USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Plymouth > The Tories of Chippeny hill, Connecticut; a brief account of the Loyalists of Bristol, Plymouth and Harwinton, who founded St. Matthew's church in East Plymouth in 1791 > Part 3
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It lies in the Ledges, and is backed by a tall cliff, fac- ing southeast toward Chippeny Hill, which an agile climber can scale in less than a minute. Ferns, and briers, and sweet smelling things that you will fail to recall the names of, grow over the entrance. Within, the impression is that of considerable length. Two lines of seven men could sit facing each other beneath the roofs of rock; three could stand upright where the rocks are highest. The quickest way for them to escape would be for the two southernmost men to turn to the south and, stooping, walk out ; and for the one northern- most man to turn to the north and crawl out. The floor of the cave is dirt which washed down from the neigh- boring cliff.
Those who came to this haven of refuge and what
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they did beneath the rocks and ferns will never be known to history. There is no record nor sign. It is a tradi- tion that Ruth Graves' oldest child was born there, but while it is possible that the father, Stephen Graves, was hiding there at the time of the child's birth, it is improbable that the cave was ever the refuge of women. As foot tracks would show in the snow, it is doubtful if it was occupied in the winter, and it is also doubtful if a fire was built there even in the day time, as the smoke might be seen by the Sons of Liberty. When the cave was in use, both entrances were so carefully hidden that it was never discovered, in spite of most careful search of the ledge above. The late Mr. John J. Welton thought there must have been an entrance partly under- ground, but nothing of the kind is now known.
The den was discovered on Thanksgiving day in the year 1838 by X. A. Welton, a grandson of Stephen Graves, and Bela A. Welton, boys of fourteen, who after hunting all day accidentally came upon the south and larger entrance.
Come! oh, rocks of the Ledges, and tell me who of the Tory clan came oftenest to the den. First of all there was Stephen Graves of Harwinton; and many a time did he run from his log cabin to hide himself beneath its moss grown roof. And many a time, doubt- less, did the secret meeting of men that he was harbor- ing adjourn thither post haste. His home was nearer to it than were any of the Chippeny Hill farmhouses, and therefore it is possible that it was he who discovered it in the first place. It was Ruth Graves, his young wife, who fed the men in the den. She carried the food from the house and left it for them on a flat rock near
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the edge of the woods, for she dared not risk betrayal by going nearer.
I wonder if there was anyone in the cave the night Joel Tuttle crawled into the entrance. The day before he hung by the neck from an oak tree on the Federal Hill Green at New Cambridge. Captain Thomas Hungerford, a patriot neighbor whose name later ap- pears as a fellow churchman, cut him down, and he lay at the foot of the tree insensible until sometime in the night, when he so far revived as to be able to make his way to the cave in the Ledges, about four miles distant.
I wonder how many of the Tuttle family saw the inside of the cave. There was Simon Tuttle, an old man, and Daniel, his son. Daniel went openly over to the Tory forces, and his land and homestead were con- fiscated by the State of Connecticut and sold at public vendue. Ebenezer had a son born in January 1775, who was given the name Constant Loyal Tuttle. And there were the Carringtons, Lemuel and Riverius. The Carringtons always loved the old and delighted in say- ing so. Lemuel afterward kept a tavern on the Hill, and Lois, his sister, once heated a great kettle of water for the purpose of giving the patriot raiders a warm reception ; but they did not come. That was almost too bad, for if she was a true Carrington she certainly would have thrown the water, and she lived to a ripe old age to tell about it. Then there was Captain Nathaniel Jones, an elderly sea captain who lived on the very summit of the Hill. He had a son, a captain of marines, in the home service, or rather thought he had, for he did not know that his son lay dead and buried, killed in his first battle for the preservation of
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the Union. It was the grand niece of Captain Jones who testified that the Tory hunters used to go about visiting cellars and pantries and destroying provisions, thus doing what they could to starve the women and children.
And there were the Mathewses, good folk of whom any community might be proud, who loved the church and were leaders in its services. I wonder if they were driven to the Ledges too. And the Jeromes-but they would enjoy such life more than the Mathewses.
