USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 3 The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut > Part 40
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Connecticut has progressed since 1885 when, for the first time, a few members of the Salvation Army stood outside the gates of Wethersfield Prison to meet discharged prisoners. Rehabilitation is now the aim.
While rehabilitation is the immediate objective, the conviction is becoming firmly established that prevention is better than cure. This attitude affects in two ways the work of charities and corrections. It results in study and effort to discern and remove the causes of crime, poverty, and disease. It also places the major emphasis upon work with children, as the most hopeful field of endeavor.
Since the opening of the twentieth century two signif- icant developments have occurred, profoundly altering the character of the groups engaged in social-welfare undertakings. The earlier, and more far-reaching, has been the growth of interest on the part of the women, with the result that today they are leading participants in every form of welfare activity-most of all, naturally, in the various movements to promote child welfare. The more recent change has been the appearance of the pro- fessionally trained worker and his rapidly attained mo- nopoly of the actual working positions. A third change is still in process. It is the effort to secure more effective organization and integration of the governmental instru- mentalities and agencies invested with responsibility for charitable and correctional work.
A century ago Connecticut was a leader in the initia- tion of welfare enterprises. Now Connecticut is recover- ing that leadership because it refrains from chasing every rainbow of reform and approaches these difficult and highly important problems with deliberation, steadiness, and dispassionate purpose. Connecticut does not lack initiative or courage to make experiments, but it insists upon taking experience as a guide in making them.
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PUBLICATIONS OF THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
The Committee on Historical Publications of the Connecticut Tercentenary Commission has issued, during the past few years, a series of small pamphlets upon a great variety of topics, selected for the purpose of making better known among the people of Connecticut and others as many of the features as possible of the history and life of Connecticut as colony and state. No attempt has been made to deal with these subjects in either logical or chronological order, the intention having been to issue pamphlets at any time upon any subject that seemed to be of interest and worthy to be made a matter of record.
The series will be completed with the issuance of a total number of sixty pamphlets. A small supplementary pamphlet providing biographical data about the authors and other information about the series has been prepared, and may be obtained without charge from the Yale University Press.
I. Connecticut and the British Government, by C. M. ANDREWS. 36 pp. . 25 ℃. II. The Connecticut Intestacy Law, by C. M. ANDREWS. 32 pp. 25c.
III. The Charter of Connecticut, 1662, by C. M. ANDREWS and A. C. BATES. 24 pp. . 25c. 25c. 25℃. 75c. 25c. 25c.
IV. Thomas Hooker, by W. S. ARCHIBALD. 20 pp. ·
V. The Story of the War with the Pequots Re-Told, by H. BRADSTREET. 32 pp. Illustrated.
VI. The Settlement of the Connecticut Towns, by D. DEMING. 80 pp. Illus- trated.
VII. The Settlement of Litchfield County, by D. DEMING. 16 pp.
VIII. George Washington and Connecticut in War and Peace, by G. M. DUTCHER. 36 pp. Illustrated.
IX. The Discoverer of Anaesthesia: Dr. Horace Wells of Hartford, by H. W. ERVING. 16 pp. Illustrated.
X. Connecticut Taxation, 1750-1775, by L. H. GIPSON. 44 pp.
XI. Boundaries of Connecticut, by R. M. HOOKER. 38 pp. Illustrated.
XII. Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut, by J. F. KELLY. 32 pp. ·
XIII. Milford, Connecticut: The Early Development of a Town as Shown in Its Land Records, by L. W. LABAREE. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XIV. Roads and Road-Making in Colonial Connecticut, by I. S. MITCHELL. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XV. Hitchcock Chairs, by M. R. MOORE. 16 pp. Illustrated. ·
XVI. The Rise of Liberalism in Connecticut, 1828-1850, by J. M. MORSE. 48 pp.
XVII. Under the Constitution of 1818: The First Decade, by J. M. MORSE. 24 pp.
XVIII. The New England Meeting House, by N. PORTER. 36 pp. . XIX. The Indians of Connecticut, by M. SPIESS. 36 pp.
XX. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, by G. M. DUTCHER and A. C. BATES. 20 pp. Illustrated. . 5ºc.
XXI. The Litchfield Law School, 1775-1833, by S. H. FISHER. 32 pp. · 25c.
XXII. The Hartford Chest, by H. W. ERVING. 16 pp. Illustrated. 25c.
XXIII. Early Clockmaking in Connecticut, by P. R. HOOPES. 32 pp. .
25c.
XXIV. The Hartford Convention, by W. E. BUCKLEY. 32 pp.
.
