USA > Connecticut > The loyalists of Connecticut > Part 2
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In July, 1776, the Continental congress had adopted the Declaration of Independence, and at the next session of the general assembly of Connecticut, which met on October 10, 1776, that body ratified the Declaration, and enacted a new statute against treason, which defined that crime to consist in levying war against the state of Con- necticut, or aiding any enemies in open war against this state or the United States of America, enlisting in their armies or persuading others to enlist, corresponding with or carrying intelligence to the enemies of the state, with other specifications evidently intended to cover the usual activities of the tories. Treason so defined was made pun- ishable by death.
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VI
THE Anglican clergy of the state, who were not likely to be personally guilty of acts of treasonable violence, found themselves in a very painful position. The Church of Eng- land was intensely nationalistic in its attitude. When the colonies had openly resisted the Stamp Act, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had refused to create any new missions in New England. To the appeals of the American Churchmen that a bishop should be consecrated for the colonies, the church authorities at home gave re- peated refusal. Now, if the Declaration of Independence were maintained, New England had ceased to be a part of the territory over which the Church of England claimed or was even willing to exercise jurisdiction. The Connecti- cut clergy had braved the wrath of their neighbors to show their devotion to a church which was barely tolerated by the authorities of the state, and was bitterly hated by a great majority of the people, only to find themselves abandoned and repudiated by the rulers of that church.
An especial point of difficulty was the Book of common prayer, by which the form of their worship was rigidly prescribed. The Anglican prayer-book of that day was full of extreme expressions of loyalty to the king, who was looked upon as the anointed and inspired representative of God. On every 30th of January prayers declaring the national penitence and humiliation for the "Martyrdom of the blessed King Charles the First" were to be read. On every 29th of May there was "to be read publickly in all Churches at Morning Prayer" a thanksgiving for the restoration to the throne of King Charles II. This prayer went on to beseech God to "Strengthen the hands of our gracious Sovereign King GEORGE ... with judgment and justice, to cut off all such workers of iniquity, as turn
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Religion into Rebellion, and Faith into Faction." The daily orders for morning and evening prayer included "A Prayer for the King's Majesty," desiring "that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies." It may be imag- ined that if those prayers were read with emphasis by a zealous clergyman in full sympathy with their senti- ments, any Sons of Liberty who were in the congregation might feel it their duty to prevent or punish such trea- sonable utterances.
In these perplexing circumstances, the Anglican clergy of Connecticut met in convention at New Haven on July 23, 1776, and resolved to suspend for the time being the public execution of their ministerial functions, that is, to close their churches. Doubtless most of those present thought that the revolt would soon be suppressed, and perhaps hoped that they would then receive the reward for their loyalty. At least one of the clergy then assembled protested against the prudence of his brethren, and de- clared that he would "do his duty, preach and pray for the King, till the rebels cut out his tongue." This was the Reverend John Beach of Newtown and Reading (now Redding). He had originally been ordained to the Con- gregational ministry, but had later repudiated that ordi- nation and obtained holy orders in the Church of England. Though nearly eighty years of age, he was the most stal- wart and outspoken of the Anglican clergy. While the other Anglican churches in Connecticut were closed, he regularly carried on his services in the church at Reading, including the prayer for the king. Apparently his courage won him the admiration of the patriots; and though he was often threatened he died peacefully in his bed on March 19, 1782.
In the meantime, he had some exciting experiences. While officiating one day in Reading, a shot was fired into
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the church, and the ball struck above him and lodged in the sounding-board. Pausing for a moment, he uttered the words: "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." He then proceeded with the service without further interruption. At another time, a party of men entered his church and, as he was about reaching the prayer for the king, pointed a musket at his head. He calmly went on and, whether they did not fire or missed, he escaped injury. One of his descendants re- lates that at one time a band of ruffians seized him, carried him to a secluded spot, and told him to say his prayers for he was about to die. He knelt and prayed so earnestly, not for himself but for his captors, that they were ashamed to go on with their murderous plan and let him go home.
