USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Norwich > A history of Norwich, Vermont > Part 16
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"Aug. 9th. Went to the hospital to visit the sick. Ensign Tilden taken sick. I went out whortleberrying-got caught in a sudden shower and much wet.
"Aug. 10th. Got Ensign Tilden out of camp.
"Aug. 11th. Went on Grand Parade. Saw 2 men whipped for desertion, and one pardoned for sleeping on his post. Went to Gen. McDougal's to swear to Pay Rolls; in the afternoon on fatigue.
"Aug. 12th. This day the first Regt1. Court Martial was held that ever was held in the Regiment. Some whipping followed."
The above extracts give us a realistic picture in miniature of the daily life in camp and on guard duty of the American soldier in 1777. Captain Brigham was then in the prime of life-thirty-two years old- but as yet had seen no fighting. The next winter he was to spend with his comrades in misery in Valley Forge, after having had his mettle tried at Fort Mifflin and Germantown the autumn following.
DOCTOR THOMAS S. BRIGHAM
Was the oldest son of Honorable Paul Brigham, and was born in Coventry, Conn., in 1769, coming to Norwich with his father when twelve years of age.
After reaching his majority he studied medicine (with what prac-
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titioner is not known) possibly with Doctor Joseph Lewis. This was before the founding of Dartmouth Medical College.
When about twenty-five years old Mr. Brigham married Polly Dana, born in 1769, a daughter of General James Dana, and settled in town, where he practiced his profession for several years previous to 1809, when he removed from Norwich, going to Amesbury, Mass., where he married for the second time, becoming the father of five children by this union. From Amesbury he removed to Maine, where he located as a practicing physician.
While living in Norwich three sons and two daughters were born to Doctor Brigham. These children and their mother remained in Nor- wich after the husband and father removed from town, and the family were never reunited thereafter.
Doctor Brighamn is said to have attained considerable eminence in his profession. He died in 1821.
ZEBINA COIT
The death of Zebina Coit at Norwich, September 28, 1886, aged eighty-one years, removed another of the ancient landmarks of the town. Mr. Coit was a son of Captain Samuel Coit, who emigrated to Norwich from the town of the same name in Connecticut over one hundred years ago, and who married Mary Burton, sister of Pierce Burton, Esq., and Henry Burton, at Norwich in 1788.
.The ancient seat of the Coit family-a family historic in the annals of Connecticut-was in and around New London. Captain Coit, at that time a youth of nineteen, was present as a soldier at the burning of that town by the British under the traitor Benedict Arnold, and the bloody massacre of the garrison of Fort Griswold on Groton Heights, on the opposite bank of the river, at the same time. He died at Norwich in 1851 in his eighty-ninth year.
Zebina Coit, born in 1805, lived all his days on the paternal home- stead, situated on the height of land in the northwest part of the town near the town lines of Strafford and Sharon. Here Captain Coit kept for many years a well known hostelry, in the old times of stage coaches and travel over the turnpike road laid through town from Chelsea court house, and thence to Montpelier in the year 1807.
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By reason of the great longevity of his father and himself, Zebina Coit, was, so far as known to the writer, the only surviving represen- tative of the second generation of Norwich inhabitants-the children of the first settlers of the town. One by one the old families that settled up the town and have been more or less identified with its history for a century or more, are passing away. In common with all rural New England, the process of depletion of its population by removal of its young men and women from town to the West and to the cities has long been going on. For more than one hundred years now there has been one constant, unbroken stream of emigration going out from us. Probably there is not a state or a territory in the Union where may not be found natives of Norwich or descendants of these.
With the death of Mr. Coit the family name becomes extinct in town.
GEORGE MUSALAS COLVOCORESSES [By Captain G. P. Colvocoresses]
Born in Scio, Grecian Archipelago, October 22, 1816. During the Greek Revolution the Turks invaded that island in 1822, and after narrowly escaping the massacre that followed, George with his mother and two young sisters were carried captives to Smyrna. Through friends in that city he was ransomed and sent in an American brig to Baltimore; much kindness was shown him by members of the Greek Relief Committee, and the story of his misfortunes excited the sym- pathy of Captain Alden Partridge, head of the military academy then at Norwich, who offered to receive and provide for young Colvocoresses as his son. Accordingly, he was sent to Norwich and his kind bene- factor educated him in his military academy and secured for him an appointment in the United States Navy in 1832.
