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 With an appendix, containing historical documents of local interest 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 25
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27
So with
" Sports that wrinkled care derides,"
closed the day.
The half is not said, yet I feel that I am abusing your patience. When did a native ever begin to talk of Norwich and know when to stop ?
From the time the Jewish maidens hung their harps on the willows, and sang of Jerusalem, to the lay of the sweetest. modern minstrel, " My native land" has been a cherished theme.
Thus with singular pleasure have I run over the scenes of my childhood, and endeavored to sketch, with rapid pencil, " Norwich up town, the plain, and round the square," as memory recalls it, seventy years ago, which, with cordial good wishes, is respectfully submitted by
CHARLES MINER.
John A. Rockwell, L. F. S. Foster, Jedediah Huntington, Wolcott Hunting- ton, and others of committee on invitation.
FROM HON. WILLIAM H. GIST, GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA.
COLUMBIA, South Carolina, July 22d, 1859.
MY DEAR SIR :- The polite invitation of the committee having charge of the arrangement for the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the settle- ment of the town of Norwich, Connecticut, to attend, on the 7th and 8th days of September next, and participate with them in the festivities of the occasion, has, through your kindness, been duly received. Nothing would afford me more real pleasure than to be with you on that occasion; but our constitution expressly forbids the "executive to leave the state, upon pain of vacating his office ;" and you see at once a satisfactory reason for my absence. I can not, however, allow this occasion to pass without expressing my gratifica- tion at this evidence of fraternal feeling that exists between the two sections of the confederacy ; and I must be permitted to hope that a brighter day is dawn- ing upon us. If I know my own heart, every pulsation beats responsive to the sentiment, " A constitutional union for ever." And although the north and south have been alienated from each other by unwise counsels, and seemingly jealous of, and hostile to, each other, I hope the recollection that we are the heirs of a common heritage of liberty, won with toil and suffering, by a common ancestry, will cause us to bury the past in more than lethean forgetfulness, and again unite in a career of greatness and glory. Let us have no "higher law,"
e
1
e e
y
278
THE NORWICH JUBILEE.
north or south, but let us all frown down any and every attempt to violate, evade, or disregard the constitution and laws of the country. By pursuing this course, the imagination of man, in its wildest flights of fancy, can form no con- ception of what we would be fifty or one hundred years hence. Divided and distracted as we have been in our councils, "there are none so poor as to do us reverence." United like a band of brothers, we could give law to nations and defy a world in arms. That such may be our destiny is my ardent wish and sincere prayer.
With sentiments of respect and esteem, I am yours, &c.
WILLIAM H. GIST.
FROM HON. WILLIAM WOODBRIDGE, EX-GOVERNOR OF MICHIGAN.
DETROIT, August 20th, 1859.
To HIS EXCELLENCY WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM, NORWICH, CONNECTICUT.
SIR :- I have received your esteemed favor of July last, covering the cir- cular of the committee, and inviting me to assist at the proposed "two hun- dredth anniversary" of the settlement of the town of Norwich.
I should have done myself the honor to reply to it at an earlier day, but for the hope I indulged that my health whuld have justified my acceptance of it. That hope, but faint in the beginning, I have felt constrained to relinquish, and it becomes proper that with the expression of my deep sense of the honor conferred upon me by the invitation, I should now most respectfully decline it.
As a native of that picturesque locality, it would delight me, if it were possi- ble, again to visit it. Its high acclivities, its moss covered rocks, its beautiful valleys and its clear and limpid waters, are still very dear to me; and to have been enabled to renew, by personal attendance, those associations of my early boyhood, which, through so many years, have attracted me to it as my native home, would have given me great satisfaction; and among other incidents of interest to me, I might again, perhaps, have taken by the hand my congress- ional friend, also of Norwich, the talented and the brilliant Albert H. Tracy ; and have rambled once more, too, over well remembered fields, with the friend of my boyhood and of my riper years, the eloquent conductor of the " Village Record," the accomplished "historian of Wyoming," the distinguished member of congress, the amiable, the excellent, Charles Miner ! But all these anticipa- tions and conjectured sources of pleasure must now be given up. For against the infirmities of sickness and the decrepitude of age, who can contend ?
