USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > St. Michael's Parish, Litchfield, Connecticut, 1745-1954; a biography of a parish and of many who have served it > Part 2
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
In the meantime Mr. Davies,
in consideration of the love and affection I have and bear for and towards the people of the Church of England in ... Litchfield, and securing and settling the service and worship of God among us ac- cording to the usage of our most excellent Church within said Litch- field, at all times and forever hereafter, and also for the love and good will I have for Mr. Samuel Cole of Litchfield
leased to Mr. Cole
for and during the term of nine hundred and ninety-eight years, to the use of the Society for the Propagating the Gospel and their suc- cessors ... fifty acres of land to be by the Society applied and ap- propriated for the benefit of the Episcopal minister for the time being of the Episcopal Church, in Birch Plain in Litchfield ... and to and for no other use, intent or purpose whatsoever.
He added the further proviso that Samuel Cole and his heirs
yield and pay therefor one peppercorn annually at or upon the feast of St. Michael, the Archangel, if lawfully demanded.2
The paper conveying this land is dated April 4, 1747. To the orig- inal fifty acres he added two more to connect them with a running brook.
Also on April 4, 1747, and in a deed similar to Mr. Davies' in- strument, Daniel Landon conveyed to Jacob Griswold and Joseph Kilborn and their heirs a tract of land of about the same size as
2 Litchfield Land Records, vol. 4, p. 225.
I 2
THE FIRST CHURCH
that given by Mr. Davies, and for the same purpose, for the sum of {150, a sum which had no doubt been raised by the contribu- tions of the congregation.
In an account by Daniel Landon of the beginnings of the church 3 he says that the land leased by John Davies "was orig- inally parsonage land, granted to the town of Litchfield for pious purposes which made him [John Davies] the more fond of getting [it]." The question of the whereabouts of the land which came to the Society from John Davies has puzzled later generations. It has been thought that it was the land on which the church was built, but that was not the case. In a history of Litchfield County published in 1881, the account of St. Michael's Church was writ- ten by the rector of St. Michael's, Storrs O. Seymour, whose fam- ily had been identified with the parish from its beginnings. He speaks of this mistaken idea, and says: "An examination of the town records shows that Mr. Davies never owned this land." Mr. Seymour locates the Davies land in this way:
This land was situated in the southwest part of the town, a little northeast of "Little Mount Tom" and is now owned by Harvey Waugh and Lucius L. Griswold, and is still called the "Glebe."
The land so described appears to have been a tract in what is now the town of Morris, located in a triangle now formed by the high- way from Morris to Washington, the highway from Washington to West Bantam, and a line drawn northwesterly from near the post office at Lakeside to the second named highway.
In his historical sermon, the Rev. Isaac Jones says:
This land was afterwards sold, and the money which was obtained from the sale of it, together with the amount realized by the dis- posal of another piece of ground lying near it, and given to the church by another member of the parish, Mr. Daniel Landon, was vested in a permanent fund, the interest of which is now annually applied to the support of preaching in the parishes of Litchfield, Bradleyville [Ban- tam] and Milton, all of which were then included within the limits of the original parish of Litchfield.4
3 Jones' Mandate of God, p. 30.
+ Ibid., p. 13.
I3
THE FIRST CHURCH
Building of the church was now started, and, according to a contemporary narrative, that of Mrs. Anna Dickinson, it was "raised April 23, 1749. It was covered, seats were made, and it re- mained in this condition for more than twenty years, with the ex- ception of a pulpit, reading desk, chancel &c." Actually the first church was used for sixty-three years until the second church was erected, approximately where the present church stands, in De- cember, 1812. After its completion Mr. Davies insisted on naming it St. Michael's, alluding to the lease quoted earlier. The first serv- ice was conducted by the Rev. Richard Mansfield of Derby, but its date is not known. From that time the church was served by various missionaries, including Dr. Johnson, Dr. Mansfield, and Mr. John Beach of Newtown, but probably more frequently by lay readers, including Mr. Cole and Captain Landon. Mr. Seth P. Beers, a later devoted communicant of St. Michael's, says of Cap- tain Landon that he was "a man of sound intellect and extensive reading. But few clergy were better qualified to explain the doc- trines of the Church. Next to Mr. Davies he may be considered as father of the Episcopal Church in Litchfield."
