min Buck brought his young wife, Mercy Parsons, also with a babe in her arms, up from Southington. He, too, bought seventy-two acres on King's Road, but farther north. The Bucks and Messengers were dis- tantly related.
Before that, on a blustery March day, Mary Brownson gave birth to Daniel Junior in the lonely cabin up the river, and in April, David was born to Ebenezer and Mabel Barnes. These were the first two white chil- dren born of settlers in the commu- nity. Mabel was to bear three more. Little Lucy in 1735 was the fifteenth for Ebenezer. More than ever he could say he was not merely the builder of a house, but that he was founding a family here.
And so it was, a new settlement was started in the New England wilderness.
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BENJAMIN BUCK HOUSE ON KING'S ROAD - 1729 (Credit Whitney Studio, Bristol, Conn.)
COLONIAL KITCHEN (Copyright Informative Classroom Picture Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan)
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life ON THE pequabuck
STEVE was tending the charcoal kiln, high on the ridge north of the Barnes home. Charcoal was re- quired in the forge for working iron.
He had piled up six feet of oak and hickory wood in a shallow pit and covered it over with closely fitted sod, leaving a hole below for air.
For two days and nights he had watched the slow-smoldering mass for it could not be permitted to burn too fast.
It was done now. He sealed up the opening and straightened up.
To the west rose the feathery crest of Chippeny or Chippins Hill. Far southwest below the Compounce Mountains, the bright sandstone of Red Stone Hill cropped out of the green forest, the sort of stone that would be used for the grave mark- ers in the new burying ground laid out at the south end of the bridge. they had built over the Pequabuck near Ebenezer's house. Thomas Lowrey, his wife Anna, and half a dozen other settlers had already put up houses on Red Stone Hill,
Across the river above the dense lower woodlands loomed up the massive bulk of South Mountain, its many-colored foliage glistening in the sunlight. Half way up the gen- tler slope of nearby Fall Mountain, Moses Lyman of Wallingford, whose great grandfather a century ago had been an original proprietor of Hart- ford, had bought land in 1736, four years ago, and had built a fine house.
Well beyond the range of Steve's vision, on Spindle Top in Wolcott, was the sturdy house of John Alcott, a young man who had braved the wilderness with his bride Deborah Blakeslee three years after Steve and his father had come here. Al- cott was a surveyor and a good me- chanic, and already had a great farm of more than a thousand acres opened up.
Now, two Gaylords - Edward, a highway surveyor, and Joseph - were building near Moses Lyman. A third, Samuel, was going to start a place far up on the edge of Cedar Swamp across from Indian Rock.
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
West of the southern tip of the ridge and overlooking the river, though not in view from where Steve was standing, David Gaylord from Wal- lingford was erecting a home for his parents and sister.
Nearer at hand, across the river, was the house of John Brown, a very devout man, who had come here from Colchester early in 1730, bring- ing his wife, Marah Chandler, and six children.
The settlement was really grow- ing now. But below on King's Road were only the houses of the first set- tlers, and one of them, Benjamin Buck, had died after moving back to Southington, leaving his wife, Mercy Parsons, with three small children. In the twelve years since Steve had helped build near the river, no other new houses had been put up. Now, well north of the Man- rosses, Ebenezer Hamblin, carpen- ter, mason and surveyor, was erect- ing a home. And John Brown Junior was planning to build on the slope northeast of the Barnes tavern.
Hamblin had come in 1736 and had bought the seventy-two acres and house that Buck had formerly owned. Since then he had bought more acres from Ebenezer and was now building back in the brush toward little Poland Brook, well east of the other King's Road houses. His grandfather had been a well-to- do miller, with a houseful of silver, willed to his numerous progeny,
who had spread far over the New England landscape.
The Barnes establishment here on the Pequabuck, with its new wing on the house and many outbuild- ings, its neat split rail fences around the pastures dotted with cows and sheep, was the finest. Ebenezer had bought up nearly three hundred more adjoining acres.
