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 59
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A hundred years from now, everything that was most distinctive will have passed away. The spinning wheels of wool and flax that used to buzz so familiarly in the childish ears of some of us will be heard no more forever-seen no more, in fact, save in the halls of the antiquarian societies, where the delicate daughters will be asking what these strange machines are and how they were made to go. The huge hewn timber looms that used to occupy a room by themselves in the farm houses will be gone, cut up for firewood, and their heavy thwack, beating up the woof, will be heard no more by the passer-by-not even the antiquarian halls will find room to harbor a specimen. The long strips of linen, bleaching on the grass, and tended by a sturdy maiden sprinkling them each hour from her water-can under a broiling sun-thus to prepare the Sunday linen for her brothers and her own wedding outfit-will have disappeared, save as they return to fill a picture in some novel or ballad of the old time. The heavy Sunday coats that grew on sheep individually remembered, more comfortably carried in warm weather on the arm, and the specially fine striped blue-and-white pantaloons of linen just from the loom, will no longer be conspicuous on processions of footmen going to meeting, but will have given place to showy carriages filled with gentlemen in broadcloth, festooned with chains of California gold, and delicate ladies holding perfumed sunshades. The churches, too, that used to be simple brown meeting-houses covered with rived clapboards of oak, will have come down mostly from the bleak hill tops into the close villages and populous towns that crowd the waterfalls and the railroads; and the old burial places where the fathers sleep will be left to their lonely altitude- token, shall we say, of an age that lived as much nearer to heaven and as much less under the world. The change will be complete.
A little further on Dr. Bushnell draws a picture of some neigh- borhood gathering, when a sleigh full of old and young had joined
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LIFE IN THE " AGE OF HOMESPUN."
a merry party in some friendly home-noting in passing that "if those ancestors of ours undertook a formal entertainment of any kind it was commonly stiff and quite unsuccessful"-the fire blaz- ing high with a new stick for every guest, and no restraint and no affectation. Dr. Bushnell continues:
They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. They are serious and gay by turns. The young folks go on with some play, while the fathers and mothers are discussing some hard point of theology in the minister's last Sunday's sermon; or perhaps the great danger coming to sound morals from the multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers ! Meantime the good housewife brings out her choice stock of home- grown exotics, gathered from three realms, doughnuts from the pantry, hickory nuts from the chamber, and the nicest, smoothest apples in the cellar; all which, includ- ing, I suppose I must add, the rather unpoetic beverage that gave its acid smack to the ancient hospitality, are discussed as freely, with no fear of consequences. And then, as the tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on majestically toward nine, the conversation takes, it may be, a little more serious turn, and it is sug- gested that a very happy evening may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative look on every face, which is itself the truest language of a social nature blest in human fellowship.
With this picture, so graphically drawn, it is well to close the chapter. In it the nobler side of the "age of homespun," as Dr. Bushnell felicitously calls it, is drawn with an artist's hand, the homely details being neither exaggerated nor idealized. It is a picture all the pleasanter for the eye to rest upon because of the ruggedness that frames it in, and the bleakness just outside the farmhouse door that forms its background.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
FIRST HIGHWAY IN CONNECTICUT-COUNTRY ROADS OR KING'S HIGHWAYS -ROADS TO FARMINGTON-TO NEW HAVEN-TO WOODBURY - THROUGHOUT THE TOWNSHIP-VILLAGE HIGHWAYS-RE-SURVEYS AND ALTERATIONS-TURNPIKE ROADS-THE PLANK ROAD.
T HE first highway made in Connecticut was from Hartford to Windsor. It was to be for cart and horse and was made upon the uplands. It was not ordered until April of 1638, or more than two years after the settlements began.
What more conclusive proof than the above do we need of the correctness of the statements of the earliest historians and letter writers, when they tell us that the so called wilderness of New England was, to a considerable extent, an open forest, "kept so, by being burned over twice a year by the Indians" as well as by the large trees which shaded out the undergrowth.
