USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I > Part 48
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88
Amusements in the modern sense at first were few among the Pu- ritans, who could not tolerate cards, dancing, or play-acting. Music was little cultivated. For the first seventy years the drum was beaten to call the inhabitants to meetings on Sunday and to lectures, and the fife added its car-piercing pleasure to training-day ; and there does not appear to have been much singing except of the long- metre psalms through the long-metre noses. But gradually, human nature would have its way, and various pastimes were in vogue. House-raisings were occasions of jollity and some drinking; all the neighborhood assembled, and the raising was followed by games and feasting. It was common for the young man about to marry to build a house for his bride ; and it was the custom for the bride elect to drive one of the pins in her future house. Elections, training-days, and thanksgivings were holidays, when the men and boys indulged in ath- letic sports of a boisterous nature, - shooting at a mark, horse-racing, wrestling, running, leaping, and ball-playing. There were rural excur- sions to gather strawberries or wild plums ; or on the coast to roast oysters ; and the ancient woods and fields saw now and then a gay cavalcade of men and women mounted on horses of every grade, riding double, jostling together along the narrow roads, and waking the echoes with shouting and singing. On holidays there were feasts, much mer- riment over nuts and apples and cider, and games of blindman's-buff. In winter there was sleigh-riding, the occupants well tucked up in the broad, roomy sleighs, with perpendicular sides and sharp bows ; the merry row of sleighs racing along the road, exchanging shouts and greetings, and snowballs, to some house of entertainment, where a dance (in later times) set the impatient feet flying. Wedding fes-
357
DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN COLONIAL TIMES.
tivities were sometimes prolonged two or three days. Between the strict Puritan times and the Revolution, dancing was common, - not in balls and midnight revels, but neighborhood dances in private houses. A note is made of a wedding in New London, in 1769, which ninety- two gentlemen and ladies attended, and danced ninety-two jigs, fifty- two contra-dances, forty-five minuets, and seventeen hornpipes, and retired at forty-five minutes past midnight. There are even records of ordination balls in those delightful days when all amusements were entered into with zest. We err if we think there was no fun in these stalwart young fellows and sly, pretty lasses of the seventeenth century, - to say nothing of the eighteenth, - because they were burdened with such names as Shadrach, Jephthah, Abinadab, Zorobabel, Consider, Friend, Preserved, Retrieve, Yet-once, Thankful, Mindful, Patience, Experience, Temperance, Deliverance, Desire, Faith, Hope, Love, Charity, Silence, Mercy. It were pretty to see Yet-once lead Desire down a contra-dance.
In the Puritan 'days the apparel of both sexes was simple, though not unbecoming, and generally of domestic manufacture ; as a rule, we suppose each family made its own, and many houses had a loom for weaving linen and wool, but in Hartford there seem to have been pro- fessional weavers. The winter garments of the men were undressed homespun cloth. Among the first settlers there was something of a military style. Swords were worn in full dress by persons in both civil and military capacity ; hats had a broad brim and a steeple crown, and occasionally a costly "black beaverett" was seen. The poorer class wore buff caps knit of woollen, gay in color, and with a heavy tassel. The coat had a long, straight body falling below the knee, no collar, or a low one, displaying the stiff stock of white linen, fastened behind with a silver buckle. A conspicuous wristband with buttons was common, and a few wore ruffs in the bosom and at the wrists. The small-clothes terminated above the knee and were tied with ribbons, and the common sort were made of dressed deer's leather; short, striped trousers of linsey-woolsey was an every-day dress of the com- mon people. Red stockings were in vogue; the shoes were coarse, square-toed, with huge buckles : if boots were worn, they had short, wide tops. Long hair was fashionable, and was combed back from the fore- head, gathered behind in a queue, and tied with a black ribbon. Wigs were not common ; the powdered wigs, and hats trimmed with gold lace, came later. The ladies had fine clothes, dresses of flowing bro- cade, embroidered stomachers, and hanging sleeves; but these were reserved for civic occasions. They came to meeting in short gowns and stuff petticoats, with white aprons of linen or muslin, starched stiff. The gown-sleeve was short, and they wore mittens that left the fingers bare, but extended to the elbow. The cloak was short, and a riding-hood covered the head. This hood was taken off in meeting, as bonnets were when they were worn. The matrons wore caps, and the young women had their hair dressed or curled. This attire was grace- ful and becoming (says Miss Frances M. Caulkins, whose excellent histories of Norwich and New London have been freely used in this paper), in comparison with the short waist, low neck, the high head- cushion with its wings or lappets flaunting in the wind, and the huge calash, of the next century.
