USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Mount Carmel > The old Mount Carmel parish, origins & outgrowths > Part 12
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At the time when the New Haven families living above the Blue Hills were associated with the Cheshire people in their worship, the pastor, the Reverend Samuel Hall, had with him a nephew, Lyman Hall,* whom he was tutoring to enter college. This young man, a native of Wallingford, was graduated from Yale in 1747 and then returned to study theology with his uncle, after which he was ordained and preached for two or three years in what is now Bridgeport.
* Yale Biographies, Second Series, pp. 116-119.
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He seems not to have been altogether successful in his pas- torate. He taught school a while, pursued a course in medi- cine, and became a practicing physician. He married and lost his wife. Then, in 1757, he made up his mind to try a new country. So he sailed for the south. Arriving in Charleston, he found that the people of Dorchester, an old New Eng- land settlement in that neighborhood, were about to quit the plantations on which they had lived some sixty years, and to go down the coast to start anew about thirty miles below Savannah. He joined them, obtained a tract of land in the new country, and went into the enterprise with the determi- nation to do all in his power to build up a model community. His occupation as a practicing physician brought him into a position of unusual influence. Choice people were attracted to the place and prosperity followed. In a few years St. John's Parish, as the district was named, contained nearly a third of the wealth of the Georgia colony, and Hall was quite the leading man there. When the troubles with the royal government came on, he took a pronounced stand for independence and carried the settlement with him. The rest of the colony was slower in moving. So St. John's Parish went ahead, chose Hall as their delegate to the Continental Congress, and sent him on to Philadelphia, where he was unanimously seated. A few weeks later, the rest of the colony fell in with this lead and he became the delegate for the whole colony, in which position he was continued by suc- cessive appointments. So he was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In retaliation, St. John's Par- ish was furiously ravaged by the British and Hall's own property was confiscated. In the end, however, he was vindi- cated in the triumph of the Revolution, and, returning to Georgia after the War, he was elected by the people as the first governor of that state.
Another man of national celebrity from this neighborhood was Stephen Rowe Bradley .* He was a son of Moses Brad- ley, the youngest of those brothers who built houses, about 1730, on the newly opened lands by the southern border of
* Yale Biographies, Third Series, pp. 549-552.
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Cheshire. He was graduated from Yale in 1775, the year of the Battle of Bunker Hill. In college, he had been a some- what irrepressible boy and, among other things, got out an almanac of two thousand copies. Afterward he taught school, served in the Army with some distinction, and studied law with Tapping Reeve of Litchfield. Then, he took the road up the Connecticut River to Westminster, some twenty miles above Brattleboro, where he obtained admittance to the bar in May, 1779, and started in the practice of law, with the purpose, however, of becoming a political leader. In the fol- lowing October, he was chosen by the legislature to appear before the United States Congress to advocate the right of Vermont to an independent government and prepared an address which was put into print. He was representative in the legislature a number of terms, in one of which he was speaker of the House. When Vermont was admitted to the Union in 1791, he was chosen United States Senator and was kept in that position most of the time for the twenty-two years that followed.
His wife was Merab Atwater of Cheshire and they had a son, William Czar Bradley, who, like his father, was in political life, representing Vermont in the United States Congress two terms and occupying many other responsible positions in national and state affairs.
During the period of over sixty years between Dr. Doo- little's settlement at Northfield in 1717 and Bradley's in Westminster in 1779 there were great changes, particularly in the growth of communities and the spread of settlers into the wilder regions of New England. In the early part of the period, western Massachusetts and the territory to the north were menaced by the Indians, so that people did not venture far from protected positions to make a home. In the Con- necticut valley above Springfield, they kept near the river at Northampton, Hadley, Hatfield, Deerfield, and did not carry their clearing of forests many miles eastward or west- ward. These river towns were seventy or eighty years old when the settlement was undertaken at Amherst, only five or six miles back from the river, and it is a local tradition that
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the Hadley and Hatfield people expected nothing better of it than that their friends would fall by the Indians' hatchets or be lost in the swamps and forests. With the end of the second French and Indian War, the terror of the Indians ceased in New England; it became safe to strike out almost anywhere into the back country.
