USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Bristol > Our Yankee heritage: the making of Bristol > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28
Gideon put his name down for a contribution to buy the trian- gular piece of land in front of the church for a public Green, necessary now that men were drilling con- stantly. Many prominent citizens subscribed, Asahel, Amos and Thomas Barnes, Elisha Manross, Josiah Lewis, Zebulon Peck, Asa Upson, the Hungerfords, Jeromes, Roots and Harts. Seven Gaylords were on the list.
There were five schools now. Several more taverns had opened up. A new North Cemetery had been started near Lewis Corner on the never-used thirty yard highway of the 1721 survey. William Mitch- ell, a Scotchman, skilled in cloth- making, had set up looms and a fulling, or cloth-shrinking mill, and a store near Goose Corner. Much tinware was being made in small shops and peddled across country.
Lately some shops had turned to
making bullets, for people were readying themselves for the strug- gle they now feared to be inevitable. The General Assembly offered a bounty of £10 for each half a hun- dred weight of nitre or saltpeter for gunpowder. Seth started making it in a shop he put up on land he had bought on South Street. Gid- eon helped him.
It was hard work. They filled big casks with earth and others with wood ashes. The water, strained through the dirt, and the liquid lye from the ashes were mixed, boiled and allowed to cool. Saltpeter rose to the surface. Pulverized with sul- phur and charcoal, it became gun- powder.
One day a tall elderly man on horseback stopped by. He was the old settler, Josiah Lewis, still as erect and graceful in the saddle as when he had ridden over the hills to Hartford with Stephen Barnes thirty years before. He was taking a pear seedling to his married daugh- ter, Phebe Norton, who lived on the road to Compounce Lake. They talked of the coming struggle with England, the Tories, the drills on the Green.
The spirit of strife was abroad everywhere now. The British had chosen the road of force and coer- cion, and to that the settlers, unwill- ing to be less than free men, would never bow. Already the Minute Men had uniforms, blue trimmed
62
SONS OF LIBERTY
with red, which they wore con- cealed under their 'frocks and trous- ers,' ready for instant call to arms.
In April Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride, and the Min- ute Men fought the Red Coats from behind every tree and stone at Lex- ington and Concord.
Free men had dared stand up to the trained soldiers of the Empire! The brave news swept through the colonies from Maine to Georgia. No less startling was the report that Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold of New Haven had led the Green Mountain volunteers through late winter snows, with only a handful of flour to munch on, to the capture of Fort Ticonderoga.
On May 18, 1775, the first Farm- ington company under Captain Noadiah Hooker, Lieutenant Bying- ton and other officers, set out dou- ble-quick for Boston. For lack of a uniform, Doctor Elijah Porter wore his wedding suit to war. The Pe- quabuck volunteers did not get to the front in time for Bunker Hill, but they remained to take part in the permanent siege.
The Bunker Hill battle, the cost- liest, most useless victory ever won by a foe, electrified the whole coun- try even more. The New York Sons of Liberty seized the City Hall and distributed guns from the arsenal. All shipments to the British troops beleaguered in Boston were halted.
The Continental Congress called
upon all men between sixteen and sixty to form themselves into local militia units, and in Farmington and New Cambridge a £10 bonus was offered to all volunteers. With three of the Pecks, two Lewis boys, David Gaylord, William Mitchell, the clothmaker, and many others, Gid- eon and Seth took the places of those who had already marched. Gideon was made sergeant.
Congress put George Washing- ton of Virginia in charge of all American forces, and he left at once to take charge of the troops around Boston.
Gideon saw him ride through Farmington on his white horse with its long flowing mane and tail - an erect unsmiling man who inspired great confidence.
The Declaration of Independence was issued by the Continental Con- gress on July 4, 1776. It reached New Cambridge two weeks later, and the people gathered to hear it read. The Training Band was drawn up. Gripping his musket tensely, Gideon listened to the great and noble words that rolled across the hilltop.
It has become necessary "in the course of human events" - declared the great Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration - to inform the world the reason patriots were tak- ing up arms. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," the great Vir-
63
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
ginian said, in words which rang across the Hill and through the whole continent and round the whole world, "that all men are cre- ated equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain in- alienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the gov- erned; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."
