USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > The bi-centennial celebration of the settlement of Litchfield, Connecticut, August 1-4, 1920 > Part 10
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Another characteristic in the lives of those eleven Becchers was their appreciation of all the best in life in the way of books, pictures, scenery, good company and conversation. That, it seems to me, was largely the result of the influence of the society of Litchfield, which was undoubtedly as good as any in America, if not the best. You know better than I do the names of some of the leaders of that rich society -- Governor Wolcott, in Washington's Cabinet; Tallmadge, one of Wasli- ington's favorite officers; Judge Reeve, founder and head of the Litchfield Law School, and his associate, Judge Gould; John Pierpont, the poet, to mention only a few of the great Litchfielders.
I thought it might not be inappropriate if on this occa-
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sion I read to you an extract from the Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
"My earliest recollections of Litchfield are those of its beautiful scenery, which impressed and formed my mind long before Ihad words to give names to my emotions, or could analyze my mental processes. I remember standing often in the door of our house and looking over a distant horizon, where Mount Tom reared its round blue head against the sky, and the Great and Little Ponds, as they were called, gleamed out amid a steel-blue sea of distant pine groves. To the west of us rose a smooth-bosomed hill called Prospect Hill; and many a pensive, wondering hour have I sat at our play-room window, watching the glory of the wonderful sun- sets that used to burn themselves out, amid voluminous wreathings, or castellated turrets of clouds,-vaporous page- antry proper to a mountainous region.
"Litchfield sunsets were famous, because perhaps watched by more appreciative and intelligent eyes than the sunsets of other mountain towns around. The love and notice of nature was a custom and habit of the Litchfield people; and always of a summer evening the way to Prospect Hill was dotted with parties of strollers who went up thither to enjoy the evening.
"On the east of us lay another upland, called Chestnut Hills, whose sides were wooded with a rich growth of forest- trees; whose changes of tint and verdure, from the first misty tints of spring green, through the deepening hues of summer, into the rainbow glories of autumn, was a subject of constant remark and of pensive contemplation to us children. We heard them spoken of by older people, pointed out to visitors, and came to take pride in them as a sort of birthright.
"Seated on the rough granite flag-steps of the east front door with some favorite book,-if by chance we could find such a treasure,-the book often fell from the hand while the eyes wandered far off into those soft woody depths with end- less longings and dreams,-dreams of all those wild fruits, and flowers, and sylvan treasures which some Saturday after- noon's ramble had shown us lay sheltered in those enchanted depths. There were the crisp apples of the pink azalea,- honeysuckle apples we called them; there were scarlet winter-
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green berries; there were pink shell blossoms of trailing arbutus, and feathers of ground pine; there were blue, and white, and yellow violets, and crowsfoot, and bloodroot, and wild anemone, and other quaint forest treasures.
"Between us and those woods lay the Bantam River,-a small, clear rocky stream, pursuing its way through grooves of pine and birch, now so shallow that we could easily ford it by stepping from stone to stone, and again, in spots, so deep and wide as to afford bathing and swimming room for the young men and boys of the place. Many and many a happy hour we wandered up and down its tangled, rocky, and ever-changing banks, or sat under a thick pine bower, on a great granite slab called Solitary Rock, round which the clear brown waters gurgled.
"At the north of the house the horizon was closed in with distant groves of chestnut and hickory, whose waving tops seemed to have mysteries of invitation and promise to our childhood. I had read, in a chance volume of Gesner's 'Idyls,' of tufted groves, where were altars to Apollo, and where white-robed shepherds played on ivory flutes, and shepherd- esses brought garlands to hang round the shrines, and for a long time I nourished a shadowy impression that, could I get into those distant northern groves, some of these dreams would be realized. ' These fairy visions were, alas! all dis- solved by an actual permission to make a Saturday after- noon's excursion in these very groves, which were found to be used as goose-pastures, and to be destitute of the flowery treasures of the Chestnut Hills forests.