One of the results of the French and Indian Wars was to give the young men who were engaged in them larger views of life, a broader knowledge of the world and of the times in which they lived. It made them familiar with the country through which they marched in their campaigns, opened be- fore them opportunities for new settlements, and awakened their ambition to have a personal part in the improvement of such chances.
In this period, the northwestern part of Connecticut at- tracted many settlers from the older towns. After 1732, large tracts of territory in this region came into the market and a number of new towns were named. Among these was Goshen, probably named from the pastures of Egypt which Pharaoh gave to the sons of Jacob. This town was divided into lots and sold at auction in New Haven in 1737. Timothy Tuttle of Cheshire bid off one of the lots for his son Timo- thy, who went out there two years later and put up a house. Having married Hannah Wadhams, the daughter of a set- tler from Middletown, the young man set about improving his property and became one of the substantial citizens of the new community. He had a family of six sons and five daugh- ters, most of whom married and had numerous children, who in turn dispersed and played an important part in many other towns .* A church was organized promptly in Goshen and, in 1740, Stephen Heaton of North Haven, a Yale graduate of 1733, was ordained to be its minister.
In the same year, Samuel Toddt of North Haven, a younger brother of Mrs. Benjamin Doolittle, having taken his degree at Yale in 1734, became pastor of the church in Northbury, which is now the town of Plymouth. After a
* The Tuttle Family, p. 513.
1 Yale Biographies, First Series, pp. 516-518.
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ministry of twenty years in this place, he went to Lanesbor- ough, Massachusetts. Thence he went to North Adams, where he gathered a church and was its minister from 1766 to 1768. Then he went over to Northfield, where he had a son living as well as a sister. He and his wife were there till 1782 and then removed to Orford, New Hampshire, where he died in 1789.
Another North Haven man, Jehiel Tuttle, was in Bark- hamsted before 1760 and about ten years later went to Tor- ringford, where he remained and left a family that figured in the subsequent life of that community. Lazarus Ives, 2d, and his brother Asa also went to Goshen and became promi- nent there.
Especially noteworthy was the going of Joseph Bellamy* of Cheshire to Bethlehem. He was graduated from Yale in 1735 and was licensed to preach in 1737, whereupon he be- took himself to the new country of Bethlehem to undertake evangelical work among people without the usual religious privileges. It was not long before he had gathered a church, of which he was ordained the pastor in 1740. He continued in this position nearly fifty years, until his death in 1789. On account of his great abilities and remarkable personality, Bethlehem grew to be a center of religious influence for all the region around and, indeed, for the whole of New Eng- land, through the young men who came in considerable numbers to pursue their studies in theology under Dr. Bel- lamy's guidance. As one thinks of the eminence to which he attained in this small out-of-the-way place, it is natural to ask how much his choice of a field had to do with Dr. Bel- lamy's greatness. May not his escape into the wilderness, out of reach of traditional trammels and into close companion- ship with lumbermen and farmers, have served to give him independence of thought, clearness of conviction, and bold- ness to stand up against other theologians with a sort of im- periousness that was the terror of timid opponents?
It was near the end of the French and Indian Wars when
* Yale Biographies, First Series, pp. 523-529.
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the Mount Carmel Parish was established in 1757. The movement of pioneers to the frontiers was already well un- der way. Perhaps this was a hindrance to the orderly devel- opment of society there. One can imagine that the wish to keep the young people from leaving may have had some- thing to do with starting a new parish. As things turned out, however, and strifes arose over church affairs, we can well believe that many of the finest and most promising of them became so disgusted that they wanted to get away from the quarrels, and so were the more attracted to pioneering. The indications of this are plain.
