USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Redding > The history of Redding, Connecticut : from its first settlement to the present time > Part 4
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The last entry referring to the war appears August 11th, 1783, some nine months after the Provisional Articles of Peace had been signed at Paris. It is as follows: "Voted that the select men of this town be desired to move out of this town all those persons that have been over and joined the enemy, and have returned into this town, and that they pursue the business as fast as they conveniently can according to law." The selectmen on whom this task devolved were, Seth Sanford, James Rogers, Stephen Betts, Hezekiah Sanford, and John Gray.
Several items that next follow are important as denoting the progress of events. December 18th, 1781: "Voted, that the select men be in- structed to petition the General Assembly to annex this town to Dan- bury Probate District," and the road committee was instructed to sell the highway from Nobb's Crook to Captain Grays, and also the "upright highway" west of Micayah Starr's, from Nathan Rumsey's to the rear of the long lots.
August 9, 1782, the town appointed delegates to a County Conven- tion held in Greenfield "to inquire into the progress of illicit trade" : also a Committee of Inspection to assist the informing officers in putting the laws into execution.
August 11th, 1783: It was voted "that the town will set up a sing- ing school," and a tax of one penny on the pound was laid to pay the singing master.
March 13th, 1797: "Voted not to admit Small Pox by innoculation ; voted to admit Small Pox by innoculation next fall."
December 14th, 1791, a committee was appointed to apply to the proprietors of the mile of commons for a title to the land in Redding left by said proprietors for a "parade." (This "parade," familiar to all
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old inhabitants of Redding, was in the large field adjoining the Con- gregational parsonage now owned by Miss Dayton; it was the scene of many militia trainings in later days.)
December 19th, 1792: " Voted to reduce the highway from Danbury to Norwalk to four rods wide, and to sell two rods." In 1795: "Voted that the selectmen prosecute those persons that cut timber on the high- ways."
The first town-house was built early in 1798. It stood nearly in the centre of the common, a few yards west of the present building.
From the plan submitted December 27th, 1797, by the building com- mittee, we learn that it was "36 feet in length, and 30 feet wide, with 12 foot posts, covered with long cedar shingles, the sides with pine." There was a chimney in each end, and fifteen windows with twenty lights in each. Peter Sanford, Ezekiel Sanford, Samuel Jarvis, Aaron San- ford, Andrew L. Hill, and Simon Munger were appointed "to receive proposals and contract for building the aforesaid Town House." The builder was Daniel Perry. In 1807 there was a movement to petition the General Assembly, "that Redding be made the shire town of Fairfield County." In 1809 it was voted unanimously, "That we will prefer a petition to the Congress of the United States for the establishment of a Post Road through this town," and William Heron, Lemuel Sanford, and Billy Comstock were appointed to draft the petition. This was suc- cessful, and the first post-office in the town was shortly after established. It was kept in the dwelling-house of Billy Comstock, who was the first postmaster ; his house stood were the late Mr. Dimon Finch lived, at the fork of the Danbury road, and that leading to Redding Centre, via Nobb's Crook. There are old people in town who remember this first post-office, and the excitement attendant upon the arrival of the weekly mail, carried by the great lumbering Danbury stage, which, with its four horses, its red-faced driver, and crowd of dusty, sweltering passen- gers, was the great tri-weekly event of the villages through which it passed.
There is evidence that in early times the town exercised considerable influence in public affairs. In the Farmer's Journal (Danbury) for April 8th, 1793, appears a circular letter "sent by a committee appointed to correspond with the different towns in the county of Fairfield," from Reading, as follows :
READING, Apr. 2, 1793.
" GENTLEMEN : We are, by the inhabitants of this town, in a town meeting legally warned for that purpose, appointed a committee to corre- spond with the other towns in Fairfield County respecting the list of persons entered on the records of Congress, a number of whom this town apprehend are really undeserving. We are ordered to ask of you to adopt
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a similar mode of appointing a committee to correspond accordingly, and if by due enquiry any person, or persons shall be found to be put on the pension list, who are undeserving, to adopt proper means for redress at a proper board.
