The Norwich jubilee. A report of the celebration at Norwich, Connecticut, on the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the town, September 7th and 8th, 1859. With an appendix, containing historical documents of local interest, Part 11

Author: Stedman, John W comp
Publication date: 1859
Publisher: Norwich, Conn.
Number of Pages: 346


USA > Connecticut > New London County > Norwich > The Norwich jubilee. A report of the celebration at Norwich, Connecticut, on the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the town, September 7th and 8th, 1859. With an appendix, containing historical documents of local interest > Part 11


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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27



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proximate to the oriental. The tastes and pleasures of that early day were simple and domestic. In each snug cottage the huge chimneys blazed cheerily during the long winter, and comfort and plenty reigned within while the storm wind rattled their case- ments and piled the snow against their walls. The meeting house, the second erected, instead of nestling as in later years at the foot of beetling crags, was perched upon the very summit. Upon its elevated position it stood a conspicuous and characteristic monu- ment of the new race that was taking root beneath. In a literal, as well as spiritual sense, it was a watch tower. During the time of divine worship the arms of the male members of the congrega- tion were stacked without, and the eye of the wary sentinel in- tently scanned the horizon in the quarter from which danger might be apprehended. The precautions of the camp were not neglected, and the frontier village must have presented a semi- military aspect.


Meanwhile the work of clearing the soil went on. The tangled thicket was cut away, the wolf and the fox were driven from their lairs, and a war of extermination waged against the rattlesnakes which had swarmed in the clefts of the rocks. Civilized man claims the soil on which he treads, and with the strength of his arm and the sweat of his brow, subjugates it to his will. Com- pared with large extents of our fertile country, this was an intract- able and rugged spot. We might marvel that men, having the continent before them, instead of seeking out some rich alluvium of exhaustless productiveness and easy tillage, should attach them- selves to so hard and unyielding a soil. Yet, from the hill tops there spread before the eye an inviting expanse of woodland and water, and the position, at the head of a navigable river and not far from the sea, must have greatly recommended the site. The profound depths of the forest were not yet explored, and an im- penetrable mystery overhung the vast interior.


Man, as the delegated proprietor of earth, overcomes the resist- ance of the soil, draws out its latent wealth, smooths the rough- ness of its surface, and makes the wilderness to rejoice and blos- som as the rose. He impresses, in a degree, his own character upon the ground he occupies. Order, convenience, beauty, abun- dance, present themselves as his empire extends. If the scenery lose somewhat of its native grandeur and boldness, it wears in-


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stead the embellishments of art, and smiles with the evidences of plenty and comfort. But while the soil submits to his mastery, and cleft by the plow-share pours forth its riches, it is not alto- gether and wholly passive in his hands. The tiller stamps his image on the earth, but the earth in turn reacts upon the tiller. Locality exerts a mysterious power, and if particular regions have not, as the ancients fabled, their tutelary deities, they have their own influences upon their cultivator and occupant. The mountaineer is a man of diverse type from the resident on the wide stretching plain, and the dweller upon the ocean shore is un- like the inhabitant of the interior. A soft, delicious tropical cli- mate, and a teeming soil that scarce asks for the hand of labor, enervate their possessors, while the rugged, unkindly region, scantily requiting toil, inures the frame to labor and rouses the mind to activity. Endurance, industry, energy and manly deter- mination, are plants that flourish on the thin mould and the primi- tive rock. The granite imparts of its firmness to the man, and the clear wintry air bears vitality and vigor on its wings. The apparently unkind New England soil is adapted to a costlier growth than the cane and the cotton plant, and productive of a nobler harvest than ever waved on the broad savannas of the sunny South. That this is no fancy, I vouch in witness the hills of Connecticut, covered so thickly with the tokens of thrift and wealth. I adduce the history of her sons and daughters, who, on the wide world theater, have honored, by their lives and actions, their birthplace and their sires. I point to the moor and the mountain, clothed with verdure and dotted with smiling villages and beautiful cities. While we rank not locality and climate with higher and holier influences, we may well assign them a place in the development of character and the formation of habit. And when the charm of beauty is added, there is combined a refining and elevating element with the resistance that tries, and rouses, and steels its conqueror. If these features are blended in the dis- trict selected as the home of your fathers; if it appeal at once to our perception and love of the beautiful, and foster industry and enterprise; we have a fit nursery, under the divine benediction, of energetic, resolute and noble men; of intelligent, refined and graceful women.


