USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. II > Part 54
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In May, 1698, Wethersfield was divided into two military precincts, - the first within the township for any purpose. The line separating the two trainbands was identical with that now dividing the Broad Street and High Street school districts. John Chester, son of Captain John, who had died in 1698, at this time commanded the First, or Broad Street company, and Robert Welles (probably ) the Second, or High Street.
In 1703, when colonial operations began in Queen Anne's War, Captain Chester was promoted to be sergeant-major for Hartford county. Joshua Robbins succeeded him as captain, Jonathan Board- man becoming lieutenant and Jonathan Belden ensign. Thomas Welles was captain of the Second company, Benjamin Churchill lieutenant, and William Goodrich, son of Ensign William, ensign. Captain Welles had succeeded Captain Robert Welles, "released," in 1701. In February, 1704, occurred the horrible massacre at Deerfield. In the following May the Hartford County dragoons, sixty men, were sent into Hampshire County. In this expedition David Goodrich, of Weth- ersfield, went as a lieutenant. Captain Jonathan Welles, son of Thomas
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Welles, 2d, of Wethersfield, then living at Deerfield, was in command of forces there.
In October, 1705, two Wethersfield men, Samuel Wolcott and James Steele, were made captain and lieutenant, respectively, of the Hartford County dragoons. In May, 1709, troops to the number of three hun- dred and fifty men were sent from Connecticut to Canada. They went, however, no farther than Albany and Wood Creek. At the latter place they were encamped through the summer and autumn of 1709, and ninety men were lost. Captain David Goodrich was both adjutant and quartermaster for the campaign. Captain Stephen Hollister, a valiant fighter, whom we have mentioned as lieutenant, died in the camp at Greenbush.
In October, 1710, Colonel Whiting's command, numbering three hundred men, was employed in the reduction of Port Royal (now Annapolis), Nova Scotia. In the capture of this important point Wethersfield did its share. It appears that the First Company, under Captain Joshua Robbins, was there; certainly, Jonathan Belden, its lientenant, was present. One Wethersfield man, Daniel Riley, was seriously wounded. Only about forty men were lost (twenty-six by drowning) in all the attacking forces.
In August, 1711, three hundred and sixty men from Connecticut, under Colonel Whiting, went to Albany. Captain Thomas Welles! commanded the Wethersfield company of volunteers. He was at that time captain of the High Street (Second) company. Joseph Garrett was one of the Wethersfield sergeants engaged. 1 In February, 1712, two Connecticut companies, provided with moccasons and snow-shoes, were despatched to a point thirty miles above Deerfield. One of these was commanded by Captain David Goodrich. Perhaps it was at this time that Martin Kellogg, of Wethersfield, was carried a captive to Canada. The treaty of Utrecht ended this war in October, 1712. In the mean time Major Chester had died, Dec. 14, 1711. Captain Robert Welles died June 22, 1714. Captain Thomas Welles, son of Captain Samuel, died Dec. 11, 1711. Lieutenant James Treat died in 1709.
In October, 1722, a company was formed at Stepney parish for the first time. Its officers were William Warner, captain ; Joshua Robbins, (son of Joshua), lieutenant ; Samuel Smith (son of Joseph), ensign.
In May, 1723, three companies were sent, under command of Major Joseph Talcott, of Hartford, into Hampshire County. One of these, numbering sixty men, was from Wethersfield, and commanded by Cap- tain David Goodrich. In February, 1724, he went north again : this time, probably, as far as Fort Dummer, near the present Brattle- borough, then the only settlement in what is now Vermont. It is probable that Thomas Welles was his lieutenant and Samuel Wolcott his ensign. Goodrich remained in Massachusetts most of the time until the close of the war, in December, 1725. In this year he became colonel of the Hartford County forces ; and had been a member of the Committee and Council of War from 1723.
In 1726 Robert Welles, son of Captain Robert, was commissioned captain of the Hartford County dragoons. A trainband was now
1 I am uncertain which Captain Thomas Welles (there were two, cousins) this was.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
organized at Newington for the first time. Its captain was John Camp ; its lieutenant, Ephraim Deming ; and its ensign, Richard Boardman.
