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 2
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574
Third house of worship of the First church, 1796 to 1840,
614
Fac-simile of receipt given by Andrew Eliot,
624
Fac simile of receipt given by Thomas Ruggles,
625
St. John's church, 1795,
657
Gravestone of Hannah Hopkins,
668
The Porter house at Union City,
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715
The house site of Ebenezer Richards,
·
717
The old mill at Greystone, .
. 718
Some autographs of early settlers,
168 Ap.
JOHN WARNER'S STAFF. {DEACON JOHN WARNER OF NORTHBURY, BORN 1700, DIED 1795.)
CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT TOWN-ITS BOUNDARIES-ITS TOPOGRAPHY-ITS STREAMS -ITS GEOLOGY-THE GLACIAL AGE-ITS MINERALOGY, BOTANY AND ZOOLOGY.
A NCIENT WATERBURY embraced a territory lying on both sides of the Naugatuck river and extending from the point where Beacon Hill brook joins that stream, or the southern- most limit of the town of Naugatuck, to the northern line of the towns of Plymouth and Thomaston, or even further north. The length of this tract is not less than sixteen miles and the average breadth about eight, and it contains nearly one hundred and thirty square miles. Lying near the southern extremity of the Green Mountain range, it has a surface consisting of several low, parallel ridges, with narrow valleys between, which trend almost without exception to the south. The unevenness of the surface produces numerous watersheds of limited extent, from which small streams find their way to the Naugatuck. Only one of these is called a river, and this is hardly more than a good sized brook. So numer- ous are these streams that they are supposed to have suggested the name given to the territory when it was incorporated as a town.
One of the largest tributaries of the Naugatuck is Lead Mine brook, which takes its name from a hill in the town of Harwinton, where a mine of black lead was supposed to exist. This stream enters the Naugatuck a short distance south of the present northern line of Plymouth, but there are good reasons for believing that the original boundary was further north and that Lead Mine hill was within the limits of ancient Waterbury. Northfield branch enters the Naugatuck, from the west, at the village of Thomaston. A mile south of this, at Reynolds Bridge, West branch, which rises in the town of Morris, flows into the river, also from the west. It is generally called "the Branch." The next tributary is Hancock brook, which unites with the main stream at Waterville. It drains a long, narrow valley, east of, and nearly parallel with, the Nau- gatuck. Steele's brook, whose watershed embraces the eastern and northern parts of Watertown, enters the Naugatuck from the west about half way between Waterville and Waterbury. The largest
2
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
and most important branch of the main stream, within the limits of the ancient territory, is Mad river. This stream has its source in Cedar swamp, which lies partly in the town of Bristol and partly in Wolcott, and was so named when it was covered with a heavy growth of white cedars. A dam of very moderate height, across the outlet, has converted it into a large reservoir, and its waters are used by the factories along the stream. Mad river, on its way to the Naugatuck, receives several tributaries. The largest of these are Lily brook, Lindley brook and Chestnut Hill brook. They furnish a large quantity of most excellent water, and are considered of great importance to Waterbury as the probable source of a future water supply. A small stream known as Smug's brook enters the Naugatuck from the east, at Hopeville, and a larger one, called Fulling-mill brook, at Union City. The next two tributaries are from the west. The first, Hop brook, joins the river between Union City and Naugatuck, and the other, Long Meadow brook, at the lower end of Naugatuck village. Beacon Hill brook, the south- ernmost tributary within the limits of our territory, is historically interesting as the ancient boundary between Waterbury and Derby. It unites with the Naugatuck just where the hills converge to form the gorge below the village of Naugatuck. It is thought that during the glacial period this gorge was closed by ice or other obstructions, and that a lake occupied the valley for many miles above.
The Naugatuck itself is formed by the union of two streams which come together at Torrington. The eastern branch rises in the town of Winchester and flows nearly south ; the western rises in Norfolk and flows southeasterly. Besides the streams we have mentioned there are numerous unnamed brooks which, after a brief course, fall into the main river. All the streams are fed largely by springs of pure water and were, in earlier times, the trout fisher's paradise.
