USA > Vermont > Addison County > New Haven > New Haven, a rural historical town of Vermont > Part 2
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There is still a larger class in the line of æsthetics and morals which have deserved a mention by a voice less par- tial but not more enthusiastic than mine, for benevolence illustrated in Dr. Tolman Wheeler of Chicago, whose wife was Delia Hoyt, a scholar at Litchfield, Connecticut, and the first to preside at a piano and give a free concert to the street boys ; he is the patron of hospitals and asylums and the founder of the Theological Seminary for the Episcopal Church. The memories of Drs. Miles P. Squire, Milo J. Hickok, the Hoyt brothers, Drs. Ovah P. and Otto S. Hoyt, Smith, Hall, and others, fallen in service, are yet fragrant, while it would be invidious to mention a few of a long list of minis- ters who will answer to that last roll call for those contend- ing for the oldest gospel, illumined by the lights of science, and the voice of the latest God-sent evangel, whose cradles were rocked here, where their fathers sleep in sepulture.
I have yet to travel, or listen, on the prairie or in the crowded cities of the East, or by the dashing waves of the Pacific, where they are not-and missionaries honored,
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teaching the Indian in his Western wigwam, sailing on the Bosphorus to teach the besotted Turk, and holding up the beacon light of Christianity to the idolatrous millions of Japan.
The editor of the pioneer, brave and able Hawkeye newspaper of Iowa, who burned his bare feet, falling into a brick kiln which his father built and owned, now known by an excavation on the Seth Hoyt farm, was a native of New Haven-Clark Dunham. The first of painters looked out on the scenery of our mountains for his study, and I will dispel the illusion of his foreign and romantic career, by giving his name-Alanson Fisher. Yet he was born on the Beech Hill of New Haven. Physicians and teachers here, cradled in great numbers, have with rare fidelity and scholas- tic culture adorned their vocations ; indeed all save that of the lawyer who never thrust out his sign near the church, where by tradition there was a caustic sermon in high art, on " a certain lawyer that stood up." Then Judge Ezra Hoyt was here jure divino ; the bright gleam of the college cupola also ministered to higher culture and the fraternal good will, riveting the links of good neighbors to this day, which asks not the arts of a pettifoger and may not in all time, since the whiskey still was long since closed, and the mammoth cider mills fallen piecemeal, without a shock to the good citizen, a widow's lament or an orphan's sigh.
Time would fail me to recount the valor of our soldiers, and it is enough that they never wavered in the imminent breach, nor do I remember one convicted of an infamous crime. If there was, his birth I assume abnormal and floated here a victim of chance. As a rumor that a five thousand dollar reward was offered ante bellum for the head of one of your townsmen, (more than its full value except to the owner,) it must be charged only to a station on the underground rail- road for the accommodation of sable travelers on their way to Canada. The entertaining of John Brown prompted the indictment, which was demurred to by the voice of humanity, and a nolle prosequi was entered by Lincoln, the martyr eman- cipator, and I am a witness that the adjudged offender is at
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large. In just and final compliment to the New Haven boys at the city of my adoption in Iowa, I should not forget that they shone brilliant and firm as the sardonyx stones on the breast of Aaron. In the house of Loyal C. Phelps, son of the educated soldier, Maj. Mathew Phelps, our church was formed, large in numbers if less eminent in christian graces, and his son, L. A. Phelps, the gentleman and musical prodigy of the west, I left borrowing inspiration and inflating lungs at his quarters from the look-out and the ninth story near Lake Michigan, a height only a symbol of his gifts and aspirations. You may ask
WHAT OF THE MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS !
