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 28
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105
* That he kept his promise is evidenced by the fact that eight years later the homestead was set to Will- iam Bronson as his whole portion in his father's estate.
+ A little paper lying unheeded for 188 years tells us that Dr. Hull came from Wallingford to attend Lieu- tenant Judd in his illness, and that before 1705 his son Thomas paid Dr. Hull at his house five shillings in cash on his "father's account."
252
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
in the building of this house and barn, was the owner of the other half. The house is mentioned in 1704, and again in 1709, but in 1715 some disaster had befallen both house and barn, for we find in a land grant the words "where the house and barn stood." Houses and barns did not wear out in fifteen years. It is not to be thought that Obadiah Richards continued to live in this isolated habitation when the peril was so great that only the edict of the General Court, commanding towns to stand and fortify, prevented wholesale flight to points of greater safety, and it is highly probable that the house and barn were burned in the Indian raid of 1710, which vis- ited Waterbury with a calamity that was long felt.
Bucks Hill is probably the scene of the second attempt to build homes at a distance from the village. The brothers John and Ephraim Warner (probably twins) were, it is believed, dwelling there at the close of 1701 in houses separated by the highway; John's house was on the west side and is now fairly well repre- sented by William Tyler's residence; Ephraim's, on the east side, a little southerly from the Tyler house. The depression supposed to indicate the cellar of the latter house was obliterated in 1891. The two houses supposed to have been built in 1701 are not specifically mentioned until 1703.
Before April of 1702 Isaac Bronson had built the first known residence in present Middlebury.
Before December of that year Samuel Hikcox had "set his house " in Naugatuck.
The initial steps had thus been taken for the establishment of three towns in 1702, and the events narrated had taken place before the first meeting-house was finished, or Mr. Southmayd was ordained.
October 7, 1703, Isaac Bronson, Thomas Judd, and Edmund Scott were chosen "to provide what was needful for the entertaining the elders and messengers for the ordaining Mr. Southmayd." If the feast was made ready and the guests arrived, the ordination did not take place that year, nor even the next year. Peaceful avocations were rudely interrupted. The fort about Timothy Standly's house was rebuilt; Timothy was elected lieutenant of the Waterbury train band, and Deacon Judd was made its ensign; the town stock of ammunition was received from Hartford and kept in the Standly fort; a garrison of ten men was stationed here by order of the General Assembly; the town agreed to fortify Mr. Southmayd's house, "every man's proportion to be staked out according to his Grand levy;" every sixth man in the train band was provided with a knapsack hatchets and a strong belt, and no man (of sixteen years or older) was permitted to leave Waterbury unless he con-
253
DURING QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.
tributed fio for the defence of the place, and every man of sixteen years was a member of the train band.
In 1704, Mr. Southmayd declined to accept the £5 addition to his salary, which was to be in the same " speci "-that was, in provision pay. Not to be outdone in generosity the town decreed to give him fro in labor-thus making his salary at his ordination £70, beside a free gift of his house and a £150 interest in what was orig- inally about one twenty-second part of a township of more than one hundred and twenty-five square miles-a fair salary and settlement for the most distinguished clergyman of the present time! May 30th, 1705, Mr. Southmayd was ordained over a church of twelve male members. It was a solemn, a serious, and an awful height to which a man was raised, when he became " a visible member of the Church of Christ " at any time from 1630 to 1740, in New England. The marvel is, that so many as twelve men were found in Waterbury to assume the enduring ordeal to life and character. The relation of pastor and people became annealed in the fires of danger through which together they passed. There is not from first to last the slightest indication in the public records that the town and Mr. Southmayd were ever at variance. He was the standard-bearer of public opinion on all vital points; a certain mellow ripeness of per- fect manhood seems to emanate from his departed life; whatever he did in the church or in the town-for the two were but one-still bears the blush of perfect fruit. One, now and then, can get a glimpse of a side of his character that recalls the fact that his father let a negro boy escape out of his barque at Middletown-and sug- gests the possibility that the same spirit descended to the son; in fact, the breath of spiritual and material emancipation was vital in him. That house on the corner, in 1700 with "one end of it fit to live in," was rich in historical interest before, during, and after the days when it was fortified.