There are no lakes in this territory, although Quassapaug is at one point only "eighty rods" from the line that bounded ancient Waterbury on the west. Neither are there any large swamps. There are many small ones and not a few pools and temporary lakelets that disappear in the dry season. These are formed in the slight depressions in the underlying mica - slate and, as many of them have no visible inlet or outlet and are slowly filling up with vegetable and other matter falling into them, they make a sort of rude gauge by which we may roughly estimate the length of time that has elapsed since these basins were formed. Some of them are filled with peat moss, and attempts have been made to use
3
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.
the peaty deposits for fuel, but with unsatisfactory results. A few have been drained and reclaimed and are now productive lands .*
One very important feature of this region remains to be noticed. It is the alluvial deposits along the Naugatuck river and some of its branches. At the time of its settlement by the whites these were natural meadows. They were not peculiar to these streams, but it was their existence here that led the settlers to choose this territory. They are of limited area, and the fertility of the soil caused the natives to destroy the forests which covered them, if such ever existed.
The geological history of Waterbury is short but interesting. All that the surface reveals, even to the eye of the geologist, is the existence of the same mica-slate and semi-crystalline rock that forms the foundation of the entire Green Mountain range, a super- ficial deposit of drift and the insignificant alluvial deposit already referred to. The two formations first named, though in contact are widely separated in time, but how widely geologists do not tell us, as the age or relative place of the Green Mountain mica-slate is a question on which they fail to agree. All admit that it is one of the oldest of the stratified rocks, but whether it antedates organic life on the planet, or is among the earliest of the formations that bear traces of life is not definitely settled. At some time in the history of the strata, either before they had become hardened, or if later when they had been made plastic through the agency of heat they appear to have been subjected to a lateral pressure so intense that they were curved, crinkled and twisted into the strange forms they now present. Later, when they had reached their present solid condition, they were, by the same internal force, raised up, tilted, broken and, in parts, completely overturned as we see them to-day. Striking illustrations of the tilting of vast ledges of these rocks can be seen on the west side of the Naugatuck river at Hinchliffe's bridge. The effects of lateral pressure on a large scale can be seen in the gorge below the old clock factory at Hoadley's station on the New York and New England Railroad. Veins of granite occur in many places. They are supposed to have been forced up through rifts in the slate rock from underlying molten masses. Some of these veins are of such extent and the granite is of so fine a quality that they are worked as quarries. The best quarries thus far opened are near the Naugatuck, one at
* The names attached to many of the hills, valleys, streams, and swamps are commemorative of persons or events, and such localities as Spindle hill, Buck's hill, Breakneck hill, Withington hill, Woodtick, Mill plain and Wooster swamp are chiefly interesting in connection with the circumstances which gave them name. They are located and described in the history which follows.
4
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
Rattlesnake hill, the other a mile above Reynolds bridge and known as Plymouth quarry.
It is evidently a long time, even as geologists measure time, since changes of position or serious disturbances of any sort have taken place in the rocks that form the Green Mountain range. How much they have been changed on the surface by the slow action of the elements, how often, through repeated subsidences and upheavals of the crust of the earth, they had been submerged in ancient seas and raised again above their surface before the ice age began, can never be known. Some conception of the length of time that elapsed between the completion of the mica-slate forma- tion and the beginning of the ice age can be gained from the fact that at least fifty distinct formations were begun and finished within that period. The possibility that some of these were contemporaneous is admitted, but the relative position of most of them is such that this could have been the case in only a few instances. Standing, as one may in many places on our hills, with one foot on the ancient slate rock and the other on the drift that partially covers it, one becomes a sort of Colossus of time, and the immensity of the period thus spanned quite overpowers the mind.