He was a passed midshipman in the Wilkes Exploring Expedition in the Pacific, 1838-'42, and saw service in all parts of the world during his naval career.
He married Miss Eliza Freelon Halsey, niece of Captain Thomas W. Freelon, U. S. N., in 1846, and Norwich continued to be his home until 1863.
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Ås lieutenant and second in command of the U. S. S. "Levant," on the China station, he took part in the bombardment and capture of the Barrier Forts in the Canton River.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he was ordered to the U. S. S. "Supply" and promoted to commander ; while in this ship he captured the "Stephen Hart" of Liverpool, loaded with arms and ammunition for the rebels. He was in constant service along the Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico; blockading the coast of Georgia in the U. S. S. "Saratoga," he conducted several raids into the enemy's country, captured troops, dispersed meetings of rebels, and destroyed salt works and stores. For his zealous and efficient services he was twice thanked in general orders by Admiral Dahlgren and also received the special commendation of the Secretary of the Navy.
At the close of the war Captain Colvocoresses commanded the U. S. S. "Wauchusett" and later the U. S. S. "St. Mary's" in the Pacific where he gave valuable protection to United States citizens in Val- paraiso during operations of the Spanish fleet against the Republic of Chili.
In 1867 he was retired with the rank of captain.
His second wife was Miss Adeline Maria Swasey, of Claremont, N. H., a sister of Mrs. Alden Partridge. By his first wife he had four children, George Partridge Colvocoresses, Franka Eliza, wife of J. Denison Champlin, Jr., of New York, Eva Freelon, married to G. E. Jones of Litchfield, Conn., and Ellena Seaman, wife of Doctor Charles W. Haddock of Beverly, Mass.
Captain Colvocoresses was the author of a book called "Four Years in a Government Expedition," narrating events of the first scientific explorations made by our navy in foreign waters. He met an untimely death by the hands of assassins in Bridgeport, Conn., on the night of June 3, 1872.
GEORGE PARTRIDGE COLVOCORESSES
Born in Norwich, April 3d, 1847, only son of Captain G. M. and Eliza F. Colvocoresses.
During the civil war he served in the navy as captain's clerk for
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over two years on board the U. S. ships "Supply" and "Saratoga." He was a cadet at Norwich University and subsequently entered the U. S. Naval Academy in 1864, graduating in 1869. His naval service has been performed on all the foreign stations and on shore as an in- structor at the Naval Academy and at the Hydrographic Office. Pro- moted to Ensign 1870, Master 1872, Lieutenant 1875, Lieutenant-Com- mander 1897, Commander 1900, Captain 1905.
Lieutenant-Commander Colvocoresses was executive officer of the cruiser "Concord" in Commodore Dewey's squadron at Manila and was advanced five numbers in his grade for "eminent and conspicuous conduct in battle." He returned home as executive officer of the flag-ship "Olympia.", The following two years he was engaged in preparing for publication the "Naval War Records of the Rebellion," after which he was appointed to the command of the U. S. Cruiser "Lancaster," and later the cruiser "Yankee." Since the expiration of this sea duty he has been employed at the New York Navy Yard.
Commander Colvocoresses married Miss Mary Dwight Baldwin of New York City in 1875 and has two sons,-George M., a graduate of Yale University, and mining engineer, and Harold, lieutenant U. S. Marine Corps.
COOK FAMILY
Three brothers, Samuel, Francis, and Lyman, with their two sisters, (children of Jonathan and Lydia [ Aldrich] Cook), ran away from the Shaker settlement at Lancaster, Mass., where they had been placed by their parents before 1800, and came to this vicinity at an early day. Samuel settled in Norwich, and married Anna Pratt, by whom he had nine children. From Samuel the later generations of Cooks in town were descended.
Francis also located in Norwich, on the farm now occupied by David Sargent, and there he lived and died. He was never married.
Lyman settled in Thetford.
Another brother, Washington, settled in New York State, and him- self and his son were made prisoners by the Indians, and taken to Canada, but were subsequently released from captivity.
BIOGRAPHICAL
Seventeen acres of the farm where Samuel Cook located were bought by him at auction when they were sold for taxes, and fifty acres were purchased at private sale from Stephen Percival.
Leonard Cook, son of Samuel, died at Norwich, on the paternal acres, May 13, 1886, aged seventy-seven years. He was the last sur- viving child of his parents' nine children, all of whom lived to have children of their own,-sixty, all told.
