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 32
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THE NEW INHABITANTS.
named. All conditions of building and living in the town a speci- fied time were removed from the bachelor lots of the old proprie- tors. The younger men who were bachelor proprietors were to receive lands according to their £40 interest, and divisions of lands were to be restricted to the two parties. Each man might take up his division "by his own land and in one place more and in a hand some form." The recorder, Mr. John Southmayd, was to issue notes to the proprietors for the lands. These notes, upon presentation, authorized the measurer to lay out lands, and the number of acres laid out was to be endorsed upon the note. Mr. Southmayd was to make a record of every note that went out from his office. Three of these little notes are in the writer's possession; they are about four inches long by three broad. One of them has the following: " To the Measurers in Waterbury these may Certify that there may be Laid out in the Common and undivided Sequestered Land in said Town. To David Prichard one acre and Twenty Rods on Jonathan Scotts Sen" Right on the Division granted Decr. 13th, 1793.
Certified per me
EZRA BRONSON, Clerk."
On the other side is the following: "forty four Rods laid out to D. Pritchard June 3th 1818. three quarters of an acre and twenty-six rods laid out to David Prichard * Oct" 23rd 1837." The lay outs are signed by Dan1 Porter, measurer. One note calling for 201 rods is still unsatisfied, but forty rods having been laid out upon it.
Deacon John Stanley was called upon to assist in making the lists of Grand and Bachelor proprietors. The combined lists com- prise the names of ninety-six men. All these, having fulfilled con- ditions, were owners of the lands purchased in 1674. Seventy-three young men, sons of twenty-four Grand proprietors had settled, for a time if not permanently, in Waterbury. Every one of the seven- teen family names on this list is represented in the Waterbury Directory of 1892.
The meeting house was the pulse of the living people-hence the first intimation that we get of the ingress of population is in 1721, when the town voted "to apply to the General Court to get a tax on all the land laid out within the town bounds, the money to be disposed of to the building of a meeting house." It will be remembered that non-residents owned lands laid out and to be laid out-and Waterbury proprietors exacted tribute from all, for the meeting house. The little old church building had but just been made ready, by repairs and additions, for the then inhabitants,
* This is perhaps the only instance in which a man of over a hundred years had land laid out.
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
when in 1722 the town empowered a committee to take up a part of the stairs into the gallery and make seats there; to stop up the east and west doors and make what seats the place would allow; to raise the pulpit, and mend the outside of the building.
Other preparations were made-"a rate of twelve" was laid " for raising up the school house (built in 1709) and other charges in the town, as far as it would go;" twenty-four acres in the sequester were laid out and ordered to be recorded for the use of the ministry; six men were chosen for a committee to lay out high- ways and make return to the recorder-three were to go together and two agreeing empowered the recorder to make a record of the highway so returned, while a general order to the committee in regard to the width of the highways was, that they were not to exceed twenty rods, but they should be as wide as could be had where they did not take off any man's land, and "where men had fenced in the highway it was to be accounted to the highway," and the road through Waterbury bounds to Farmington * was to go where it then went, and be ten rods wide where it would allow; and no surveyor was to make boundaries within that stating of the road; the ministry land near the center (now occupied by many buildings) was to be leased (time not stated) to Samuel Porter and Thomas Upson, and the school lands in the various meadows were leased for six years; the school committee was bidden to demand the country money yearly, also the money that the school land was let for,-and pay the school and give an account of its receivings and "dispensements " at "the great town meeting," which at this time met every year on the second Monday in December, at 10 o'clock in the morning; t bills against the town were first to be brought in, and then a rate to be laid sufficient to pay the charge.
It must be remembered that during these years Waterbury was ever acting on the defensive; she was harassed by fears and con- fronted by actual warfare; her citizens carried on their avocations under terrible restraint; they went forth to their fields by com- mand of authority in companies, every man bearing arms. If this were a romance instead of veritable history, our Drum hill com- manding the meadows up the valley would receive its name from the fact that the sentinel was posted there with his drum to warn the planters at work in the meadows of approaching danger, and romance would probably coincide with fact.
* This was the road that ran from Hartford to New Milford through Farmington, Waterbury, and Woodbury, in distinction from other roads from Waterbury to Farmington.
