USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. II > Part 2
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CHAPTER XXII.
The present Constitution of Connecticut .- Events which preceded and led to the constitutional convention; the convention called; the constitution formed ; sketch of his excellency, John Cotton Smith ; sketch of his excellency, Oliver Wolcott. 510
CHAPTER XXIII.
Early Jurisprudence of Connecticut .- Religious toleration ; "Quak- ers, Ranters, and Adamites ;" ecclesiastical dominion ; the proper mode of interpreting laws and ascertaining what is their true spirit ; our criminal code the simplest in the world, and practically
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the most bloodless; fewer executions have taken place in Connec- ticut than elsewhere; the impropriety of calling Connecticut a " blue law" state; the authors of this nick-name were aliens, and either dishonest or ignorant of the history and character of the people who founded the colony; religious toleration of the in- habitants evinced in affording a place of refuge for Mrs. Hutchin- son, and in hiding the Regicides at the peril of their own lives ; also in the statute published in the code of 1672, which took the lead of all the other states of the world in tolerating other denom- inations ; they believed in witchcraft; this was borrowed from the Hebrew code and from the laws of England ; this law was almost a dead letter ; it was not strange that our people believed in the existence of such a crime; Cudworth, one of the best of men ; James I., James II., Queen Elizabeth, Lord Bacon, Lord Coke, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Mansfield, and Lord Hale, all held to the same doctrine; sumptuary laws ; the people were obliged by law to go to meeting ; this was by no means exclusively a puritanical measure ; Act of 35th of Elizabeth ; the offender not conform- ing was obliged to abjure the realm-if he came back without license he was to be adjudged a felon and suffer death ; our ances- tors have been charged with bigotry, and of being afraid of the devil-fearing the devil is not the worst cowardice in the world ; ecclesiastical dominion. . 526
CHAPTER XXIV.
Episcopacy in Connecticut .- The Stratford Church ; resolve of the General Court ; the society for propagating the gospel in foreign parts; first attempt to introduce episcopacy in Connecticut ; Mr. Muirson ; Mr. Pigot ; Dr. Cutler ; Dr. Samuel Johnson ; Rev. James Wetmore; Mr. Beach; efforts to obtain a bishop ; Dr. Leam- ing; consecration of Bishop Seabury; sketch of his character ; Bishop Jarvis. . 539
CHAPTER XXV.
Other Religious Denominations .- Methodism ; its rise and progress in Connecticut; Jesse Lee; Rev. Dr. Fisk ; sketch of the progress of the Baptists ; the Wightmans ; other distinguished clergymen ; the "great awakening." . 554
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXVI.
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Schools, Colleges, Science, Art, and Literature .- Early legislation on the subject of Education ; the school fund; Honorable James Hill- house ; Yale College ; its presidents and benefactors ; its graduates ; Jonathan Edwards; Dr. Bellamy ; Litchfield Law School, and Female Academy ; other institutions; our poets, the Athens of America ; Trumbull, Barlow, General Humphreys, and Dr. Dwight, were the first American poets who made any impression upon the popular mind ; since their day we have had a new era in letters ; Hillhouse, the most stately and artistic of those who have passed from the stage of life; Brainerd, his "Falls of Niagara ;" Lemuel Hopkins, Richard Alsop, Elihu Hubbard Smith, Mrs. Laura Thurs- ton, Miss Martha Day, James Otis Rockwell, Hugh Peters, E. P. Moxson, and others ; the propriety of mentioning our living poets in the text: Fitz Green Hallack, his " Marco Bazzaris," his works compared with those of Gray; his poem upon Connecticut ; Per- cival, John Pierpont, Prentice, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Ann Ste- vens, Mrs. Emma Willard, Goodrich, Nichols, Wetmore, Hill, Brown, Dow, Burleigh, Park, and William Thompson Bacon ; John Trumbull, the artist; Whitney, Fitch, Junius Smith, Morse, Mansfield, Kirby, Treadwell, Ballamy, the conclusion.
APPENDIX.