Soon it would be planting time - 'Injun' corn and oats, rye and mislin, a little wheat, considerable flax. The apple orchard was grown up now, and the buds were swelling. A large press made plenty of cider and ap- plejack for the inn, and the malt house provided ale from their own barley. Only rum had to be im- ported, mostly from the West In- dies. Occasionally they got a choice bottle of brandy from France or the Canaries.
A big roomy barn near the road provided storage for hay, and shel- ter for the horses and cows and the animals of travelers. An ample smokehouse took care of the salmon which came up the Pequabuck to spawn, also the beef, mutton and ham. Near the large lean-to - for tools and for the cheesepress, churn, and butter tubs - had been added a good-sized woodshed. The big fire- places, needed for preparing food as well as for heating, were never allowed to go out except during summer when an outside cookhouse was used, so it was an everlasting
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LIFE ON THE PEQUABUCK
chore to feed them with hundreds of four and five foot oak and hickory logs. The neighbors had long 'wood spells' to get in the supply. The bigger logs were left in the forest till a good snowfall made it easier to drag them in on runners.
Steve was proud of everything for much of it was his own hard work, since Jedidiah and Gideon had married a few years after com- ing here, and, to Ebenezer's great sorrow, had gone to Southington to live. So had Deborah, who only last summer had married Stephen Buck Junior, a brother of their lost neighbor Benjamin.
Again Steve's glance roved over the farm. To remove the huge stumps and pull the great glacier- strewn boulders into stone walls had taken years of toil. Gradually they had put glass in all the windows. This was costly, for it had to be im- ported from England.
To plow, plant and harvest, to raise and feed the animals, to spin the flax and wool, now and then a bit of imported cotton, to make soap and candles, to fashion new iron tools, to cut wood - to plan and build and carry on year after year - took the constant efforts of the whole family. The chore of bring- ing water in big wooden piggins from the cistern and the spring for drinking and cooking and hot sponge baths in the copper basins was endless. Sometimes they had
to go for water after dark, with flam- ing pine torches to scare away wolves.
But little by little they had shaped what God had bestowed upon them into a pattern of security. Their success was due to their own labor and thought and abiding faith.
Steve hurried down the hill for this was 'sugaring off' time when it still froze at night but daytime thaws caused the maple sap to drop from every twig, and run into the wooden buckets, hung on the whit- tled spouts. Maple syrup and honey were important, for all sugar had to be imported from the West Indies. Beehives made of rolled grass on wooden perches were kept in the apple orchard.
Steve started bringing in the heavy buckets in pairs balanced off the ends of a strong shoulder yoke.
Before long the barrels in the back yard were full cnough to start the big brass kettles over the fires. Soon the boiling syrup sweetened the keen Spring air. It was 'grained' with long wooden paddles and at the right moment four men lifted off the kettles, and 'stirred off' the syrup with short-handled paddles almost like a butcher's cleaver. A few ladles were dripped onto the snow to harden as candy.
The women busied themselves in the out-kitchen, roasting corn and chestnuts and toasting apples.
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
Neighbors rode over to join in the fun, among them the newcomers, David Gaylord and his sister Mary. She was eighteen, and her dark eyes and smile held Steve in a spell from the first moment. David, two years younger than Steve, was a fine singer, and led the others in songs and hymns as they sat about the glowing fire.
Spring moved on. Soon the apple trees were in full bloom, a carpet of pink and white on the valley floor.
Far up the Compounce Road, Steve saw two riders descending. This was one pleasure of the place, the many friends and newcomers who stopped at the inn and brought news from Farmington and Water- bury.
The newcomers proved to be his brother Ebenezer Junior and his wife Abigail from Southington. Steve greeted them joyously and put their horses into the barn. Mabel hastily pulled her hands out of the 'darling-cradle' or bread trough, where she was sifting rye and 'In- jun meal.' The girls left their vari- ous tasks. Ebenezer drew cider for everybody. Around the big table, they asked eagerly for news of other members of the family in Southing- ton.
