USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > The history of the town of Litchfield, Connecticut, 1720-1920 > Part 24
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"The second Mass was said in the house occupied at the time by John Ryan, on the west side of North Lake Street. This historic Mass was said by Rev. Philip Gillick in 1853, in the presence of twenty persons. At this time, or at least in the same year, was solemnized the first Catholic marriage in Litchfield, Father Gillick officiating". (Diocese of Hartford, p. 293).
A convert to the Catholic faith, born in Litchfield, Miss Julia Beers, purchased a small building, in 1858, which now forms part of the pastoral residence. The present dining room of the house, she arranged with altar and seats, and here Mass was said at fre- quent intervals until 1861, when increasing numbers made removal to the Court House necessary. In 1868, the first church was com- pleted. During these years and until 1882 the pastors of Winsted served the people of Litchfield. On September 8, 1882, Litchfield was made an independent Parish, with the Rev. M. Byrne the first resident pastor. During the administration of Rev. Timothy M. Sweeney, the present Church was built, at a cost of $23,000.
As auxiliaries to the pastors of St. Anthony's parish, Miss Beers and another convert, Miss Emma Deming, labored zealously to pro- mote the welfare of the Church and its congregation. Miss Beers, in the last years of her life, lived in Rome, where she is buried.
CEMETERIES.
The work of Charles T. Payne, Litchfield and Morris Inscrip- tions, 1905, was published at the suggestion and with the support of Dwight C. Kilbourn. It gives a complete and admirable state-
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ment of all the Cemeteries and private Burying Grounds in the original limits of the township, together with transcripts of all the inscriptions down to 1900, which were legible when the collection was made. Particulars regarding the several Cemeteries in South Farms, Northfield, Milton, and Bantam are given elsewhere from this same source. We will quote here the notes of Mr. Payne on our West and East Cemeteries, pp. 8, 54.
"The West Burying Ground is the earliest of the Burial places in Litchfield, and its establishment was nearly contemporaneous with the founding of the Town. The first notice of it appears in Vol. I of the Land Records, as follows:
"'An acompt of the High Ways in Litchfield in 1723 ... the 2d high way Running East and West between Samuel Smedly his home Lott and the Widow allen's home Lott of twenty eight Rods in bredth Sixty Rods West and then is twelue Rods Wide down to the swamp and then is laid out but six rods Wide thorou the swamp Which highway runs on the West side of the letle plain buting north upon Land Laid out to John Gay to make up the fifteen acres for his home Lott and so continuel a West Line until it comes to the swamp or flooded Lands and all the Land upon the letele playn South of said highway to the swamp or flooded land which is not yet Laid out is Resarued and Laid out for a burying place. Which highway at the West End of the litle plain or burying place runs six Rods Wide throro the swamp and across the hill called buck's Neak With the same corce and bredth until it comes to the pine plain Which high Way is Called by name of Middiel Street'.
"Here were interred nearly all of the pioneers of Litchfield and the yard remained the principal burying ground of the Town until the Revolution.
"Early in the Nineteenth Century a large tract was added on the Western side". The Roman Catholic Cemetery adjoins this upon the West.
"The East Burying Ground has become the largest of the ceme- teries in the township, although it was the third one to be estab- lished, and was at first, as is noted below, a part of the highway set apart for the purpose. It lies half a mile east of the court-house. The following record in the first town book is of interest:
"'September 26, 1754 ... At the same Meeting Messrs. Samuel Culver Joshua Garritt & Edward Phelps were chosen committee to lay out a Burying Place in the East Side of the Town where & how much they shall think proper'.
"The laying out of this ground is recorded in the land records under date of January 12, 1755. ...
"In 1837 the yard was enlarged upon its western side by an addition of sixteen rods. The next year further extension was made on the northern side, and the town voted a part of the highway for the same purpose. The stone wall in front of the ground on East Street was built about 1850 by subscription.
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"Within fifteen years a corporation known as the Litchfield Cemetery Association has purchased a tract of land between the ancient yard and Torrington Road and has laid it out with much care. Many fine monuments have been erected upon the new ground.