Delegates to the convention that ratified the constitution of the United States ; delegates to the convention that formed the constitu- tion of 1818; Common Schools ; Trinity college; biographical sketches ; Andrew Adams; Ethan Allen ; Ira Allen ; John Allyn ; Richard Alsop ; Samuel Austin ; E. C. Bacon ; Azel Backus; A. Bald- win ; S. Baldwin ; Joel Barlow ; Colonel Beebe ; Lyman Beecher ; E. Boardman ; J. Brace ; S. Bradley ; J. Buel; Aaron Burr; Charles Chauncey ; W. Chipman; Daniel Chipman ; Thomas Chittenden ; Samuel Church; Leman Church; John P. Cushman ; David Dag- gett; Silas Deane ; Daniel S. Dickinson ; Timothy Dwight; Eli- phalet Dyer; William Edmond ; Jonathan Edwards; Pierpont Edwards; Henry W. Edwards; Thomas Fitch; John Fitch; Samuel Foote ; Thomas Gallaudet ; Calvin Goddard; Nathan Gold ; Chauncey Goodrich ; Elizur Goodrich; Gideon Granger; Edward D. Griffin; Alexander Griswold; Matthew Griswold; Stanley Griswold ; Lyman Hall; James Hillhouse; William Hillhouse ; Benjamin Hinman ; Royal R. Hinman ; Peter Hitchcock ; Samuel
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J. Hitchcock ; Horace Holley; Abiel Holmes ; Samuel Hopkins; Titus Hosmer; Stephen T. Hosmer ; Samuel Huntington ; Joseph Huntington ; Jabez Huntington ; Jedediah Huntington ; Benjamin Huntington ; E. Huntington ; I. W. Huntington ; Jared Ingersoll ; I. Ingersoll; William Johnson ; S. S. Johnson ; James Kilbourne; James S. Kingsley ; Ephraim Kirby; James Lanman; Richard Law ; Jonathan Richard Law ; Jared Mansfield ; Charles Marsh ; Jeremiah Mason ; R. J. Meigs; J. Meigs ; Samuel J. Mills ; S. W. Mitchell; J. Morse; Amasa J. Parker ; E. Phelps; Samuel S. Phelps; Timothy Pitkin; William Pitkin ; D. Plumb ; Peter B. Porter ; Samuel Prentiss ; James Riley ; E. Root ; J. Root ; Gurdon Saltonstall; Theodore Sedgwick ; Horatio Seymour ; E. Silliman ; Gold Selleck Silliman ; Richard Skinner ; I. Smith ; Junius Smith ; Nathan Smith ; Perry Smith ; Ambrose Spencer ; Harriet Beech- er Stowe; J. Strong; M. Stuart ; J. Talcott; Gideon Tomlinson ; Uriah Tracy ; Samuel Wales ; R. H. Walworth ; Noah Webster ; E. Wheelock ; John Wheelock; E. Whittlesy ; Calvin Willey ; E. Williams; William Williams ; Elisha Yale ; E. Young ; sketch of Colonel Thomas Knowlton. .
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. 611
HISTORY
OF
CONNECTICUT.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAST FRENCH WAR.
IT is needless to tell the reader that a turn in our path presents to the eye a landscape more extensive than any that we have before caught glimpses of as we journeyed together. I do not mean to say, that the character of the scenery is entirely unlike any that we have before paused to look upon; but we seem now to be rather in the condition of travelers who, having started in company to explore some navigable stream, began with the slender rills that almost lost them- selves in the gorges of the mountains before they met; as we advanced, committing our birchen canoes to the strength- ening current where it could be safely trusted, bearing them upon our shoulders where rocks, rapids, or cataracts were interposed-until the opening hills disclose at last a deep cur- rent rolling between banks well-defined, though irregular enough to fill the soul with beautiful forms, and bearing us so steadily upon its bosom as it flows towards the ocean, that we become almost unconscious that we are moving. Yet before yielding ourselves up to the will and rythm of the stream, we must pause once more and explore the fountains of some of its beautiful tributaries.
At the May session of the legislature, 1726, the county of Windham was incorporated, and the several county officers were appointed. It consisted of the townships of Windham, Lebanon, Canterbury, Mansfield, Plainfield, Coventry, Pom- fret, Killingly, Ashford, Voluntown, and Mortlake (now Brooklyn.)
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18
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Willington was sold by the colony in May 1720, for five hundred and ten pounds, to the following gentlemen, viz., Roger Wolcott, Esq. of Windsor, John Burr of Fairfield, John Riggs of Derby, Samuel Gunn and George Clark of Milford, John Stone and Peter Pratt of Hartford, and Ebenezer Fitch: The population had so increased in 1728, that the Rev. Daniel Fuller was ordained to the pastoral office over the church and congregation.
