USA > Vermont > Men of Vermont : an illustrated biographical history of Vermonters and sons of Vermont > Part 11
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proceeding severely in his paper, and also published another article severely condemn- ing President Adams' appointment to office.
The articles, though they showed consid- crable warmth of feeling, were not anywhere near as bad as have been published thou- sands of times since in political controversy without exciting more than passing attention, and they did not begin to compare for bit- terness and personal invective with the utter- ances which the Federalists were constantly pouring forth from both press and pulpit against Jefferson and the Democratic lead- ers. Nevertheless, he was indicted before the United States Circuit court, at Windsor, and sentenced by Judge Patterson to $200 fine and two months' imprisonment. He was allowed to serve out the imprisonment in the jail at Bennington, but the fine he had to pay, and it was refunded to his descendants over fifty years afterward. The prosecution made him a good deal of a popular hero, as it did Lyon, and the celebration of the Fourth of July in 1800 was postponed at Bennington till July 9, when his term ex- pired, and he was liberated amidst the roar of cannon and a great demonstration of the people.
The publication of the old Bennington Gazette which Mr. Haswell established was continued with occasional interruption both before and after his death, until 1849, when it expired in the hands of his son, John C. Haswell. The elder Haswell also started a paper in Rutland, in 1792, called the " Her- ald of Freedom," the progenitor of the pres- ent Rutland Herald, but his office was burned after he had issued the fourteenth number, and it was to recoup this misfortune that the Legislature authorized him to raise $200 by lottery. Mr. Haswell ventured twice into the magazine field, starting in March, 1794, "The Monthly Miscellany, or Vermont Magazine," and on Jan. 8, 1808, another monthly called the "Mental Repast." Both had a short life, though the latter carried considerable original and interesting matter. He published a good many books and pamphlets from his office, among them the " Memoirs of Capt. Matthew Phelps " of which he was the author, and he wrote or rather composed much on moral, religious and political subjects, in both prose and verse, for most of his thoughts took shape as he put them into type at his case.
He was a man of decided ability, warm and impulsive temperament and thorough conscientiousness. He was twice married, and dying, May 26, 1816, left numerous de- scendants.
PAYNE, ELISHA .- Lieutenant-Governor in 1781, simultaneously chief judge of the Supreme Court, and in 1782 one of the dele-
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CHANDLER.
gates to Congress, appears only briefly in Vermont history, during the continuance of the " East union " of New Hampshire towns with Vermont. He was born at Canterbury, Conn., in 1731, became quite prominent in New Hampshire in colonial days, doing good service in the French war, rising to be colonel and deputy surveyor-general of the King's woods, to preserve the pine trees re- served in all grants for the royal navy. In the short-lived union of the sixteen New Hampshire towns with Vermont in 1778, Colonel Payne appeared as representative of Cardigan, N. H., and was elected councilor, though he refused the position because he thought he could be more useful in the House in resisting the effort he knew would be pressed to dissolve the union. He was a leader in the Charleston convention of 1781 which, with the aid of Ira Allen's manipula- tion, resolved to ask annexation to Vermont of all of New Hampshire west of a line seventy miles from the sea-coast, instead of attempting to form still another new state of this part of New Hampshire and the eastern half of Vermont, as had been originally planned.
He urged the union energetically and eloquently before the Vermont Legislature until it was consummated in the April fol- lowing, when he enjoyed a liberal share of the honors of the new state as above stated. His election as Lieutenant-Governor was by the Legislature, as there had been no choice by the people. In the winter following, when New Hampshire started to regain the seceded territory by force, Mr. Payne's ad- dress and firm stand undoubtedly went far to avert bloodshed. When Governor Chit- tenden ordered him to call out the militia " to repel force by force," he at once wrote President Weare of New Hampshire stating his instructions, but in a tone so conciliatory and yet firm that peace was restored. When this last "union " was dissolved, Gov- ernor Payne adhered to New Hampshire, though he had now such a hold on the respect and affections of the people of Ver- mont that he could have commanded high honors from them which were impossible from the former state. He died at Lebanon, July 20, 1807, aged seventy-six. One of his descendants was Col. E. P. Jewett, of Mont- pelier.