If less conspicuous potent forces, in almost divine ministries. If less gifted and accomplished than Rose Standish, they were idols and brides from the best of homes, making their way here by blazed trees, and many like my grandmother, whose name I revere, through deep snow on the rude ox sled. Before epidemic sickness, the whoop of the Indian and the howl of the wild beasts, they would not retire. I look over the title deeds for a hun- dred years- they could write-and I find no cross made by our mothers conveying land ; nor divorce suits in the courts of record. In pride they concealed the gnawing vultures of gross incompatibility and violent temper and clung like christian heroines often to the drunkard and father of their children, even when the last faint hope of reformation had fled. I would represent them not in vassalage but disfran- chised, with no voice in the schools, but in an emergency our good angels in the work of destruction. The demolition of the old school house furnishes a vivid illustration, for " I was thar" or thereabouts. That old unpainted rookery had been condemned by public opinion for years, low, crowded by a round hundred pupils, the mice peeping through cracks by day which larger shy vermin made at night, windows rattled, clapboards flapped in the wind, and a generation of sufferers, like imprisoned convicts, were doomed by divisions, sordid tax payers and tabled resolves of the lords to near freeze on
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one side of their anatomy and roast on the other, until the mothers and daughters met, on the fortunate absence of the men at a Bristol wolf hunt, moved, closing debate, the pre- vious question, which was a signal for the hasty demolition of the old shell in certain promise of a new house. The veteran matrons, captains of squads wielding axes, lifting ladders, pulling at ropes, are all gone, but I do not withhold my tribute of gratitude for their clever device and courageous execution, as a long perched victim on a rough bench. If it seems rudeness at this day it has mirrored delicate refinement in a picture of sacrifice never to be forgotten. The boys who packed their little trunks to go forth for an education or to seek their fortunes in a land of strangers, could here tell the stories of love and sacrifice, unfolding the secrets of virtuous and noble careers which, alas, their good angels are not here to listen or recount.
I knew the mother, (it was mine), who took the last dol- lar in the house, when the flour barrel was near empty, to buy school books. I have the story also, not romance, that another mother, weak and wan, threw the shuttle to weave the cloth for her winter exposure ; but sent it to her boys in a distant State, herself left thin clad in the winter storms, to bring early death, aye, martyrdom, in the ambition and love of a mother for her sons, in vicarious sacrifice. In remem- brance of cheeks tinged with the glow of the rose, ruby lips and eyes twinkling like the stars of the morning, in boyish fancy, I shall state an incident, withholding names for obvious reasons.
There was a young school teacher in this town, that be- · came enamoured with one of his scholars, (and all who knew the beautiful girl did not wonder), and pressing his suit, found that he had a rival, a courtier in nature, of family and position, who won the favors he sought. The school was soon ended, the lover sank into a morbid melancholy, marked by his friends ; but from this he recovered, to gain a collegiate education and win the high honors of his State, and after the lapse of a half century, on his dying bed, he rose up to call with streaming eyes the name of the one to whom he was so devoted, and said that his early love came
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near ending his existence, for "I actually purchased the poison with which to end my life." You may have only pity for his weakness. I knew him well and honored him for his bravery in surviving one of the darts from the bow of Cupid, as I admired his eloquence. You had, perchance, triple for- tune in your lives, age, family, and competence, and if driven to desperation and suicide on a repulse, I should not have charged it to a weak brain, but found a solution in the vir- tues and fascinations of the girls as I knew them-the moth- ers as time proved them, ready to waste and suffer for their boys. That heart-moving picture on canvas, the daughter nourishing as a child in secret a father condemned to death, and on discovery, opening her veins to give out her life's blood to save from starvation, was only the devotion of our mothers, though never waking the muse of poetry, or thrown by the painter on canvas. Rome had her Cornelia, doating mother, classic queen and worthy of her sons the Gracchi, and we, though in humble station, were from parents whom we can remember but with moistened eye and grateful emo- tion, of the faith of the devout women "last at the cross, earliest at the grave."
FACTS OF INTEREST COGNATE TO OUR HISTORY
I find in the large number of revolutionary soldiers who lived here and died-I think a score. The seven years war found them poor, often homeless, and this spot became more enchanting and an endeared home by the arts of tories and the strifes of fierce claimants, establishing historic families before the close of the last century. As children we are . proud of the names synonymous of valor whom we knew.
Wm. Seymour is one who saw the ill-fated Andre hung for treason, and witnessed the emotions of Washington, as he wiped his tears in sorrow, for one whose sentence he could not commute, or even mitigate, when plead to substi- tute death by the musket shot for a degrading expiation on the gallows.
Dea. Solomon Brown also lived and died here fifty years To him belongs the honor of having fired the first ago.
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effective shot at the red coats in the revolutionary war. I attended his funeral, at which his memorable shot was men- tioned, and I just remember the story from his own lips. Noble Paul Revere of Boston has been mentioned by many writers, and his deeds are emblazoned in history. A spirit equally daring was Brown's. He did not wait for orders and sighted an honest gun at a red coat spy, where was found blood, and to him belongs the honor of that first shot which " echoed round the world." You will hear from his son, Geo. W. Brown, Esq., of Boston, who honors us with his presence to-day, the only surviving son of the veterans at Lexington.
