USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 5
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They rode south over the moun- tain. Near Cedar Swamp, Gideon shifted his rifle and fiddle - for he could do without food easier than music - to look back at the home he might never see again. New Cambridge was quite a place now, nearly a hundred houses scattered over valley and hilltops, nearly a thousand people, and a fourth school had just been built northeast toward the Stafford Section. Folk over on Red Stone Hill had also put up a school. A new and bigger church was being planned.
Gideon thought of the happy days of his life here, the boyhood years
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THE GREAT LAND RUSH
in the little schoolhouse on the cen- tral hill, the singing parties, the strawberry hunts, Thanksgiving and Christmas, the gay Training Band days - he would miss Spring drill this year - and his work at the tan- nery and his father's shop.
Smoke curled up from the houses and the mills there on the Pequa- buck and from Barnes's tavern. The first Barneses were only a legend now. Ebenezer, the great patriarch of New Cambridge, had died in 1756 when Gideon was a small boy, and Stephen had been carried away in an epidemic a year later. Eben- ezer Junior had sold the mills to two brothers of the Deming family, but had kept the tavern going. Jim Naughton, his brother-in-law, un- comfortable in the new arrange- ment, had moved with Mary and the children to Southington.
In Wallingford Gideon separated from the others, who put up at the taverns, and stayed with his moth- er's family, the Ives.
The main body of men rode in next day. They had started out from Norwich under Major John Durkee, famous Indian fighter in expeditions against Canada. At the time of the hated Stamp Act four years ago, he had organized the Sons of Liberty at his tavern on Bean Hill in Norwich and had led a thousand vigilantes with white staves across the Connecticut hills to throw out the royal tax collectors.
Since then his organization had spread from end to end of the colo- nies. He believed in complete in- dependence for the Thirteen Colo- nies.
As Gideon swung over the hills toward Danbury, his excitement in- creased - all the thrill of setting forth into wild virgin country. He had the glorious feeling he was really seeing the world.
They crossed the broad Hudson at Poughkeepsie, a breathtaking spectacle, and Gideon, who had never been on a ferryboat, felt a thrill of fear as the powerful current swung them around, but kept say- ing, "I really am seeing the world."
In Dutchess County they put up at a friendly Quaker settlement. Gideon was fascinated by the quaint clothing and the strange gentle talk of these people. For a century in Connecticut the Quakers had al- ways been considered evil perni- cious folk who flouted the True Faith. But Gideon had never met such kind hospitable folk. Appar- ently the dreadful stories he had always heard were wrong.
"They must have a good faith," he told Jabish. "They are real Christians.'
The Quakers chided the Connec- ticut men for traveling with guns and having violence in their hearts.
"We wish no trouble," answered Joseph Gaylord stoutly. "Only what we are entitled to have."
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
Reinforced by remnants of the First Forty, Durkee led his men across the rugged mountains, mostly swept free of snow by now. Gid- eon - as Elias had been - was thrilled when they topped the last high ridge above the magnificent valley. It was early May, the foli- age was out, and he and his com- panions made their way down through flowering thickets and wild grape vines.
The meadow grass was lush on the valley floor, and he ran the rich black soil through his fingers in amazement.
"They say this used to be a lake bottom. The soil goes down deep," Joseph Gaylord remarked, "not thin like our Connecticut soil."
But Gideon's eyes strayed back with affection to the hills along the Lackawanna River they had just passed, soft and rolling and burst- ing into green like Connecticut hills.
Durkee resolutely led the way south past the Ogden-Jennings blockhouse and the burned cabins of the First Forty to Mill River.
There was no time to lose. He set part of the men putting in sev- eral hundred acres of corn. The rest feverishly built cabins. These were arranged with doors and win- dows facing an inner quadrangle; at the back, solid logs, not a win- dow, only loopholes for firing. A month later the quadrangle was surrounded by an outer palisade of
pointed logs. So was 'Fort Durkee' built and manned with day-and- night sentries.
Gideon saddled his horse to ride south and find Elias. Jabish said he would do better to put up a cabin and get in crops.
"He will be expecting me, he may need me," replied Gideon.
Three days later at Easton he found the twenty accused persons, out on bail, camped near the river. Elias was with them, and was over- joyed to see Gideon. The trial was set for June 12.