East Haddam was vested with town privileges in 1734, having previously for many years been a parish of Haddam. The first minister of the place, the Rev. Stephen Hosmer, was ordained May 3, 1704. This town has produced its full share of eminent men, among whom I may name the Hon. Epaphroditus Champion, member of Congress, and Col. Henry Champion. The "Moodus Noises" in East Haddam formerly attracted much attention. They appear to have consisted of subterranean rumblings, resembling continuous shocks of earthquakes, some of which were so violent as visibly to shake the ground and buildings. Mr. Hosmer says-"Oftentimes I have observed them coming down from the north, imitating slow thunder, until the sound came near or quite under, and then there seemed to be a breaking, like the noise of a cannon shot, or severe thunder, which shakes the houses and all that is in them." They sometimes occur- red several times in a day; and sometimes only at long intervals .*
Somers constituted the south-east part of the ancient town of Springfield, granted by Massachusetts to Mr. Pyncheon and his company. In 1726, it was made a distinct ecclesi- astical society by the General Court of Massachusetts, and was named East Enfield. The first permanent settlement was made in 1713, when Edward Kibbee, James Pease, Timothy Root, and Richard Montgomery, with their fami- lies, moved on to the tract. The town was incorporated in 1734.
* See Trumbull, ii. 91, 93.
19
CANAAN, KENT, SHARON.
The settlement of Union began in 1727, and the town was incorporated in October, 1734. Among the first settlers were William McNall, John Lawson, and James Sherrer, from Ireland.
Harwinton was incorporated in October, 1737, about six years after the settlement commenced. The early and most prominent settlers bore the names of Brace,* Messenger, Hopkins, Catlin, t Webster, Phelps, and Wilson. The Nau- gatuck river forms the western boundary of Harwinton, separating it from Litchfield.
Canaan was sold at auction in New London, in January, 1738, and the settlement on the lands was commenced during the same year by John Franklin, Daniel and Isaac Lawrence and others. The town was incorporated in 1739; the Rev. Elisha Webster was ordained as pastor in October, 1740. This town is largely engaged in the manufacture of iron. The Housatonic at this point has a perpendicular fall of sixty feet, and the stream for several miles is quite rapid, affording one of the best water powers to be found in the state.
The tract embracing the present towns of Kent and War- ren, was sold at auction in Windham in March, 1738, and the settlement commenced the same year. It was incor- porated as a single town in October, 1739, and was named Kent. The first minister was the Rev. Cyrus Marsh. On the west side of the Housatonic, in the lower part of this town, was the seat of the Scatacook tribe of Indians. The legislature at an early date made a reservation of certain lands in that vicinity for the benefit of these Indians, and a few individuals of the tribe still occupy a portion of the reservation. The Moravians established a mission among the Scatacooks in 1743. They baptized one hundred and fifty of them, among whom was the chief sachem.
Sharon was surveyed by a legislative committee in 1732;
* The late Hon. Jonathan Brace, an eminent citizen of Hartford, was a native of Harwinton.
t This name has furnished many able and highly esteemed men, and has been a conspicuous name in the town from its organization to the present time.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
was sold in October, 1738; and began to be settled in 1739, during which year it was incorporated. Sharon is a rich township of land, and has nurtured a goodly number of excellent and talented men, some of whom lived and died within her borders, while others became prominent in neigh- boring or distant states .*
The settlement of New Hartford began in 1733, and the town was incorporated soon after. The first settlers were Watson, Merrell, Gillett, Olcott, Kelsey, Andrus, Marsh, Shepard, Douglas, Goodwin, and others. As this was long a frontier town, fortifications were erected as a defense against the Indians. The township contains 23,940 acres.
In October, 1707, the legislature granted to Nathan Gold, Peter Burr, Jonathan Wakeman, Jonathan Sturgess, John Barlow, and others, of Fairfield, a township of land lying north of Danbury, and bounded west by the New York line and east by New Milford, which they called New Fairfield. It was originally fourteen miles long, and embraced the present town of Sherman. The fact that the Indians of that region were thought to be unfriendly, together with the additional circumstance that the New York boundary line was then unsettled, retarded the growth of the place for many years. On the 27th of April, 1730, the tract was laid out into fifty-two equal divisions, exclusive of four hundred acres which were to be reserved to each of the twelve original proprietors. At the May session of the legislature, 1740, the town was incorporated.
Cornwall was laid out in fifty-three rights, and sold by the
* The Hon. John Canfield was the first lawyer in Sharon in point of time. He was elected a member of the continental congress in 1786, but died in October of that year, aged 46. His nephew, the Hon. Judson Canfield, was much in pub- lic life. Col. Samuel Elmore, a brave revolutionary officer ; the Hon. Ansel Sterling, member of Congress and Judge of the County Court; and the Hon. John Cotton Smith, L.L. D., were residents of Sharon ; as is also General Charles F. Sedgwick, the historian of the town, a gentleman highly esteemed both in public and private life. The Hon. Messrs. G. H. Barstow, A. J. Parker and F. G. Jewett, members of Congress from the State of New York, are natives of Sharon.
