USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > The history of the town of Litchfield, Connecticut, 1720-1920 > Part 7
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The formation of the County was a most important event for the prosperity of Litchfield; legally, commercially, socially, and indirectly educationally, much of the success and prestige of Litch- field dates from this time. All the Courts for the County met in Litchfield, including the Supreme Court of Errors, and the Superior and County Courts. These Courts all continued to meet in Litch- field and not elsewhere in the County until 1873. In that year thirteen of the towns in the County, but not including Litchfield, were constituted a Judicial District, known as the District Court for the First District of Litchfield, with sessions at Winchester (the Courts sitting at Winsted), Canaan (the Courts sitting at Falls Village), and New Milford. This Court was abolished in 1883 and the Court of Common Pleas for Litchfield County consti -. tuted with sessions at Litchfield and the three towns just named. In 1881 the District Court of Waterbury was given jurisdiction over several towns in this County. In the same year Litchfield County was included with Hartford, Tolland, Middlesex and Wind- ham Counties in the first judicial District of the Supreme Court of Errors with sessions only at Hartford. In 1897 an act was passed providing for sessions of the Superior Court at Litchfield, New Milford and Winchester. These changes have greatly reduced the importance of Litchfield as a judicial center in the last fifty years.
The importance which the formation of the new County gave to Litchfield led to a singular contrast, for we find Litchfield in the position of a County Seat, with its courts and other business, yet with no newspaper, no mail-service, no means for passenger travel !
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It was a life that centered within itself to a degree that we van with difficulty picture to-day. The condition of the roads, so far as there were any roads, prevented travel except on horseback, save when the snow made sleighing a possibility. Kilbourne says, p. 166; "Horses were trained to carry double; and it was not an uncommon thing to see father, mother and at least one child mounted on the same horse. Long journeys were sometimes taken with this triple load. For years after the Old Forge, in the western part of the town, was erected, the ore for its use was brought from the iron- mines of Kent in bags slung across the backs of horses; and the bar-iron manufactured there, was bent in the form of ox-bows and carried to market on horseback. Ox-carts and ox-sleds were com- mon, and journeys of hundreds of miles were not infrequently made in these tedious vehicles. Many of the ambitious and hardy young men of this town, who emigrated to Vermont, to the Genesee Country, and to New Connecticut, went on foot, each carrying a pack, in which was enclosed, as an indispensable part of his outfit, a new axe. Some who thus went, became men of wealth and distinction.
"There was no public conveyance between Litchfield and the neighboring or more remote towns, for a period of nearly seventy years after the settlement of the place commenced. As early as 1766, it is true, William Stanton was a post-rider between Litch- field and Hartford; but as it is said that his journeys were per- formed on horseback, the inference is that he did not make a practice of carrying passengers! Indeed, during the Revolution, all regular communication between the interior towns was suspended, even where it had before existed; but expresses were sent hither and thither, as the exigencies of the hour might demand. Litchfield was on the great inland route from Boston to New York, as well as on that from Hartford to Westpoint, so that the travel through the town was very great.
"The establishment of a weekly paper in this village, in 1784, seemed to call for some method of obtaining and circulating the news. There was not a Post-Office or a Mail Route in the County of Litchfield; and how the subscribers contrived to get their papers may well be regarded as a mystery by the publishers of our day. In 1789, Jehiel Saxton, a post-rider between New Haven and Lenox, passed through this town on his route, at stated intervals. In 1790, another of this interesting class of primitive letter-carriers and errand-men, commenced his long and lonely rides over the almost interminable succession of hills, between the Litchfield Court-House and the city of New York, leaving each place once a fortnight. That was a proud day for Litchfield-perhaps for New York also!" ( Kilbourne, p. 167).
It is readily conceived that in such a state of isolation, the early settlers of Litchfield were more immediately concerned with laying out the Little Plain, where the West Cemetery now is, and with draining the adjacent swamps along the river into four acre meadows for the use of those who were working up their herds, than with the
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great concerns of the outer world. Kilbourne notes that the First French War, 1744-1748, came and went without leaving a trace on our minute book of the town meetings. The matter of the new County, which was just then coming up, was a business of vastly greater importance to the town than how a war which was in pro- gress at such a distance should be decided.
