USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 19
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The land sold to Cruger is stated to be three thousand acres, or about one-eighth of the entire township. It com- prised a tract approximately rectangular in shape, bounded on the north by the Hartland town line, and extending south nearly one mile and a half. Its eastern boundary was a straight line about one mile and a half west from the Connecticut River: its western boundary a straight line about two miles easterly from the eastern boundary of Reading. The southern boundary was parallel to the northern.
The land sold to Banyar was also approximately rectangu- lar, comprised eleven hundred acres, was bounded on the north by Hartland, on the east by the Cruger tract, on the west by Reading, and on the south by a straight line parallel to and about three-quarters of a mile south of the Hartland town line.
Colonel Stone was also required to advertise in a New York City newspaper for all claimants to Windsor township under the Benning Wentworth charter. His advertisement appeared in Hugh Gaine's New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury for April 13, 20, and 27, and May 4, 1772, and reads as follows:
1 The names of Adam Van Denbergh, Jr., and Henry Tiers, who had been designated as two of the grantees, were dropped.
2 Windsor Deeds, vol. 1, p. 337. Deed Book 19, page 106, in New York secre- tary of state's office, where at the foot of the record is this significant line: "I do allow the same to be recorded. Henry Cruger."
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THE NEW YORK PATENT
WINDSOR
Whereas his Majesty by his Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Province of New York, hath granted to certain persons therein named, all that certain Tract or Parcel of Land known by the name of Windsor, situate, lying and being on the West Side of Connecticut River, in the County of Cumberland, within the Province of New York, beginning on the West Bank of the said River, at the Distance of 506 Chains and 20 Links South from the South Bounds of a Tract of Land known by the Name of Hertford; and this Tract runs from the said Place of beginning, North 74 Degrees West, 480 Chains; then North 6 Degrees East, 494 Chains; then South 74 Degrees East, along the said South Bounds of Hertford to Connecticut River; then down along the West Bank of the said River as it winds and turns to the Place where this Tract began, containing (inclusive of a certain Lot of five hundred Acres reserved to his Majesty, and of certain Lots therein granted for public Uses) 23,000 Acres of Land, and the usual Allowance for Highways, and hath erected the same into a Township by the Name of Windsor; and whereas a Grant of the same Tract of Land was heretofore pretended to be made by a certain Instrument under the Great Seal of the Province of New Hampshire, unto Samuel Ashly [here follow the names of the original New Hampshire grantees] and to be erected into a Township of that Province by the Name of Windsor; and whereas it is intended that all Persons interested in any of the said Lands under the said pretended Grant (except as is hereinafter excepted) should, upon the Terms and under the Provisoes hereinafter mentioned, be enabled to obtain a good Title to their several Shares and Interest therein, under the Grant thereof issued under the Great Seal of the Province of New York; public Notice is therefore hereby given to all the Persons above named, to whom the said pretended grant was originally made, as aforesaid, and to all other Persons respectively possessed of, or interested in any of the said Lands, by, from, or under any of them, that all and singular their several Interests respectively in the said Tract of Land under the said pretended grant shall be confirmed to them
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
respectively under the Grant thereof, made as aforesaid, under the Great Seal of the Province of New York (except the Share formerly reserved to Benning Wentworth, Esq .; containing the five hundred Acres reserved for his Majesty, as aforesaid) provided they apply for the same respectively, to the Sub- scriber Nathan Stone, of the said Township of Windsor, Esq; within one year after this Notification, paying unto him their respective Proportions of all Fees, Charges and Disbursements, with the lawful Interest thereof, which hath or shall arise, or grow due by Reason of the issuing out the said Letters Pat- ent; together with the Costs and Charges of the Deeds and Conveyances to be made to them respectively.
New York, 13th
April, 1772.
NATHAN STONE.
Having completed his advertising and having obtained sole title to the township except for the Cruger and Banyar tracts and the reserved lands, Colonel Stone remained in New York long enough to have sold several parcels of Windsor property to Thomas Pearsall, Joseph Bull, and Stephen Ward of New York. The properties bought by these men were in the south- erly or southwesterly part of the township, not far from the lands reserved for the public rights, and if selected by the purchasers as their choice of what was valuable, showed ignorance or poor judgment on the part of the buyers. Pos- sibly the same adroitness which Colonel Stone displayed in having the public rights located on the inaccessible parts of Ascutney Mountain may have again been called into play when New York City investors undertook to transact business with him. Of this wild land Pearsall purchased one thousand acres, while Bull and Ward together purchased five hundred. Adding to these purchases the forty-one hundred acres ac- quired by Cruger and Banyar, it will be found that Colonel Stone, before leaving New York City, had reduced the com- mon property of the town by fifty-six hundred acres.