The first resident missionary in Litchfield was the Rev. Solomon Palmer. A native of Branford, where he was born April 16, 1709, and a graduate of Yale College in 1729, he had been installed as a Congregational minister in the newly settled community of South Cornwall in August, 1741. He was opposed to the excesses which accompanied the revival stirred up by Dr. Whitefield, and, after continuing with his congregation in peace, as an old account has it, for a number of years, he announced one Sunday in March, 1754, that he found himself an Episcopalian in sentiment. This caused both great surprise and sorrow to his congregation, but carrying out his intention he went that same year to England where he was ordained deacon and presbyter. He returned under the auspices of the Venerable Society as Missionary for Cornwall and Litchfield, Connecticut, and Great Barrington, Massachu- setts, receiving for his services, from the Society in England, the
14
THE FIRST CHURCH
sum of {40. In 1760 he reports that his labors have been successful beyond expectation and says:
Besides the three congregations to which at first I was particularly appointed I have three more, namely, at Roxbury, Cornwall and Judea [later named Washington]. The last two consist of fifteen families each, and there are subscriptions raising for the building a church in Kent (which they design to forward as fast as they can) at a place convenient for about fifty families, to meet from several different towns. These are all in Litchfield County; and since April 16, 1758, I have baptized an hundred and twenty-two children.
The church steadily progressed under his energetic ministry. He saw the good effects produced by the liturgical services, even among the Dissenters (as he called the Congregationalists), for, he writes to the Society, a neighboring congregation,
observing our regular method of reading the Scriptures in church, had, in their last parish meeting, voted that a new folio Bible be bought for them, and that their teacher shall read lessons out of it every Sunday morning and evening.
The church in Litchfield, he wrote in a report, was composed of "a body of religious, sober, and orderly people steady in their prin- ciples, and constant in their attendance upon public worship." This last phrase must have meant that many families traveled reg- ularly over long distances by inconvenient and slow means to reach the church. One can picture a family arriving at the church door, the parents on one horse, with a child in its mother's arms to be christened, and several older children on another horse. Or they may have made the journey in a rude vehicle used on the farm. The condition of the roads was an added discomfort. But in spite of all inconveniences the people came to church, which must have given satisfaction to the minister who spent so much of his health and vigor in their behalf.
When in 1760 Mr. Palmer moved to Litchfield from New Mil- ford, where he had previously made his home, he was already be- ginning to feel the strain of the work he had carried forward with
I5
THE FIRST CHURCH
such zeal. He felt obliged to ask for a less extensive charge and was offered, by the Venerable Society, the mission at Amboy, New Jersey. He found, however, that the parish there had already en- gaged a minister and were as averse to receiving him as he was averse to going. In 1762 he was appointed to Rye, New York, where he would have liked to go, but the Rye parish had already invited the Rev. Ebenezer Punderson, of New Haven, to be their rector. After a little more delay Mr. Palmer was sent, in 1763, to New Haven where he succeeded Mr. Punderson as rector of Trin- ity Parish.
Before Mr. Palmer left Litchfield, the death of Mr. John Davies, at a good old age, occurred on November 22, 1758. His body was taken seven miles to the church he had been instrumental in build- ing. He had ordered gifts of mourning apparel for his friends who had been his contemporaries and partners in building St. Michael's Church. Two early accounts say he was buried in the common burying place, and a note in one account, in what looks like a later handwriting, adds "in the West burying ground, contiguous to the church." Although the land on which the church stood and the West Burying Ground are contiguous, the church was distant from the latter from a half mile to a mile. No stone marks the place where Mr. Davies lies. In an anniversary sermon preached many years later a rector of St. Michael's, the Rev. L. P. Bissell, said:
Revered as his memory is, as, under God, the founder of this Church, it is a sad commentary on the transient nature of man's earthly life that the dust of so good and useful a man in his generation as John Davies should sleep today in a nameless grave.
His name is inscribed on a family monument in the cemetery in Davies' Hollow, and a beautiful tablet in his memory, and that of his son and grandson, has been placed on the wall facing St. Mi- chael's Chapel in the present church building.