A movement of settlers to Berkshire County, Massachu- setts, seems to have been closely connected with the move- ment of troops through this region for the operations about Lake George and Ticonderoga. Connecticut bore a promi- nent part in these campaigns, sometimes having as many as a thousand men in the field; and there is proof of Mount Car- mel's bearing her full share. What she did for the state militia is shown by the number of commissioned officers here between 1749 and 1760; the captains were Theophilus Goodyear, Daniel Bradley, Jason Bradley, Jonathan Ives, and Phineas Castle; the lieutenants were Amos Bradley, Jesse Blakeslee, Nathaniel Tuttle, and Joel Munson; and Amos Peck, Solomon Doolittle, and Jacob Atwater were en- signs. In the rolls of troops who marched from New Haven on September 12, 1755, are found the following from Mount Carmel: Joel Munson, Ebenezer Beach, Asa Good- year, Noah Woolcot, Joel Bradley, Ebenezer Woolcot, Al- vin Bradley, Stephen Cooper, Jr., and Allen Cooper. In the campaign of 1757, "at the time of the alarm for the relief of Fort William Henry," these are named: Ithamar Todd, Abner Todd, Jonathan Alling, Jesse Blakeslee, Dan Car- rington, John Munson, Daniel Rexford, Elisha Chapman, Amos Alling, William Payne, John Grannis, Timothy Leak, Ebenezer Warner, Joseph Warner, Uri Tuttle, Daniel Bradley, and his three sons, William, Jabez, and Jesse. Daniel Bradley himself, as a captain, went in command of a
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company from Fairfield,* "each of whom rode a horse," and they no doubt took the route up the Housatonic valley; while the others went the nearer way from this part of the state.
The line of march from this neighborhood was probably over the usual road to Farmington, thence by the Litchfield highway as far as Harwinton, where a road struck off to the north through Colebrook to New Marlborough, Great Bar- rington, Stockbridge, and on to Lanesborough, where a fort had been built for a defence against hostile incursions. After leaving Farmington, the route was through a comparatively new country in which houses and cultivated fields were by no means common. Harwinton, New Marlborough, Great Barrington, and Stockbridge each had a church and settled minister; but nowhere else in the whole distance was there another village that had attained to this dignity.
The tramp over this road must have told these farmers a deal about the country that they did not know before. In particular, it made them acquainted with Berkshire and its abounding opportunities: its wooded hills and fertile valleys watered with cool springs and clear flowing brooks, spread- ing out before the eye at one point and another, just as they do today, in charming landscapes to delight the passer-by. Especially were they likely to become familiar with Lanes- borough, which, with its fort, seems to have been the natu- ral rendezvous from which to advance against the enemy. Things were interesting there. Three or four settlers had planted themselves in this spot in 1754, and a few more in the neighborhood to the south, then called Pontoosuc, now the city of Pittsfield; but, with the outbreak of the War, all had fled to safer ground, and what was left for the troops to look upon was their deserted homes and farms running to waste and ruin. The troops had come to fight the marauders, to make these farms secure, and to enable their owners to come back and live there again. They must have had a good deal to say about the return of the refugees, the rebuilding
* Daniel Bradley's sister Esther was the wife of Samuel Gold of Fair- field.
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of the place, and the likelihood of prosperity in years to fol- low. And it would not have been strange if some of them had felt that they might like to have a hand in the under- taking.
One can easily imagine Captain Bradley and his three sons as having such an interest in the situation; together, perhaps, looking about over the good farm lands, sizing up the ad- vantages for stock raising, counting on the value of standing timber, and estimating the chances for any new settlers that might come up from Connecticut to this new country. How- ever this may have been, it was not very long after the War before one of the sons actually came to Lanesborough and made his home there.
The refugees began to return in 1759 and in the summer of 1762 William Bradley removed thither with his family, consisting of a wife and four little boys. Mention is made of him at a meeting of the settlers in the April preceding the arrival of his family, when he was chosen one of a committee to provide preaching, which indicates that he was already well known and highly enough regarded for such a responsi- bility .* We may therefore conclude that he himself was in Lanesborough some time before; that he had bought prop- erty and become identified with the community; probably employing his time in building a house and planting his ground in preparation for the establishment of his family there.
The journey was made in the month of June, over the same road, no doubt, that the troops had taken a few years earlier; but by this time it had become a more travelled route and there were more farmhouses along the way. It must have taken a full week, however, if not more, to make the journey. The life on the road may have been something like that of gypsies. We can imagine household stuff of all kinds and farm utensils loaded upon one or two big carts drawn by oxen; while the mother probably rode horseback with a child in her arms, and perhaps another on a pillion behind; a cow was necessary to afford milk morning and evening, and
* Holland, History of Western Massachusetts, Vol. II, p. 340.