Ruth Graves was a Jerome. She and her brothers, Zerubbabel Jr. and Chauncey, were the loyalist mem- bers of this adventuresome family. Chauncey was a young man and lived on Fall Mountain which rises far off on the southern horizon, as you look from the cliff. The den was a long way from his home, and had it not been for Jonathan Pond, his brother-in-law, he would once have suffered severely for that very free tongue of his. They caught him on the mountain and led him to an apple tree, with his shirt up over his head, then strung him up by his thumbs to a limb, his feet barely touching the ground. They selected a strong hickory rod and struck a terrific blow. Tradition says that a scar was left on the tree, where the rod came down. Athletic Chauncey Jerome had torn from his bonds with a leap, leaving his shirt hanging on the tree, and in his small clothes he ran like a deer down the moun- tain. He sought refuge in the house of Jonathan Pond, who stood gun in hand at the door and commanded the pursuers not to enter. Chauncey Jerome finally went to Nova Scotia to live until the war was over, and he outlived most of his contemporaries and always bore
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the name of Jerome the Tory. He was often to be seen in his old age walking toward Chippeny Hill, dignified, erect, and with a determined step, his strong, intelligent face surrounded with long white locks, cordial to those that he knew but turning quickly with a startled glance at the step of a stranger.
Another inmate of the den, maybe, was the man- name unknown-who lived in the first house east of the Waterbury line on the old road from what is now East Plymouth to New Cambridge. A band of Tory hunters stopped at his house once with a number of bound prisoners, of which he was one. When the only armed man of the squad, in order to get a drink at the well, left his gun leaning against the house, the housewife seized it, and, cutting the bonds of her husband, placed it in his hands. Then under his protection she released the bonds of the other prisoners. The most distin- guished visitor to the den was Rev. James Nichols.
CHAPTER V
CAPTAIN WILSON'S SONS OF LIBERTY
T THERE were no more patriotic men in Litchfield county when Lexington rang with the sound of musket shots than the men of Harwinton. The older of them had known the encompassing hills when all was a wilderness where wolves howled at night. Now homes were scattered here and there; roads had been built, there was a busy mill, and a blacksmith shop, fertile fields lay where formerly forests had thrived, and law and order prevailed everywhere. No king in England or his nobles could have accomplished this. It is the work of the man of energy that reaps the laurels in a land such as this.
Captain John Wilson was such a man. He had come into the wilderness as one of five settlers, a Caleb in Israel, who had wandered into the land to possess it and remained, hale and hearty, to judge therein. Deacon, captain, selectman, and deputy in the General Assembly, during the stirring days that followed the battle of Lexington, he was a moving spirit, although he was then sixty-four years old. So was Daniel Catlin, Justice of the Peace. When it was the mind of the town that the mode of taxation be altered and a com- mittee was selected to confer with a committee at Litch- field on the subject, it was Captain John Wilson and Daniel Catlin, Esq. who were chosen. Catlin was the
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judicial authority ; but when it came to the executive it was Captain John Wilson. I suspect that the Cap- tain was a member of the secret debating club session of the legislature, called by Governor Trumbull at about the commencement of the disagreement with the home country, when six of the ablest jurists of the State were appointed to debate the right of parliament to tax the colonies-three affirmatives and three nega- tive-when every one went home, after two or three days' argument, convinced to the marrow of the justice of the American cause.
The Sons of Liberty were the "Klu Klux Klan", of Harwinton, and Captain Wilson was their natural leader. The freemen in town meeting volunteered to supply thirty-six men for the war and guaranteed their pay, sent four men to assist in guarding the sea-coast at Horse Neck, and directed that cattle should be col- lected for the soldiers at the front. Committees ap- pointed by them provided shoes, stockings, shirts, and other "cloathing" for the soldiers, and cared for their families. Daniel Catlin, Esq. swore in all who took the oath of fidelity, and kept a record of their names. Militia men who refused to serve when called on were fined. All these things were done under the law and with the sanction of the authorities.
Captain Wilson and his "Sons" knew no authority. They defied authority. Independence had been the characteristic of the Sons of Liberty, ever since the first society was started in Connecticut in 1765 for the pur- pose of preventing the enforcement of the stamp act. By actively defying law they caused the rebellion, and they did not hesitate to break the law, if by so doing
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they could forward the success of their cause. They did many services for their country, however, which no law could do. They patrolled the towns in which they lived and rode those, who believed as they did not, on a rail. Tar and feathers, a peculiarly American mode of pun- ishment, was the product of their ingenuity ; and they were no respecters of persons. The churchmen, who were also worshipers of the king, were their special prey, and any sign of sympathy with the government of Great Britain set them in immediate action.
