USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 16
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It was probably not one of the boys so soundly trained in the Benedict household and shop who was responsible for the cynicism in the following episode. A house in which shoe-making had once been carried on was declared by its occupant to be haunted. He was disturbed nightly by the rap-a-tap-tap of hammers. An old resident
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declared that if so they couldn't be the same "teams," as one of the former years would not work days, "let alone nights." It was up in Caleb Benedict's shop that the "rap-a-tap-tap" was first heard in the village, for he it was who introduced here the method of pegging shoes, having bought in New York the right to use this innovation.
SMALLER INDUSTRIES OF TOWN
Some other New Canaan industries of smaller proportions were concerned also with clothing the inhabitants. There were several woolen mills: Hanford Davenport's on Ponus Ridge, Pliney Daniel's in Silvermine, David Selleck's near the Norwalk line, where yarn was made by the old processes of carding and fulling and dyeing with butternut bark and alum. There was little machinery at this stage and the yarn was often taken home to be woven into cloth on a loom by the fireside. We know that Mr. William Eells had such a loom. But at Deodate Waterbury's mill, now Jelliff Mill at Talmadge Hill, the complete job was done. We have seen that Mr. Waterbury had been running a saw and grist mill and making beautiful furniture before the turn of the century. He was, moreover, the inventor of the first hay press used in this country. When his two sons, Isaac and Jesse, took over the mill they fitted up looms for the weaving of both woolen and linen cloth. Nearby was a small building known as the fulling mill, where carding and other preparation of material was carried on. A chronicler adds, "A spinning wheel and carding wheel used in the business are now owned by descendants of the family and one member owns linen sheets woven by the family from flax prepared by them."
We are so accustomed to associating the silk industry with the other side of the world that it is hard to realize that even some present day New Englanders can remember when this material too was produced on the home farm. A skein of silk found in the attic of the old Silliman house was made long before the memory of anyone now living, about 1810, by an ancestor of the present Silliman family.
So our predecessors worshipped God, educated their children and provided for the physical needs of all. Can we know anything more of them and their daily lives? Was there any lightening of the work- filled routine? Little indeed of anything which the modern youth would call diversion, or for which his father would have to plan in
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his budget under the heading of "Amusement and Entertainment."
THE INDIGNATION ELM
We have seen how old and young looked forward to Thanksgiv- ing Day as the great festival of the year, also how the village had thrilled every May and September to its own "grenadiers" and "militia" who on Training Day gathered on the Parade Ground (the northeast corner of Parade Hill and Oenoke) and marched down the ridge to Meeting House Hill. We can picture from his own vivid reminiscences the little William St. John, son of Samuel St. John of many offices, sitting with his brother and other boys on the stone wall which formed the southern boundary of the Parade Ground, a wall then so close to the home of John Jones, where Mr. Frederick Fisher now lives, that the boys could touch the house while sitting there. (Mr. St. John adds, "John Jones has since set his fence out, encroaching several feet on the Parade Ground.") The boys watched with great delight the military evolutions, and then refreshed themselves with cookies and peanuts from a stand nearby, the great- great-grandfather of the hot dog and ice cream cone stand.
We are apt to forget the interest our townsmen must have taken in wider issues of state, nation, and countries abroad. We have interest- ing evidence of the local attitude towards the War of 1812, which was very unpopular in the North because of the harmful effect upon the shipping industries. Mr. Charles Demeritt contributes an inci- dent related to him by Russell Hall in his old age. Many years before, an old man had told Mr. Hall about an indignation meeting held under the elm in front of the Library to register a protest against the war. This is evidently the same elm tree that figures in the account of a certain great day in 1815 set aside for celebrating the declaration of peace with Great Britain. Our chronicler, looking out of a window of the old white house on Main Street, then as now the Hoyt Home, watched the crowd set off a cannon in the lot back of the elm tree across the way. He must have been a little lad to be watching from a window instead of being on the spot, and the noise made by the small cannon was "startling and unusual" to him. The elm tree of which he speaks as growing "in the bank wall" and then not more than six inches in diameter, is evidently one of those stately elms now glorifying the Library lawn.