CHANDLER, THOMAS .- Among the earliest and most influential settlers on the east side of the mountain, but dying finally in poverty and disgrace, was a native of Woodstock, Conn. He was born July 22, 1709, and came to Vermont in 1763, being one of the proprietors under New Hampshire of the present town of Chester, under the name of New Flamstead. He procured its
CHANDLER.
rechartering with the name of Chester by New York, after jurisdiction had been given that colony by the Crown, and in the course of 1766 was appointed justice of the peace, surrogate of the county, colonel of militia, and judge of the inferior court of common pleas under New York authority, and held all these appointments when the county was reorganized by direct act of the Crown.
His conduct at the attempted session of the court that led to the Westminster massa- cre is difficult to understand. The picture which D. P. Thompson paints in such dark colors of the sycophancy, the cowardice and tergivisation of his conduct corresponds to the idea that was generally held at the time and covered his reputation with an obloquy from which it never recovered. There is no doubt that he wavered in his ideas of duty. He had presided at meetings of settlers that resolved to resist the British encroachments. He had publicly said a few days before that he thought it would not be best to hold the court, "as things then were," but yielded to the more resolute loyalty of Judge Sabin and perhaps to the pressure of the land grabbers by whom he was surrounded, and convened the court, though he evidently exerted himself to avert the violence that followed, and conducted himself with prudence and dignity through the difficulty. He was imprisoned for two or three days by the popular party and though released on bonds was never brought to trial. He appears to have been zealously on the patriot side in the next few years, though so distrusted that he had no public position.
He was deeply embarrassed financially in his later years, the result, as Thompson charges, "of a long course of secret fraud in selling wild land to which he had no title," and in 1784 petitioned the Legislature for an act of insolvency in his favor. It was finally granted, June 16, 1785, but on June 20 of the same year he died in jail at West- minster, where he had laid for several months, and was buried privately and with- out funeral, owing to the superstition that then prevailed about the inhumation of the body of an imprisoned debtor.
Similarly wretched was the fate of his two sons, who came with him to Chester after a residence of a year or two at Walpole, N. H. John, the eldest, was assistant judge for six years, 1766 to 1772, and county clerk for nearly the same period ; but he was re- moved for misconduct, and the rest of his career is buried in obscurity, except once in 1781, when a case appears before the Legis- lature to recover a tract of 9,000 acres of land in Tomlinson (Grafton) which he had unlawfully deeded as attorney for a Tory, after the latter had joined the enemy, and showing that he had his father's business habits.
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SAFFORD.
HAZELTINE.
Thomas Chandler, Jr., the second son, first secretary of state for a few months, then for nearly three years speaker of the General Assembly, was born Sept. 23, 1740, and died towards the close of the century in poverty and embarrassment, like that of his father. Ile was also for nine years, 1776-'75, an assistant judge of the inferior court of common pleas, a court which New York seems to have made a family snap for the Chandlers. But he was soon after active among the Vermont men, was a delegate in the Westminster convention of October, 1776, and January, 1777, was elected to the first General Assembly in March, 1778, and chosen its clerk, but abandoned the post to take the secretaryship of state, was re-elected in 1778 and 1781, was a member of the council in 1779 and 1780, a commissioner of sequestration on the estates of Tories, and was judge of the first Supreme Court, elected in October, 1778. He resigned the speakership of the Assembly in the middle of the session of 1780, because of charges brought by Azariah Wright of Westminster, alleging that he had acted as an attorney for a negro while speaker, and that he also invited the massacre at Westminster in 1775 by misleading the sons of liberty by writing to them that he knew his father's mind in their favor. Chandler brought a libel suit against Wright because of these charges, and finally recovered some $50 and costs, but they nevertheless brought him into "great discredit" and he sank into a rapid decline politically. He was once elected a judge of the Windsor county court in 1786, and in 1787 again represented Chester in the Assembly, but the prejudice against him was too great to permit his successful ad- vancement. He was, however, an undoubted patriot during the war, and exerted himself much for the patriot cause in Chester town meetings. The records of the Governor and council in October, 1792, show that like his father he was a petitioner for an act of insolvency in his favor, having been re- duced to poverty "by a long series of sick- ness in his family."
