USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 1 Connecticut and the British Government > Part 31
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each inhabitant could go to any of his holdings without trespassing on his neighbor's property. Unfortunately, the system lacked flexibility. No provision at all was made for the growth of the town, only the needs of a small static community were anticipated. Hence it was inevitable, that with the increase in population, compli- cations should arise. One can imagine the situation. Here is a newcomer whose home lot is near the outskirts of the settlement. Naturally he has to go to his holdings, but his allotments are so encompassed that he is unable to reach them without trespassing on other people's land. What is he to do? He has to take his cattle to pasture, gather his hay in the meadow, and bring it to his barns, he must carry his corn to the mill to be ground and get his supply of wood from the wood lot and every Sabbath he and his family were obliged to go to the meetinghouse. If his neighbors refused to give him the right of way through their property (as they frequently did), his only recourse was to petition the town. Usually such a petition was met by counter petitions from the rest of the community, protesting that the highways desired would cut up their lots into such small pieces that the income therefrom would not equal the cost of fencing. Hence weeks and months often elapsed before any action was taken, while the town considered the merits of the contradictory pe- titions.
The lack of any adequate provision for roads to keep pace with the growth of the township is well illustrated by the increasing number of petitions for "winter church privileges" and new highways to the meetinghouse. A serious matter in colonial times-attendance at meeting. For not only did a man's escape from eternal damnation depend upon his going there regularly, but he was further liable to a fine by the court, if he were not present, be-
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sides being taxed for the support of the church in his own township even though he might attend another more conveniently situated.
In 1732 some petitioners from Lebanon stated that they were four miles from public worship and had to go across particular men's proprieties as trespassers and through thirteen or fourteen fences and many miry places as well as over bad hills and be troublesome to our neighbors at Windham where we have a good road and nearer for most of us." A certain Squire Hookell in Thompson asked for a way to the meetinghouse because he had to go through twelve pairs of bars before reaching the travelled way; at least six others made a similar request. In 1732, some of the inhabitants of Newington complained that the highways were so "badly contrived" that they were obliged either to tarry at home or go somewhere else to meeting, which was "a great hardship considering the great taxes they pay for the support of the public worship in the parish of Newington." It is interesting to note that all the adver- tisements in the newspapers of property for sale, stated the distance of the dwelling house from the meeting- house.
According to a law passed by the General Court in 1643, each town was to have charge of making and mend- ing ways within its own bounds. Hence appeals for new roads were made first to the town, where they were con- sidered in town meeting. If the selectmen decided that the roads requested were necessary, they appointed committees to mark them out in the "most convenient way, taking care to commit as little damage as possible" and to recommend the amount of compensation due those whose property was cut into. In laying a road across a man's farm, they always tried to do the work between plowing and mowing and pasturing. If the persons ag-
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grieved were not satisfied with the amount voted, they could appeal to the county court any time within twelve months. If the selectmen refused to lay out the highways requested, those desiring them could take the matter to the county court, the decision of which, in turn, could be set aside by the General Court.
The "private town ways" were, throughout the his- tory of the colony, in charge of the selectmen. Until 1771, if they refused to lay out any private way, no appeal could be made from their decision. But in that year a pro- vision was added to the general highway law, stating that appeals could be made to the county court. If the latter saw fit, it appointed a committee to lay out the desired highway, which, if approved by the court, might then be- come a public one; if not, it remained private. The ex- penses for damage to property were borne by those for whose benefit the road had been made and not by the town, and was paid in money or land.