25c.
XXV. The Spanish Ship Case: A Troublesome Episode for Connecticut, 1752- 1758, by R. M. HOOKER. 34 pp. 25c. ·
XXVI. The Great Awakening and Other Revivals in the Religious Life of Con- necticut, by M. H. MITCHELL. 64 pp. . 5ºc. 25 ℃ .
XXVII. Music Vale Seminary, 1835-1876, by F. H. JOHNSON. 24 pp. Illustrated. XXVIII. Migrations from Connecticut Prior to 1800, by L. K. M. ROSENBERRY. 36 pp. · 25c.
25℃. 25c. 25c. 25c. 25c.
25c. 25℃. 5ºc. 25c. 25c. 25 c.
XXIX. Connecticut's Tercentenary: A Retrospect of Three Centuries of Self- Government and Steady Habits, by G. M. DUTCHER. 32 pp.
25c. XXX. The Beginnings of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, by O. S. SEY- MOUR. 32 pp. . 25c. 25c. 75c. 25c. . by J. P. BOYD. 48 pp. · 5ºc. 25c.
XXXI. The Loyalists of Connecticut, by EPAPHRODITUS PECK. 32 pp. XXXII. The Beginnings of Connecticut, 1632-1662, by C. M. ANDREWS. 84 pp. . XXXIII. Connecticut Inventors, by J. W. ROE. 32 pp.
XXXIV. The Susquehannah Company: Connecticut's Experiment in Expansion,
XXXV. The Regicides in Connecticut, by L. A. WELLES. 32 pp. .
XXXVI. Connecticut Newspapers in the Eighteenth Century, by J. M. MORSE. 32 pp.
XXXVII. Slavery in Connecticut, by R. F. WELD. 32 pp.
XXXVIII. Farmington, One of the Mother Towns of Connecticut, by QUINCY BLAKELY. 32 pp. Illustrated.
XXXIX. Yale Law School: The Founders and the Founders' Collection, by F. C. HICKS. 48 pp. Illustrated. . · ·
XL. Agricultural Economy and the Population in Eighteenth-Century Con- necticut, by A. L. OLSON. 32 pp. . 25c.
XLI. The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut, by A. F. MUNICH. 32 pp· . 25c. 25c. 25c. 25c. XLV. The First Twenty Years of Railroads in Connecticut, by SIDNEY WITH- INGTON. 36 pp. Illustrated. · 25c. · ·
XLVI. Forty Years of Highway Development in Connecticut, 1895-1935, by the STAFF OF THE STATE HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT. 20 pp. Map. 25c. XLVII. A Lawyer of Kent: Barzillai Slosson and His Account Books, 1794-1812, by MABEL SEYMOUR. 36 pp. 25℃. 5ºc.
XLVIII. The Rise and Fall of the New Haven Colony, by C. M. ANDREWS. 56 pp. XLIX. The Development of the Brass Industry in Connecticut, by W. G. LATHROP. 32 pp.
L. The Colonial Trade of Connecticut, by R. M. HOOKER. 44 pp.
LI. The Literature of Connecticut, by S. T. WILLIAMS. 24 pp.
LII. The History of Tobacco Production in Connecticut, by A. F. McDONALD. 32 pp·
LIII. Connecticut's Contribution to the Development of the Steamboat, by P. R. HOOPES. 32 pp. ·
. LIV. Migrations from Connecticut After 1800, by L. K. M. ROSENBERRY. . 32 pp. ·
25c.
· LV. Educational Problems at Yale College in the Eighteenth Century, by ALEXANDER COWIE. 32 pp. ·
· · 25c.
LVI. The Clergy of Connecticut in Revolutionary Days, by A. M. BALDWIN. 32 pp.
25c. 25c.
LVII. Charities and Corrections in Connecticut, by W. W. T. Squire. 32 pp.
LVIII. Connecticut Influences in Western Massachusetts and Vermont, by R. L. MORROW. 24 pp. 25c.
LIX. The Hartford Wits, by A. R. Marble. 32 pp. 25c.
. LX. The Achievement of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, by P. W. COONS.
25c. 32 pp.
Published and for sale for the Commission by
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT
25c. 25c. 25℃. 5ºc.
XLII. A History of Banking in Connecticut, by FRANCIS PARSONS. 32 pp. · XLIII. The History of Insurance in Connecticut, by A. A. WELCH. 36 pp. . XLIV. The Rise of Manufacturing in Connecticut, by CLIVE DAY. 32 pp. .
25c. 5ºc. 25c. 25c. 25c.