In 1739 the militia of the colony was regularly organized for the first time. Thirteen regiments were formed. Wethersfield was included in the sixth regiment, with Middletown (then on both sides of the river), Glastonbury, and the parish of Kensington. Out of each regiment was organized one troop of sixty-four men. Thomas Welles, son of Cap- tain Robert, was the first colonel of the Sixth Regiment, John Chester its . lieutenant-colonel, and Jabez Hamlin, of Middletown, its major ; Nathaniel Stillman and Josiah Griswold, both of Wethersfield, were the first captain and ensign, respectively, of the troop of the same regiment.
We are unable to tell how many of the five hundred men from this colony, in the disastrous campaign of 1740-1741, against the Spanish West Indies, went from Wethersfield.
In March, 1745, Captain Elizur Goodrich, son of Colonel David, entered into the service of the " New England Army " under Lieutenant- General Pepperell. Louisburg, " strong as Barcelona," was taken in June, 1745, after a fifty days' siege; and with it the island of Cape Breton fell into English hands. Captain Goodrich came back as lieu- tenant-colonel, July 1, 1746. The company he had taken out was one of eight forming the Connecticut regiment, all volunteers. Rector Elisha Williams, of Wethersfield, was chaplain of the Connecticut forces. The Rev. Simon Backus, of Newington, succeeded him, and died at Louisburg, March 16, 1746. When General Wolcott returned to New England, he left at New London the vessel which brought him ; thence he came overland via Lyme, Middletown, and Wethersfield ; whence, after stopping one day, he was escorted to his home in Wind- sor by Hartford and Wethersfield troops and civilians.
Captain Martin Kellogg, of Wethersfield, was engaged in June, 1746, to be pilot for the expected British fleet in the St. Lawrence. In May, 1751, he was sent as the colony's agent to Hendrick, chief of the Mohawks, to supply them with clothing, - as an inducement to their continuing in friendship with New England. Nearly forty years before, he had been for some years a captive among the French and Indians in Canada, where he had learned the languages of his captors.
The peace following George the Second's War was destined to be but short-lived. As early as October, 1754, Colonel Elisha Williams, of Wethersfield, was sent to Boston to procure arms and war-supplies for a campaign of invasion. In May he was one of the three war commissioners sent to Albany to confer with commissioners from other colonies. In March, 1755, Connecticut's quota was fifteen hundred soldiers ; the whole to be in two regiments. One of these, the Second, was put under command of Colonel Elizur Goodrich, of Wethersfield ; and the whole were ordered to a position opposite to Crown Point. Three companies of Connecticut men were authorized to volunteer in the service and pay of New York. Of one of these, Josiah Griswold, of Wethersfield, was commissioned captain ; but it does not appear that he accepted. In August, two more regiments were ordered raised. In one of these, the Third, Wethersfield men did service; and one at least, Matthias Smith, was seriously wounded. Another, Timothy Andrus, was pensioned for disability produced in this Crown Point
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campaign. Ebenezer Griswold was a second lieutenant and Christopher Palmer an ensign, - both of Wethersfield.
At this time (1755) some four hundred French prisoners from Nova Scotia were quartered among the different towns, and Wethersfield's proportion was nine. They were placed in charge of Nicholas Ayrault. Samuel Curtis, and Joseph Boardman, and were allowed to work about the village. In February, 1756, twenty-five hundred men were raised for Major-General William Shirley's command, to operate at Crown Point and Iroquois Lake. In this campaign several Wethersfield offi- cers participated ; among them, Eliphalet Whittelsey, captain of the Sixth Company in the Fourth Regiment. He remained in the service during the war. In the campaign of 1757, which resulted in the sur- render of Fort William Henry to Montcalm's forces, Captain Whittelsey had the command of a picked company of one hundred men. In 1758 Fort Edward was the base of operations and Ticonderoga the objective point. Wethersfield bore its part in this campaign. One of her citizens, Josiah Griswold, was Major of the First Regiment ; Whittelsey was captain of a company in the same regiment; Lieu- tenant Hezekiah Smith and Ensign Josiah Wright were also there. Fort Frontenac, with its sixty cannon, together with nine armed ves- sels, fell into our hands.