"In the southeast corner of the old burying yard lie a great number of Revolutionary soldiers who died during the war, and were buried here without any distinguishing marks".
CHAPTER XX.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGES.
Frederick Wolcott died at Litchfield on Sunday morning, May 28, 1837. The funeral Sermon was preached by the pastor of the Congregational Church, Rev. Jonathan Brace, who said in closing: " ... He is gone, and he is the last of his order. Reeve has been carried out before him. ... "
And in the Personal Memories of E. D. Mansfield, p. 125, after reading of the Wolcotts, Tallmadges, Seymours, Buels, Tracy, and others, we come on this passage: "All this is gone, and nothing can illustrate the evanescent state of our society more than the changes which it has undergone in many of the old places in the old states. However excellent or able may be the people who live in Litch- field now, there is no such social glory, no such marked superiority there, as that which distinguished the noted people of Litchfield in the generation just passing away, when I came upon the stage. The change in people, manners, and conditions is quite as great
as the change in the dress of gentlemen. When I was a law student, 1823, a few old gentlemen still retained the dress of the Revolution. It was a powdered queue, white-topped boots, silk stockings, and breeches with buckles. I can remember to have seen David Daggett, chief justice, and a half dozen others, walking in the streets with this dignified dress. It is in vain to say that the present dress is at all equal to it, in what ought to be one of the objects of good dress, to give an idea of dignity and respect. The man who is now inside of a plain black dress, with unpretending boots, may be as good a man, as able a man, as he in white-topped boots and breeches, but he is not respected as much, for he no longer assumes as much. He has become only one of a multitude instead of being one above a multitude".
Certainly great changes have come upon Litchfield; we have only to compare the wilderness of 1720, with a few settlers dwelling in their log huts, without flour to bake bread, without even an apple or adequate seeds to raise vegetables; with the social, educa- tional. commercial center of 1820, when the chief magistrate of the State lived in Litchfield, and the teachings of Lyman Beecher were to be heard twice every Sunday. Or again we have only to com- pare this Litchfield of 1820 with the summer resort of 1920, when we no longer give out an influence important far beyond the County, but instead receive and welcome those from outside our borders, and give them a measure of recreation and health, to do which we seem particularly adapted.
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Such changes as these are very hard for us to realize. Barely two lifetimes, as lifetimes are counted in Litchfield, have passed in the course of these changes. Reuben Dickinson, a resident of Mil- ton, was born in Massachusetts in the year 1716, four years before the settlement of Litchfield; he died in Milton on November 5, 1818, at the age of 102 years. His great-grand-nephew, Edwin Perry Dickinson was born in Milton on January 4, 1821, and is now living there, in good health, in his one-hundredth year.
As we look back, it is not possible to say, this period ends here, or that period begins there. But we make such generalizations, knowing them to be inaccurate, so as to have some measure, even if the measure be inexact, of the transitions our town has passed through. As a matter of fact, the transition is constant. Our town has never stood still. Each year definite links with the past are broken, and new links with the future are being made. We do not know what the future is to be, so we do not recognize the importance of the new links; and we never have the true perspective of the immediate past, so we do not notice the parting links. It is only at the death of a man, whose life has been noteworthy, as was that of Frederick Wolcott, or after a radical change, such as Mansfield noted, has become a completed fact, that we speak of the old order changing. That is the shortcoming of history, and if we speak of the year 1840 marking an important point in the story of our town, we do so only because it is the end of a decade, and a time somewhere near which certain influences, already long since waning, seem to have entirely ceased, and others, already apparent, first become dominating.
Of the passing influences, one was that of the men who had been young and active in the days of the Revolution, men built in a large mould, as it seems to us, or rather developed to a great pitch of efficiency and public responsibility by the necessities of their young manhood. On June 1, 1833, Oliver Wolcott Jr. died; on March 7, 1835, Benjamin Tallmadge died; on May 28, 1837, Fred- erick Wolcott died; on January 23, 1838, Julius Deming died; on May 11, 1838, James Gould died. The old institutions of Litch- field also changed in this period: the Law School was closed in 1833; on October 31 of the same year, Miss Gimbred became the principal of the Litchfield Academy in the stead of Miss Sarah Pierce. Tapping Reeve, Moses Seymour, Uriah Tracy had died at dates much earlier. Lyman Beecher had been called to a larger field in Boston in 1826.