Mr. Cook's son, Royal E., now resides in Norwich Village, having removed from the ancestral home several years since, leaving it in the possession of his son, George, whose children are the fifth generation of the family to live on the place.
THE CURTIS FAMILY
Simeon Curtis came to Norwich from Lebanon, Conn., as early as the year 1773, in which year he was elected one of the town assessors, and located near the south line of the town, on the farm where Henry S. Goddard now lives. Mr. Curtis died in 1779 at the age of fifty- eight years, and his grave is found in the old cemetery at Norwich village among the graves of other early settlers and near that of his gifted son, Abel Curtis, who survived his father only four years.
But little is now known of the Curtis family, as its last representa- , tives seem to have disappeared from town more than half a century ago. , The maiden name of Mrs. Simeon Curtis was Sarah Hutchinson, and the home of the family was at "Lebanon Crank" as it was called, or that part of Lebanon which is now Columbia, Conn., and which was the immediate locality of Moor's Indian Charity School founded by Doctor Eleazer Wheelock, out of which grew Dartmouth College.
Captain Solomon Cushman, who came to Norwich the same year with Simeon Curtis, had married in 1768, at Lebanon Crank, Sarah Curtis, probably a daughter of Simeon Curtis. He removed to Tun- bridge, Vt., in 1784, where he was preceded several years by Elias Curtis, another son of Simeon, who had previously lived in Norwich, and where two or more of his children were born (Elias, b. July 4, 1776-Abijah, b. March 11, 1781), but had removed and was living near the first branch of White River in Tunbridge at the time of the
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burning of Royalton in 1780, and who was carried into captivity to Canada at that time, where he remained till the close of the war. Elias Curtis died in Tunbridge, October 16, 1830, just fifty years to a day from the time of the attack on Royalton, having been a prominent and much esteemed citizen of that town, which he represented in the legis- lature and in the convention which in 1791 adopted the constitution of the United States, preliminary to the admission of Vermont into the Union. The wife of Elias Curtis was also Sarah Hutchinson and sister of Abijah, John, and Hezekiah Hutchinson, all from Lebanon, Conn., and pioneer settlers in Tunbridge and Royalton.
A brother of Elias Curtis, Simeon Curtis, Jr., married Abigail Rood of Royalton and settled in Tunbridge at an early day, and reared a family of five children. Two of his sons, Abel Curtis and Asahel Cur- tis, removed in 1810 to the new town of Lowell, Vt., where they were distinguished for their enterprise and intelligence in building up the town. Abel Curtis was the first town clerk of Lowell, an office which he held twenty-seven consecutive years, with two years' exception ; was the first justice of the peace, which position he held twenty years; the first postmaster ; built the first frame house; the first grist mill; was member of constitutional convention, etc. He died in 1879 at a very advanced age.
Asahel Curtis represented Lowell in the legislature in 1812, '14, and '18.
Don Brigham Curtis, son of Abel Curtis, has been town clerk of Lowell since 1866, has represented that town in the legislature two vears, as has also, repeatedly, Don Eugene Curtis, a son of Don B. Both of these have for many years been leading men in business and public affairs in Lowell, and the Curtis family are altogether still showing a strong vitality and strength of character.
Of the Curtis family in Norwich, two daughters of Abel Curtis, Esq., survived him. Lucy, the eldest, (born February 22, 1780), married Hon. Thomas Emerson. Of the younger, Sally, (born De- cember 6, 1782), we have no information.
Samuel Curtis, probably a son of Simeon Curtis, married Amy Chandler, May 8, 1788. He is believed to have lived on the Simeon Curtis farm (now H. S. Goddard's). Several children were born to him from this union prior to 1794, of whom Abel Curtis (born Oc-
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tober 26, 1790) was one. Still later Solomon Curtis seems to have owned and occupied the same premises. He sold the farm to Doctor Joseph Lewis in 1800, and from that date the Curtis family, so far as we are informed, disappears from Norwich.
ABEL CURTIS
In the abundance of able men that adorned the first twenty-five years of the history of the town, there is no more brilliant name than that of Abel Curtis.
He was a son of Simeon Curtis and came with his father from Leb- anon, Conn., where he was born June 13, 1755.
The son graduated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1776, being the first graduate from this town, one year earlier than the Rev. Asa Burton.