When the Last French War, 1755-1763, began, Litchfield had developed so rapidly as to be ready to do its share from the begin- ning. At the start of the war, Connecticut raised a force of a thousand men, and this was gradually increased to five thousand, which was maintained through all the campaigns. Unfortunately, but a single list of the soldiers raised in Litchfield during this period has been preserved, and many of the names on it are of men who came to Litchfield to enlist. This is the pay-roll for Capt. Archibald McNeile's Company, in the second regiment of Connecti- cut Forces, for the year 1762, which is on file in the office of the Secretary at Hartford. This list is reprinted in the Appendix. Some of the officers who received commissions in these years were undoubtedly at the War, but it is no longer possible to say which ones. The list of these is as follows:
1756: Captain Solomon Buel;
1757: Colonel Ebenezer Marsh; Captain Isaac Baldwin; Lieu- tenant Joshua Smith; Ensign Abner Baldwin;
1758: Ensign Zebulon Gibbs; Captain Archibald McNeile;
1760: Lieutenant Stephen Smith; Lieutenant Eli Catlin;
1761: Lieutenant Isaac Moss; Lieutenant Josiah Smith; Lieu- tenant Asa Hopkins; Ensign Gideon Harrison; Ensign David Lan- don ;
1762: Ensign Lynde Lord.
We also know that Timothy Collins was Surgeon of one of the Connecticut Regiments at the battle of Crown Point. The only nar- rative of service is the very laconic one made by Zebulon Gibbs: "I was active in the French War in the year 1756 till the year 1762. I was conductor of teams and horses, by which means I obtained the title of Captain".
The names of the more prominent settlers and those of the men of action in the wars of the time will not, however, paint for us a true or complete picture of those early days. More than any other period that has followed it was a time whose real character was typified in those who were not men and women, as we say, of action. In his Centennial Sermon in 1851, the Rev. Horace Bushnell pointed this out in what is really an address describing the life of the times, which for beauty of style, not less than for truth of obser- vation and dignity of thought, is probably the finest address that has been delivered at any time in our town. The changing fashions, if the word can be used of Sermons, have not made The Age of Homespun one whit less striking than it was the morning the
EBENEZER MARSH HOUSE, 1759. Site of Wolcott and Litchfield Library
0
SAMUEL SEYMOUR HOUSE, 1784-5. ST. MICHAEL'S RECTORY
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THE HISTORY OF LITCHFIELD
great Divine delivered it. The same humanizing influence which he brought to his interpretation of the old Calvinistic theology and which made his preaching appear so advanced to the Hartford of eighty years ago will be found in his kindly, yet always just, analy- sis, of Colonial life as it existed in our town and those like it. The address is better history than the Historical Address delivered the preceding day; it is better history than ever we can hope to write in this book; and in reprinting it herewith we can only regret that it has been necessary somewhat to abbreviate it. The Sermon in full will be found on pages 107-130 of the Centennial Book published in the same year, 1851.
CHAPTER VI.
THE AGE OF HOMESPUN.
BY HORACE BUSHNELL.
[Extracts from a discourse, delivered at Litchfield, on the occasion of the County Centennial Celebration, 1851.]
It has often occurred to others, I presume, as to me, to wish that, for once, it were possible, in some of our historic celebrations, to gather up the unwritten part, also, of the history celebrated; thus to make some fit account, of the private virtues and unrecorded struggles, in whose silent commonalty, we doubt not, are included all the deepest possibilities of social advancement and historic dis- tinction .... I think you will agree with me, that nothing is more appropriate than to offer some fit remembrance of that which heaven only keeps in charge, the unhistoric deeds of common life, and the silent, undistinguished good whose names are written only in heaven. In this view, I propose a discourse on the words of King Lemuel's mother :-
PROV. 31: 28. "Her children rise up and call her blessed".