"My father was fond of excursions with his boys into the forests about for fishing and hunting. At first I remem- ber these only as something pertaining to father and the older boys, they being the rewards given for good conduct. I remember the regretful interest with which I watched their joyful preparations for departure. They were going to the Great Pond-to Pine Island-to that wonderful blue pine for- est which I could just see on the horizon, and who knew what adventures they might meet! Then the house all day was so still; no tramping of laughing, wrestling boys,-no singing and shouting; and perhaps only a long seam on a sheet to be oversewed as the sole means of beguiling the hours of absence.
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And then dark night would come down, and stars look out from the curtains, and innuendoes would be thrown out of children being sent to bed, and my heart would be rent with anguish at the idea of being sent off before the eventful expe- dition had reported itself. And then what joy to hear at a distance the tramp of feet, the shouts and laughs of older brothers; and what glad triumph when the successful party burst into the kitchen with long strings of perch, roach, pick- erel, and bullheads, with waving blades of sweet-flag, and high heads of cat-tail, and pockets full of young wintergreen, of which a generous portion was bestowed always upon mne. These were the trophies, to my eyes, brought from the land of enchantment. And then what cheerful hurrying and seur- rying to and fro, and waving of lights, and what cleaning of fish in the back shed, and what calling for frying-pan and gridiron, over which father solemnly presided; for to his latest day he held the opinion that no feminine hand could broil or fry fish with that perfection of skill which belonged to him- self alone, as king of woodcraft and woodland cookery.
"I was always safe against being sent to bed for a happy hour or two, and patronized with many a morsel of the sup- per which followed, as father and brothers were generally too flushed with victory to regard very strictly dull household rules.
"Somewhat later, I remember, were the expeditions for chestnuts and walnuts in the autumn, to which all we young- sters were taken. I remember the indiscriminate levy which on such occasions was made on every basket the house con- tained, which, in the anticipated certainty of a great harvest to bring home, were thought to be only too few. I recollect the dismay with which our second mother, the most ladylike and orderly of housekeepers, once contemplated the results of these proceedings in her well arranged linen-room, where the contents of stocking baskets, patch baskets, linen baskets, yarn baskets, and thread baskets were all pitched into a pro- miscuous heap by that omnipotent marauder, Mr. Beecher, who had accomplished all this confusion with the simple promise to bring the baskets home full of chestnuts.
"What fun it was, in those golden October days, when father dared William and Edward to climb higher than he
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could, and shake down the glossy chestnuts! To the very last of his life, he was fond of narrating an exploit of his climbing a chestnut-tree that grew up fifty feet without branches slantwise over a precipice, and then whirling him- self over the abyss to beat down the chestnuts for the children below. 'That was a thing', he said, 'that I wouldn't let any of the boys do'. And those chestnuts were had in everlasting remembrance. I verily believe that he valued himself more on some of these exploits than even his best sermons.
"My father was famous for his power of exciting family enthusiasm. Whenever he had a point to carry or work to be done, he would work the whole family up to a pitch of fervent zeal, in which the strength of each one seemed quad- rupled. For instance: the wood of the family used to be brought in winter on sleds, and piled up in the yard, exactly over the spot where father wished in early spring to fix his cucumber and melon frames; for he always made it a point to have cucumbers as soon as Dr. Taylor, who lived in New Haven, and had much warmer and drier land; and he did it by dint of contrivance and cucumber frames, as aforesaid. Of course, as all this wood was to be cut, split, and carried into the wood-house before an early garden could be started, it required a miracle of generalship to get it done, considering the immense quantity required in that climate to keep an old windy castle of a house comfortable. How the axes rung, and the chips flew, and the jokes and stories flew faster; and when all was cut and split, then came the great work of wheeling in and piling; and then I, sole little girl among so many boys, was sucked into the vortex of enthusiasm by father's well-pointed declaration that he 'wished Harriet was a boy, she would do more than any of them'.
"I remember putting on a little black coat which I thought looked more like the boys, casting needle and thread to the wind, and working almost like one possessed for a day and a half, till in the afternoon the wood was all in and piled, and the chips swept up. Then father tackled the horse into the cart, and proclaimed a grand fishing party down to Little Pond. And how we all floated among the lily- pads in our boat, christened .The Yellow Perch', and every
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one of us caught a string of fish, which we displayed in tri- umph on our return".
I think this extract bears out what I said about the part Litchfield played in forming the character of this family.
