USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Waterbury > The town and city of Waterbury, Connecticut, from the aboriginal period to the year eighteen hundred and ninety-five, Volume I > Part 16
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ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT ; SECOND PAGE.
130
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
This paper was prepared by Major Talcott and delivered to the men of Mattatuck, and is a copy of the original manuscript with its autograph signatures, which was undoubtedly returned to the General Court. The illustrations show that it was written upon
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ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT ; REVERSE.
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MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION.
three sheets of paper, which were afterward made one by sewing the parts together. At the fourth article the stitches are taken with a red worsted cord which has kept its color well for nearly two hundred and twenty years. At the sixth and seventh articles it is again sewed by brown linen thread. The document entire is a little less than a yard in length. It has been bound in glass and framed, and will be handed down to the care of coming genera- tions. The third page of the illustration shows the reverse. The writing upon it, except the signatures, is that of John Wadsworth.
The document was found in 1890, together with other orders relating to the settlement. This discovery included two of the Indian deeds of the township; the original lay-out of the three acre lots, and a very valuable paper relating to the houses of 1681. They were in the house of Mr. Charles D. Kingsbury, on North Main street, in Waterbury. Soon after the decease of that gentle- man, his son, Honorable Frederick J. Kingsbury, sent this docu- ment to the writer, and the finding of it led to the examination of thousands of papers that were in the same house. The older papers had been handed down from one town clerk to another, until, in 1793, the inheritance fell upon John Kingsbury. He was then a young man of thirty-one years. During a life-time of official service, from town clerk to presiding judge of New Haven County Court, Judge Kingsbury had accumulated many valuable documents, all of which were placed in the hands of the writer, to the very great advantage of this work. When Dr. Henry Bronson prepared his history of the town he was without the valuable assistance thus acquired. A comparison of the original paper here represented with the version of it as rendered by the recorder of the period and faithfully reproduced by Dr. Bronson will result to the advantage of Major Talcott's paper. The recorder for Waterbury omitted the name of one signer, that of Benjamin Judd, thus making it appear that the signers of 1674 were thirty in number, instead of thirty-one.
This paper is not only important in itself, but is noteworthy as the only one to which the autograph of every member of the com- mittee is attached, and also as the only one that has been found relating to Mattatuck during the first three years of its existence as a plantation. We are thus left without direct evidence of what was achieved in the year 1674, and that part of 1675 before the inhabitants were ordered away. We know from subsequent events and recorded references, that the beautiful ridge of high land that we still call Town Plot, was the chosen town site. It was selected by the committee to view the lands, and approved by the commit-
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
tee to order the plantation. From the "Articles of Agreement," we naturally infer that eight-acre house lots were allotted to the subscribers, but even this ample provision may have been modi- fied in order to bring the habitations into more immediate neigh- borhood. These house lots we are told, were laid out on either side of a highway. That there was a highway extending north and south through the old Town Plot we know, and we know that its width as originally laid out was 264 feet. This we learn by a subsequent order for its reduction to two rods. This was after the town site had been chosen on the east side of the river, in 1677. It was after that time often called the "town spot," to distinguish it from the town plot.
We are left with little knowledge of the achievements of our fathers during the period between June 6th, 1674, and the tenth month of the year 1677. Tradition points her finger to the hill on which the Waterbury Hospital stands, as the site of certain cellars which the men of Farmington digged in its eastward declivity for protection during their first winter here. It has long been believed that men spent that winter at or near the point where Sled Hall Brook flows into the river. The finding of Indian arrow-heads at this place suggests that wigwams may have been there also. Sled Hall Brook might tell us that it ran a saw-mill that first winter, but its voice has departed with its falling waters, and we listen in vain at the closed door of the past.
Leaving tradition, we do not know how many of the thirty- one men presented themselves to accept house lots; neither do we know how many habitations graced Town Plot in 1674 and 1675. Whatever was done at that time Articles metatack has been utterly lost to us; but the finding of the orders of the committee for 1677 affords us a bit of material on which to specu- late in house lots. On the back of THE OLD TOWN PLOT. the order to reduce the dimen- sions of the highway on "Old Town Plott" is traced what appears to be the lay-out of the original town or village, and we may accept
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MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION.
it with more or less uncertainty. It certainly is not the new town spot on the east side of the river. Fifty-two years later, when these old eight-acre house lots came in question and they were to be looked up and laid out anew, we find "that it was by vote agreed that if the committee for the old Town Plot lots can not find all the old Town Plot lots for all the original proprietors, those that are wanting may have liberty to take them up in the undivided lands." If we rely upon the house lots, as plotted on the back of the order, we shall at once see that the whole number of sub- scribers does not appear to be represented. There is a highway, on one side of which nine lots of varying size are outlined, with eight on its opposite side. At either end of this highway are transverse ways, on one of which we find five lots, on the other three, making twenty - five in all; thus intimating that twenty- five of the original proprietors made some progress in building on the original town site, before the inhabitants were ordered away in 1675.
