USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Norwich > A history of Norwich, Vermont > Part 17
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"A. CURTISS
"Dartmouth College, Sept. 22, 1777."
DOCTOR SHUBAEL CONVERSE
The son of Shubael and Phoebe Converse, was born at Randolph, . Vt., September 7, 1805. He studied his profession with Doctor R. D. Mussey of Hanover, N. H., and at Dartmouth College, graduating at that institution in 1828.
Soon after he settled in Strafford, where he resided in the practice of medicine until 1837, when he purchased the business and homestead of Doctor Horace Hatch at the southern border of Norwich village, and removing there was engaged in the active pursuit of his professional duties for a period of thirty years, until his sudden decease August 6, 1867. Doctor Converse possessed in a high degree the respect and con- fidence of the community, both as a citizen and a physician. A man of enlightened views and much public spirit, he was especially interested in the cause of popular education. He was superintendent of schools
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in Norwich from. 1846 to 1854, and again in 1855 and 1856. After the removal of Norwich University to Northfield in 1866, he was prominent in establishing the Norwich Classical and English Boarding School the following year. He represented the town in the legislature in 1845 and 1846 and was chosen a Senator from Windsor County in 1855 and 1856. Among other young men who pursued medical studies with Doctor Converse at Norwich were Doctor Henry Baxter of Highgate and Doctor Charles D. Lewis of Kentucky.
Doctor Converse married in 1841, Louvia E. Morrill, daughter of David and Margery Morrill, of Strafford, Vt., to whom were born two sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Charles B. Converse, grad- uated at Dartmouth College in 1863, and is now a practising physician in Jersey City, N. J. He received the degree of M. D., at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1871.
Doctor Converse was a cousin of Governor Julius Converse of Wood- stock, also a native of Randolph, where the Converse family appears to have been an influential and numerous family from an early period.
OX !!
REAR-ADMIRAL GEORGE A. CONVERSE
Born at Norwich, May 13, 1844, son of Dr. Shubael and Louvia (Merrill) Converse; was a cadet at Norwich University from 1859 to 1861 ; graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1864, with the high- est honors in a class of 64 members; attached to the European squad- ron, 1865-'69, 1870-9 and 1883-85; instructor at the torpedo station at Newport, R. I .; in command of the U. S. S. Montgomery during the war with Spain; now chief of the bureau of navigation, U. S. Navy. He married Laura Shelby Blood, daughter of Henry and Laura (Shelby) Blood, to whom were born several daughters.
ยท Admiral Converse's great ability in his chosen profession has re- ceived merited recognition from his brother officers.
THE CUSHMAN FAMILY
The Cushman family in New England dates from the year 1621, the first after the landing of the Pilgrims from the Mayflower, when Rob-
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ert Cushman, who was a prominent leader and organizer of the Ply- mouth Colony, brought from England the earliest recruits and supplies to the wasted and famishing settlement.
A century and a half later Solomon Cushman, a descendant of Rob- ert, in the sixth generation, born at Plympton, Mass., in 1745, having married Sarah Curtis, daughter of Simeon Curtis, at Lebanon, Conn., in 1768, removed to Norwich, probably in company with the Curtis family.
Solomon Cushman (afterward known as Captain Solomon) was in those days a famous hunter and marksman, the terror of bears and catamounts. He once shot and killed a deer at a distance of seventy- two rods. In the war of the Revolution he served three years as lieu- tenant in the Norwich militia in the campaign of 1777 against Bur- goyne, and the following two years on the northern frontier as captain of a company of Rangers in the regiment of Colonel Timothy Bedel of Haverhill, N. H. His health was much broken as a result of his service in the army. In 1784 he removed to Tunbridge, Vt., where he died in 1799, at the age of fifty-four. His son, Benjamin H. Cushman, born in Norwich, recently died at Tunbridge, upwards of ninety years old, and the father of twelve children.
Three years after the removal of Captain Solomon Cushman to Tun- bridge, another Solomon Cushman, the fifth in descent from Robert Cushman, the Pilgrim ancestor, came to Norwich from Willington, Conn., with his family. He was already a man of advanced years, and a portion only of his large family of grown up children seems to have accompanied him to his new home in Vermont. Of three sons who came, Job and Solomon, Jr., after some years' residence in Norwich (where Solomon married Charlotte Vincent), removed to the state of New York. Oliver, the remaining son, married Maria C. Thomas of Lebanon, N. H., in 1795, became a prosperous farmer and reared a family of eleven children. He died in 1852 aged eighty-three. Hix son, Oliver, Jr., who married Sophia, daughter of Timothy Tilden, in 1839, occupied the paternal homestead near the banks of Connecticut river.
