USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Mount Carmel > The old Mount Carmel parish, origins & outgrowths > Part 11
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The new church, however, was disappointing. There is no indication that many people were attracted to its services who had not before attended the meetings in private houses. The great body of substantial churchgoers still continued their worship at the old meeting-house. Accordingly, after a few years, in 1819, measures were taken for a removal to the center of the town. The old property was sold and a new edi- fice erected at Centerville, where it is still standing as the home of a prosperous society, unhampered by the competi- tion of any other church in the immediate neighborhood.
XIII. Farms as Schools of Pioneering.
T OWARD the close of the colonial period, the peo- ple of Connecticut began to reach out for farm lands beyond the borders of the state. The people were mostly farmers and needed arable land for tilling and pastures for their stock. The amount of ground that could be used for such purposes was quite limited; for a large part of the country was taken up with rocky ridges, and even the valleys were largely covered with boulders, gravel, and sand that had been laid down in old glacial movements. From the beginning, the settlers had to choose out the ground to be worked in small pieces here and there as it could be found, and let the rest go wild. Then, as the years went by, they carried their search for fertile soil farther and farther into the remoter parts of their territory till the whole was dotted over with homesteads surrounded with cultivated fields. After that, they had to look beyond their borders.
In Eastern Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, maritime interests were greater, and more people were engaged in sea-faring occupations. It was the same with New York, which had the seaport at Manhattan and thriv- ing trade up the Hudson to Albany. But in Connecticut the people generally lived on their land. Most of them had to, if they lived at all. So they thought a great deal of their bits of ground and made out of them all they could. Farmers' boys grew up with the hunger for land very much as the lads of a sea-faring community are eager to go to sea. It was instinctive with them to go out pioneering.
This had much to do with shaping the character of Con- necticut. It also accounts somewhat for her prosperity. The growth of her population, as compared with that of the ad- jacent territory of New York, is in point. The area of those parts of New York lying east of the Hudson, including Long Island, is about that of Connecticut. New York had
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the start of Connecticut by many years, Manhattan having long been a trading center when the first settlements were planted at Windsor and New Haven. Yet, in the closing years of the colonial period, the population of Connecticut was much greater than that of her sister colony .* A certain explanation of this may be found, perhaps, in the large landed estates on either side of the Hudson, as compared with the small farms a few miles to the eastward.
The oldest of these was that of the Van Rensselaer family, begun as early as 1630 by a rich merchant who lived in Amsterdam and employed agents to trade with the In- dians and take their lands in exchange for merchandise. He himself never saw America, but his property grew almost into an independent principality; so that, in 1650, a com- plaint was made by the authorities on Manhattan Island that the patroon forbade his tenants to appeal to them, ousted whomever he pleased, and allowed no one to live there but on such conditions as he laid down. This estate, lying on both sides of the river, reaching from twelve miles below Albany to twelve above and extending forty-eight miles across from east to west, covered a territory as large as two Connecticut counties. After the English came into possession of the land, estates with more restricted privileges were founded under the name of manors, but they were still of vast size. That of Frederic Philipse, lying between Yonkers and the Croton River, comprised three hundred and ninety square miles. North of this was the Van Cortlandt Manor consisting of two grants each twenty miles square. Next were the Rom- boudt and Verplanck manors, between the Fishkill and Wappinger creeks, several miles along the Hudson and go- ing back sixteen miles into the interior. East of these lay the Beekman Manor; and, on the north, that of Robert Living-
* Dexter, in his "Estimates of Population in American Colonies," His- torical Papers, p. 164, gives New York, in 1756, 96,790; Connecticut, over 130,000. The returns made in 1755 to the Board of Trade give, "according to the best account," New York, 55,000 and Connecticut, 100,000, whites only. (New York Col. Docts., Vol. VI, p. 993.) Dexter's figures, which include blacks also, are much more reliable.