I was born amidst the convulsions of the revolution. Every thing about me then bore the impress of that great struggle; it was a struggle for independ- ence and for freedom ! My father was a "minute man ;" my paternal and my maternal grandfathers were both distinguished as friends of free government ; such, indeed, was the character of all about me! And with such surroundings in my youth, and with such lessons as they taught, how could it have been otherwise than that I should have caught and appropriated something of the spirit which every thing about me breathed ? And after all, sir, with too little
279
APPENDIX.
individual merit, are we not, in the providence of God, very much the crea- tures of circumstance ?
But however that may be-and it matters little, I suppose, what may be thought of it-it is not the less incumbent upon me to thank you for that spirit of courtesy and of kindness, which pervades the communication with which you have honored me. Be pleased then, sir, to accept this expression of my thanks, and believe me to be, with much respect,
Your obedient servant,
WILLIAM WOODBRIDGE.
FROM REV. ERASTUS WENTWORTH, MISSIONARY TO CHINA.
Foo-CHow, China, June 15th, 1859.
GENTLEMEN :- After looking forward with pleasurable anticipations for many years, to personal participation in the celebration of the bi-centennial birthday of Norwich, the place associated with my earliest and dearest recollections, I find myself, on the eve of that event, sixteen thousand miles away, and effect- ually debarred from the intellectual treats and social festivities promised by the occasion. It will be some compensation for the disappointment, and no slight gratification, if I may be allowed to contribute by letter, a trifle to the interest of the family gathering. It will not, at such a time, be deemed egotistical in me to state, that I spent the first eighteen years of my life in Norwich ; that my father was born there seventy years, and my grandfather a hundred and seven years ago ; and that my family name, by no means an obscure one, in either English or American history, has stood on the town records for one hundred and eighty, out of the two hundred years you are now assembled to commemo- rate.
Old Norwich !- who that has been a denizen of the place, especially in early youth, can ever forget its winding valleys and rugged hills; its stony pastures and green meadows, enameled with violets, and buttercups, and daisies, and goldened with cowslips and dandelions ; its spreading elms and sycamores ; its clear streams, alternating with babbling shallows and cool depths, overhung with willows and alders, and the favorite haunts of roach, trout and pickerel; its gray precipices and romantic falls; its striking contrasts of village quiet and country seat retirement, with commercial activity and city bustle. All these can never be forgotten. With me, neither the pellucid St. Lawrence or noble Mississippi, nor those floating seas of alluvion, mightiest in the brotherhood of rivers in the northern hemisphere, the Missouri and Yang-tse-keang, have ever served to obliterate, or even to dim the images of the Yantic, Shetucket and Thames. The mammoth tree growths of the prairie bottoms of the west, or the giant banians that greet my vision as I write, have never overshadowed the memory of Norwich sycamores and elms. The billowy seas of granitic elevations which stand, a wall of azure, about the valley of the Min, and roll away in end- less undulations over the entire surface of the Fo-ke-en province, are not so charming to me as the hills of New England. Society changes, but these natural features remain, and impress themselves upon the minds of successive generations.
of
8
er
ne d-
t;
en he ile
st
1 e
hd
t. d r
.
280
THE NORWICH JUBILEE.
My earlier recollections of Norwich antedate steamboats and railroads, canals and telegraphs, temperance and anti-slavery. The Yantic, was Backus's iron works ; the Falls, Hubbard's paper mills; Greeneville, pastures on the banks of the Shetucket, in which curious antiquarians sought for the pile of stones that marked the grave of. Miantonomoh. The first and second congregational, were · the only edifices really worth the name of churches; and I remember a Christ- mas pilgrimage on foot from Bean Hill to the Landing to hear the little organ, the only one in town, in the little wooden episcopal church, that preceded the present elegant structure. Elder Sterry, baptist, had a little wooden chapel at the Landing, where, as one of his sons said to me in our schoolboy days, " He preached for nothing and furnished his own meeting house." Elder Bentley had a little church on the wharf bridge, which took a fancy to go to sea in the great freshet of 1815. Court house and jail were up town, and the stocks and whip- ping post still maintained their position at the corner of the old court house. I have seen a woman in jail for debt, and heard my grandmother tell of the last woman who was taken to the whipping post, and how the people laughed at the sheriff for merely going through the forms of the law, actually flogging the fair culprit " with a tow string."