It was declared that it "would greatly prejudice the interests of Queen Anne and encourage the enemy if any of the outposts in Hartford county should be quitted or exposed by lessening the strength thereof." Waterbury was accounted one of the eight frontier towns, and it was forbidden that it should be broken up. That it might be enabled to stand, a garrison of ten men was ordered to be stationed here, and a scout of two men was to be on duty every day.
Before 1706 there was a call for 400 soldiers from Hartford county alone, to go forth to war with the English forces. Already Queen Anne's war had been waged for four years, and the burden and horrors of it fell upon New England. Waterbury had received
254
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
one poor afflicted refugee in the person of Sergt. John Hawks, who sought the home of his daughter, Mrs. Jonathan Scott, after having survived the massacre at Deerfield, in which Frenchmen and Indians killed his wife, his only son and his wife with their three children, and earried captive and killed his daughter Elizabeth. Sergt. Hawks' cattle were taken out of the Waterbury list in 1706, and Dr. Bron- son tells us that he spent his latter days here.
In 1706, the fort about Standly's house was repaired by Doctor Porter and Thomas Judd. A period of the wildest alarm and most agonizing suspense followed. It was incited by a messenger from Colonel Schuyler at Albany with the information that the "French and enemy Indians were preparing to make a descent upon the frontier towns." This was in January, 1706-7. Waterbury was one of the four most exposed towns. At the same time Captain Minor sent a messenger from Woodbury to the Council conveying his suspicions that the Indians thereabout had been invited to join the enemy. An examination of the Indians, who were summoned be- fore the Council, confirmed Captain Minor's suspicions into belief. It was resolved to remove the Indians of Woodbury and New Mil- ford to Stratford and Fairfield; but later, as there was "much sick- ness among them," two of their chief personages were taken to Fairfield and held as hostages. Waterbury was warned to provide with all possible speed a sufficient number of well fortified houses for the safety of the inhabitants. The Council "resolved" that this exposed town must have three houses fortified, and promised to use its influence with the General Assembly that the charges for the same should be borne by the country. Fifteen pounds was later allowed Waterbury out of the country rates for that year, in consid- eration of the extraordinary floods that had occurred.
The immediate response to this warning appears in our records under date of January 31, 1706-7, when "the town agreed to build the fort that is at Lieut. Standly's, strong." An act was also passed "to build a new fort at the east end of the town at the place where they could agree." They did not seem to agree about the place for the new fort, for the following June, probably as the result of a local alarm, "the town by vote considering our troubles and fear of an enemy do agree to lay aside cutting bushes which was warned for this day (June 23d) till after Michaelmus, and this day forth- with to go about finishing and repairing the forts and to finish them by Wednesday next at night." If there was a third fort at this time, we have no intimation of its location. This was soon after the expedition of one thousand men, in twenty-three trans- ports, had set sail from Nantucket for Port Royal. During the
255
DURING QUEEN ANNE'S WAR.
time of that expedition the frontier towns were kept in alarm. In October of 1708 an expedition was fitting out against Canada, and the Council of War was directed to erect and sustain with men and provisions as many garrisons at Waterbury as it deemed necessary (but not more than two) at the colony's charge. It was at this time that "£50 was allowed for bringing up and maintaining Dogs in the northern frontier towns in the colony to hunt after the Indian enemy." A black dog, at about this time, is a factor in a deed in exchange for land in Waterbury which may have figured in the Indian hunts. It is interesting to note that in the midst of all this dread excitement and danger the Reverend Ministers in the gov- ernment met at Saybrook to utter their confession of faith on the platform of Church Discipline there erected.
Our own records afford no intimation that a garrison was ever stationed here, but in November 1708 we find the following act : "The town agree to have three forts in the town, one built at the west end of the town on the country account-one at Lieut. Stand- ly's on the country account-one at John Hopkins's house on the town account."* In December, it was announced that the fort at the west end of the town should be built about Mr. Southmayd's house.
In view of the above records, it is not possible to give a definite and clear statement of the fortifications of Waterbury, for Mr. Southmayd's house had been fortified four years at the last men- tioned date, and the Stanley fort ante-dated that. Three months later "the town agree that the Fort to be built at the West end of the town shall be built about Mr. Southmayd's house."
In 1708 fifty names appear on the Waterbury list of tax-payers. In 1709 we find but forty-three-a loss of seven names in one year.