To the open forests were added the natural openings along the streams, known as meadows. The term "meadows" was not then restricted, as now, to grass or mowing lands, but was applied to any naturally cultivable land, and the same early writers tell us that cattle could find ample pasturage in the woods, and considerable hay could be cut in the open places without breaking ground or sowing seed .* The Indian's hard and plain paths ran where there were objective points of interest, and these the white man naturally followed in going from place to place, or in exploring the country- the chief trouble being to learn the best route to take to reach a desired point without being misled to follow deviations of a local or special character, foreign to the object in view. It was from the very multiplicity of these trails that the necessity arose for mark- ing or blazing the trees when any highway or recognized route was sought to be established, and this method, for a time, answered very well.
As land began to be laid out along the travelled path, and cart roads became necessary to move crops and goods from place to
* The elder Winthrop, after having been a short time in Massachusetts, wrote, in 1630: Here is as good and as I have seen in England, but none so bad as there. Here is sweet air, fair rivers, plenty of springs, and the water better than in England.
In November of the same year, he wrote : My dear wife : We are here in a paradise. Though we have not beef or mutton, yet, God be praised, we want them not-our Indian corn answers for all. Yet we have fowl and fish in great plenty.
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place, the future need of recognized highways dawned-and so to preserve space enough to allow of choice of road-bed on convenient and satisfactory ground, without the removal of large rocks or stumps, and, to exempt it from intrusion by layers out of lands, highways were prepared for ;- sometimes a number of years in advance of their actual use, by placing heaps of stones, called mon- uments, at the corners or angles, and at convenient distances between, to designate the lines of the highway as against the claims of adjoining land-owners. A little later, as the need of future highways grew imminent, lands were granted, or divided, subject to the same-the expression in the conveyance being: "without prejudicing highways."
In process of time the marks on the trees became obliterated or indistinct. The trees themselves disappeared. The heaps of stones became displaced or confused with similar heaps, used to denote other land boundaries, and the custom was made legal of entering upon record a description of the course of the highway, the dis- tances and directions between boundaries, with the mention of any distinctive objects along the route, or of guiding facts to help in recovering lost lines, and fixing in the minds of surveyors salient points when laying out adjoining lands.
At first, only some of the most important highways were recorded, a re-survey or new layout being necessary to obtain a proper description of them; but at length, by degrees, all highways came to be reviewed and placed on record, except a scattered few- and these-either because they were too well known to admit of question, or because they were unimportant-seem never to have been recorded.
For the above reasons, in following the records of highways we are not taken back to the beginning of travelled ways, but are intro- duced to them at a comparatively remote and transitional period, and become acquainted with them by degrees and installments- the laying out of new city streets denotes the intended develop- ment of a section, the record of the old time highways development accomplished.
When Waterbury was settled, there was a road from Hartford to New Haven, one from Milford to Farmington, and Wallingford also had her connections with the outside world. In 1643 each town was ordered to choose two surveyors yearly. The surveyors had power to call out every team, and person (from sixteen to sixty years) fit for labor, one day in each year to mend the highways, and were enjoined to have special regard to those "Common wayes " which were betwixt town and town. In May of 1679 the roads
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
"from plantation to plantation " were "reputed the Country roads or King's highways," and it was recommended that the inhabitants of the various towns should first clear such roads "at least one rod wide." Five years later, in 1684, complaints were made of the "wayes between towne and towne" that they "were encum- bered with dirty slowes, bushes, trees and stones," and the Court ordered that forthwith the highways should be well amended from their defects, and so kept. The surveyors in each town were enjoined to do their duty, and the Surveyor's oath was promulgated as an inducement to action.
