USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Norwich > A history of Norwich, Vermont > Part 4
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The founding of Dartmouth College at Hanover in 1769 was an event of great interest and importance to the early settlers of Norwich. Besides the advantages it promised for the convenient higher educa- tion of their children,-advantages to which they were fully alive. as shown by their liberal subscriptions in land and money to its endow- ment-the building up of such an institution in the immediate neigh- borhood created an instant demand for labor and supplies of every kind. The president, Doctor Wheelock, through his Indian pupil, Samson Occum, and other agents, had collected in England and Scot- land several thousand pounds to be expended in the establishment and support of a new college in the wilderness. The effect of this ex- penditure could not fail to make money more plenty and to contribute in various ways to the material prosperity of the vicinage. The con- version and education of the Indians was the leading purpose that ani- mated Doctor Wheelock in thus setting up his college on the very bor- ders of civilization. And surely no pious brotherhood of priests, no lonely mission of French or Spanish Jesuits, by western lake or river, ever planted an institution of learning or religion into wilder scenes and surroundings. The location of the college at Hanover was de- cided upon early in the summer of 1770, after Doctor Wheelock and two of the trustees from Connecticut had made a tour of several weeks' exploration along the river and through the northern part of New
*Seven of the ten first governors, and five of the nine first lieutenant governors of Vermont were natives of Connecticut, as were eleven of the sixteen first judges of the Supreme Court whose place is known. So were two-thirds of all the higher officers of the State during the first fifty years of its history,
36
HISTORY OF NORWICH
Hampshire. A tradition in the Burton family asserts that the location was finally fixed at a conference held at the house of Jacob Burton in Norwich, in June, 1770, between Doctor Wheelock and his associates and some of the leading men of this and neighboring towns; a tradition by no means improbable, and it may also be here said, incidentally, that the location might probably have been placed at Norwich rather than Hanover, had not New Hampshire a short time before, in com- pliance with the royal decision of July 20, 1765, formally renounced her jurisdiction over all territory west of Connecticut river, in favor of New York, thus leaving Norwich just outside the domain of the authority (Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire) which had granted the college charter. To many of the inhabitants of Norwich and adjacent towns, Doctor Wheelock was then personally well known as a favorite preacher and for many years the preceptor of Moor's Charity School at Lebanon, Conn., in the very neighborhood from which they had themselves lately come. And while Norwich was at this time thickly dotted with clearings and contained nearly 200 people, her sister township of Hanover across the river was still, in ail the western portion at least, an almost unbroken wilderness. Hanover Plain was a forest of gigantic white pines, some of which reached a height of more than 200 feet .* The stalwart sons of Jacob Burton, with other young men from Norwich, helped to cut down these mon- archs of the primitive forest in the early summer of 1770, so that when Doctor Wheelock came on with workmen and teams in the August following, a beginning had been made and sunshine admitted to a few acres of ground where the village of Hanover now stands.
A few weeks later when the family of President Wheelock and students to the number of about thirty arrived, a log hut eighteen feet square was the only building ready to receive them. A house for the president, and a college building 32x80 feet, both of logs ( ?) had been commenced. A unique spectacle it must have been when the straggling procession of Moor's Charity School and Dartmouth College made their debut into Hanover, as they emerged slowly from the surrounding
*One tree was found to be 270 feet by actual measurement. An acre of land could be enclosed, it is said, by four of these monsters properly felled. The white pine is one of the longest lived of our native trees. Doctor Williams says that some of the largest pines on Connecticut river, of the original growth, were ascertained to be between 300 and 400 years old, by count of their concentric rings when cut.
37
EARLY JOURNALS OF PRESIDENT WHEELOCK
forest into the little clearing on some September afternoon in 1770, the students on foot, driving before them a few cows and pigs be- longing to the college, the whole equipment and endowment of the in- stitution loaded into a few ox carts, and Madame Wheelock and the females of the Doctor's family bringing up the rear in the family carriage-the first four-wheeled vehicle, assuredly, that ever rolled into this part of the country. Until the last of October, when the college building was made fit for occupation, the students camped out in booths which they made for themselves of boughs and bark, in true Indian fashion.