During at least a part of Colonel Stone's sojourn in New York he had the company of a no less interesting fellow- townsman than Captain William Dean. It may be doubted whether Captain Dean participated in any of Colonel Stone's
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THE NEW YORK PATENT
direct negotiations with the New York Provincial Govern- ment, but he was active in finding buyers for Windsor lands. Besides securing a customer in Joseph Bull, he began what led to considerable dealings in Windsor realty with Ennis Graham. The latter was a New York tailor, haberdasher, and importer who speculated freely in lands on the New Hamp- shire Grants and became a large land-owner in Windsor. Since for some time Graham was the defendant in a crown prosecution in New York, one wonders whether Captain Dean had formed this acquaintance during his term of imprison- ment in the "new gaol."
On returning to Windsor with his New York Charter and the sole title to all the Windsor land, excepting the reserva- tions and the lands that he had sold, Colonel Stone proceeded to apportion the balance among the respective claimants. Other than the deeds themselves, virtually no account of his procedure remains. The Windsor County History (p. 286) states that the deeds to the respective claimants bear date of November, 1772. This was not uniformly the case, although true in the majority of instances. The authority last men- tioned names the following as Colonel Stone's grantees:
Caleb Benjamin
Phinehas Dean Benjamin Wait
Nathan Atkins Joseph Patterson
Jeremiah Bishop
Samuel Patrick
Ebenezer Hoisington
Thomas Cooper
Joseph Woodruff Benjamin Bishop Levi Stevens
William Dean
John Chandler Andrew Norton
Samuel Seers
Benjamin Spalding
Peter Leavens
Elisha Hawley, Jr.
Alexander Parmelee Steel Smith Mary Hubbard
Isaiah Burk
Timothy Stanley
Elisha Hubbard
Ebenezer Curtis
Thomas Wilson
David Cook
Solomon Burk
Elisha Hawley, Sr.
Samuel Cook
Samuel Root Watts Hubbard George Stow Andrew Blunt
Asa Smead Ebenezer Davis Elihu Burk
David Hall Elizabeth Curtis
Solomon Emmons
Ebenezer Howard
Lazarus Bannister John Benjamin Samuel Chase
William Smead, Jr.
Fisher Gay
Joseph Barrett
Joseph Bull
Nehemiah Lincoln William Smead, Sr.
Samuel Stone
Elnathan Strong
Hezekiah Thomson
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
James Wellman Jacob Hastings
Thomas Pearsall
Dudley Chase
Asaph Butler
Goldsbrow Banyar
Henry Cruger
Nathan Stone
Isabel Patrick
David Taylor
Willard Dean
Zedekiah Stone
Barnabas Dunham
How nearly complete this list may be we have not deter- mined nor have we ascertained how it was compiled. Obvi- ously it should not have included Cruger, Banyar, Pearsall, or Bull, who had received their deeds before Colonel Stone reached Windsor. If we are not mistaken, the list also includes a few whose deeds were made subsequent to November, 1772, and several who never became Windsor residents. All told, these deeds did not dispose of all the Windsor lands, for Colonel Stone continued for some years after 1772 to convey property by the same form of deed that he used for the original distri- bution of November, 1772, thus indicating either that certain claimants delayed the prosecution of their claims or that he was authorized to hold and from time to time to sell to new arrivals the unclaimed common lands.1 It was a matter of nearly twenty years before Colonel Stone was called on to make conveyance of the lands chosen in the east and west parts of the township for burying grounds and sites for meet- ing-houses.
It naturally happened that in the large acreage sold to Cruger was land which formerly had been occupied by Wind- sor settlers. This difficulty the settlers generally adjusted by accepting conveyances of other land by way of substitution. In one instance only did a settler seriously object. That was the case of Joel Smead, who, some sixteen years later, claimed title to lands within the Cruger tract that formerly were claimed by William Smead, senior. It is perhaps fortunate that this claim was pressed to the necessity of an action of ejectment because by the decision of the court the legality of the New York titles was definitely established, and in the report of that case we have an early and authoritative state- ment of the whole subject of Windsor titles under both the
1 Many of Colonel Stone's deeds were witnessed and probably drawn by Francis Beatty, who in 1784 described himself as a resident of Claremont and a Loyalist.