It is probable that much of the rounding and polishing of the boulders, pebbles and gravel which constitute so large a portion of the drift, was done by water before the glacial era began. The ice in its course took up this material, but deposited much of it unchanged. Long ago, as we reckon time, but quite recently, if we reckon by geologic eras, seas washed the base of the Green Mountain range and sandstone deposits of considerable extent were formed. In these, remains of animal and vegetable life are found which show that the higher forms of both lived on the land in great numbers and for a long period. But, if they lived within the limits of the territory we are describing, all traces of them have disappeared.
The loose, unstratified deposit of clay, sand, gravel, cobble- stones and boulders that covers nearly all the northern part of North America is known as "drift." It is a heterogeneous mass of material that has been transported by some means from places often hundreds of miles away, and always from points northward of its present location. The study of glaciers as they exist to-day in various parts of the world shows that the drift, whatever the history of the parts of which it is composed may be, has come into its present position through glacial agencies. So well are these agencies now understood that an explanation of most of the feat- ures presented by the drift in this region is not difficult.
5
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.
The ice age was formerly looked upon as a completed period in the geological history of the earth, but it is no longer so considered. It may be nearing its close, for ice fields cover far less territory than they covered in the past, or it may be that the recession of the glaciers to higher altitudes and polar latitudes is only tem- porary, and that they will, sometime, reoccupy their former limits. Evidence is accumulating which shows that the advance and retreat of the ice fields occurred once or more than once before. Vast regions in the polar zones are covered with ice, and glaciers fill the higher valleys in many mountain ranges in the temperate zones, and in the aggregate millions of square miles are to - day undergoing a grinding and smoothing process precisely like that which smoothed and polished our hills of mica-slate. The study of existing glaciers shows them to be moving bodies and recent observations on some of the Alaskan ice fields prove that their velocity varies from a few inches to more than sixty feet in a day. Without stopping to consider the cause of this motion, it is sufficient for our purpose to say that the moving fields of ice trans- ported innumerable boulders far from their original beds (leav- ing them in many instances on the summits of high mountains), formed kames, drumlins and kettle holes,* and on melting left the general deposit of clay, sand, gravel and loose rocks that covers all our hills and valleys. At almost any point where the removal of the drift has laid the rocks bare, grooves and striæ can be seen that were made by the slow but resistless movement of the ice and the sand and the fragments of rock imbedded in it. They are parallel and can often be traced for a long distance. Their direction in this region is a few degrees east of south. It is an interesting fact that, although their course is rarely, if ever, deflected to the right or left by any obstacle, they follow vertically every elevation and depression except the most abrupt. This was explained when it was found that glacial ice is not the rigid solid it seems to be, but yields under its own weight to all the inequalities of surface beneath it. It would be easy to show that this pressure must mani- fest itself vertically and not laterally. On all our hills of slate rock the easy acclivities are almost invariably on the northern side, and the cliffs, where such exist, are as constantly found on
* A " drum " or " drumlin " is defined as a long narrow ridge or mound of sand, gravel and boulders; a name given by Irish geologists to elevations of this kind, believed to have been the result of glacial agencies. A " kame " is a peculiar elongated ridge made up of detrital material. A " kettle-moraine " is an accumula- tion of detrital material with kettle-like depressions. These depressions are called kettle-holes. (A fine example of this sort is the north Spectacle pond on the Meriden road near Silver street.) The chief differ- ence between drumlins and kames is in the arrangement of the materials composing them and the time of their formation, the kames being of more recent date. It is only in the kames that the kettle-holes are met with. The explanation here given of these terms seems called for, as they have but recently appeared in geological writings.