Over in Stockbridge, Mass., I have two small boys grow- ing up, the elder of whom is named David Beecher, named after the learned blacksmith of New Haven, who was the father of Lyman Beecher, and if the environment of Stock- bridge shall prove as stimulating in affecting the lives of those boys as the environment of Litchfield was in forming the char- acters of their ancestors, I may enjoy the delight of remarking that genius skips a generation.
STATE DAY: THE NEW HAVEN GRAYS
ADDRESS BY UNITED STATES SENATOR FRANK B. BRANDEGEE
Congregational Church, August 2, 1920.
Ladies and Gentlemen :
It is with deep pleasure that I have come up here today to join with you in celebrating your 200th anniversary. I come from what is known as "Old Whaling Town", New Lon- don by the sea, called by the Colonists, "Ye Fair Harbor", and more than twenty years ago we celebrated our 250th anniver- sary, for, as you know, that town was founded by John Win- throp, the younger, in 1645.
One of the particularly gratifying things to my mind about this grand little state of Connecticut is that it is composed of 168 different towns, each of which is of itself a little republic within itself. Connecticut has always stuck to the system of local town government; and, I think, there may be traced to the business sense, the local contests and the meeting of the people in the local town meetings, the great capacity for self- government which Connecticut and its towns have always shown and the great influence upon the life of the nation which its men have always exercise 1.
We read in the histories that along about 1631, an old Indian from Connecticut appeared in Massachusetts and went to the Governors of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies and told them of the beauties of the great valley along the Connecticut river and tried to get them interested in sending colonists down here, as he wanted their assistance in his war against other Indian tribes. The Governor thought it over for a year or so and he finally decided to make the expedition and to explore the land. They did so, and you all know how the three towns of Wethersfield, Windsor and Hartford evoluted from that old Indian and later how the State of Connecticut was formed. I shall always feel a great deal of gratitude to that old Indian, no matter what his motives were. It is fitting that our minds should turn back to the origin of things, for it is absolutely true that in order to understand a work in
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progress of completion one must go back to the beginnings of things and follow the evolution down through.
It was due to Connecticut that we were able to form the Union at all. It was the Connecticut Compromise which . suggested the way out of the solution to the attending dele- gates. In the wise provision it was agreed by unanimous vote that no matter how small a state was it should never be deprived of a place in the Senate.
But I say to you that in this old State, one of the original thirteen, now about 300 years since its founding, is and will continue to be one glorious succession of days such as you are here to celebrate. People, as never before, are studying this past history. During the Civil War we had in the governor- ship William Buckingham. Then came this great war, beyond comparison with anything in history; we have with us today our War Governor, Marcus H. Holcomb, also Governor Weeks, and that grand old gentleman, Simeon Baldwin.
Speaking of the value of history to guide our steps in the future so as to be able to hand down to posterity; I suggest to Governor Baldwin, the sage of Connecticut, that he, with his vast learning, his wonderful grasping of law, jurisprudence and history, should dedicate the remaining years of his life to the preparation of a history of Connecticut to hand down to our children forever and as a memorial to him. Some of my Republican friends used to make that suggestion to the Governor when he was in the Governor's chair, and to suggest that his real mission was to write a history of Connecticut. It would be, in my opinion, a calamity to the patriotic people of Connecticut if the information which is stored in that mar- velous brain should not be committed to manuscript for the benefit of posterity.
This County has always laid close to my heart. There is something about its rugged hills and the rugged character of its people that has always attracted me. I know that the great Senator who preceded me was a product of this County, and evidenced it in his great ability.
This State has practically existed in its present form for 300 years. We are apt to look at a house and call it an antique. We are apt to think 300 years is a great period of time. Well, it is longer than the brief span of one's life, but
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what does it amount to after all to think that 300 years ago this state, with its great population, with its good roads weav- ing in and out everywhere, its steam railroads, great buildings, to think that this state only 300 years ago was a wilderness inhabited by savage men and savage animals, and to think this has taken place in 300 years is amazing. Three hundred years is only four lives and that length brings you back to the time that Thomas Hooker left Massachusetts and came here to form a new commonwealth.