Abel Curtis is first mentioned in connection with town affairs in November, 1778, when he was chosen delegate to the Cornish conven- tion of December following, in company with Peter Olcott and Nathan- iel Brown.
From this time until his death in 1783-a period full of important events shaping the future of state and country-he was prominent in all the transactions of the town, representative for three years in the legislature ; serving on many committees ; delegate to Congress in 1782, with Ira Allen and Jonas Fay; assistant judge of the county court in 1782; delegate to the Charlestown convention of January, 1781, sitting at Windsor, by the joint action of which with the legislature of Ver- mont, the second union of New Hampshire towns was effected on the 22nd of February, following; delegate to the Thetford convention of June 1782, by which he was commissioned agent of the towns of Hart- ford, Norwich, Bradford, and Newbury to carry to the Government of New Hampshire a memorial, drawn up by himself, proposing to place said towns under the jurisdiction of that state, in certain contingencies. The last public service he performed for the state was as chairman of a legislative committee to secure the services of a state printer, which resulted in a contract with Hough and Spooner, who came to Windsor from Norwich, Conn., and acted as printers for the state for the term
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of eight years. We have hardly space to enumerate the town offices he held in these years. He was elected town clerk in March, 1780. The records of the town meetings from the organization of the town up to the time of his death in 1783 are in his handwriting.
These records he appears to have carefully copied from the note books and memoranda of earlier clerks and clearly arranged in a new volume. He was elected justice of the peace in 1781, was town treas- urer in -- , first selectman in 1781-'82, lister, grand and petit juryman, and representative elect to the legislature at the time of his death. He also acted as a member of a committee to build the first meeting house.
AN UNSUNG WORTHY [W. W. Morrill, Esq.]
In the old burying ground on Norwich Plain, a crumbling tombstone, adorned with the marvellous skull and scroll-work of the Revolutionary sculptor, bears the following inscription :
" In Memory of " ABEL CURTIS, Esqr " who " 1783 " Beneath "lies at " whom heaven had blest " with Genious bright & love
" Divine which now in
" Relms of Glory Shine."
The missing words have disappeared with the shale upon which they were engraved, and must be sought elsewhere or imagined.
At the foot of the grave, upon another stone almost as large as the first, the inscription intact, as though "the carking tooth of time" had purposely spared to future generations this monument of orthography and song to the scholar whose glory is predicted, reads :
" Abel " Curtis Esqr " Here lies e dust of " one whos Generous " soul is gone to seats " of high Renown "to ware a Glorious " Crown."
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The first, though not the earliest, entries under the head of "Mar- riages, Births, Deaths," in the first book of records of the town of Norwich reads :
"Abel Curtis married to Kezia Brown, May 12, 1779."
"Lucy Curtis, born 22d February, 1780," and the opposite page is headed with : "Abel Curtiss Esq" died October 7, 1783."
The general catalogue of Dartmouth College contains, as it has or may have done for a century past, the following entry :
"1776 Abel Curtis, f. A. M. 1783. 28"
Who and what was Abel Curtiss (for so the name is always spelled by himself) ; this youth who left his alma mater at the age of twenty- one, whose subsequent career was almost coincident in time with the war of the Revolution, who became a farmer, a husband, and a father, and who died a hundred years ago, aged twenty-eight ?
A little book, believed to be the first literary production of a Dart- mouth graduate, or of a citizen of Vermont, as well as the first purely English grammar written and published in America, but a single copy of which is now thought to exist, bears the following upon its title- page :
"A compend of English Grammar; being an attempt to point out the fundamental principles of the English language in a concise and intelligible manner, and to assist in writing and speaking the same with accuracy and correctness.
"Written by Abel Curtiss, A. B."
" While Education bears her gentle sway, And we her precepts cheerfully obey ;
While every breast glows with the gen'rous flame And Britons envy our increasing fame ;
In mighty pomp America will rise, Her glories spreading to the boundless skies,
" Dresden ; Dartmouth College.
" Printed by J. P. & A. Spooner, 1779."
The events of the seven years between Abel Curtiss' graduation and his death, crowded with the stirring scenes of the war for independence, are doubly interesting to the student of early Vermont history; they possess a still greater charm for him of the Connecticut river towns.