358
MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
In the middle period between the Puritans and the Revolution the dress was distinguished neither by simplicity nor economy. Ladies hoarded household linen to last for years ahead ; and the wardrobes of the rich were extravagant, for the time, though they would come under the title of "nothing to wear" to-day. Widow Elizabeth White, of Norwich, in 1757, left behind her gowns of brown duroy, striped stuff, plaid stuff, black silk, crape, calico, and blue camlet; a scarlet cloak, blue cloak, satin-flowered mantle, and furbelow scarf; a woollen petticoat with a calico border, a camlet riding-hood, long silk hood, velvet hood, white hoods trimmed with lace, a silk bonnet, and nineteen caps, and so on, with fourteen aprons, and a silver and a blue girdle. And she had rings, and a few silver ornaments and cups. The next generation was much richer in articles of ornament and display. When the daughters of General Jabez Huntington, of Norwich (born 1757-1760), were successively, at the ages of fourteen and fifteen, sent to a fashion- able Boston boarding-school, their outfit was required to be rich and extensive. One of them took with her twelve silk gowns ; but she had not been long in Boston when her instructress wrote to her parents that another dress must be provided for her, made of a recently imported fabric, in order that she might appear in society according to her rank.
Before the Revolution, wigs, full and curled, white and powdered, red cloaks or roquelaures, and buckles at the knees and in the shoes, were worn by gentlemen. Even boys were seen in cocked-hats, small- clothes, and knee-buckles. But our limits do not permit us to go into those days, when the ladies wore long trains, a rich brocade, with open skirt and trail, silk stockings, with sharp-toed slippers and high heels, the hair combed over a high cushion stuffed with wool and covered with silk, a head-dress that made necessary the wide and deep calash, out of the depths of which came the fascinating smiles that captivated the cocked-hatted and periwigged suitors.
But with all this sumptuousness of apparel, even as late as the pre- Revolutionary days, there was more simplicity of living and of inter- course than now. Even the first lady of the place, attired in a white short-gown, stuff petticoat, muslin apron, and starched cap, would take her knitting and go out about two o'clock in the afternoon, to take tea unceremoniously with some neighbor, perhaps the butcher's or black- smith's wife. As late as the early part of the eighteenth century, at least, it was customary for the girls of a large family, even among the better class, to go out to work by the day or week, and thus contribute to the support of the family.
The " stores " of the pre-Revolutionary period kept everything sal- able, from New England rum, nails, laces, and felt hats, to " London- lettered gartering," " barleycorn necklaces," and London dolls. Besides the sort of dress goods with which we are familiar, we find in the advertisements hum-hum, wild-bore, elasticks, moreens, durants, cali- mancos, tammys, royal-rib, shalloons, erminetts, stockinetts, satinetts, russeletts, German serge, duffles, taffety.
The African was early in Connecticut, both as a slave and a free- man. The subject does not concern us here, except in its social aspects. Slavery was not profitable, its terms were comparatively easy, and the relation practically disappeared during the Revolution. Some negroes were certainly held in servitude as early as 1660. The blacks were
359
DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL LIFE IN COLONIAL TIMES.
imitative then as now, and contributed something to the variety and picturesqueness of the time. They had "negro trainings," - parades of companies and regiments in odd uniforms and accoutrements, usually borrowed from the whites ; and their field-days, under the command of a mounted " General," furnished a great deal of amusement to the spectators. Amusing anecdotes of their evolutions and of the words of command are preserved ; but some of the slaves earned their freedom by good service in the war.
Decent roads were about the latest evidences of civilization to come in the colony. Travel was necessarily on horseback. It was near Revolutionary time before the great two-wheeled vehicle called a chaise began to roll over the bad roads. Madame Knight, who made the journey on horseback, with a guide, from Boston to New York, in 1704, starting the 2d of October, makes much complaint of the roads and the inns. After floundering through a swamp in the fog, they reached late one night the Billingses, where she was to lodge. The guide left her to find her way into the house alone. She had scarcely stepped into the room, when she was interrogated by the eldest daughter of the house : -
" Law for uss, what in the world brings you here at this time a night ? I never see a woman on the rode so dreadfull late in all the days of my versall life. Who are you ? Where are you going ? I'm scared out of my wits."
