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 With an appendix, containing historical documents of local interest 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 15
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You will, I think, all agree with me, that even in the brief and imperfect sketch which I have given of major Mason, I have described a hero and a statesman ; a great man and a fit founder of a great nation ; a leader in that class of men who impress their characters on future generations.
He possessed all the elements of greatness. His purposes were high and noble ; his will was strong and determined. He was pos- sessed of remarkable firmness and promptitude, a courage which
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was absolutely fearless, united with a prudence and moderation the most considerate and reflecting. There was a sternness and almost terrible rigor in his character, and yet he was as modest and simple as a child. Never do you hear from him one word of boast- fulness or vanity.
Fierce and unrelenting as he showed himself in the bloody bat- tle with the Pequots, he was yet a man of moderation and a friend of peace; and by his firm, cautious and resolute, and yet pacific course, he prevented, or checked in the outset, every tendency to disorder or violence.
These high qualities made him not only a great soldier, but an admirable legislator and magistrate, and caused him, as we have seen, to be selected as the master mind in all the important meas- ures undertaken by the colony for a long series of years.
Never in his life do we find recorded a single manifestation of an intolerant or persecuting spirit. Envy, hatred and malice, seem- ed to find no place in his heart. He was virtuous in his life and habits, and in the relations of husband and father he was without reproach. His form was suited to the noble and devoted character of the man. He is described as large in size, lofty in stature, and of a commanding presence.
There was certainly nothing feeble or effeminate in his composition; and whatever excess of sternness, or harshness, or impetuosity, there may have been in his character, there was never anything border- ing on tyranny or injustice ; and those rougher and harsher features were moderated and tempered by the sincere faith and humble life of the Christian.
He suffered during the last years of his life with one of the most painful of diseases, and died on the 30th day of January, 1672, in the seventy-second or seventy-third year of his age.
The closing paragraph of the last letter which he wrote to the general assembly of the colony is in the spirit, as it is in the lan- guage, of an apostle. Entreating their remembrance at the throne of Grace, he adds-" Beseeching the God of Peace, who brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of His sheep, to make us perfect in every good word and work to do his will, into whose hands I commend you and your mighty affairs, who am your afflicted, yet real servant,
JOHN MASON." .
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There are other men in the early history of the colonies who are better known to fame, and have filled a larger space on the page of the historian and the poet, but, unless I deceive myself, there is none, of all those bold and fearless men, who deserve so high a place as John Mason. In the number, variety and magnitude of the services performed, if he has any equal, he certainly has no superior.
To none could we with more perfect truth in every respect, apply the beautiful language of one of our own poets :-
" With manly heart, in piety sincere, Faithful in love, in friendship warm and true, In honor stern and chaste, in danger brave; Beloved in life, and sainted in the grave."
NOTE.
I am unwilling to omit a formal acknowledgment of the aid which I have . received in preparing the foregoing address, although in so unimportant and ephemeral a production it scarcely seems necessary.
The reverend Mr. Ellis, in his biography of Mason, contained in Sparks's Bio- graphical Series, so thoroughly explored the sources of information in relation to his life and character, as to leave little to be added by any one who should follow. In preparing the address, I have, as far as possible, had recourse to the original documents and authorities; but my researches have only tended to confirm the opinion which I had formed of the faithfulness and accuracy of Mr. Ellis's narration. I need not add that I have been much indebted to him for the large amount of material thus prepared to my hand.
I have drawn freely from the Connecticut Colonial Records, compiled by J. Hammond Trumbull, esq., and those of the New Haven colony, by C. J. Hoad- ly, esq., and have availed myself not only of their valuable notes to those compilations, but of many useful suggestions which they so kindly made, and which their familiar and accurate knowledge of the early history of the state enabled them to furnish.
To Learned Hebard, of Lebanon, I am also indebted for valuable original papers.
At the conclusion of this address, the masonic fraternity formed in procession and left the tent.
. The following ode, composed by Miss Josephine Tyler, was then sung.
·
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THE NORWICH JUBILEE.
TO THE FUTURE INHABITANTS OF OUR NORWICH HOME.