Another duty entrusted to the town governments un- der the law of 1643 was that of laying out the intertown highways. This method of management proved very un- satisfactory. It was hard to get the towns to cooperate and frequently the roads suffered neglect. Hence in 1702 a change in supervision was effected by giving the matter over to the county court. According to the new law, the county court was to appoint a committee of two or three freeholders of neighboring towns to find out what inter- town ways were needed and where they should be made. This having been done, the county sheriff or deputy was to summon a jury to lay them out. If the ways were not satisfactory, they could be set aside by the assembly, as in the case of the town ways. The General Court always appointed the committee to survey a road which was to connect towns in different counties. It also might exer-
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cise the same power if petitioned directly by inhabitants of a town. In all cases the towns paid for the sections ly- ing within their own limits. The towns, obviously, did not feel under any obligation in the matter of providing public roads within their precincts, which would join with the King's Highways. In many places there were no connecting roads for years. Yet the inhabitants went quietly about their daily tasks, serenely indifferent to the complaints of travellers who were most seriously incon- venienced by such a state of affairs. They acted as if it were no concern of theirs and did absolutely nothing about it until forced to by the assembly. As late as 1712 travellers from the west to Boston or Providence were most disagreeably surprised when they arrived at the boundary of Plainfield to find no country road running through it.
The highways that were to be so carefully laid out with "as little damage as possible to private men's pro- prieties" were but wide swaths cut through the forest, rough and uneven, with half buried boulders and tree stumps sticking up here and there. No attempt was made to improve the surface. Instead of piling up gravel in the center, turnpike fashion, or laying a foundation of rubble or stone, they simply cleared it of bushes and the easily removable trees and stumps. Frequently the middle was lower than the sides. Brooks and little creeks flowed through without hindrance, forming mudholes and quag- mires. Devices such as culverts for drawing off the water were unthought of. Consequently in winter and spring the roads were well-nigh impassable. If a road was not used constantly, the second growth of bushes and shoots sprang up quickly and these were even harder to clear than the original trees. Often large tree trunks were blown over by the high winds making it impossible for
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teams to get by. Drivers always carried axes with them to be ready for such an emergency.
The highways were usually broad, varying from three rods in the country to twenty, twenty-five, or even forty in the towns. Five or six, however, was the usual breadth of all except the main one. The generous width made up for the lack of improvement. When the ruts and holes became too deep in one part, better going could be found in another. The cart tracks wound in and out, back and forth among the stumps and stones, never keeping a straight course for any considerable distance. Like coun- try roads through the woodland today, grass grew every- where, in the center as well as along the borders, furnish- ing good pasture for sheep and cattle. Indeed, roads that had been staked out were sometimes ordered cleared for that very purpose, rather than for travel.
Just as the cartwheels made a winding track in the roadway, so the early town ways pursued a similar twisted course through the township. This was due either to the lie of the land or the scattering of the settlement. In the records of Cheshire we read that "all difficulties about rocks, swamps and other impediments the sur- veyors and sizers shall have power to regulate by turning the highways a little out of a straight course as conven- ient." Miss Larned describes an eighteenth-century road in Thompson that is typical. "From the south-east sec- tion it meandered in a most bewildering manner to the houses and pastures of Phinehas, Ebenezer, and Henry Green, crossing bridges and the upper and lower ford- ways of the Five Mile River, passing Merrill's barn and improved land on to the old road over Quintasset Brook and so following the same till they turn out to come into the country road, at the southwest corner of Hezekiel Sabin's little orchard, foreside of the meeting house."
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Many of the private ways were "pent," that is, closed at either end with swinging gates, which were paid for by the persons wanting them. The expense was trifling in comparison with the saving in the cost of fencing. Of course, from the standpoint of the traveller, it was a great annoyance to be compelled to open and shut so many gates, especially as they were frequently out of repair.