III LITCHFIELD
LITCHFIELD COUNTY was not settled as early as were the parts of Connecticut along Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River. This was not the kind of country to which would be drawn the earliest settlers, who had the choice of more easily worked and more fertile land. It was called the Western Lands, and was left an unexplored wilderness until good land in the colony became scarce; then the settlers turned to what was left.
This section of the colony had early been assigned to the in- habitants of the towns of Hartford and Windsor, but not until 1715 was an effort made to investigate its possibilities. In May of that year John Marsh, an energetic and courageous man, was sent out by the town of Hartford to explore part of the territory. His trip took five days, of which three were spent riding over what now comprises parts of Litchfield, Morris, Bethlehem, Washing- ton, Warren, and Goshen. He must have reported favorably on what he found, for in January, 1716, Thomas Seymour was sent out to treat with the Indians in purchasing the land. The result of his negotiations was the purchase of the land in this township (it was then called Bantam) for {15, a sum said to have been satis- factory to the Indians.
In 1718 a company was organized to settle the new township, which consisted of about 44,800 acres. It was divided into 60 shares. Three of them were reserved for "pious purposes," and the remaining 57 shares were sold and deeds of conveyance executed,
17
LITCHFIELD
dated April 29, 1719, and confirmed by act of the Assembly in May. John Marsh, who had been the first man to visit and explore the township, became the owner of two shares. He was the founder of the Marsh family in Litchfield.
Settlement of the town began in the summer of 1720 when Cap- tain Jacob Griswold from Windsor, Ezekiel Buck from Wethers- field, and John Peck from Hartford moved their families here. One of the conditions on which rights were granted to the original proprietors was that each should build a tenantable house on his share, not less than 16 feet square, and inhabit it by the last day of May, 1721, and for three years thereafter. No one was permitted to leave or dispose of his share for five more years without the con- sent of the other shareholders. The reason for this provision was to insure the orderly development of the township, clearing of land, and so on, and also to guarantee to all the shareholders the assistance and protection of neighbors in an isolated community.
For isolated this community was. Once settled, the nearly sixty families which made up its population were cut off from the world and dependent on themselves. The nearest settlements were Woodbury and New Milford; an unknown wilderness stretched westward to the Hudson River, where were the settlements of the Dutch, and northward to Canada. Although the local tribes were not troublesome, the threat from Indians was real. For in the wars between the English and the French the latter encouraged the Indian tribes friendly to them to attack the English frontier settle- ments. So there were in Litchfield in 172 5 forts manned by soldiers sent by the Committee of War, in Hartford, as a protection against Indians. One fort was where the Court House now stands, and four others were in more remote parts of the town as protection to men working on the outlying clearings. One was on Chestnut Hill, where ten families settled. In a letter to the Governor report- ing on the building of the forts, John Marsh said: "These Gar- resons have done our settlers great good in quieting their fears from the wild Indians that live in the great woods."
18
LITCHFIELD
But even if their fears were quieted, the situation of the pro- prietors of the little community was difficult. The necessity of protecting themselves against the Indians delayed the clearing of the land and planting and harvesting crops. In the face of hard- ships some proprietors deserted their rights at least temporarily, thus leaving a heavier burden on those who remained. The sol- diers who were sent out for the settlers' protection had to be housed and fed. The situation remained difficult for some time. It is said that for thirty years after the forts were erected they were resorted to with more or less frequency by individuals and families on account of apprehended danger.
The little settlement was difficult of access. As a traveler left Hartford going west, he very soon entered what was known as the Greenwoods. Continuing for miles, this was a primeval forest, an almost impenetrable wilderness filled with giant trees. More- over there were everywhere fallen logs overgrown with vines and underbrush. Indian trails abounded, but they were of little use in developing roads, and roads there had to be. To fill the need roads of a sort were made in time, but they were merely wide paths cut through the forest with an uneven surface caused partly by stumps of the trees cut down, since only those easily removable were cleared away. If the roads were not used constantly a second growth of trees and bushes sprang up, as difficult to clear as the original trees. From 1700 to 1750 practically no roads were opened up in the colony west of the Connecticut River. The first highway in this direction, popularly known as the "high road to Albany," ran from Hartford through Farmington, Harwinton, and Litch- field and northward along much of the route we know today. Though complained of as unfit for use, it was regarded as a won- der of the age that a direct route could be found through the Greenwoods. A vivid impression of the condition of the road is given by a comment of a traveler 1 through this region in 1780; he remarked that the Litchfield highways were formed for the "roe-
1 Count de Chastellux, recorded in Mitchell, Roads and Road-making.
19
LITCHFIELD
buck rather than for laden horses and conveyances." Such were the roads by which the early missionaries traveled back and forth over most of the county.
