USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Mount Carmel > The old Mount Carmel parish, origins & outgrowths > Part 6
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The number of settlers increased rapidly, and they soon began to recognize the necessity of improving their oppor- tunities for church attendance. In 1738, the people of Amity, who were similarly situated, became a distinct parish. The others were not yet ready for this step; but instead they made a move to identify themselves practically with their two neighboring parishes to the east and north. On February 26, 1738-39, a memorial to the General Assembly was pre- pared by the people in the more southerly parts asking that, for better convenience of worship, they might be attached to
Photo by A. J. Tefft
Looking South from the Cheshire Border See note on page 54
59
Scattered Homesteads.
the North Haven parish; and on April 18, 1739, a similar memorial was drawn up by the people living above the Blue Hills, asking that they might be attached to the parish of Cheshire. In the May following, both petitions were granted and the signers with their households were from this time onward regarded as belonging respectively to the congrega- tions under the care of the Reverend Isaac Stiles and the Reverend Samuel Hall. The signatures affixed to these me- morials present an interesting, though by no means com- plete, catalogue of the householders at that time. Those on the North Haven petition were these:
Nathaniel Goodyear Enos Pardee Theophilus Goodyear
Joel Munson Samuel Peck Isaac Johnson
Stephen Cooper Anthony Thompson . Andrew Goodyear
Thomas Morris Josiah Mansfield William Payne
Jonathan Ives Mary Gilbert
And those on the Cheshire petition were these:
Daniel Sperry
Ralph Lines Abel Matthews
Wait Chatterton Daniel Bradley Amos Bradley
John Hitchcock
Daniel Rexford Lazarus Ives
Enos Tuttle
John Turner
Nathaniel Tuttle
Jacob Hotchkiss
As Mill River was the boundary of the North Haven parish, there are no signatures of householders living east of the river; and as some of those about Gilbert's Farm preferred to keep their connection with the old First Church in New Haven, their names do not appear.
The movement of settlers into these new fields was due to the requirements of a fast-growing population. The increase had been by family growth. The people who occupied these lands were native to the soil, sprung by three or four genera- tions from those planters who came up the bay just about a hundred years before and started the colony. The period of early immigration to New England was short, covering hardly more than twenty years; indeed, most of the settlers came within a period of ten years. Then the immigration
6c
The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
stopped and the colonies grew by the multiplication of those on the ground. Still, they grew with great vigor.
In the Register of Births in the New Haven archives, 290 family names are recorded between 1647 and 1754 and un- der these are the names of 5,954 children. This, of course, is but an incomplete record of those families, for however full the registration in the earlier years while the people were living close about the central village, later on, with the removal of many to a distance, complete registration became impossible. A glance at the record of a few selected families gives some indication of the growth that took place. Such records are to be found in a number of published family his- tories. Thus, in the history of the descendants of David At- water, it appears that he had eleven children and sixty-five grandchildren; and twenty-five of these grandchildren, of whom the families are named, show one hundred and sixty- two great-grandchildren. In the same way, we learn that Abraham Doolittle had thirteen children, seventy-three grandchildren, with two hundred and thirty-two recorded great-grandchildren. Samuel Munson had ten children, sev- enty-one grandchildren, and two hundred and eighty-three recorded in the third generation. William Tuttle is given twelve children, seventy-two grandchildren, and three hun- dred and twenty-three in the third generation. Richard Sperry had ten children, sixty-six grandchildren, and three hundred and twenty-five or more in the third generation. William Bradley had eight children, fifty-five grandchil- dren, and two hundred and forty-eight great-grandchil- dren. These were exceptional families; but most of the families were large, from which it is possible to understand how the descendants of the New Haven planters and the few who joined them from other colonies were able, in the course of a hundred years, to take possession of the sur- rounding country.
The territory between Gilbert's Farm on the south and Cheshire on the north was late in being occupied. North Haven, Wallingford, and Cheshire had grown into prosper- ous communities, and Woodbridge on the further side of
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Scattered Homesteads.