MUSIC COMPOSED BY H. W. AMADEUS BRALE, OF NORWICH.
Andante.
Soprano.
4
Sons of home, who, far in distance 'Mid the future's dark mists wait, A
re -
Alto.
Pia.
Cres.
For.
pp
Tenor.
Sons of home, who, far in distance 'Mid the future's dark mists wait, A re -
Bass.
veil - le to existence At the sure decree of fate, Forward bending, thoughts extending, We the
For.
pp
15
veil - le to existence At the sure decree of fate, Forward bending, thoughts extending, We the
.
·
ear - ly greet the late; Forward bending, thoughts extending, We the early greet the late.
ear - ly greet the late ; Forward bending, thoughts extending, We the early greet the late.
When beside these lovely rivers, We, no more, as now, shall tread, When our native sunlight quivers O'er us, resting with the dead, Backward turn ye, and discern ye How the seasons with us sped.
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Guard the treasures we transmit you-
Virtue cherished ; knowledge free ;
Well of friendship's claims acquit you ; Better act your part than we ; Chide us gently, reverently, Let our ashes honored be.
Coming years may ope before you Visions new, to us unseen,
Yet, of grandest, proudest glory, Wisdom shall not change her mien ;
All who love her, one shall prove her, She shall be what she hath been.
Ere yon hills their stern crests lifted, Wisdom high in light abode --
And should each firm base be rifted, At the august Maker's nod,
All the ages, she engages, Shall yield up her sons to God !
The president then introduced Donald G. Mitchell, esq., who proceeded to deliver the following
ADDRESS.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I shall not detain you long : indeed, after the absorption of all the salient topics of the day by the gentlemen who have already so ably addressed you, I should be at a loss to fill up even the half hour which is allotted me, did I not feel that the occasion itself is the real speaker, and we only the interpreters; every successive oration or poem, being only the passing of a new set of fingers over the keys of the great centennial organ whose music is swelling and surging on our ears to-day.
And what is the occasion that has drawn together such a vast crowd of young and old, of citizens and strangers, as Norwich never welcomed before ? Only a birthday ; or rather let me say, a great golden wedding. Two hundred years ago this month, since the masculine energy and vigor of the puritan was married, under God, to that little mountain bride, which from the beginning lay waiting here, between the rivers and the plains. Yet what is there in the beginning of a town that should warrant such festivities? Do not all towns have their beginnings, either near by, or remote ?
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Is it wonderful that a company of sturdy settlers, having bargained for lands hereabouts, some two centuries since, should have de- fended their own, and dug, and planted, and built, and worshiped, and left a posterity to dig, and plant, and build, and worship after them? Is not now the story repeating itself all over the world ? Long before the days of Mason, or of Fitch, the Mohegans or the Pequots delved, and planted, and worshiped in their way, and after them other Pequots, or other Mohegans. To-day one shape of shadow which the drifting clouds of centuries cast upon the hills, and to-morrow another shape of shadow.
The mere fact of settlement is nothing; there is no distinction in being born ; the question is, what growth, what development, what fulfillment of promise? And all anniversaries have their force and their joy in this-that they are the registers of growth, and not the registers of decay. The seed you throw into the ground must germinate by a law of nature, and must stretch up a little bundle of leaves to the light and air ; no thanks to you for this. But if you feed and nourish and protect, so that it comes to a great wealth of leaf and stem, and finally from a fully compacted maturity throws down showers of golden fruitage, then your pride and your joy have cause. So to-day we rejoice in the beginning of white homes on these plains and river banks, because energy and toil, and faith and courage, have assured constant and teeming growth ; and the tree whose rootlets are in the dim and shadowy past-lo, on all your hills, the golden fruitage !
I say that we have cause for this festive rejoicing of ours, in our growth; and yet if you do not feel to-day, looking on this sea of glad faces, or walking these streets filled with almost princely houses, that the town of Norwich has made growth enough, and set up trophies enough, and nurtured rare children enough, to make her birthday a festival, why, I shall not try to prove it to. you. If you can stand in the full rays of the sun and yet deny their warmth, I am not prepared to prove that there is any warmth in them. I address myself rather to those who are hearty believ- ers in the propriety and justice of this commemorative fete, and shall ask them to go back with me for a few moments to that old rallying date of 1659; appearing to many, I dare say, a kind of mythical epoch; toward which on such commemorative days we strain back our imaginations, and seem to see, as it were in some mental kaleidoscope, the swart faces of savages, steel head-pieces,
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black coats of puritans, tomahawks, beads, black letter Bibles, hard work, and faith in God.
