USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > The history of the town of Litchfield, Connecticut, 1720-1920 > Part 22
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"The cellar of his church was used by some of his parishioners who were engaged in the wholesale liquor business, to store their goods. Report says it was John Pierpont who wrote the following lines:
There's a spirit above, And a spirit below; A spirit of love, And a spirit of woe. The spirit above is the Spirit Divine, But the spirit below is the spirit of wine".
(Morris Herald, April 1899).
John Brown was born in Torrington on May 9, 1800. He came to the Academy with his brother Salmon about 1816 or a little later. and remained only one year. "He was not very popular with the other pupils; this may have been due to certain unamiable traits of character for which he admits his brothers criticised him, or simply to his conscientiousness of behavior. His disposition to attempt to right wrongs in a summary way appeared even at that early day. His younger brother Salmon was guilty of some offense for which he thought he ought to be punished, 'If Salmon had done
.
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this at home', he said to the teacher, 'father would have punished him. I know he would expect you to punish him now for doing this, and if you dont I shall'. That night, more in sorrow than in anger, he gave him a severe flogging". (Morris Herald, Jan. 1899). Salmon Brown was for a time in the employ of Morris Wood- ruff. His grandson, George M. Woodruff, tells that on one occa- sion, Morris Woodruff, upon his return from the legislature, was much annoyed to find that some of his directions concerning farm work had not been carried out. Upon which Salmon consoled him by saying: "Gin'ral, Gin'ral, don't you know that if a man wants anything did, he must did it hiself?" We are not sure whether this anecdote speaks very well for the teaching of grammar at the Morris Academy!
Through his life Morris showed a deep interest in his fellow men, not only in the scholars directly in his charge. This character- istic led him to be greatly interested in missions; the mission school of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions being first connected with Morris Academy. The Litchfield County Foreign Mission Society was the first organized auxiliary of the Board, and dates from 1811. James Morris was largely instrumental in its undertaking, and was its Secretary from its inception until his death. About 1816 he founded a mission school at South Farms, which in May 1817 was transferred to Cornwall, where it became an object of great interest as an experiment before untried. The school was founded as a result of the finding in 1809 of a young Sandwich Island boy, Henry Obookiah, on a doorstep at Yale College. He was cared for by Rev. Edwin Welles Dwight, then a resident gradu- ate at Yale. Samuel J. Mills Jr., who had been a pupil of James Morris at the Academy, became the companion of Mr. Dwight in New Haven, and so was deeply interested in the heathen boy and conceived the idea of educating him as a missionary to his native land. Gradually the idea grew of a school for native foreign mis- sionaries; and when at last the school was opened at South Farms, Mr. Dwight became the first principal. On April 1, 1817, he wrote to his mother from the school: "I came at the request of the agents of the Heathen school to take charge of the Owhyhee boys. It is established by the board of commission of foreign missions and not long hence to have a very important connection with all our plans and efforts to spread the gospel. The object is to furnish a place for collecting and instructing all the heathen youth that may be thrown upon our country or sent to this country for educa- tion. Of the Owhyheeans, three or four are pious. It is very evidently God's design to prepare some of these young men to return as missionaries and interpreters to their own country". Samuel J. Mills Jr. did not live to see the success of the school. In 1818,
on the return journey from Africa, whither he had gone to explore the West Coast with a view to founding a colonization project, he died at the early age of thirty five. In his short life, through his many and varied pioneer services for the cause of foreign missions,
OLD MARSH HOUSE. NORTHFIELD HILL
DAVID WELCH HOUSE, MILTON, 1745
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he won the reputation of being the Father of American Missions. He is buried in Torringford, where he was born.
After removing to Cornwall the school grew very rapidly. The catalog of 1820 showed that the scholars were chiefly natives of the Sandwich Islands, one from Tahiti, one from the Marquesas, one Malay. There were also several American Indians. The school was discontinued in 1827, as it was found better to train native missionaries in their own lands. The detailed history of the school does not belong in this book. The life of Obookiah was written by Mr. Dwight in 1818, the work passing through 12 editions, the last in 1867. R. Henry W. Dwight, the biographer of his grand-father, has estimated that these several editions, in three languages, num- bered not less than 50,000 copies, an enormous amount for those days. But the little seed of foreign missions, sowed in South Farms, cannot be counted in numbers, and though the story is virtually forgotten to-day its influence has been enormous.