In my youth, Strong and Goddard were at the head of the bar, and gentle parson Paddock, earnest parson Mitchell, and the solemn parson Strong, occu- pied the sacred desk. Through life, I have counted it no small privilege to have received the first rudiments, of education in Norwich. I mean those initial lessons which preceded colleges and schools, and the rudimental train- ing of pedagogues Smith, Bliss, and Lester, of cruel memory. A child is ed- ucated by all those with whom he comes in contact, and the personal excel- lences, defects, and peculiarities of his earliest acquaintances become his models and measuring rods for all the rest of mankind. Bonaparte said, "The world is governed by nicknames;" and the nicknames of a community are a surer index of the character of the wearers than cognomens of illustrious descent or appellations bestowed by godfathers and godmothers. While a few of the nicknames which still cling to the memory of men long since passed from the stage of action, recall eccentricities, peculiarities, and in some instances the meannesses with which our humanity is afflicted, the great majority of them revive the memory of nobleness and excellences worthy of remembrance and worthy of imitation. It is more blessed to be surrounded by good men than great men, by examples of worth than displays of wealth. My memory retains a whole gallery of daguerreotypes of those whom I loved or hated, rev- erenced or despised, in the days of my youth. I would like to pay a passing tribute of respect to those who for eminent virtues commanded my most un- qualified regard. I can only mention parsons Strong and Austin, judges Spalding, Shipman and Hyde, Erastus Huntington, James Stedman, and dea- con Charles Lathrop, all of whom have gone to the land from which there is no return. It would be easy to extend the list, but my limits will not allow. I can not refrain from a passing tribute to the memory of two of my school mates, recently deceased-reverend Z. H. Mansfield and honorable Thomas L. Harris. I would like also to extend the compliments of the occasion to my old Nor-
281
APPENDIX.
wich schoolmates, John T. Wait, J. G. Lamb, Rev. William Havens, Hon. H. P. Haven, Huntingtons, Tracys, and others whom I may not here enumerate. I was in Shanghai last year, and on a rude wooden slab at the head of a recent grave I read, " CHARLES BAILEY, Norwich, Connecticut," son of the old up town jail keeper, and seaman on one of our ships of war. In what part of the world do not the bones of the sons and daughters of Norwich repose! Black eyed " Tom Leffingwell" lies with his father at the bottom of the ocean, and curly headed "Bob Lee," slain by Camanches on the plains of Texas, while Ceylon embalms, with the fragrance of Paradise, the remains and memories of Harriet Joanna and Charlotte H. Lathrop. How brief the space over which the life of any one individual extends in the history of our beloved town. Perhaps not a single soul survives that saw its last centennial. Will any single soul live to connect this centennial with that of 1959? This occasion should not pass away without providing enduring monuments of itself for the use of coming generations. If the idea has not already occurred, as I presume it has, I would suggest the erection of a centennial hall of Norwich granite, fire proof, if possi- ble, to contain a museum of town and state relics, and mementos of the past, of our fathers, of the Indian tribes, and of the present generation. In this way, 1859 may shake hands with 1959, especially if scaled boxes and coffers containing the sayings and doings, speeches and sentiments of this day, are se- cured there, to be opened only on the occasion of the next centennial. Books, records, portraits, &c., would find their appropriate place there, and it would become the favorite resort of all those who reverence the past and desire to de- duce from it useful lessons for the future.
With a sigh for the Norwich that was, a greeting to the Norwich that is, and a hail of welcome for the Norwich that is to be, I remain, gentlemen,
Sincerely yours, ERASTU'S WENTWORTII.
EARLY PHYSICIANS OF NORWICH.
BY ASHBEL WOODWARD, M. D.
PRESIDENT OF THE CONNECTICUT MEDICAL SOCIETY.
Of the physicians generally of the American colonial period, little is now known. As a class they were unambitious to participate in the deliberations of public councils, or take the lead in advocacy of popular measures, so that only few names became prominently identified with local or general history. Many devoted to the duties of their calling the undivided energies of long and labo- rious lives, reaping only a scanty pecuniary recompense for the present, and no place at all in the grateful recollection of posterity. Respected and loved by cotemporaries with that respect and love which strikes such deep root and blos- soms so beautifully in the chamber of suffering, they were too frequently for- gotten when their own generation had passed away.