West Rock was showing a similar enterprise before the first homestead had been set up beyond Shepherd's Brook. Those who know this region today and love its features of rocky cliff and gently rounded hill, of unnumbered valleys kept ever fresh with flowing springs and winding streams, can tell of many a spot likely to have been dear in former times to the hunter, the herder, and the woodman, who, however, were slow to put their stakes down and build here. So it was left mostly in undivided severalty till the Sixth Division in 1727-28.
Those who started building were young people coming away from their early homes and beginning life by them- selves. The old homes were many of them full to overflow- ing-like hives of bees just before a swarming-and the time was ripe for seeking new abodes. The old home from which Enos Pardee came had in it nine sons and seven daughters, Enos being the oldest of all; and the home of his wife, Abi- gail Holt, had sheltered two sons and six daughters. The three Goodyears were brothers in a family of eight; Na- thaniel Goodyear's wife, Sarah Woodin, was the eldest in a family of five; Theophilus Goodyear's wife, Esther Sperry, was probably from a family of eight; and Andrew Good- year's wife, Jane Gilbert, had three brothers and two sisters. Joel Munson was one in a family of seven, and his wife, Mary Morris, was one of nine. Anthony Thompson was one of seven, and his wife Sarah Peck, who was a sister of Samuel and Amos Peck, belonged to a family of nine. Thomas Leek was from a family of three sons and four daughters; John Hitchcock from a family of eleven; Wait Chatterton from one of nine; the two Tuttles from a family of seven; and the Bradleys from a family of six.
The life in those old homes had been a rare preparation for making a new home in these rough fields. The young men and women had grown up with ideas that were by no means over-fastidious. They were used to hard work and to many sorts of work; to frugal meals and plain clothes; to little money and to contentment with many things not bought with money. They had lived in an atmosphere of
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
domestic enjoyments, concerned with care of the house, preparation of food and clothing, and rearing of children, and they had grown up with the ambitions that belong to such a life. Their hearts were set on the things most prized in the best of homes and they had that forward-looking atti- tude of mind which is instinctive with men and women who have young people about them and love to be with little children.
It is needless to say that the new homes were patterned after those that had been left in town. The very form in which they were built was as similar to the old as conditions would allow. They were set near to some spring of clear water, or to a dashing brook, from which the wants of the house could be supplied. A barn and other farm buildings were added as necessity called for them. Fences were built to inclose the cultivated fields. Orchards of young trees, many apple trees, a few pear trees, two or three peach trees, and one or two plum trees were set out in due time. A choice bit of ground by the house, to the right or the left or in the rear, was set apart for a garden, where vegetables could be grown for the kitchen; and as a spot for flowers-marigolds, peonies, lilies, roses, hollyhocks, larkspurs, and other bril- liant masses of color for adornment.
Here, too, the family life of the previous home blossomed again. To the young bridegroom and bride came the dignity of fatherhood and motherhood through the little child crowning their union with its highest joy. In course of time, other children came, till a group of boys and girls made the house and all the place around noisy with their capers and merriment.
When the memorials were presented to the General As- sembly for annexation to the parishes of North Haven and Cheshire, the lists of signatures stood for many more people than is shown. All but two or three are names of married men, and represented households. The households in the North Haven group had among them over forty children and the whole number of persons in all of these families was about seventy. The households in the Cheshire list had come
63
Scattered Homesteads.
upon the ground more recently and were younger, so that there were not so many children, only about twenty-five, making the number of persons not far from fifty. If we add to these the families who kept their connection with the old church on the Green, the total number of people, men, women, and children, can hardly have been fewer in 1739 than a hundred and fifty. Perhaps this number was swelled by a considerable list of men and women who were em- ployed on the farms and in the several homesteads.