+ In 1723, the "receivings" and the disbursements of the committee were £6.9.0, " with twenty-five shillings in the hands of Dr. Warner."
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THIE NEW INHABITANTS.
The only inhabitant who appeared in 1721 was Gershom Fulford, a blacksmith, who moved over from Woodbury and entered into a covenant to live in the town and practice his trade seven years, and perform articles as the Bachelor proprietors had done. As a con- sideration, he was given eight acres of land by subscription and by vote. It does not appear that Captain Thomas Judd, the deacon and the blacksmith, left Waterbury at this time, but circumstantial evidence points three fingers of fact in that direction. He sold his house; his position as captain of the Waterbury train band was filled by Dr. Ephraim Warner in May of 1722, and his name disap- pears for a time from the list of office holders. I do not know whether James Brown of New Haven, or Samuel " Chidester," who had married a half-sister of Joseph Lewis, was the next arrival; both came in 1722 and settled at Judds Meadow. James Brown was licensed to keep an ordinary in that year. One can rejoice with the inhabitants of 1723 in the prospect of even one new inhabitant, and imagine that a tremor of satisfaction is found in the hand of Mr. Southmayd where he records that Dec. 10, 1723, Nathaniel Arnold [of Hartford ] signed an agreement to live in Waterbury four years, for which the town gave him ten acres on David's brook, north of the town, near the common fence. Nathaniel Arnold's coming was an event of importance. The town did not oblige him to build a house, because there was one awaiting him. He bought the next year the original house lots of John Bronson, Lieut. Judd, and Daniel Warner, comprising six acres. The next day William Ludinton subscribed to an agreement to live here four years and build a house, and the same day the town agreed to give John Williams, a clothier, ten acres if he would come and sign the conditions and build a fulling mill and follow the clothiers' trade. John Williams' name is not subscribed to the agreement on the town book, and it is not known that he came.
Judd's Meadow had already welcomed a substantial inhabitant in the person of James Brown of New Haven, with his wife, Elizabeth Kirby, and their eight children. As early as 1717, he, with Hezekiah Rew of Milford, bought of John Hikcox a house and land on the hill on the east side of the river, south of the site of Naugatuck's first meeting house. There he had been keeping an ordinary, and cherishing the Church of England in his heart, (although he paid tithes for the meeting house), while his neigh- bors at the Town spot were undecided whether to repair the old school house, or to build a new one; whether, with the help of Derby to build a cart road to that place, or " a country road to be settled by the Court." There was, however, no indecision in regard to
.
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
building the new meeting house. Waterbury had from her begin- ning a way of deciding matters for herself. Again and again we have witnessed the manner in which she, quite courteously, avoided the aid of foreign committees, even when offered by the court. Her establishment of bounds with Derby and Woodbury is in evidence. Waterbury witnessed the discord in the towns around about her in relation to the location of their meeting houses, and four years before a step was taken in regard to the building of a new one, we find her people saying: "When we shall build another meeting house we will build it upon the Green upon which the present meet- ing house stands." In December of 1726, they laconically declare: "We will build a meeting house forty feet wide and fifty feet long." From the public records, and the autograph accounts kept by Mr. Southmayd (now in the writer's possession), the following story of the building of the second meeting house is gleaned: After decid- ing upon the place for it in 1722, and its size in 1726, plans were laid for meeting its cost. It will be remembered that in the adjustment of proprieties, about 1715, six new ones were created of £40 each. Two of these had been sold; the four remaining, were placed in the hands of a committee for sale, the proceeds to be expended on the meeting house. For money to be used in its beginning, a rate was laid of three pence on the pound, to be paid in May, 1727. The building committee was composed of five of the town's best citizens, Lieut. John Hopkins, Sergt. John Scovill, Isaac Bronson Sen", Dea. Thomas Hikcox, and Thomas Clark.
In the midwinter of 1726-7, the timber and other building materials were brought by the people to the Green, and "overdid " the rate of three pence on the pound, whereupon a second rate was laid of three pence on the pound, which was also intended to cover the town charges for the year.