But the change was not alone in the passing of a few men. The whole population of Litchfield was involved. As we have not yet referred to the numerical population of the township, a few figures may be in order here.
In 1756, the inhabitants of Litchfield township, including South Farms, numbered 1,366. The population of the state was 130,612.
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Litchfield was the 35th town in population in the state, and included about 1 per cent. of the total number of inhabitants.
The growth was rapid. In 1774, we had 2,544 inhabitants; in 1782, 3,077; in 1800, 4,285. Litchfield was then the 10th town in the state. In 1810, the population was 4,639; about 2 per cent of the total for the state; and the town was the fourth in point of population in the whole state. Only New Haven, Hartford and Middletown were larger; but the remarkable thing is that New Haven, the largest of all, was only half as large again as Litch- field, its population being 6,967.
Then came the turn in the tide. In 1820, the population had declined just a little to 4,610; but we had lost fourth place to Groton. In 1830, Norwich and Saybrook passed us, and we were seventh, with 4,456. In 1840, Bridgeport, Danbury and New Lon- don passed us, leaving us the 10th town, with 4,038. In 1850, the decline had reached 3,953. In 1860, owing to the separation of South Farms, we fell to the 39th place in the state, with only 3,200 inhabitants. Since then the population has not greatly changed, though it reached the lowest figure of all at the last census: 1870, pop. 3,113; 1880', pop. 3,410; 1890, pop. 3,304; 1900, pop. 3,214; 1910, pop. 3,005. At this last date we had fallen to the 64th township in the state, with only one-quarter percent. out of a total popula- tion for the state of 1,114,756. In other words, in just a century, we have fallen from fourth to 64th place, and our population rela- tive to that of the state has fallen from two per cent. to one-quarter per cent. It should be added that there are in the state 168 town- ships altogether.
It is possible that the low water mark of 1910 will be found later to be the change in the tide. If so, it will be due solely to the growth of Bantam as a manufacturing center.
There is another great change to be noticed about our popula- tion. If we contrast the quaint statement of Morris, p. 95, "Only two European families have settled in Litchfield; they came from Ireland, and were respectable", with the constantly increasing for- eign element at present, we shall get a real idea of the difference in the population. It is impossible to give any figures in this con- nection, because so many of our citizens of foreign birth have become Americanized, that no one can say who the foreigners now are. This is the happy solution of the immigration question, but it does not alter the fact that the people of the town are now in great part of other races than they were in 1820.
There is another change to be considered, at about this time, which may seem a singular one to the reader; and that is the importance of the weather. The weather of course has not changed, but the way we consider it has. Our winters are proverbially severe. Philip P. Hubbard, whose house is located at the foot of East Hill, near the river, where low temperatures are produced by the atmospheric conditions, sometimes two or three degrees lower
SNOWDRIFT AT DR. BUEL'S, BLIZZARD OF 1888
SOUTH STREET, ICE STORM OF FEB. 20, 1898
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than on the Hill, has observed a mean low temperature of about fifteen degrees below zero for a considerable period of years; while the extreme in severe winters has been 27 below. The severity of the climate is not due to these intensely cold spells, because they usually occur with crisp, sunny weather, and an absence of wind. The most severe weather occurs when the temperature is slightly above the minimum, but when high gales are raging, not infre- quently attaining 80 miles an hour, and sometimes even more. The exposed condition of the Hill affords little shelter from such gales, and when they are accompanied by drifting snow, or the destructive ravages of an ice storm, (see Plate 64), the experience is one to be remembered.