No such universal and majestic
doctrine of democratic freedom had ever before been laid down in the entire history of man. The words were received in wonder. A great silence gripped the assembled peo- ple. Then a hale voice with a burry accent rang out - that of William Mitchell, the Scotchman so recently come to this side of the water to make his home in New Cambridge, "God save our American States!"
Three cheers rent the air. The drums were beaten, and Captain Zebulon Peck ordered a gun salute fired into the air. The battle for a new way of life had begun in earnest.
64
»7
THE fight FOR freedom
ALL over the colonies men streamed to the front. Those who could not go worked to get supplies together. Grain was gathered, lead bullets were made, meat was cured. The women toiled at their spinning wheels and looms to provide warm clothing. Soon Hezekiah Gridley Junior's house on West Street was crammed with supplies for the Con- tinental Army.
Old Reverend Samuel Newell, who later served as chaplain, and two other ministers from Torrington and Plymouth, led parties into the woods to try to rediscover the for- gotten lead mine deeded to Farm- ington back in 1657. Newell hope- fully carried a bell to be rung when his party came upon the old dig- gings. But after some days the search was reluctantly given up.
In New Cambridge more than a hundred men - most of the able- bodied men in the village - vol- unteered. Eight Bartholomews marched off. The Barnes family gave seven to the independence cause. Five Roberts joined up.
Three more Lewis boys shouldered their guns, so did Elijah, Theodore and William Manross. Soon Na- thaniel Messenger, Asa and Thomas Upson and Ebenezer Norton were in the fray.
Among the first to go was Josiah Holt, New Cambridge's first well- known physician. Two other young doctors had come to New Cam- bridge before this but had died soon after starting practice. One had been induced to settle by Zebulon Peck who gave him an acre of land and built a house for him, but he had hardly arrived when he con- tracted pneumonia. Doctor Holt had taken a leading place in the community and soon became well- to-do.
Two of William Jerome's sons, David and William Junior, and a grandson of Timothy Jerome en- listed. Aged Zerubbabel Jerome went with three sons, though the rest of his family - Chauncey and Zerubbabel Junior and three daugh- ters - had turned Tory.
Many Chippins Hill Church of
65
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
England families were split in bit- terness. Caleb Mathews and his younger relatives were among the first to march off. As younger men left to fight for the cause, fear and rancor deepened in older Tory hearts, loyal to the King of England. How could raw untrained recruits, without proper arms or supplies or experience, hope to win against the seasoned troops of the most power- ful empire on earth?
Elias sent back part of the answer from Wyoming Valley. "All Eng- land," he wrote, "is smaller than our Westmoreland County here in the west. What the Tories do not real- ize is the greatness of this new coun- try of ours. When a spirit of free- dom has been aroused in a people, all the might of empire can never quench it."
No one was more ardent than John Wilson of Harwinton, leader of the Sons of Liberty in two coun- ties. He was part of the inner coun- cils of the Governor and the Hart- ford Assembly and was responsible for much of the quick efficacious action taken, especially in curbing Tories. He and his fellow towns- men paid the wages of thirty-two volunteers and also maintained four men on guard constantly at Horse Neck on the coast, asking nothing from the hard pressed State or Con- tinental authorities. They kept a steady stream of clothing and pro- visions flowing to the front. The
women there and in New Cam- bridge worked far into the night at the spinning wheels and the looms. The farmers stripped their fields of cattle, and it seemed grossly unfair to John Wilson that a handful of well-to-do Chippins Hill Tories should prosper while others made sacrifices. The herds on Chippins Hill were raided and butchered for meat for the front fighters.
The Chippins Hill folk - John Wilson charged - were harboring traitors: they sped the King's mes- sengers on their way and that might bring the loss of battles and death to thousands. His answer was prompt and cruel, not always just, but it was a grievous dangerous time, and the life of the colonies was at stake. Raid after raid was made to try to catch escaping Tories, men fighting with the Red Coats, or mes- sengers of the Crown.
When working in the fields, the Tory farmers were warned of raid- ers by the conch shells blown by their watchful wives, and usually managed to hide out in the Tory Den, a secret cave in the ledges atop the hill. But Reverend James Nichols, stirring up his people to resist the independence cause, was tarred and feathered.