The reason that we have to do with the Harwinton Sons is because the southeast corner of Harwinton town reaches down almost to Chippeny Hill, and Stephen Graves, the loyalist, lived in that corner, and the im- pression made by the Harwinton Sons upon Stephen Graves was so strong that it was handed down and preserved by his descendants. There were patriots in Farmington in which town New Cambridge and Chip- peny Hill lay; and there were patriots in Waterbury, in which town Northbury lay, and they were active; but the Harwinton Sons were the most active, for they had Captain Wilson. There was only one Captain Wilson, and he watched all Harwinton. The church- men in the corner did not escape him although his home was in the further northwest section, almost in sight of where Torrington now stands. A characteristic of a Harwinton Wilson, according to a typical living mem- ber of that family, is that he is "dreadful full o' zeal." Captain Wilson was dreadful full of zeal. There were miles of hills, rough paths, and mud for the elderly man, but rough paths were a mere incident to the Captain. By night and day, in season and out of season, he
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swooped down upon the loyalists to their discomfort and terror. The men fled at his approach, and the women watched over the long northern hills for his men. They saw violence there and force; a deacon and a gentleman, who stood in the doorway, hat in hand, but with an armed force at his back, demanding ad- mittance. He was hunting for men that he might take them and tie them to a tree and bare their backs and flog them until the blood ran. For Connecticut must be free, and shame would it be for the goodfolk of Harwinton that traitors should dwell in their midst.
The loyalists united and worked their fields together in bands for protection. The housewife kept watch, and, at the first sight of a prowling patriot, blew a blast on the dinner horn. Other women, listening in distant farm houses, blew the warning farther over the hills, giving the men opportunity to escape to the den or to a place of safety. Mrs. Ebenezer Johnson, who of the loyalists was the nearest to Harwinton center, one day espied one or more of Wilson's raiders, and blew her tin horn. They searched the house for it without success. Waiting until they were fairly out- side, she untied the horn from her garter and blew a 'defiant "toot! toot!" They returned and searched the · premises thoroughly but again without success.
There is another story of Harwinton that is worth telling before we pass on to the life of Stephen Graves. Once upon a time two Whigs, each by himself, went Tory hunting. One was a leading citizen of Harwin- ton, later commonly known as "Squire Brace", who discovered something or somebody on or near the Graves farm. The man also discovered him and made
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for him, supposing him to be a Tory. Brace, less courageous, turned and fled, closely followed by his pursuer, until he finally fell down exhausted. What was said by each to the other has not been recorded in the chronicles of Whig and Tory, but tradition says that the prostrate runner was never allowed to forget that race for life. Brace was later a strong Federalist, and became Mayor of Hartford, State's Attorney for Hartford county, and a member of Congress. Asa Smith, once a teamster in the latest French war and who died about 1828, aged ninety, was thus remembered in rhyme by his son Miles, who lived not far north of the Graves place, and, like most of the conservatives of the Revolution, was a Republican.
As for Uncle Ase, He thinks it no disgrace To vote for federal Brace, Fall down and skin his face.
An echo, probably, of town meeting day.
CHAPTER VI
STEPHEN GRAVES
S TEPHEN GRAVES, whose family has left the most complete story of those stirring days of the loyalists, was the particular object of Captain Wilson's raids. His home was a storm center, because it was a rendezvous for the loyalists.
Graves was a modest young man, and loved the ways of peace. His father, who lived in Northbury, owned nearly two hundred acres of land in the southeastern corner of Harwinton ; and when young Graves decided to marry, he built his cabin there. On the same site, he later built another house which is now the summer home of Professor John C. Griggs.
From the hill-top looking toward the northwest were the hills of Harwinton; away toward the southeast was Chippeny Hill, and close on the north and east lay the Ledges, which to this day is a wild and rocky region. Stephen Graves brought his bride from Chip- . peny Hill to this place in December of 1778, and there they made their home.