Joseph Cushman, a younger brother of Solomon, Sr., came to Nor- wich about the same time and settled in the western part of the town. He had previously served four years in the Revolutionary army, and
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had been present at Monmouth and other important battles. He died here in 1848, at the age of eighty-nine, having received a pension of $96 a year for many years. He married Tabitha Johnson, daughter of Captain William Johnson, of Willington, Conn., in 1785, a sister of Seth, Calvin, William, James and John Johnson-all early settlers of Norwich, and four of these also fellow soldiers in the Revolutionary struggle. Mrs. Cushman died in 1856, aged eighty-eight years. Of the descendants of their four children, a granddaughter only, Mrs. Susan Ann Davis, widow of Oscar F. Davis, who died in Andersonville prison in 1864, survives in town.
MOSES DAVIS
The records in the U. S. Pension Office show that Mr. Davis married Sarah Sawyer, at Dracut, Mass., April 6, 1785. He came to Hanover, N. H., in 1806 or '07, and from there to Norwich in 1813 or '14. He was a soldier at the Battle of Lexington and it is supposed that he was in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
In 1777 he served at Fishkill on the Hudson and the next year at Valley Forge. He was one of the guard over the spy, Major Andre, one or two nights before he was executed. The aggregate of Mr. Davis' service in the army was over two years.
DOCTOR IRA DAVIS
The son of Moses Davis, Esq., was born at Dracut, Mass., probably about the year 1797 or 1798. He established himself in the practice of medicine at Norwich Plain in 1830 or 1831, and there continued till his death in March, 1873. He was in constant practice of his profes- sion for more than thirty years.
During his long residence in town, Doctor Davis interested himself in a great variety of matters outside of his professional work. With William T. Porter* he edited and published the Vermont Enquirer
*W. T. Porter, who, in 1856, in connection with George Wilkes, founded in New York City the sporting paper called Porter's Spirit of the Times,
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from 1829-1831. He was chiefly instrumental in organizing an Epis- copal church about 1835. He was a trustee of Norwich University from its start, and always active in its behalf.
He was fruitful in projects of various kinds, many of which it was his fortune never to see realized. For many sessions of the legislature he regularly put in his petition for the establishment of a Bank of Discount at Norwich.
In politics he was a strong partizan, and cultivated party spirit in all the relations of society. He was the only town clerk, as we are in- formed, who ever thought it necessary in recording a statement of the vote of the town at local or general elections to designate the politics of the respective candidates for office opposite the name of each on the record of the town. He often held public office in town, and was postmaster one or more terms.
Doctor Davis was very well versed in matters outside of his pro- fession, in which he was considered a skillful practitioner, and but for a great degree of hesitancy towards exertion, either mental or physical, he might have reaped a happy reward for his efforts toward gain.
He was married (first) to Polly Hazeltine, by whom he had one child, Charles, who was living in one of the western states, not long since : (second) Rhoda Slack, to whom were born Andrew, Frank, Rosella, Margaret and Belle, of whom only Margaret and Belle are living, the latter now holding an important clerical position in the police depart- ment of Boston, Mass., which position she has been an incumbent of for many years. Margaret resides in Minnesota. The third wife was Eliza Crary, who had two sons, one of whom is Doctor George Davis, a suc- cessful physician in Manchester, N. H.
THE DUTTON FAMILY
The progenitor of this family in Norwich was Samuel Dutton, a lineal descendant of Thomas Dutton of Washington, Conn. Samuel Dutton was born March 1. 1707, and married Abigail Merriam, May 6, 1729. He died in Royalton, Vt., in 1802, and his wife April 6, 1799.
Mr. Dutton came from Washington, Conn., to Hartford, Vt., and from the latter place to Norwich, locating on what is called Dutton hill,
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a little west of Norwich village. The original farm, with later addi- tions, is now occupied by Otis Metcalf, son-in-law of the late Deacon John Dutton. .