The town of Norwich has never failed to respond to appeals


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made to her patriotism. In the old French war many of her sons jeoparded their lives, and bore their share in the capture of Louis- burg and other achievements. Of the intense interest which was felt in the struggle for American independence, you have already had so full and animated a description that it would be super- fluous for me to dwell upon that page of her history. The town paid her full quota of the great price at which the independence of these United States was purchased. Yet, while entering so heartily into the conflict, she never suffered the invasion of the foe. The tide of war swept past, but never broke over her habitations. In the war of 1812 the same immunity was enjoyed, although danger was often imminent, and invasion by no means improbable. But the thunders of war were heard only in the distance, and like Sparta of old, the town never saw the smoke of an enemy's camp.


Some forty years ago, the stranger visiting your town would have been struck with its air of quiet, comfortable repose. A tranquil rural beauty pervaded the scene. Norwich had enjoyed her seasons of commercial prosperity. Her citizens had been largely engaged in foreign trade. Shipping had crowded the wharves at her land- ing, and the sails of the inward and the outward bound whitened the Thames. But her commerce had been nearly destroyed by the war of 1812, and did not revive. A few weather beaten hulks re- mained as memorials of departed traffic, but the warehouses were empty, and the channel of the river became gradually choked with sand. But while business was almost stagnant, the air of comfort could not be mistaken. Spacious old fashioned mansions reposed, in tranquil dignity, beneath spreading elms. Gardens and orchards bordered the streets. The streams were not yet exhausted of their waters by mill races and machinery. The cascade foamed and sparkled in pristine beauty. The hills rose with sharp abruptness from amid the dwellings, and heaved their bare summits toward the sky. The town seemed to be falling into a verdant and placid old age. Many of its prominent citizens were of the revolutionary era. The memory of one who was then a boy retains with vivid distinctness the erect forms, noble bearing and polished manners of white haired men who had fought with Washington, and who rep- resented an age that has now wholly passed away. Longevity has attached to the pure bracing air and simple habits of the town. The occupancy of the same pulpit by two pastors, the venerable


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Drs. Lord and Strong, for the space of one hundred and seventeen years, is scarcely to be paralleled ; and the Rev. John Tyler's con- temporary rectorship of Christ church extended over fifty-four years. At the period of which I speak, the town seemed grace- fully declining into the vale of years. Its early promise and vigor- ous youth in the wilderness ; its robust manhood inured to the ex- igencies of toil and the alarms of war; its busy competition for commercial importance and wealth; its impassioned share in the revolutionary struggle ; these had been its heyday of life ; and with somewhat blunted ardor and enfeebled energies, it seems to resign itself to congenial repose. Like the veteran, it lived much in the past, and was rather prone to revert to the bygone than to antici- pate the future. The curfew bell at nine signified the close of the day's toils, and invited all to retirement. The town was the pic- ture of mellow, contented, beloved, respected age.


But the pause was only temporary. The city, instead of sinking into decrepitude, soon arose to bound forward with new vigor in the path of improvement. The touch of that mighty magician, the steam engine, awakened her from slumber. Vessels propelled by the new power vex her placid waters. The iron track binds her to distant cities, and the train darts and whizzes through her secluded valleys. The streams that had been enjoying immemorial liberty are repressed by dams, compelled to drive the wheel and the shuttle, and forced to aid the ingenuity and industry of man. The signs of enterprise and prosperity multiply. The quiet un- pretending village begins to assume the stir and stateliness of the city. Churches of imposing architecture succeed to the humbler structures in which the piety of a preceding age worshiped the Father, and mansions that would grace a metropolis adorn the streets. Thus covered with the tokens of wealth and refinement, art and nature happily combining to enhance her beauty, does the ancient lodge in the wilderness present itself to our view on her two hundredth birthday.