SAFFORD, GEN. SAMUEL, - Revolu- tionary soldier, judge and councilor, was born at Norwich, Conn., April 14, 1737, and came to Bennington among its earliest settlers. He took an active part in the land controversy with New York, represented Bennington in several of the conventions of settlers, and was an ardent advocate of the new state idea. When the regiment of Green Mountain Boys was organized under the recommendation of Congress to support the Revolutionary cause, he was chosen major and second officer to Warner, who was lieutenant colonel, and he served under Warner in Canada, and
when Warner's continental regiment was raised Safford was appointed lieutenant col- onel, and as such fought at Hubbardton and Bennington and throughout the war. The Legislature in 1781 elected him general of militia. Hle represented Bennington in 1781 and '82 and the next year was elected state councilor and regularly re-elected for nineteen years. In 1781 he was elected chief judge of Bennington county court and held the office for twenty-six successive years. Governor Hall well describes him as "an upright, intelligent man of sound judg- ment and universally respected." "He was one of the few who were cognizant of the Haldimand negotiations, but his patriotism was never questioned," says Walton. He died March 3, 1813, and there are some of his descendants still at Bennington.
HAZELTINE, JOHN, of Townshend, was one of the early and most trusted patriots on the east side of the mountain. He came to Townshend from Upton, Mass., soon after the first settlement in 1761. He was chair- man of the convention at Westminster, Oct. 19, 1774, which resolved to "assist the peo- ple of Boston in defense of their liberties to the utmost of our abilities," and also chair- man of the convention of Feb. 7, following, which formed a standing committee of cor- respondence with the friends of independence in other colonies, and he was made, by order of the convention, custodian of all its papers. He was one of the committee appointed by the convention after the Westminster massa- cre to draw up resolutions of indignation and resistance to the authority of New York. He procured the signature of every man in Townshend to a pledge to maintain and dis- seminate the principles of American liberty. In May, 1775, he was appointed with Dr .. Spooner and Major Williams a delegate from Cumberland county to the Provincial Con- gress and Convention of New York and attended, but remained only three days. He was the person to whom bonds with security were given by sundry of the persons who were arrested for participation in the West- minster massacre. This is only one of the evidences of the confidence in which the
whigs held him. Another is the epithet "King Hazeltine" which John Grout, the pestilent Tory, bestowed on him. He died in the early part of 1777, owning about one- fourth of the land of Townshend. He was quite a land speculator, and his enemies used to tell amusing tales of the sharp methods by which he got his titles.
FLETCHER, GEN. SAMUEL .- Judge, councilor and Revolutionary soldier, was born at Grafton, Mass., in 1745, served a year in the French and Indian war, married
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TOWNSHEND.
a daughter of Col. John Hazeltine, and gave up the blacksmith trade to which he had been trained, and moved to Townshend. He was one of the few men on the east side of the mountain active in the formation of the new state and was a member of the con- ventions of October, 1776, and January, 1777. He was at the Bunker Hill fight as orderly sergeant, then was made captain of militia, was at the siege of Ticonderoga and the Bennington fight in 1777 and on the way to the former at the head of a party of thirteen, he attacked a British detachment of forty, killed one and took seven prisoners without the loss of a man himself. He was promoted to be major and continued in the service until after the surrender of Burgoyne. He was afterwards a brigadier and major general in the Vermont Militia, represented Townshend at the first session under the new government in 1778 and also in 1779. He was councilor from 1779 to 1790 and in 1808, sheriff of Windham county from 1 788 to 1806, and judge of the county court in 1778, 1783, 1784 and 1786. He was ap- pointed a judge of the superior court in 1782 but refused to serve. He died Sept. 15, 1814. Physically he was a man of fine proportions and manly beauty, elegant in manners and bland and refined in deport- ment, while his intellectual equipment was strong and his courage, integrity and busi- ness capacity conceded. He was a fine writer and through much of his active life kept a journal, recording daily events of public importance, but it was unfortunately lost in the burning of the house of his son- in-law and executor. One of his daughters married Epaphroditus Ransom, afterwards Governor of Michigan.