Some of the clergy removed to more friendly colonies or confined their activities to the private administration of the sacraments or performance of pastoral duties. Others could not refrain from non-clerical activities, and did not escape the hand of the law. At the same term of the superior court at which Moses Dunbar was condemned to death, the Reverend James Nichols, missionary at Water- bury, who also had parishes in Northbury (now Plymouth) and New Cambridge (now Bristol), was tried for treason but acquitted; and the Reverend Roger Viets of Simsbury was convicted of having assisted loyalist prisoners to es- cape and received a sentence of imprisonment for one year. Four months later the general assembly ordered him to be released from prison and to be confined within the town of Simsbury for the remainder of his term upon his giving a bond of one thousand pounds not to ". . . do or say anything against the United States of America or detrimental to their interest."
Whether the loyalists suffered more from the irregular
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and illegal violence which they often endured at the hands of overzealous patriots, or from the imprisonments and other penalties imposed upon them by authorized process of law, it may be difficult now to tell. Even the clergy were not exempt from personal abuse. The Reverend James Nichols, who seems to have been especially active in the king's cause and especially obnoxious to the patriots, was once (according to tradition) tarred, feathered, and dragged in a brook. One of his parishioners was hanged to a tree and left, presumably to die, but was cut down and resuscitated by passing strangers. The tories of Plymouth, Harwinton, and Bristol, parishioners of Mr. Nichols, had a cave in a rocky ledge at a distance from any highway, which then was and still is known as the Tory Den,6 where they hid when they feared attacks of their hostile neigh- bors. The gravestone of Mathias Leaming in the ancient cemetery in Farmington still records the fact that that sturdy loyalist "hars got Beyound the reach of Parce- cushion."
VII
As early as December, 1775, the general court of Con- necticut passed "An Act for restraining and punishing Persons who are inimical to the Liberties of this and the Rest of the United Colonies." For various degrees of criminality such inimical persons could be imprisoned for not more than three years, or disarmed and disfranchised, or simply disarmed. On July 18, 1776, the council of safety declared that "many persons inimical to the United States of America do wander from place to place with in- tent to spy out the state of the Colonies and give intelli-
6 Located in the town of Harwinton, near the highway (route 117) which runs north from Terryville, a mile or two north of East Church. It was on or near the property of Stephen Graves, a staunch loyalist.
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gence to their enemies;" and therefore prohibited any un- known person or persons "whether they appear in the character of gentlemen, expresses, travellers, or common beggars," to pass from town to town without a certificate stating from and to what place the person is traveling and "that he is friendly to the liberties of the American states." This regulation was extended by the general assembly in May, 1777, and suspected persons traveling without such certificates were ordered to be committed to jail.
At the first session of the general assembly after the Declaration of Independence, an act was passed "for apprehending and securing such inimical Persons as shall be deemed and adjudged dangerous to the State." This act empowered the selectmen or committees of inspection of each town to confine such dangerous persons, and the council of safety to determine the place of their confine- ment. This was evidently regarded as a measure of pro- tective detention, and no term of imprisonment was speci- fied in the act. The attention of this assembly was par- ticularly directed to the western part of the state where, the preamble states, there are a number of persons "inimical to the liberties of this and the other united States of America, who are forming dangerous insurrec- tions and taking every method in their power to commu- nicate intelligence to comfort, aid and assist the enemies of these united States and to distress the inhabitants of said towns and to bring on a general anarchy and confu- sion among them." A committee of five was directed "to repair to said western towns and to convene before them all such persons as shall be suspected to be inimical and dangerous to the rights and liberties of America in this critical and convulsed state of affairs when the ordinary mode of prosecution will not be adequate to the mischief apprehended." This committee was empowered to confine
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those whom they deemed dangerous to the safety of the state in such place or places in this state as shall be thought best, "for such time as the public security may require."