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ston, which was sixteen miles long and twenty-four broad. We may not be warranted in assuming that conditions on these manors were similar to those on the Van Rensselaer property, but the existence of estates so vast is significant enough in itself. In 1701, the governor of the province wrote to the Board of Trade in London that not less than 7,000,000 acres had been given away in thirteen grants, and that all of them were uninhabited excepting the Van Rensse- laer, on which stood the town of Albany .* In that same year, 1701-02, the three hundred and fifty-four land proprietors of New Haven carefully defined each one's share in the Sequestered Lands and made preparations for the Fourth Division, in which the shares averaged just about ten acres to the individual.
During the thirty years or so preceding the Revolution, Sir William Johnson was a conspicuous figure in colonial movements, particularly in dealing with the Indians, block- ing the schemes of the French, and securing control of the Mohawk and Susquehanna valleys. Sir William came from England in 1741, to manage a great estate that had been granted to his uncle in the Mohawk valley, and in course of time he gained for himself another estate of 100,000 acres in the Susquehanna valley. Sir William clearly saw the im- portance of bringing in settlers to recover his domains from the wilderness and to bring them under cultivation. By mak- ing liberal offers to purchasers, he succeeded in attracting many thousands who afterward became a bulwark of strength in the Mohawk valley .; But before his time many immigrants came to the manors along the Hudson only to become disheartened, and to look elsewhere for more favor- able conditions. Among these were a considerable number of Germans from the Palatinate, who came to the Livingston Manor in 1710, and then moved on to Schoharie County. From there, some of them went down the Susquehanna to southern Pennsylvania. For families whose enterprise had
* Halsey, ed., Four Great Rivers, pp. xxxiii-xxxvi. Albany was an in- corporated city.
t Ibid., pp. xlviii-lxv.
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dared the hardships of a voyage across the Atlantic, it must have been a bitter surprise to find so many great estates un- der a system that could not allow them a freehold.
As the usage about land was very different in New York from what it was in Connecticut, so there were essential dif- ferences in other things. Some glimpses of conditions in the rural parts of New York are given in the Journal of Richard Smith of Burlington, New Jersey, who, in 1769, made a journey up the Hudson and Mohawk rivers to Canajoharie and then, crossing over to Otsego Lake, down the Susque- hanna and Delaware to his home. His errand was to investi- gate a land grant in Otsego County, in which he was inter- ested, and to find out what he could concerning prospects of improvement in the regions thereabout .*
Soon after leaving Yonkers, he makes this entry: "The country hereabout excels ours by far in fine prospects, but I conceive that our countrymen excel the people here in cul- tivation."+ In talking with some of the tenants on great estates he found them dissatisfied with the terms upon which they held their leases. Thus he writes: "Our company went on shore up the rocks to a miserable farm and house in Orange and left with the farmer a direction for Otsego as he and a few of his neighbors seemed desirous to seek new habitations."# Further up the river, at the Beekman Manor, he writes again: "The houses are mean. We saw one piece of good meadow which is scarce here-away."§ Several times he speaks of good bottom lands fit for meadow but unimproved, or used for corn, peas, and wheat. Then he adds: "However there was one rich meadow improved."|| Again, he says: "They hardly ever plough their upland." At Schenectady, he writes: "The Townspeople are supplied altogether with beef and pork from New England, most of the meadows being used for wheat, peas and other grain; however there
* Halsey, ed., Four Great Rivers, pp. 1-88.
+ Ibid., p. 5.
¿ Ibid., p. 6. § Ibid., p. 10. | Ibid., p. 14.
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are certain choice grass meadows about the place. . . . We did not observe any orchards or gardens worthy of atten- tion."* He mentions cattle and hogs two or three times, but speaks oftener of horses, which seem to have been common and generally depended on for farm work and teaming. He tells of wagons drawn by two horses and of a two-wheeled plough drawn by three horses abreast with a boy on one of them.t The account is finally closed with a reference to the superior farms of New Jersey and Pennsylvania which he appreciates the more highly for the contrast.}
In this narration it is noticeable that no mention is any- where made of oxen or a cart or of manure for keeping up the fertility of the soil. We are told of neglect of meadows and the grass crop, indicating little hay and not very much stock raising. This is confirmed by the dependence of a town like Schenectady, with its three hundred houses, on New England for the beef and pork in its market.