The first cloud that shadowed the enterprise was the death of a member of the committee, Sergt. John Scovill, who died Feb. 26, 1726-7, and in his place were appointed "Steven " Hopkins and Lieut. Wm. Hikcox. Two stakes were set down at the east end of the old meeting house, to " regulate the seting of the new one." The northwest corner was to be at the one stake and the southeast cor- ner at the other; the " sills were laid two feet from the ground on the highest ground (the Green not having been graded) and the stone work or underpinning was done accordingly." It was evidently far easier to lay rates than it was to collect them, for in December of 1727 the first rate was still ungathered; and the second one was not yet in when the town announced its expectation that if the collector did not gather the money without delay "that the townsmen strain
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THE NEW INHABITANTS.
on the collector," and then, it, at the same meeting, proceeded to lay the third tax of three pence on the pound, which was to be paid in money, and was to be gathered in July of 1727. The town meeting here referred to was evidently not altogether peaceful, for Mr. Southmayd records that "Capt. Hikcox and Stephen Hopkins were put out from being meeting house committee," and "Lieut. Hopkins was discharged from being a committee for the meeting house." Their successors were Capt. Thomas Judd, Isaac Bronson, and Deacon Thomas Hikcox.
In March of 1728, Nathaniel Arnold and Stephen Hopkins, assisted by James "Balding " [Baldwin],-a young carpenter from Newark, New Jersey, who had recently married one of Dr. Daniel Porter's daughters-"culled the shingles that had been brought by particular persons to be laid on the meeting house," and in the same year the fourth tax was laid, making the entire tax eleven pence on the pound. By Mr. Southmayd's account book we learn that two hundred and one pounds were paid to twenty-one men for boards and work; one hundred pounds to the carpenter and for glass and nails. Of the first sum mentioned Mr. Merriam, the car- penter, was paid more than one-fourth, James Blakslee about forty pounds, Joseph Lathrop thirty-two, and Israel or Isaac Moss twenty-five. The entire cost of the building, exclusive of the gal- leries which were not finished, seems to have been four hundred and eighty-seven pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence.
It was paid for by the sale of the four proprieties of £40 each, which were sold for two hundred and sixty-two pounds-of this amount, Mr. Southmayd tells us that Thompson's bond was fifty- four pounds, Judson's, the same amount, and Welles's seven pounds, ten shillings (on the land records, we find that Jan. 11, 1726-7, the three men named-all of Stratford-had measured and laid out for them, sixty-two acres of land "on the Northward End of the hill commonly called and known by the name of Shum's orchard Hill in the North East corner of Waterbury Bounds"); by a gift from Lieut. Timothy Standly of one of his Bachelor proprieties, which sold for sixty pounds; by " Lieut. Balding's gift," of three pounds, and by rates amounting to one hundred and sixty-two pounds, ten shillings and eleven pence.
Whatever other debts Waterbury assumed early and late, there was apparently no indebtedness left on its meeting house of 1729. Mr. Southmayd's name does not appear on the town or proprietor's records as indicating his activity in the enterprise, but the little meeting-house book in which he kept all the accounts is eloquent in his praise. He recorded the following item: "To get Rum," but
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
his pen crossed the charge-which was but four shillings and six pence-a fact, notably to the credit of this town in that day and generation.
Just one year before the meeting house was finished, Deacon Thomas Hikcox, the second member of the original committee, died and Thomas Clarke was appointed to the office of deacon.
On the last day of June in 1729 all things were in readiness for that most delicate and troublesome of all ceremonial observances of early New England life-" seating the meeting house." As far as my knowledge enables me to state, each town established its own rules and grades of dignity. But two factors were recognized here-age and estate. In 1719, one year was accounted as four pounds of estate-in 1729, as two pounds-in 1826 as ten dollars. I am not certain whether it was because age had decreased in value or the pound had increased. Every man's estate was increased by eighteen pounds, on which he paid, for his poll tax. He also paid on the same amount for members of his family or household who were subject to the tax. It was now decreed that only one head should be counted in a man's list in the seating of the meeting house.
On the last day of June in 1729, Mr. Southmayd made the fol- lowing record: "At a town meeting they by vote gave me John Southmayd the liberty of chusing a seat in the new Meeting House and I made choise of the pew next the pulpit at the East end of the pulpit for my Family to sit in," and he adds to the record the words: "It was voated that we would Endeavor to seat the Meet- ing House." We pause an instant here, to state that during the erection of this building death had called away not only John Scovill and Dea. Timothy Hikcox of the committee, but two of the original planters who lived almost under its walls, Lieut. Timothy Stanley, and his next-door neighbor, Dr. Daniel Porter, leaving Abraham Andrews as the sole survivor of the signers of 1674.