In May of 1709, in the list of troops to be raised for the expedi- tion to Canada, it is found that Waterbury's quota was four. In October, Queen Anne ordered the expedition to be "laid aside." Col. William Whiting commanded the Connecticut men. "Sorrow- ful circumstances " attended the expedition, and a post was sent to Col. Whiting directing him to take the best care that he could of the sick soldiers remaining at Albany; to provide for their return by water; and then to march home with such of his men as were fit for the journey. His men were to be disbanded at the towns from
* The large red house of John Hopkins, standing on the south side of East Main street, between Great and Little brooks, with a well in the middle of its "enormous" kitchen, is remembered by persons still living, and is thought to be the house fortified in 1708.
Some of the palisades of the Stanley fort were used in the construction of a fence about the house of Lemuel Harrison, which occupied the site of the Stanley-Clark homestead, and are still remembered by Miss Mary Ann Clark, a great-granddaughter of Thomas Clark.
256
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
which they had gone forth. Certain of the soldiers were not returned to the places of their enlistment, and the dates of their discharge remained for some time unknown. Of this number was Nathaniel Richardson of Waterbury, a young man of about twenty- four years.
He was "detached for the expedition to Canada, and he was dis- missed from service, being sick, at New Haven." Four years later, his heirs were awarded for his services to the country one pound and sixteen shillings.
That Nathaniel Richardson returned to Waterbury is made evi- dent by the following entry in the Proprietor's book, under date of March 13, 1710. By a major vote he was given four-score acres on a branch of Hop Brook east from Break Neck hill. For this, he was to live in the town in a settled way ten years and build a house in five years. To this gift, remonstrance was made by certain of the proprietors.
The names of the three other soldiers who served on the expe- dition are unknown.
CHAPTER XX.
THE WILL OF THOMAS SCOTT OF HARTFORD - THE GIFT-DEED OF EDMUND OF WATERBURY-JOSEPH SCOTT "KILLED" BY INDIANS AT THE WEST BRANCH ROCKS-HIS GRAVE-HIS SON JOHN ADMIT- TED AN INHABITANT OF WATERBURY-JONATHAN SCOTT CAP- TURED BY THE INDIAN ENEMY AND TAKEN TO CANADA-JOHN SCOTT IN CAPTIVITY AMONG THE INDIANS AT CANADA-HANNAH SCOTT, THE MOST AFFLICTED WOMAN IN NEW ENGLAND-THE FRONTIER ROAD THROUGH WATERBURY.
T HE only Waterbury family known to have received personal injuries at the hands of Indians during all the long and bit- ter years of warfare is that of Edmund Scott.
The Scott family seems to have been somewhat noted for mis- adventure from the days when Thomas Scott, the ancestor of the family, was chosen in the midwinter of 1639 to go and examine the country-or, in the words of the record, "to view those parts by Unxus Sepus," because Hartford desired more ample accommoda- tions, and Wethersfield also desired a plantation at Farmington. This Thomas Scott was, I think, the grandfather of Edmund of Waterbury. He died in 1643, while making his will in the presence of two friends who had been summoned in haste to receive his last words. "John Ewe, by misadventure, was the cause of his death" and paid a fine of five pounds, in consequence of his act what- ever it was, to the Court, and the same amount to Thomas Scott's widow.
In present Watertown there are two Waterbury graves that should be suitably inscribed and kept in perpetual remembrance because of the sufferings endured by their tenants at the hands of Indians; and also because they were the first permanent residents of Wooster-Westbury-Watertown. The graves are those of Jona- than and Hannah (Hawks) Scott. He was a survivor of Indian torture; and she was, probably, the most afflicted woman in all New England, for in 1704, her mother and her brother with his wife and their three children were slain at Deerfield, while her only sister was made a captive and perished on the way to Canada. In 1707 or 1708, within a few miles of her home in Waterbury, her husband's brother was tortured to death. In 1710, her husband was seized in the Waterbury meadows, the thumb of his right hand was cut off, and thus mutilated, he was taken on the long and weary march to
17
258
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
Canada, being bound at night to the earth by poles laid across his body, on the ends of which his savage captors slept. He was sub- ject to all the pains and penalties of two full years of captivity before his wife saw him again. Her son John, a lad of eleven years, was taken from her sight forever-it is said, on the same day, by the same cruel foe; and, if the tradition be true, her eldest son Jonathan, then thirteen years of age, was taken also; leaving Mrs. Scott-with her daughter Martha, a child of nine years, and three little boys, Gershom, seven; Eleazer, five; and Daniel, three-to brave life in Waterbury in 1710. Poor Hannah Scott! Her sorrows should keep her in remembrance.