This Lemuel, who is called a King, is supposed by some to have been a Chaldee chief, or head of a clan; a kind of Arcadian prince, like Job and Jethro. And this last chapter of the Proverbs is an Eastern poem, called a "prophecy", that versifies, in form, the advice which his honored and wise mother gave to her son. She dwells, in particular, on the ideal picture of a fine woman, such as he may fitly seek for his wife, or queen; drawing the picture, doubt- less, in great part, from herself and her own practical character. "She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff. She is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all her house- hold are covered with scarlet. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She openeth her mouth in wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness". Omitting other points of the picture, she is a frugal, faithful, pious housewife; clothing her family in garments prepared by her industry, and the more beautiful honors of a well-kept, well- mannered house. She, therefore, it is, who makes the center of a happy domestic life, and becomes a mark of reverence to her children :- "Her children rise up and called her blessed".
A very homely and rather common picture, some of you may fancy, for a queen, or chief woman; but, as you view the subject more historically, it will become a picture even of dignity and
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polite culture. The rudest and most primitive stage of society has its most remarkable distinction in the dress of skins; as in ancient Scythia, and in many other parts of the world, even at the present day. The preparing of fabrics, by spinning and weaving, marks a great social transition, or advance; one that was slowly made and is not even yet absolutely perfected. Accordingly, the art of spinning and weaving was, for long ages, looked upon as a kind of polite distinction; much as needle work is now. Thus, when Moses directed in the preparation of curtains for the Taber- nacle, we are told that "all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands". That is, that the accomplished ladies who understood this fine art, (as few of the women did), executed his order. Accordingly, it is represented that the most distinguished queens of the ancient time excelled in the art of spinning; and the poets sing of distaffs and looms, as the choicest symbols of princely women. If I rightly remember, it is even said of Augustus, him- self, at the height of the Roman splendor, that he wore a robe that was made for him by Livia, his wife.
You perceive, in this manner, that Lemuel's mother has any but rustic ideas of what a wife should be. She describes, in fact, a lady of the highest accomplishments, whose harpsichord is the distaff, whose piano is the loom, and who is able thus, by the fine art she is mistress of, to make her husband conspicuous among the elders of the land. Still, you will understand that what we call the old spinning-wheel, a great factory improvement, was not invented till long ages after this; being, in fact, a comparatively modern, I believe a German or Saxon, improvement. The distaff, in the times of my text, was held in one hand or under one arm, and the spindle, hanging by the thread, was occasionally hit and twirled by the other. The weaving process was equally rude and simple.
These references to the domestic economy of the more ancient times, have started recollections, doubtless, in many of you, that are characteristic, in a similar way, of our own primitive history. You have remembered the wheel and the loom. You have recalled the fact, that our Litchfield County people down to a period com- paratively recent, have been a people clothed in homespun fabrics- not wholly, or in all cases, but so generally that the exceptions may be fairly disregarded. In this fact I find my subject. As it is sometimes said that the history of iron is the history of the world, or the history of roads a true record, always, of commercial and social progress, so it has occurred to me that I may give the most effective and truest impression of Litchfield County, and especially of the unhistoric causes included in a true estimate of the century now passed, under this article of homespun; describing this first century as the Homespun Age of our people. The subject is homely, as it should be; but I think we shall find enough of dignity in it as we proceed, even to content our highest ambition; the more, that I do not propose to confine myself rigidly to the single matter of spinning and weaving, but to gather round this feature of domestic
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life, taken as a symbol, or central type of expression, whatever is most characteristic in the living picture of the times we commemo- rate, and the simple, godly virtues, we delight to honor.