Mr. Samuel Dutton married (first) Johanna Root in 1764; and (second) Rachel Benedict, in 1772, to whom were born eight children.
Mr. Dutton died Feb. 22, 1813, and his wife died July 1, 1828.
Daniel Benedict, son of Samuel and Rachel Dutton, was born August 22, 1773, and died at Norwich September 1, 1849, aged seventy-six years. His wife, Lorana (Smith), to whom he was married December 5, 1796 (born February 15, 1779), died September 15, 1857. From Norwich he removed to Stowe, Vt., and remained there until just before his father's decease, when he returned to Norwich for a short time, then returned to Stowe.
In 1834 he again came to Norwich, and here died.
The late Deacon John Dutton, son of Daniel B. and Lorana (born at Stowe, Vt., August 23, 1818), came to Norwich with his parents in 1834, and continued thereafter to reside on the ancestral acres until his decease January 16, 1888.
Although a lifelong farmer, Deacon Dutton interested himself in other ventures, at times. He represented his town in the Legislature in 1874 and 1876. He was a devoted member of the Congregational church for many years.
His wife (Harriet Anna Lord) to whom he was married June 14, 1848, is still living. Their children were six in number, two of whom are living : Charles Sumner and Hattie Elizabeth, the latter the wife of Otis Metcalf.
THE EMERSON BROTHERS
About the year 1792, Elihu Emerson, just then arrived at his ma- jority, came to Norwich from Westfield, Mass .; followed in 1795 by Joseph and later by Thomas, two younger brothers.
These young men became heads of families, and were prominent resi- dents in town for many years.
Elihu was a blacksmith by trade, and carried on business in a shop
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that he built a short distance north of his residence on "Norwich Plain."
For his first wife Mr. Emerson married Thankful Grant, and for his second wife Cynthia Brooks. The first wife died in 1834, aged fifty- eight years, and the second wife in 1861, aged eighty years, Mr. Emer- son following them in 1873, at the advanced age of over one hundred and two years. He died at his daughter's in Leicester, Mass., from which place his remains were brought to Norwich and placed in the village cemetery.
By his first wife Mr. Emerson had three daughters: Charlotte, who married John Milton Partridge of Norwich; Harriet, who married Doctor Austin Flint, of Leicester, Mass .; and Julia, who never mar- ried.
Mr. Emerson was a very agile man until well along in years- placing his hands on his horse's back and mounting thereon from the ground on the seventy-first anniversary of his birth.
Joseph and Thomas were inclined towards trade and speculation. Besides occupying the home field in this direction, they had, before 1812, established large stores of general merchandise at Montreal and Detroit, doing a very extensive business. The latter place was, at that period, the general trading post and distributing point for a large portion of the Northwest Territory. They traded with the Indians and furnished the American army under General Hull and other commanders in that vicinity with large quantities of supplies, and did a very lucrative business.
After having sold out there, Joseph Emerson was engaged consid- erably as a builder. He built both the Norwich University buildings, the "South Barracks" in 1819-1820, and the north building, a board- ing house, in 1830-1831, besides many private dwellings in town. He died at Norwich, January, 1857, at the age of eighty-four years. Thomas Emerson continued active in trade at Norwich and other places. He was also prominent in building the new meeting house of the South Congregational Society, at Norwich Plain, in 1817. After 1820 he was actively engaged in politics. He represented the town 1824-1829 as a Jackson Democrat.
During some of these years the contest waxed very hot between the partizans of Mr. Emerson and those of Judge Loveland, who was op-
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posed to him in politics and frequently a candidate for legislative honors. The struggle was made mostly on personal grounds, as far as we have been able to ascertain.
Mr. Emerson was a good representative, in his day and on a small scale, of what has since come to be known as personal politics, and he was a good example of a political "boss." The scenes that attended electioneering and elections at this time are represented as sufficiently discreditable to the town. Rum flowed as freely as water, and the amount of treating, drunkenness, and disorder was utterly sickening to sober minded people.
He removed to Windsor in 1829 to become president of the Windsor Bank. The bank failed in 1835 or 1836, and after passing through an unpleasant ordeal as a consequence of the failure, Mr. Emerson went West never to return to Vermont. While at Windsor he built himself a costly dwelling house-said to be the finest residence in the state at that time. It is the place owned by Hon. E. W. Stoughton. The brick used in building it was all made at Norwich, and the granite for under- pinning and cellar was quarried here. These were all transported to Windsor by teams on the same day.