In preparing a village site for Waterbury in 1677, it seems to have been the duty of the Colonial committee to lay out the village high- ways, and also to indicate what should be the official highway con- necting the new town with Farmington, and thus with Hartford. Accordingly, we find that the authorized highway of 1677, which was perpetually sequestered by act of the "Grand Committee " in 1679; which was further reserved and encroachments upon forbid- den by the proprietors in 1722; which was re-surveyed and formally entered on record in 1754 was substantially East Main street, the old Cheshire road to East Farms school-house, thence up the hill in the line of the present road until past the Austin Pierpont place, when it turned northeastward across the present pasture lot where the old road-bed may still be seen, and came into the Meriden road a little westward of the old Farmington corner-now a corner of Wolcott and Waterbury. From there the road ran eastward on the south line of Farmington nearly where the Meriden road now is, until the brow of the mountain was reached, when it went down by the present peach orchards of Barns & Platt into the Quinnipiac valley, and there joined the early road between Milford and Farm- ington. Grants of land at East Farms and on the way thither in 1686 and later; layouts of land near the Meriden road in the extreme eastern part of the township in 1722; conveyances of land on the route scattered along through many decades, confirm beyond question the location of this road as " the road to Farmington .*
For the line of the Indian highway, see page 220. Besides this King's highway to Farmington, there were two recognized roads leading to the same town. Just before Mattatuck was settled, the southerly and westerly portions of Farmington township were laid out in "long lots," many of which were owned by our planters. Between these long lots, highways and cross-highways were plotted,
* About three miles from the centre on this road, in 1749, Joseph Beach and Cornelius Johnson were granted liberty to advance three rods into the highway, for thirty rods. Two years later the town conferred the land upon them, they having built their houses there.
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OLD HIGHWAYS AND STREETS.
if not laid out, and these probably served as avenues through which some of these wandering paths reached Farmington.
The second recognized road to Farmington (see page 218), re- ferred to as "the new road as we go to Farmington" in 1686, is found by record passing between the Hog Field hill south of Woodtick, and Woodtick. It probably connected with and entered Waterbury by the way of the very early path over Long hill from Bronson's meadow. On its eastward way, it probably joined one of the Farmington highways that were plotted through her long lots before Waterbury was-that is, after the road left the bounds of our township.
An early Waterbury path, mentioned in 1696 on the Farmington records as in Poland, ran through Bristol, and doubtless is the foun- dation for the tradition, faithfully adhered to by many persons, that the first road from Farmington came over Fall mountain, Spindle hill, along the west side of Ash swamp, west of Chestnut hill, along the western side of Long hill to Walnut street and so on down to East Main street. The " Chestnut hill path " is mentioned in 1686.
In 1724 we again find mention of another "new road to Farming- ton." At Spindle hill this road left the hill, apparently near the school-house, turned northeastwardly to Mad river and then east- ward to the line of Farmington, and there it is reasonably certain, if not established, that it met the Alcox road of present Wolcott. It passed through Wolcott north of the centre, across roads now known as Plumb and East streets, and down the mountain into Southing- ton valley. These roads of 1686 and 1724, as mentioned, were prob- ably but new sections of road connecting former highways or trails on the Waterbury side with those on the Farmington side.
Before 1720 we have few recorded highways. It must not, how- ever, be taken for granted that the highways about the town, and even the more distant ones were not formally laid out at a much earlier period than we find them on record. Many of them make their first appearance as re-surveys. Many are recorded as laid out at a certain time, when we know that the highway in question had been in use for a number of years.
As an instance of the delay to make record, is the statement of Benjamin Barnes and Stephen Upson in 1720-that they had been appointed with " Leftenante Judd " to lay out highways to the mill. They then state what they had done at least eighteen years before that time-for Lieut. Judd died in 1702.
The earliest date of a highway accompanied by a layout that is on record is Grand street, from Bank street to Union square, and that was the date of the re-opening of the street, at which time we
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
assume that it was much narrower than in Samuel Steel's original layout of the village plot. In 1712 it was 3 rods wide at Bank street and 5 rods at Union square.
In 1716 Sergt. Stephen Upson and Abraham Andrews laid out "the Country road to the corner of New Haven bounds." They began " at the mouth of the mill trench" on the east side of Mad river (they call it Mill river). It ran to Horse Pasture bridge, to Smug Swamp brook (where the path then went over) to Thomas Hickcox's land, to a rock on the east side of the Country road, to a cart way newly made over a stony swamp, to a black oak stadle on the west side of the Country road on the hill against Sergt. Upson's land, through Daniel Warner's 8 acre lot, to the Fulling Mill brook, to Doctor Porter's land, under the hill to the Great Hollow (between the Hill Side cemetery and that of the Roman Catholics), up the hollow to a plain that leads toward the Burying Yard (Pine Hill), eastward to Samuel Hikcox's plowing land, to the west side of Hikcox's house, over the plain to the brook that runs to the river, under a hill and over a brook, to Thomas Richards's house, to Obadiah Scott's house (beyond which it turned eastward), to the cart way that Judd's Meadow folks use eastward toward New Haven, "and so to the end of the bounds as we suppose." This road was 4 rods wide its entire length.