What we call History, considered as giving a record of notable events, or transactions, under names and dates, and so a really just and true exhibition of the causes that construct a social state, I conceive to be commonly very much of a fiction. True worth is, for the most part, unhistoric, and so of all the beneficent causes and powers included in the lives of simple worthy men: causes most efficient, as regards the well-being and public name of communities. They are such as flow in silence, like the great powers of nature. Indeed, we say of history, and say rightly, that it is a record of e-vents: that is, of turnings out, points where the silence is broken by something apparently not in the regular flow of common life; just as electricity, piercing the world in its silent equilibrium, hold- ing all atoms to their places, and quickening even the life of our bodies, becomes historic only when it thunders; though it does noth- ing more, in its thunder, than simply to notify us, by so great a noise, of the breach of its connections and the disturbance of its
silent work. Besides, in our historic pictures, we are obliged to sink particulars in generals and so to gather, under the names of a prominent few, what is really done by nameless multitudes. These, we say, led out the colonies; these raised up the states and communi- ties; these fought the battles. And so we make a vicious inversion, not seldom, of the truth; representing as causes, those who, after all, are not so much causes as effects, not so much powers as instru- ments, in the occasions signalized by their names : caps only of foam, that roll conspicuous in the sun, lifted, still, by the deep underswell of waters hid from the eye.
Therefore, if you ask, who made this Litchfield County of ours, it will be no sufficient answer that you get, however instructive and useful, when you have gathered up the names that appear in our public records and recited the events that have found an honorable place in the history of the County, or the Republic. You must not go into the burial places, and look about only for the tall monuments and the titled names. It is not the starred epitaphs of the Doctors of Divinity, the Generals, the Judges, the Honorables, the Governors, or even the village notables called Esquires, that mark the springs of our successes and the sources of our distinction. These are rather effects than causes; the spinning wheels have done a great deal more than these. Around the honored few, here a Bellamy, or a Day, sleeping in the midst of his flock; here a Wolcott, or a Smith; an Allen, or a Tracy; a Reeve, or a Gould; all names of honor: round about these few, and others like them, are lying multitudes of worthy men and women, under their humbler monuments, or in graves that are hidden by the monumental green that loves to freshen over their forgotten resting place; and in these, the humble but good many, we are to say are the deepest, truest causes of our happy history. Here lie the sturdy kings of Homespun, who climbed
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among these hills, with their axes, to cut away room for their cabins and for family prayers, and so for the good future to come. Here lie their sons, who foddered their cattle on the snows, and built stone fence while the corn was sprouting in the hills, getting ready, in that way, to send a boy or two to college. Here lie the good housewives, that made coats every year, like Hannah, for their children's bodies, and lined their memory with catechism. Here the millers, that took honest toll of the rye; the smiths and coopers, that superintended two hands and got a little revenue of honest bread and schooling from their small joint stock of two-handed investment. Here the district committees and school mistresses; the religious society founders and church deacons; and, withal, a great many sensible, wise-headed men, who read a weekly newspaper, loved George Washington and their country, and had never a thought of going to the General Assembly! These are the men and women who made Litchfield County. Who they are, by name, we cannot tell: no matter who they are: we should be none the wiser if we could name them; they themselves none the more honorable. Enough that they are the King Lemuels and their Queens, of the good old times gone by: kings and queens of Homespun, out of whom we draw our royal lineage.
I have spoken of the great advance in human society, indicated by a transition from the dress of skins to that of cloth-an advance of so great dignity, that spinning and weaving were looked upon as a kind of fine art, or polite accomplishment. Another advance, and one that is equally remarkable, is indicated by the transition from a dress of homespun to a dress of factory cloths, produced by machinery and obtained by the exchanges of commerce, at home or abroad. This transition we are now making, or rather, I should say, it is already so far made that the very terms, "domestic manu- facture", have quite lost their meaning; being applied to that which is neither domestic, as being made in the house, nor manu-facture, as being made by the hands. This transition from mother and daughter power to water and steam power is a great one, greater by far than many have as yet begun to conceive: one that is to carry with it a complete revolution of domestic life and social man- ners. If, in this transition, there is something to regret, there is more, I trust, to desire. If it carries away the old simplicity, it must also open higher possibilities of culture and social ornament. The principle danger is, that, in removing the rough necessities of the homespun age, it may take away, also, the severe virtues and the homely but deep and true piety by which, in their blessed fruits, as we are all here testifying, that age is so honorably distinguished. Be the issue what it may, good or bad, hopeful or unhopeful, it has come; it is already a fact, and the consequences must follow.