Signed :
THADDEUS BENEDICT, WILLIAM HERON, LEMUEL SANFORD, S. SAMUEL SMITH, JAMES ROGERS.
To the Selectmen of-
And in the Farmer's Chronicle (Danbury) for January 6th, 1794:
"At a Town Meeting held in Reading, by adjournment, on the 23rd day of December A. D. 1793, 'Voted unanimously, That this Town will exert ourselves in every legal and constitutional method in our power to prevent the sale of the western lands at present, and to obtain a repeal of the act of this state appropriating the avails thereof for the support of the ministry and schools in this state, as we conceive the same to be impolitic. And that a committee be appointed to correspond with the other towns in this county to effect the purpose aforesaid, and that this vote be sent to the committee appointed to sell those lands, with our re- quest that they will omit to make any contract or sale of them till the sit- ting of the next General Assembly.'"
And in the records of a town meeting held April 20th, 1818:
"Voted, That our Representatives to the General Assembly to be hold- en at Hartford in May next, be, and hereby are, instructed to use their influence that measures be taken preparatory to forming a written con- stitution for the Government of this State. That it is the opinion of this meeting, that the State of Connecticut is without a written constitution of Civil Government, and we believe it very important for the security of the Civil, and Religious rights, and privileges of the Citizens, that the powers and authorities of the Government should be distinctly defined."
The present town-house was erected in 1834. At a town meeting held March 3d, 1834, Mr. Thomas B. Fanton made a proposition "that he would engage to build a new Town House, same dimensions as the old one, of good materials, covering to be of pine, with shutters to the win- dows, outside of house to be painted, and the whole inside and out, to be finished in a workman like manner, to be erected near the old one, on land belonging to the town, provided the town will give him $400, and the old house," and engaged to save the town from any expense on account of materials provided by the committee to repair the old town house. This proposition was accepted, and John R. Hill, Gershom Sherwood, and
1
Historic Houses. GENERAL PUTNAM'S HEADQUARTERS, 1778-9. From an old print of 1836.
1
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Aaron Burr, 2d, were appointed a committee "to superintend building said House." There were objections, however, to having the new house built on the old site, and a meeting held shortly after voted "to relocate the house in the building owned by Thaddeus M. Abbott recently occu- pied for a school house."
But other parties objected to this plan, and a third meeting was held before a site satisfactory to all parties could be agreed on.
This meeting voted to locate it "on the Southeast corner of Thaddeus M. Abbott's homelot, fronting the public parade on the South, and on the west the Lonetown highway, provided that nothing in this vote interferes with the contract made with Thomas B. Fanton for building said house, and that it be no additional expense to the town." The building belong- ing to Mr. Abbott which stood on this site was moved away, and the present town house erected in the summer of 1834.
From this point until the opening of the civil war the records indicate only the usual routine of town business, and may be profitably passed over in order to make room for the valuable and interesting Revolutionary history of the town.
CHAPTER IV. Revolutionary History and Incidents.
Two years had passed since the opening of the War of Independence -years of alternate victory and defeat to the colonists-when a hostile armament of twenty-five vessels bearing two thousand men, the flower of the British army, appeared off Compo, in Westport, on the Connecticut shore. It was the 25th of April, 1777. A few days before news had come to Lord Howe, commanding in New York, that a magazine of mu- nitions of war had been formed by the rebels in Danbury, and which afforded him a pretext for a descent on Connecticut-a step which he had long meditated. The region of country covered by the proposed campaign had been swept of its able-bodied men, who were in the Con- tinental ranks keeping a careful watch on his lordship's regulars ; but that there might be no balk in the operations, an overwhelming force of two thousand picked men was detailed for the expedition. For commanders, Howe chose a nondescript genius, one Governor Tryon, and two military men of ability, General Agnew and Sir William Erskine. Tryon had been Governor of New York ; he had the further merit of being intimately acquainted with Connecticut, and of being consumed with an inveterate hatred for, and thirst for revenge on, the Yankees ; he had a special grudge too against Connecticut, the sturdy little colony having thwarted him in a variety of ways. Her dragoons had scattered the types of his news-
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paper organ through the streets of New York; her "Sons of Liberty" had plotted against him even in his own city, and she had treated with contempt his proclamations inviting her to return to her allegiance, even printing them in her gazettes as specimens of the governor's pleasant humor.