Called by your undeserved partiality to this unaccustomed task, I would draw lessons appropriate to the occasion from this brief historical survey. It has seemed to me on this occasion most fit- ting to look at the special dealings of the Most High with this community, rather than at general truths; to take my text from the book of Providence, rather than from the written word. If, in


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so doing, I have repeated facts that more properly belong to the historical department, so worthily occupied, I throw myself upon your kind indulgence. Permit me now briefly to note the import of this providential teaching.


And in very deed, after this rapid review of two centuries of town existence, can we forbear to confess, with grateful and glow- ing hearts, the loving kindness of the Lord ? Have not His good- ness and mercy followed us from the beginning unto this day ? Hath He ever forgotten or forsaken the tender scion here planted with trust in His protection, and prayer for His blessing? The founding of an infant settlement in a new country is alway a try- ing and perilous enterprise, involving hardship, suffering and dan- ger. Colonies have been, with little exception, liable to visitations of famine and pestilence. The first winter swept away half of the Plymouth pilgrims. Salem sustained a loss equally severe. James- town, Va., was almost depopulated by disease, and now a single ruined tower marks the first settlement of the English on these shores. But we read of no such scourge falling upon Norwich. The voice of joy and health resounded in her tabernacles.


At the period when your town was founded, the danger of savage invasion was great and imminent. Norwich was an out- post on the edge of the wilderness. Beyond stretched, for hun- dreds of miles, the dark, impenetrable forest, the lurking place of the wild beast and the Indian. At any moment bands of ferocious warriors might swoop down upon the little settlement with irresist- ible impetuosity. None could retire to rest with the assurance that their slumbers would not be disturbed by the horrible yells of a ruthless foe. The cottage which the owner was so industriously rearing might ere the morrow be in a blaze; the corn field he was tilling might be moistened with his own blood ; the wife of his bosom might be dragged into captivity, and see with unavailing tears her children massacred before her eyes. Such were the well known perils of the frontier. Ere the town was twenty years old, in 1675, broke out the sanguinary struggle known as king Philip's war. An age not untinctured with superstition saw it presaged by strange sounds and fearful sights from heaven. The reality was sufficiently appalling without the enhancement of preternatural terrors. Over a large part of Massachusetts and Rhode Island it swept as a devouring flame. Brookfield was set on fire. Deerfield


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was burned, and Bloody Brook perpetuates by its name the mas- sacre that reddened its waters. Springfield, Lancaster, Medfield, Weymouth, Groton, Marlboro, were laid in ashes. Tales of slaughter and conflagration, of desperate conflicts and hair breadth 'scapes, fill up that lamentable history. The hunted savage turned to bay, and determined that, if perish he must, he would not perish unavenged. From this desolating scourge Connecticut was en- tirely exempt. Not a village was sacked; not a house burned ; not a drop of blood shed; while in the neighboring colonies it was computed that of the able bodied men one in twenty had fall- en, and an equal proportion of the families were burnt out. Through this whole outburst of savage fury your fathers dwelt in peaceable habitations. And so also during the war of 1756, when European art combined with savage ferocity against the English settlements, and during the more extensive and protracted struggle of the revolution, the same happy immunity was experienced.


While in this security we devoutly recognize the care of an al- mighty Guardian, we may remark, with satisfaction and pleasure, that one instrumentality employed for this end was the humane course pursued by the town toward its Mohegan neighbors. The citizen of Norwich need not blush at recalling the early relations of the town to this aboriginal tribe. Would that we could say the same thing, as citizens of these United States! A sad and pain- ful page will that be to read, that recounts the dealings of civilized races with the natives of this continent. The advent of Christian people has proved anything but a blessing to the children of the soil. The transaction of Naboth's vineyard has been repeated on a large scale. Fraud and oppression have provoked the indignant rage of the red man, and then the explosion of his wrath has been the signal for indiscriminate vengeance and prompt extermination. Neither do pictures of the ferocity and treachery of the native, al- beit dark and truthful, palliate the retaliatory cruelties of enlight- ened and evangelized men.