Wilson's ire was particularly roused by the Tory members of the Jerome family. Three girls were married to Tories, Jonathan Pond, Moses Dunbar and Stephen Graves.
66
THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
The Sons of Liberty seized Chaun- cey on Fall Mountain, strung him up by his thumbs to an apple tree and bared his back to receive the hick- ory rod. But he wriggled loose and 'ran like a deer' to the house of his brother-in-law, Jonathan Pond, over the line in Plymouth. At his house door, gun in hand, Pond defied the raiders.
Stephen Graves escaped to safety in the Tory Den time and again, but was finally strung up to a cherry tree and beaten. Joel Tuttle was hung by the neck to the great oak on Quarry Hill Green. Captain Thomas Hungerford, the tanner, cut him down but dared do no more. Tuttle crawled away and took ref- uge in the Tory Den.
By this time, Gideon and Seth and three cousins were already with the Continental Army. Many volun- teers saw fighting at once, but Gid- eon's outfit - Captain Bray's com- pany - was stationed in Hartford in readiness to repel any attempt by the Crown forces to land on the Connecticut coast. Below their encampment on the western hill were the Meetinghouse Green and the Heart and Crown Inn where they often gathered. Nearby, the Connecticut Courant was pub- lished.
Gideon's life changed when he met Falla Hopkins. She was a lively, sensible girl, and Gideon
liked her more every day. She had been orphaned at the age of five and lived with relatives. An uncle re- turning from abroad got her grand- father's will set aside and took away the land and her father's house which she had inherited. She was a direct descendant of famous Wil- liam Bradford of the early Plymouth colony, and of two successful pro- prietors of Reverend Hooker's expe- dition who had founded Hartford plantation.
In December Gideon was made an Ensign. He heard frequently from his brother, for a fortnightly postrider mail service had been set up between Wyoming and Hart- ford. Forty Fort was being rebuilt larger and stronger, nearly an acre square. Other town forts had been planted up and down both sides of the river. Various families had built their own forts, such as 'Fort Gaylord' in Plymouth.
"Even so we are poorly pro- tected," Elias wrote. "Nearly every man has gone off to the Continental Army. Only old folks and women and children are left. If the Tories start the Indians on the warpath we will be massacred. A terrible smallpox epidemic is raging, and the Westmoreland pesthouse is crowded with unhappy victims of all ages. To make matters worse, I have been quite ill also. As soon as I am able, I shall return to the Pequabuck."
67
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
In Hartford great excitement came in January 1777 with the ar- rest of Reverend James Nichols and Moses Dunbar, the Chippins Hill Tories. Both were dragged to Hart- ford jail, charged with treason. Nichols was released, but Dunbar had been captured with a King's commission in his pocket. He had persuaded various neighbors to join the British Army, and the irate fa- ther of one of those volunteers had informed against Moses.
The latter's father, actively buy- ing supplies in Plymouth for the Continental Army, was zealous for the independence cause and offered to furnish the Hartford authorities with hemp for a halter to hang his son with.
In the courtroom on Hartford hill, Gideon and Falla Hopkins heard the evidence against Moses and the story of his life.
"I was born in Wallingford, June 14, in the year of Our Lord, 1746, the second of sixteen children," he informed the court. "I was edu- cated in the business of husbandry."
When seventeen, Moses had mar- ried Phebe Jerome and came to Chippins Hill to live. Four of their seven children were baptized at the Indian Hill Episcopal Church. When he and Phebe had joined the Church of England it caused a 'sor- rowful breach' between him and his father.
He treated "me very harshly in
many instances, for which I heartily forgive him, as I hope for pardon from my God and my Saviour for my own offenses."
On January 22, 1777, the Connec- ticut Courant reported that the Su- perior Court had found Dunbar guilty. It was ordered "that he go from hence to the gaol from whence he came and from thence to the place of execution and there to be hanged up by the neck between the heavens and the earth until he shalle be Dead."
But March 3 the Courant and handbills reported that the ‘atro- cious Moses Dunbar' had escaped. "He is about five feet eight inches high, short curled hair which with his beard is of a sandy color, has a down-look round face, hollow eyes and wears a red great coat." £3 and costs were offered for his appre- hension.