Among the Wethersfield officers in the campaign of 1759 were Captain Whittelsey, Lieutenant Josiah Goodrich, and Ensign Roger Riley, all in the First Regiment. The general headquarters were at Fort Edward. Several Wethersfield men were buried there in June, 1759; among them, Nathaniel Kirkham and Samuel Wright, both of Newington. This campaign was the most prosperous one for the English in the long contest known as the French and Indian War. Niagara, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Quebec were won; though at the sacrifice of the life of the gallant and distinguished General Wolfe.
In the campaign of 1760, in the First Regiment, were Captain Whittelsey, Lieutenant Goodrich, and Ensign Riley, already mentioned, and Ensign Ebenezer Belden ; and it cannot be doubted that other officers were furnished from the same town. The last great work to be done was the capture of Montreal, which was effected in September. In March, 1761, another and closing campaign was organized for Canada. This was to complete the conquest of that province. Con- necticut sent two regiments. Among the officers of the Second were Francis Hollister and Jonathan Robbins, Jr., lieutenant and ensign respectively.
In the Havana expedition (1762) were Lieutenants Francis Hollister and Samuel Wright. Hollister's company lost forty men ont of a total of ninety. Wright's company lost thirty-seven men out of a total of ninety-one. Lieutenants Josiah Smith, Hezekiah Smith, and Nehemiah Dickinson (I am not certain that the latter was from Wethersfield), and Ensign Elisha Blinn served in the northern campaign, mainly at Crown Point, the same year. Storms and disease worked fearful ravages in the Connecticut soldiery near the coast of Cuba, and Weth- ersfield lost many of her citizens in this disastrous campaign.
The year 1763 witnessed the close of both the French and the Spanish wars, and the cession of all Canada to England. One of the
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most efficient men in the colony was Colonel John Chester, Sr. He was the father of Captain John Chester, who commanded the Wethers- field company at Bunker Hill. He was an assistant at the General Court during the whole war, and one of the three members of the committee of the pay-table of the army.
How many French prisoners were quartered in Wethersfield we cannot say. In 1759 some of them were at Newington under charge of selectmen Martin Kellogg and Nathaniel Boardman. In 1762 the town built a house " near Howard's pond, for the use of the French family."
Excepting certain episodes connected with attempts to enforce the Stamp Act, matters were pretty quiet in Wethersfield from this time until the Revolutionary epoch. There were now thirteen regiments in the colony, and Wethersfield was with Glastonbury and Middletown and Kensington parish, in the department of the sixth of these. It was commanded by John Chester, Sr. ; who, being of the blood of Governors Talcott and Welles, and a son of Major John Chester, may be supposed to have inherited a good degree of the military spirit so prominent in many of their descendants. It was in front of the house of Colonel Chester, on Broad Street, that the Sons of Liberty on the evening of Sept. 19, 1765, intercepted Stamp-Master Jared Ingersoll, of New Haven, on his way to Hartford, and compelled that officer, by potent arguments, to sign and seal a written resignation of his office. It is said that about five hundred men from Wethersfield and eastern towns were in the concourse of Ingersoll's interviewers ; and that each one carried a club of wood from which the bark had been peeled. The renunciatory document stated that he, Ingersoll, executed the instru- ment of his "own free will and accord, without any equivocation or mental reservation." He was also asked to swear to the truth of it. To this he demurred, when the crowd released him, upon his thrice shouting the words, " Liberty and Property." The out-of-doors part of this demonstration was under the immense elm-tree (burnt down some twenty-five years ago) in front of Colonel Chester's ; and the tavern in which the renunciation was signed stood a few rods north, and was destroyed by fire within the memory of people now living. Some, how- ever, say it was signed at the tavern on the east or opposite side of the street.