It was probably a number of years after the war commenced when the Sons of Liberty decided that Stephen Graves was a person needing their attention. Whatever opinions he may have had, he seems to have kept them to himself for some time. In 1778, with other good men of Harwinton, he appeared before
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Daniel Catlin, Esq. and took the oath of fidelity and the freeman's oath. The original oath of fidelity, as he took it, was drastic and compelled a conscientious denial of the king's power; but the one afterward adopted and used was little more than swearing fidelity to the State of Connecticut as an independent state and promising to do one's duty as a good subject to sup- port its rights and privileges. It is a family tradition that Graves was drafted for service in the American army, hired a substitute, and, according to his daugh- ter's statement, "starved his family to pay the wages of his substitute." While this man was still in the field, Stephen Graves was drafted a second time. It is related that Samuel Alcott, the grandfather of Mr. James Shepard, of New Britain, voluntarily enlisted, and upon his return home was three times drafted and served out his period each time. Jonathan Pond also hired a substitute in September, 1777, and was obliged to engage another three months later.
But Stephen Graves vowed that he would neither fight nor continue to pay a substitute. His sympathy with the King thus being made known, the Sons of Liberty undertook to break it. They didn't. Stephen Graves was a quiet man but he was as independent as the rest of Harwinton people. His sympathy for his Church and King was natural. His father was a member of St. Peter's church in Northbury, and the Graves name appeared prominently among the mission- aries of the church in New England. Rev. James Nichols was his close friend, so much so that after the war he appointed him his agent in a business matter in which he was interested.
MATT Fall
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Every attempt to break his loyalism only increased it. A mob once seized him and carried him to a fork of the roads on the northern line of Waterbury town, a half mile south of his house. There was a cherry tree there, and they tied him to it and scourged him with hickory rods. He told his daughter years afterwards that while that stump remained he should remember his whipping. Yet the whipping did not change his mind. Once, while on a visit to Saybrook, the home of his grandfather, he was arrested and brought back to Har- winton, his captors accusing him of desertion. They rode while he walked, and they required him to pay all the tavern bills. Finding that he made no attempt to escape, they relaxed their vigilance and sometimes when climbing a hill allowed him to get some distance ahead. Such were their relative positions one day at dusk, coming up Pine Hollow Hill from New Cambridge, about three miles from home, when he stepped up the steep bank, bade them good evening, and disappeared in the woods. Being well acquainted with the region thereabout, he reached home and lay on a flat rock within hearing of the colloquy that took place between the pursuers, who arrived later, and Mrs. Graves who affirmed that he was not at home but had been absent some weeks at Saybrook. At another time, he escaped capture by climbing a pine tree.
He had an unusual disposition. He was non-com- bative and peaceful, but almost devoid of fear. He used to tell his children that he had never been alarmed but twice and then when he was a small boy. Once he had climbed a tree to rob a woodpecker's nest, and, putting his hand into the hole, a black snake had thrust its
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VIEW LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE TORY DEN CLIFF
Old Marsh in the foreground; Chippens Hills at the left, and East Plymouth at the right.
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head out. The next instant he found himself on the ground. He was an honorable man and leader, and before his death had held office as selectman of Harwin- ton and was looked upon as a respected citizen despite his reputation as a Tory. A grandson, Carlos Welton of Thomaston, according to family tradition, strongly resembles him in personal appearance and in tempera- ment.
The wife of Graves was a resourceful woman. She was Ruth Jerome of Chippeny Hill and as a bride of eighteen came to live in the house in the woods. She was a timid woman, of whom her daughter is recorded as saying that she used to tremble with fear when she heard at night the "ooah! ooah!" of the bears in the neighboring wood. He who fishes on the Old Marsh now after dark knows how lonely the Ledges are; but in those days there were loons in the Marsh, and a forest covered the hills.
One day Mrs. Graves, who had just blown her warn- ing conch shell, was surprised by the entrance of Captain Wilson just as she was stooping to hide the shell between the straw bed and the feather bed. With quick wit she took something from under the bed, hid it under her apron, and walked out of doors. The Captain, supposing she was going out to hide the shell which he was quite anxious to capture, closely followed. When he was well outside, she suddenly turned and threw the contents of the vessel in his face. Thus roughly assaulted, the Captain in his wrath threatened the life of Mrs. Graves' young girl companion, with a pistol at her head, until she showed where the conch was concealed. Many years afterwards, when Mrs.
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Graves heard of Captain Wilson's death, she exclaimed: "I'm glad on't." Her husband reminded her of the Christian duty of forgiveness. She replied that she could not forgive him, for he had not brought back her conch shell that he had stolen.