Furthermore, he was well acquainted with the country to be traversed. He had been as far inland as Litchfield, had probably visited Danbury, and had been dined and feted at Norwalk, Fairfield, and New Haven. He seems to have acted as guide to the expedition while his two advisers attended to its miiltary details. The troops disembarked at Compo at four in the afternoon, and the same day marched to Weston, about eight miles distant, where they encamped for the night. To oppose these troops there was only a militia corps of old men and boys, not equal in number to one half the invading force.
Colonel Cook was in command at Danbury with a company of un- armed militia. General Silliman at Fairfield, General Wooster at Strat- ford, and General Arnold at Norwalk could not muster, all told, more than eight hundred raw, undisciplined men. Under these circumstances Tryon's expedition can only be viewed as a picnic excursion into the country, and as such no doubt he regarded it. On the morning of the 26th his army was early astir, and reached Redding Ridge, where the first halt was made, about the time that the inhabitants had concluded their morning meal. What transpired here is thus narrated by Mr. Hol- lister in his admirable "History of Connecticut," vol. ii, chap. 12:
"On the morning of the 26th, at a very seasonable hour, Tryon ar- rived at Reading Ridge, where was a small hamlet of peaceful inhabitants, almost every one of them patriots, and most of them farmers, who had crowned the high hill, where they had chosen to build their Zion, with a tall, gaunt church, which drew to its aisles one day in seven the people that dwelt upon the sides of the hills, and in the bosom of the valleys, within the range of the summons that sounded from its belfry. By way of satisfying his hunger with a morning lunch, until he could provide a more substantial meal, he drew up his artillery in front of the weather- beaten edifice that had before defied every thing save the grace of God, and the supplications of his worshippers, and gave it a good round of grape and canister, that pierced its sides through, and shattered its small- paned windows into fragments. The only spectators to this heroic dem- onstration were a few women and little children, some of whom ran away at the sight of the red-coats, and others faced the invaders with a men- acing stare."
Mr. Hollister is in the main a careful and accurate historian, but a due regard for the truth of history compels us to say that he was mis- informed in regard to the above facts. The following account is believed
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to be correct, our principal informant being an aged inhabitant of Red- ding, and a competent authority :
During the halt the main body of the troops remained under arms on the green in front of the church. Tryon, Agnew, and Erskine were in- vited into Esquire Heron's, who lived in the first house south of the church. Here they were hospitably entertained with cake and wine, and with many hopeful prognostications of the speedy collapse of the "re- bellion." Across the street from the church, in a house a few yards south of the one now occupied by Daniel Sanford, lived Lieutenant Stephen Betts, a prominent patriot, and at whose house it will be remembered the county convention was held in 1779. A file of soldiers entered the house, seized him, and he was taken with them on their march. James Rogers, another prominent patriot, and Jeremiah Sanford, a lad of ten years, son of Mr. Daniel Sanford, met a like fate. The lad, we may remark, was carried to New York and died in the prison ships, June 28th, 1777. Shortly before the army resumed its march, a horseman was observed spurring rapidly down the Couch's Hill road toward them, and approach- ed within musket-shot before discovering their presence; he then turned to fly, but was shot, and severely wounded in the attempt. He proved to be a messenger from Colonel Cook in Danbury, bearing dispatches to General Silliman, by name Lambert Lockwood. Tryon had formerly known him in Norwalk, where Lockwood had rendered him a service, and seems to have acted on this occasion with some approach to mag- nanimity, as he released him on parole, and allowed him to be taken into a house that his wounds might be dressed.
The statement concerning the firing into the church is a mistake, and I am assured that the reverse is true. It is said that the church was not molested at all (except that a soldier with a well-directed ball brought down the gilded weathercock from the spire), and the fact that the rector, the Rev. John Beach, as well as several of its most prominent members, among them the Squire Heron above referred to, were most pronounced loyalists, strengthens the assertion. The British army, after halting an hour or two in the village, resumed its march to Danbury, with the cap- ture and burning of which the reader is no doubt acquainted.