These drastic measures naturally produced a great num- ber of arrests, and quickly filled up the jails of the state.7 In December, 1776, the number of guards at the Hartford county jail was increased to fourteen men under the com- mand of one ensign and one sergeant. On July 15, 1776, Newgate prison in East Granby was reported to be in a dangerous situation "especially since a number of tory prisoners are committed there," and the number of guards at the prison was increased. Some loyalist writers have dwelt upon the horrors of this prison, which was an aban- doned copper mine, in the apparent belief that it was used only for the confinement of these political prisoners; but in fact it had been used for several years for the confine- ment of ordinary criminals, and continued to be so used after the close of the Revolution. The barbarity of im- prisonment in this underground dungeon was a part of the crude and merciless penal practice of the time, and not evidence of any special malignity against the tories.
The time of the council of safety was much occupied by the consideration of the treatment to be awarded to vari- ous suspected or convicted tories. Many were released on declaring their repentance and taking the oath of fidelity to the state. On January 25, 1777, nine convicted tories confined in Lebanon and Coventry were released, “on giving sufficient bonds for their good behavior." On Janu- ary 27, 1777, thirteen from Stamford and Norwalk were released, "upon their giving bond of £1000 each . . . for
7 Because of the greater security possible in Connecticut, especially in 1776 and 1777, large numbers of tory prisoners from Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey were sent into Connecticut for custody, notably Dr. Benja- min Church of Massachusetts, Judge Thomas Jones of New York, and Governor William Franklin of New Jersey.
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their good behavior." On January 28, 1777, six from New- town and Reading were ordered confined in Windham jail, but were released on February II. On February 24, 1777, "Large number of tories present, being allowed to come this day," six from Stamford and Norwalk were re- leased. In May, 1777, the general assembly appointed a committee to consider the case of seventeen persons from Farmington, who were imprisoned on suspicion of their being inimical to America. The committee reported that "they had been much under the influence of one Nichols,8 a designing church clergyman . . . that they were indeed grossly ignorant of the true grounds of the present war with Great Britain; that they appeared to be penitent of their former conduct" and "that since their imprisonment upon serious reflexion they are convinced that the States are right in their claim, and that it is their duty to submit to their authority, and that they will to the utmost of their power defend the country against the British army." Upon this report the keeper of the Hartford jail was di- rected to liberate those prisoners on their taking the oath of fidelity to the state. Two more Farmington tories named Leaming (probably relatives of Mathias Leaming)9 were given a final hearing and, having assured the committee "that in their cool and deliberate moments they feel the highest regard for their country and the liberties of the same," were released.
In May, 1777, moreover, the assembly authorized the governor to issue a general proclamation assuring pardon to absconding loyalists who should, before August I, re- turn to the state and "take a proper oath of allegiance."
8 See above, p. 17.
9 See above, p. 18. A brother of Mathias, the Reverend Jeremiah Leaming of Norwalk, who was one of the oldest and most respected of the Anglican clergy, suffered imprisonment as a loyalist, and yet his church, his house, and all his belongings were burned in Tryon's raid.
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This conciliatory attitude toward repentant loyalists seems to have obtained during the remainder of the war. Naturally, few of those implicated in the raids into the state or who had actually enlisted in the British army sought or received pardon, but many others did and be- came peaceable and law-abiding citizens. Even in the case of resolute loyalists who had fled from the state, their wives and children were usually accorded considerate treatment and frequently aided to join the fugitives. In general, the anti-loyalist legislation of Connecticut seems to have been deterrent rather than punitive in intent and, after the early months of the struggle, to have been ad- ministered in a liberal spirit.
Perhaps the most severe act of legislation against the loyalists, except that imposing the penalty of death for treason, was passed in May, 1778, by which act "all estates, real and personal, lying and being within this State, which belong to any person or persons whatever who have heretofore voluntarily gone over to, joined with and skreened themselves under the protection of the ene- mies of the United States of America, or have aided and assisted them in their hostile measures against said States, and have continued so to do, untill the passing of this act, or who shall hereafter voluntarily go over to, join with and skreen themselves under the protection of, or shall aid, abet and assist said enemies in their measures as afore- said, shall be forfeited, to and for the use of this State."