Under the circumstances it is not hard to think of the commu- nity at Litchfield as a self-contained one. Everything the family used-food, raiment, household furniture, the means of cooking and of keeping warm-came from the land and was made in the home. The economy of the settlement was entirely agricultural, with grist mills and other simple manufactures required in an agricultural community.
In Old Litchfield, the author, the Hon. George M. Woodruff, gives, however, another side of life in the little community:
Notwithstanding the fact that Litchfield was a frontier town, liable to be harassed by French and Indians, it was from the first attractive as a residence and its settlers were a cheerful, social people, with their raisings, apple parings, spinning bees and dances . .. At these early dances the music was vocal, one of the party singing while the others danced, but in 1748 a violin was brought to Litchfield and an enter- tainment given which cost, including the music, a dollar.
Another writer describes 2 the spinning bees, neighborhood gatherings for an afternoon's spin and social chat, to which the ladies might be seen coming from their respective homes each with a little spinning wheel. When these were set buzzing, with the chatting of the spinners, there was music in the air. There were many such gatherings in the winter. The crowning Bee of the year was at the minister's; to this old and young carried their run of yarn, leaving their wheels at home. The result was a fine bunch of yarn, enough for a year's consumption, which was a great help in the minister's large family.
The young people, too, had a social life, including excursions on horseback, after the haying, to the tops of the neighboring mountains, boating on the river or the lake, and always singing, at singing school which met in the evenings in the winter, or at
2 Grandma Cowles' Record.
20
LITCHFIELD
gatherings at each other's homes. Of marriage one historian says that it took place at an earlier period in life than now. This was not because the time was more romantic or less prudent, but be- cause women were necessary to their men in the hard task of making a living. From the beginning a wife entered into the hard battle of life and bore the brunt of it with her husband.
Of education we know that the early settlers considered it highly, and provided for it when laying out their villages. But however desirable, schooling could not be formal under the con- ditions that prevailed. The district schools gave no more than what we know as a grade-school education, if that. But there was little or no illiteracy, and boys who aspired to go to college were prepared to do so by the minister.
When in 175 1 Litchfield became the county seat, the village at once became the center of county activities, with the county court held here, and the county jail provided for law-breakers. It prob- ably did not gain much business from being the county center, however, as the several towns of the county were still remote and had already established business connections in other directions.
It might be a matter of some surprise that the Episcopal Church made the headway it did in an isolated community in a colony which supported the Congregational Church. This may be ex- plained by the character of the original settlement, which was not, like the New Haven Colony, for example, to which John Davenport brought his followers, all of one religious faith. The settlement of Litchfield, falling in a later period, was characterized by a lack of homogeneity. The first proprietors were, to be sure, from the towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor, but not all of them settled on their holdings. Some sold their rights with the consent of the other proprietors; outlying land, as it was cleared, was offered for sale. Settlers having no connection with those already here bought land. The result was that the entire settlement was not Congregationalist. A man like John Davies, who came from England and bought a large property in the west-
2 I
LITCHFIELD
ern part of the town, brought his love of his church with him. When he looked about for persons of a like mind, he found twelve heads of families who were willing to join with him in starting a church. Perhaps some of them, or some who joined them later, had belonged to the Church of England previously and had simply gone with the majority to the church for the support of which they were taxed, until drawn into a movement to establish an Episcopal church. President Stiles, in his Itineraries, gives some surprising figures about the comparative strength of the Episcopal Church in Litchfield and elsewhere in 1762. Out of 220 families in Litchfield at that time, he says 40 belonged to the Episcopal Church, while in Harwinton 4 families out of 100, and in Wood- bury 20 out of 450, were Episcopalian. Comparing the Rev. Mr. Palmer's field with New Haven, a much larger settlement, he said that in 1761 Mr. Palmer had 100 or 150 families in Litchfield and New Milford, with two churches, whereas the Rev. Mr. Punderson had in New Haven one church with 22 families, in West Haven one church with 23 families, and in Guilford and Branford together one church with 20 families.