The next morning ushered in a day of supreme interest to every inhabitant. After deciding that all the men of sixteen years and over should be seated, the town made choice for a committee to do the work, Dea. Thomas Clark, Samuel Hikcox, and Stephen Kelcy (a young man from Wethersfield.) This committee was chosen wisely. The first member was, according to our estimate, one of the rich men in the town; the second represented fairly the pros- perous, well-to-do element, although himself a young man, while the third owned at that time but an ox, a horse, and five acres of upland.
Over against the pew of the minister's choice, with the pulpit between, was the pew next in dignity to that one. To the ever-
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THE NEW INHABITANTS.
lasting credit of that committee, or the town, there was voted into that pew "Goodman " Andrews* and his wife-Lieutenant Hop- kins and his wife, Goodman Barnes-Sergt. Upson, and the widow Porter. We seek in vain for increased knowledge of that day's proceedings, for Mr. Southmayd adds the words "And Doc Warner into the second pew," then closes the record for three months.
If the inhabitants were seated according to estate and age, we might readily make a list of the order of the scating. Joseph Lewis had in 1729 the largest estate, closely followed by Isaac Bronson, Timothy Hopkins, Lieut. John and Thomas Bronson, John Richards, Stephen Hopkins, Richard Welton, Captain William and Thomas Hikcox, Nathaniel Arnold, and others.
In a community like that of Waterbury, there was a manifest in- congruity in the seating qualifications, and doubtless there was an uproar and much confusion, which wise Mr. Southmayd concealed from our view as he closed the door of the records upon future in- quiries. We need go no further in illustration than the case of Deacon Thomas Judd. He had, even as others-for it was a custom, and with few exceptions almost universally observed-given his property to his children, leaving in his own name but a small frac- tion of a large estate, and by the above ruling, Dr. Warner, a younger man, was placed above him in the second pew.
The same rules applied to the same practice in the same church down to the latest seating, in 1836, with few variations. In 1829 persons were seated according to list and age, ten dollars being allowed in the list to one year of age. But one complete record of a scating has been met. It is for the year 1792, and was among the papers of David Prichard, who died in 1838. From it, we learn that the meeting house of 1729 was divided into thirteen dignities, each dignity consisting of two pews. In the first one, at the head of the aisle or "alley," eight persons were seated, six men, and two women; in the corresponding dignity on the west side, six persons. These were followed by two great pews, and these, in turn, by the fourth dignity, consisting of "northeast and northwest pews in the square body." The fifth dignity was the second pew in the "alley " and its west side counterpart-the sixth, two corner pews-the seventh, the pew before the east and west doors-the eighth, north of the east and west doors-the ninth, the third pew joining the alley, and the corresponding pew on the west side-the tenth, the pews east and west of the front door-the eleventh, the middle pew on the
* This is the only instance, I think, in which Mr. Southmayd used the word "Goodman," and it signifies simply their venerable age, and was used in the absence of any other title. Both men having been chosen to represent the town at the General Court, they could not, in that day, have been men of inferiority.
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front side the house, and the west side-the twelfth, the southeast pew in the square body, and the southwest one-the thirteenth, south of the east door, and the "west side." This arrangement of pews in 1792 may have been very unlike the original interior of 1729.
Tithing-men were first appointed in 1726. In the new building, three were required to keep all things in order.