The repeated reference in the above to the former Country road to New Haven evidently refers to the first one laid out, or ordered, in I686.
The next year, Dec. 15th, a highway was laid out "The west side The River," down to Joseph Lewis's house lot. It will be remembered that passages or ways twenty feet wide were very early laid out through the Common Field meadows, and this highway began on one of those passages at the Long meadow bars and ran across a corner of Doctor Porter's plain which lay west of Pine Island, turned west under the hill to the west side of Carrington's 8 acre lot, then a west line up the hill to the north end of Samuel Barnes's land, then southwest the west side of Bronson's 8 acre lot, over a little brook, then "whealing " southward down to and west through John Barnes's land, to Hop brook, down the brook, across a part of Abraham Andrews's Judd's meadow lot, over the brook, west to the Great hill (Gunn hill, a portion of which is now known as the Terraces), southwest of John Barnes's farm, southwest past a corner of a lot of Benjamin Richards (deceased), southwest down to Butler's brook, down the brook on the north side to Samuel Warner's land, and over the brook to Joseph Lewis's 25 acre house lot. His house was a little west of Ward street.
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OLD HIGHWAYS AND STREETS.
The next day, and it was December weather, two of the survey- ors, Thomas Hikcox and John Bronson, laid out a 4 rod highway to Thomas Andrews's land at Turkey Hill. This was, in part, the same Prospect road that now passes in sight of the Turkey Hill reser- voir. It is described as beginning at East Main street (they call it the Country road), and at "the highway that lies between Daniel Porter's land and Jeremiah Peck's land " (believed to be originally Newell's Cart way), or the way that once answered to present Dub- lin street, although running at a different angle. This road ran south over the Mad river, up along the south side the river to the east end of William Hikcox's land against Gaylord's plain. The original plain is where Rogers & Brother's mill is. The upper Gaylord's plain is where Silver street begins.
The road then ran east over the river, by the river to the end of the plain, then crossed the river and ran southwardly to the north side of Samuel Hikcox's field (a part of it was probably in St. Joseph's Cemetery), thence east, and eastwardly up the East moun- tain where the road now is, across one corner of Samuel Porter's farm, south by the east side of it, and along the west end of Thomas Andrews's land.
The same day they laid out a 4 rod highway from the New Haven road across the south end of the " Abrigado" to the above East Mountain road.
Without date, two roads are recorded, one from Buck's Hill to the vicinity of Wheaton's station, or the ancient "Hancox Brook meadows" above Greystone; the other, from Buck's Hill to Wel- ton's ice pond.
THE EARLY WOODBURY ROADS.
There were three early roads to Woodbury. The first one is mentioned in 1687 and at that date ran over Break Neck hill. A lower road is mentioned in 1718 and earlier. An upper road is found about the same time. It is not until 1720 that a lay-out of the road of 1687 appears upon record. At that time, it comes duly labelled as: "A road towards Woodbury so far as our bounds went." Isaac Bronson, Timothy Standly and Thomas Judd laid it out. They began on West Side hill, where Highland avenue is. They called the place "our west bars." The bars were in the common fence. The first course of the road ran to the west side of the old Bunker Hill road and was twenty rods wide to that point. From thence the road was to be ten rods wide. It took the course of the pres- ent Middlebury road to the Park road, up the Park road to the foot of the first hill (Richards, so named from the first Obadiah Rich- ards's 2 acre lot), where it entered the "lower way." It then turned
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HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
southward and ran along the east side of the hill crossing its south- ern point, and came out into the present road opposite the Oronoke road which it followed to Oronoke hill, where it diverged from the lower way and ran over the northern extremity of the Oronoke range. The old road is still used, and there is a house on it which was long occupied by the Umberfields. It unites with the present Middlebury road near Pine rock-a well known point in the Water- bury and Middlebury line. It followed the present road by the south end of Mount Fair, then went northwestward down its west side in the course of the present road to the ancient Richardson place at Bronson's meadow, where Ebenezer Bronson lived in 1729, and Ebenezer Richardson in 1750, and his son Nathaniel kept tavern in Revolutionary days .*
From the Richardson house the road ran to the west side of the big meadow anciently called Race plain, over the top of Three Mile hill, past Prime's land, about Isaac Bronson's farm (where it was already 6 rods wide), then "to run whereabouts the path now runs" Io rods wide through Isaac Bronson's land and to the end of the bounds. It met the road from Woodbury at the Woodbury line, "at the going down of Wolf Pit hill to the Brids brook in Woodbury bounds." This is called "the Country road to Woodbury" in 1735.