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
the southern or southeastern side. This shows not only that the denuding force which smoothed the hills came from the north and expended its energy against the rocky obstacles in its course, but that, being a semi-fluid, it did not accommodate itself to sudden and abrupt changes of level as readily as a fluid would have done. Boulders are found everywhere. They belong to various geological formations, but always to such as may be found at some point further north. This may be near at hand or hundreds of miles away. Some are rounded as if water worn in pre-glacial seas. Others are angular as if they had been subjected to little more than the ordinary action of the elements. Their situation often indicates very clearly the means by which their removal was effected. They are as often found stranded on the highest points of our hills as in the vales below-left there when the sea of ice melted away. One of the largest of these stray rocks, in this re- a little distance to the the residence of Shel- cock, on the road from to Southington, and, to its angularity and its cal character, it is not
gion, stands southeast of ton Hitch- Waterbury judge from mineralogi- a great way from its ori- ginal bed. So nicely balanced are some of these bould- ers that they can be moved by the hand. These are called rocking stones. A remark- able boulder is seen on the old Cheshire road, near the resi- dence of John Mix. It is above the ordinary size, and out of a rift on its highest point a large and wide spreading white oak tree has grown.
TREE IN THE ROCK ON THE OLD CHESHIRE ROAD.
7
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.
During the last thirty years several hills within the city have been leveled. Others, especially along the line of the railroads below the city, are fast disappearing. Very few remain intact. Their removal has afforded to those interested an excellent oppor- tunity for studying their structure. They are composed of sand, gravel and boulders, and are unquestionably of glacial origin. So also are the similar deposits that skirt the hillsides along the Naugatuck and its principal branches. The peculiar arrangement of the material composing them is not easily accounted for. It is not stratified, in the sense in which that term is usually understood, nor is it without a kind of stratification. Sorted, expresses best the arrangement of the sand, clay, gravel and boulders. The hills have usually a linear arrangement in the line of the glacial movement, and in this locality they are always found where some valley, large or small, opens out into a plain. South of West Main street two parallel ranges of hills exist; the range nearest the river consisting of material brought down the Steele Brook valley, and the other and much longer one, of material brought down the Naugatuck valley. Each of the brooklets that flow from the north through the city has its hill of drift, or terminal moraine, as they were formerly called, at the point where the stream enters, or formerly entered, the plain. The moraine of Little Brook valley was the hill (now removed) that extended from where Dr. Alfred North's residence stands to the fountain at the east end of the green. Spencer hill and the hill on which the High School building stands, mark the termination of Great Brook valley. The entrance of Carrington Brook into Mad River valley is marked by an exten- sive deposit of drift of the same general character as the others we have named, and similar examples may be seen in many other places.
As already remarked, the transportation of earth and boulders by glaciers is going on in many parts of the world to-day, but I do not find that any observer has satisfactorily explained the pro- cess by which the different materials in our hills were sorted and deposited. A careful study of their structure, based on observa- tions made while some of them were being removed, has led to the belief that they were formed near the close of the ice period, not by river currents but in temporary lakes. The closing of the gorge (already referred to) below Naugatuck would have resulted in the formation of a lake where Waterbury now stands, deeper than the height of the highest drift hills in this region. Admitting the existence of such a lake, we may suppose that the field of glacial ice extended over its entire surface, and that glacial rivers carried earthy materials across the ice. A deposit must, of course,
8
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
have been formed at the termination of the ice field, the same as if it were on the land, and, as by irregular stages the ice retreated, a line of hills would have been left. The sorting would depend upon the volume and strength of the currents of water flowing over the surface of the ice, and these would vary with the seasons and from various other causes. The structure of the hills is just what it would be if a feeble current bearing clay or sand for a time, till a hillock of such materials was formed, had been succeeded by a flood strong enough to bear along the heavier matter that had been left behind. The advance or retreat of the ice field even for a few feet, or any variations in the course of the currents, would change the place of the deposits, and bring about just such an arrangement as we actually find. This explanation accounts for the limited area covered by the several deposits and their great, relative thickness; also for the varying inclinations they present. As a rule they dip to the north or in the direction from which the material must have come, but it is not rare to find the inclination towards other points of the compass, and occasionally a deposit caps the cone-like hill, falling down to the base on every side. How far the features here described are local I am unable to say, but there are, in several geological works, cuts showing sections of drift hills in various localities, and in some of them the structure is apparently the same as in our hills.