What is going to happen to this country in the future stag- gers the imagination to attempt to conceive. What will this country do in the next five hundred years? I will tell you one thing. Even if this country proceeds according to the law of God, and its people continue tolerant with each other and doing and exacting justice, it will never reach such a period in the next five hundred years of posterity as it has in this. We must keep alive the feelings of liberty. How best to do that? The way to Americanize the youth of this country is to concentrate upon their attention the works of those who have gone before them. If every school, church and home would teach their youth to imitate those illustrious examples of our ancestors, that would determine what kind of Ameri- cans our future Americans will be.
It has been one of the delights of my summer to be with you, and I thank you for your earnest attention.
ADDRESS BY CONGRESSMAN JAMES T. GLYNN.
Congregational Church, August 2, 1920.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen :
It is certainly a pleasure to be here to assist in an humble way in celebrating this 200th anniversary of the settlement of Litchfield. If there is a town in the United States which has had a more interesting history for the past 200 years than Litchfield, I don't happen to know that place, and as I rode around today and someone in the car would point, why, "There is Governor Wolcott's house, who was a signer of the Declara- tion of Independence"; "Statue of George III, taken out in the back yard and melted into bullets"; again, "There is the site of the First Law School in America"; and again, "There is the site of the first institution for the higher education of women which was started in the United States". It seemed as if almost every house we passed was the home of a Governor, a signer of the Declaration, Chief Justice of the State,-one house was the home of a man who was appointed Secretary of the Treasury to succeed Hamilton. I said, "This is an historic town". It reminded me of a talk I once had with a loyal son of Litchfield, Charles B. Andrews. I had occa- sion to come down here and with him was discussing the his- tory of Litchfield. I regarded Litchfield as interesting a town as any in Connecticut. He said, "Litchfield is as interesting a town as you will find in the United States. Where will you find one to compare with it?"
Oliver Wolcott was an active man before and after the Revolution. While they were holding tea parties in Boston they were doing the same thing here in Litchfield. We find that town meetings were held in Litchfield to raise money to aid the starving people.
You talk about Boston being the Cradle of Liberty. I say Litchfield is as much a Cradle of Liberty as is Boston. Today has impressed upon me what Litchfield has been. Litch- field is one of those towns which is responsible in a great measure for what we call today "American Spirit"-a spirit
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which stands for something, the kind of a spirit which inspired resistance to the Stamp Tax, resistance to foreign tyranny, the spirit which inspired the patriots at Concord, at Saratoga, and at Yorktown, the spirit which builded broad and deep the foundations of this Republic, and erected that noble struc- ture which, please God, will endure forever.
Litchfield is responsible for a spirit of antagonism to slavery. No family in this land, no single persons, did more to arouse a spirit of antagonism to human slavery than Har- riet Beecher Stowe and her distinguished brother, Henry Ward Beecher. That was the spirit which sent the best of our young men from off these New England hills in the decade preceding the Civil War, the men who went out with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other, and though every hour might be beckoning danger they must do, and die if necessary, to snatch Kansas and Nebraska from being polluted with slavery,-and the town of Litchfield contributed to that spirit as much as any town in America.
I like the Litchfield way of celebrating. It was said of Dean Swift that he celebrated his birthday by cursing the day he was born. It is strange, it is rather fitting, that as the dark days of '61 drew on to '65, the Litchfield County Regiment pitched its camp on the Litchfield Hill, because here was the spirit of Litchfield, the spirit of patriotism, the spirit of freedom. And so it was in the present war. That kind of spirit sent our boys across the sea into the trenches. That is what we mean by the American Spirit and Litchfield was in a large way responsible in forming it. It is the kind of a spirit we need today as much as ever.
Sometimes progress has come by leaps and bounds, as when is born some inspired man such as Abraham Lincoln. Sometimes progress stands still, or rolls backward towards barbarism because of a lack of strength to push that car of progress up the rugged hill. Let us leave the future of this country here safe! Let us, as far as we can, emulate that spirit of old Litchfield which has steered through its course in all crises and through all the dreary watches of the night.
COUNTY DAY : THE LITCHFIELD GIRL SCOUTS
OFFICIAL PROGRAM
TUESDAY, AUGUST THIRD.