After the Revolution the character of the state and its com- munities changed. Progress was rapid. This county was by then well established as a producer of grain, fruits, cattle, and dairy products, and had some manufactures, as, for example, iron found- ries. It had excellent natural resources and excellent human re- sources, as well, a hard-working, honest, intelligent lot of men and women. It was soon on the way to prosperity.
In the diary of a young Scotch physician, Alexander Coventry, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, who traveled exten- sively through the northern states before settling down in the ter- ritory which is now upper New York state, we read impressions of Litchfield which he visited in 1786. He arrived by horseback after a long trip, and made this entry in his diary:
Continuing along roads like the former we came to Litchfield, a large village. It has two churches, one a very elegant one, also one with a
22
LITCHFIELD
spire. Here are several handsome frame houses, well painted, and surrounded by fine orchards, elegant vegetable and flower gardens; the latter laid out in flower plats with borders of tulips etc. This is the prettiest and best situated country town I have seen in Connecti- cut, or of the same size in New York. It is situated on a plateau, surrounded by low grounds, beyond which the hills appear again.
The intellectual growth was not behind the material. In 1784 the first newspaper in the county, the Weekly Monitor, was started by Thomas Collier, who carried on a publishing business until 1808. Among books published by Collier were the third American edition of Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, and Gray's Elegy, published in 1789 and 1799 respectively. Private schools sprang up. The Morris Academy in the parish of South Farms, now called Morris, was started in 1790 by James Morris, and be- came the most noted school in the county, and continued for many years. The Litchfield Female Academy, begun by Miss Sarah Pierce in 1792, was the first school for the higher education of girls in the country. As an experiment it was highly successful, and continued for more than forty years, attracting young women from many states. In 1784 the Law School under Tapping Reeve was started, and drew young men here from Maine to Georgia.
Touching on other matters, the temperance movement was early felt in Litchfield. In May, 1789, a temperance pledge was signed, repudiating the use of distilled liquors, by thirty-six gen- tlemen, among them Julius Deming, Benjamin Tallmadge, Uriah Tracy, Ephraim Kirby, Moses Seymour, Daniel Sheldon, Tap- ping Reeve, Frederick Wolcott, and John Welch. Somewhat later Dr. Lyman Beecher preached a notable series of sermons on the evil. Going further afield, but to illustrate the variety of forms the intellectual movement took, in 1817 a Foreign Mission School was established in Cornwall, with the object of spreading the Chris- tian religion and the means of civilization among heathen peoples.
The period of the first twenty years of the nineteenth century, called Litchfield's "golden age," is well known to us. We read in Mr. Woodruff's Old Litchfield that the town had its industries:
23
LITCHFIELD
according to the census of 1810 when Litchfield was at its zenith, being the fourth town in population in the state, only Hartford, New Haven and Middletown outranking it, there were in it some sixty mills and manufactures, including four iron foundries.
We are aware, too, of its social life, which was rich, cultured, varied, and gay.
Two things conspired to change Litchfield from one of the largest towns in the state to one of little or no importance from the point of view of manufacturing: the advent of railroads, which followed the valleys and left the high towns undisturbed, and the shift of manufactures to the valleys where were railroads and the water power they needed. As the county seat Litchfield still had some importance, and it was the trading center of a farming area throughout a wide township. But Litchfield was no longer on the main road from east to west, a center of stage traffic from Boston to New York, and from Hartford and New Haven to Albany. Gradually it became the village of stationary population spoken of by rectors of St. Michael's Parish in their reports. That it did not die, as have so many once-prosperous towns, was partly due to the two facts just spoken of, and may possibly also be laid to the fact that its sons and daughters who had scattered over the coun- try retained an affection for their native village, and when their means permitted returned to Litchfield and made it their home during at least part of the year. A trend set in. Even before the Civil War, and for many years afterward, Litchfield was a popular summer resort for the wealthy.
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.