When Abel Curtiss left the college on the eastern bank for the farm
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on the western, the united colonies had just declared their independence of the British crown, the people of the New Hampshire Grants, whose territory was separately claimed by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and particularly New York, were about declaring themselves an inde- pendent state; and the towns on either bank of the Connecticut had a special concern that they might not be separated from each other in the division into states. So while with the new-made states they fought the savage and the Briton, common foes, the river settlers had three distinct contests to wage against individual states, and still another with whomsoever sought to make the Connecticut a boundary.
The town of Norwich, now almost a Sleepy Hollow with a Deserted Village, was in Abel Curtiss' time one of the foremost towns in the infant commonwealth; so important that when the first Governor's Council was formed, in 1778, while other leading towns furnished each one of the twelve councillors, Norwich alone gave two.
The records of the town bear ample testimony that the Norwich fathers were able and influential men ; so that when Abel Curtiss took the freeman's oath it was by no means wholly for lack of efficient ma- terial that he was at once put forward as a leader in civic affairs; that now he is appointed upon a committee to lay out a highway from the river across the town; now an assessor to assess the inhabitants to pay a scouting party ; now to take the list of inhabitants with a view to providing for the minister's support; now to estimate the value of the several pews in the new meeting house, the finest in the state; now "to treat with the trustees of Dartmouth College respecting the expediency of endeavoring to obtain a lottery for the purpose of erecting a bridge across the river between this town and Dresden"; that he held all man- ner of town offices and several at a time-surveyor of highways, sealer of weights and measures, petit-juryman, grand-juryman, selectman, town treasurer, town clerk, justice of the peace; that he represented the town in the Vermont assembly in 1778, 1781, and 1782; that he was appointed a delegate to almost every one of the frequent conventions in which his town was interested. Nor certainly in larger fields was it from paucity of able and experienced men that he became one of the judges of the County Court: that in company with two of the foremost men of the state he was sent to the American Congress at Philadelphia to solicit admission to the Union; that he was appointed
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by the governor a member of the "board of war"; that he held other delicate and responsible positions.
Important as were his services to town, county, and state, Abel Curtiss' political labors were chiefly directed to keeping the Con- necticut river towns united in civil relations.
Prior to 1764 the territory of New Hampshire and Vermont had been under a single jurisdiction. The two banks of the Connecticut had been settled by neighbors, who had remained neighbors, whose customs and interests were identical. The division in Colonial times had affected them but slightly. But when it became a question of form- ing independent states, the feeling of indifference gave place to one of great concern that the river towns should not be separated.
Of these river towns, Norwich on the one bank was, as we have seen, important; on the other side was Dresden, the portion of Hanover, three miles square, which contained the college, and which New Hamp- shire had placed under the jurisdiction of President Wheelock as magistrate. These two important places were centrally located from north to south, and approximately so from east to west, should Ver- mont be allowed to extend to "Mason's Line"; and the capital, which would doubtless be located on the river, might well come to one of them.
At all events, the college authorities were deeply interested, together with many east-bank towns, as was Norwich with those on the western bank, to remove the boundary from the river. What wonder that both parties saw in Abel Curtiss, one of the earliest graduates of the college, and doubtless the first collegian whom Norwich had produced, young, talented, and ambitious, a valuable coadjutor in their plans, and that he at once became a leader in the movement !
Finally, no better tribute can be paid to the patriotism of this almost prodigy of the olden time, than the reproduction of the follow- ing extracts from a letter written to a college classmate who had joined the enemy :
"For Mr. Levi Willard :
"To the care of any patriot; supposed to be with the British forces at the Northward, unless taken,
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"My dear Willard:
"You can hardly guess my surprise and grief when first I heard the melancholy news that you had forsaken a father's house, friends, and acquaintances, and had gone : gracious Heaven, where ? To join your- self with (let me use as favorable terms as possible) those savage and unnatural destroyers of our country If you think our cause unjust, I shall not at present multiply words; only ask you to look into the natural and equal right every man has to freedom, and then see if one may in justice assume power over another so as to 'bind him in all else whatever' It is this arbitrary power these states are opposing ; and indeed I am so convinced of the justice of our cause that should every man in the United States of America, even to his Excellency General Washington, willingly submit to the power of Britain, which I am confident is far otherwise, I should by no means be persuaded that we are not fighting in the cause of heaven and mankind. That you may be thoroughly convinced of your error, return to your allegiance to the American States, be a faithful and true subject of the same,-and experience the happy, happy effects of a pardon from God and your country is, once dear sir, the hearty desire and prayer of your well wisher and my country's devoted servant.
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