No systematic account of the early physicians of Norwich has hitherto been given. The materials for such a work are fragmentary, and collectible only with great difficulty and labor. Public records afford little assistance, while the
36
le
a at
p- I st at pe
to se
d-
er
ng
els
nd an
he
he he
ges
I es ris. or-
t
2
282
THE NORWICH JUBILER.
scanty aid they might otherwise render is still further impaired by the general absence of the titular appendage from the names. Another peculiar circumstance of the present case cuts us off from one source of information, which, in many localities, is highly fruitful. During the early colonial period (as has almost al- ways been true in the infancy of nations,) the professions of theology and medicine frequently met in the hands of the same incumbent, the cure of fleshly ills being esteemed an incidental concomitant to the cure of the more dangerous maladies of the soul. These clerical physicians, exercising their double vocation amid a people justly celebrated for affectionate attachment to the expounders of the divine oracles, were often minutely remembered and described for after time, in virtue of the popularity of the priestly office. But in Norwich, the two professions were kept entirely distinct from the beginning, so that ecclesiastical writings in all the multifarious forms they then assumed, are wholly unavailing to the biographer of her early doctors.
Of some of these, almost the only memorials are the precarious inscriptions of moss grown and neglected tomb stones. Others whose days of toil and nights of watching in alleviation of human pain were otherwise forgotten, still live in the hearts of their descendants, and in traditions floating downward in the same current with their blood. The names of several enter largely into cotemporary records, whereby we may infer the prominency of their influence, though the various proceedings they shared in, and the trusts imposed upon them must here be passed in silence as too common place for exhumation in our brief trib- ute to their memory. Yet it should not be forgotten that, as a citizen, one may be pre-eminently useful, and still perform few actions whose recital either in- terests the attention or quickens the pulses of posterity.
The medical profession in ancient Norwich was more than respectable; was distinguished. As practitioners and teachers, several of its members had few superiors on the continent. As reformers of abuses and fearless advocates of salutary though unpopular changes, they held place in the foremost rank. In the year 1763, prior to any attempts at medical organization elsewhere on the continent, Theophilus Rogers, with ten others, petitioned the colonial legislature for the charter of a medical society. This movement, made in advance of the age, was negatived in the lower house. Still it indicates one of the most important crises in the history of the profession. The presentation of that unpretending Norwich memorial, was the initiative step in a series of efforts which have since resulted in the permanent establishment of many flourishing state associations, and within a few years of the national society, which has contributed in a high degree to purify the ranks, elevate the aims, and make a real unit and fraternity of the profession in America. In the attempt alluded to, it was not the object of the petitioners to secure any immunities or exclusive privileges for themselves, but to protect the health of the community by additional securities. At that time there was no authority in the state legally qualified to confer degrees in a way to discriminate the man of solid acquirements from the ignorant pretender. Many, without either study or natural aptitude for the exercise of the calling, by shameless vauntings imposed upon a credulous populace, and by assuming their title brought discredit upon honorable men. Our Norwich memorialists
283
APPENDIX.
wished to strike at the root of this disgusting and rampant empiricism. To shut down the flood gates through which their ranks were inundated by incessant streams of ignorance and charlatanry, to establish a standard of education by making a respectable amount of attainments an indispensable requisite to the acquirement of the title, they asked for the appointment of a committee legally authorized to examine and approve candidates, if found qualified. Thus Nor- wich, though unsuccessful in her first attempt, was the pioneer in the cause of American medical organization.
As early as 1785, when there were but two medical schools in the whole country, Drs. Philip Turner and Philemon Tracy issued proposals for the de- livery of a series of lectures to students on " Anatomy, Physic, Surgery, &c." As additional incentives to induce the " rising sons of Æsculapius" to improve the facilities proffered to them, they tendered the free use of a " complete library of ancient and modern authors," together with " the advantage of being present at capital operations, dissections, &c." The prospectus goes on to state, " Every attention will be paid by the subscribers to render their lectures both useful and pleasing, their constant endeavors will be to facilitate the instruction, direct with propriety the judgment, correct the errors, and increase the knowl- edge of the pupils in their study."