VIII
NOTWITHSTANDING the bitter feeling against the Con- necticut loyalists, and the severe treatment which they received from the authorities of the state, only one was sentenced to death. The history of this man, Moses Dun- bar, deserves a somewhat fuller narration. It is possible to
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give such an account because, fortunately, during the time between his condemnation and his execution, Dun- bar wrote two documents, one of them an account of his life, religious and political opinions, arrest, and condemna- tion, and the other a brief letter of farewell to his children.
Moses Dunbar was born in Wallingford on June 14, 1746, the second of a family of sixteen children. When he was about fourteen years old his father removed to what is now the town of Plymouth, but was then a part of Waterbury. Plymouth was one of the Anglican missions in Waterbury, and was near two active groups of Church- men, in Harwinton and in the western part of New Cam- bridge (now Bristol). In 1764, when not quite eighteen years old, Moses was married to Phebe Jerome of New Cambridge. A part of her family and most of the neigh- bors among whom they lived were Churchmen, and when the Revolutionary War broke out took the loyalist side. In the year of his marriage Moses Dunbar and his wife left the Congregational Church, in which both of them had been brought up, and declared themselves of the Church of England. They lived in what is now the west- ern part of Bristol, at the corner of Hill Street and Pine- hurst Road, and attended the little Anglican church which then stood on Federal Hill in the center of Bristol. There his children were baptized. During the twelve years from his marriage in May, 1764, to his wife's death in May, 1776, they had seven children, of whom four sur- vived their mother. Not long after his wife's death, he was married again to Esther Adams.
The Revolutionary War was then in full operation, the statute defining treason against the state of Connecticut had been or was very soon thereafter passed, committees of inspection were investigating the activities of the loyal- ists, and Dunbar himself, a courageous and outspoken
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young man, was already an object of severe suspicion. He wrote:
From the time the present unhappy misunderstanding be- tween Great Britain and the Colonies began, I freely confess I never could reconcile my opinion to the necessity, or lawfulness of taking up arms against Great Britain, and having spoken something freely on the subject, I was attacked by a mob of about forty men, very much abused-my life threatened and nearly taken away; by which I was obliged to sign a paper con- taining many falsehoods. . .. I had concluded to live peaceably and give no offence, either by word or deed, and had thoughts of entering into a voluntary confinement within the limits of a farm; and making proposals of that kind, I was carried before the committee, and by them ordered to suffer imprisonment during their pleasure, not exceeding five months. When I had remained there about fourteen days, the Authority of New Haven dismissed me. Finding my life uneasy, and, as I had reason to apprehend, in great danger, thought it my safest method to flee to Long Island, which I accordingly did. But having a desire to see my friends and children, and being under an engagement to marry her who is now my wife, the banns of marriage having been before published, I returned and was married. Having a mind to remove myself and family to Long Island, as a place of safety, I went there the second time to prepare matters accordingly, where, I accepted a Captain's warrant for the King's service in Col. Fanning's regiment. I then returned to Connecticut where I was betrayed by Joseph Smith. I was then carried before Justice Strong and Justice Whitman of Farmington, and by them committed to Hartford, where the Superior Court was then sitting, when I was tried on Thursday the 23d of January 1777 for high treason against the state of Connecticut, by an act passed in October last. Being inlisting men for General Howe and having a Captain's com- mission for that purpose, I was adjudged GUILTY and on the Saturday following was brought to the bar of the court and received sentence of DEATH.
The Farmington justices put in writing Dunbar's con- fession that he had received a captain's warrant for serv-
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ice in the king's army, and "that he was now under Wages for two dollar pr. day from Lord Howe;" and also received evidence that he had persuaded one John Adams to en- list, and had paid to him and to other recruits the ex- penses of their travel to New York.