He was caught within a few days, and the execution was held on schedule. Gideon invited Falla Hopkins to go, but she said, "If my relatives and friends and you, Gid- eon, never come back, men like Dunbar will be to blame. He must be hung but I don't want to see it."
On South Hill outside the prison walls under the dangling hemp rope on the gallows, Reverend Nathan Strong, in sonorous words, told a 'prodigious concourse of people' what lessons should be drawn from this unhappy event. His words
68
THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
faded away in the chill air, and pres- ently the body of Moses Dunbar dangled from a noose, turning slowly and inert in the March wind.
In April, the British raided Dan- bury, supply center for the Conti- nental Army, and burned it down in a drunken yelling orgy of plunder, sparing only Tory houses marked with white lime crosses. Four pa- triots were burned alive in Captain Ezra Starr's house, and when the meat houses burned, melted fat ran ankle-deep in the streets.
A former member of the New Cambridge Church of England and several young people of the Tory Den crowd helped guide the marau- ders. The New Cambridge Com- mittee of Inspection acted swiftly. Seventeen Chippins Hill residents, neighbors, were rounded up and lodged in Hartford jail.
"They are a pack of fellows con- nected with the late Moses Dunbar reported the Connecticut Courant. "Some actually engaged to serve with him in the ministerial army."
To an Assembly Committee all the prisoners denied having had anything to do with the Danbury atrocity, though several admitted they had been approached to join the raid or had 'traitor sons' fighting for the King. But all claimed to have little notion of what the war was about. They put all the blame on Reverend Nichols, saying he had
misled them. All promised here- after 'to the utmost of their power defend the country against the Brit- ish Army.' The Assembly ordered everyone released on taking the oath of fidelity to the United States and paying his share of the £27 7 shillings and 10 pence jail costs.
Gideon was transferred to Cap- tain Peck's company in the Enos battalion, with orders to move south. The idea of separation was painful for both him and Falla; they were deeply in love and decided to get married. A few days before the date set, Gideon received word that his brother Elias Junior, who had returned home from Wyoming in poor health, had died. It was a bad blow, and it made him all the more anxious to marry Falla. The wed- ding was celebrated September 25, 1777.
Half a year passed by before he had a chance to get back to see her. She was expecting a child, and he took her to New Cambridge to stay. On the way they found Farmington full of Yale freshmen and sopho- mores who had been moved up there because food was so scarce in New Haven.
More than ever he was worried about his father in Wyoming Val- ley. A great band of Tories and thousands of Indians were prepar- ing to march in from New York State.
69
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
Gideon went to his neighbors, the Coles, to find out if any word had come through. A barefoot woman in rags turned in at the gate ahead of him. Her hair was tangled about her face. She carried a baby in arms, and a small child and a boy, looking like a scarecrow, were with her. It was Katherine Gaylord.
The Tories, with a great horde of war-painted Indians, had fallen on the settlers.
"Aaron is dead," she told Gideon, "and your father is dead, too."
That evening, with Falla, Gideon heard the full story.
"We held out in Fort Gaylord," Katherine began. "Aaron was in charge."
When scouts came back with news that an overwhelming force had captured the fort at the head of the valley, Aaron decided to unite with the main body of defenders in big Forty Fort. It seemed their only chance.
Aaron's father, Joseph, and three other old men were left to look after the women and children. But Kath- erine insisted on going with Aaron and taking the children along.
At Forty Fort it was a tossup whether to await the enemy there or to meet them head on. Though the defenders could hold out in the fort for a time, little help could be ex- pected, for the only militia forces anywhere near were Pennamites. Many men in Forty Fort were fran-
tic because their wives and children were still in their isolated homes, and the Tories and Indians were out looting and killing.
A desperate sally was agreed upon, and nearly every able-bodied man rode out. They fell into a cleverly laid trap in a narrow pas- sage between a swamp and log fence and were slaughtered. Barely two score escaped back to the fort where the women and children, the aged and sick, were huddled. All that night the Indians scalped the wounded and the dead.
Knowing all was lost, Joseph led the women and children out of Fort Gaylord across the river and the valley into the mountains. They went without blankets or food.
Katherine was still at Forty Fort, praying for her husband's safety, when a man brought her Aaron's hat with a bullet hole in it. He had been hiding behind a log ten feet from where her husband was scalped. Anything seemed better than being trapped in the fort at the mercy of the savages. She slipped out with her three children and hid in the woods. There they saw the last dreadful scenes of death and destruction and heard the yells of the scalpers and the screams of the dying.