The case was continued until September, so Gideon and Elias rode off toward the Delaware. They got back in September, the day be- fore the trial. In spite of the Phila- delphia lawyer the company had hired, each of the twenty-three de- fendants was sentenced in the blink of an eye and a hard rap of the gavel to pay a £ 60 fine. Eleven were able to pay, but a dozen, including Elias and Samuel Gaylord, were crowded back into the tiny jail.
The local sheriff, having no funds with which to feed them, turned his back, so they all walked out and scattered.
Samuel Gaylord headed back to the Wyoming, but Gideon and Elias galloped across the river into New Jersey, out of reach of the Pennsyl- vania courts and rode up the Dela- ware River valley to others gathered
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THE GREAT LAND RUSH
at the Minisinks. Irate Sheriff Jen- nings posted a £60 reward for their recapture.
In spite of constant trouble, the Connecticut settlers still in the Wyo- ming Valley were valiantly raising houses, building fences and roads. They put up a gristmill and sawmill. But the Ogden blockhouse and Fort Durkee glared at each other not two miles apart and there were frequent clashes with axes, tomahawks, scythes and clubs.
Captain Amos Ogden, the famous Indian fighter leading the Penna- mites, staged a surprise sortie, cap- tured Major Durkee and sent him in irons to Philadelphia. Fort Durkee surrendered November 14, 1769.
The Pennamites looted houses and crops, stole the cattle and horses and pigs, and drove all the Connec- ticut folk, some with wives and children, out of the valley.
There to the Minisinks, where Gideon and Elias were waiting, came the refugees, toiling down from the high mountains, in rags, half-starving, carrying sick children in their arms. There came Samuel Gaylord, Joseph Gaylord, Steve Hungerford, Zerubbabel Jerome and other New Cambridge men. Jabish, cut off for two days, was one of the last to get through.
Week after week they camped on the Delaware hoping for better news. The days grew shorter, the night chill deepened. They tasted
the first tang of winter and shivered in the first light fall of snow. It was Gideon, those cold nights beside the campfire, who did much to keep people's spirits up with his fiddle and his songs.
There, one bitter January night, came the startling news of the fight on Golden Hill in New York City between the Sons of Liberty and the British Red Coats. That might be bad for John Durkee, lodged in a Philadelphia jail. Feeling against the British ran high around the shivering circle of men on the lonely Minisinks beside the curve of the Delaware that seemed to flow on relentlessly to a future of darkness.
The three Roberts went on to the New York Quaker settlement. There word came of the Boston Massacre - how the British Red Coats had drenched the Boston Commons with the blood of honest patriots. Anger flared in every nook and corner of the Thirteen Colonies.
In Wyoming a new bitter strug- gle was going on. The company had rushed Captain Zebulon Butler, Connecticut's most notable Indian fighter, to the scene with orders 'to keep and maintain possession of our purchase on the Susquehanna River.'
The Connecticut folk were now scattered, but Butler got help from the brave Paxtong Rangers of near- by Lancaster County, who had been fighting the Penns for years. They
53
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
recovered Fort Durkee in a wild surprise attack, but the Pennamites managed to hold on at the old block- house. Butler laid siege.
Major Durkee, who had been freed, gathered armed reinforce- ments and supplies on the lower Delaware to come to his aid. Steve Hungerford and Samuel Gaylord, still at the Minisinks, and Timothy Gaylord, who had just come out from New Cambridge, hurried to join him.
The Pennamites also received strong reinforcements under Ogden. After some weeks of ineffective bombardment, the Connecticut be- siegers attacked the blockhouse, drums beating, shouting like In- dians, but only after five days of close-up firing, when his supplies went up in flames, did Odgen sur- render. He and all his men were expelled from the valley. This was in May, 1771.
The three Roberts, with Joseph Gaylord, Jonathan Carrington and others from New Cambridge, joined the stream of settlers from Connec- ticut, from New York and the Dela- ware - all headed once more for the Susquehanna paradise.
Benjamin Mathews was eager to get there. His son, Benjamin Jun- ior, had joined up with the wild 'Paxtong Boys.'
But Zebulon Frisbie, Elijah Lewis and Ebenezer Norton had had enough fighting; they were going
back to New Cambridge.
One settler, struggling over the mountains with his wife and two children, was also leaving for good. He shook his head dolefully. "I worked hard all summer. I put up a house and built fences and got fine crops growing. The house is gone, everything is gone. I've had enough."
The valley was beautiful in the full tide of spring flowering. Major Durkee had already surveyed a township on the east bank of the river. He named it Wilkes-Barre after two courageous British states- men fighting resolutely, alternately in Parliament or in jail, for the rights of the American colonies. The township on the west side, reserved for the First Forty, was named Kingston.