One other feature of these hills is to be noted. Over the entire surface of most, and perhaps all of them, there is a thin layer of drift, rarely more than one or two feet in thickness, which differs from the layers beneath it in that the sand, gravel and boulders of which it is composed are intimately mixed and without any stratification whatever. As river currents capable of moving this material would have demolished the hills themselves, it is probable that it was formed from detritus from floating ice after the glacier had retreated to the northern shores of the lake.
On the road from Waterbury to Meriden, not far from Silver street, there were a few years ago two deep holes, partly filled with mud and water, known as the Spectacle ponds. One of them still remains, but the other has been drained by the removal of the bank of drift which separated it from Mad river, and the peat has been carried away. They are very near together, there being only a narrow roadway between them, and their small diameter, circular outline and great comparative depth suggest the name of kettle holes, which is now generally given to similar depressions every- where. The kettle hole on the north side of the road does not exceed three hundred feet in diameter at the top and its depth is
9
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.
between thirty and forty feet if we include the water and mud which fill the bottom. The steep bank is composed of drift, but a ledge of rocks approaches very near to it on the northern side. The kettle holes were, for a long time, a puzzle to geologists, but it is now generally believed that they mark places where detached masses of ice of moderate extent but of great thickness were sur- rounded by and covered over with drift at the close of the ice period. As the ice melted, the debris on the surface would fall outward from the middle, and when all was gone a kettle hole would remain. This explanation does not militate against the theory that a lake covered this region at the time these were formed, for beds of ice of immense thickness are often covered with drift to the depth of many feet and of sufficient weight to strand the whole mass. Few regions illustrate better than ours the principal features of the ice age.
No rich deposits of the metals have ever been found within the limits of ancient Waterbury. It is said that traces of gold and silver exist in several places, and indications of copper are not rare, but the efforts that have been made at mining for these metals have not been successful. Early explorers of the region reported the discovery of graphite, and samples of the mineral seem to have been carried away, but the location of the mine, if there was one, was lost and has never been re-discovered. There are traces of graphite in our mica slate in many places, but nowhere in such quantity as could be called a black lead mine .*
A list of the trees and plants growing in Waterbury at the time of its first settlement would be interesting as showing how many of the native plants have become extinct. No such list exists, and there are very few references in ancient records to particular species even of the useful forest trees. Sometimes a particular species is mentioned as marking a boundary, but that is all. The original forests have been cut down and, though there are more acres of woodland than there were even thirty years ago, the trees are everywhere of recent growth. Probably the chestnut (Castanea
* As remarked in the description of the geological features of this region, the country is dotted all over with boulders, and it is plain that these came from places north of where they now lie. Now it is well known that graphite is abundant at Hinsdale, Mass., at Brandon, Vt., at Ticonderoga on the west shore of Lake Champlain, and at many places north of the Naugatuck valley. Is it not quite probable that a boulder containing graphite from some of these places was found on Lead Mine hill, and that the small quantity thus secured was taken as an indication of a large deposit ? There is a boulder on a hillside half a mile south of Bristol, Conn., that contains a small amount of pure graphite. This rock must have come from a long distance to the north, as there are no other rocks of the same kind in that vicinity. A limestone boulder containing a vein of sulphate of strontia, was found a few years ago in the drift overlying the clay slate at Middleburg, Ohio, although the nearest locality where strontia is found in place is on Strontian island in Lake Erie, nearly one hundred miles from where the boulder lies.
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
vesca) was then as now the most abundant species. This, with the white pine (Pinus strobus), the sugar maple (Acer saccharinum) and four or five of the eight or nine species of oak found here, formed the greater and more valuable part of the forests. Two species that were sparingly found here thirty years ago have since become extinct,-the black spruce (Abies nigra) and the paper or canoe birch (Betula papyracea). The former once grew in the swamp south of the Middlebury road, and the latter was found in several deep ravines. One species, the common locust (Robinia pseudacacia), has become naturalized in a few places.
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