When the guide entered, she roared out : -
" Lawful heart, John, is it you ? Where in the world are you going with this woman ? Who is she ?"
Instead of replying, John sat down and applied his mouth to a black bottle, leaving his passenger to the torment of silly questions. She lodged in the lean-to, on a wretched bed so high that she had to use a chair to climb into it. The next day she dined on pork and eab- bage, the sauce of which looked as if it had been boiled in a dye-kettle. She crossed the Providence ferry in a canoe, forded the next stream in a terror for her safety, and so continued on through trees and bushes and dolesome woods. The roads were no better as she advanced ; the road in Stonington was particularly stony and uneven. Here she fell in with an old man and his daughter, whom she accompanied to New London. Jemima was a girl about eighteen, whom her father had been to fetch out of the Narragansetts ; they had ridden thirty miles that day, on a sorry, lean jade, with only a bag under her for a pillion, which the poor girl often complained was very uncasy. "Wee made Good speed along, which made poor Jemima make many a sow'r face, the mare being a very hard trotter ; and after many a hearty and bitter ' Oh,' she at length ow'd out, 'Lawful Heart, father ! this bare mare hurts me dingeely. I 'me direful sore, I vow ;' with many words to that pur- pose. 'Poor Child,' sas Gaffer, 'she us't to serve your mother so.' 'I don't care how mother us't to do,' quoth Jemima, in a passionate tone ; at which the old man Laught, and kik't his jade o' the side, which made her Jolt ten times harder."
Madame Knight makes many notes on the people as she passes along, and seems to think they would be benefited by education and conversation, for they have mother-wit enough. "They are generally very plain in their dress throughout all the colony, as I saw, and follow
360
MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
one another in their modes ; that you may know where they belong, especially the women, meet them where you will."
We get a flattering picture of this region later, in 1788, in the "Travels " of Brissot de Warville : "The environs of Hartford display a charming cultivated country, neat, elegant houses, vast meadows, covered with herds of cattle of an enormous size. To describe the neighborhood of Hartford is to describe Connecticut. Nature and art have here dis- played all their treasures; it is really the Paradise of the United States." The keen-scented traveller might have said something more complimentary if it had not been night both times he passed through Hartford ; perhaps it was moonlight. At any rate, Connecticut ap- peared to him like one continued town : On quitting Hartford, you enter Wethersfield, - a town not less elegant, very long, consisting of houses well built. "Wethersfield is remarkable for its vast fields uniformly covered with onions, of which great quantities are exported to the West Indies. It is likewise remarkable for its elegant meeting- house, or church. On Sunday it is said to offer an enchanting spec- tacle, by the number of young, handsome persons who assemble there, and by the agreeable music with which they intermingle the Divine service."
Brissot de Warville lost his heart to the Connecticut girls ; he lost his head in the French Revolution : -
" New Haven yields not to Wethersfield for the beauty of the fair sex. At their balls during the winter it is not rare to see an hundred charming girls, adorned with those brilliant complexions seldom met with in journeying to the South. The beauty of complexion is as striking in Connecticut as its numerous population. You will not go into a tavern without meeting with neatness, decency, and dignity. The tables are served by a young girl, decent and pretty ; by an amia- ble mother, whose age has not effaced the agreeableness of her features ; by men who have that air of dignity which the idea of equality inspires, and who are not ignoble and base like the greater part of our tavern- keepers. On the road you often meet those fair Connecticut girls, either driving a carriage, or alone on horseback galloping boldly ; with an elegant hat on the head, a white apron, and a calico gown, - usages which prove at once the carly cultivation of their women, since they are trusted so young to themselves, the safety of the road, and the general innocence of manners. You will see them hazarding them- selves alone, without protectors, in the public stages. I am wrong to say hazarding ; who can offend them ? They are here under the pro- tection of public morals and of their own innocence ; it is the conscious- ness of this innocence which renders them so complaisant and so good ; for a stranger takes them by the hand and laughs with them, and they are not offended."