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
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SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON 4 HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
LVIII
Connecticut Influences in Western
Massachusetts and Vermont RISING LAKE MORROW
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1936
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
LVIII Connecticut Influences in Western Massachusetts and Vermont
RISING LAKE MORROW
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LTHOUGH some settlers of Connecticut had early turned their footsteps northward, it was not until the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury that the movement into western Massachusetts and the region later known as Vermont assumed appreciable proportions. From then on, for more than fifty years Connecticut sent a continuous stream of pioneers through the longitudinal valleys of western New England, first into the region of the Berk- shires, and later into the Green Mountains. Movers from eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, to be sure, joined the trek, but the Connecticut people by sheer weight of numbers so dominated the development of both sections that they became, in substance, new Connecticuts.
The land problem, which bulked large in the minds of all frontiersmen, was probably responsible for the greater part of this migration. The spread of population, which
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flowed like quicksilver into the valleys of Connecticut's hinterlands, and the hegiras to Long Island, New Jersey, and Delaware gave evidence of the restless energy of the colony's earliest settlers. Before Wethersfield was ten years old, a committee of the general court, investi- gating a religious quarrel which threatened to split the settlement, reported: "Many of those who put up their names for remoueall were not induced thereunto by any dislike, or ingadgement they haue in the present quar- rells, but for want of lotts and other considerations." A historian of Hartford might have been describing any of the older towns when he wrote that the place was a beehive for new settlements, "a little swarm here, one there, another there, and they clung, each, almost wherever in the region round about, a tree branch shaded the flowers of the wilderness." By 1680, with a popula- tion of approximately 12,000, Connecticut had already reported its territory to be so full of rocks, swamps, hills, and vales that most of what was fit for planting had already been taken up and that "what remaynes must be subdued, and gained out of the fire as it were, by hard blowes and for smal recompence."
As the years passed the land problem grew more acute. There was some immigration from old England and some from Massachusetts but, in the main, the Connecticut people themselves were responsible for their increasing numbers. In the register of births in the New Haven archives, under the 290 family names recorded between the years 1647 and 1754, an investigator has discovered the names of 5,954 children. This record, moreover, is very likely incomplete for, as families moved farther from the village, registrations inevitably became in- creasingly irregular. Abraham Doolittle, for example, had 13 children, 73 grandchildren, and at least 232 great-
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grandchildren. William Tuttle was the father of 12, the grandfather of 72, and the great-grandfather of 323 chil- dren. Richard Sperry, with 10 children and 66 grand- children, had 325 great-grandchildren. The Reverend Abel Stiles of Woodstock baptized in his society 367 boys and 415 girls between 1737 and 1759. The results of this fecundity are reflected in the population estimates for the first half of the eighteenth century. From 38,0001 in 1730, the estimates jumped to 71,000 by 1749. Thir- teen years later Governor Fitch was reporting a popula- tion of 141,000 whites and 4,590 blacks. In 1756 he had written that according to "the best computation that hath been made" the inhabitants of the colony had doubled in twenty-four years, an increase which he attributed to an industrious, temperate life, early mar- riage, and divine benediction.
In Connecticut, at that time, there was no well- established manufacturing industry. A few people living on the coast or navigable rivers engaged in trade, but for the vast majority agriculture furnished the chief means of livelihood. In consequence, as the pressure on the arable land increased and its value rose, the sons of Connecticut's pioneers turned once more to the frontier. There they raised their crude log cabins, wrested their acres from the wilderness, and established again the institutions of their fathers. It is significant, also, that the larger emigration came from districts having poor transportation facilities. Counties and towns on the coast and rivers, whence markets could be easily reached, grew rapidly, while inland districts remained either stationary or, in a few cases, actually declined in
ISo reported by Secretary Hezekiah Wyllys to the board of trade, but there is reason to believe that the population was actually 50 per cent greater in both 1730 and 1749. See A. L. Olson, Agricultural economy and the population in eighteenth-century Connecticut (no. XL in this series), p. 21.
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population. It was a rural people, holding to agrarian principles, who founded the colonies of Connecticut.
Rural though they were, however, in common with the other pioneers of the American frontier, they were not good farmers. Secure in the knowledge that out on the fringes of settlement virgin land could always be bought for a song, they exploited their soils with no attempt to preserve their productivity. It is a curious paradox of the American frontier that, owing to the abundance of land and the scarcity of labor, the most economical farming was often the most wasteful. Hence, antiquated methods were followed and, as the soil lost its fertility, the farmers left it in order to repeat the process farther on.