Puntohy Gro F. Wright
Eng. by R Babann& F Anchews
Print by Willrock Danul
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21
TORRINGTON AND SALISBURY.
[1744.]
colony at Fairfield in 1738. In 1740, the first permanent settlement was made in the town, thirteen families having moved in during that year. Their names were Jewett, Spaulding, Allen, Barret, Squires, Griffin, Roberts, and Fuller. In August 1741, the Rev. Solomon Palmer, of Branford, a graduate of Yale College, was ordained as their pastor. He declared himself an episcopalian in 1754, and soon after went to England for ordination. In the beautiful valley of South Cornwall, the Foreign Mission School was established in 1818 by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. At this school were educated many heathen youth, from among the American Indians, and from the Islands of the Pacific-some of whom became missionaries to their own country. The town contains 23,654 acres.
Torrington was named at the May session of the legisla- ture 1732, and the survey of the town was completed in 1734. The first family who located there was that of Ebenezer Lyman, of Durham, in 1737. Soon after, Jona- than Coe, also of Durham, married and settled on the lands which he had purchased in Torrington. When the first minister, the Rev. Nathaniel Roberts, was ordained in the summer of 1741, there were but fourteen families in the township. The town was incorporated in 1744.
The township of Salisbury was surveyed into twenty-five rights in 1732, which were principally sold at Hartford by the governor and company in 1737. One of these rights was reserved for the first minister who might be settled, one for the ministry, and one for schools. The charter was granted in 1741. Besides being the locality of the most valuable bed of iron ore to be found in the state, it is famed for the richness of its soil, and for the independent circum- stances and general intelligence of its inhabitants .* It has
* The number of emigrants from this town who have become eminent abroad, is quite remarkable. Among them have been Governors T. Chittenden, J. Galusha, and M. Chittenden, of Vermont; Chief Justice Chipman, and the Hon. Daniel Chipman, of the same state; Chief Justice Spencer of New York; General Peter B. Porter, Secretary of War, Member of Congress, &c .; Hon. Josiah S. Johnston, U. S. Senator from Louisiana ; and ten members of Congress
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
various large manufacturing establishments, particularly of iron. The mountains and lakes with which it abounds, present some of the most beautiful and diversified scenery to be found in New England.
Goshen was sold at New Haven on the first Tuesday in December 1737; began to be settled in 1739 ; and was incor- porated in 1749. The Rev. Stephen Heaton, of North Haven, the first minister, was ordained in 1740. The land, though rough and hilly, is excellent for grazing; and large quantities of beef, butter and cheese are annually sent to market.
By the twelfth article of the treaty of Utrecht, that part of the old French dominion called Acadia, or Nova Scotia, had been ceded to Great Britain. Yet France evidently intended, from the first, to resume as soon as she could her old sway over the country thus torn from her hands. She now renewed her claim to a large part of the territory, by invading the new settlements, building fortifications and establishing garrisons in them.
The situation of the French and English colonies "was not such as to answer a long peace." The English, follow- ing the habitudes of the nation that still ruled them, were engaged in the pursuits of trade and agriculture. Although in their new retreat a boundless continent lay stretched out before them, inviting them to take possession, yet the voice of the waves, that had been the lullaby of their infancy, still echoed in their ears, and true to their earliest associations, they sought the friendly neighborhood of the sea. Hardly an English settlement had been formed one hundred and fifty miles from the coast, while they had already occupied the harbors and mouths of the rivers of the whole North Ameri- can sea-board. The English had emigrated for the main purpose of enjoying civil and religious liberty without
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from different states. The Holley family has been eminently distinguished both at home and abroad, in various public stations. The late Hon. Samuel Church, L.L. D., Chief Judge of the State, and the late Leman Church, Esq., of Canaan, a celebrated lawyer, were also natives of Salisbury.
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THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH SETTLERS.
restraint. The religion of the rival colonists was the very religion that they abhorred and dreaded as the worst of all national calamities and fatal to the moral and intellectual culture of individuals.