Now I shall not attempt to clear up this delicious confusion by any speciality of detail, but hope only to fasten on your minds, by one or two broad historic marks, the actual limitations and relations of that old date of 1659.
. We weigh dates by the great facts that belong to them; and what was the rest of the world doing at the time our sturdy settlers paddled up the Mohegan river, and planted Norwich ?
In the old country, of which at that time the colonists were all loving children, the truculent Oliver Cromwell had just closed his great career; Richard, the son, was too feeble to wear the mantle of such a father, and had given over the attempt. The shrewd general Monk commanded the British army, and the army held the fate of the country in its hands. There were plottings and counter plottings; Algernon Sidney and John Milton working vainly for a republic are thrust aside; the line of kings is restored; and perhaps at the very time that the Norwich settlers are marking out their home fields, crowding through alder bushes and swamps, the vain, irresolute, amiable, good-for-nothing Charles II is journeying from Dover to London, amid all manner of rejoicing-guns and drums, and the waving of banners. In France the weak Louis XIII, who ruled by the brain of Richelieu, has gone by, and the great Louis Quatorze has just come upon the stage ; still under the tutelage of Cardinal Mazarin ; but yet he has fairly inaugurated that great reign, which is to carry France to the highest splendor through the extremest lusts of civilization. But in justice to. France it must not be forgotten that while our puritan settlers were building their first meeting house upon the green, men of French birth and lineage, such as Le Moyne and Mensard, were toiling through the silent forests of the West, far as the shores of Michi- gan, carrying knowledge of the Christian faith, and exploring and mapping out the resources of the continent. Poor Spain, which in times past had sent over the ocean, a Columbus and Pizarro and Ponce de Leon, and which had illustrated our colonial annals the century before by that barbaric and daring march of De Soto through the everglades of Florida, far as the Mississippi-the golden crosses and the iron spear-heads clashing together in the cane-brakes -- which had founded the oldest town on our Atlantic
23
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border, St. Augustine-was now being disabused of her golden dreams; she was wearied by long wars with France and England, in the course of which she had lost her island of Jamaica, and was feeling the approaches of that insidious decay which is feeding upon her still. The little Netherlands, near to Dover and to the French coast, had grown bravely from that beginning of inde- pendence wrought out by William the Silent, a century before, . and was now almost a match for England on the sea. It was the day of the Van Tromps, and the Ruyters, and the Dewitts; and the Dutch flag was flying on Batavia and Java in the east, and from the heights of Good Hope, and from that little promontory of land which we now call the battery of New York; indeed, there were Dutch houses at this time in New Amsterdam, built by Dutch artisans and defended by Dutch valor, which would rival the best houses of the Massachusetts colony. As for the two states, with which, as colonists, we were to be brought more immediately in contact, (I speak of France and England,) I do not know how I can better epitomize and illustrate their respective stages of civili- zation at the date of 1659, than by saying that just at the time when the first psalms of thanksgiving were rising in the first Nor- wich church, the great dramatist of France, Moliere, was wander- ing through the provinces, playing his own comedies to crowded and delighted houses. And, across the channel, the great British poet, John Milton-quite another style of man-was living in a back street of London, and sitting in his doorway, clad in a sober suit of gray-the very type and image of puritan simplicity, and of puritan faith-was turning his sightless eyes to Heaven, and re- volving in the recesses of his mind, those solemn thoughts and that splendid imagery, which in due course of time were to be em- broidered-as it were by angel fingers-upon that noblest of Christian poems, the immortal epic, Paradise Lost.