The journals and correspondence of President Wheelock, in these first years following the establishment of the college at Hanover, are curious and instructive, as affording some insight into the manner of life and the difficulties and trials experienced in making new settle- ments at that period. Writing to Doctor Erskine Dec. 7, 1770, he says : "My nearest neighbor in town is 2 1-2 miles from me; I can see nothing but the lofty pines about me." (There were about twenty families at that time living in the east part of Hanover, three or four miles back from the river.)
The difficulty of procuring provisions compelled the sending of part of the students back to Connecticut, at the beginning of the first win- ter. Breadstuffs were brought chiefly from Northfield and Montague, Mass., for the subsistence of the settlement and school. For two years the larger part of the supply of food for the support of the school was transported from one to two hundred miles, over bad roads, from the older settlements of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Doctor Wheelock writes that the cheapest fodder he had for his teams and a few cows the second winter after coming to Hanover, was brought forty miles on sleds by oxen. Active and persistent efforts were at the same time put forth to make the colony self supporting. A saw and grist mill was built on Mink Brook in 1771, seventy acres of land cleared and twenty cropped with wheat, and about fifteen tons of hay cut and stacked. In September, 1773, he reports about thirty tons of hay cut that summer, reaped twenty acres of English grain, and twenty acres of Indian corn on the ground; fifteen acres fenced and sowed to winter wheat; 500 acres had been cut and girdled for future
38
HISTORY OF NORWICH
cultivation, and about 2,000 acres of "wilderness" enclosed with fence, "so that oxen, cows, horses, etc., may be restrained from ramb- ling beyond my reach." He employed from twenty to thirty men laboring for the college in his farming and building operations. His live stock consisted of seven oxen and twenty cows. Whole number of students during the year, about eighty, including sixteen or seven- teen Indian boys. "A little more than three years ago,'' he adds, "there was nothing to be seen here but a horrid wilderness. Now there are eleven comfortable dwelling houses, besides one for the students, built by tradesmen and others, who have settled within sixty rods of the college."
Our Norwich settlers, as already intimated, sympathized keenly with Doctor Wheelock, their venerable friend and former neighbor at Leb- anon, Conn., in his benevolent designs and self denying labors to re- move his charity school and set up a college at their very doors. And they testified their sense of the importance of his undertaking to them- selves by contributing liberally from their slender means for its en- dowment. Besides labor and materials which, in the general absence of money in the new settlements, were most readily afforded, a list of subscribers which has been preserved shows that nearly every adult male person then living in town gave the infant college some pecuniary help in its day of small beginnings.
Previous to its location at Hanover in 1770, a subscription paper had been circulated through the towns along both sides of the river, which were the only towns that then contained any considerable popu- lation. The Norwich subscribers to this paper were thirty-four in number, and their subscriptions amount in the aggregate to £35, 10s. in money and about 600 acres of land given to the college. This amount was probably largely increased in the years immediately following 1770. .
The counties of Cumberland and Gloucester had been organized by New York in 1766, out of the territory lying between the Green Moun- tains and Connecticut River. In the year 1771 a census of these coun- ties was made under the authority of that province. All the towns in Windham and Windsor Counties, as now constituted, belonged to Cumberland County ; the remaining portion of the state to the north-
39
POPULATION OF NORWICH, 1770-1771
ward, then mostly unsettled, was called the county of Gloucester .*
By the census of 1771, the population of the two counties of Cum- berland and Gloucester was returned as 4669-(Cumberland, 3947; Gloucester, 722). Norwich was found to contain 206 people distributed among forty families. In this enumeration the inhabitants were classi- fied as to age and sex only. The number of males above sixteen years of age was found to be 66, the number of females 48. The number of males under sixteen was 53, the number of females 39. The num- ber of children or young people under sixteen (92 out of a total of 206) is remarkable. Reckoning forty families in town, there would remain twenty-six unmarried men and eight unmarried women over sixteen years old in the new settlement.