Ebenezer Junior told them about Spring training band day. He was an ensign and expected to be made a captain.
"Even so, we are thinking of mov- ing here to the Pequabuck.'
Gladdened by this news, Steve's father offered to add a new wing to the house. "And I'll have some good land to deed over to you," he added. "All you boys are going to get a good plot of ground before I die."
At this hour of the day there was little time for idling. The girls went back to the butter churns in the lean-to or to finish their runs of flax. Occasionally they wet their thumbs and forefingers with their lips to twist the thread. Mabel put her bread dough on the side of the fire- place to rise and started making 'hasty pudding.'
"Why they call it hasty pudding, I have no idea," she said.
The corn meal had to be dropped into boiling water, and be stirred constantly, then poured into indi- vidual 'nappies' or wooden bowls to be served with milk, sometimes maple syrup.
Steve went out to help his half sister Esther, now seventeen, make salt. Black salt or 'powder' was necessary for preserving butter and salting down shad and meat. Esther had put the ashes in the tubs four days ago and had drawn off the lye. Steve strained the ashes, and the liquid residue was boiled over a slow fire until the salt settled. The following day she would skim it off and spread it out to dry on woolen cloths in the shade of the big elm.
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LIFE ON THE PEQUABUCK
The ashery where this was done was an important part of the Barnes' establishment. Here they made soap, pearlash for baking powder, and potash. Besides what they earned from the inn and the trading- in of pelts and furs, potash, selling at £60 a ton, provided their most reliable cash income. But to make it was hard work. An acre of wood- land had to be burned over and the ash laboriously collected and proc- essed.
That Sunday the Barnes caval- cade to the Farmington Meeting House was larger than usual. Eben- ezer, now sixty-five, was feeling fine, and took Mabel and five-year-old Lucy on the cloth pillion. Steve took Esther and the youngest boy. Eben- ezer Junior rode with Abigail. The three other boys walked. They were joined by David and Mary Gaylord.
The long Sunday jaunts were never dull. Steve often had a chance to talk to Mary. He liked best the long twilight rides home, after the all-day services. Some- times the journey stretched on into night. He could hardly wait for each new Sabbath to roll around.
Often Steve had to go to Farm- ington on week days also, with hides for the tanners to cure and make into shoes, or with grain to be ground at the mill, or to lay in sup- plies at Samuel Gridley's store. The
Gridley place sold everything from hand-hammered nails to scythes, hardware, flints, powder and bul- lets. It was also the pharmacy where medicines and home reme- dies, all sorts of 'simples and bene- fits,' could be bought.
Several times a year he rode as far as Hartford or Middletown to take potash or pelts, grain or jerked meat, which were traded for hard- ware and tools, cloth and rum that came up the Connecticut River. He liked to stroll along the landings, where the products of New England farmers were piled high, wheat and peas, rye, barley and corn, barrels of pork and beef. At another spot were collected wool, hemp and flax. Negro slaves were rolling kegs of cider and perry (made from pears) up a gang plank to a low-riding river boat. Horses were being pushed aboard another vessel. Lumber and kegs and staves were being loaded on from oxcarts.
Steve was relieved of some of these long hard trips when the mills on the Pequabuck were built. Jo- seph Plum, from Milford, a grand- son of the famous tavern keeper of New London, bought four acres of land from Ebenezer on the south side of the river, a little west of the Barnes house, where he built a dam and put up a gristmill.
Steve liked to watch the big water wheel and the heavy stones crunch- ing the grain. Often Mary managed
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
to bring the Gaylord corn to the mill at the same time - it became a fre- quent tryst. Once she surprised him by swimming her horse straight across the river instead of going around by the bridge.
Presently Plum erected a sawmill on the north bank side of the river, utilizing the water power from the same dam. But he died the follow- ing year, and to meet his debts, the court ordered his land sold to 'the highest bidder' at 'publik vandue' or auction after due notice at 'the beat of the drum.'