The people were so widely scattered that probably no one at the time would have thought of there being so many. If, however, one could have taken his position on a Sunday morning at the old meeting-house in North Haven and watched the stream of men, women, and children, some on horseback, more on foot, coming over the several paths that led down from the hills at the west, the sight no doubt would have opened his eyes. The History of Cheshire has in it some recollections of Amasa Hitchcock's, whose memory reached back nearly to the times of which we are thinking. He gives a list of eighteen men whom he remembered "liv- ing within the bounds of what is now Hamden, who con- stantly attended meeting at Cheshire," and among these are several not named in the memorial, Jonathan Blakeslee, Na- than Alling, Caleb Grannis, John Grannis, John Perkins, Moses Brooks, and Daniel Bradley, Jr. Then he adds: "All these people and their families, seventy years ago and up- wards, in pleasant weather filled the meeting-house even to crowding; and in summer time I believe as many as sixty boys sat on the gallery and pulpit stairs, and on a bench be- fore the first seats." This account was written in January, 1823, in the eighty-third year of Mr. Hitchcock's age. It gives a glimpse of the Cheshire congregation in 1740-50 by one who was an actual eyewitness of, and participant in, the worship.
VIII. Mills, Roads, Fords, and Bridges.
A N immediate want of a pioneer settlement is a mill. The founders of New Haven were quick to see the use that could be made of the falls, at what is now Whitneyville, and hastened to throw a dam across the stream and to build a mill there. On this account, the stream was afterward called "Mill River."
The projectors of the enterprise seem not to have found the mill a paying concern; for, before 1642, they proposed to the town that it be run as a community affair. Instead of this, the town passed an order that no other mill should be built to compete with this one, a protective measure which was continued for some fifty years. A question was also brought up as to the order in which men coming to the mill should have their corn ground, and it was voted to leave this to the discretion of the miller, John Wakefield, and the rule of equity. Another question was, how the mill was to be mended when workmen could not be found, and this was settled by voting that the authorities might "press men for the work." Things went on according to these rulings till 1665, when the mill was burned.
At this juncture, the town entered into an agreement with William Bradley and Christopher Todd to take the prop- erty, put up suitable buildings, employ a competent miller, keep the mill in order, and grind corn as it ought to be ground. For this they were to have the water privilege, the dam, and what was left of the old mill, the land belonging with it on this side of the Rock and twenty acres of upland beyond the Rock for the miller to live on, the right to take timber and other materials for rebuilding from the town's lands, a continuance of the right to press workmen for re- pairs, continued immunity against the building of any other mill that might compete with them, a toll of two quarts of grain for every bushel ground, and, finally, if things were
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Mills, Roads, Fords, and Bridges.
satisfactory, the sum of one half rate from the several in- habitants. These specifications show how essential the mill was held to be and how generously the people were willing to contribute to its maintenance.
Christopher Todd died in 1686 and William Bradley two years later. Then for a time things did not go so well. In 1692, a proposal was made in town meeting, "for better set- tlement of the town mill, to attain the ends of grinding, and to prevent entails of law and further trouble." A contract was made with the three sons of Christopher Todd, John, Samuel, and Michael; the name Bradley disappears from the management, and "Todds' Mill" became the designation in common use.