From the so common ill treatment of the Indian, I think we may claim for our own town an honorable exemption. The settlers came hither as allies and friends. The contiguity of the two people oc- casioned no strifes or quarrels. There may have been cases of in- dividual wrong, but the mutual harmony of the two communities does not appear to have been ever seriously interrupted. When


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Uncas in his old age preferred certain requests, the town granted them at once, on the ground of his being " an old friend." Indeed, the persevering fidelity of the tribe would be unaccountable unless the treatment which they received had been kind and equitable. The Indian is quick to perceive and sure to resent wrong. Yet he never swerved in his attachment to the inhabitants of these border towns; and it is a noteworthy fact, recorded by your faithful his- torian, that while the tribe continued independent, no Mohegan's weapon was ever bathed in the blood of a white man.


But what concern, it may be asked, was exhibited for the spirit- ual welfare of the red man? What was done toward the dis- charge of the immense debt owing from the Christian to the hea- then ? The Gospel is given not as a monopoly to the favored few, but as a world wide benefaction. It is a trust which its recipients are bound to diffuse. Here, too, impartial history can not acquit the white man of culpable indifference and neglect. The poor savage, constantly encroached upon, might too often have exclaimed, "No man careth for my soul !" When Elliot began his labors in Mas- sachusetts, the Indians, we are told, inquired why, if Christianity were so good for the Indian, it had not been spoken of for twenty- six years .* Too general was the disposition to regard the con- version of the aborigines as hopeless.


Here again we are thankful to remark the different spirit mani- fested in the town of Norwich, and the solicitude that has been often shown for the religious welfare of the heathen in this vicinity. The Rev. Mr. Fitch appears to have been a man of true philan- thropy and of enlarged missionary zeal. He made early efforts to instruct the natives in the truth of the Gospel. He took pains to acquire their language, and was a frequent visitor in their wig- wams. He impressed them with his own sincerity and benevolence, so that those who, like Uncas himself, remained obstinate in their unbelief, accorded him their entire confidence, and regarded him with affectionate respect. To their temporal as well as spiritual wants he was always alive. His labors were not unblessed. His converts were formed into a settlement by themselves upon lands which he partly presented, and partly procured for them from the town. These Christianized Indians continued strongly attached to the whites, and many of them enlisted as volunteers in the Louis-


* Hutchinson's History, chap. i, p. 150.


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burg expedition. After the removal of Mr. Fitch by death, the efforts in behalf of the Indians slackened ; but at an early period a school was established in the tribe, which, with occasional interrup- tions, was kept up until the revolution. In this school Samson Occum, a native Mohegan, acquired the rudiments of learning, and at the age of seventeen became impressed by the power of divine truth, under the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Jewett, of New London, another true friend of the Indian. Occum became a missionary among his own people, and was fitted to do the work of an evan- gelist by the Rev. Dr. Wheelock, of Lebanon. This gentleman established a school in which Indian youth might be qualified to carry the Gospel to their countrymen. Occum, in company with the Rev. Mr. Whitaker, pastor of the congregational church in Chelsea Landing, visited England for the purpose of raising funds for the endowment of this school. On this errand they were prospered. Means were furnished liberally ; the school went into successful ope- ration ; about forty Indian youths were trained by Dr. Wheelock, many of whom accomplished much good among their own people. Respecting this school, Whitefield wrote to a friend in England, "How would you have been delighted to have seen Dr. Wheelock's Indians! Such a promising nursery of future missionaries I believe was never seen in New England before. Pray encourage it with all your might." The seminary, as you are aware, was removed to New Hampshire, and grew into Dartmouth college. Through the labors of Occum and other pupils of Dr. Wheelock, many of their people professed the faith of Christ crucified.


While referring to the good accomplished by Dr. Wheelock's benevolent enterprise, I would not omit the name of one of his pupils, the Rev. Samuel Kirkland, who afterward became the faith- ful missionary among the Oneidas, and spent forty years of his life in these self-denying labors. He was the son of the Rev. Daniel Kirkland, the first pastor of the Newent Society, organized in 1723, afterward set off as the town of Lisbon. These early efforts to convert the Indians to the faith of Christ deserve honorable notice. They were evidences of the true spirit of His religion who " came to seek and to save that which was lost."