In December of 1729 it was voted to go on and finish the galleries within six months, and verily there was need of haste, for we find new inhabitants at more than the cardinal points of the compass, and all points led to this central edifice, on Sabbath days, Lecture days, fasts and thanksgivings, and on Town Meeting days. Among the new inhabitants we find Nathaniel Arnold, of Hartford, accom- panied by his mother and his five children-the youngest a lad of eleven; Jacob Benson, who must have had a family, for he paid a tax for three persons, and may have been the first settler on Wol- cott hill, as that was early known as Benson's hill; Henry Cook, from Branford, with his wife and five children; Samuel Brown, "from Boston, Hartford County," with his wife and five children; Joseph Nichols from Derby, with his wife and six children; John Sutliff, a wanderer from Deerfield, Durham, Branford and Haddam, with his wife, eight daughters and two sons; Abraham Utter, with his wife and six children; William Luddington, with four children, and perhaps a wife-if he came according to agreement in 1723; Caleb Clark, with his wife and four daughters; Abraham Hodges, from New Haven, with his wife and two children; Jonathan Guern- sey, from Milford, with his wife and two children; Joseph Harris, who probably had a family, for he owned a home lot; Joseph Judd from West Hartford, with his wife and son Isaac; Robert Johnson, a shoemaker and tanner, with his wife and one child; Thomas Blakeslee from New Haven, with his wife and four children; Daniel How and his son; Jonathan Forbes, who paid taxes for "his faculty," whatever it may have been; James Johnson and his wife Eunice, who lived for a time on Bank street near the corner of East Main street, he having bought Thomas Warner's house in 1730; Joseph Smith with his wife and two children, he buying in 1726, while he was yet of Derby, the house and land now the site of St. Margaret's school; John Johnson, with his son Silence and his daugh- ter Jane; John " Allcok" with one child, from New Haven; Ephraim Bissell from Tolland with at least one child; Ebenezer Blakeslee, and his bride from North Haven (whose father provided abund- antly for him); Elnathan Taylor from the same place, with two children-while Daniel Porter, son of Richard, and a few other wan- derers returned to the fold. To these were added the young men who came to the town and found here a charm in young woman-
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hood unknown to them elsewhere, for they all married daughters of proprietors of Waterbury; James Blakeslee, "joiner" of West Haven, who was taxed on £6 for "his chest;" Isaac Castle and Joseph Hurlburt from Woodbury; James Baldwin from Newark, New Jersey; Nathan and Jonathan Prindle from Newtown; the three brothers-Stephen, Isaac, and Ebenezer Hopkins, with their mother, from Hartford, Stephen paying in 1732 a tax on £8 for "his cordwinding trade," and Isaac on £7 for his "turning trade "- Ebenezer not marrying here; Jonathan Kelsey and Stephen Kelsey, a carpenter, who had built a house west of Break Neck in 1727- they coming here from Wethersfield; Daniel and James Williams (brothers) from Wallingford-Daniel building a house on Pattaroon hill in 1731, and paying a tax for his faculty, on fio; Samuel Thomas from Woodbury, who bought land "southwestward of the lower end of Woster Swamp westward of the path that goes to Woster Swamp," in 1727; James Hull from New Haven; Nathaniel Merrill from Hartford; John Guernsey, who married Deacon Jere- miah Peck's daughter Anne, and was the first known resident of The Village, now called Guernsey Town; Caleb Thompson, the site and cellar place of whose house down the western slope of Town-Plot hill was marked in 1891 by lilacs and a peach tree; all these, beside Daniel Rose who laid out many acres on Twitch Grass brook at Thomaston; Daniel Blakeslee, Ebenezer Kelsey, Jesse Blakeslee, and Joseph "Gillet " were here before the close of 1731.
The foregoing list of new inhabitants does not, in all proba- bility, include every person who came, and it may not be strictly accurate in every instance in relation to family. Among the causes of this movement to Waterbury may be found, first of all, the opening of the township to outsiders by its proprietors, and the lay out of The Village. It will be remembered that when it was decided to make a hundred acre division to each proprietor, to every man alike, the long lots were to be laid out next Woodbury, beginning at the southwest corner of the bounds. Owing to the loss of the proprietors' records between 1717 and 1722 we are not able to give facts, but it seems entirely probable that the vote was revoked, and that that division was ultimately laid out in present Watertown-at that part of it now known as Guernsey Town, and whose present name was given, because of its first settler, John Guernsey. The natural features of this section were such as to render it capable of being laid out with uniformity, in pleasing contrast to the ordinary manner of selecting a "piece of land " here and there to suit the emergency of the hour.
As laid out, The Village was an encroachment upon Woodbury's east line at its northern point, for the towns adjusted the matter
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
and changed the line-accordingly, the main Village lines were made to run with it, and the change upset the highways, but the proprietors fixed them up as well as they could and went on.
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