His widow Thankful Gaylord, sister of several Pequabuck settlers, was left in a bad fix with seven young children, mostly girls. But Mary and David Gaylord took one of the children into their home, and two uncles looked after several more.
However, before the auction oc- curred, Thankful, an attractive woman of thirty-seven, marricd Hezekiah Rew. This was a happy choice, for he had had experience as a miller in Waterbury, where for a time he had owned the gristmill on Mad River. Plum's debts were satis- fied by the sale of four acres and the sawmill, bought in by Hezekiah's brother John, a lawyer, and Heze- kiah took over the running of the Plum mill.
The mills made a great difference. Pcople unable to make long trips to Farmington had had to grind their
grain by hand in the primitive fash- ion of the ancient Egyptians. The sawmill enabled the settlers to build houses and make furniture with less labor. It was easier to throw bridges across the Pequabuck. The mill also did a flourishing business ship- ping staves to the coopers of Water- bury, Farmington and Hartford and to 'the wine islands of the West Indies.'
Soon a fulling mill was put up alongside the other two mills, and the women of the settlement were relicved of the laborious work of cleaning, shrinking and dycing the cloth they wovc.
The Barnes tavern was a natural place for people to drop in. There were special gatherings, too. Corn- husking was a hilarious time, and it was easy to see that Steve and Mary were in love.
In the late Fall they made soap and dipped candles. Both were strenuous tasks. The night before the candlemaking, the long hemp wicks werc cut and twisted over dipping rods. Each rod had to be dipped into the hot meltcd tallow again and again until the candles were long and thick enough. Arms soon began to ache. But gradually the racks werc filled up with a win- ter's supply. A few smaller candles were made from scented bayberry wax and 'silk-grass' wicks of milk- weed down.
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MAKING SOAP (Copyright Informative Classroom Picture Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan)
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
During stormy winter days Mabel and the girls spun and sewed and quilted. They made linen sheets and goose feather mattresses. They made baskets and hampers from reeds and twigs. Esther made Steve a fish basket he wanted badly. Sometimes they made brooms from heath and birch or the broom plant that flowered so brightly yellow in the Spring. A more painstaking task was making brushes from pig bristles.
During those days of deep snow, Steve made bullets with the mold or experimented with making pewter ware. The best imported pewter, almost like white bronze, was eighty per cent copper and twenty per cent tin, but local pewter was merely tin with ten or twenty per cent lead. Low grade pewter was called 'Tri- fle.' That with nearly as much lead as tin was very soft and was called 'Lay.'
The lead now came from Con- necticut mines, but the tin had to be imported from England. Some- times Steve hammered out trays and plates from flat sheets - 'sad ware' it was called - or cast 'hollow ware' in gun metal molds.
He spent many hours whittling with his English jackknife. Only by fashioning wooden substitutes for metal and glass items could they have many articles too expensive to import: plates and spoons, cheese and butter tools, candle-rods and
bottles, wheels and syrup spouts, dowels and bungs and a rolling pin. Different woods served best for dif- ferent things. Oak and hickory were best for utensils and plow- shares, staves and furniture; walnut for ax handles; buttonwood and basswood and beech for tubs and windlasses. Smooth red cherry was fine for butter paddles. The wood had to be laboriously polished by hand.
A traveling peddler came along with wool and flax spinning wheels, neatly lathed and joined, and Steve whittled out all the other necessary parts. As he whittled he kept think- ing of Mary.
Those stormy days he was often unable to see her; but whatever the weather, nearly always they went to Meeting on Sunday, often strug- gling through deep snow all the many long miles to Farmington or Southington and back again.
Midwinter, on a dazzling day of clean, dry snow, they butchered the hogs. The carcasses were hung overnight in the smokehouse, where they worked by the light of resin- dipped rope ends. Next day the meat was cut up and salted, por- tions being pickled in the solid wood 'powdering tubs,' or set aside for sausage, headcheese, sour ribs and roasts. The best parts were cooked or cured. The children got the tails to roast in the ashes.