Using the results of this census in connection with the list of sub- scribers to the Dartmouth College fund of 1770 and with some help from the town records, we are able to ascertain with considerable cer- tainty the names of each of the forty men, heads of families, living in Norwich in the year 1771. These are the names of the principal pioneer settlers of the town, and they may properly be regarded and here recorded as the
FATHERS OF THE TOWN
John Hutchinson Nathan Messenger
John Slafter
Hezekiah Johnson
Daniel Waterman
Jacob Burton Thomas Murdock Elisha Burton John Sargent Josiah Burton
Samuel Waterman
Josiah Goodrich
Timothy Bush
Peter Thatcher
Samuel Partridge
Joseph Smalley Francis Smalley James Huntington
Elisha Partridge John Hatch Joseph Hatch Aaron Wright John Wright
Medad Benton
John Burnap David Turner
*In the first organization of eastern Vermont into counties by New York, Norwich belonged to Cumberland County. In March, 1772, a change of boundary was made which placed the town in Gloucester County. In the new division, which was thenceforth maintained, the north line of the county of Cumberland began at the southwest corner of Royalton, and ran thence on a course of South 60 degrees East to Connecticut River.
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HISTORY OF NORWICH
Samuel Brown
Daniel Baldwin ( ?)
John Hopson
Jesse Geer. ( ?)
Samuel Hutchinson
Gershem Bartlett ( ?)
Ebenezar Ball
John Rogers ( ?)
Joseph Lewis
Elisha Crane ( ?) Isaac Fellows ( ?)
Elijah Gates
Samuel Wright
Benjamin Hatch
Israel Brown
Samuel Partridge, Jr.
Samuel Brown, Jr.
Simeon Carpenter
Jonas Richards
Twenty-seven of the above names are found on the college subscrip- tion list of 1770. In respect only to the last six names [marked with the interrogation ( ?)] does any uncertainty exist, and here the doubt does not relate to their residence, but as to whether their respective families had then come into town.
The names in the left hand column belong to men who settled in the south and those in the right hand column to settlers in the north or central portions of the town. The following may be added, names of unmarried young men then resident here and actively engaged in the work of settlement :- Israel Brown, Peter Thatcher, Joseph Ball, Sam- uel Hutchinson, Jr., Daniel Baldwin, James Smalley, and Ebenezar Jaques.
The figures set against other towns in Cumberland County, in the census of 1771, show Norwich in the first rank if not leading all others in the number of its population. Hartford had 190, Sharon 68, Hart- land 144, and Windsor 203.
Across the river, the nearest New Hampshire towns contained num- bers very similar. Two years later, in 1773, Hanover had 342 (in- cluding 8 slaves and 90 students at college), Lebanon 295, Lyme 241, and Orford 222. But in those two years Norwich had made large gains.
Ten years had now elapsed since the town was chartered by New Hampshire and five since the tide of immigration first set vigorously into it. A little community of more than 200 persons had been col-
41
POPULATION OF NORWICH, 1771
lected, scores of clearings made in the primitive forest, and a virgin soil made to yield food for man and beast; roads had been opened, mills built, a church had been organized (in 1770), and the homes of the people began to possess some of the most indispensable comforts of civilized life. Children played where but lately the bear and woif roamed unmolested and unscared.
But everything was still crude and rough in the new frontier town ; the people lived in log houses almost destitute of furniture or utensils, ate coarse food and wore homespun clothes of linen or woolen fabric, It was a long way yet to the railroad and telegraph, to pianos and sewing machines, or even to the first cooking stove. It was more than thirty years later before Norwich had a postoffice.
CHAPTER III.
NORWICH IN THE CONTROVERSY WITH NEW YORK
A. D. 1765-1790
The contest with New York in regard to land titles was the first of a series of political commotions that arose to disquiet and vex the settlers on the New Hampshire Grants, to turn their thoughts and energies away from the improvement of their little properties, and check their growing prosperity. In this contest the inhabitants of the upper valley of the Connecticut in general took no active part.