County Day
12 m .- Parade starts from Playhouse and line of march same as on Tuesday. Composition as follows:
Marshal, Major Jackson, and aides.
E. P. Dickinson, born January 4th, 1821, oldest resident of Litchfield, in automobile.
The Selectmen of the towns of Litchfield, New Hartford, New Milford, Salisbury, Thomaston, Torrington, Winchester, in automobiles; Band of 2nd Co., G. F. G., Morgan-Weir Post, American Legion, Litchfield Fire Department, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Mary Floyd Tallmadge Chapter, D. A. R .; Bantam Ball Bearing Co., Litchfield Chemical Engine, Bantam Fire Truck, Gartland's 23rd Regiment Band, Waterwitch Hose Co., No. 2, New Milford; Canaan Fire Company, Winsted Drum Corps, Winsted Fire Department, Kent Fire Department, Man- chester Bag Pipe Band, Terryville Fire Department, Nauga- tuck Hose, Hook and Ladder Co .; Litchfield Grange, No. 107, Beacon Grange (Northfield) No. 118, Bridgewater Grange, No. 153; Cornwall Grange, No. 32; East Canaan Grange, No. 136; Goshen Grange, No. 143; Morris Grange, No. 119; Washington Grange, No. 11.
3:00 p. m .- Athletic Field, Locust Knoll. Baseball - New Milford vs. Litchfield.
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OFFICIAL PROGRAM WEDNESDAY, AUGUST FOURTH Litchfield Day
11:00 a. m .- Playhouse-Historical Address, Hon. Morris W. Seymour, read by Origen S. Seymour.
12:30 p m .- Community Picnic Lunch, West Park. 2:00 p. m .- Concert-West Park, Band 2nd Co., G. F. G. 4:00 p. m .- Historic Masque, Golf Grounds, Country Club. 9:00 p. m .- Community Dance Telford road, West street, From Marcy Block to Playhouse.
HISTORIC LITCHFIELD.
Address by the Hon. Morris W. Seymour, LL.D. (Read by Origen S. Seymour, Esq.) The Playhouse, August 4, 1920. "Let us now Praise Famous Men- Our Fathers that begat us." -Ecclus:44;1.
Fellow Citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen:
An attempt to epitomize the events of two hundred years in an hour's time is no easy task in any circumstances. It becomes doubly difficult when those years are filled with the stirring events that have marked the history of this community. I do not hesitate to say that no town of an equal number of inhabitants in this or any other country has played so con- spicuous a part in the affairs of a state or nation as has the town whose two hundredth birthday we celebrate. Its very conception originated in a historic tragedy. Years before the settlement of the town, our State officials became convinced of the hostility of the English Government and its determina- tion to revoke our charter. To frustrate this design, in part, and to prevent the "Western Lands", as they were called, which embraced the territory of this town-in the words of the enactment - "From falling into the grasp of Sir Edmund Andros and permitting him to enrich himself and his minions", the Legislature, on January 26, 1686, ordered the sale of those lands to the Towns of Hartford and Windsor. A few years later, there dropped from our Royal Oak, in whose bosom safely lay concealed our hidden charter, an acorn, which by reason of this action of the legislature, sprouted and blossomed forth as the Patent of this Town.
A company was organized in 1718, upon the petition of Lieutenant John Marsh and Deacon John Buel, and they, with others, were incorporated by the General Assembly at its May Session, 1719, to settle a town called Litchfield on the "Western Lands" at Bantam. These original settlers were
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residents of and men of affairs in the Towns of Wethersfield, Hartford, Windsor, Lebanon and Farmington.
Among the list of settlers appear names that we hear uttered almost daily in our streets and today are fortunate to have some of their descendants still with us-Marsh, Buel, Woodruff, Webster, Griswold, Gibbs, Stoddard, Sanford and many others.
The plan of the village has never been materially changed. The settlers who had the first choice selected the southern portion of the town along the Bantam River and Little Pond, presumably because of the natural meadows which gave them hay for their cattle without waiting the slow process of clear- ing the land,-the first pitch was the upper corner of South Street and Gallows Lane (then called Middle Street).
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