In connection with this mission work, we notice that under the inspiration of James Morris and Morris Woodruff in South Farms, and of Julius Deming, Benjamin Tallmadge, Tapping Reeve and others in Litchfield, the support of Litchfield to the general Board was on a very liberal scale. "In the first years of the American Board for Foreign Missions its prospects were dark, and its supplies dubious. When the annual collection from Litchfield County first came into the Treasury of the Board, relieving it from some existing embarrassment, Dr. Worcester exclaimed 'I bless God for making Litchfield County'." (Semi-Centennial of the Litchfield County Foreign Mission Society, 1861, p. 25). The contribution from Litch- field in the spring of 1813, the first remittance, was $1,354.11, truly a large one for the time, as the entire receipts of the Board for that year from the whole country were only $11,361.18.
James Morris was taken ill while visiting the Mission School in Cornwall, and died on his way home, at Goshen, April 20, 1820. The work at his Academy was continued after his death by a Mr. Chapman, and in 1831 Samuel Morris Ensign, 1804-1888, became principal. He was a distinguished educator, and drew large num- bers of pupils from the then western states, such as Ohio. The building of the Academy was torn down in 1892. For the last few years it had been used as a barn, the school being conducted in the home of Mr. Ensign. Some years before the latter's death the Academy practically ceased to exist.
NORTHFIELD.
The south-eastern part of our township, now known as North- field, was first settled about 1760, but not incorporated as a parish until 1794. The parish, as laid out, included a part of Thomaston, then known as Northbury, or the north section of Plymouth. The name Northfield is a compound of the first syllable of Northbury and the last syllable of Litchfield.
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Tradition says that the first settlers were John Humaston and Titus Turner, both of whom came from New Haven. Humaston built a sawmill on the stream just east of the cemetery, where a mill still stands, though not the same one. Here he sawed the lumber for the first frame house, which stood on the site of the present Post Office until it was burned in 1904, with the former Post Office just to the east. Turner's log house stood about a quarter mile west, on the south side of the present main street, but facing south on the earlier road.
James Marsh was the first child born in the settlement, Septem- ber 22, 1762.
Prior to 1794, the settlement was called South-East Farms. The first recorded meeting of a Society was October 15, 1789, at which it was voted to hire a minister for the winter season of six months.
In 1791, application was made for liberty to have a burying ground. The first location was not satisfactory and was not used. On May 6, 1795, John Humaston made a gift to the Society of half an acre, on the present site, and this tract has been twice subse- quently added to. He reserved to "Himself, his heirs and assigns forever the right of feeding said Ground".
Northfield is the only section of our township in which the Episcopal church was built before the Congregational. The First Episcopal Society of Litchfield Southeast Farms was organized at the house of John Humaston on September 5, 1793. Thirty six persons were enrolled as members at this meeting. The first church, 45 by 34 feet, was built on the Green, where the Soldier's Monument now stands, facing south, with a door at the west end also, and was completed in 1795. Rev. Joseph E. Camp officiated for a short time, addressing the Episcopalians in the morning and the Congre- gationalists in the afternoon. This building was consecrated as Trinity Church on October 19, 1836, by Thomas Church Brownell, Bishop of Connecticut. The present church was begun in 1865 and consecrated as Trinity Church on February 10, 1866, by John Williams, Bishop of Connecticut.
By gift of Mrs. Bennett Humiston in 1899 the Society acquired the house adjoining the church on the south, which has since been used as a rectory. Here the Rev. Adelbert P. Chapman, the rector from 1901 to 1917, conducted for several years a small Summer Home for Girls for the preventative treatment of Tuberculosis, an admirable charity, carried on with great devotion.
The Ecclesiastical Society of Northfield was incorporated at the session of the General Assembly, October 1794, the name being changed to the Congregational Society of Northfield in 1859. The Society was organized at the house of William Washburn at a meeting on January 1, 1795, with 14 enrolled members. Later in the year it was voted to adopt 'Deacon Dutton's plan' for a meeting house, 50 by 38 feet. The building was commenced in 1796, but not completed for use until 1803. It stood on the top of Northfield
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Hill, a quarter of a mile north of the present Green. The present church was dedicated February 6, 1867.