The fact of the first shot by our hero is not dependent on the declarations of a christian soldier, but is supported by Elias Phinney, in his battle of Lexington address, in 1825, saying, " Brown was seen to take aim and probably gave the wound received by the regular of the tenth regiment." This was on the discovery made as Brown returned from Boston. Elijah Sanderson of Salem deposed in 1824, " I saw blood where the column of the British had stood when Solomon Brown had fired at them." Abijah Harrington, a state repre- sentative from Lexington, testified in 1825, in corroboration. " A day or two after the 19th, I was telling Solomon Brown of the circumstance of my having seen blood in the road and where it was. He then stated to me that he fired in that direction and the road was then full of regulars, and he thought he must have hit some of them." This is in support of the claim that the first blood was shed at Lexington ; and the dust of the hero of that day sleeps here.
Dea. Brown, coming to Vermont, was a noted character and an honest store keeper at the foot of Beech Hill. To his grandson, who is the custodian of the musket from which was sent the first shot, and occupies the old home, I am in- debted for a study of an old account book of 90 years ago, which is a mirror of those days in its business and social habits, both instructive and a warning. There was a busi- ness like annual settlement in exact form. "The undersigned have looked over our accounts and settled from the foundation of the world to this day, and find"-with the signature of parties. The record covers four years, from 1798 to 1802. There
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are dealings with sixty patrons, charging flour, salt, tobacco, codfish, rum, &c., with near ten thousand items, and near three thousand for rum, by the gallon, pint or drink, and quaffed with the luxury of sugar an additional charge of two pence.
Who were they ? Names to be remembered if not spoken. The records of that day point to the enslaved victims of ap- petite, poisoned in blood, enfeebled in purpose, by the cruel sorceries of rum. Their children no fathers loved more, but visited the cursed Nemesis under the law of heredity impossi- ble to flee from ; aye, the edict of a God visiting the iniquities (habits) of the fathers upon the children, "unto the third and fourth generation." You have seen the boy, the real son of his father, whose thirst for drink was no surprise, never divested of that fiery blood, which only a long abstinence could cool. It leaped in the veins, mounted the cheek of the com- panions of my youth, and under strong temptation in fashion- able convivial circles, our born noble men became limp, irre- solute and bent the bow of life with timid, uncertain aim. The law of descent is inseparable from your success in rear- ing the brutes, as is the ideal of a God in perfecting a race in His image. What then of equal concern to those habits, the basis of hope for your children, or to mar with morbid appe- tites, crying, give ! give ! to slake a raging thirst ; potent to lift from a gulf of despair or nerve for unnatural criminal deeds. Thus an entail in law beyond human repeal, seen in the insidious corruption of the foe whose feet are like those of the " avenging angels shod with wool." In nature we may give strength and character to the blood, as sun and air give fragrance and color to the rose. Thus I find the habits of the fathers often poisonous to the arterial blood in my Iowa home," the witness of desperate struggles in re- formation ; agonies to regain manhood lost on the swift cur-
*I can appeal to the city of my residence in Iowa, for the benefits of statutory prohibition, in that where there are railways and thousands of people in the first 25 years of our history, no citizen was found in a poor- house, sentenced to a jail, or a convict in prison. In the State there are 55 county jails for rental, and in 90 counties a thief and saloon keeper are alike subject to punishment and equally esteemed.
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rents sweeping on with hereditary taints. Drinking usages do beget dangers, often uncounted woes, linked to generations under salutary laws investing the real man as a charged battery for right and good, or touched by seductive forces dreaded as an enemy with muffled tread.
I may pass from a warning to rather a
LUDICROUS CHAPTER.
In politics we were anti-Jackson, yet always a Demo- crat, except as to party creed. There was, in 1831, intense bitterness. A Connecticut lady visiting us heard a faint apology for Jackson which caused her to shudder, saying he was a monster-that they prayed every day he might die, and I was so impressed with the remark that on being send up the second time to rap for the lady to come to breakfast, returned with the innocent suggestion that she was waiting to pray President Jackson dead, and it meant a cold break- fast.
Between 40 and 50 years ago, New Haven was a very dull place. We had decided in school house debates that this town never would invite a railroad near, oats and horses would be worthless, taverns closed, and in the language of Judge Bottom, a flock of black birds flying over would be of equal value.