One of the earliest great storms we read about was that on Thanksgiving Day, 1779, when young John Cotton Smith, Governor of the State in 1814, was a visitor with his father at Tapping Reeve's house on his way from Sharon to New Haven, (Smith, Colonial Days and Ways, 1900, pp. 301-307) : "We found the roads badly drifted long before we reached what is now Ellsworth. At that point we had to leave our sleigh, while we pursued our journey on horseback. In those days no one travelled in any sort of a vehicle without taking along saddles for use in emergency It was dark before we reached Litchfield and the snow-laden wind was piercingly cold. ... During the night the storm increased in violence and in the morning it was impossible to see many feet from the door on account of the whirling masses of a snow so hard, dry and powdery that it cut into the face like fine iron filings. ... In traversing the short distance from the house to the barn to attend to the wants of our animals, over a path hardly more than twenty yards long and partly sheltered by the wood-shed, we were almost blinded and bewildered. ... On Wednesday the sun rose bright and clear over a dazzling desert of snow. The lower windows of most of the houses were hidden beneath great piles of drift, In some cases even the second story windows were hidden, or only visible through openings in the drift like the hooded bastions of some icy fort. ... Fences and shrubs were obliterated. Trees, some looking like mountains of snow and some like naked and broken skeletons, arose here and there. And in the village only rising wreaths of smoke told that life existed in the half buried houses. The Meeting House spire was on one side decked by the icy snow with fantastic semblances of marble statuary over which the new long, black light- ning rod had been twisted by the wind until it looked like a Chinese character. ... By nine o'clock we climbed out of an upper story window upon the hard crust of frozen snow and started off with no other burden than the light, but cumbersome snow shoes attached to our feet, and a small roll fastened to each of our backs".
A still earlier storm is told about, without the date, during which Timothy Collins' wife, who became a physician like her husband, when the latter left the church, was called to Goshen.
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No other means of conveyance being possible, she was drawn all the way thither on a hand sled by two men, relatives of the patient. No effort was made to keep the roads open, even in the Center. As late as the Revolution, occurs this vote, at a Town Meeting April 10, 1780: "The question being proposed whether the Selectmen shall allow pay for making Snow Paths or Highway in the Winter? Voted in the Negative".
Our storms often begin early in the winter and are met again late in the spring. Noah Webster, in his Diary, p. 561, speaks of a considerable fall of snow, May 8, 1803, adding, "In Litchfield the ice was half an inch thick; but the trees not forward enough to suffer any injury".
On March 22, 1837, there began a two days' ice storm which is said to have done damage in the town to timber and orchards to the extent of $100,000. During the winter of 1872-1873, Wil- liam Norton came to church on runners for twenty consecutive Sundays, a good record for the snow and for Mr. Norton too. (Book of Days, p. 57). The most destructive ice-storm was on February 19-20, 1898, when every tree in the town is said to have suffered. Many were snapped off ten or fifteen feet from the ground. Millions of icicles hung from the electric wires, which sagged in great loops and finally broke. The very blades of grass stood up stalagmites of ice. (Book of Days, p. 37). A year later, another great storm swept over the country, February 13, 1899: "After a week of bitterly cold weather, when the mercury at its highest was only a few degrees above zero, and at its lowest threat- ened to disappear altogether, the blinding snow of a great storm filled the air. Drifts ten feet high were common enough; in some cases, the snow reached to second-story windows. From Monday noon till Wednesday night, Litchfield was under the snow block- ade". (Book of Days, p. 33).
The winters of Litchfield are not all like this. The great storms are the exception. Many weeks are clear, bright, with a crisp snow that invites one out, or with the wonderful black ice on the Great Pond, which makes such memorable skating for the enthusiasts. Our rollicking diarist, George Younglove Cutler, gives a delightful account of a real winter night out-of-doors, (Vander- poel, pp. 204-205) : "November 28, 1820. Went to Waterbury & tomorrow morning before daylight, shall be obliged to be off in the cold-thro' the snow on horseback to Litchfield-all for this vex- atious law-cursed be the day when I first turned my face towards the fields of litigation.
"November 29. It was no killing thing either. Much worse would it be to hang. For the moon was bright, the snow full of reflection, I full of breakfast, & Nate full of fire. While the cocks of the country crowed about us for musick & the stars shot this way and that about the heavens, as if making a display of fire- works for our amusement. All was silent. As we rose the hills
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& look back upon the far distance which ran down the valley to the south east, the two extremes of the splendor of the united powers of snow and moonbeams & the contrasted darkness of the deep ravines into which light would not penetrate, filled the whole view".