The new contract did not contain the clause forbidding any other mill. This omission was made for a purpose. A scheme was in the air to have another mill. At a town meet- ing in 1691, before this contract was made, Moses Mans- field broached a project for "building a corn mill on Beaver Brook" near West Rock. Prominent in this enterprise was one of the sons of William Bradley, and there are indica- tions that his father had had a purpose of this sort in his mind many years before; for, in 1680, he bought of the town a tract of seventeen acres at Beaver Pond and, in 1688, made over by gift to his son Abraham the part containing the site for a mill. So, at the very time when the contract was made with the Todd brothers, Abraham Bradley in company with Daniel Hopkins asked of the town the right to build on Beaver Brook pond; and, a few months later, in January, the town granted his request, with a reserved right to add a fulling mill. Bradley at once set about this undertaking, put- ting up the corn mill and, not very long after, the fulling mill. Hopkins seems to have been a kind of silent partner, for little is heard of his share in the business, and Abraham Bradley was recognized as the proprietor. This was the be- ginning of manufactures in what is now the village of West- ville. In process of time, Bradley's oldest son, John, became an owner of the fulling mill, having for his partner Isaac Jones, who afterward sold his share to John Munson. Then
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
Bradley and Munson put up a new corn mill, and eventually Munson bought Bradley's share of both mills; the old corn mill, however, continuing in the hands of Abraham Bradley till his death in 1718 .*
John Munson was a man of various enterprises. In 1717, he conducted the first stage line between New Haven and Hartford. He is spoken of in the records as a maltster. He got up a company to erect a saw mill beyond West Rock, above Sperry's Farm. In 1735, he bought a third part of Todds' mill. His property in the Beaver Pond neighborhood finally went to his son-in-law, Caleb Hotchkiss, from whom the place came to be known for many years as Hotchkissville. He left two sons, John and Joel, the latter of whom played a prominent part in laying foundations at Mount Carmel. Brought up in the mills, he became a master of the business and was especially qualified to undertake an enterprise of this sort in a new field.
The New Haven proprietors were not unmindful of this, when, on September 3, 1733, they granted liberty to Joel Munson to build a dam across Mill River, near the place called "The Steps," to furnish power for a grist mill and a saw mill. Under this grant, the dam was speedily built, grist mill and saw mill soon followed, and from that time until within a few years ago the spot was the scene of a succession of busy industries. The dam is there today, with the pond above it, though it serves now only as a reservoir for the New Haven Water Company.
With the building of the dam and mills, it became neces- sary to make the place accessible. Until that time, the region thereabout had been utterly wild. The river ran through a gorge, between the steep wall of mountain on the east side and a rugged ledge on the west, which kept its bold features straight across to the high hills beyond the valley. The ledge, like the whole mountain, is a mass of trap dike, the south side of which rises from the alluvial ground below in a series of rough terraces. The terraces now are not very sharply defined, but in former times they rose one above an-
* New Haven Town Records.
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A. Brooks: Saw B Jon .- Saw &fruit C. Chatterton. S. D. Bradleys . S
B. Dickenmany . S. . F. Basil Mumsom . S. G. Joel Munson . S. & G. Hr. Tous S. Todd, G. I. Bradleys. G. K. Holchkilis. G. I . Sam goes. G. . . 14. M &a haven Ferry
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President Stiles's Diagram of Mills
Reproduced by permission from Dexter's "Extracts from the Itineraries and Selected Corre- spondence of Ezra Stiles," published by the Yale University Press
67
Mills, Roads, Fords, and Bridges.
other in clear outline like a flight of stairs, over which people went up or down in going over the ledge. Hence the pass was commonly known as "The Steps," a name that is found continually in old documents, especially in references to the Blue Hills. There was only a footpath over this ledge. Per- haps a horse might make his way over and probably cattle going in single file. Many of the people whom the mills were expected to accommodate lived above the Steps. So, a few weeks after the dam was authorized, the proprietors en- tered into a further agreement with Munson to give him two acres of land if he would make "a feasible highway over the Steps within ten years." Munson had this undertaking done by the following spring, so that, in April, the committee hav- ing the business in charge was able to report that "Joel Mun- son had made a feasible cart-way over said Steps."*
There was not a house then in the whole valley to the south for a number of miles and the paths were not much more than hunters' trails. The travel from Cheshire and Farmington was over a road off to the west, which runs down through the hills to the Gilbert's Farm neighborhood and thence over the Plains to town. But there was seldom a house on this road, though the Sixth Division lots, a large part of them, had been laid out on either side of it. The neighbor- hood had previously been a long distance from any mill, which had hindered people from settling there. North Ha- ven people could go to a mill at Wharton Brook on the boundary of Wallingford; and there was another at Yales- ville, the other side of Wallingford, to which Cheshire peo- ple might go. Besides these, there were the two mills at Whitneyville and Westville; but all of these were a good many miles away. Munson's enterprise made a great change. The new mills at the Steps became a center of resort for all the country around. Men brought their logs to be sawed and carried back lumber with which to build them houses and barns. They could now cultivate their ground, knowing where they could get their corn turned into meal and their
* Munson Records, p. 627.