The principal business on the street was by wagons, ex- changing bar iron, ore, lumber and goods, and sending up the huge bark wagons to Lincoln from the tannery. These young men had a narrow range of vision, some never having been from home a night. One was allured on a ride up into the wilds of the mountains, fifteen miles, to be homesick, fearful of a return, but was overjoyed just at sundown, that on a day's absence, seeing one he knew, leaped from the wagon, on the run, shouting, "Uncle Hubbard ! Hubbard! How do you do ! You look as natural !"
A man that had been to Boston or New York, we stared at in church, and his presence improvised a circle to get the news. One of the Nashes, Colonel or General, both famed for keen wit, who have left many honored bearing the name,
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was saluted, after returning from a swine drive of 200 miles to Boston, "Sorry you had a poor market." " Thank you. Market very poor, lost money, but gentlemen, I can dispense with your commiseration-you may remember that we had a great deal of very good company going down."
The village store -- a cheap forum for discussion, and the resort of the " born weary" and others with long and heavy service in sitting down, found one who had earned in ad- vancing years the place of ranking captain, but waived fur- ther promotion on a keen shaft of wit sent by Ezra Hoyt, Jr. It is not less veritable than the records of the Sibyl- ine books or less true than the reporter's news column, thus silencing one loquacious tongue, if not vacating a worn chair. An estate was being settled, commissioners and neighbors seated on the grass, and Mr. Hoyt read from the account book of our victim, which should have been :
" Dr. To setting two panes of glass. .6 cents."
Dr. to setting two hours on the grass. .6 cents.
Grave commissioners rolled on the grass in laughter and shouts at the thrust, which seem yet to reverbrate among the hills.
We in our isolation had early prejudices against foreign- ers, especially the Dutch. It is told of myself that I asked of mother : "Did Charlotte Hoyt marry a Dutchman?" "Child, why did you ask that question ?" "I don't believe it, for a gentleman, they called him, pulled me out of the mud in the middle of the road, and I lost one shoe, and he had hard work to get out with his boots." My prejudices vanished and we did not know that my rescuer was one of the Knick- erbocker Dutch, and this is my first opportunity to acknowl- edge, after 60 years, the hale young man of 87 years, owner and occupant of our old home, Elisha H. Landon.
BY EARLY MEMORIES,
I indulge only in an optimistic view, and say not that "the former days were better than these, for thou dost not speak wisely." Dare I give you a farmer boy's recollections it would be of bare feet and nursing stone bruises ; binding Canada thistles with stray stalks of wheat; guiding in lo-
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comotion a string of steers at a plough, with a rebound at stumps and stones, which struck your anatomy with the handles, but in a severer shock at the doctrine of the " perse- verance of the saints." Families rode to church in springless lumber wagons, over hubs and stones, affording painful exer- cise rather than amusement to the young, and to the mothers in weariness a doubtful means of grace. Money to most was not a snare, its possession a delusion. I recall a half day kept from school to ride a horse in corn ploughing on a scant sheep skin and a sharp vertebra, often impaled on the harness hames by a sudden collision with stumps or rocks-and as my mother was a widow was generously paid with a bright full orbed silver five cents. As a deliverer of letters at the Post Office, I have withheld for 25 cents postage a letter from " The Ohio" to the fond " girl I left behind me." On the one newspaper subscriber there were many calls, and if they who " go a borrowing, go sorrowing," there was much grief in the neighborhood. The great church early gave the wood ashes to the Sexton for his service, and on his retiring, fires were made by charity and the bell rung later by chance. Those high gallery pews screened card players behind the choir, and boys in the corner at play at fox and geese, on the stealthy approach of the tithing-man, one boy could swallow the black fox and the other pocket the geese. I recall now the jutting tufts of hair in the high remote African pew, giving freer access to their God in worship than to brother mortals. Hymns were usually in dolorous long meter and sermons in longer measure; which with hard seats and chilled extremi- ties the genius of mental and physical punishment seemed to have inaugurated a preparation for the abode of the in- corrigible.