To return, now, to the argument that the winters of Litchfield have assumed an importance different from that they played a century ago, we should note that people are no longer content to travel considerable distances on horseback, or on snowshoes, or to be pulled for miles on hand-sleds. If our motors cannot go through we are greatly distressed. Even in the day of carriages and sleighs, the winters' drifts of Litchfield were dreaded. Gradually the win- ters have contributed more than would at first seem credible to the change of life in many of our residents. The call to the cities has been, in a small measure at least, accelerated, by the desire to avoid the cold and the discomfort. The same is apparent in our summer residents, who, even if they be persons of complete leisure and robust health, would rarely think of spending a winter here. Notice the closed houses of North Street and South Street on a morning of mid-winter. By actual count, more than half are closed, the larger percentage being on North Street. On Prospect Street, every house will be found desolate. The same holds in the outlying districts, where the large and small countryplaces are growing up, as distinguished from the old farms.
But the great call to the cities was due to the growth of manu- facturing towns in the State. It is strange to-day to think of Litchfield, not being passed by Bridgeport and Danbury until 1840. But once passed, what a rush there has been! How the little manufactures have left our hill towns and clustered in the valleys!
In still another respect, and one certainly not anticipated at the time, Litchfield was destined to drop behind. This was as a center of traffic. When the rail-roads came, they were hailed as a great innovation, a great developer of traffic and of trade. But the railroads have left Litchfield high and dry, as they have many another hill town. We lost in a few years all the through stage traffic between Boston and Hartford and New York, between New Haven and Albany; and all that came in its stead was the long ride to New Milford, or later to East Litchfield, or later still the restless tossing of the Shepaug, with its solitary passengers, fast asleep, when the good old engine pulls its way at length into the terminus at the foot of Litchfield Hill.
On February 11, 1840, the very year we have taken to mark the changed conditions, the Housatonic Railroad was opened as far as New Milford. With the building of this road, the New York and Albany stage, which used to roll through our streets at unearthly hours in the morning, is heard no more. (Book of Days, p. 33). In 1849, the first passenger train to Winsted over the Naugatuck Railroad went through on September 22. Our own
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Shepaug Valley Railroad was not opened until January 1, 1872. This was constructed largely as a result of the energetic public spirit of Edwin McNeill. He had been a successful railroad builder elsewhere and returned to his former home in Litchfield in 1863. He first tried to have a road put through from Waterbury to the north, not far from the center, by the Boston and Erie Railroad. He saw clearly that what Litchfield needed was a through road, which would connect it with various parts by a service of adequate speed. He was unsuccessful in this, and finally determined to get a branch road from Bethel and Hawleyville to Litchfield. The story of the construction of the road is an unfortunate one through- out. A great deal of money was sunk in the line, and the traffic, being purely local, has never resulted in any success of operation. It has been a great convenience to Litchfield and to all the towns along the line; but it has never developed the trade or the extensive passenger traffic which a through line would have done. To-day it is much shorter to go to many points of the state by motor, for instance to Hartford, than by train. Many men in Litchfield supported Mr. McNeill, with money and influence; all cannot be named, but J. Deming Perkins and Henry R. Coit should be men- tioned.
As these changes gradually came about, it is interesting to con- sider what new characteristics were developed. One of these is especially important, the growth of a historical spirit. Up to 1840, very little attention was paid to the history of the town. The only actual pamphlet on the subject was the often quoted Statistical Account of James Morris, and this, if we want to be very exact, was written in South Farms. In Litchfield, the life was so busy and so much was being accomplished by the citizens, many of them away for considerable periods, that the retrospective, or shall we call it the contemplative, spirit had little opportunity. There were some diaries kept, of course, and the town records, but very little his- torical material was accumulated. Then we find an extensive and sudden outburst of the historical spirit.
This was led by George C. Woodruff and Payne Kenyon Kil- bourne, both of whom appear to have begun their researches into the history of the town about 1840. Kilbourne's early interest began through researches into the Revolutionary history; while Woodruff's was at first largely concerned with local genealogy; but both soon extended their interest to cover the whole field of Litch- field history.
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