Stephen Graves could afford to own only one cow, so he was forced to borrow a second from a neighbor. As the Sons were in the act of driving off Graves' animal, Ruth appeared and warned them not to take what was simply a loan. The Sons therefore thought they had made a mistake and were taking the wrong property, so they returned the Graves' cow to her stable and drove off the other. As soon as the sun set, the Graves' household drove their cow down to Chippeny Hill and had it butchered rather than have it fall into the hands of the Sons. What the owner of the pilfered bovine said is not recorded.
This young girl was surely a helpmeet to the good- man Graves. And I venture that she had ideas of her own, even if the ooah! of the bears in the neighboring wood did frighten her. Her aged father, Zerubbabel Jerome and a brother shouldered their guns and marched to the aid of Boston. Another brother fought the British in New York, and one who lived in Wyoming died fighting for Washington in New Jersey. Two of her brothers were loyalists like herself and were not afraid to say so. Captain Wilson found her a typical Jerome. What a striking figure she must have made that day when she turned about in the back yard and soused the Captain! A poor log cabin, one cow, and the simple life of an old time farm! I wish I could have seen the wrathy Captain and the drippings from his
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aged locks. No wonder that his eyes snapped at the laughing woman. But when he was gone and the excite- ment was over, there was nothing for her to do but to throw herself down on the bed where her precious shell had been kept. She had not realized how much the shell had meant to her, until she could feel it no longer in its place. How well she remembered when she first put her lips to it and could not blow it. And how proud she was when after trying again and again for the first time the sound came forth and her husband praised her for it. She could hear it now, resounding through the air, she could see the birds among the trees scatter at the noise, and the cows, feeding over on the hill, raise their heads. She wondered where her friends, who always listened for it, were then. She always heard, whenever the women gathered together, how this one stopped the loom to listen, and how that one was pick- ing berries miles away. Then she was proud to blow until her face was red, standing right there where she had faced the Captain. Now she could blow it no more. She hated the Captain,-old meeting house deacon ! Poor girl, how could she know that the rebellion was sacred !
CHAPTER VII
MOSES DUNBAR
T HERE was one man who drew to Chippeny Hill the critical eyes of the entire State. He was Moses Dunbar, who was captured on or near Chippeny Hill, and who was the only person executed as a traitor as a result of trial by law in Connecticut during the Revolution. It was a tragedy meet for a poet's pen.
The best account is that given by Moses Dunbar himself in his short biography, and by some of the con- temporary records of the day. I will give them here as they are given, asking that in reading the unadorned written records you forget not the green hills near the Ledges and the loyal farmhouses that loved him well. Dunbar's biography is as follows :
"I was born at Wallingford in Connecticut, the 14th of June, A.D. 1746, being the second of sixteen children, all born to my Father by one Mother. My Father, John Dunbar, was born at Wallingford, and married Temperance Hall of the same place, about the year 1743. I was educated in the business of husbandry. ' About the year 1760, my father removed himself and family to Waterbury* where, May ye 30th, I was mar-
*The Waterbury Land Records show that on March 21, 1775, Moses Dunbar bought, for ten pounds, of Thankful Bachelor, eighty rods of land in Waterbury, with a dwelling house thereon. The same premises were bought by Bachelor from Ebenezer Cook, being taken off the west side of Cook's farm in Northbury parish, the land lying across the Great Brook.
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ried to Phebe Jearman of Farmington [i. e. Phebe Jerome of Chippeny Hill] , by whom I had seven chil- dren, four of whom are now living. The first year of our marriage my wife and I, upon what we thought sufficient and rational motives, declared ourselves for the Church of England, the Rev. Mr. Scovill being then missionary at Waterbury. May 20th, my honored mother departed this life. She was a woman of much virtue and good reputation, whom I remember with the most honor and gratitude for the good care and affec- tion she continually showed me. My joining myself to the Church occasioned a sorrowful breach between my father and myself, which was the cause of his never as- sisting me but very little in gaining a livelihood, like- wise it caused him to treat me very harshly in many instances, for which I heartily forgive him, as I hope pardon from my God and my Saviour for my own offences. I likewise earnestly pray God to forgive them through Christ." [Dunbar's father later offered to furnish the hemp for a halter to hang him with. ]
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