MAGICAL AND BENEFICENT
are the changes of a half century, not better illustrated than in the beauty of this frescoed historic temple of praise ; in the academy convenient to your children, and giving a generous welcome to the youth of the State in promise of that which my aspirations found only in expatriation from home. Happy people ! fortunate in your benefactor, Anson
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Beeman, who inaugurated your academy like a beacon light among the mountains, wooing the youth to a higher plane of life and inviting the liberality, stimulating pride for the old home in those to the manor born, returning wealth to the spot forever in association with home endearments, and worthy to share the opulent gifts and prayers of devoted sons. Here is a safe abode for the student, where the spirit of the venerable dead abides, by the streams flowing from these old mountains, that have from the morning of time, holding their breath, refused to echo the wail of a slave. Its liberal en- dowment will not only better fit for bearing a high civiliza- tion in our laws and religion to the waiting millions of the republic of Mexico and the islands of the ocean, but minister to that State pride which I would enliven by a
SHORTER CATECHISM
in a biographic mention, which will have the rare merit of brevity and verity, giving the names of a few eminent in our annals.
Who, in recognition of the God of Armies, in laconic speech, demanded in the name of God and the Continental Congress, a surrender of the key to the fortress of American Liberty at Ticonderoga ?- ETHAN ALLEN.
What jurist, in a fugitive slave case, first trampled on the traditions and laws of human chattelship, in demanding before a surrender of the slave held for return, a " bill of sale from God Almighty "-the first Vermont judge-THEOPHILUS HARRINGTON.
Who was the General in the late rebellion in Louisiana, comprehending the value of the slave, first, without orders, enlisted colored troops ?- GENERAL J. W. PHELPS.
What law-maker and leader of the American Congress, by his eloquence and courage, gained the title of the " Old Commoner," but a native of Peacham, Vt .- THADDEUS STEVENS.
Name the veteran diplomat and first in the rank of lin- guistic scholars and critics, and it is the Vermonter, with more than national fame !- GEO. P. MARSH.
The Christian philanthropist who gave the library of this
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great scholar to the University of Vermont, and one of the chaste edifices of the world to his college-the peer of princes, also a Vermonter-FREDERICK BILLINGS.
The only idol of the Democratic party loyal to the flag since General Jackson, was the "Little Giant," born in Brandon, Vt .- STEPHEN A. DOUGLASS.
Before what sculptor has the world paid homage in recognition of that master-piece of high art, the Greek Slave, a Vermonter-HIRAM POWERS.
What other American has chiseled his genius in marble and immortalized it in decorative bronze in our parks and galleries until rising to national fame ? The Brattleboro boy, -LARKIN G, MEAD
Who, with the brush of a Raphael, has thrown upon the canvas the beauty of the valleys and grandeur of the moun- tains of his native land better than our " Beech Hill Painter ?"
Where an Anglo-Saxon the equal in puns, smoother in verse, more brilliant in wit, peer of poets, than our lamented -JOHN G. SAXE.
None but the Almighty may "weigh the mountains in scales, hills in a balance," but next, by the world's acclaim, decorated by kings, is in the exact weighing of earth's jewels and products, the late Governor-ERASTUS FAIRBANKS.
If Vermont gave to the world Joe Smith and a Mormon- ism, with many wives, it was reserved for your Senator to crush the monster Hydra-GEORGE F. EDMUNDS.
The highest ranking minister, save him who holds inter- course with the "King of Kings," is a Vermonter, at St. James court, in London-EDWARD J. PHELPS.
What American divine filled the first place west of the Mississippi river? The lamented veteran of St. Louis-DR. T. M. POST.
First of Emancipation orators, deceased in New York, was-ALVIN STEWART.
Who presides at the Centennial celebration at Philadel- phia, in memory of the adoption of the National Constitu- tion ? A Vermont diplomat-JOHN A. KASSON.
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What was the honored part borne by Vermonters at Washington during the last administration ?
The head of the Senate Committee on Finance was- JUSTIN S. MORRILL.
At the head of the Committee on the Judiciary, and vice pro tem. President, was-GEORGE F. EDMUNDS.
Filling the Presidential chair was one pure and as clear and exalted in political purpose as the life of his martyr pre- decessor, the lamented-CHESTER A. ARTHUR.
Friends :
You have mentioned my visit here in honor of our family, earliest of the settlers, now of Vermonters all num- bered with the dead save one, Dr. A. P. Grinnell, Dean of the Medical Department of the University of Vermont, who is present to-day. There were twenty-five in this town who invite a few words, if not strictly impersonal.
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