One word or more may be allowed just here regarding the gen- eral condition of the colony at the time Mattatuck had its first beginning; for it seems to have had two distinct entrances upon plantation life, the first in 1674, the second in 1677.
The year 1674 was a period exceptionally free from disturbance in colonial life in New England. The treaty of peace had been signed between England and the States General of the United Netherlands, by which New York had been restored to the English. Major Andros did not arrive in New York-to begin dis- turbances and claim jurisdiction, for the Duke of York, over all the region to the Connecticut River-until November in that year, and he waited until the May following to demand surrender of the ter- ritory. The growth of towns in the colony was extremely grati- fying. So quiet and peaceful, comparatively speaking, was the country that there seems to have been no occasion for the meeting of the authorities between May and October, and, when the last Wednesday in that month was appointed "to be kept as a day of publique Thanksgiving throughout the colony to prayse God for the continuance of His mercy and goodness to the English nation," thanks were to be given "for freedom from the dangers of war which did surround them, for the enjoyment of God's holy word and ordinances with peace, for health, which had been continued in the plantation, and for the comfortable harvest the Lord had been pleased to grant them." All the business before. this court related to matters of peace. Time was found even for establish- ing a table of rates for post-riders and their expenses throughout
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
the colony, with Hartford as the hub of the wheel. Under such circumstances can we suppose that the best blood in Farmington would remain idle in Waterbury? that no sounds of the builder were heard on Town Plot during the summer and autumn of one year and the summer of another year?
That the town was in building, in May of 1675, appears from the action of the Court on the petition of Joseph Hawkins and John Hull, of "Pagawsett," that "Pawgasuck " (Derby), might be made a Plantation. In view of the facts as given by them to the General Court-"that about twelve families were settled there already, and more, to the number of eleven, were preparing for settlement forthwith; that the people had engaged a minister to settle amongst them speedily, and had expended about one hundred pounds in preparing a house for him"-the court was induced to look with favor upon the petition, reserving to itself the power to settle the bounds of the place "so as may be most accommodating and least inconvenient to the said Pawgasuck and the new town goeing up at Mattatock."
Early in the summer of 1675, began the first war between Indi- ans and Englishmen, with "King Philip" of Rhode Island, who was said to be the son of Miantonomah, and the grandson of Massasoit, as the generally accredited aggressor. It was marked at every step by horrors and cruelties that can never be forgotten so long as the meaning of the word war is retained in the conscious- ness of an Englishman. Massachusetts is to this day monumented with memories of it. No pen needs to trace anew the story, from the day in June, when Philip, roused to anger by the execution of three of his friends by the English, because of their murder of an Indian Missionary, marched out from his fortress on Mount Hope, near Bristol, R. I., and fell upon the little company at "Swansey," in Plymouth Colony, down to the date of his death, in August, of the following year. On the first day of July the news reached Hartford of the attack upon Swansea. Measures were at once taken to send thirty dragoons and ten troopers to aid in the defence of Stonington and New London. The men were raised out of the three original towns, and Nicholas Olmstead was com- missioned as their lieutenant. They set forth at a day's notice. Word was hurried down the way to New Haven, and ordered to be sent on to all the towns lying on the sea coast, that "the Indians were up in arms in Plimouth and in the Narrogancett Country; that they had assaulted the English; slain about thirty; burnt some houses, and that they were engaging the Indians round about by sending locks of some English that they had slain, from one
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MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION.
place to another." To add to the intricate situation, Governor Andros arrived with two sloops at Saybrook. He was come ostensibly to make a visit, and to give aid, but everything in the way of usurpation was momentarily expected from him and his forces. The utmost of delicate and firm diplomacy was required. The council and the commander, Captain Thomas Bull, proved equal to the occasion, and after some expressive words and impressive ceremonies between the parties of both parts, Governor Andros made a formal departure without having forcibly carried out his supposed right, which was to take possession of the territory lying west of the Connecticut River, for the Duke of York.
That the Pequot Indians, west of the Mystic River, remained friendly to the English in this war, may have been largely owing to a fact that seems to have been lost sight of. Only two months before the contest began, the government of that tribe had been duly organized by Connecticut; a code of laws drawn up, under which they were required to live, and the government placed in the hands of an Indian governor with an associate and two Indian assistants. For the support of this government, largely instituted by our Major Talcott, whose laws are extremely interesting and suggestive, "each Indian man above sixteen years of age, was to contribute annually five shillings in current Indian pay." This revenue to the governing Indians, doubtless played an important part in keeping the peace. Governor Cassicinamon was wily enough to beg that the Indians, whom he was to govern, should not be informed of his own interest in the income, thus acquired.