We may well end our scant review of colonial social life with this French study of the flower of it, -the girls.
Chas Hudby bramen
CHAPTER II.
HARTFORD, TOWN AND CITY.
SECTION I.
THE TOWN SINCE 1784.
BY MISS MARY K. TALCOTT.
THE CARE OF THE POOR. - BURYING-GROUNDS. - BRIDGES. - THE TOWN RECORDS. - TOWER HILL. - OTHER MATTERS OF INTEREST.
A PORTION of the town of Hartford was incorporated as a city, May 29, 1784, and the limits and boundaries are given in the proper place. Almost the first subject of importance mentioned on the town records after that date is the building of a new almshouse. Jan. 4, 1785, Colonel Thomas Seymour, John Trumbull, and Chauncey Goodrich, Esqs., were appointed agents on behalf of the town to prefer a memorial to the General Assembly, asking liberty to build an almshouse for the poor of this town, and for liberty to tax themselves for a build- ing, and the support of the same. Three years before the seleetmen were directed to set out a small piece of land, and to build a small house on it, "for the use of Niel McLean, the old Soldier, as long as he lives, between the Gaol and the Lower Mills, on the Bank of the River, to remain to the Town for a poor-house for the use and dispose of the Town." Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth, Captain Samuel Wadsworth, Captain Thomas Hopkins, and Captain John Chenevard were appointed, Sept. 20, 1785, a committee to " ascertain how much of the town lands adjacent to the poorhouse lately built are necessary to be taken up and used for the accommodation of the poor, and to lay out the same for that purpose." Feb. 7, 1786, a tax of 8d. on the pound was levied on the inhabitants to defray the charges for supplying the almshouse, and the tax was continued year after year.
Probably there were not a sufficient number of paupers to fill the house, for on the 19th of December, 1796, the seleetmen, James Bull, Miles Beach, and Ebenezer Faxon, were authorized by a vote of the town "to sell the Alms or Poor House lately erected, with the adjoining lands, at anetion, to the highest bidder." June 5, 1797, the place was sold to Ashbel Spencer for £100, and the boundaries described in the deed conveying the property show that the house was on the Windsor road ; and from the recollections of old inhabitants we learn that the house
362
MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
stood south of the State arsenal, and opposite the old North Burying- Ground. From statements made by old residents we learn that the building was a low, one-story wooden building, sixty or eighty feet long, with a gambrel roof and dormer windows, standing with the end on the street, and that there were several entrances on the side. From 1797 to 1811 it does not appear that the town had a poorhouse, and the presumption is that the poor were supported by contract. Dec. 30, 1808, the selectmen were authorized to petition the General Assembly " for permission to establish a Work-House, and to alter the location of it from time to time as they shall see fit;" but apparently nothing was done about it, for in January, 1812, Enoch Perkins, Esq., was appointed, together with the selectmen, to petition the General Assembly for au- thority to establish a workhouse. The subject of an almshouse came up also at the same time, and on Dec. 31, 1811, it was voted that a temporary almshouse should be established ; and the selectmen were directed " to have all the Town poor supported at the place or places where they have a general contract for the support of the Poor, except in some special cases." According to the recollections of old inhabi- tants who lived in that vicinity, the building bought by Ashbel Spencer was again used for its original purpose, and it was probably leased by the town from his heirs, and occupied as the almshouse until 1822; but the accommodations were limited, and a number of the paupers were sent to Wintonbury (now Bloomfield), where Captain David Grant had the care of the State poor. They may also have been supported in other localities, as General Nathan Johnson states in a report made in 1835, covering the sixteen years of his administration as town trea- surer, that in 1819 the entirely dependent poor were supported on contract, at an expense of $1.25 per week, and those who received partial aid exacted large supplies as a compromise for not demanding entire support. In December, 1812, the dwelling-house of Ashbel Sey- mour,1 and the buildings appurtenant thereto, were taken by the town for a temporary workhouse, the selectmen to be the overseers. A vote, passed in December, 1816, directed that all the town poor should be supported at one place by contract, and the selectmen were ordered to take proper measures for executing the law for binding in service all persons " reduced to want, or likely to be reduced to want, by Idleness, Mismanagement, or Bad Husbandry;" and also "to cause the Conduct of the Negroes in this Town to be inspected, and to bind in Service all such Negroes as are by Law liable to be bound in Service."