The drawings for lots were held in June. Settlers' names were put in one hat, the numbers of the lots in another. Elias drew a town lot, a hill field and a mountain tract. Zerubbabel Jerome was a near neighbor.
Jabish hoped to get land in fertile Plymouth township south of Kings- ton. Gideon had his eye on the roll- ing Lackawanna hill country, a township called New Providence.
While the new proprietors were busy putting up cabins and build- ing Forty Fort on the river, once more tireless Captain Ogden crept
54
into the valley over an unguarded northeast trail and surprised the set- tlers in their fields, then burst into Fort Durkee. Once more Major Durkee was sent off in irons to Philadelphia. This time Captain Butler, who was seriously wounded, and many others were also taken to jail there.
The three Roberts escaped. Once more they took the long trail over the mountains. From the heights they saw their fields and homes go- ing up in flames.
It was a sad journey, struggling over the rocky trail, women and children, the aged and the sick. Gideon helped a family with five young children, all on foot.
At the Minisinks, they received word that the Paxtong Boys had swept in at a gallop, retaking Fort Durkee in one charge. But the Pennamites were still in the valley in force. There would be war for a long time. The crops were gone. It would be a long homeless hungry winter.
THE GREAT LAND RUSH
Elias said he intended to go back and fight on, come what might, but Gideon and Jabish were determined to return to Connecticut for good. "It will be years before anything can be built up in the Wyoming," insisted Gideon.
By the flickering camp fire, where the first few flakes of a snowstorm hissed and vanished, Gideon wrote out a deed, turning over the four hundred acres of his New Provi- dence grant to Elias.
The next morning early, Elias rode resolutely back toward the val- ley. Gideon turned toward home, his heart heavy, for he knew he and his father might never see each other again.
Once more Jabish and Gideon were given hospitality by the Quak- ers, and once more Gideon marveled at their great peace of soul. He rode on toward the Hudson, much heartened. He rode with a new idea. He was going home where he belonged and make clocks.
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"Connecticut will feed the Continental Armies and our Allies in this war. obama,10
SUPPLYING PROVISIONS FOR THE CONTINENTAL ARM- IES (Illustration from A Century in Connecticut, reproduced by permission of G. Fox & Co. in Hartford)
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sons of liberty
IT was a bright May afternoon in 1774. Gideon Roberts stood among the crowd massed before the Farmington Meetinghouse where a huge bonfire blazed at the foot of a forty-five foot Liberty Pole topped by a blue Liberty Cap decked with gold stars. A thousand people were gathered to protest against the Bos- ton Port Bill. The British Parlia- ment, at the behest of Lord North, His Majesty's Prime Minister, had closed the leading port of New Eng- land to all commerce as punishment for the Boston Tea Party and other demonstrations against royal au- thority. What Farmington did was important, for next to New Haven and Norwich, it was the largest community in Connecticut.
The streamers on the tall pole on the Green bore bold mottoes: 'Peace, Liberty and Safety' . . . 'No Taxa- tion without Representation.' There on the meetinghouse porch stood the leaders of Farmington and all the villages around about.
An officer of the Training Band read the 'infamous' bill that sought
to starve the good people of Boston into submission for their opposition to the Stamp Tax and the oppres- sions of George III. Bitter in the hearts of the colonists was memory of the martyrs of Golden Hill and the Boston Massacre four years ago. This law was the latest of a long series of intolerable measures. Jeers greeted its reading.
"Is this law a crime?" shouted the Training Band officer.
A roar of 'yeas' replied.
"Shall it be hung to the Liberty Pole and put to death like a common criminal?"
Another mighty roar of 'yeas.' "Shall this law be burned?"
Another great shout went up. "Let your will be carried out."
The offensive bill was cast into the fire. A little puff and curl of flame, and it was gone. But all the trouble it would bring still lay ahead of them.
Among the spectators was Cap- tain John Wilson of Harwinton, leader of the Sons of Liberty and member of the Hartford Assembly.
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
He stood arms akimbo on the meet- inghouse steps, a lean, hard-bitten man of over sixty.
Along with Daniel Messenger, he had been one of the five first found- ers of Harwinton, carving a home- stead out of the forest. Ever since, he had been a leader in church and community affairs, a venerable church deacon and selectman, and now was serving his third term as town representative in the Colonial Assembly. He was a man of sub- stance and character, but in him was the dark brooding of the Harwinton forests, and his inflexible self-right- eous faith and passionate patriotism were soon to make history in the New Cambridge settlement.