TOWNSHEND, MICAH, for twenty-four years a lawyer at Brattleboro, Secretary of State 1781-'88, and the ablest and most trusted of the "Yorkers" in the early years of the controversy, was born at Cedar Swamp, Oyster Bay, L. I., May 13, 1749, graduated from Princeton in 1767, studied law in New York City, and first settled in practice at White Plains, N. Y. He was active among the young patriots there at the opening of the Revolution, clerk of the county committee of safety, and captain of a company of militia to operate against the Tories. The destruction of the village of White Plains by fire caused him to start anew in life and to locate at Brattleboro, where, in August, 1778, he married Mary, daughter of Col. Samuel Wells. He was here in confidential correspondence with Governor Clinton, making a series of able and cool-headed reports on the condition of affairs and frequently being entrusted with important negotiations with the Vermont men. He was a delegate from Cumberland
JONES.
county to the New York Assembly, and ex- erted a great influence there. He earnestly opposed the proposal to divide the state on the mountain line with New Hampshire after the extraordinary exertions and sacrifices the people of his county had made to remain in New York, and his arguments were effective in dissuading New York from going into the scheme.
Finally he became satisfied that New York could not maintain her claims, and gave in his adherence to the new state, which was quick to avail itself of his talents in public employment. Besides the secretaryship of state, he was judge and register of probate for Windham county from 1781 to '87. He resigned the former office in '88, and the Legislature, by resolution, "expressed the warmest sentiment of gratitude for the fidel- ity and skill " with which he had peformed its duties. Nathaniel Chipman regarded him as one of the ablest and most useful men the state had at this period. He served with Chip- man on the committee to frame the " quieting act." He was secretary of the council of censors for the first revision of the constitu- tion, and his promptness and skill with rec- ords, and his facility in phrasing legislative propositions made him almost indispensable to the times. He had a large and success- ful practice as a lawyer, was not renowned for oratory, but for the clear, cogent way he had of making his statements. He, how- ever, quitted the state and country in 1801, selling his Brattleboro property to Judge Tyler, and settling in Farnham, Que., on lands which the British government had granted his father-in-law for his Toryism, where he died, April 23, 1832.
JONES, DR. REUBEN, of Rockingham and afterwards of Chester, was the earliest and perhaps the most active of the new state men on the east side of the mountains. He was active in stirring up the people to arrest the loyal court after the Westminster massa- cre, riding express and hatless to Dummer- ston on this errand. He gave history the answer to the misrepresentation of the offi- cial reports, with his "relation " of the affair. He was an efficient member of each of the Vermont conventions, beginning with that of Sept. 25, 1776, and being secretary of several of them. He represented Rockingham in the first four Legislatures and also Chester for one year. He was one of the most ar- dent and uncompromising whigs in the state. His later years were spent in deep poverty and in dodging back and forth between New Hampshire and Vermont to avoid imprison- ment for debt. Once when under arrest pop- ular sympathy forced his release, for which he and two friends were indicted in the Windsor county court.
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SPAU DNING.
SPAULDING, LIEUT. LEONARD, of Dinmerston, shared with Dr. Jones the honor of being among the earliest leaders in this county of the new state men. He was born, probably in Rhode Island, O(1. 28, 1728, served in the French and Indian war and soon after its close settled in Putney and later for a few months in Westmoreland, N. 11. He was a member of all the conven- tions beginning with September, 1776, but for years before that he had been a headlong agitator against both royal and New York authority, and had built up a strong popular following. It was carly when he shocked pious people by denouncing the King as "Pope of Canada" because of the Quebec bill. In 1771 while he was a resident of Putney some of his property had been seized under a judgment of a York court, and a large party crossed the river from New Hampshire and rescued it by force. In 1774, after he had come to Dummerston, he was arrested and imprisoned at Westminster for high treason in speaking disrespectfully of the King, and it is related that it required three or four Yorkers to arrest him. A meet- ing of indignation was held at Dummerston the next day to denounce "the ravages of the British tyrant and his New York and other emissaries." A large body of men formed from that town, Putney, Halifax and Draper and proceeded to Westminster a few days later and forcibly released him. He was once arraigned before the county committee for the arrest and imprisonment of Col. Sam Wells, which in the excess of his patriotic zeal he had effected at the head of a body of fol- lowers. But his penalty was only a require- ment of apology to the Tory leader, which he made. He was the first man in Dummers- ton to shoulder his gun and start for West- minster for the fight of March 13, 1775. He joined the Revolutionary army as soon as hos- tilites broke out, served through most of the war, gained a captain's commission, was in the battle of Bennington and was wounded in the battle of White Plains, Oct. 28, 1776. He represented Dummerston in the General Assembly in 1778, '81, '84, '86, and '87. He died July 17, 1788, aged fifty-nine.