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THE NEW YORK PATENT
New Hampshire and New York charters or patents. At the risk of departing from strict chronological order, we may prof- itably take up the report of that case at the present stage of the narrative.
From Henry Cruger's executors, who had a power of sale under their testator's will, Elijah Paine, of Windsor, and Lewis Richard Morris, of Springfield, had bought one hundred acres within the Cruger tract. On the land so purchased they found Joel Smead claiming to be the owner as heir of his father, William Smead, senior, who had drawn the land by lot as owner of a proprietary right bought from an original grantee named in the Benning Wentworth charter of 1761. Messrs. Paine and Morris showed that William Smead, senior, in 1771 had joined in the power of attorney, authorizing Colonel Nathan Stone to secure a patent from New York, that the Benning Wentworth charter had been lawfully surrendered by Stone to the Province of New York, and that Stone had se- cured the New York patent in 1772, had acquired title to the whole of Windsor township, and had lawfully sold to Henry Cruger the whole of the Cruger tract in order to pay the cost of the New York patent fees. It also appeared that Colonel Stone had conveyed to William Smead, senior, an acreage in Windsor lands equivalent to what the latter had claimed under the Benning Wentworth charter, and that William Smead, senior, had accepted such conveyance in substitution for his original holdings. In charging the jury in that case, Chief Justice Nathaniel Chipman, with the concurrence of Judge Knight, commented thus on the transaction between Colonel Nathan Stone and the authorities of the New York Provincial Government:
"The plaintiff in this case relies that the New Hampshire charter of the town of Windsor was surrendered into the hands of the Governour of New York for the crown, and that the letters patent, issued in consequence, by that Governour, act- ing for the crown, and intended to operate by way of con- firmation to the claimants under the former grant were good and valid. The act itself, by which the surrender was made, is not produced. The proof of a surrender of the New Hampshire
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
grant arises from the power given to Stone, the agent-from the recital contained in the letters patent from New York;
. and from the acceptance and long acquiescence of the . . New Hampshire proprietors under this grant. It would seem that the acceptance and acquiescence alone, which must have involved almost the whole property of the land in the town, would be construed a waiver of the former grant and a con- firmation of the latter. It may be further observed the origi- nal charter of New Hampshire has not been produced; and it is agreed that it was lodged in the office of the Secretary of the Province of New York previous to issuing these letters pat- ent and that it remained in that office.1
"The defendant in this action stands in the place of his father, William Smead, and his claim must be viewed in the same light. W. Smead, who claimed the premises under the grant of New Hampshire, was a proprietor of several rights or shares and was one of those who executed the power to Stone to procure a confirmation from the Governour of New York. It is evident that W. Smead accepted from Stone a title of lands in Windsor, ... in full for his claim under the former grant ;- in part, of the same lands which he formerly claimed, and in part, of other lands, the benefit of which he enjoyed and left to his heirs. For it will be observed that under the New York grant the whole property was vested in Stone, in trust, that he might convey to every one according to his right, and that the division which was made under the New Hampshire title was not then taken to have any legal effi- cacy, but served only for description. . . .
"The Governour of New York and the authority of that Province were guilty of the highest oppression and injustice towards the New Hampshire grantees. They held the titles derived through the Governour of New Hampshire to be void. They were able to enforce this opinion by violent laws and by the arbitrary decisions of their courts. In consequence of these measures they extorted large sums of money from the New Hampshire grantees and settlers for what they called a con- firmation. This was practised upon the proprietors of Wind- sor. "
1 This is not the fact: a certified copy was filed instead of the original.
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THE NEW YORK PATENT
The court concluded the charge by stating that the high price charged by New York for the confirmation patent in no way invalidated the titles under that patent, and the jury brought in a verdict in favor of Messrs. Paine and Morris.1
This decision of the Supreme Court of Vermont resulted in validating the titles under the New York confirmatory pat- ents for all time.2 It did not, however, settle the title to the five-hundred-acre Wentworth tract which, by the terms of the New York patent, was to remain vested in the Crown. Counting the Dean Prosecutions as the first, the case of Paine and Morris v. Smead is the second great judicial proceeding of Windsor origin that shaped the future of Vermont.