68 The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
wheat into flour to live upon. The number of settlers in- creased.
An opening of new roads in many directions followed. Most important was the one leading directly down the val- ley. This was made practicable very early, running down to Centerville and there turning west at a right angle to go over and join the old road near Shepherd's Brook. The farmers coming down from the north found it convenient to stop at the mill and leave their corn; then to continue on to town for marketing; and, on their return, to take the meal home . with them. The travel by this route increased rapidly, lead- ing to the development of a good highway; the old road at the same time falling into comparative neglect. Other roads were determined by circumstances. They became especially necessary for getting logs to the saw mill. A sack of corn could be thrown over a horse's back and a child, mounted on it, could drive through the woods to the mill without much of a path. But hauling logs and heavy loads of lumber was another thing. A yoke of oxen and a cart was the usual means of transportation. They had to have some kind of a road, and roads were built for them. Such logging roads, in process of time, grew into highways where highways were needed.
All the new roads converged toward the mills. A glance at an ordinary map of the neighborhood as it is today shows this distinctly. One road along the south side of the moun- tain makes this connection with Wallingford, while two or three others branch off from it on the south toward North Haven. A road on the north side of the mountain, coming from the east, joins the main highway just above the mill pond. Two other roads, coming from Prospect and Bethany on the west, arrive at the same point. Then, further south, a road from the southwest joins the main highway at the meeting-house; and, a little further down, there is still an- other, also from the southwest. We cannot now tell how many of these highways started as forest paths to the mill, but we can be sure that all of them played a good part in bringing the people from different neighborhoods to this point of common interest.
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President Stiles's Sketch of Quinnipiac Valley
Reproduced by permission from Dexter's "Extracts from the Itineraries and Selected Correspondence of Ezra Stiles," published by the Yale University Press
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69
Mills, Roads, Fords, and Bridges.
The mills became a popular resort for various reasons. There were tools there of many kinds and for numerous purposes; usually also someone who was handy with them for all sorts of jobs. In every house, and particularly in a farm house, there is demand for a "Jack of all trades," to mend tools, to contrive expedients, and to get people out of little annoyances too numerous to mention. A mill, if any- where, is the place to find such a friend in need. Then, trade gravitated there. It was the favorite place for swapping horses and matching steers. There was a store where pur- chases could be made, for cash, or by barter, or on account, if your credit was good. The miller took his pay mostly in toll and had on hand corn and meal and flour, planks, boards, and lumber in variety. By exchanges with traders in town, he was able also to keep in stock many kinds of mer- chandise, and to order other articles when desired. In a word, the mill was a market on a small scale. The latest news was to be learned there. What answered for a post office received and delivered letters, and from this center important tidings were circulated through the surrounding country.
The first dwelling-house built was that of Munson. Others came one after another as business grew. The man- sion of Samuel Bellamy was early on the ground. Probably it served the purpose of a tavern from the beginning. We know that it was famous in this way afterward. Besides, Bel- lamy's father had been an inn-keeper in Cheshire, and it was natural that the son should continue in the business. It was a wonderful spot for the purpose, sure of a constant and in- creasing patronage, especially from people going down from Southington and Cheshire, who must have somewhere to break the journey and get a rest for themselves and their horses or oxen. This was about half-way to the town and so at the best possible point. The Bellamy house was on ground very near where the Mount Carmel railroad station is now seen. It was built about 1743-44 and remained a local land- mark for more than a hundred and fifty years. Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy were of such high character as to command general
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The Old Mount Carmel Parish.
respect, and their house added much to the growing life of the neighborhood.
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