Meantime there is growing up between the Yantic and She- tucket, the material for a homelier epic. Sixty, seventy and eighty days only bring news of what is happening across the water; and it matters little to our sturdy colonists if Charles the II, or if Richard Cromwell is wearing the purple, if only good- man Elderkin has built his mill according to contract, and the town surveyors keep the cart path in good order, from the cove below, along the plain to the meeting house above, and to the
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store. The clergyman is giving good, honest doctrine; Uncas, below upon the river, is a good friend, and keeps a sharp look out for intruders. The swamps are yielding gradually to cultivation. The worshipful Mr. Winthrop has secured a charter from the king, which gives all needed independence, and, with slip-shod indulgence, extends the boundaries of the Connecticut colony from the Narragansett river to the shores of the Pacific-rather too liberal to be lasting, but forming the basis of that claim which in after years secured to the state its admirable school fund. And the same worshipful Mr. Winthrop, being governor, is occasionally waited upon by the active men of our little township-deacon Si- mon Huntington, or lieutenant Thomas Leffingwell, or perhaps the grand major Mason, who report progress to the governor, and listen to his after dinner discourses about my lord Clarendon, or sir Isaac Newton, or John Milton, or Robert Boyle, all of whom he has personally known, and with some of whom he still corres- ponds.
The quieter men at home, who do not dine with the governor, are laying out new highways, or pushing a little trade down the river and along the coasts. There are no savage onslaughts; the worst en- emies the town knows, for a long succession of years, are a short crop, or an occasional wolf, or a rattlesnake, or some drunken friend of an Indian, or some new clergyman who does not hold precisely the right views in regard to the Saybrook platform. Bating these little diversons, life seems almost Arcadian here as we look back upon it. The cattle are feeding and lowing in the new pasture grounds; the red blush of the English fruit trees is beginning to show itself in all the gardens; the virgin meadows along the Yan- tic are filled with flowers that perfume the air; the brooks, fuller and more numerous before the forests are cut off, frolic down all the hill sides ; and of a Sabbath morning, while the dew is still spark- ling on the grass and on the tree tops, the church bell from the rocky height yonder-tone after tone-tone after tone-spends its sweet gushes of sound over the roof of the farthest settler.
Thus a hundred years or more pass on; the king Philip battles, and the long stretch of the old French and Indian war, bring their train of mourners; but Haverhill, and Deerfield, and Fort Ed- ward are very far away from the homes of Norwich ; as far on the score of news as Pike's Peak or the California trail are now. The
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growth of the town is not seriously interrupted. The original set- tlers have multiplied ; new people have come in from year to year by vote. Death has, indeed, drawn a little array of recruits to one side, but courage and faith and work and hope are still the masters of the situation. And in this hundred years or more there have been changes in England. Sidney and Milton (whom we saw sitting on his door step) have both gone long ago to their reward. Charles II, and Clarendon, and Buckingham, and Nell Gwynne and the rest are sleeping a long sleep in the pages of the biographical dictionaries. It is the time of the Georges and of the elder Pitt, and of that dogmatic Dr. Johnson, who thought the king could screw down the colonies by as many taxes as he chose, and of a greater man than Dr. Johnson-I mean Edmund Burke- who thought the king could not screw down the colonies just as he chose. Over in France, the reign of Louis XIV is ended, and the king that the courtiers fancied too grand to die, is as dead as any pauper in a Norwich grave. There has come after him a weaker and a worse king, Louis XV, who is ruling jointly with the madame Pompadour, while Voltaire, with his sardonic smile and his witty flings at Providence and simple faith, is not only a writer, but a power in France, and he is leading on very swiftly with the rythmical cadence of his artful and sonorous periods toward the bloody gulf of revolution. In the scientific coteries of Paris there is just now an American name well known-that of Benja- min Franklin. And there are other names well known at home, such as Israel Putnam and Patrick Henry, who has made a speech before the burgesses of Virginia which has found echo in every valley of New England. There is living somewhere in his neigh- borhood a tall, quiet, sedate country gentleman, looking after his estates just now, whose name is colonel George Washington, and who, not very well known as yet to Norwich people, will pres- ently make himself known and make himself felt all through the country, like a great rain in time of drought. And there is a certain boy born in Norwich a little before this, (I have a sad story to tell here) whose father had come from Rhode Island, and who was of a somewhat doubtful character, falling eventually into. dis- solute habits and poverty ; but he had married a worthy woman ; and the boy, as such things will happen, had inherited all of the mother's energy and none of her goodness, and all of the father's
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deviltry with none of his weakness; the boy's name was Benedict Arnold. I dislike to name it; but truth is truth, and history is history. He can not stay in the drug store of the Messrs. Lathrop, where he has been placed-too bad for that. He runs away and enlists for the French war. Ah! if some friendly bullet had slain him there ! But no; Providence has kept him for a warning to all men everywhere, that courage and ambition and energy are nothing, and worse than nothing, except they be governed by an honest purpose, and tempered by a sterling humanity.