The hostility of the people extended to other acts of the British Parliament besides those requiring the use of Stamp Paper, imposing a duty on tea, etc. Among them was that passed in 1774, known as the Boston Port Bill, because of the destruction of tea in that harbor in the preceding December. Wethersfield sympathized heartily in Bos- ton's distress. At a meeting of her citizens at the brick meeting-house, June 16, 1774, at which Captain Thomas Belden presided, strong resolutions were passed. It was also resolved, " to the utmost of our power and influence " to encourage the proposed formation of a " Con- gress of the Colonies ; " and a committee consisting of Sheriff Ezekiel Williams, Elisha Deming (both of Wethersfield village), Elias Wil- liams, Captain William Griswold (both of Stepney parish), Captains Martin Kellogg and Charles Churchill (both of Newington parish), and Solomon Dunham (of Beckley Quarter) was chosen to receive contributions from the people and send the same to Boston.
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WETHERSFIELD.
At a meeting on the 5th of September following (being two days after the " Boston Alarm," and occasioned by it), the same Ezekiel Williams, Martin Kellogg, and Solomon Dunham, together with Cap- tain Belden, Mr. Stephen Mix Mitchell, Captain Elisha Williams, Captain John Chester, Mr. Silas Deane, and Mr. John Robbins, were chosen a " Committee of correspondents." Mitchell, Belden, and Eze- kiel Williams were chosen delegates to the convention to be held at Hartford on the 15th of the same month, "to consult about a non- consumption agreement," etc. A supply of five hundred pounds of pow- der was ordered for the town, with " bullets and flints in proportion."
On the 12th of December the " Articles of Association," then recently adopted by the Continental Congress, were approved in a town-meeting ; especially the article recommending town-committees of surveillance over citizens suspected as too friendly to the British Parliament. Such a committee was then chosen, consisting of Ezekiel Williams, Elisha Williams, Thomas Belden, Silas Deane, Stephen Mix Mitchell, Elias Williams, Oliver Pomeroy, Martin Kellogg, John Chester, Francis Hanmer, Solomon Dunham, John Robbins, and Barnabas Deane.
From the foregoing it is apparent that Wethersfield was wide awake in the movements which led to the Revolution. One of her citizens, Silas Deane, was one of the most active and efficient members of the Continental Congress of 1774. In the following year he was one of the five Connecticut members (three only were present) of Vilas@rancos the Congress of the Confeder- ation. He carly became one of the confidants of General Washington, and it was undoubtedly due to this fact that the latter made Colonel Samuel Blatchley Webb (Deane's stepson, then a young man of twenty-one years) a member of his per- sonal staff, while Deane became an ambassador to France. Captain
John Sheraton Puffs
John Chester (son of Colonel Jolin Chester, who had died in 1771) was then in command of the oldest of the four military companies in the township, - the First, or Broad Street Company. It is not perhaps too much to say of this organization that it was the finest one of the kind in the colony. Captain Ezekiel Williams, a brother of William Wil- Ez williams. liams, of Lebanon, the signer of the Declaration, was deputy commissary of prisoners for the colony during
most of the war. He was father of the late Chief Judge Thomas S. Williams. His cousin, Captain Elisha Williams, mentioned above, was a son of the rector-colonel of the same name. He was a merchant,
J.M. Mitchell and one of the most active members of this remarkable family. Stephen Mix Mitchell was afterward United States Senator, and chief judge of the State. Captain Thomas Belden was graduated at Yale College ; he afterward
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
became colonel of the Sixth Regiment. Captain William Griswold, who lived at Rocky Hill, was a sea-captain, and to this fact he owed his title. He owned the brig " Minerva," which was chartered by the col-
Bar Deane.
ony and converted into a man-of-war. Lieutenant Barnabas Deane was, like his brother Silas, a mer- chant largely interested in the West India trade.
The minister at Wethersfield, the Rev. John Marsh, then but a few months installed in his office, had been a tutor at Harvard College. He was still young, carnest, and burning with patriotism.