Another factor in the exodus northward from Con- necticut was the growth of land speculation. During the seventeenth century the New England colonies in general had granted lands to groups of men for the purpose of founding communities. The proprietors were supposed to hold such lands in trust until assigning them to persons who would properly carry on the Puritan tradition. Yet, in the eighteenth century, as the density of settlement increased, and as it became necessary to reward the re- turning veterans of the wars with the French, a com- mercial element entered into the proceedings. Among the seaboard businessmen of Massachusetts and Connecticut were many who, as the result of trade, found themselves with a growing capital surplus to invest. Since the devel- opment of manufacturing enterprises was ruled out by the British mercantile system, investment in land seemed to them to be the only recourse. Consequently, with no thought of settling upon the lands themselves, they either bought the allotments to soldiers or sought new grants from the colonial authorities, with the idea of reselling the land at a profit. Realizing that actual settlement
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would attract additional settlers, they often offered special inducements to the firstcomers.
While it seems clear that economic factors were chiefly responsible for the migration from the colony, religious considerations played a part as well. Irreconcilable dif- ferences over such matters as the Half Way Covenant and the proper combination of church and state were responsible for the founding of many a town, both within and without Connecticut's boundaries. Hartford and Wethersfield, for example, were hardly well established before a theological dispute as vague and indefinite, according to Cotton Mather, as the source of the Con- necticut river, sent a disgruntled minority into the wilds above Springfield to settle Hadley, Massachusetts.
Troubles also arose as a result of the territorial extent of the parishes. In the early days of a settlement one church normally served a township. In consequence, people in outlying districts often found it difficult, be- cause of the distance and other conditions affecting travel, to attend church services regularly. When the dissatisfied ones felt that the numbers in their section were sufficient to support a minister of their own, they applied to the general court for permission to form a separate church. Since the new church would diminish not only the area of the old parish but, by including all people and property within the new bounds, would diminish its revenue as well, the original churches regu- larly opposed any division. Sometimes numbers of peti- tions would be necessary and years would pass in controversy before the discontented either won their case or removed to more congenial surroundings.
Though difficulties of this sort tended to decrease during the eighteenth century, the Great Awakening brought in its train a new crop of theological dissensions.
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Coming as it did just at the set of Connecticut's north- ward tide, it was perhaps the most important element in the religious cause of the migration. To check the eccle- siastical hysteria which was sweeping the colony, the general assembly, in 1742, forbade ministers to preach in any parish but their own, save on the invitation of both the people and pastor of the parish in question. This was followed a year later by a repeal of the law which allowed all who soberly dissented from the prevailing order to establish separate worship unmolested provided they paid their taxes for the support of the parish minister. Over the issues raised by these enactments there developed the Old Lights and the New Lights, two factions who opposed each other with complete disre- gard for the peaceful principles of the religion they both professed.
While this controversy was unquestionably responsible for the emigration of many individual families, it also caused a large group which had separated from the First Church of Norwich to move to Bennington, Vermont. One of the group, Deacon Joseph Safford, carried along the rec- ords of the Separate church which they had tried unsuccess- fully to organize in Norwich. Bennington, in fact, seems to have become something of a center for New Light expatriates, as "Father" Joseph Marshall, pastor of the first Separate church in Canterbury, was a frequent visitor, and the Reverend John Palmer of the Separate church in that part of Windham which is now the town of Scotland, repeatedly served on the ecclesiastical councils of the town.
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THERE were many reasons why the largest number of those who left Connecticut during the eighteenth cen-
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tury traveled northward. Most important, perhaps, was the fact that it was the line of least resistance. In that direction, through natural gateways, lay the fertile val- leys of the Connecticut and Housatonic rivers in western Massachusetts, still relatively unpopulated. Between them and eastern Massachusetts, holding back the west- ward spread of settlement, and deflecting to Maine and New Hampshire many of the Bay Colony's emigrants, stretched the barrier of broken, hilly country which comprised Worcester county. With Connecticut already a hive too full, and with Massachusetts speculators hunting for settlers for their western lands, a migration from Connecticut became inevitable.
Tradition also played a part, for Connecticut people had long been interested in the region. As early as 1653 the petition of John Pynchon, Eleazur Halliock, and Samuel Chapin to the general court of Massachusetts for permission to erect a settlement at what is now Northampton, was accompanied by one signed by twenty-four men of Connecticut setting forth in "theese fiew Leins" their desire to settle a section above Spring- field. Hadley, a few years later, drew settlers from Hart- ford, Windsor, and Wethersfield, some of whom had gone to Connecticut with Thomas Hooker in 1636. The frontier, however, still lured them on, for within two years some of them were pushing on to Hatfield, and by the end of the century their sons and daughters were moving back from the river to found Amherst.