Steam from boiled meat rose from
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LIFE ON THE PEQUABUCK
the heavy brass kettles on the many- hooked fireplace crane and in spite of the roaring fire, froze on the dark roof beams. The hams were sus- pended over casks and the spiced drippings poured over them daily. At two-week intervals they were thoroughly rubbed with salt, sugar and spices. This year they would have some extra to ship down the Connecticut River to the West Indies.
Steve and Mary were married in the Spring. They lived temporarily in the new wing put up at the tav- ern while he finished a new house on thirty-one acres of land Ebenezer ceded to him on the north side of the old trail called South Street, at West and Wolcott, near what came to be known as Goose Corner. It was catty-cornered from Daniel Brown- son's cabin.
Daniel had sold the place nearly ten years ago and had gone to Southington. It was now owned by Joseph Benham from Meriden, a surveyor, whose family was living there until a proper house could be put up.
Except for occasional help from his younger brothers and neighbors,
Steve built the new place himself. But now he got his lumber - all but heavy beams and rafters - ready- cut at the sawmill. He laid up the fireplace and chimney, finding even more pride in the effort, for this was his own home, than when he had helped his father build.
For the house-raising late in sum- mer, the whole settlement turned out. The women prepared food, and the men ranged themselves in long lines to handle the heavy tim- bers and the tackle of thick ropes. The mug of hot brandy flip was passed from hand to hand as David 'deaconed off' the lines for singing while they worked. Smaller boys stood by with baskets of wooden dowels. Mary had to drive in one of the last 'pins' - then with glad shouts, the rooftree was in place with its supports, and the house was ready for rafters and shingles. Af- terward the girls passed around cider and doughnuts.
Steve's first child, Mary, born that February, died before the year was out. Three years later Thomas was born, the fourth Barnes to bear that name.
And so life on the Pequabuck flowed on.
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Zeon The Memoriale of the nos $2
de nos Brand, Frenk Gaylord & dundry r gerland That is bottled on The front, this), Fourle both Directions and in The Town of Farming ton That Lys Lauer. (Se (aller) in 5. From Thewing. the great Difficulties you're inder to attend the Publich Wowhin of God in the Society to which they Dobe long in the Winter Sonfor Sind Praying for liberty to fail preach ing aring !hun falvy for the. Hinter Trafon annually. This afriendly grants party to the Memorialists Such other performs as Share sitting on the Division of land about? willin the unity following De. Beglosing att The Soulte End of saie Ditions and The me to Extend nor the five Mile, Liberty of hiring Some Orthodox + Suitably Qualified person to preach to them for the Space politice mouth annually. s. Form kollegin in the first of hover? with all Such malty If Privitiger as allowed by Law to other buch Sonitys. in this (Hony)
Out. 1742/ Dath in if Lower house
Cour,' in the upper Kouy.
GRANT BY COLONIAL ASSEMBLY OF PETITION FOR WINTER PRIVILEGES TO THE "SOUTHWEST WINTER SOSIATY" (Vault, Bristol Public Library)
THE church ON THE hill
THE BARNES family had been attending church in Southington be- cause so many of Ebenezer's chil- dren and grandchildren were there, and they liked Reverend Curtiss. But as the winter of 1742 ap- proached, Ebenezer, who was sixty- seven, looked ahead with dismay to the long Sabbath trips through snow and ice.
"We ought to have our own preacher during winter," he told Steve.
That September a Farmington legal scrivener stopped at the inn, and Ebenezer sat him down with quill and ink to write out an 'Hum- ble Memorial' to the 'Honourble Gour Councill, and Reprefentatives of his Majeftys Colony of Conecti- cott in New England,' asking that the Pequabuck residents be allowed to hire a 'fuitably Quallifyed perfon to preach ye Gofpeľ during 'ye fpace of fix months in ye year An- nually.'
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