Meanwhile the patriots in Redding anxiously waited the approach of the Continental army in pursuit. At length it came in view, marching wearily, with dusty and disordered ranks, a little army of five hundred men and boys, led by Brigadier-General Silliman in person. They had marched from Fairfield that day, and were fully twenty-eight hours be- hind the foe, who was then lying drunken and disorganized at Danbury. A muster-roll of the little band would have shown a most pathetic ex- hibition of weakness. There were parts of the companies of Colonel Lamb's battalion of artillery, with three rusty cannon, a field-piece, and
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HISTORY OF REDDING.
part of the artillery company of Fairfield, and sixty Continentals ; the rest were raw levies, chiefly old men and boys. It was eight o'clock in the evening when the troops arrived at Redding Ridge-an evening as dis- agreeable as a north-east rain-storm with its attendant darkness could make it. Here the troops halted an hour for rest and refreshment. At the expiration of that time a bugle sounded far down the street ; then the tramp of horsemen was heard, and presently Major-General Wooster and Brigadier-General Arnold, at the head of a squadron of cavalry, dashed into the village.
On hearing that the British were so far ahead, it is said that Arnold became so enraged that he could scarcely keep his seat, and his terrible oaths fell on his auditors' ears like thunder-claps. Wooster at once as- sumed command, and the column moved forward through the mud as far as Bethel, where it halted for the night. At Danbury, but three miles distant, Tryon's force was sleeping in drunken security, and might have- been annihilated by a determined effort, but the command was too much exhausted for the attempt.
Tryon the next morning was early astir, being aware that the militia were closing in on him on all sides, and commenced a retreat to his ships,. taking the circuitous route through Ridgefield. On learning this move, General Wooster at Bethel divided his command, one detachment under Generals Arnold and Silliman marching rapidly across the country and taking post at Ridgefield, while the other, commanded by himself, pressed closely on Tryon's rear. The succeeding fortunes of the patriots-how they met the foe. at Ridgefield, how Wooster fell gallantly leading on his men, how Arnold performed prodigies of valor, and how the enemy were. pursued and harassed until they gained the cover of their ships-has be- come a part of our national history, and needs no recounting.
News that the British had landed at Compo, that they were encamped at Weston, and would march through Redding the next day, was conveyed to this town at an early hour, and occasioned the greatest consternation to this town at an early hour, and occasioned the greatest consternation and excitement. Money and valuables were hastily secreted in wells and other places of concealment ; horses and cattle were driven into the forests, and the inhabitants along the enemy's probable route held themselves in readi- ness for instant flight. Herod's emissaries could not have excited livelier emotions of terror in the hearts of Judean mothers than did Tryon's in- vasion in the bosoms of the mothers of Redding. He seems to have warred pre-eminently on women and boys. The latter especially he made. prisoners of, and consigned to the horrible prison-ships, either holding them as hostages, or on the plea that they "would very soon grow into rebels." The women of Redding had heard of this propensity, and at his approach gathered all the boys of thirteen and under-the older ones were away under arms-and conveyed them to a secluded place near the
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Forge, where they were left under the charge of one Gershom Barlow ; here they remained until the invader had regained his ships, provisions being cooked and sent in to them daily.
Many other incidents of the invasion are current in the town.
On receiving intelligence of the landing at Compo, Captain Read mus- tered his company of militia, and forthwith marched to intercept the in- . vaders. At a place called Couch's Rock, in Weston, they came suddenly upon the entire force of the enemy and were taken prisoners. Timothy Parsons, one of the militiamen, had a fine musket which he particularly valued ; this a grenadier took, and dashed to pieces on the stones, saying it should waste no more rebel bullets.
Mrs. Thankful Bradley, living in Weston, near the Redding line, was milking by the roadside when the troops surprised her. An officer told her to remain quiet, and they would not molest her. She followed his advice and continued milking while the entire army filed by. With the exception of kidnapping the lad Sanford, the British behaved with praise- worthy moderation during their march through Redding. No buildings were burned, and no such enormities committed as marked their descent on Fairfield and New Haven two years later.