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FIRST POSTAL SERVICE
There was no local newspaper in those early days to publish an event of such importance, and not even a mail service to bring in a newspaper from the city, until in June, 1818, a postoffice was estab- lished with Samuel St. John as the first postmaster. At first there were but two mails a week, the carriers riding in on horseback from Stamford. Mr. St. John kept the offices in his house on Park Street, which he had built eleven years before (and which was burned in 1876) - if the name of "office" can be used for the small and very crude accommodations, with a box not over three or four feet square to hold all the mail. The postmaster himself, however, was to be found in his store, and thither came the mail, the lonely carrier soon super- seded by a more impressive successor. The four-horse stage galloped up the hill past the Academy on the right and the red school house on the left. How lucky those pupils whose seats were near enough to the windows for a glimpse and how hard to attend to their readers when they heard the driver tooting his horn to announce the coming of the mail to Mr. St. John in his store above. "The hostler watered the horses while the mail was shifting, then away to Danbury at the crack of the whip over the heads of the leaders."
It was only a few years before that an ordinary carriage with one moderate horse had caused such a sensation in New Canaan and such a thrill in the breast of a certain sixteen-year old girl that she remem- bered and told it about eighty years later when she was "Aunt Hetty" Bouton, and had lived through nearly a century of New Canaan history - that same Aunt Hetty who used to visit the Indians and watch them pound their corn at the "Indian Rocks."
Miss Diana Richards' father had the first wagon in town, but it was Colonel Eliphalet Seeley's top carriage driving through the streets that caused the big sensation. A few emulated his example, but not for another decade were carriages brought into general use. The state of the so-called "highways" must have been discouraging indeed to this method of travel.
WEEK'S TRIP TO NEW YORK
Transportation to New York was accomplished of course by water and was a commonplace in the case of shipment of merchandise, as
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many farmers of large acreage like the Ayres, Talmadges, Water- burys and Lockwoods were in the habit of sending produce down by boat. But a trip to New York as passenger was a matter worthy of comment, taking longer than an ocean crossing at present. Mrs. Clarissa Raymond who was the oldest woman in Connecticut when she died in Wilton in 1887 at the age of 105, could look back seventy- three years to such a journey. She had gone from New Canaan, her native place, to live in New York. Her home in New York City was out in the country - on Hester Street where it now meets the Bowery. When she moved back here she made the trip of a week by sloop to Norwalk.
We are indebted to both Mrs. Raymond and "Aunt Hetty" Bouton for some reminiscences of the meeting house of this period. Mrs. Raymond tells of a martial choir-leader, "a very pompous chap but a good singer," Major Seeley, who had been a musician in the Revolu- tion and for many years thereafter led the singing in church. On the Sunday preceding "May Trainin' day" he always appeared in full army regimentals in honor of his triumphs. She added, "I heard he made away with himself, but I'm not positive." The psychiatrist of today could no doubt make a prompt diagnosis of this tempera- ment. Aunt Hetty remembered when the first stove was put in the Congregational Church, the second Meetinghouse. It was made of brick and stood near the south door. Before that time such an interest in physical comfort had evidently seemed unworthy of true worship- pers, but we may conclude that the real softening process had not yet set in, for although this stove was quite large, Aunt Hetty remem- bered "hearing a church member say that he sat only two seats from it but didn't feel it."
It was still the general belief that the house of God would be desecrated by too much comfort, too much music, or even by Rev. Mr. Bonney's Sabbath School, which, as we have seen, started in the Academy with its master Julian Sturtevant as superintendent and which moved later to the Town Hall. Occasionally a church service acquired an additional interest from an announcement made at the close that a wedding was to take place that week, with the names of the prospective bride and groom. This custom was kept up as long as the old (second) Meeting House continued in use. Wed- dings were usually if not always celebrated at home.