1 N. Chipman's Reports, pp. 99, et seq.
2 The manuscript records of the Cumberland County Courts show that Cap- tain William Dean brought a similar ejectment suit against Zephaniah Spicer in 1772 and obtained a verdict in his favor in 1773.
CHAPTER XXVI
-LAWFUL TOWN GOVERNMENT
THE news of Colonel Stone's success in securing a New York patent reached Windsor before his return. The town- meeting day of 1772 had come and gone and had been ob- served by the election of a new set of town officers. The meet- ing was held at Deacon Hezekiah Thomson's, where Esquire Israel Curtis presided. The officers elected were: David Stone, town clerk; Benjamin Wait, supervisor; Jonathan Burk, Heze- kiah Thomson, and William Smead, overseers of the poor; David Stone, Thomas Cooper, and Jeremiah Bishop, trustees; Andrew Norton, Jeremiah Bishop, and John Benjamin, com- missioners; John Benjamin, Benjamin Bishop, and Elisha Hubbard, constables; William Smead, Caleb Stone, Andrew Blunt, and William Dean, surveyors of highways; David Getchell and Steel Smith, tythingmen; Samuel Stone, key keeper; Benjamin Wait, John Smead, Samuel Patrick, and Solomon Burk, hog drivers; Elnathan Strong and Ebenezer Curtis, fence viewers. Except that it was voted to shut up the swine from April 1 to November 1, nothing else was done at this meeting.
The officers thus elected had been in office but a few weeks when the news of Colonel Stone's success in New York reached Windsor. By the terms of the New York patent the annual meeting of the town was to be held on the third Tuesday in May. It was fortunate that news of the granting of the New York patent came in season for such a meeting in 1772, be- cause the "Districting Act," already referred to, had become a law, and it was therefore important that Windsor should promptly organize itself as a separate New York township with its own lawful town officers, to avoid the chance of being "districted" with other parts of Cumberland County. With this idea in mind, as well as the thought that a lawfully elected Windsor "supervisor" might vote in the coming county meet- ing on the question of removing the court house from Chester, the citizens of Windsor held the first lawful town meeting in
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LAWFUL TOWN GOVERNMENT
its history on May 19, 1772, being the fifth town meeting of which we have a record.
The record of this meeting follows:
"Att a Legal Meeting of the Freeholders and other inhabi- tants of the town of Windsor in the Government of New York and in the County of Cumberland held at the house of Steel Smith, Gent., on tuesday the Nineteenth day of May A. D. 1772.
Votd Hezekiah Thomson Moderator Vota Thomas Cooper town Clerk Votd Israel Curtis Esq' Supervisor
Votd Benjamin Wait
Assessors
Votd Samuel Stone
Votd Elisha Hubbard Benjamin Bishop
Collectors
Votd Jeremiah Bishop John Benjamin Samuel Stone
Commissioners
Votd Jonathan Burk
Zedekiah Stone
overseers of the poor
Votd Ebenezer Curtis Jacob Hastings
Fence Viewers
Votª Caleb Stone
Elisha Hubbard
Constables
Benjamin Bishop Jacob Hastings
Vota William Smeed Jun™ Caleb Stone Andrew Blunt Willard Dean
Surveyors of
Votª David Gitchel Steel Smith
Tything Men
Votd Benjamin Wait John Smeed
Hog Drivers and Field Drivers
Samuel Patrick Solomon Burk
Voted Samuel Stone
Key Keeper
Voted to Dismiss this Meeting.
Hezh Thomson ) Moderator."
Highways
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
It was becoming that the townspeople should give full rep- resentation to the Stone family in recognition of Colonel Na- than Stone's achievement in New York. The retirement of David Stone as town clerk in favor of Thomas Cooper, if sur- prising, was a great improvement in the matter of efficiency. At this meeting, as at most of those that followed, Colonel Stone himself was elected to no office, but his activities in straightening out the land titles and in apportioning the land under the new dispensation kept him fully occupied. For sev- eral years his position in the town as a public character was second to none.