PHELPS, CHARLES .- The first lawyer to settle upon the grants, in 1764, one of the leaders in the organization of Cumber- land county, and the most unbending of all the "Yorkers," though a supporter of the Revolution, was born at Northampton, Mass., August 15, 1717, of a family which had con- tained John Phelps, private secretary of Oliver Cromwell. He was one of the orig- inal grantees of Marlboro under New Hamp- shire authority, and he petitioned unsuc- cessfully for a confirmation of the charter by New York, but nevertheless supported
1'111.1.PS.
New York authority with a courage and devotion that were pathetic in the sacrifices and suffering it caused him, but with an ec- centricity that indicated the twist of mind that after events made only too evident. "Vile Vermonters" was his regular epithet for the great men of the new state. For a time after the Westminster massacre, when New York and royal authority appeared to be identical, he was in revolt against both, and was on the committee that framed reso- lutions of denunciation. At one time also he intrigued industriously for the annexa- tion of the state to Massachusetts, declaring that he regarded the authority of New York as composed of "as corrupt a set of men as were out of hell," and that he would as "soon put manure in his pocket as a commission from New York"-though he held such com- missions for a good share of his life. But this aberration was short-lived, and he was soon engaged again in fighting New York fights.
Twice, in 1779 and 1782, he appeared before Congress, first as a delegate from the Yorkers of Cumberland county, and last on his own responsibility, to oppose the recog- nition of the new state, and he stuck to the latter mission, penniless, hungry, and almost freezing at one time, an actual object of charity from the New York delegates, until, by his " persistence, zeal, craftiness, and finesse," as Jay describes it, he thought, as was the general idea, that he had won in the resolution from Congress, ordering " full and ample restitution " to be made to the New York adherents who had been arrested or imprisoned, or had their property confis- cated, and declaring the purpose of Congress to enforce a compliance with this demand ; but he found when he reached Vermont that these resolves were treated with as much in- difference as the edicts of New York. It was while on this mission that he wrote his trenchant pamphlet, “Vermonters Un- masked."
He was jailed in January, 1784, his prop- erty ordered to be sold for the benefit of the state, and even his law books given to Nath. Chipman and Micah Townshend to pay for their services in revising the laws of the state. But his petition for pardon and re- mission of sentence, on taking the oath of allegiance, brought a resolution of the Legis- lature in October, 1784, restoring such prop- erty as had not been sold for the benefit of the state. One of the reasons given for this clemency was his fidelity to the whig cause. But his allegiance was only nominal. He remained to the end intensely opposed in feeling to the new state, and he dated his last will at "New Marlborough, in the county of Cumberland and state of New York." He died in April, 1789, at the age of seventy-
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three. Among his descendants have been some exceptionally able men, but all, in the early generations at least, showing often to the point of insanity, the mental eccentrici- ties that became so marked in his later years. His oldest son, Solomon, a graduate of Har- vard and a lawyer and preacher of fine powers, committed suicide at the age of forty-eight. Timothy, his third son, a man of great energy of character and steadfast- ness of opinion, and sheriff of Cumberland county under New York authority, passed his later years with darkened mind.
John Phelps, son of Timothy and grandson of Charles, was register of probate, state sena- tor and councilor in 1831 and 1832. Other descendants have been : John Phelps, of Guilford, son of Timothy, who was state councilor in 1831 and 1832, his son Charles E. Phelps, congressman from Maryland and brigadier-general of the Union army ; Judge Charles Phelps, of Townshend, who was councilor in 1820,-'21,-'22, and his son, the late Judge James H. Phelps, of Townshend ; Gen. John W. Phelps, the author, scholar and accomplished soldier, who entered the war with such brilliant prospects which were blasted by his quarrel with Butler and his in- sistance on emancipation of negroes in Louisiana before the administration was ready for that measure, and who was the anti-Masonic candidate for President in 1780. Except for a young son of General Phelps, the male line of the family is now extinct.
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