After their departure nothing further of a warlike nature occurred in the town, until the encampment in Redding in the winter of, 1778-9 of the right wing of the Continental Army. These troops had been op- erating along the Hudson during the fall, and as winter approached a council of officers decided that it should go into winter quarters at Red- ding, as from that position it could support the important fortress of West Point in case of attack, overawe the Cow Boys and Skinners of Westchester County, and cover the country adjacent to the Sound. Ac- cordingly, early in November, General Putnam arrived in Redding with several of his general officers to select sites for the proposed camps. Three were marked out: the first in the northeastern part of Lonetown, near the Bethel line, on land later owned by Aaron Treadwell. The second also in Lonetown, about a mile and a half west, on the farm of the late Sherlock Todd, a short distance southwest of his dwelling-house. The third camp was in West Redding, on the ridge lying east of Uriah Grif- fin's, on land now owned by him, and about a quarter of a mile north of Redding Station. The sites of all three camps may be easily distinguished by the ruins of the stone chimneys which formed one side of the log huts in which the troops were sheltered. The first camp was laid out with admirable judgment, at the foot of the rocky bluffs which fence in on the west the valley of the Little River .* Only a few heaps of stone mark the site of the second camp, which was also laid out on the southerly slope of
* For a fuller account of this camp see Chapter v.
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a hill, with a stream of running water at its base. The same may be said of the camp at Long Ridge.
As to the exact location of Putnam's headquarters at this time, au- thorities differ, but all agree in placing it on Umpawaug Hill. Mr. Bar- ber, in his "Historical Collections," says it was the old house that stood until recently on the corner of the road leading down to Sanford's Station, a short distance north of Andrew Perry's present residence. Mr. Lossing, in his "Field Book of the Revolution," makes the same statement; but I am informed by an aged resident, whose father was an officer in the Rev- olutionary army, and visited General Putnam at his headquarters, that they were in an old house that then stood between the residence of the late Burr Meeker and that now occupied by Mr. Ephraim Barlow, and that the first-named was his guard-house. The question is one of little importance perhaps, except to those who demand the utmost possible accuracy in the statement of fact.
Some of the officers were quartered in the house now occupied by Mrs. Seth Todd, then owned by Samuel Gould ; others in a house that stood on the site of the one formerly occupied by Sherlock Todd. General Parson's headquarters were on Redding Ridge.
While the army lay at Redding several events of importance occurred, which are worthy of narrating with some degree of particularity. The troops went into winter quarters this year in no pleasant humor, and al- most in the spirit of insubordination. This was peculiarly the case with the Connecticut troops. They had endured privations that many men would have sunk under-the horrors of battle, the weariness of the march, cold, hunger, and nakedness. What was worse, they had been paid in the depreciated currency of the times, which had scarcely any purchasing power, and their devoted families at home were reduced to the lowest extremity of want and wretchedness.
The forced inactivity of the camp gave them time to brood over their wrongs, until at length they formed the bold resolve of marching to Hart- ford, and presenting their grievances in person to the Legislature then sitting. The two brigades were under arms for this purpose before news of the revolt was brought to Putnam. He, with his usual intrepidity and decision of character, threw himself upon his horse and dashed down the road leading to his camps, never slacking rein until he drew up in the presence of the disaffected troops. "My brave lads," cried he, "whither are you going? Do you intend to desert your officers, and to invite the enemy to follow you into the country ? Whose cause have you been fighting and suffering so long in-is it not your own? Have you no property, no parents, wives, or children? You have behaved like men so far-all the world is full of your praises, and posterity will stand astonished at your deeds ; but not if you spoil all at last. Don't you con-
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sider how much the country is distressed by the war, and that your of- ficers have not been any better paid than yourselves? But we all expect better times, and that the country will do us ample justice. Let us all stand by one another then, and fight it out like brave soldiers. Think what a shame it would be for Connecticut men to run away from their officers." When he had finished this stirring speech, he directed the acting major of brigades to give the word for them to shoulder, march to their regimental parades, and lodge arms, which was done; one soldier only, a ringleader in the affair, was confined in the guard-house, from which he attempted to escape, but was shot dead by the sentinel on duty -himself one of the mutineers. Thus ended the affair, and no further trouble was experienced with the Connecticut troops.
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