Of course large quantities of liquor were consumed and some of the men who went with their teams were said to have been several days in getting home.
REVEREND SAMUEL GODDARD
Mr. Goddard was born at Sutton, Mass., July 6, 1772. We have no information concerning his early life. His opportunities for education are said to have been scanty. After coming to manhood he was for several years in trade with a brother in Royalston, Mass. Here he married his first wife (Abigail Goddard of Athol, a town adjoining Royalston), and here his older children were born.
The mercantile business ended in failure, and Mr. Goddard's thoughts were turned strongly towards the subject of religion. The result was that he became a student for the ministry with Doctor Seth l'ayson, D. D., of Rindge, N. H. (Doctor Payson was father of Rev- erend Edward Payson, the eminent divine of a later day.)
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After being admitted to preach, Mr. Goddard was employed part of a year at Gilsum, N. H. In the year 1809 he removed to the town of Concord in northern Vermont, a new town in a thinly settled district, a town whose first settlers were largely from Royalston and other neighboring Massachusetts towns.
He was then a man thirty-seven years of age and had a family of six children. A small church had been gathered in Concord previous to the coming of Mr. Goddard, largely through the efforts of Deacon David Hibbard, who had emigrated to that town from Norwich, Vt., in 1799.
Over this church Mr. Goddard was ordained the first pastor Sep- tember 7. 1809, which relation was maintained about twelve years, until his dismission June 6, 1821. The church consisted of but seven- teen, members at the settlement of the new pastor, and received about eighty additions during his ministry. The ordination services were held in the open air (at Concord Corner), and were largely attended by citizens of Concord and adjoining towns. The ordination sermon was preached by Rev. Joseph Lee of Royalston, Mass., from Jeremiah III, 15. A handsome meeting house was built for the church in 1816- large and costly for the time, at an expense of about $3,000. It was furnished with an excellent bell "the first in all the region round."
Besides building up a flourishing church at Concord, Mr. Goddard performed considerable missionary labor for the Vermont and New Hampshire Missionary Societies during his residence at Concord. At least three new churches were organized by him during this period- at Barnet in 1816, and at Glover and Barton in 1818.
It is claimed that he established the first Sabbath School in Ver- mont, composed of the young people of his church, in 1811 or 1812. This he called his "Bible School," and it was modeled after similar schools then recently started in England. (It is interesting to note in this connection, that the successor of Mr. Goddard over the church at Concord, Reverend S. R. Hall, is credited with being the first to estab- lish educational institutions for the training of teachers for common schools-substantially our modern Normal Schools. This was about the year 1825.)
An invitation to preach as a candidate for the North Congregational Church at Norwich, Vt. (then without a minister) in the autumn of
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1821, was followed by his settlement there January 23, 1822, as suc- cessor to Reverend John W. Woodward, who had been dismissed the preceding summer. The North Church at this time numbered about one hundred members; and almost immediately there were large accessions. March 3, 1822, twenty-nine new members were admitted; in May, six- teen ; and in July, ten; so that before the end of the year sixty new members were added to the church.
"During a ministry of a little over seventeen years," wrote Mr. God- dard in 1838, "there have been five revivals of religion of greater or less extent in this church. In 1821 and 1822 there were added to the church eighty-eight. In each of the years 1826, 1831 and 1835, there were revivals and about forty added to the church as fruits at each season. In the winter of 1836-37, there was a revival in several school districts, chiefly among the Sabbath School children, and sixteen were added to the church. The present number on our list is now (1838) 247, some of whom are non-resident. The society is small and much scattered, and the usual number at public worship is considerably less than the number of church members."
The prosperity of the North Congregational Church under the min- istrations of Mr. Goddard, as above outlined, is certainly remarkable. He found it weakened in numbers and resources by the recent organ- ization of a new church at Norwich Plain, less than two miles distant, the seat of a flourishing seminary around which the business, popula- tion and wealth of the town were gathering to build up a new and thriving village. At the close of a ministry of over twenty years, during which period his parish was still further depleted by the re- moval of many families and individuals to the West, he left the church stronger and more united than he found it.