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most likely other farm animals helped to lengthen the train. It would have been natural to have one or two of their old neighbors to help on the journey, or one or two of the brothers who were especially interested. In the hands of the men there would have been at least one gun to bring down any game that might come in sight and thereby to help out their food supply. Altogether, it may well have been a jolly enterprise. With the leaves and blossoms coming out on the trees, wild flowers springing up by the roadside, and song birds filling the air with mirth, the fun should have put the trouble of it into the background. Arrived at the end of their journey on June 24, we can be sure that they had a hearty welcome from their new neighbors and were soon at home among them; filled with delight, too, at the fair country around, in which they had come to live.
The new community speedily took on an air of prosperity. Harmony prevailed; a Congregational church was formed in March, 1764, about two months later than the one at Mount Carmel and, in the following April, a minister was ordained to be their pastor, Daniel Collins, a graduate of Yale in 1760 and a classmate of Simeon Bristol of Mount Carmel. So this community was happier in its ecclesiastical affairs than the one from which the Bradleys had come. In other respects, also, the family seems to have been contented with their lot; other children were born, till there were eight in all, and their home was one of comfort and abundance.
This had its influence on those who had remained near the old place in Connecticut. About 1770, Jesse Bradley made up his mind to follow his older brother's example; went up to Berkshire; found a farm to suit him a few miles south of Lanesborough, in what is now the town of Lee, and removed thither with his family. He then had a wife and seven chil- dren, so that the change was even more of an undertaking than it had been for William. Hardly had he become well settled in his new home, when Elisha Bradley, his cousin, bought a farm in Stockbridge and removed his family to that place, not many miles from either Lanesborough or Lee. Elisha's father had died when he was a child and his uncle
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Litchfield, Berkshire, and Vermont. 139
Daniel had been appointed his guardian; so he had been al- most like another son among Captain Daniel's five boys, a little younger than William and a little older than Jesse, but the constant companion of both. At the time of his removal, he had a wife and eight children, a little larger group than even Jesse's. Elisha had been prominent in the society and church at Mount Carmel beyond either of the others, and his departure must have been seriously felt in the troubled state of things that prevailed there. He found a field, however, of equal if not greater usefulness in Stockbridge, as William had done at Lanesborough and Jesse in the near neighbor- hood of Lee.
These three Bradleys with their large families filled no small place in their several communities, not only at that time, but in years that followed. William did a great deal for Lanesborough. Jesse at Lee served on committees of the church and society; was a captain of militia, selectman, mod- erator of town meeting, surveyor, and deacon. Elisha at Stockbridge was a deacon, and his three older sons, Lent, Josiah, and Asahel, all served in the Army of the Revolu- tion.
Other kinsfolk of these families, a few years later, fol- lowed them into Berkshire. Jabez Bradley, 2d, a son of the Jabez who was there as a soldier in the campaign of 1757, came to Lee and settled down near his uncle Jesse; also his wife's father, Eli Bradley, and her brother, Heman, were there for a time, having come from the southern part of Mount Carmel. These did not remain long but removed eventually to a settlement in the Mohawk valley, as will be narrated in due time. There is a story in the family, too, about a visit of Jabez's sister Hannah, the wife of Jonathan Alling of Barkhamsted, with her little daughter Mary, at her brother's house, her husband being away from home in the Continental Army.
At about this time James Ives removed from Mount Carmel to Great Barrington, where he bore the title of cap- tain and reared a family. Thomas Ives of North Haven also went to Great Barrington and was distinguished as a justice
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of the peace and a major general. The name of Joel Dicker- man is on the Massachusetts militia rolls as from Stock- bridge; he was probably the son of Jonathan Dickerman of Mount Carmel. Ebenezer Atwater, with his wife, Rachel Parker, was in a party which was among the early settlers in North Adams before 1778.