If our sons and daughters should assemble, a hundred years hence, to hold another celebration like this, they will scarcely be able to imagine the Arcadian pictures now so fresh in the memory of so many of us, though to the younger part already matters of
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hearsay more than of personal knowledge or remembrance. Every- thing that was most distinctive of the old homespun mode of life will then have passed away. The spinning wheels of wool and flax, that used to buzz so familiarly in the childish ears of some of us, will be heard no more for ever: seen no more, in fact, save in the halls of the Antiquarian Societies, where the delicate daugh- ters will be asking, what these strange machines are, and how they were made to go? The huge, hewn-timber looms, that used to occupy a room by themselves, in the farm houses, will be gone, cut up for cord wood, and their heavy thwack, beating up the woof, will be heard no more by the passer by; not even the Antiquarian Halls will find room to harbor a specimen. The long strips of linen, bleaching on the grass, and tended by a sturdy maiden, sprinkling them each hour from her water-can, under a broiling sun, thus to prepare the Sunday linen for her brothers and her own wedding outfit, will have disappeared, save as they return to fill a picture in some novel or ballad of the old time. The tables will be spread with some cunning, water-power Silesia not yet invented, or perchance some meaner fabric from the cotton mills. The heavy Sunday coats, that grew on sheep individually remembered, more comfortably carried in warm weather on the arm, and the specially fine-striped, blue and white pantaloons, of linen just from the loom, will no longer be conspicuous in processions of footmen going to meeting, but will have given place to showy carriages, filled with gentlemen with broadcloth, festooned with chains of California gold, and delicate ladies holding perfumed sun shades. The churches too, that used to be simple brown meeting houses, covered with rived clapboards of oak, will have come down, mostly, from the bleak hill tops, into the close villages and populous towns, that crowd the waterfalls and the railroads; and the old burial places, where the fathers sleep, will be left to their lonely altitude: token, shall we say, of an age that lived as much nearer to heaven and as much less under the world. The change will be complete. Would that we might raise some worthy monument to a state which is then to be so far passed by, so worthy, in all future time, to be held in all dearest reverence.
It may have seemed extravagant, or fantastic, to some of you, that I should think to give a character of the century now past, under the one article of homespun. It certainly is not the only, or in itself the chief article of distinction; and yet we shall find it to be a distinction that runs through all others, and gives a color to the whole economy of life and character, in the times of which we speak.
Thus, if the clothing is to be manufactured in the house, then flax will be grown in the plowed land, and sheep will be raised in the pasture, and the measure of the flax ground, and the number of the flock, will correspond with the measure of the home market, the number of the sons and daughters to be clothed, so that the agriculture out of doors will map the family in doors. Then as
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there is no thought of obtaining the articles of clothing, or dress, by exchange; as there is little passing of money, and the habit of exchange is feebly developed, the family will be fed on home grown products, buckwheat, indian, rye, or whatever the soil will yield. And as carriages are a luxury introduced only with exchanges, the lads will be going back and forth to the mill on horseback, astride the fresh grists, to keep the mouths in supply. The meat market will be equally domestic, a kind of quarter-master slaughter and supply, laid up in the cellar, at fit times in the year. The daughters that, in factory days, would go abroad to join the female conscrip tion of the cotton mill, will be kept in the home factory, or in that of some other family, and so in the retreats of domestic life. And so it will be seen, that a form of life which includes almost every point of economy, centers round the article of homespun dress, and is by that determined. Given the fact that the people spin their own dress, and you have in that fact a whole volume of characteris- tics. They may be shepherds dwelling in tents, or they may build them fixed habitations, but the distinction given will show them to be a people who are not in trade, whose life centers in the family, home-bred in their manners, primitive and simple in their character, inflexible in their piety, hospitable without show, intelligent with- out refinement. And so it will be seen that our homespun fathers and mothers made a Puritan Arcadia among these hills, answering to the picture which Polibius, himself an Arcadian, gave of his coun- trymen, when he said that they had, "throughout Greece, a high and honorable reputation; not only on account of their hospitality to strangers, and their benevolence towards all men, but especially on account of their piety towards the Divine Being".
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