President Dwight, writing in 1803 on the failure of the wheat crop in the Connecticut valley, laid it to the general use of animal manure which "produced noxious effects long after it had ceased to enrich the soil," and he supported this extraordinary theory by a reference to the successful wheat crops of Pennsylvania and the older settlements of New York, where the grain was "not exposed to the blast and cattle were not very numerous." Dwight was a great trav- eller and careful observer and, while his theory may cause a smile, his statement can be trusted about the prevalence of stock raising in New England and the neglect of it beyond the Hudson. §
Evidence of the practice in Connecticut is seen in the in- ventories made out at the settlement of estates and preserved in probate records. Thus, an inventory of William Gibbard's estate, in 1663, names two oxen, three cows and a calf, one heifer, two beasts two years old, one yearling, sheep, ten
* Halsey, ed., Four Great Rivers, pp. 22-23.
+ Ibid., p. 21.
$ Ibid., p. 78.
§ Dwight, Travels, Vol. I, pp. 341-345.
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swine in the woods if they are alive and can be found, five small swine at home; and in the woods, if they can be found and are alive, three mares, one horse, two mares two years old, two one-year-old colts. Here is the story of farm life some twenty-five years after the New Haven colony was started. By the side of this we may put an exhibit of a hun- dred years later, an inventory of Caleb Mix's estate in 1765, which mentions one horse, one mare, one pair of oxen, one bull, one three-year-old steer, two steers two years old, five yearlings, four cows, one two-year-old heifer, two cows and calves, one cow, thirty-one sheep, six ewes and lambs. The estate of Captain Daniel Bradley, appraised in 1773, has the following list: one horse, a cow and calf, two cows, a heifer, a pair of steers, two calves, one calf, six heifers, three swine.
The farms here represented were of the better sort but may be taken as fair specimens of the general usage. We find no records of cattle in large droves, such as may be seen on western ranches today; but a few animals of different sorts and various ages were a part of the natural belongings of every small farm. Gibbard's estate has a disproportionate number of horses. There are other indications that show more ventures in horse raising in that early period than were afterward undertaken. Evidently horses were found to be less profitable than other animals. Oxen were more economi- cal because they could be turned into meat after having served their day at the plough and in other work. It was usual to keep on hand cattle of different ages, so that when the older were fattened for slaughter, the younger might come on to take their places in the work. A thrifty farmer saw to it that he always had a number of calves and two- year-olds growing up for later needs. It required constant care to have a good meat supply and to replenish it from year to year. Cellars contained barrels of pork and corned beef. The smoke-house had its full rows of hams, beef tongues, and hunks of dried beef, which went from there to the kitchen, a never-failing resource of the housewife.
So many animals made it necessary to raise a great deal of hay. The best land was put into meadow and treated with
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scrupulous care, being turned over now and then to some other crop for a season or two, that it might be made more productive. Some of the worst land, too, was utilized for hay; wet, swampy ground that could not be ploughed might grow a coarse grass to be made into an inferior hay often used for bedding. Also the frequent stretches of salt meadow along the coast were cut up into small rectangles by a sys- tem of drainage ditches, each rectangle provided with a staddle. After the upland haying was over, farmers came down from long distances to cut the salt grass and make it into hay, which they built into symmetrical stacks to be taken off on sleds when the meadows were frozen in the winter. Often, at a distance from the homestead, there were pastures to which young cattle were driven in the spring and where they were left to graze at will, with occasional visits to see how they were doing, till late autumn, when they were brought back to the shelter of barns and kept on cornstalks and other fodder.
Nothing like this was to be seen in country where the peo- ple were not interested in live stock. Raising wheat and corn, peas, and beans, is quite another thing. And not the products only are different; the people themselves grow to be most unlike. Washington Irving has given us those charming pic- tures of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle in illustration of the Dutch legends of the Catskills. They afford a glimpse of that old life about Irving's own home, in stories with which he was familiar. One could hardly fancy pictures like these in a Yankee setting among Connecticut hills and val- leys. The legend here is not of a lifetime spent in any long drowse with a rusty gun under the trees, but of men awake to opportunities and reaching out to all sorts of new under- takings.