On March I, with the aid of a knife brought to him by Elisha Wadsworth, he cleared himself of his irons, knocked down the guard, and escaped from the jail. The Connecti- cut Courant of March 3, 1777, contained an account of the escape of "the atrotious Moses Dunbar" and added: "He is about 40 years of age, about 5 feet 8 inches high, short curl'd hair which with his beard is of a sandy colour, has a down look round face, hollow eye'd and wears a red great coat."
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He was soon recaptured, and was executed according to the sentence. The gallows was erected on the hill south of Hartford, where Trinity College now stands. "A prodigi- ous Concourse of People were Spectators on the Occa- sion," said the Connecticut Courant of March 24.
Dunbar's statement concluded as follows:
The time of my suffering was afterwards fixed to be the 19th day of March 1777-Which tremendous and awful day now draws near, when I must appear before the Searcher of Hearts to give an account of all things done in my body, whether they be good or evil. I shall soon be delivered from all the pains and troubles of this wicked mortal state, and shall be answerable to one All seeing God, who is infinitely just and knoweth all things. As I am fully persuaded that I depart in a state of peace with God and my own conscience, I have but little doubt of my future happiness thro' the merits of Jesus Christ. . ..
I die in the profession and communion of the Church of Eng- land. Of my political sentiments I leave the reader of these lines to judge. Perhaps it is neither reasonable or proper that I should declare them in my present situation.
I cannot take the last farewell of my countrymen without desiring them to shew kindness to my poor widow and chil-
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dren, and not reflect on them concerning the manner of my death.
Now I have given you a narrative of all things material con- cerning my life with that veracity which you are to expect from one who is going to leave the world and appear before the God of truth. My last advice to you is, that you, above all things, confess your sins, and prepare yourselves, with God's assistance, for your future and eternal state. You will shortly be as near eternity as I now am, and will view both worlds in the light that I now view them. You will then view all worldly things to be but shadows, but vapours, and vanity of vanities, and the things of the spiritual world to be of importance be- yond all description. You will all then be sensible that the pleasures of a good conscience and the happiness of a near prospect of heaven, will outweigh all the pleasures and honors of this wicked world. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on me and receive my spirit. AMEN AND AMEN.
MOSES DUNBAR.
Hartford March 18, 1777.
This statement was written, as appears by the date, on the night before his execution.
A letter to his children, written a few weeks previous, was as follows:
Feb. 25, 1777.
MY DEAR CHILDREN.
REMEMBER your CREATOR when in youth and learn your Creed, Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments and Catechism, and go to church as often as you can, and prepare yourselves, as soon as you are of a proper age, to be worthy partakers of the Lord's Supper. I charge you all never to leave the Church. Your own mother groaned out this good advice for you to me when on her death bed. I am now in Hartford gaol condemned to death for high treason against the state of Connecticut. I was thirty years old last June the fourteenth day. God bless you. MOSES DUNBAR.
O! Remember your father and mother and be dutiful and kind to your present mother.
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After her husband's execution Mrs. Dunbar went with- in the lines of the British army for protection, but after- ward returned to Bristol and married Chauncey Jerome, brother of Dunbar's first wife, with whom she went to Nova Scotia, the place of refuge of many Connecticut loyalists. After the treaty of peace, they returned to Con- necticut and were the parents of several children. One of their descendants was Chauncey Jerome, one of the lead- ers of the American clock trade, who manufactured clocks on a large scale in Bristol, and afterward removed to New Haven where he founded the New Haven Clock Company.
Two assertions can safely be made in regard to Moses Dunbar: first, that since he had accepted a commission in the king's army, and was "inlisting men for General Howe," he was undoubtedly guilty of treason under the Connecticut statute and subject to the penalty of death, the risk of which he had deliberately incurred; second, that he was a man of high character, inflexible courage, and sincere devotion to his religious and political convic- tions. While Nathan Hale, who about the same time was hanged by the British army as a spy, will always be the most radiant figure among the Connecticut heroes of the Revolution, we may take pride in knowing that the de- feated party also produced a figure of devoted and gallant heroism in Moses Dunbar.
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