Outside of the special duties of his calling, Mr. Goddard proved him- self a valuable citizen in the promotion of the best interests of the town and community. In 1825 he assisted in organizing a town com- mittee for the supervision of the common schools of the town, of which committee he was a member (with Colonel Alba Stimson and others), and chairman for several years. This was before there was any state legislation requiring town supervision of common schools in Vermont. He was instrumental in organizing a Temperance Society in connection with his church and society. July 4, 1827, at the very outset of the
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temperance movement in this country, a society was formed from members of the North Church, with others, "on the principle of volun- tary abstinence from the use of ardent spirits." On the third of May, 1833, the church, by a solemn resolve, declared "that the traffic and use of ardent spirits, as a drink, was inconsistent with church mem- bership." Early the following year Ralph Waterman, who persisted, after repeated appeals, in selling spirituous liquors to intemperate per- sons, was expelled from the church.
About thirty years ago, Reverend S. W. Boardman, then preaching for the South Congregational Society at Norwich, reviewed the his- tory of that church in town in a series of historical sermons. His esti- mate of Mr. Goddard is copied in part below, slightly condensed, but mostly in his own words:
"Mr. Goddard deserves to have a full narrative of his life written. It seems to me, all things considered, that no better or more useful citizen has ever lived in this place. More than any other man ever settled here he might say, I think, 'By the grace of God I am what I am.' His opportunities for early education were exceedingly limited. I have understood that three months completed all his time at school. In mature life he became a merchant, but it was impressed upon him that he ought to preach the gospel. Still he felt that he could not leave his business, but the Lord sent upon him calamity and his store was burned to the ground. Still he pursued his business till reverse fol- lowing reverse left him nothing more to lose; and being thus divested of all earthly treasures he was ready to enter the Lord's vineyard. He was now thirty-seven years of age, with a family of six children. It is not probable that many are called to preach the gospel under such circumstances, but in Mr. Goddard's case there can be but little doubt that he followed the path of duty. After a brief period of study he commenced preaching
"At the close of his first settlement of twelve years at Concord, Vt., he was called to Norwich in 1821. His equipment of learning was prob- ably less than that of any other man ever settled over this church. He had, however, a clear, ready mind, a good knowledge of the bible, and he was a man of prayer.
"While he made no pretensions to scholarship he had, above all, the Lord's work at heart. He preached generally without notes, and
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though wanting perhaps in the logical method secured by thorough training, he had an aim before him in every sermon, the conversion and sanctification of souls. The earnest manner and godly devotion of the man commanded universal reverence. People were glad to see him in all the neighboring pulpits. He was a favorite at Hanover, where the students never criticised him. They saw in him something higher than the rules of rhetoric or mere human culture, something that silenced and overawed criticism. Speaking in this simple, artless man- ner he would nevertheless, often rise to a high degree of natural elo- quence. A remarkable man, eminently consecrated to his work, he combined every gift of piety and talent directly to glorify God.
"He was settled on a salary of $600; in some years, I am told, re- ceiving not more than one half of it. In his later years he became nearly or quite blind."
In his domestic life Mr. Goddard seems to have seen many sorrows. He buried two wives, and it was his lot to stand at the graves of sev- eral grown up children. His first wife, Abigail Goddard of Athol, Mass., died at Norwich, Jan. 23, 1823, aged 48, just about one year after his settlement. His second wife, Prudence Hayward of Lunen- burg, Vt., died at Freedom, Portage Co., Ohio in 1840, after a sickness of four and one half months, where she had gone the previous year with Mr. Goddard to care for his sick daughter Elizabeth. Her age at death was 60 years .*
Eunice Hutchinson of Norwich, his third wife, whom he married in 1841, survived him 36 years, dying in 1880 at the age of 88.
Of Mr. Goddard's eight grandchildren, the oldest is the daughter of his youngest son.' She recalls with marvelous clearness the loving ex- pression of his countenance when he told her the story of Jesus, and as the years go by that impression grows more vivid in her memory.
Rev. Samuel Goddard was known to his friends in Norwich, it is thought, for almost anything rather than as a writer of poetry. In his early years, however, he seems to have given many leisure hours to the composition of verses. One of his grandchildren, Miss Ellen God-
*Mr. and Mrs. Goddard left Norwich for Ohio, July 14, 1839, and he did not return until May 23, 1840. During his absence Mr. Goddard preached a part of the time at Free- dom, Ohio, where he was invited to settle.
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