It may well be imagined that with all these influential agents at work Wethersfield accomplished a great deal. She sent to Boston, so said Samuel Adams, three hundred and ninety bushels of corn, two hundred and forty-eight and a half of rye, thirty-four of wheat ; besides other articles. And when the "Lexington Alarm," in April, 1775, reached Wethersfield, she sent Captain Chester, with probably the largest company from this colony, to Massachusetts. The amount reimbursed by the colony to the town for the expense of this expedition was £156 2s. 11d. The names of those who went are as follows : -
Captain : John Chester.
First lieutenant : Martin Kellogg.
Second lieutenant : Chester Welles.
Third lieutenant : John Beckley.
Ensign : Barnabas Deane.
Clerk : Roger Bull.
Sergeants : Charles Butler, Thomas Welles, Solomon Stoddard, William Warner.
Corporals : Hezekiah Butler, Eliel Williams, Ebenezer Dickinson, and Ben- jamin Catlin.
Fifer : William Fosdick. Drummer : William Tryon.
Privates : Amasa Adams, John Atwood, Henry Brown, Jonathan Belden, (Jonathan B.) Balch, Edward Brown, George Bradley, Timothy Brooks, Alvin Bigelow, Thomas Bunce, Daniel Buck, Elisha Belden, Samuel Boardman, John Barnes, John Benton, Return Boardman, Elijah Boardman, Samuel Boardman, 2d, Enos Blakeley, Benjamin Beckley, Solomon Beckley, Francis Bulkeley, Michael Brigden, William Crane, Nathaniel Coleman, Joshua Cone, James Clark, Daniel Curtis, Zadock Coleman, James Camp, Daniel Deming, Leonard Deming, Rich- ard Deming, Leonard Dix, Joseph Dodge, Elisha Dix, Josiah Deming, Aaron Deming, Jonathan Dallapy, Levi Dickinson, David Dimock, Samnel Davis, Solomon Dunham, James Francis, Simon Griffin, John Goodrich, Constant Gris- wold, Ozias Goodrich, William Griswold, Asa Hills, Enos Hun, John Jackson, David King, James Knowles, Phineas Kellogg, William Kelsey, Moses Kelsey, . Timothy Kilbourn, Richard Montague, Seth Montague, Hezekiah May, Benjamin Morton, Charles Nott, Selah North, Oliver Pomeroy, Ackley Riley, Jacob Rash, Joseph Roads (Rhodes), Nathaniel Russell, Thomas Russell, Oliver Robbins, Joseph Stillman, Nathaniel Sanborn, Gershom Smith, John Scripture, James Stanley, Ebenezer Stoddard, Ashbel Seymour, David Stoddard, Enoch Stoddard, Jonathan Stoddard, Eli Stoddard, Eben Sanford, Charles Treat, Ashbel Wright, Robert Warner, Benjamin Weston, Joseph Wright, Josiah Welles, John Wood- house, Solomon Williams, Leonard Webster, David Wolcott, Zion Wentworth, Timothy White, Amos Andrus Webster, Israel Williams, Solomon Wolcott, Samuel Whitmore, and Timon, a Negro.
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WETHERSFIELD.
The above were volunteers, taken from all the companies in the township, and were not attached to any regiment.
In the very first conquest made by the Americans in or in fact preceding the Revolution, - the capture of Ticonderoga, May 10, 1775, - Colonel Ethan Allen, but for the assistance of citizens of Weth- ersfield, might not have been able to report the success which brought him so conspicuously into notice. The Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull 1 has conclusively shown that the plan for that enterprise was formed in Hartford, and that Colonel Samuel II. Parsons, of Middletown, Colonel Samuel Wyllys, of Hartford, and Silas Deane, of Wethersfield, " first undertook and projected taking that fort," to quote the language of Colonel Parsons. They were materially assisted by the purse of Silas Deane, he advancing £380 to Captain Elisha Phelps, commissary of the expedition. Ezekiel Williams, of Wethersfield, was one of the six signers of a note for £500 to be used in behalf of the expedition. There were forty-seven prisoners captured at Ticonderoga, exclusive of Major Skene and the other officers, and these were "billeted " among the people of Hartford and Wethersfield. Williams had the personal charge of the prisoners at Wethersfield. They were allowed, and some of them embraced the opportunity, to attend divine services at Dr. Marsh's church. Joseph Webb, a merchant and tanner, and a brother of Colonel Samuel B. Webb, was particularly useful in the commissa- riat for the supply of war matériel.
