USA > Vermont > Addison County > New Haven > New Haven, a rural historical town of Vermont > Part 3
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Those of the rural branch of the family may never have found the high empyrian of the ambition of the dwellers by the ocean, but there was one, our grandfather, beside whom my father and many of the family sleep in the ceme- tery, whom I mention.
Reuben Grinnell, with his bride Mabel, came from Salis- bury, Ct., that early home of our governors and jurists- their peer. Except in prayer he stammered, and is remem- bered by sparing the stateliest pines of the forest for the church. Moses was his model farmer, as first law giver, and he gave the seventh year in a rest for the soil as our ancestor did, and used it in building this church, yet firm and spacious, now slated and decorated, in promise of cen- turies of service. Huguenot blood was his pride, in recount of the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, when our an- cestors with heraldic fame, owners of park, palace, the famed Grennelle Spring of Paris, left all to become exiles on the chalky cliffs of Wales, up to their emigration to Rhode Island, in 1710. Divine Providence in good time brings its com- pensations, and I find a notable instance in the resolve that under the flag of France there is to be erected on the
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home from which our fathers were driven, a copy of our Bartholdi statue-Liberty enlightening the World.
We have placed a memorial tablet from a granite boulder quarried on the old farm, borne from the Arctic North on the sea of ice, melting in this valley perhaps in the morning of time, which takes the fine polish of Scotch granite, but not more lustrous and imperishable than the names engraved thereon. They are the ancestors of Judge Julius Sprague Grinnell, that law officer of Chicago, who has well earned the plaudits of millions in placing prison stripes on official plun- derers, and to the joy of all lovers of liberty has secured the conviction, in promise of the gallows, of seven murderous Anarchists.
Jointly in rearing our granite tribute is the brother of the Jurist, and not less eminent in the medical profession, of the blood of the minister, Dr. Hopkins, and worthy successor to a father, an esteemed physician, also disciple of the Hugue- not Pare, father of modern surgery, Prof. A. P. Grinnell of Burlington, Dean of the Medical Department of the Univer- sity of the State of Vermont.
In premonition that this may be my last visit to Ver- mont, I indulge in no fear that any profane vandal iconoclast will deface the names of your revolutionary dead. So may ours be spared in the company of Christian heroes, where the antiquarian will make his visits and in a more reverent age the sacred dust may be a higher inspiration to the children, and more worthy to be hallowed in devotion -- a shrine.
CONCLUDING,
let me not indulge a recall to cloud this hour or anticipate calamity. The epidemic of 1813 and 1814, blanched the cheek with the paleness of death, when thirty of our number were cut off from life.
Then the torrent of 1830, in a mad sweep of waters down the New Haven river, sent desolation and bore at Beeman's Hollow twenty-four houses from their foundations, to sate the anger of the flood. Fourteen human beings found a watery grave, and in the daring risk of Lemuel B. Eldridge and
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his son to rescue the drowning, by which the intrepid young Loyal W. Eldridge lost his life, I have a mirror of sorrows met and recalled on our life's voyage. The endeared of fam- ilies rise before me to swell the hosts of the departed. They only tell that we are on a wave from which we shall be separ- ated one by one in the Divine Edict-alone thou wert born, and alone must die and answer to God. Buoyant youth and feeble age have been swept on together to ocean deeps, and shoreless expanse-too soon forgotten! We shall soon be at the melancholy flood, where beauty and valor no more appear in full dress upon the stage-and they, too, in turn, flitting by ; may it be hoped, in immortal fruition! The great flood gave an incident in the father grasping the dead body of his son floating by, which in pathetic verse tells of the meetings and sorrows of our checkered lives, long in memory, and not found in our libraries :
Whence com'st thou ! my Boy ! that thy nerves are all chill, And thy young limbs, which once might well buffet the wave? From the drift-wood, the surf, and the wind sounding shrill, I have come to the deep where the storm may not rave.
Why com'st thou! my Boy ? could thy strength and thy skill, Not deliver thy life from thy play-mate the wave ?
My Father ! above us the tempest broods still,
And I seek from its wrath a kind refuge-the grave!
Alas then ! my Son ! may I meet thee no more,
When the storm breeze is hushed and the billows all sleep?
Thou may'st! but our meeting must be on that shore Of immortal delight where no tempests e'er sweep !
Adieu ! my townsmen and friends ! May there be for us no such farewell in the dark, silent chambers of the deep ; rather let us hope for a pleasant, if not a long voyage, to that haven which our fathers found in the service of country and in a humble Divine trust.
At the conclusion of Mr. Grinnell's address, Hon. L. D. Eldridge was thus introduced :
We have with us to-day a gentleman of the fourth gener- ation, of a family for nearly a century largely identified with
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the history of New Haven and of the county, a gentleman whose success in life we have watched with pleasure. You anticipate before I speak the name of Hon. L. D. El- dridge of Middlebury, who is invited to come forward and address the audience.
Mr. Eldridge paid a tribute to Mr. Grinnell, his old school teacher, and was eloquent in praise of Prof. Meacham, an early pastor, and the town of his nativity. The Library and Academy, with higher education, were held up as the instruments in connection with the Church to maintain the noble record of the sons of New Haven. The committee were not fortunate in obtaining a full report of the speech.
The chairman referred to the fact, before mentioned, that the attorney who caught and caged the anarchists was a Vermonter. " Well," continued he, "the orator of the day, with characteristic enterprise, undertook to catch that attor- ney and have him here to-day. The effort was not success- ful ; but he has rendered a service equally praiseworthy ; he has caught that attorney's brother-and I am pleased to be permitted to call out Prof. A. P. Grinnell of Burlington, who will now speak to you."