Farmington adopted strong reso- lutions denouncing the British af- fronts and the maltreatment of Bos- ton. With wild acclaim, it was agreed to collect provisions to suc- cor Boston. Volunteers were called to march at an instant's notice to aid the port. The first New Cambridge Minute Men to step forward were Isaiah Thompson, Odadiah An- drews, Samuel Peck and Wise Barnes.
The crowd burst into the popular song of the day:
Freedoms charms alike engage Blooming youth and hoary age
None are happy but the free, Bliss is born of Liberty Which from fair America Tyrants strive to take away
The fire before the Liberty Pole died down in the deepening twi- light, but the flame was running from heart to heart in a hundred Connecticut villages, from the sea- side folk of Stamford and New Ha- ven, Saybrook and New London, through all the winding valleys north to the woods of Canaan, the hills of Suffield and the far ridges of Woodstock.
The same sparks of freedom had flown along the entire Atlantic sea- board. All the Thirteen Colonies were aroused now. Committees of Correspondence had been set up to protect American rights, stop the use of tea and other British prod- ucts, and keep an eye on Tories. A call had gone out for a Continental Congress to meet in Philadelphia in September. Connecticut's great governor Jonathan Trumbull, unlike those in most of the colonies, was backing every move of the General Assembly to defend American rights.
On June 15, when the Boston Port Bill went into effect, New Cam- bridge stopped all work, and every- one devoted himself to fasting and prayer. The First Church was draped in black, but the Church of England building was deserted. The members, mostly from Chip- pins Hill, were Tories who dared not meet openly any longer. The feud of thirty years before had never been healed.
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SONS OF LIBERTY
Reverend Newell preached a ser- mon on The Misery and Duty of an Oppressed and Enslaved People. The whole village was silent except for the prayers and the solemn beat- ing of the drums, all day, all night.
The ships and fishing boats now lay idle in Boston Harbor, the wharves were empty and silent ex- cept for the tread of the British Red Coats. No goods, no food came in or out. In New Cambridge Heze- kiah Gridley turned his home on West Street into a warehouse, and Amos Barnes of Red Stone Hill, son of Ebenezer, took charge of collect- ing supplies to aid the closed port. He and his committee, Stephen Hotchkiss, Josiah Lewis Junior, Hezekiah Gridley Junior, Stephen Barnes Junior, Asa and Thomas Upson and others, soon got to- gether a great store of wheat and rye and Indian corn, pork and beef. They were rushed to the Boston Selectmen 'to be Distributed . . . to those . . . incapacitated to pro- vide a necessary subsistence in con- sequence of the late oppressive measures of administration.' New Cambridge and Farmington sent such large quantities that before July was over Samuel Adams wrote a special letter of gratitude.
Muscles were readied for the coming conflict. In September the Town authorized the purchase of thirty hundred weight of lead, 10,- 000 French flints, thirty barrels of
powder. A special force was drilled to be ready to march. Joseph By- ington, the talented wood joiner, was one of the officers. Other New Cambridge minutemen were Ste- phen Hotchkiss, Josiah Lewis, Heze- kiah Gridley Junior, Amos Barnes, two of the Nortons, the Upsons - father and son - and Elnathan Smith.
It was voted to enforce all the Spartan decisions of the new Con- tinental Congress. Byington headed a committee to examine all viola- tors, tea drinkers and black market- ers of British goods. 'Horse-racing, gaming, cockfighting, exhibitions of Shows,' were in violation of Article 8 of the new 'Continental Associa- tion,' and transgressors were to be punished. A special committee for New Cambridge looked into the ac- tivities of 'Persons suspected to be unsound in their political senti- ments' and 'in a Pacific way' reclaim them 'to a sense of their duty.' Ne- hemiah Royce was 'excommuni- cated by vote of ye Town.' He and others were publicly advertised 'in ye Gazette as an enemy to his coun- try,' and his children denied admit- tance to the schools. Not until he disavowed previous arrogance toward the committee, were his rights restored.
With his good neighbors on Wol- cott Street, Gideon talked over the attitude of the handful of people
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
who refused to go along with the majority. They read the hard- woven logic of Thomas Paine, the passionate broadsides of Samuel Adams of Boston, and John Dickin- son's Letters from a Farmer in Penn- sylvania, gracious but biting essays, a best seller everywhere.