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STRICT SABBATH OBSERVANCE
We may perhaps infer that the Sabbath rigors of the preceding century were somewhat abated by the fact that the strict practices of some of the older villagers were deemed worthy of note. It is recorded, for instance, that Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Dorcas St. John were so strict that they allowed no work except what was absolutely necessary from sundown Saturday until Monday morning. We suspect that Uncle Benjamin of himself would not have been so straightlaced, for he had a "dry and comical way of saying and doing things," while Aunt Dorcas was never seen or heard to laugh. Both, however, were full of good works. When they heard of a case of illness in the village, they would start out with a large willow basket full of provisions, both riding on the same old horse. When Benjamin's brother Mead (who seems to have been the same as Samuel, son of Enoch St. John), the wealthy merchant of Mobile, died and left Uncle Benjamin fifty thousand dollars, the only differ- ence remarked in their manner of living was that they carried a larger basket and went oftener to visit the poor and sick. Such a relief expedition must have been a sight worth seeing, and we smile when we read that Uncle Benjamin did not let his left hand know what his right hand was doing, for such direct and picturesque methods of charity could hardly have gone unnoticed.
The old horse should share in our meed of praise, like that faithful steed of two other devoted churchgoers, Jonathan and Polly Abbott, who on Sunday morning after breakfast would put their house in order, then, seated on one horse, gallop their nine miles from Upper Smith Ridge to the Norwalk Church. A grandson speaks with the voice of the new century when he writes in 1901, "This no doubt refreshed their souls, but how about the horse, after six days of plow- ing from 4 A.M. on? May gentle breezes and summer rains softly weep above his lowly, wornout frame."
Our forefathers' regard for the Sabbath was as we know supported by sanctions which have not yet entirely disappeared from the statute books of the State of Connecticut. Under date of 1784 we find a provision that anyone travelling on the Lord's Day should be subject to a fine of from $1.67 to $3.34. It does not appear just why amounts are named so suggestive of some modern department store prices.
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BLUE LAWS ENFORCED
It is interesting to compare the costs of indulgence in the various forms of vice, and to speculate on whether a backslider found these alluring in proportion to their expense. In a series of statutes originat- ing in the years 1702-84 we find that drunkenness was punishable by a fine of $1.34 - less than the forfeit of travelling on the Sabbath. This was devoted to the use of the poor in the town. But possibly the malefactor was himself one of the town's poor: in that case he was disciplined by one to three hours in the stocks. There was of course no penalty for the selling of liquor, but for every pack of cards sold a man was fined $7.00. For duelling and disabling his opponent a man was liable to a fine of $3,000. But with such extravagant mis- demeanors our frugal and Godfearing forefathers can have had little to do.
The liquor question, however, they had always with them. We noticed in our walk down the present East Avenue the low building across the river "where the topers of New Canaan used to get their whiskey" distilled from the farmer's cider. There were at that time "three distilleries in town in running order, ruining whole neighbor- hoods." There were no saloons in those early years, as such accom- modation was unnecessary when each general store sold New Eng- land rum and other liquors by glass or gallon. One merchant, William Fitch, who lived in Silvermine where is now the home of Mr. Walter Naumburg, "did not himself half believe in the business" and as he also manufactured shoes extensively in a shed attached to the house, he could afford to make a curious sort of statement. He devoted his liquor profits to laying stone walls "so as to give the bruisers a chance to work out his grog bills." Our chronicler adds, "These walls are still standing and show considerable artistic skill."
THE WHIPPING POST
The stocks and whipping posts were evidently available for pur- poses of discipline throughout the first quarter century, for we have the story of the punishment of two men from New York who stole shoes from Amos Ayres just after he built his factory in 1824, later the Benedict "Big Shop." After being tried and found guilty the men were sentenced to receive 12 lashes apiece and marched to the old whipping post, which is described by Timothy Raymond, then about
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21, as being opposite the corner as you turn to go up to the Congre- gational Church and nearly opposite Seymour Comstock's (at that early date the Fayerweather, now the Ewing house). Edward Nash, who lived across the road from Amos Ayres, where he had rebuilt his house burned a few years before, was the officer upon whom fell the unpleasant duty of administering punishment, but as he was too "chicken-hearted" to perform the duty, he deputized David Waring to do it for him. The latter evidently made a thorough job of it, as Mr. Raymond could remember seeing the marks of the rawhide as they arose in ridges upon the bare backs of the culprits.