Berkshire County was largely settled at the outset by peo- ple from the western half of Connecticut. The families that have been named represent contributions from the vicinity of New Haven, not unlike those from many towns. In keep- ing with this was the habit of the settlers in looking to Yale College for their ministers; almost all of whom were edu- cated there .* Thus, the early pastors at Sheffield were Jona- than Hubbard, John Keep, and Ephraim Judson; at New Marlborough, Thomas Strong, Caleb Alexander, and Jacob Catlin; at Great Barrington, Samuel Hopkins; at Stock- bridge, John Sergeant, Jonathan Edwards, and Stephen West; at Williamstown, Whitman Welch, Seth Swift, and Ebenezer Fitch, the first president of Williams College; at Richmond, Job Swift and David Perry; at Lanesborough, Daniel Collins; at Egremont, Eliphalet Steele; at Adams, Samuel Todd; at Lenox, Samuel Munson; at Becket, Zadoc Hunn; at Tyringham, Adonijah Bidwell; and at Windsor, David Avery; also Gideon Bostwick, who was an Episcopal missionary for Lanesborough, Lenox, and Great Barrington. All these were Yale graduates and most of them were na- tives of Connecticut. This general movement from Con- necticut is to be accounted for by the greater ease with which the Berkshire region could be entered from these parts than from eastern Massachusetts. People from the older Massa- chusetts towns who wished to move to the frontier were more attracted by New Hampshire and Maine, which could be reached with much less difficulty than was involved in the journey over the ranges of rugged hills between them and Berkshire.
Some of the Connecticut people, however, chose to go up
* Hodges, "Yale Graduates in Western Massachusetts," N. H. Col. Hist. Soc., Papers, Vol. IV, pp. 253-298.
Litchfield, Berkshire, and Vermont. 14I
the Connecticut valley, as Benjamin Doolittle and Stephen Rowe Bradley had done. One of these was John Dickerman, whose father had left him as a part of his inheritance some land in Mount Carmel. Unlike his cousins, Samuel and Jonathan, he sold his lands about New Haven and went to Vermont, not far from the time that William Bradley went to Lanesborough. He settled at Brattleboro first, but after a few years removed to Lyndon in the northern part of the state. He had nine children, of whom the older ones re- mained in Connecticut; but the others grew up in Vermont, some of them leaving families which are represented there at the present time, while several went to other parts of the country .*
About a mile south of Daniel Bradley's place in Mount Carmel was the homestead of John Hitchcock, who also at- tended worship at Cheshire before the new meeting-house was built. In his family were five sons and five daughters, most of whom married and brought up their families not many miles from the old home. But two of the sons removed to Claremont, New Hampshire, some forty miles above Brattleboro on the east side of the river. John Hitchcock, 3d, was one of six men who began the settlement there in 1767. Another of the six was Benjamin Tyler of Wallingford, who started a mill at Claremont. Tyler had a daughter Phebe, to whom Hitchcock was married in 1774. A year later Ichabod Hitchcock, a younger brother, joined the pio- neers. He had married Rebekah Pardee at Mount Carmel and had a little child. An account of the journey says that another man came with them. The men walked and drove a yoke of oxen, with a cart containing the goods and provi- sions for both families, while the women rode horseback and carried the baby, and they were fourteen days on the way. Ichabod was a master carpenter and for many years the only man in town who knew how to put up a frame house. He was also a farmer and his farm remained in the family over a hundred years.f
* Dickerman Genealogy, pp. 231-277.
+ Hitchcock Genealogy, p. 71.
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Rebekah Pardee was a daughter of Benjamin and Hannah (Beecher) Pardee, who lived in the Centerville neighbor- hood. Her oldest sister, Lowly, was the wife of Samuel Dickerman, 2d. A brother, Levi, and four sisters, Hannah, Mary, Abigail, and Anna, all removed to Claremont. Levi married Jerusha Jones, Mary married Asa Jones, Jr., and Anna married Josiah Jones, all of whom were children of Lieutenant Asa and Sarah (Treadwell) Jones, who came to Claremont from Colchester, Connecticut, in 1768. Hannah married Ebenezer Sperry, and Abigail married Ephraim Tyler, who was from Wallingford.
A number of other Wallingford people were in the settle- ment at Claremont. One of the oldest gravestones there bears the name of Benedick Roys; another, that of Newton Whittlesey. Timothy Grannis of North Haven was a settler there. Several of the early inhabitants bore the name of An- drews; Whiting Andrews, Amos Andrews, Benjamin An- drews, and Mrs. Eunice Andrews Barnes. When the Rever- end Samuel Andrews made his missionary tours in northern New England, he found at Claremont not a few whom he had known in Connecticut, quite a number of kinsfolk, and, undoubtedly many of his former parishioners. This may have had a good deal to do with the early formation of an Episcopal church in Claremont and made the visitations of Mr. Andrews especially happy .*
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