They all held their lands under New Hampshire Grants, and as New York never regranted the same lands to other parties, or attempted to dispossess them or molest them in any manner in the quiet enjoy- ment thereof, they had personally no cause for controversy with the authorities of that province. The town records of Norwich contain no allusion to the vexed questions that occupy so large a space in contem- porary history on the west of the Green Mountains, nor do the words "New York" once occur on these records, except in conveyances of land from one person to another, where the property is described as lying in the "Province of New York." The authority and jurisdiction of New York were for the most part quietly ignored. No active par- tisaas of her claims are known to have resided in town, nor did the town "in apprehension of future loss of their landed property," pro- cure at a heavy expense a new charter from the New York govern- ment confirming them in possession, as was the case with a large pro- portion of the towns in what is now Windsor County. The farthest that the town went in apparent recognition of New York jurisdiction,
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THE CONTROVERSY WITH NEW YORK
was in the election of sundry town officers under their New York names, as supervisors instead of selectmen, assessors for listers, three commissioners of highways (whose business was to lay out and alter highways), three overseers of the poor, two or more constables, and in 1775 and 1776, a board of three trustees. This fashion prevailed from 1770 to 1776, when they finally disappear from the records, and the good old New England names of town officers-selectmen, listers, con- stable, etc., were promptly restored, and the other offices of tithing men, haywards, grand jurymen, etc., unknown to municipal govern- ment in New York, were filled again. It is worthy of remark, too, that Norwich never changed the time of holding the annual town meet- ing from March to May, in conformity to New York law and usage, as was done in most of the neighboring towns during the period of New York ascendancy. Soon after Vermont came into being as a State, in 1778, these towns by common consent returned to the ancient practice of March meetings, which they had derived from New Hamp- shire with their first charters, and which is still preserved in both states.
The influence of New York probably reached its height east of the Green Mountains about 1772 or '73. This was before the arbitrary pol- icy of that province towards the New Hampshire settlers west of the mountains was fully developed, and its actions of ejectment and proclamations of outlawry against the leaders of the Green Mountain Boys had everywhere created a feeling of disaffection and dislike to its authority. It was about this time that Peter Olcott emigrated to Norwich and Joseph Marsh to Hartford. Both of these men at once took leading positions in their respective towns, became large land holders, and, there is reason to believe, were at first inclined to look with favor upon the claims of New York to rightful jurisdiction over the New Hampshire Grants.
About this time (May 10, 1772) John Hatch of Norwich was com- missioned a justice of the peace by New York and acted as such for several years so far as to take acknowledgment of deeds and authenti- cate legal papers. Mr. Hatch was the first person to hold the office of magistrate in town, and the only inhabitant who is known to have held civil office under New York appointment. He was ever after familiarly known as Esquire John Hatch .*
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HISTORY OF NORWICH
In 1772 the town of Hartford took out a charter under New York, as either the same year or earlier did Windsor, Woodstock, Chester, Springfield, Wethersfield, Cavendish, Reading and Plymouth. In all of these towns the forms of government of New York were much in vogue for several years. The fees paid to New York officials for these charters were generally $2,000, or upwards, against about $300 orig- inally paid to New Hampshire for a like service; and a quit rent of 2$ 9ª sterling on each 100 acres was demanded in place of the 9ª pro- vided for in the New Hampshire charters. [For specimen of a town charter by New York, see Vermont History Magazine, Vol. II, pp. 808-11.] The records of deeds in Norwich witness that there existed for several years, perhaps, some nervousness in the minds of real estate owners, as to the validity of title under New Hampshire grants, inasmuch as in the conveyance of land by deed, the grantor did not usually give an absolute warranty of title, but limited his warrant only against persons claiming by, through or under himself, or the original New Hampshire grantee.
At the first organization of the counties of Cumberland and Glouces- ter by New York in 1766, out of the territory lying east of the Green Mountain range, Norwich was included in Cumberland County ; but a new division was made in 1772, which placed the town, with Sharon and Royalton, within the limits of Gloucester County. The census of the previous year had shown the latter county to contain a popu- lation of only 722, while Cumberland County returned 3944-more than one-half the population of Vermont at that time. Newbury, Mooretown [Bradford], Thetford, and Strafford were the only towns in Gloucester County then containing any considerable population.
Earnest efforts were early made by New York to set up the ma- chinery of county government in Gloucester County, but with very indifferent success, tlthough there were some decided partisans of that jurisdiction living in the north part of the county. Appointments of judges, sheriff, and other county officers were made, and the county seat was located at the present town of Washington, in Orange County, which had been granted previous to 1770, by New York to the corpor- ation of King's College, in the city of New York, under the name of
*Samuel Partridge held a military commission issued by New York.