Not only did the towns have to lay out the roads, but upon them also was placed the entire burden of keeping the roads in repair. By the law of 1643, two surveyors were to be appointed in each town, whose duty it was to call out annually all the able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and sixty with their teams for one day's labor on the roads, under penalty of five shillings, should they fail to respond. At first no one was exempt. Later, an aristocratic tendency appears in the law of 1672 which excused magistrates, commissioners, ministers, ruling elders, physicians, and schoolmasters. In 1702, constant herdsmen, shepherds, and one miller from each gristmill were also excused. To make up possibly for their exemp- tion, slaves, servants, mulattoes, and Indians were later listed among those eligible for work on the highways. The one day's labor called for by law of 1643 proving inade- quate, another law was passed in 1650 increasing the number to at least two and as many more as were neces- sary and imposing a penalty of 2s 6d on any man who re- fused to obey the summons, and one of 6s for failure to send out a team. The surveyor was held to his duty more strictly by being made liable to the same fine himself, if he neglected to call out any of the inhabitants or to re- port the names of delinquents to the magistrates. The fines were used to hire other men to work on the roads. In 1679, at which time the General Court officially desig- nated the existing ways from plantation to plantation
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as the "Country Roads" or "King's Highways," the towns were ordered to work one day a year on them, clearing them of bushes and underbrush to the width of one rod. The law had little effect. In spite of the severe penalties inflicted for neglect, most of the roads between the towns were in bad condition. In 1684 they were de- scribed as "being entangled with dirty slowes, bushes, trees, and stones." By 1739 so many people preferred to pay their fine, rather than do the labor required, that the penalty was increased to 6 shillings a day. Yet such dras- tic measures were of little avail, since it is human nature not to take seriously "working on the roads." Even the most conscientious will exert themselves as little as pos- sible.
The fact that the early settlers apparently regarded the highways as their own personal property to be used as they saw fit was another reason for their being constantly in need of repairs. That a road was the King's Highway or even, as in some instances, the post road had no re- straining effect. The story of their encroachment is long and interesting. If a man needed gravel or stone and there happened to be some that suited him in the middle of the highway, with a cool indifference to the law he carried on his digging wherever his fancy dictated and little cared he how deep or wide the hole that he left. Or if he wanted some timber he did not hesitate to chop down a tree on the roadside, take what he needed, and leave the rest lying where it happened to fall. Again, if it were to his advantage to fence off a portion of the road and use the enclosure for pasturing his sheep or raising tobacco, he promptly did so without the slightest hesitation. Sometimes a householder might prefer to keep his wood- pile in the public thoroughfare rather than in his own yard; if so, no scruple held him back from putting it
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where he wanted to. In an ordinance passed by the town of Guilford in 1750 we read that "in divers places in the highways or streets of this town, timber and firewood is layed to the great Inconvenience of travellers especially in wet seasons or on Dark nights. Such wood and Timber lying where it is most convenient and necessary for foot- men to travel which may be justly esteemed as common nuisance."
What a nuisance the pent ways were, and what a hin- drance to legitimate trade the roads where gates and bars were legally permitted, is vividly illustrated by a peti- tion of the inhabitants of Preston and the neighboring towns for a road to Stonington harbor. Every journey, they said, meant the pulling down and replacing forty or fifty pairs of bars. This was bad enough in itself, but when insult was added to injury in the form of their being stopped by the owners of the land, and forced to go back, it was too much to be borne. As a result they were com- pelled to go several miles out of their way over hills and through swamps, which required double strength to pull their loads. This, it is clear, rendered the carrying on of business almost impracticable, as the cost was vastly in- creased. To make the journey successfully, they had to take an extra yoke of oxen and an extra hand for every load. Consequently they did not cart nearly as much lumber as they would have done, had there been a regular road.
So widespread was this practice of encroachment, that the General Court was finally compelled to take a hand in the matter. It passed many stringent laws, which, as was usually the case, were recognized more in the breach than in the observance. By the first of these, in 1715, any per- son obstructing the road had to bear the cost of having it cleared, besides paying a fine of twenty shillings if con- victed before a justice. The attempts to enforce this un-
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popular law occasioned much trouble. Lawsuit after law- suit resulted between those who had built the fences and those who pulled them down. Taking advantage of the vague wording of the statutes, many claimed that in fencing off certain portions of the road they were only acting within their rights, since it was the highway that was encroaching on their own private property and not they on the highway.