But the era marked by the zeal and devotion of Wheelock and his pupils passed away, and in the following generation there was either more of difficulty in the way of promoting the spiritual good of the Indian, or less of interest. The Christian part of the tribe


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gradually diminished, and there were no new converts to take the place of the departed. War always exerts a blighting and disas- trous influence upon the cause of religion. Faith and fervor sensibly declined during the revolutionary struggle. By this conflict, as well as by the war of 1756, the Mohegans were thinned. Pestilen- tial diseases had also prevailed among them at different times, and, doubtless, the Indian's worst enemy, the fire water, conspired with other causes of diminution and decay. Forty years ago, there re- mained but a feeble and degraded remnant of this once consider- able community. Only a single Christian survived in the person of a female, aged more than ninety years, a sister of Occum. The tribe seemed fast verging to extinction, and little disposition was manifested by their more favored neighbors to reclaim and rescue them. The sunken miserable descendants of the ancient nobility of the land might be discerned staggering through your streets, ob- jects of pity and disgust. At this sorrowful period, when the light that had once shined in their hovels (the Mohegans) was darkened, one came to their relief, who might have well seemed to their un- taught minds as a messenger from a better world. With an angel's alacrity, and an angel's countenance, she entered upon an angel's work. In 1827 Sarah L. Huntington began her self-denying labors among these neglected outcasts. She traversed, from week to week, the distance of nearly six miles between her home and the Mohe- gan reservation, regardless of summer suns and wintry storms. When strong men would have shrunk from the icy blast, this fair and delicate woman made her way on foot through the drifted . snow to the scene of her toil. She gave up her own pleasant home to spend half her time in the comfortless abodes of the objects of her solicitude. With the aid of a like minded associate, she sus- tained a day school and a Sunday school, instructed the rude females in those womanly arts that make the poorest dwelling cheerful, conveyed to their dark minds with unwearied assiduity the precious truths of the Gospel, and by degrees lifted them above their abject condition to a higher level of knowledge, holiness and hope. In this work there was no attractive romance; distance lent it no en- chantment; the voice of flattering commendation was unheard ; for a time even friendly sympathy seldom cheered her onward. The enterprise was accounted visionary, and unsuited to a female in her circumstances. Rebuffs and hindrances of no common sort were her frequent experience. But the love of Christ, and of the souls


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for which He died, constrained her. She willingly resigned per- sonal convenience and ease, social and domestic enjoyment, and valued religious privileges, that she might by all means save some of these children of ignorance and ill fortune. In due season she proved the promise faithful-" He that goeth forth, even weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." Her devotedness awakened interest in other hearts. Her earnest appeals procured assistance from Gov- ernment. Her heart was gladdened by the erection of a house for the worship of God, and the settlement of a pastor and teacher. Her school responded to her unwearied culture. And when at length the impression of a higher call of duty led her, as the bride of the Rev. Eli Smith, to embark as a missionary for Syria, tears gushed from many dark eyes at the parting, and petitions for God's blessing upon her were uttered by many tongues which she had taught to pray. In the distant Orient lies the mortal part of one, as fair within as she was beautiful in person. Her works have fol- lowed her, and to the visitor who remarks the social condition and Christian privileges of this remnant of a once powerful race, she, being dead, yet speaketh. England hailed with a burst of uni- versal enthusiasm the Christian heroism of Florence Nightingale. Let Norwich treasure the memory of her Sarah Lanman Smith.


Neither does the name of this gifted lady stand alone as a herald of salvation to the distant heathen. There is a long and bright catalogue of faithful men and women who have gone out from your midst to proclaim among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. To enumerate them all would be scarce practicable; to discriminate among them would be unjust. Some are still bearing the burden and heat of the day, spending their energies and lives in this glorious work. A larger number, perhaps, rest from their labors. The heads of some lie low beneath the Syrian palm tree. The graves of others are washed by the surges of the Pacific. In Ceylon and India; in torrid Africa ; in the islands of the Southern Sea; among the native tribes of America; they have unfurled the banner of Jesus. Their precious dust is garnered in either hemi- sphere until the resurrection of the just. A town is rich that has nourished such children. A town is sicher still that has given them up to the service of the Lord of the harvest. May we not trust that the blessing of God will never be withdrawn from her.




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