The Society is endowed through a trust fund of $10,000., received from the estate of Asa Hopkins, who died in 1838. He lived on the East Hill, where he began at a very early date the manufacture of wooden clocks; later he began the manufacture of flutes at Flute- ville; and finally removed to New Haven, where he again manu- factured clocks.
By the bequest of William L. Gilbert of Winsted, a native of Northfield, who died in 1890, the Society received the sum of $4,000. for a parsonage, to include a room for a free Library, for which the further sum of $8,000. was given. This building is located opposite the church, and was completed in 1896. The Librarian, from 1893 to 1907, was Levi S. Wooster, to whose faithful work in building up the Library, Northfield is very largely indebted for the fine collection of 5,500 books now included. Rev. Wallace Humiston is the present Librarian.
The first school, Litchfield District No. 14, was established in 1774. The school stood east of the road about half way from the present Congregational church to the top of the hill above. All traces of it disappeared long ago. In 1797, the Ecclesiastical Society appointed a committee which laid out the following districts: Center, Hopkins, Marsh, Fluteville, Mill and Guernsey Hill. Of these, Hopkins has long been abandoned, and Guernsey Hill more recently ; while Mill is now in the town of Morris. A new building was furnished by Daniel Catlin about 1840 for use of the Center district, which the town later acquired and which is still standing, opposite the present Center School, built in 1885.
There have been at least two important private schools. Rev. Joseph E. Camp, during his long ministry with the Ecclesiastical Society, 1795-1837, fitted many boys for college. One of these was John Pierpont, who also studied at the Morris Academy.
Deacon John Catlin opened a private school in the old tavern of Jacob Turner about 1845. Among his pupils were Senator O. H. Platt, Judge Edward W. Seymour, Rev. Storrs O. Seymour, D. D., and James G. Batterson of Hartford, builder of the State Capitol.
There has been a Post-Office in Northfield since about 1836, when Daniel Catlin was postmaster. Prior to this time a weekly mail was delivered to the settlers by the rider to Hartford from Litchfield, beginning January 24, 1791.
About 1794 the mail was left at the store of Turner and Wood- ruff, and the trips were made twice weekly. Shortly after 1800, the mail was left at the tavern of Jacob Turner, which was a way station for the overland mail from Hartford to Albany. This house still stands, being the second house north of the Congregational Church.
Of the many industries which have been located in Northfield, the only one now active is the Northfield Knife Co., which was
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incorporated in 1858, with John S. Barnes as President and Samuel Mason as Secretary, leasing and later buying the plant of an earlier factory, the Northfield Manufacturing Co. Barnes was succeeded as President by Mason, and in 1865 by Franklin H. Catlin, with J. Howard Catlin as Secretary and Treasurer. The business was rapidly built up, and has attained an enviable reputation for the finest grade of pocket cutlery. Exhibits were made at the World's Fairs at Philadelphia, 1876; Paris, 1878; Chicago, 1892; and Buffalo, 1901; prizes being received at each. At Buffalo, over a thousand styles of knives were shown. In 1919, the name and plant were sold to the Clark Brothers Cutlery Co., of Kansas City.
Among the natives of Northfield, John Pierpont Humiston should be mentioned as the inventor of the first duplex telegraph instru- ment. He was born 1816, a grandson of John Humaston, and was apprenticed as a boy to a local carriage maker. He bought his last year of service for $342.50, for which amount he gave his note. After working in New Haven and Seymour, he turned his attention to electricity. His invention of the duplex telegraph allowed four messages to be sent over one wire, two each way. He also invented machines for the quick writing and receiving of telegraphic charac- ters. He sold his patents to the American Union Co., at the time of the Civil War, and after many years in the courts realized only
$5,000., for patents which have proved of great value. The diffi- culty was caused by the Government taking over the American Union's lines, and that Company selling out to the Western Union. The latter Company did not recognize Humiston's claim, and although after a long lawsuit he obtained a verdict for $16,000., the amount was greatly reduced by costs. Mr. Humiston died in Northfield at the age of 88, in 1904, and was at the time of his death the oldest resident of the village.