Let us examine the evidence that has been collected regarding Waterbury's one Indian tragedy. Edmund Scott of Waterbury gave to his children nearly all of his property, by a deed of gift, executed June 11, 1690. This deed has been called his will-hence the error that has arisen in regard to the date of his death. In the distribution of his lands, he gave to Joseph, whom he calls his eld- est son, his twenty acres in the Great Swamp of Farmington, with its upland, and a four acre lot; to Edmund, beside what was for- merly given to him, a lot in the Neck, and a fourth part of his undivided land in Waterbury; to Samuel and Jonathan, his "whole right and title in Farmington, of houseing, home lots, orchards, meadows, and upland." After gifts to his daughters-there was no incentive to a man to leave lands to his married daughters, for they could not hold them-he left to George, David and Robert, his whole property in Waterbury, including all his "movable estate, both quick and dead." This deed tells us why Samuel Scott left Waterbury, giving up his newly built house on Bank street, and his other lands, to his brother Jonathan.
Three years later, Farmington gave to Joseph Scott, the eldest son, "a swamp of 14 or 16 acres, as a soldier's lot, and the same year the town measurer laid out for him two parcels of land " in the place called Poland (Bristol). One piece of nineteen and a half acres is described as "abutting southerly on the west branch of the Poland river, and running westerly up the river to a marked white oak tree near the northwest branch of the Poland river, and from the tree a straight line eastwardly to a tree marked on three sides and standing a little east of WattEberry path." The lands thus laid out to Joseph Scott had formerly been granted to John Langdon. Joseph Scott probably went to Bristol to live in the wilderness at this time, for we find the town of Farmington giving to him "a lib- erty to dwell alone, provided that he faithfully improve his time and behave himself peaceably and honestly towards his [Indian?]
259
THE SCOTT FAMILY.
neighbors and their creatures." He was constantly to attend the public worship of God, and, when required, to give an account to the townsmen of the manner in which he spent his time. In 1695 we find mention made of "his cellar at Judd's meadow" in Farmington.
Tradition* gives the following in relation to Joseph Scott. "Early in the history of the town [Bristol] a Mr. Scott who had begun to clear a piece of land on Fall Mountain, intending to remove hither from Farmington, was seized by a party of Indians and horribly tortured. His screams were heard a long way; but the Indians were so many that no one dared to go to the rescue, and a considerable number of the settlers, fearing an attack from the infuriated Indians, hid themselves all day in the bushes near the river."
The Mr. Scott of the tradition is, without doubt, Joseph Scott. He was "killed" twenty years before there were any known set- tlers in Bristol to hear him scream, or to hide by the river bank, and he lost his life in Waterbury, according to the following evi- dence. In 1758, Richard Seymour (Seamor) laid out about two acres of land at Reynolds Bridge, described as "at the West Branch rocks," and also as "near where Joseph Scott was killed." Stephen Seymour had land adjoining laid out at a still earlier date with the same description.
In Joash Seymour's re-survey of a very large tract of land at the same place, it is described as "beginning at the foot of a ledge or large rock, which lies to the right of the path leading to the ancient Rock House, and as running from thence to the West Branch, and down the Branch to the Naugatuck; down the river to Deep River brook to a branch of the brook and up the branch to a highway, and through the wilderness to Scott's grave, and thence, through the wilderness, to the point of beginning."
There are three rocks in this immediate vicinity, THE ROCK HOUSE. any one of which might be taken for the Rock house of the early days. In a meadow boundary, made before 1700, the Rock house
* Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1886, Vol. 11, P 44.
260
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
was a bound, and the line was run from it, forty-seven rods to the river. The one selected for the illustration is capable of giving shelter to forty or fifty persons, and has been known in the Rey- nolds family for a century as the Rock house. Another and still larger ledge of the same description lies higher on the hill-side to the southwest.