The "upper road to Woodbury" connected with the meadow pas- sage of 20 feet which began near present Mattatuck street, ran along the east side of Manhan meadow to Brown's bridge over the Manhan canal, across a corner of the meadow, to and across the river, through Steel's meadow to Steel's plain, and up the plain to the point where the early roads to Watertown and to Plymouth began.
The upper Woodbury road left this meadow passage a little below the Almshouse, followed the course of Jedediah's brook to Isaac's meadow bars, not far from where the Bunker Hill road joins a cross road from Watertown. It followed substantially the pres- ent Bunker Hill road, and Poverty street to the Woodbury line.
The "lower road to Woodbury" we find nowhere laid out as a con- tinuous road. It was in use in 1715, if not earlier. It diverged from the road of 1720 at Oronoke hill, went by the present clay hole, through Hop Swamp, over Bedlam hill and through Bedlam.
THE DAY'S WORK OF DR. EPHRAIM WARNER AND JOHN BRONSON.
April 5, 1724, the highways of the northeastern section received attention. One was laid out to Buck's Hill. It began at the clay
* Here, tradition tells us, that General Washington dined on one occasion, his horse, meanwhile, being made fast to an enormous elm tree, lately standing, in front of the inn. And here is repeated the same story that Dr. Bronson gives us concerning General Washington and Esquire Hopkins, with Nathaniel Richardson as the "decidedly inquisitive " questioner.
ยท
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OLD HIGHWAYS AND STREETS.
pits (vicinity of Grove and Bishop streets) and continued to about Division street (Edmund Scott's pasture) 6 rods wide, was then increased to 20 rods, which width continued as far as Mrs. Pear- sall's house (the layout says, Obadiah Scott's house). From there, it continued in the path by the east end of Buck's Hill, unto Richard Welton's house. From Welton's house it ran northward " in a path to Handcox Brook meadow at Warner's and Welton's land."
The same day, they marked a road or highway from Obadiah Scott's house lot on the East side of Wigwam Swamp brook to the Pine Hole bars, 4 rods wide (Buck's Hill road to Waterville).
On the same day, they began at the east end of Buck's Hill and ran east, northeast, to a great white oak tree that stood at the south end of Benjamin Warner's house lot, and east and north to Ash Swamp brook. It then ran to the "New Road to Farmington " until they got over the Mad river to Farmington bounds, which point was then marked by "a tree with two branches, and a stone in the crotch."
The same day, these industrious men laid out a highway from "Sergt. Welton's Israel's field," that ran south, down Barnes's plain, "and so to run south and by west through the Chestnut Hill Rocks, and through Mantoe's House Rocks, and then on the west side of Lewis's meadow to the north end of Edmund's pasture."
In 1727 the already existing highways leading to and about present Watertown were formally laid out by two John Bronsons and Thomas Hickcox. One of these began on Steel's brook a little above Isaac Castle's house (southward of Joseph Baird's house), between the brook and the path. It was 8 rods wide to Spruce brook (above Oakville station). From John Warner's line (the Oak- ville Pin company's dam is about the north end of his line) it was to hold so wide to Jeremiah's brook and to Steel's brook. It was "to run up against Ebenezer Richardson's house" (the James Brown, John Merrill, Esquire Buckingham and Davis house). From that place it was 6 rods wide to Samuel Thommus's corner (near the late Cande place), then 4 rods wide for 15 rods, then 8 rods to Cran- berry brook, from thence 4 rods to the village line-just on the western side of Watertown village.
The same day, they laid out a road from the Richardson house above, to Jonathan Scott's mill.
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