The facts relative to Northfield have been furnished by Albert M. Turner, the Field Secretary of the Connecticut State Park Com- mission. It is interesting to notice the important part that he and Horace Bushnell, also a native of our township, (he was born in Bantam in 1802), have played in the development of Connecticut parks.
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Horace Bushnell was the originator of the project to make a public Park in the center of the city of Hartford. After a long fight for such an innovation, his plan was successfully carried through in 1854, the park now bearing his name. This was the first time that an appropriation of public funds was made in the state, and very possibly in the nation, for the purchase of land for park purposes. Heretofore, such parks or reservations as existed had been set apart out of public land or out of private gifts. It is hard to realize to-day, when millions of dollars are being spent annually by municipalities, states and the nation, for the purchase of land for park purposes and for the establishment of public forests,
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how recently and with what difficulty the first appropriation of the kind was made.
Albert M. Turner, as Field Secretary of the State Park Com- mission, has been the chief instrument in carrying out the extensive plans of that body since its formation in 1913. This State was one of the last to have a Park Commission, but it has made up for lost time by its wise and energetic action. It is also interesting to note that the first gift to the Commission of land was made by Mrs. G. A. Senff, of New York, of a tract on Mount Tom, lying partly in Litchfield, and partly in Morris and Washington. The tower at the summit of Mount Tom is included in the area of this park. It was constructed in 1888, from a design by Professor Henry S. Munroe, of the Department of Mining of Columbia University and a summer resident of Litchfield; the tower is 30 feet high and was modeled after an oil well tower and was so well designed and built that it is still in service at the present time, having withstood the high winds and storms of 32 years. The tower is 1,291 feet above sea level at its base.
MILTON.
The village of Milton was settled from Litchfield about 1740. Some settlers also came from New Milford, notably David Welch, who built the oldest house now standing there, located at the entrance to the village on the Litchfield road. It dates from 1745 and is the oldest house anywhere in our township, with the single exception of the Vaill House, at the foot of Brush Hill, which is a year older, but extensively remodeled. The Welch house is now known as the Bissell House, as it was the home of William Bissell, who was Captain of the Litchfield Company in the Litchfield County Regiment in the Civil War. The house in Milton now known as the Welch House is situated at the farther extremity of the village and dates from 1774. This belonged to another branch of the same family.
There was no church in Milton, which was at first known as West Farms, until 1795, when the Parish was set off and incor- porated, including parts of the townships of Goshen, Cornwall and Warren. The building of the Episcopal Church was begun in 1802. Morris says, p. 105, that neither of these churches was com- pleted in 1814. The Episcopal church is said to have been com- pleted in 1827, and to have been dedicated in 1837. The bell was added in 1843, a gift from Garry Welch and Hugh P. Welch. There has also been a Methodist church in Milton, which was moved to Bantam some years ago and converted into a dwelling.
The Burying Ground lies nearly a mile west of the village, in a sheltered valley, enclosed by a substantial wall of quarried stone. Charles T. Payne says, p. 174, that no record of the date when this Cemetery was laid out remains, beyond the evidence of several tombstones of the Revolutionary period. It is spoken of in a deed
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of 1790, but is probably of considerably earlier date. Additions were made to it in 1813 and 1872.
"Within the parochial limits of Milton", says Morris, p. 105, "there are five saw-mills; two grist-mills; two iron works; one trip- hammer; one carding machine for wool; one machine for manu- facturing wooden clocks; one waggon-maker; two turners; two shoe- makers; six whole school districts; and six school-houses, in which schools are kept through the year, by males in the winter season, and by females in the summer. The price for schoolmasters, is from 9 to 12 dollars per month and their board; for school-mistresses, from 5 to 6 shillings per week and their board". By the concen- tration of industries in the valleys and by the centralization of the schools, this long list of a century ago is reduced to one mill and one school.
The Shepherd Knapp Fresh Air Home, which is located on the hill east of the village of Milton, was founded in 1905 by Mrs. Shepherd Knapp of Litchfield and New York, in memory of her husband. It is maintained as a branch of the New York Tribune Fresh Air Fund, and gives happy summer outings of two weeks each to a thousand or more city children every year.