That Colonel Stone has never been a figure of importance in the written history of Vermont is neither singular nor in- explicable. General Jacob Bayley, of Newbury, a much more important personage, is, after all, obscure in comparison with the Allens and their intimates, of whom, for whom, and by whom Vermont history has been written. Neither Bayley nor Stone was on good terms with the Allens. In the case of Colonel Stone, there were other reasons why his name was not held in respect by Vermont historians: he had become friendly for a second time with the officers of the New York government, he had acquired such influence and favor with them that his services were sought to secure New York pat- ents for other towns, he did not join the "new state" move- ment and he gave positive offence to those who set up the new republic in Windsor in 1777. Whether he was suspected of being a Tory the writer cannot determine conclusively. He was a character of sufficient interest to make us wish that his correspondence might have been preserved. Although he and some of the other sons of Captain Zedekiah Stone had served with their father as soldiers of the King in the late war with France and had military experience sufficient to make them valuable to the Revolutionary cause, there is no evidence that their services were offered, except in the case of Samuel Stone, who enlisted as a private in Joab Hoisington's Rangers. On the contrary, Colonel Stone was at one time under military guard, as if he were charged with toryism.
But if one feels that Colonel Stone has not received the recognition due him in written Vermont history, it should be
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pointed out that local traditions of Colonel Stone are equally lacking. Not only did no local story of Colonel Stone survive to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but his name was virtually unknown among Windsor families of that period. From him and from his brothers we have no descendants liv- ing in Windsor. The present well-known Stone family of Windsor traces its ancestry not to any of the sons of Captain Zedekiah Stone, but to a nephew-Samuel Stone-who came to Windsor after the close of the American Revolution.
What has Windsor in the way of traditions or "stories" of the early settlers? Nothing much, save that Captain Steel Smith was the "first settler," cut down the "first tree" and built the "first frame dwelling." We remember to have heard that his son Samuel was the "first child born" in the town and that Captain William Dean's wife was the "first person to die" in Windsor. All these traditions are preserved mainly by word of mouth, not for their importance but because they touch a popular American weakness-the love of a record. "The first" to do this or that holds a "record." Beyond these interesting but small traditions there is scarcely a thing in the way of unwritten story of Windsor's early settlers. The writer remembers that his father had a story or two of Esquire Israel Curtis and one excellent but probably purely apocryphal yarn of Captain Steel Smith. Through descendants of Ebenezer Hoisington there have been preserved or partially preserved a few vague items; but of all the Windsor settlers prior to the Revolution not one left a local reputation that survived in popular remembrance.
The place of holding the meeting of May 19, 1772,-"at the house of Steel Smith"-it would be pleasant to determine. What seems reliable tradition is that the Evarts farmhouse, which stood on the rise of ground just north of the Pulk Hole Brook and west of the highway was built by Captain Steel Smith, and was the first or at least the oldest frame dwelling in Windsor. Whether it was built as early as May, 1772, the writer cannot positively say.
The "districting" of Cumberland County as performed by the county magistrates was not as serious as might have been
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
apprehended. The only towns which escaped altogether were, of course, those that had secured their confirmation charters from New York; but several of the others had the good for- tune to be separately "districted" and experienced no incon- venience. The original notice of the districting and election order, signed on May 6, 1772, by Crean Brush, the newly ap- pointed clerk of Cumberland County, was preserved among the "Pingry Papers," and is copied in full in B. H. Hall's History of Eastern Vermont, at pages 743 and 744. Pursuant to the terms of this notice, the town supervisors met at Ches- ter on May 26 and voted to change the county seat to West- minster, on the Connecticut River. That meeting at Chester, to which Esquire Israel Curtis was Windsor's delegate, was the first that the writer has found where Cumberland County supervisors or delegates met officially for the transaction of county business.
Windsor was now fairly launched as a duly incorporated town, erected by lawful authority and possessed of lands by titles reasonably secure. Now began the construction of sub- stantial dwellings which, one by one, replaced the log cabins. In the year 1772 the Cumberland County Court issued to men of Windsor three separate licenses for the sale of spirituous liquors, viz., to Caleb Stone as a retailer and to Benjamin Wait and Colonel Nathan Stone as tavern keepers. In the following year Hezekiah Thomson secured a tavern keeper's liquor license.
To this period belongs the erection of "The Old Constitu- tion House" on the east side of the main or town street, just south of the lane which now leads to the railroad station. Now began, also, a larger immigration from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. The set- tlement of the question of land titles, as far as Windsor was concerned, gave assurance that the lawlessness which had been rife in Windsor but two years before, and which was still distracting the towns on the west side of the Green Moun- tains, had become in Windsor a thing of the past. There was a higher quit-rent to pay under the New York patent than had been reserved by the New Hampshire charter, and, if their wishes had been consulted, most of the people of Wind-
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