Richard Smith tells of a landing near the present town of Marlborough on the west side of the Hudson and remarks: "The New England men cross here and hereabouts almost daily for Susquehanna; their route is from hence to the Minisink's, accounted only forty miles distant, and we are told that seven hundred of their men are to be in that coun-
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try by the first of June next."* This refers to a movement from Connecticut to the Wyoming valley that was going on at that time.
Connecticut had a legal claim to the northern part of Pennsylvania under the charter granted by Charles II in 1662, which specified the breadth of its territory west as "to the South Sea," or the Pacific Ocean. Conditions laid down in a subsequent grant to the Duke of York made the charter inoperative for the territory of New York, but beyond there the title was supposed to be valid. Unfortunately, the later grant of Charles to William Penn overlapped that of Con- necticut and threw the claim into dispute. The Connecticut people went to great pains in the investigation of their rights by proper counsel, and took the further precaution of nego- tiating with the Indians of the Six Nations and buying out their claims for the sum of £2,000. Having thus satisfied themselves of the validity of their title, a good many people from Connecticut moved over and proceeded to take posses- sion. They could do this, as the land had been unoccupied theretofore.
Their right to be in the Pennsylvania country was con- tested from the outset. The Pennsylvania authorities said they were intruders, while the Connecticut government sup- ported and encouraged the settlers. When the Pennsylvania sheriff's warning was disregarded, measures were taken to drive out the settlers. Then violence was met with violence. Bold and adventurous spirits in larger numbers came on from Connecticut to defend the settlers. The struggle went on for many years and was called the "Pennanite War." In time, there were some 6,000 Connecticut people established in this new country, to which they gave the name of "West- moreland." They instituted a government by town meeting, held elections, and sent their representatives to the legisla- ture at New Haven and Hartford. To counteract their growth, Pennsylvanians were encouraged to buy land and settle in the immediate neighborhood. So the region was kept in a wild turmoil of bitter strife with not a little destruction
* Halsey, ed., Four Great Rivers, p. 8.
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of property and bloodshed. The most shocking event was the Wyoming massacre, but the animosities that flamed out then were always alive, even when smouldering under aspects of tranquillity. Such was the story of some twenty-five years. Finally, after the Revolution and the establishment of the Federal Government, the United States Congress was called . on to adjudicate the dispute and appointed commissioners for this purpose, which resulted in a decision against Con- necticut and in favor of Pennsylvania.
It would seem as if a great deal of trouble might have been saved by a more conciliatory policy at the beginning. Early in the controversy, when Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania wrote to Governor Wolcott of Connecticut in remonstrance against the proposed settlement of Wyoming, the latter replied with the suggestion that the settlers should be made freeholders, arguing that, in those times of French aggression, they might have something "to fight for of their own." It was natural for a Connecticut man to think that it would be better to have those great wilderness tracts brought under cultivation by thousands of industrious farmers than to remain as they had been, a waste for wild beasts and roaming Indians. William Penn's policy was broad-minded. He began the occupation of his grant from Charles by open- ing it at once to settlers on the most generous terms, "a free colony for all mankind." He found some few Swedes, Dutch, and English already on the ground and conceded to these equal liberties with other settlers. He gave religious freedom, which attracted Quakers, Presbyterians, Mennon- ites, and Huguenots. So the population grew very fast; for a few years, at the rate of a thousand a year. If such a spirit had ruled when the first Connecticut pioneers found their way to Wyoming some compromise would surely have been found. And, had such a spirit ruled, after the decision of the congressional commission in favor of Pennsylvania, there would have been devised some better way of vindicating the dignity of the state than to dispossess so many worthy peo- ple, who had changed wild lands into prosperous and happy homesteads.
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Though Congress disallowed the provision of the Con- necticut charter as concerned Pennsylvania, it confirmed the charter as concerned Ohio, and established the "Western Re- serve" under Connecticut jurisdiction. The moulding power of Connecticut in the growth of Ohio is beyond question. Connecticut pioneers did not a little for northern Pennsyl- vania, despite the difficulties that beset them. How much more they might have done if they had not been so sadly hindered cannot be known.