Another interesting point in the history of Norwich was the long and bitter controversy between the advocates and opponents of inoculation for small pox. At that period this disease was the most formidable scourge of humanity. There was no place of refuge from its ravages, nor means of mitigating the fury of its poison. Inoculation having been practiced with success in Turkey, had recent- ly, through Cotton Mather's influence, been introduced into the colonies. Com- mencing in 1760, for many years several of the more prominent physicians of Norwich struggled assiduously to establish the practice against the inveterate prejudices of the community. A popular vote, authorizing pest houses, passed after the lapse of a third of a century, shows how obstinately the public con- tended before yielding to the superior arguments of the profession.
Drs. DANIEL and JOSHUA LATHROP were successively the most celebrated druggists of their day in Connecticut. Importing medicines directly from Europe, they not only supplied a wide area of country about home, but also re- ceived orders from New York. Both of these gentlemen were gradnates of Yale. Both were distinguished for benevolence of heart, urbanity of inanner, and sincere piety.
Our preliminary remarks applying to the profession of Norwich collectively, by obviating the necessity of repetition, will enable us to make our sketches of individuals brief, and in these we shall confine ourself to the first one hun- dred and fifty of the two hundred years.
Dr. SOLOMON TRACY was among the earliest, if not the very first physician of the infant settlement of Norwich. He was the fifth son of lieutenant Thomas Tracy, one of the thirty-five original proprietors of Norwich, whither he came with his father, brothers and sister, in 1660, at the age of nine years.
He married first, November 23d, 1676, Sarah, daughter of deacon Simon Hunt- ington, by whom he had daughter Lydia and son Simon. He married second, April 6, 1686, Sarah (Bliss) widow of Thomas Sluman, and had son Solomon.
S
of
f 8
S
e e
e
f
·
e
284
THE NORWICH JUBILEE.
The accomplished historian of Norwich says of him, " He must be remember- ed among the solid men of the first generation, very active in all town affairs, constable in 1681, selectman for a long course of years, and always chosen for what was called the east end of the town." He probably resided, therefore, at or near the old homestead of his father east of the meeting house.
He died July 9, 1732.
Limiting the active professional career of Dr. Tracy to fifty years, the de- · scendants of lieutenant Thomas Tracy, in the male line, have held distinguished rank as physicians for more than one hundred and seventy-five of the two hun- dred years that Norwich has had a history.
Dr. CALEB BUSHNELL, son of captain Richard Bushnell, is the next physician of whom any account has been discovered. He was born May 26, 1679, and mar- . ried January 9, 1699-1700, Ann Leffingwell, having by her a son and five daughters. It is believed that his early location was near the residence of D. . W. Coit, esq. At a later period he probably removed to the Landing.
Captain Bushnell, as he was more generally called, died February 18, 1724-5, having accumulated by sagacity in business, an estate of about £4,000.
He was " townsman" in 1709 and 1713, besides holding, from time to time, other public trusts.
Dr. DAVID HARTSHORN was the sixth son of Thomas Hartshorn, of Reading, Massachusetts, where he was born 1656. He married, 1680, Rebecca Batchelor, and had sons Jonathan, David, Samuel, and Ebenezer, and daughter Rebecca.
He first located in business in his native town, where he continued till about the year 1700, when he removed to Norwich West Farms. In this new field of labor he was highly esteemed as a physician, and was a leading man both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs. He was also one of the original deacons in the church, and generally held in trust the funds of the society. Dr. Hartshorn died November 3d, 1738.
Dr. JOHN SABIN was born in Pomfret, Windham county, Connecticut, 1696. Removing early to Portapoug, he acquired an extensive practice. Upon his tomb stone it is stated that he was captain of one of the Norwich foot com- panies. The fact that he was several times deputed as agent to transact impor- tant business with the legislature, shows that he was held in estimation. He married for second wife, Nov. 3d, 1730, Hannah Starr, of Dedham ; died March 2d, 1742.
One of his descendants is now a member of the United States senate.
Dr. THOMAS WORDEN should, perhaps, be noticed among the early physicians of Norwich. He was a son of Samuel Worden*, and lived on Plain Hills. Al- though his advantages were slender and his location obscure, and although his death occurred one hundred years ago (1759,) yet his name has been handed down to our own time, in connection with a prescription which he originally used.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.