The General Assembly having in April, 1775, ordered six regiments of volunteers to be raised, a company of one hundred and nine men, including officers, volunteered, under Captain Chester, for service in the Second Regiment, under General Joseph Spencer; and this is the same company which fought at Bunker Hill, and whose brilliant performance there rendered glorious the part taken by Connecticut in that action. No soldiers were braver or better disciplined ; and no Connecticut officer, after Putnam, became more distinguished for his share in that sanguinary engagement than Captain Chester. Below is a muster-roll of this company, called the " Elite Corps of the Army;" when it marched to Charlestown: -
Captain : John Chester.
Lieutenants : Samuel B. Webb (to whom Barnabas Deane gave way), Eben- ezer Huntington, and Stephen Goodrich.
Ensign : Charles Butler.
Sergeants : Ashbel Seymour, Phineas Grover, Benjamin Catlin, Daniel Curtis, and James Knowles.
Corporals : William Tryon, Joseph Miller, Alexander McDowell, Joseph An- drus, and John Benton.
Drummers : John Russell and William Tryon.
Fifers : William Williams, and William Fosdick.
Privates : Ashbel Wright, Jared Bunce, John Allyn (Asahel Andrews ?), Michael Barce, Jonathan B. Balch, Isaac Bidwell, Enos Blakesley, Abraham Blinn, Hezekiah Blinn, Seth Boardman, Samuel Boardman, Jonathan Bowers, Timothy Brooks, Lery Brooks, Thomas Brooks, Edward Brown, Francis Bulkeley, James Burnham, Orrin Burnham, John Buller, James McLean, Gideon Cole, Nathaniel Coleman, William Crane, Joseph Crane, Thomas Crosby, John Dalla- bee (Delliber?), Samuel Davies, Samuel Delling (Dillings ?), Daniel Deming,
1 Collections of Connecticut Historical Society, vol. i.
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MEMORIAL HISTORY OF HARTFORD COUNTY.
Leonard Dix, Seth Paddy, Benjamin Evans, Eliphalet Flint, Simeon Fox, Roger Fox (killed in battle), James Francis, Abner Fuller, Jacob Gibbs, Jonas Clark Gibbs, Isaac Goodrich, Hosea Goodrich, Ozias Goodrich, Elizur Goodrich, Azarialı Grant, Constant Griswold, Thomas Hinckley, Asahel Hills, Aaron Hollister, Elijah Hollister, Thomas Holmes, Thomas Hoskins, Eli(jah ?) Hurlburt, Silas Hurlburt, John Jackson, Seth Kilbourn, Christopher Kilby, David King, Asa Loveland, Abisha Marks, Hezekiah Mackey, John Miller, Joseph Miller, John Miner, James Murphy, Elihu Phelps, Benoni Powell, Jacob Rash, Oliver Raymond, Frederick Robbins, Wilson Rowlandson, Joseph Rowlandson, Stephen Sabins, Moses Scott, Reuben Shipman, Gershon Smith, Epaphras Stephens, Hezekiah Stocking, Enoch Stoddard, David Stoddard, Lawrence Sullivan, Ashbel Taylor, Charles Treat, Elias Weare, William Weare, Josiah Welles, Zion Wentworth, Elizur Wright, and Waitstill Dickinson.
This company has been called " by far the most accomplished body of men in the whole American army." 1
It will be seen that some of the members of this company were from other towns than Wethersfield. Lieutenant Huntington was at the time a student from Norwich, in Yale College. He was a son of Gen- eral Jabez Huntington, and he ran away from New Haven in order to reach the recruiting-station at Wethersfield. He was afterward dis- tinguished as a brigadier-general.
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