The episode of the Equivalent Lands2 helped further to direct the attention of the people of Connecticut to western Massachusetts. When the boundary between the two colonies was adjusted in 1713, it was found that
2 See Roland M. Hooker, Boundaries of Connecticut (no. XI in this series), pp. 15-24, especially p. 20.
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Massachusetts had granted 107,793 acres of land claimed by Connecticut. Massachusetts made compensation by ceding to Connecticut an equal number of its ungranted acres. These lands, lying mostly in the northwestern corner of the colony, were sold at auction at Hartford, Connecticut, and London, England, in 1716. They were the goal of many of those who, years later, plodded northward from Connecticut.
The movement which was to have such a profound effect on western New England gathered momentum slowly. Until the middle of the eighteenth century there were competing lands in Connecticut itself, especially in Litchfield county, which attracted many of those emi- grating from the earlier settled portions of the colony. Others, few in number at first, turned their footsteps northward. There were Connecticut people at North- field, Massachusetts, in 1717, and in 1736 Greenwich, Massachusetts, was granted to a group of proprietors hailing largely from Brookfield, Connecticut. Among the grantees of Bernardston, located beside Northfield on the northern border of the state, were men from thirteen Connecticut towns, while in other new settlements of the period Connecticut men played prominent parts. In Southampton, Jonathan Judd of Waterbury, fifth in descent from Deacon Thomas Judd who had accom- panied Hooker, started, in 1743, a pastorate which was to last sixty years. Asahel Birge, another Connecticut emigrant, held at different times the offices of town clerk, selectman, justice of the peace, and representative in the legislature. This early Connecticut advance was paralleled by a gradually increasing number of emigrants from the older sections of Massachusetts. The Connecticut valley was the first goal of the easterners, but in 1735 a road was cut from Westfield to the Housatonic on which the
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emigrants from both colonies mingled as they entered the Berkshires.
King George's War tended to hold back, but did not check, the movement. With rude stockades along the northern line of settlement providing a somewhat un- certain security, settlers from Canterbury and Suffield, Connecticut, combining with a few from eastern Massa- chusetts, founded the town of New Marlboro at the southern end of the present Berkshire county. At the same time the towns of the Connecticut valley con- tinued to receive immigrants both from the south and from the east.
The end of the war saw a rapid spread of settlement. Many soldiers, whose services had acquainted them with the region, moved in to occupy a part of it. Such towns as Sandisfield, Alford, Becket, and Granville were founded, and assisting at the birth of each were natives of Connecticut. The early history of the settlement of the region about Williamstown well illustrates the process. Fort Massachusetts had been built in 1741 and gar- risoned with fifty men, largely from Massachusetts. Captured and abandoned in 1746, it was rebuilt and its garrison doubled in 1747. The reduction of this force at the close of the hostilities furnished a number of settlers for the attractive valley lands in the country round about. To them were added small groups from Connecti- cut seeking farms along the frontier. West Hoosac (now Williamstown) was founded in 1753 a few miles from the fort and Allen Curtiss of Canaan was chosen moderator of the first meeting of the proprietors.
Although the outbreak of the French and Indian War caused some of the settlers to retire to less exposed regions, a Connecticut military company was formed to aid in the frontier's defense. In spite of the early defeats
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of the English farther west, the population grew. In 1756, as the result of a petition to the general court, William Chidester, formerly of Connecticut, received permission to build a blockhouse at West Hoosac, which the colony agreed to garrison with ten soldiers. The return to the town of some of the Connecticut settlers, who had earlier retreated, aided the rapid completion of the project. Although the force consisted of local recruits, the first commander was sent over from Fort Massachusetts. The friction which quickly developed led to his replace- ment by Chidester and to a growing antagonism between the two forts. This feeling, according to the one scholar who has thoroughly familiarized himself with the situa- tion, grew out of a long-standing antipathy between the Connecticut men and the men of the Bay, an antipathy which showed itself in other fields of contact during those trying years.
The end of the war saw a further influx of Connecticut pioneers and their establishment as the dominant ele- ment of the entire section. Williamstown, incorporated in 1765, was settled largely from the regions about Killingly, Litchfield, and Colchester. At least twenty-five families from Colchester alone left posterity there. Ac- cording to Professor A. L. Perry, this infusion of Con- necticut families into a Massachusetts township resulted in "some pretty sharp differences in the social and religious conditions of Williamstown as compared with those of the typical Massachusetts town."
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