More honor to-day from us who are gathered here, to goodman John Elderkin, who built his mill according to contract, and faith- fully ground his grist, than to the great major general Arnold, in British short clothes, crowned with infamy. These memorial days are not the glorifiers only, they are also the avengers. If Norwich, in an awkward monent, has given birth to a villain, let us not be silent in this the day of her rejoicing, but let the world know that we are second to none in giving him our scorn.
Shall we take a glance at the town in those times ? Anywhere from 1750 to 1770.
The little sloop Defiance is making her trips with credit and dispatch. There is a thriving ship trade at the landing; occasion- ally a fleet of twenty or thirty sail; or a stout packet-Ebenezer Fitch, commander-is up for London. There is a flourishing busi- ness with the West Indies; long teams come in from the adjoin- ing towns, blocking up the roads in the neighborhood of the town green, bartering their produce for West India molasses, or possi- bly some tight little jug of West India rum. Houses are scattered up and down, from the landing to the up town plain. The gener- ous old fire places are not all gone by, and sitting in some corner of one of these, on a winter night, it may happen that some trav- eler or sailor man just arrived by London packet, entertains an earnest, curious company, with a story of a trip to Paris, and of the shady avenues of Versailles, and the carriages of the great king covered with gold, and fountains that throw water a hundred feet in the air! I say the fire places are not all gone, though a certain Dr. Franklin has latterly contrived stoves, which are said to make ~ a wonderful economy of heat. And the same gentleman, it is whispered, in well read circles, has learned to catch the lightning and to bottle it.
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Some adventurous young fellow, disposed to make a dash, is fined heavily for riding to church in a gig, and disturbing the sobriety of the congregation. The women go to church in plain homespun-good, innocent creatures, never having thought of making a personal exhibition of themselves. Ah, if good old Dr. Lord, who was preaching in that day, though he was past seventy ; if good old Dr. Lord, I say, could have seen some fine woman of our day, sailing up the center aisle, swaying along under a great breadth of silken canvas, I think he would have urged with new unction, "straight is the gate and narrow is the way,"-that the good people follow. [This hit at the prevailing fashion was re- ceived with the most boisterous relish, and considerable time had to be allowed to let the general laughter subside.]. But Dr. Lord's is not the only church in these times; there has grown up below the hill a thriving little village, called Chelsea, which has its own meeting house, and church members, not very harmonious as yet, a certain Mr. Whitaker being the bone of a rather sharp theological contention ; but who knows but the little parish may come in time to rival the mother church upon the green ?
And on the heights of Franklin, which was then but a corner of the nine miles square, there is another orthodox place of wor- ship, whose quaint architecture withstood the bleak northwesters down to our own time; and I can well remember, though my memory does not run so far back as that of a good many I see about me ; I can well remember, I say, treading very awe strick- en over the broad stone boulder which formed the stepping stone, and peering through the bobbin balustrade that ran round the tops of the square pews, at the huge sounding board, with its won- derful carving, and the gray velvet cushions of the desk; and listening to the quavering falsetto tones of the little white haired old gentleman, in black knee-breeches, who maintained, there upon h's mountain altar, to the very last, all the fire and energy of the puritan spirit.
There were two good taverns in those days upon the town green ; and there was a paper mill in the valley of the Yantic, with Chris- topher Leffingwell, esq., for proprietor ; there was a stage coach running to Providence; there was a bridge built after long alter- cation over the foot of the cove. And though it sounds like an Arabian story, I must relate to the young people of Norwich that
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