On the other hand, the French, with little practical acquaintance with the principles of civil liberty, and wedded to a religion that did not recognize the rights of an individual conscience as the English understood the term, had no sea- ports to tempt them to engage in commerce, and they were little inclined to agriculture. They had possession of the head waters of the St. Lawrence, a river that did not allow them to communicate with the ocean at all seasons of the year, and of the Mississippi, that was still less available for maritime communication, and were as much shut away from the coast, as if the vast prairies of the west-to which they laid claim, and over which they roamed in quest of the buffalo, or with the more eager passion to spread the religion that they loved so ardently and propagated with such zeal- were walled in by the high mountains. They saw with jealousy the steady growth of the English settlements, stretching along the sea and extending slowly like a fire rang- ing over a forest, still further into the interior of the con- tinent. The English population was constantly increasing ; while, from their roving habits and unsettled mode of life, the French were subject to sudden checks and liable at any time to be diverted into other channels. Their numbers could by no means compare with those of the English. Still, they were far from being an insignificant enemy. Their two colonies of Canada and Louisiana were peopled by bold and daring men, who were united by the common sentiments of national pride and religious enthusiasm.
The first emigrants from an old country to a new one, are always strong-willed and fearless men, and almost always above the common range of the peasantry. It is only after a new country is partly settled, that the lowest classes venture to seek their fortunes there. So it was with the French settlers of Canada and Louisiana. The very
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
extent of the territory that they occupied was calculated to keep them on the alert, and to give them a celerity of motion, and a facility of execution that made them still the more to be dreaded when taken in connection with the fact, that they were not divided by local boundaries, as the English colonies were, and could concentrate their power without the inter- vention of those tedious negotiations that often crippled the enterprises of their neighbors. The old national hatred, that had existed since the third Edward of England had laid claim to the throne of France in the early part of the four- teenth century, was kept more glowingly alive in the breasts of the French emigrants, than in those of the English, who had so many other enemies to subdue, that their attention could not be confined to a single object of hatred or pursuit. The French had also succeeded much better than the Eng- lish, in availing themselves of the friendship and services of the Indians, and had, from becoming familiarized with the horrid modes of warfare practiced by their savage allies, and, from the rough nurture and hardships of the western wilds, had acquired, (if indeed it was not natural to them,) a ferocity of disposition that stains the pages of their colonial history with the most revolting scenes of butchery and murder that are known to the annals of the world.
Such being the relative condition of the parties, it is not strange that they should have been embroiled in wars for many years previous to the final struggle that put an end to the French power in the west. Regarding with well grounded fear the progress of the English emigration, and the steady advance in wealth and strength that attended it, the French resolved to check the commerce, the agriculture, and the trade, that they could not rival. They therefore conceived the plan of confining the English within their old limits by means of a line of fortifications stretching from Quebec to New Orleans, that would be in the nature of a breakwater to keep back the tide of British enterprise .* Nor did they confine this barrier to the two great rivers, the
Holmes, i. 49.
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ENCROACHMENTS OF THE FRENCH.
St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and the lands that lay con- tiguous to them ; but they brought the fortresses so near the English settlements, that vast regions lay between the banks of those rivers and the arbitrary line thus established ; tracts of territory that they could hardly be justified in claiming by right of discovery, and that they appeared as little anxious to occupy as the remorseless savages whose aid they had invoked.
Long before this, a shrewd French officer had recom- mended that New York should be seized by his nation as a convenient harbor whence they might ship their furs and carry on their commerce ; and now, more than ever before, some maritime channel was felt to be necessary to the pros- perity of the French colonies.
As early as the year 1731, this jealousy of the French began to evince itself in the erection of a fort at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, so many miles to the eastward of any other French settlement, as to excite very great alarm among the English-especially as the site of the fort was within the territory of the six nations, their faithful allies, who had never been led estray by the arts of France. This invasion alarmed the province of New York, who looked upon it as the entering wedge to the dismemberment of her territory, and was watched with eagerness by Massachusetts, whose authorities had not forgotten the revelation of Gallic faith in taking possession of the province of Nova Scotia.
The treaty of Aix la Chapelle left all questions of boundary to be settled by the negotiations of commissaries .* This gave the French an opportunity to prepare the way for new encroachments before the hearing was had. Very soon after the treaty was signed, and before the appointment of the commissaries on either side, they attempted to establish themselves at Tobago, and were only driven from the project by the decided steps taken to defeat it by the British mer- chants. Still, as the French had been restored by the treaty
* This treaty was signed on the 7th October, 1748. By it Cape Breton was given up to the French.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
to the possession of Cape Breton, they saw with much dis- trust that Nova Scotia was being fast peopled with English emigrants who must ultimately interfere with this isolated domain. The attack made upon the colonists of Nova Scotia by the Indians, who were known to be in alliance with the French, soon after the arrival of Cornwallis* in that province with emigrants to people it, was supposed to point to a general invasion from Canada.
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