NOTE: An example of training for bold adventure is Stephen Rowe Brad- ley, see below, pp. 131-132. From a farm on the Cheshire border he worked his way through college, taught school, served in the army in the Revolutionary War, and studied law with Tapping Reeve at Litchfield. Then he went up into the Green Mountains to practice among the pio- neers who had followed Ethan Allen to Ticonderoga. There he projected the formation of a new state and got it constituted and admitted to the Union as Vermont. He was then sent to the United States Senate and kept there for over twenty years, during which he was chosen to be president of the Senate. Especially significant was his vote in a great crisis, at the trial of Judge Chase, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, in which the independence of the judiciary was at stake. The impeachment was made by the Jeffersonian party and Bradley was a Jeffersonian. Yet, com- prehending how much this trial meant, Bradley drew back, sided with the Federalists and, followed by two others of his party defeated the im- peachment. Beveridge says that the effect of this trial was "to settle the fate of John Marshall as Chief Justice of the United States, and to fix forever the place of the National Judiciary in the scheme of American government." (The Life of John Marshall, by Albert J. Beveridge, Vol. III, p. 175.) As concerns Bradley, it reveals a man who put sound states- manship above party regularity and had the strength of character to stand against an insidious temptation. The question is suggested whether his two brilliant contemporaries, Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr, might not have kept a better moral balance if they had been started in life under sterner discipline.
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XIV. Migrations to Litchfield, Berkshire, and Vermont.
T HE pioneer spirit which was dominant in all the early settlements continued in the times that fol- lowed. The restlessness that brought the fathers from their ancestral homes in England across the Atlantic reappeared in their children and grandchildren, impelling the more adventurous to strike out anew into the wilderness regions and start fresh settlements of their own. In this man- ner, the New Haven colonists speedily spread out beyond the two-mile circuit till the surrounding territory was occu- pied and vigorous communities grew up to the east, the west, and the north.
But enterprise did not pause there. With each new genera- tion, there came a new lot of adventurers, eager to push on over untrodden paths to plant themselves in eligible places, however distant. The movement to distant regions began about as soon as it could after the territory within reach had been taken up. Indeed, sooner than that. Before the Brad- leys went up to settle in the "fresh meadows" above the Steps, and before the Wallingford families got together in the little village of New Cheshire, pioneers found their way up the Connecticut valley to an outpost on the border of Vermont.
It was in the year 1717 that Benjamin Doolittle* planted himself thus at Northfield, Massachusetts. He and his neighbor, Samuel Hall,f had been students in Yale College while it was still at Saybrook and received their diplomas in 1716, the year in which the school was removed to New Haven. Hall became the pastor of the church in Cheshire at its organization, and Doolittle was ordained at Northfield to
* Yale Biographies, First Series, pp. 151-154.
t Ibid., pp. 154-156.
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a ministry which lasted in fruitfulness and honor to the end of his life. Doolittle was a physician and surgeon as well as preacher and thus multiplied his usefulness to the people all around Northfield. We can imagine that he was influenced to combine the two professions by the example of Dr. Jared Eliot of Clinton, in the near vicinity of Saybrook, of whom he must have heard a good deal while in college.
Before starting for Northfield, Dr. Doolittle was married to Lydia Todd, the eldest child of Samuel and Susanna (Tuttle) Todd of North Haven. The marriage was on the fourteenth of October, 1717, and in the autumn season of brilliant foliage and fair landscapes they made their wed- ding journey along the banks of the Connecticut to the pic- turesque spot among the hills that was thenceforth to be their home. Their family connections were many among the people who lived north of the Blue Hills, as well as to the south, and a host of friends were warmly interested in their departure. They regarded it, too, with no little anxiety, for they were going to parts still in danger of attack by Indians, who only a few years before had ravaged and stamped out one settlement on that very ground, and were now waiting, no doubt, to do the same by any other pioneers who might venture within their range. How it might fare with them was the theme of conversation in numerous households and the tidings that came back from them at infrequent intervals were passed around and listened to most eagerly. The proofs are abundant that their life at Northfield was very happy, and they had the usual gift of the pioneer's home, a large family of sons and daughters.
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