SLAVES IN NEW CANAAN
Reminiscences like this seem to carry us back farther than one brief century, but we remind ourselves that most of the radical changes in the village as well as in the larger world have come about in the span of a single lifetime. Not so many years ago certain of the older inhabitants could remember a few slaves still living here - not to be wondered at when we know that in 1790 there were still over 2,000 in the state of Connecticut - almost as many as free colored people. By 1840 the number had dropped to 17. Many Con- necticut slaves had earned their freedom by fighting bravely in the Revolution. Two of whom we have record were Abner Andrews, freed by his master, John Wright, and Caesar Freeman, freed by Elias Williams and possibly named by himself.
Slaves in Connecticut were fairly well treated, and we have no cases on record of harshness or cruelty. Some, like "Old Grace," the last one set at liberty in this village, "didn't want to go free." Old Grace and her husband, Ben Smith, were servants of Mrs. Diana Richards. They had a little cabin on Poorhouse Road, whence they came every Sunday to St. Mark's Church. Then there was old "Sib," who belonged to Deacon Eliphalet St. John, and who used a clothes- stick to aid her faltering steps up the rugged hill to the meeting house.
We hear also of a slave named Harry belonging to one Mr. Hunt- ington, who lived in the house on Brook Street just west of the old red school-house (now the Winship house on Seminary Street). The school children used to like to go there, perhaps to see and talk to Harry, as a slave was by this time enough of a novelty to be interesting.
We hear nothing of conflict in New Canaan over the slavery
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question until nearer the Civil War times, but echoes must have reached here of the intense feeling aroused in many parts of Con- necticut in 1819, when the slave power was trying to gain Missouri and Florida, and another New England state, New Hampshire, was passing a resolution declaring that slavery was an evil of great magni- tude, and that it was the solemn duty of the government to prevent by all constitutional means its extension. But the champion of the black man had to be armed with valor. The instance of Miss Prudence Crandall, of Canterbury, suggests what might have happened in our village if some relative of Caesar or Old Grace had tried to enter the select ranks of the Academy. Miss Crandall kept a prosperous school for young ladies. When a respectable colored girl asked and received admission, the other pupils left. When Miss Crandall pro- posed opening a school for colored girls, great excitement ensued: the law was invoked to prevent it, her house was attacked, and she was put in jail for a day. It was several years later before the "Black Law" was repealed.
These and other matters of nearby towns and the history in the making in the outer world must have been discussed with interest after church and Town Meetings or at the "general store." Surely a gathering around the stove in Samuel St. John's establishment should have been a forum worth attending if led by this public-spirited man - town officer, educator, postmaster, legislator, monarch of all he surveyed: just at hand, his beautiful house; on the hillside above, his church, home of the Town Meeting; and just below and across the way, the Academy of which he was "chief proprietor." We should like to have heard his comments on village life, his theories of education, his interpretation of national and foreign affairs. There were significant happenings in the larger world at the time of our town's small beginnings. Washington, born at the birth of Canaan Parish, had died in 1799, only two years before the Parish became New Canaan in the same year in which the seat of national govern- ment was transferred to the city that bore his name. Jefferson, Hamil- ton, Burr, Monroe, Napoleon, Nelson, Wellington, - these are some of the names that stirred men's souls and tongues when the news came in on horseback from Stamford, or from Norwalk by sloop from New York. And a new era was dawning when news from other states and other lands was to be carried with unbelievable speed,
Two views of CHURCH HILL or GOD'S ACRE. The upper is from "Barbour's Recollections" published in 1837. The lower is from the margin of a wall map of Fairfield County dated 1857 which hangs in S. B. Hoyt's florist shop. Both show the old graveyard on the side of the hill.