"About r in the morning of August fifth, 1675, the Council," consisting of Governor Winthrop, Major Talcott, Captain Allen and three other gentlemen, was called together. A messenger had arrived in Hartford with thrilling tidings. Less than forty miles away, at Quabaug, now Brookfield, one of the most stirring events of the war had taken place. The Indians, in pursuit of fleeing victims had entered the town-but we all know the story! We learned it in childhood. We almost know that house by sight -the large one on the hill-into which all the village folk are fled. We enter with them, and for two long days watch and wait, while all around us houses burn, until this one in which we crouch is the only one left in the town. We hear, are forced to hear, the piercing in of the musket balls that pelt the house, for the Indians have muskets now! We are made to feel the flash of fiery brands hurled upon roof and clapboard, to catch the fumes of sulphur, as rags dipped in brimstone stifle the air they are tossed through. We dart back from the fire-tipped arrows that are shot against it.
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
We are even compelled to watch with well nigh fatal fascination that cart, while Indians lade it with flax and tow until it can hold no more; while they throw on the flaming torch and thrust for- ward the fiery load that strikes the house with a burning thud; to know, at last, that the house is kindling! Shall we stay to burn, or open that door and rush forth to meet three hundred foes, every one of whom has heard the story of the burning of his Indian fathers in swamp and fort by Englishmen? While we hesitate, the " heavens are opened," the floods descend, the fire is quenched, help cometh, and we are saved!
It was after Hadley, Deerfield and Northfield had been attacked ; after the seventy young men from Essex county, con- veying grain from Deerfield to Hadley, had been surrounded and slain while gathering grapes at Muddy Brook, by an overwhelm- ing force of nearly eight hundred Indians; after thirty houses had been burned at Springfield, that advice "to be observed " came from the General Court. The inciting cause for this advice was a letter received from Governor Andros of New York. It was writ- ten October roth, and informed the Council that an Indian, profess- ing friendship for Englishmen, had given warning that the Con- necticut Indians planned to attack Hartford during the "light moon " of October. Governor Andros received this news in the morning and hurried it off by post. He added to it the report that other towns between Hartford and Greenwich were in the same danger, and that between five and six thousand Indians were "engaged together" to make the attacks. The urgency of this let- ter is well expressed by its inscription. After the usual address to Deputy Governor Leete, Governor Andros added, “ to be forth- with posted up to the Court, post, haste, post-night and daye." This letter confirmed fears that were already in force because of the war-like demonstrations in Connecticut's own towns. The Indians of Milford made complaints of hard treatment, and even the Paugasuck Indians of Derby "were prepared with their arms in a hostile manner." This had so alarmed the inhabitants that the Council was appealed to for advice. The Court had already advised the inhabitants "to remove their women and children; their best goods and their corn-what they could of it-to some bigger town that had a better capacity to defend itself," and had given the same counsel to all small places and farms throughout the Colony.
Upon the receipt of this letter advice crystallized into law. Under the impression of imminent danger, the Council set forth in crisp language the well nigh defenceless condition of all the plan-
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MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION.
tations, and ordered each one to make places of defence and appoint room in them for the women and children, and others not able to help themselves, to repair into in case of assault. It ordered all weak places and out-livers on farms speedily to remove, with the best of their estates, to places of the most hopeful security. This order was issued October 14, 1675. Treaties were at once formed with the Indians of Hartford, Farmington, Wethersfield, and Middletown. The Indians were to set their wigwams where ordered, that they might be kept under the watch and ward of the respective towns. This was done to prevent their departure to join hostile tribes or to do injury to Englishmen, and also to prevent any cause of offence that might be offered to them by white men. At Hartford, a list of every Indian man, woman and child was taken. When the night watch went on duty, each Indian answered to the roll-call. When the ward began in the day the list was handed over to the warders, and each made answer again to the name on the roll. No Indian could be abroad after night fall, neither could he be absent, except by ticket of leave, unless accompanied by an inhabitant.
We naturally infer that it was at this time, and consequent upon the order recited, that the inhabitants of Mattatuck took the Council's warning. We know that the men of Woodbury returned to Stratford, their old home, and that it was with great difficulty that many of them were persuaded to return to the wilderness when the war was ended. A considerable number of the then planters of Mattatuck still held home lots and houses in Farming- ton. No written evidence of the fact has been found by the writer, but it seems almost necessarily true that the "new town going up at Mattatuck" ceased in its building; that its dwellers left their houses on our Town Plot, crossed the river near Sled Hall Brook, followed the raised roadway, still apparent, leading from that point across the meadows to Willow street, and thence took their way by "the Watterbury path" to Farmington. This discouragement must have fallen heavily upon the little band of workers, that doubtless was compelled to leave certain of its num- ber to gather in the Indian and English corn and convey it to the nearest place of safety. Wallingford was at the time the nearest place of safety, as there were garrison houses there.