45
THE CONTROVERSY WITH NEW YORK
Kingsland. The county buildings here consisted of a log jail built at the center of the town some time before it had any permanent inhabi- tants, and which stood for many years afterwards to be pointed out by the curious as an interesting monument of our early history. Only a single instance is remembered in which this jail was used as a prison. In this case the prisoner had taken along with him a few potatoes for sustenance during his confinement. Finding imprisonment intol- erable in that lonely place in the woods, he soon broke jail, but with rare forethought or benevolence he planted the potatoes he had left, for the benefit of future occupants, in front of the jail, where-it is added -they grew spontaneously for years afterwards.
'The great distance from the seat of government in New York, and the scanty and scattered population in Gloucester County, probably delayed a complete organization of county affairs-so prominent in the New York system of government-such as prevailed for many years in the more populous southern county of Cumberland. There is no evidence that Gloucester County was ever represented in the New York legislative body, either in colonial times or after the rupture with Great Britain. Jacob Bagley of Newbury was chosen a delegate to the New York Congress in 1775, but did not take his seat.
Aside from the town of Kingsland, above mentioned, the only grants of land made by New York in Gloucester county, known to the writer, were the town of Bradford, under the name of Mooretown, in 1770, and the town of Royalton, under the name of Lintfield. Both these townships covered grants previously made by New Hampshire, but for some reason the original grantees in each case seem not to have
An amusing account of an attempt to hold court at this shire town in the month of February, 1771, by John Peters, clerk, and John Taplin, and John Taplin, Jr., judge and . sheriff of the court of common pleas of the county of Gloucester. is found in Volume I, p. 268 of "Government and Council," copied from the Documentary History of New York, wherein it appears as an official record. It reads as follows : - Feb. 25, 1771 .- Set out from Mooretown for Kingsland, traveled until night. There being no road and the snow very deep, we traveled on snowshoes or rackets. On the 26th we travelled some ways and held a council, when it was concluded it was best to open court. As we saw no line, it was not known whether in Kingsland or not. But we concluded we were far in the woods ; we did not expect to see any house unless we marched three miles within Kings- land, and no one lived there, when the court was ordered to be opened on the spot."- Ten years later the town was regranted (Aug. 8, 1781) to Elisha Burton of Norwich and others, by the legislature of Vermont, under the name of Washington,
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HISTORY OF NORWICH
availed themselves of their grants for the purpose of settlement, and the same had therefore lapsed, so that no controversy arose concerning the title to lands.
The dealings of the New York authorities in general with the New Hampshire settlers east of the mountains, appear to have been much more temperate and conciliatory from the beginning than with their brethren on the west side, and there is much to support the belief, which has been widely entertained, that such was the studied policy of the New York officials. With this view, separate county govern- ments were erected on the east side, officered from its own people, while the whole western section was annexed to the existing New York counties of Albany and Charlotte, and harassed by writs of ejectment, sheriffs, bosses, and other oppressive measures. And while it is prob- able that the leading men of Norwich, in common with many in Cum- berland and Gloucester Counties, did not exactly approve all the doings of the "Bennington Mob," as the New York officials styled those most active in resisting them, yet when the hour was ripe for a final separation from that justly hated government, and for the erec- tion of the whole of the New Hampshire Grants into a new State, we find Jacob Burton and Thomas Murdock, two influential citizens of the town, sitting as delegates in the General Convention at Westmins- ter January 15-17, 1777, and among the most prominent and active members of that body.
At this convention the decisive step was taken of renouncing at once and forever all political connection with New York, and it was further unanimously "Voted, that the district of land commonly called and known by the name of New Hampshire Grants be a new and separate State." A formal Declaration of Independence was drawn up by a committee of five of which Thomas Chittenden and Jacob Burton were members. This committee made report to the convention on the 16th, ' in the following terms :- "Your committee, to whom was referred the form of a declaration setting forth the right the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants have to form themselves into a separate and independent state or government, beg leave to report, viz :
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