March 21, 1822, John Hempsted, Jeremy Hoadley, William Ely, Michael Olcott, and Nathaniel Seymour were appointed a committee to take measures to procure an almshouse, with suitable appurtenances for a workhouse ; and they were authorized to purchase suitable build- ings for the above purpose, together with a sufficient quantity of land, at an expense not exceeding $5,000. On the 17th of June, 1822, a deed was executed by the Hartford bank, conveying to the town a piece of land, lying about one and one half miles northwestwardly from the State House, containing eight acres, with part of the dwelling-house, etc., which had belonged to Levi Kelsey. Other deeds, dated a few days later, convey other parts of the Kelsey farm, which apparently passed
1 Probably on Vanderbilt Hill.
363
THE TOWN SINCE 1784.
entirely into the possession of the town, with the dwelling-house on it. This building stood about twenty rods east of the present almshouse, directly north of several elms now standing there, and it was used as the almshouse for a number of years. A new brick structure was built on these lands to be used for the workhouse. There were cells in this building, for the solitary confinement, with bread and water, of those prisoners who might need to be punished in this manner. The regu- lations for the management and government of the workhouse and almshouse were framed by a committee, consisting of the following persons : Andrew Kingsbury, Nathan Johnson, William Ely, Seth Terry, and Theron Deming. All persons sentenced to the workhouse were to be " employed in manufacturing labor on the Town lands adjoining, or in menial labor in the Alms House, as might suit their age, sex, or ability." The hours of labor were to be as follows : " from six to half- after eleven in the forenoon; from one to seven in the afternoon in summer; in Winter from nine to twelve in the forenoon, and from one to sundown in the afternoon; and from the 20th of September to the 20th of March they shall labor in the evening from six to eight o'clock. All the labor pertaining to the Institution to be done by the poor as far as practicable ; a suitable person to be chief cook, and others to be cooks and washers." The Master was " to see that the poor statedly comb their hair, wash their hands and faces, and at suitable times their feet, and their heads when occasion requires." The hours for retirement were to be nine in the summer and eight in the winter ; and the time for rising was to be at sunrise throughout the year. "The whole house- hold shall strictly observe the Sabbath or Lord's Day. The poor shall put on clean and decent apparel in the morning, and be ready for re- ligious exercises. The Overseers shall endeavor to procure Evangelical ministers to preach statedly at the house, and shall cause Bibles and religious tracts to be distributed among the Poor. When there is no preaching on the Sabbath, the Master shall cause such as are best able to read aloud the Bible and other approved Books for the benefit of the others, who shall attend at least an hour and a half in each part of the day on such exercises; and no one shall be permitted to roani abroad in the lots on the Sabbath. Any breach of the Rules by any of the Poor shall be punished by an increase of task, curtailment of the quantity of food, shackling, handcuffing, solitary confinement not exceeding forty- eight hours, with bread and water only for food, at the Discretion of the Master. Visitors to be admitted only on Wednesdays, between nine A.M. and four P.M." A burying-ground was to be laid out on the town land for " such as may die in the house." It was also voted that on the intro- duction of the poor into the almshouse, the overseers invite the Rev. Dr. Perkins, of this town, "to perform divine service there on the occasion."
In November, 1828, a committee was appointed to consider the ex- pedieney of building, near the almshouse, an hospital, or "House to receive certain persons who cannot conveniently be received into the Alms House; and in December $800 was appropriated for it. In 1840 the subject of a new almshouse was broached, and on the 11th of Janu- ary, 1841, a plan was laid before the town-meeting, with an estimate of $15,000 for the expense of building. The report was accepted, and the selectmen authorized to borrow money for the purpose of building. Jan. 24, 1842, it was voted that the selectmen provide convenient and
364
MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
comfortable accommodations for the sick at the new almshouse. They were also authorized to erect a new fence, and to dispose of the wooden buildings belonging to the town.
Dec. 4, 1848, it was voted to build a suitable building for a hospital, near the almshouse, and that the old almshouse be taken down and the materials used for that purpose, as far as they would answer; and that the small wooden building in the rear of the almshouse, now used for a hospital, be removed to the west end of the town-farm, for a pest- house, at an expense not exceeding $800.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.