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for in 1804 the first locomotive steam engine had been used in Wales and three years later Robert Fulton had succeeded in running his "Clermont" up the Hudson. The world marvelled in 1819 at the first crossing of the Atlantic by steam when the Savannah made its trip from New York to Liverpool. Here we should remind ourselves that a cousin of the New Canaan Mitchells had preceded the "first" steamboat with one of his own which he had run successfully at Philadelphia on the Schuykill River some time before the Clermont, but which he had lacked the means to bring to the attention of the world.
SAMUEL ST. JOHN PASSES ON
Samuel St. John's life ended with the close of the first quarter- century. We like to think of him as embodying those qualities, raised to a higher degree, which were said to be characteristic of our village down the years - principle, independent industry, and good common sense. And as with qualities of character, so with everyday interests; combined in his life are most of the threads we have been trying to trace: government, church, education, business, he was eminent in all. But now other hands and minds took up what he had laid down, and carried on, to undreamed issues, the fortunes of our little town. How did the young town government develop? How did churches and schools prosper? What changes came to industry and varied phases of life in New Canaan through the rest of the nineteenth century?
TOWN HALL BUILT
Early in 1825 a town meeting had voted that a building should be erected "in the south-east corner of Joseph Silliman's home meadow" and that it should be 28 feet by 36, with "eleven foot posts under the floor laid in the upper as well as in the lower story," also that the "lower story shall be seated in good order, the sides to be boarded or lathed or shingled." A month later, fearing "restrictions or encumberances," the meeting voted not to build on Mr. Silliman's home meadow, but to pay him $20 for the required land. The length of the posts seems to have occasioned great mental indecision, as four or five votes were required to settle this matter, in the course of which they grew from 11 to 17 feet, shrank again to 14 and ended at 18. At the end of the year it was voted to finish the upper part
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of the Town Hall and rent it to the Masonic Society for $20 a year for 20 years.
Under date of April 1826 we find directions for painting which imply a regard for appearances duly combined with economy - the front, the gable, and the window frames all to be painted white, but the north side, where it is to be supposed not many would see it, Spanish brown, with fish oil all over.
In the spring next year, 1827, with laudable breadth of view, it was voted that the Baptist and Methodist Societies in town might have the liberty of meeting occasionally in the Town Hall for public worship if they would make good any damages that might be done.
Three years later this generosity was somewhat abated, as it was voted that a religious society using the Town House must pay for the privilege. But the opportunity of renting an adequate meeting- place for regular worship was hailed with joy by the valiant little group of Methodists. They had been strengthened by a revival in 1828 which brought a number of new members, including Captain Holly Hanford, one of the most "noted" men of the town. He con- tinued a strong supporter until his death in 1851.
METHODISTS' FIRST CHURCH
On a bright day in May 1831 the happy group gathered for their first sermon "on the hill," and devoutly gave thanks to God for lead- ing them, as in the days of old he had led the Children of Israel, across Jordan (the Five Mile River? ) to a safe home in Canaan. Their Moses of 1808 (Captain Crofoot?) had died, but their Caleb of 1819 (Hobby Seymour?) and their Joshua in 1827 were there to assist in setting up a tabernacle and erecting the altar of Methodism on the hilltop of the promised land. They must have had with them a Solomon as well, for less than two years and a half after this, in October 1833, they were able to dedicate a "temple" of their own which served as a place of worship for 20 years on the same spot where stands the present Methodist Church.
The successful struggle of the Methodists against the prejudice of their townsfolk must have furnished an education in tolerance, for it was voted in 1835, on petition of Thomas Husted and others, that the Town Hall be opened for public worship for any religious denomination who might apply. The key was to be kept by the
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Town treasurer, to whom the applicant must pay 25 cents and be held responsible for damage.
In the spring it was voted that the Town Hall be moved so that the south end should be in line with the south end of St. Mark's Church, built just five years before on the adjoining plot, also that 1 2 feet be added in length and more paint and repairing were required, to be done both outside and in, "in a good and sufficient manner," which included lath and plaster for the lower rooms and extending the seats across the middle "ile." But only two years later (1843) more radical changes were voted. The Town Hall was to be turned around so that the end might stand toward the street, the eight feet added to the front, which should then be eight feet from the high- way. Also the upper story was to have the partition removed and to be finished off as one room.
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