"Here then, my dear countrymen, rouse yourselves and behold the ruin hanging over your heads." In placing duties on goods the Colonies were forbidden to manufacture, England was bringing about the final "tragedy of American Liberty. . . . We have been prohibited from procuring manufacturies, in all cases, anywhere but from Great Britain. . . . We have been prohib- ited . . . from manufacturing our- selves. . . . We are exactly in the situation of a city besieged. . . . If Englishmen order us to come to her for necessaries we want, and can order us to pay what taxes she pleases . . . we are as abject slaves as those in wooden shoes, and with uncombed hair."
Arrogant abusive bureaucrats and soldiery were being foisted on the colonies. George III, with his doc- trines of absolutism, and leagued with the corrupt trade monopoly of the powerful East Indian Company, was trying to destroy a hundred and forty years of established self-gov- ernment in the New World.
Everywhere, in spite of British troops, flags hung at half-staff, and
new streamers were flown from the Liberty Poles as fast as the Red Coats tore them down. The Sons of Liberty, now organized in every colony, grew bolder every day.
For two years, Durkee, who had started the organization, had lain in chains and filth in a Philadelphia prison, but now, in spite of broken health, he was back leading the fight for 'Liberty and Property!' The Norwich people issued a ringing manifesto demanding freedom for American commerce and the right to set up their own industries.
Most Church of Englanders re- mained loyal to the King. He was the head of their church. They had never embraced the idea that free men should govern themselves freely. In New Cambridge, the Chippins Hill people believed that those who defied the King's author- ity were seditious traitors.
For Adams and the Sons of Lib- erty, such Tories were the real trai- tors. Not the people of America, but a distant Parliament, in which the colonies had no voice, was over- throwing liberty, the constitution and the Magna Charta. The Crown was violating the charters and sa- cred rights granted the colonies long ago. England, not America, was tearing down law and custom. 'Hu- man rights,' the colonists main- tained, were too sacred for any gov- ernment to destroy.
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SONS OF LIBERTY
For more than a century, the colonial assemblies, chosen by free- men, had been forcing Royal Gov- ernors to accept their majority decisions. The democratic town meetings, responsive to American, not British, needs, unbeholden to the King or his agents, had become free sovereign bodies. Now the Con- tinental Congress supplied all the colonies with one over-all authority, also based on democracy and home rule. All men of the New World were obliged to make their choice between dictatorial monarchy and their own free government, between autocracy and freedom. Such was the struggle for the soul of man.
Bitterness deepened. In New Cambridge, as armed conflict drew closer, the dangers greater, the un- willingness of the Church of Eng- land Tories to stand with their neighbors against improper Royal exactions sorely tried the patience of the local people. Joseph Bying- ton and two others were given power to subpoena any violator who dealt in British goods or worked against the cause of freedom.
In one of his letters from Wyo- ming, Gideon's father told how the Tories there were inciting Indians to cowardly hit-and-run attacks. With a note of glee, Elias wrote: "The other day one of the Paxtong Boys rode over and said, 'A Tory is a man whose head is in England and whose body is in America, and his neck
ought to be stretched.' We have our troubles here, but we are three thousand strong now, ready to de- fend our lands and our houses to the death. In spite of the Penna- mites and Tories and the savages they stir up, we shall hold our own. I wish and pray I might see you all again, and I would that your brother Elias, my eldest beloved son, jour- ney forth here to Wyoming. It would gladden my heart. Even if he does not stay here, he could take up some land that might prove of advantage to him in the years ahead. . . . "
The brothers talked it over, and Elias, though far from well, agreed to go out with several neighbors on Wolcott Road, Lieutenant Aaron Gaylord and his wife Katherine Cole and others.
Gideon had no desire to go riding forth again over far hills. He had returned home from Wyoming to work in peace and to be part of the New Cambridge he loved. He found real joy in being back with his two brothers and his sister Phebe who had blossomed into young womanhood. He found greater pleasure than ever in working quietly in the shop and for relaxa- tion enjoying the music he loved so much. In free moments he worked on the design of the clock he hoped someday to make and sell.
He had taken part in Society af-
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THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
fairs and was elected chorister to lead the singing in the new church building, put up while he had been away, by a joint contribution of ma- terials and personal labor. There were forty-one pews and an attrac- tive arched door and fan window. This one was brightly painted, spruce yellow with white trim and white doors, and a Spanish brown roof - as though the faith of the people, now that the harsher days of early settlement were over, had also brightened.
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