She was not the only woman to make her way alone with her chil- dren through the wilderness. Some were lucky enough to find boats to
70
THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
get down the river. Elizabeth Mathews, whose husband Ichabod Tuttle was killed, got away by the river with her three little children. One was a two-year-old baby and the oldest only six. "She, too, walked back with them to her fam- ily here in New Cambridge."
But others went south over the great high swamp - 'the Shades of Death' - and there they died. One woman carried her dead baby twenty miles, not wanting to leave it to be devoured by the wolves. The fourth day Katherine and the children lost all their food and clothing when crossing a swollen stream and had no food for many days except a few berries, sassafras roots and birch bark. They met Indians and were frightened out of their wits, but each time the Red Men were kind and helped them.
"There were more than three thousand people in the valley, and all were driven out - except the hundreds killed and scalped. From the mountain top, I saw our home going up in flames."
Every house in the valley, except those belonging to Tories, was de- stroyed, the crops stolen or burned, the animals slaughtered. For most people ten years of toil were wiped out. Many had to face life with only the clothes on their backs.
For Gideon, that night when he sat in the Cole parlor on Wolcott Street, listening to Katherine's bit- ter story, was the darkest moment of the war. Nothing - not even the terrible ordeals he himself was to face later - was ever quite so bad. He knew there was no turning back. He had to go on. It had to be vic- tory or death.
In the months that followed, he saw hard fighting and suffered the privations of winter camp life. Worst of all was the time he was taken prisoner in New Jersey and thrust under chained hatches in one of the rotting prison ships at the Wallabout on East River, New York, jammed in with more than a thousand others. There was scarcely room to lie down, they were fed putrid meat and wormy bread. Men were dying from small- pox, yellow fever, typhus, spotted fever, dysentery and festering wounds. Gideon was assigned to the work squad to carry out the dead, sometimes scores each day. He weighted the bodies and tossed them into the river. Among the dead was Solomon Carrington, brother of Jonathan, from New Cambridge. One evening Gideon escaped to shore, slipped through enemy lines, and made his way back to New Cambridge.
71
A GIDEON ROBERTS CLOCK (Pine case, paper dial. Made by Bristol's first clockmaker, an ancestor of the owner, Mrs. Fuller F. Barnes)
»8
free town
DURING 1782-3 a treaty of peace was negotiated in far-off Paris. The hardships and the dying were over.
Being home gave Gideon Roberts a rich feeling. The hills seemed greener, the skies brighter. He and Falla were together again. He was already the father of two children. Their first - born during the war - had died at birth. The second, Elias, had been born in December, 1779, and little Falla in October, 1781.
He celebrated peace by buying sixteen acres and a house on Wol- cott Street and picked up the broken threads. Once more he became chorister and began having musical gatherings at his house. He was made a member of the important church seating committee and of the committee to 'Deal out the salt,' or charity, 'to widows and soldiers . . . & such other needy perfons as they fhall think best.' His third child, Catherine, was born in March 1783, the day that news of actual peace reached New Cambridge.
The Training Band gathered on
the Green under the new flag of thir- teen stars and stripes which the women had sewed on all night to have ready. The Band members were seasoned veterans now; there were many gaps in the lines. The bonfires flamed, the drums and fifes played, the serpentines of gunpow- der sizzled into the air. Thirteen volleys were fired in honor of the thirteen states.
Reverend Newell preached a stir- ring sermon. During all the dark days he had been an ardent advo- cate of independence, but now he spoke of the rewards that could come to people of a free country, the opportunities that awaited them, their duties to make the new nation strong and great.
The new nation, born of the long bitter struggle for freedom, stretched from Canada to the southern bor- ders of Georgia, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi - nearly as big as all Europe - and was now at liberty to trade with any part of the world and to produce all the things British rule had not permitted. The war
73
THE MAKING OF BRISTOL
left little money, there was terrible inflation, so that few imported goods could be bought; there was a short- age of everything. But stirred by new hope and freedom the folk set to work to make what they needed. To meet the demand for goods, new enterprises sprung up on every side - almost like popping corn.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.