REMARKS OF DR. GRINNELL.
MR. PRESIDENT :- It was my intention to come here and be a listener to the interesting and admirable address which we have heard to-day, but you have seen fit to exercise what appears to me as an unwarrantable license in calling me up for a few remarks. I cannot enter fully into the spirit of this hour because it is my misfortune to have been born in New York. Although my father was born here, my grand- father and great grandfather were buried here, still I cannot but feel that the sentiments of praise offered by the orator are more applicable to others than myself. In fact, from the statement made by the speaker, I could not well be in- cluded in his list of notable men unless I had been dead a century or two or had emigrated West. I never until to-day appreciated the grave mistake my parents made in having me born in New York. After hearing all the fine things said
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about my ancestors and other distinguished people who origi- nated in New Haven, the great and good men who started from this quiet Vermont hamlet, to become millionaires and profound statesmen in the West, I feel ashamed that I was not born in New Haven. I shall never feel quite willing to forgive my parents for obliging me to be born in such an ob- scure and uninteresting a State as New York. Pleasant allusion has been made to my brother who emigrated West a few years ago to grow up with the country, and to whom the peo- ple here and everywhere seem anxious to offer thanks for his efforts in sustaining law and order. To be sure he has won laurels, made an enviable reputation and secured success by going West, but I will not acknowledge that the only path to fame and fortune is found in following the footsteps of my cousin or brother. I have no reason to complain of Vermont as a place of residence now, and instead of accepting the sen- timent expressed by Douglass, that "Vermont was a good State to emigrate from," I would say Vermont was a good State to emigrate to.
Vermont may look small on the map, and may, perhaps, barely be holding her own in population, but the average farmer, living here, is quietly drawing interest on his mort- gages placed in the West,-while the payor is boasting of his great wealth and superior advantages. While this remains as it does, I shall feel contented to live where my ancestors lived and died, and if I can ever contribute to the wonderful growth and prosperity of the West as they did, then my mission in life will have been well filled.
The chairman said : " Another family, long prominent in town, is honorably represented here in the presence of Judge Wm. S. Wright, who is invited to speak." The Judge paid a high compliment to the able citizens of New Haven, where he and his ancestors so long resided.
At the conclusion of Judge Wright's remarks the chair- man stated : "But one name more remains upon the pro- gramme, and it is in this case, as sometimes in families, when its inmates migrate from the home nest, the vacant place is filled by adoption. So we have just adopted a son of a
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sister State, who will doubtless ere long become 'as to the manor born.' He is invited to address you."
Rev. W. B. Hogue, pastor of the Church in New Haven, said substantially :
I have been deeply interested in the address of Mr. Grin- nell, and in the remarks of the gentlemen who have followed him. I have only been in New Haven fifty days, more or less, and cannot talk of the past with those that look back for fifty years, more or less. I can only look into the past along the lines which the addresses of the preceding speakers have opened.
The thing that comes upon me with force, is the present with its relation to the future. I was stirred by the reference of the orator of the day, to the substantial way in which, under the inspiration and leadership of his grandfather, (dur- ing the year in which he suffered his land to lie idle that the house of God might be built), the timbers of this church edifice were framed, and the structure so thoroughly put up, that with due care it should last for centuries yet to come.
Now, while I have been deeply moved by what has been said of the past, I am moved to speak of the present, with its outlook upon that which is to be. If the future is to be as the past and more abundant, it will be because we, who are of the present, are worthy of the heritage committed to us, and act accordingly.
What is the most important institution of the town? I believe that it is the Church-that it has been so in the past, is so now and is to be so in the future. I believe that the Church is the most important thing in any community. If we, therefore, are to build worthily on the foundation of the fathers we should strive to make the Church more than it has been.
But there are some of us who are at work upon the problem which the Church affords, and we hope for a success- ful issue.
Next to the Church and supplementary thereto, stands a good educational institution. It is a matter of great im- portance to New Haven that there is an academy here. Since
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my arrival I have been impressed with the fact that New Haven needs nothing else so much as a suitable endowment and equipment of this institution. I understand that it has some ten or eleven thousand dollars in funds, but with its present cramped up quarters, and seventy or more students, it has completely filled its limits. Something must be done to give it more space and a larger force of instructors, if it is to do its proper work. Here is a case that is urgent. The academy is a source of income to a town, which in a few years is likely to return a sum as great as that put into the endow- ment.
But there are higher considerations, among which are the incentive to education afforded to the youths in this fair valley and on the adjoining hills; strengthening the higher educational institutions to which the academy is a feeder ; enlarging and enriching the lives of many who otherwise would grow up untrained or but poorly prepared for responsi- ble positions ; and not least among other things, establishing in the youth the conditions of the best spiritual develop- ment.
From this academy, properly equipped, I hazard the statement that in the future New Haven will derive more honor from those who here have been instructed than from the worthy record of her sons of that which is now the past.
Geo. W. Brown, Esq., of Boston, was called on. He is the only child of Dea. Solomon Brown living. An interest- ing account of the capture of his father by the Red Coats in the revolution was given and a corroboration of the histori- cal declaration made that his father fired the first effective shot for liberty at Lexington. The old gun is now a relic at the New Haven home, and the holes made by the shots aimed at my father are yet to be seen on the house near the old Lexington monument.
Hon. Luman Pease of Illinois, a native of Vermont, closed the exercises with a most entertaining speech.
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