Other orders soon followed. Simsbury was given but one week to remove in-Hartford, New Haven and other towns that could do so were enjoined to fortify. They were "to compleat and lyne their stockadoes and flanckers with a ditch and breast worke-that persons might have recourse to them to annoy and withstand ene-
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IHISTORY OF WATERBURY.
mies, and all men's courage more animated and emboldened to do their dutys." Milford gave the Council some concern. The peo- ple there differed in the matter of their fortifications. They had trouble also with their Indian neighbors, these not keeping within the bounds prescribed, "and the people of Milford wishing to deal with them as enemies." The Council, without a day's delay, posted off a letter to Mr. Alexander Bryan of that town, desiring him to cause "all the people to carry so tenderly towards the Indians that they may not receive any just provocation to stir them up against us," adding : "We have enemies enough, and let us not by any harsh dealing stir up more yet ! Let us walk wisely and warily, that God may be with us."
The necessity for a standing army caused an order to be issued in May of 1676 for three hundred and fifty men to be raised as the standing army of the colonies. How many men of the Mattatuck of 1674 and 1675, beside Timothy Standly and John Bronson, were volunteers in the companies that went forth to battle with the enemy, and were to have all the plunder that they could seize; "both of persons, corn or estate," the only condition being that "authority should have the first tender of their dispose of captives, allowing them the market price," or how many of their number were pressed into the more regular service has not been learned .* Farmington was largely represented in this war, more than fifty men being demanded of her; and once, at least, she was warned, by post, to stand upon guard for her own defence.
We learn, with interest, the effect that this war had upon one of the thirty-one men of Mattatuck in determining his future resi- dence. John Judd and John Hawkins were the sons respectively of the Deacon Thomas Judd and the Anthony Hawkins who had grants of four hundred acres in 1661. John Judd had married Ruth Hawkins, a sister of John Hawkins, and the latter, when about to go forth with the army, made a will, from which I quote :
THIS FOR MY BROTHER, JOHN JUDD. January the 11th, 1676.
These may inform you and those whom it may concern that if the providence of God shall so order it that I fall on the field and loose my life, or miscarry any other way before I come home, that the small estate that God hath given me shall be disposed as is here mentioned.
To his nephew, the four-year old child of John Judd and his sister Ruth, he gave his house and home-lot, together with other
* At a meeting of the Council in Hartford, December 5th, 1676, there was granted to John Bronson of Farmington, the sum of five pounds "as reparation for his wounds and damage received thereby, and quar- teridg and halfe pay to the first of this present month." To Timothy Standly, there was granted a soldier's lot. There were three John Bronsons in Farmington.
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MATTATUCK AS A PLANTATION.
lands, when he should be twenty-one years of age. (In this will the child is called the "cousin " of the testator). During the inter- vening seventeen years, the benefits arising from house and lands were to be held by John Judd. That John Hawkins fell in battle, or soon died, is apparent from the date of the inventory of his estate, which is September fifth, of the same year. Thus, we account in part-the removal of Deacon Thomas Judd to Hadley in 1679 being an additional motive-for the fact that John Judd never came to build on and occupy the house lot of two acres extending along the west side of Bank street, from the "Green," nearly to the Waterbury Bank, which was duly assigned to him.
As we hasten on, this not being in any wise an outline of the war, we turn most willingly away from all the horrors of the win- try march of near two thousand Englishmen with their faithful Indian allies, and its outcome, in the greatest of all the swamp fort-fights, that of Narragansett, and come to the close of the conflict, making mere mention of the fact that throughout King Philip's war, the most careful, earnest and painstaking efforts were made, first and last, by the General Court, and the Council to "conciliate, pacificate, and well treat" the Indians within their borders. The safety of the colonists at home, depended on keep- ing their Indian neighbors "contented in their minds," and in gen- eral, success attended their efforts. When subject to the rigors of long marches, taken in cold and hunger, their Indian allies were, seemingly, if not in fact, treated with greater consideration than were the colonists themselves; so fearful were they of losing their dusky friends. The Court entreated her children in all the towns to come to some agreement with their neighbor Indians, by which they might be able to distinguish them from the enemy, and "not to put them upon any unrighteous and intolerable terms, to be observed, least trouble break out to the country thereby." Connec- ticut colony lost few of its inhabitants within her own bounds. A man named Kirby was killed, between Middletown and Wethers- field, by five Indians. Near Windsor, G. Elmore was slain. Henry Denslow, William Hill, and perhaps others, fell victims to Indian warfare. When Cohause, an Indian, who was taken prisoner by Indians, between Milford and New Haven, was examined before the Council, at Hartford, he admitted his knowledge of and parti- cipation in most of the above murders. As "a child of death, the council sentenced him to suffer the pains and terrors of death." His executioner was an Indian.
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