Joseph Scott was " killed " before Feb. 7, 1708-9, at which date administration on his estate was granted to his brother Samuel, and his grave is to this day a recognized bound of three farms; those of Henry Reynolds, Charles Bidwell and George Osborne. He seems to have had an only child, John, who, like poor John Hawks, fled to his kindred in Waterbury, after the death of his father, for "Dec. 28, 1709, John Scott, son of Joseph Scott, deceased, was ad- mitted an inhabitant in said town" (Waterbury). According to this admission, he must have joined the expedition against Canada from Waterbury, for he was in Col. Whiting's regiment, and was of Waterbury at the date, although, having recently left Farmington, he was accredited to that place when five pounds was paid to him, in 1710, for his services to the country.
Dec. 28, 1709, Jonathan Scott was appointed one of four fence viewers. At some time between that date and July 26, 1710, he was "captured by the Indian enemy, and taken to Canada." In October, 1710, and again in 1711, the country rates on his estate were remit- ted to his wife. In October, 1712, he was "but lately returned from his captivity." He requested relief from the Court, and received " a release from his country rate, and ten pounds out of the treas- ury, for the loss of one of his thumbs by the enemy." While we can give no evidence that he was again captured, subsequent peti- tions point decidedly to that view of the case, for, after an interval of nine years, in 1721, we find him again before the court, setting forth that "while he was a captive and prisoner at Canada, he was under distressing circumstances, and necessitated to take up money upon credit for his subsistence and relief, and had taken up ten pounds and prudently spent the same." The constable of Danbury was directed to pay ten pounds of the Colony's money into his hands. It seems probable that his son John was made prisoner about this time, for four years later, or fifteen years after the first capture, we find "the prayer of Jonathan Scott, setting forth that his son John is now in captivity among the Indians at Canada, and, that he is so reduced, that he cannot get him home." His prayer was answered by a gift of five pounds, and the promise, that if he recovered his son, the matter would be further considered, and the Assembly would do therein as it thought fit. That was Jonathan's
26I
THE SCOTT FAMILY.
last prayer to the court, although he lived twenty years after that date. We find no proof that he recovered his son John, or that John ever returned from captivity. Notwithstanding the traditional statement as given by Dr. Bronson, it seems quite probable that the stories of Joseph, of Jonathan, and of John, became intermingled by the lapse of years, and that John's capture occurred during the period between 1722 and 1725, for at that time the very air was ringing with the alarms that shot along the frontier road-this road ran from Hartford through Farmington to Waterbury, and from Waterbury to Woodbury and New Milford. What more natural, when Major Talcott came "riding this frontier," impressing men and arms-on the news that three hundred "French Indians were come over the lake towards Connecticut"-than that a Scott should join the fray ?
Life was far from being dull and weary for want of in- citement, to our fathers. There was scarcely time to get the seeds in the ground, so incessant was the demand for scouts to be established. Military watches and constable watches were con- stantly in operation. The friendly Indians were all called in from their hunting grounds; not one being allowed to enter the territory lying north of the road that ran from Hartford through Waterbury to New Milford, and between the rivers Connecticut and Housa- tonic. Even an Englishman might not fire a gun within that ter- ritory to kill any animal. If a gun was heard to the northward of that road, the sound struck terror into every man, woman and child.
Certain of the Litchfield settlers deserted that then new and defenceless plantation, until "the men of the coast" from Branford and Guilford; from Fairfield and Stratford and Milford, were sent to their aid. Even the few trusted Indians-the six who accom- panied a scout of three Englishmen-were obliged to wear some- thing white upon their heads to secure their lives from the wrath of white men. And these were the times in which the men of Waterbury made their town !- the same men, whose graves the men of 1891 had not the courage to face, and so despoiled them and hid them from sight forever.
The following is the traditional story of Jonathan Scott's capture as related by Dr. Bronson. "About the same time (1710) some In- dians came down from Canada and ascended a hill, or mountain, on the west side of the river, opposite Mount Tayler [the lower end of Buck's Meadow mountain], to reconnoitre. They saw Jonathan Scott seated under a large oak tree in Hancock's meadow, eating his dinner, with his two sons, aged fourteen and eleven, at a little distance. The Indians approached stealthily, keeping in a line
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.