Among the citizens of Milton should be mentioned one of the Revolutionary soldiers of the village, John Griswold, whom Eliza- beth C. Barney Buel, in her lecture to the Litchfield Scientific Asso- ciation, on the Industries of Litchfield, describes as the maker of the first model of an "iron Monitor". This he tested out on Milton Pond, so that it cannot have been very large. He never did any- thing with his invention, and heard of Ericsson's earliest experi- ments with an iron turreted ship only two days before he died, December 22, 1847. Ericsson's experiments did not bear fruit until the real Monitor was constructed, fifteen years later.
BANTAM.
The following account of Bantam has been summarized from data specially contributed by Herman Foster of that Borough. Originally the name Bantam was given to the whole district, covering so extensive an area that our Goshen was known as New Bantam prior to its settlement in 1738. When our township was denomi- nated Litchfield in 1715, the name Bantam was used in a constantly more restricted sense, until at one time only the Lake and the Falls carried on the name. The remainder of the present village, towards the West, was known as Bradleyville, from the Bradley family, several branches of which were prominent here in the early Nineteenth Century. Here the old Bradleyville Tavern was the Mecca for excursions of the young people from Litchfield, and one of the regular stopping places for the four horse coaches from New York and Danbury.
The origin of the name Bantam has caused much perplexity. Morris and Woodruff attribute it without question to an Indian origin. Kilbourne suggested that it might have been derived from
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an East Indian Bantam in Java. This remote town, being known to the early English traders as a wild region, inhabited by a race of barbarians, would, according to the Kilbourne theory, naturally have lent its name to a similar tract in the New World. His theory has always been interesting, but never entirely convincing. It should not be dismissed without a study of the various arguments he pre- sents, which space prevents our reproducing here. We may add a curious circumstance to the evidence he presents, namely that, when Ohio was being settled largely from Connecticut after the sale of the Western Reserve lands, two of the villages near Cincinnati were called respectively Bantam and Batavia. They are nearer indeed to one another in Ohio than their namesakes are in Java, and the Bantam unquestionably came by way of our township. There are also, for those who seek a remote ancestor, a Cape Ban- tam in Indo-China, and a village of Bantama in the Gold Coast of Africa.
This plurality of barbarian Bantams suggests that the word is perhaps a corruption of some native jargon as heard by English ears, and this brings us back to the older hypothesis that it sprung from some phrase of our own Indian tribes. One interesting sup- position says that Pe-an-tum meant a Praying Indian, referring to some early local chief converted perhaps by the first Moravian mis- sionary visits into the Wilderness from the Dutch settlements beyond the Hudson. Unfortunately for such a tradition, no Mora- vians came to our parts until ten years or more after the name Bantam was in general use, and even then it is doubtful if they came any nearer than to New Milford. The sum total of the discussion is that we shall never know more of the etymology of Bantam than of that of the later name for the township, Litchfield. New evidence is more likely to confuse than to explain.
The outlet of Bantam Lake, as it approaches the present village of Bantam, tumbles nearly one hundred feet in the course of three- quarters of a mile, in which distance there were at one time six dams furnishing water power for as many varied industries. After leaving Bantam, the stream races on down the hills and through the valleys, until its waters finally are merged in the Shepaug River, passing on into the Housatonic River, and thence into Long Island Sound.
This wealth of water power has made Bantam potentially the richest section of the township. Recognition of the advantages presented was slow in coming. In the chapter on the older indus- tries, we found here little beyond the paper mill and the other mills, not notably in advance of those elsewhere in the town. As the indus- tries of Connecticut began to pass from the hilltops to the valleys in the forties, Bantam was still comparatively neglected. In 1876, C. F. Flynn and William Doyle formed the firm of Flynn and Doyle, took over the business of the earlier Litchfield Carriage Company, and, until 1911, carried on an extensive manufacture of carriages,
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wagons and sleighs, reaching in some years an output of $40,000. Their products were of a high standard and their market extended far beyond the state. In 1911, the Company was merged into the Flynn and Doyle Co., which was continued until the death of Mr. Flynn. Mr. Doyle carried on the business for another year, until 1918, when it was discontinued. In April, 1919, the factory was taken over by the Bantam Auto Repair Station.
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