In Windsor, the selectmen, rendered desperate by the constant bickering and contentions of the inhabitants, as a last resort petitioned the General Court in 1725, to confirm and mark officially roads that had been used twenty, forty, and even sixty years. Not only legal con- troversies but scenes of violence were not uncommon, in which strong language, resort to fisticuffs, and broken heads all bore evidence to the widespread distaste for this law. The records tell us of a certain John Rall, who, when protested with by the town authorities for building a fence across a road running from the shore along the col- ony, "did in a violent manner with his hands and at- tempts with an ax and calling for his sword and gun threatened by force to oppose their passage."
Another factor that made the highway problem diffi- cult, was the necessity of building and keeping in repair safe and adequate bridges. This was especially burden- some because of the large number of wild and tumultuous rivers. The early bridges were built by the inhabitants of the town as a part of their regular highway duty and they were very simple structures usually consisting of two or three hewn logs placed in such a way that horses might pass over. "A strong suficientt cartt Bridge" which was ordered built across the Little River in Hart- ford in 1640 was "to be Twelfe footte wide bettwene the Rayles wth Turned Ballesters over the Top."
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With the increasing travel and trade in the eighteenth century, the bridges became more elaborate and preten- tious. Over the larger streams they had to be constructed so as not to hinder the passing of large vessels and scows laden with hay or timber up and down the river. Some were of quite a respectable length, one in Norwich, built in 1728, being 250 feet long and 20 feet high. Another at the mouth of the Shetucket, referred to as a bridge of "geometry work," was nearly 200 feet long, very costly in timber and framing and expensive in the raising, as it "required many hands hired at great wages, besides ves- sels with large frames built on them to support the work for the space of one full month." The cost was £4000.
Even though the public bridges were under the super- vision of the General Court, yet the townships were re- quired to keep them in repair. Various methods were used to meet the expense of their construction and mainte- nance. If a river separated two townships, each one had to pay half the expense of bridging it. Even the mainte- nance of intercolonial bridges was ultimately delegated to the towns, a condition that aroused the most deter- mined opposition. For fourteen years, for example, Ston- ington refused to pay Connecticut's share of the bridge over the Pawcatuck to Westerly, Rhode Island. Only after the assembly threatened to impose a fine of £300 did she grudgingly submit.
There was one instance where a group of public-spirited men built a bridge at their own expense (Elderkin Bridge over the Shetucket). Frequently private bridges, which were of use to the public were taken over by the assem- bly, the owner being paid in colony land or money. A rather novel experiment was tried in connection with a bridge over the Farmington River. A group of men di- vided it into sections, each guaranteeing to build one and
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keep it in repair. A section consisted of four posts and one length of timber. A common method adopted by the towns of providing for the upkeep of the bridges was to free certain men from highway service on condition that they look after them. After 1735 the usual way of financ- ing a new bridge was for a man or group of men to sub- scribe a part or the whole of the required amount, and then get permission from the General Court to collect toll. That privilege was generally granted for a period of ten or twenty years, though it might be perpetual, de- pending on the cost. When the time had expired, the town had to take it over. At any time a toll bridge could be changed into a free bridge by paying the full price to the builder.
After 1750, the favorite method was the lottery. The scarcity of money, the high cost of living, as well as the gambling instinct account for its popularity. Request after request was sent to the assembly for lotteries to change toll bridges into free ones, repair old ones, and build new ones. Not very many were granted however.
Despite the care used in construction and the money spent, the architects seemed unable to build bridges suffi- ciently high and strong to withstand the torrents of spring and the ice of winter. Frequently a new bridge needed mending before a year had passed. How often, doubtless, did travellers have experiences similar to those of Ma- dame Knight who, with fear and trembling, had to cross a bridge near Stamford which was "exceeding high and very tottering and of vast length" and another at Nor- walk where she "crept over a timber of broken Bridge about 30 foot long and perhaps 50 foot to the water."
Sometimes as many as four bridges were swept away in a single storm. In the spring of 1711, extraordinary floods demolished nearly every bridge in Windham county
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leaving not one over the Nachaug, Willimantic, and She- tucket rivers. One can hardly blame the authorities for not wanting to rebuild them. Under such circumstances they often did delay until the General Court, having been bombarded with complaints from irate travellers, forced them to take action in the matter. It was not uncommon, though, after a bridge had been destroyed a discouraging number of times for the town to give up the attempt and to establish a ferry instead.
It is interesting that there is not one bridge today in the whole state of Connecticut that dates back to the colonial period, whereas in England travellers who go to Canterbury still cross the streams by some of the very bridges used by the pilgrims in Chaucer's time.
From the beginning, ferries existed side by side with the bridges, as many of the rivers were too broad to be crossed in any other way. So characteristic and important were they, that to ignore them in a study of Connecticut highways would be like discussing Hamlet with Hamlet left out. Situated on all the great roads through the south and the east they played a significant part in the life of the people.
Hazardous crossings such as "Rope Ferry" at Niantic and the one between Norwalk and Fairfield furnished additional excitement to journeys already well supplied with dramatic incidents. At Niantic, passengers were often delayed by reason of the rope having been carried away or the boat being at the bottom of the river, which happened frequently, since every time the west wind blew, it filled with water and sank. The ferry between Norwalk and Fairfield over the Saugatuck was described by petitioners who wanted a bridge as being not only "hazardous to the lives of travellers but wholly impracti- cable till the resting of the tide which retards and delays
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the travellers intent with urging speed to accomplish his intended journey and many of us witnesses of their suf- ferings ... the prince and the peasant plunged into dis- tress and danger in cold and inhospitable seasons." In the winter, the ice made the crossings even more difficult. All travellers were not as fortunate as the Earl of Lou- doun who, when he arrived in New Haven from Boston in February, 1757, and learned that the passage across the Stratford River was obstructed with ice, dispatched a messenger over night to have it cleared so that his lordship could pass over in safety.
Unlike the bridges, the ferries were, on the whole, an asset rather than a liability to the towns, where they were located, since they furnished a small but steady in- come instead of being a continued drain on the treasury.
In 1700 there were nine important ferries, at Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield, New London, Saybrook, Had- dam, Norwich, New Haven, and Stratford. At this time, the first general law applying to all the ferries was en- acted by the General Court, fixing rates, and stating other necessary regulations as to equipment, exemp- tions, rules of carriage, etc. The immediate cause of its passage was, apparently, the flagrant dishonesty of the Saybrook ferryman, who had shortly before been con- victed of "dooing a rong to travellers in his ferry emply- ment."
The rates varied at different ferries, those at New Lon- don and Saybrook being higher than the others with an additional charge at the latter during December, Janu- ary, and February, when the crossing was especially dif- ficult. Until 1750 the fares were payable in hard money or county pay, thereafter in proclamation money. The ferrymen were required to provide themselves "with good tight boats sufficient both for largeness, strength,
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and steadiness for the safe transportation of travellers and their horses and supplied with oars and other im- plements and men who are discreet, strong and skilled in rowing." If they lacked the proper equipment they were fined £ 5.
At the ferry each person had to wait his turn, the only exceptions being public officers, physicians, and mid- wives. No one could get on the boat against the will of the ferryman, or any assistant, justice of the peace, elder of the church, representative of the general assembly or the majority of the passengers. Should the ferryman so far forget himself as to accept more than the regular fare, he suffered a penalty of 4os for each offense and should he yield to the temptation of overloading his boat he was fined 20s. All had to pay except the postrider, and later, by the law of 1729, the magistrates and deputies, when travelling on public business, went free of charge. The ferrymen grumbled a good deal at being required to make any exemptions, saying that they ought not "by any rules of justice pay and do more for the support of the government than the other subjects." Some ferrymen were given the right to provide entertainment for trav- ellers who could not be accommodated at the inn. The homes of others, to whom such permission was not granted, often became de facto taverns, since frequently there was no other shelter in the town for belated way- farers. The keepers of the larger ferries usually retailed strong drink-a privilege they were eager to get, as it doubtless added materially to their income.
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