USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 29
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1 Although Doctor Jonas Fay's manuscript record contains after the name "New Connecticut" the words "alias Vermont," it has been stoutly asserted that the name "Vermont" was not suggested at the time but was written in, months after the date of the Convention, by reason of the discovery that the name "New Connecticut" was already in use to describe an area in northeastern Pennsylvania (1 Gov. & Coun., pp. 41 to 46, note).
2 In Redfield Proctor's Early Vermont Conventions, p. 20, appears the erroneous statement that Doctor Jonas Fay was the draughtsman. Fay was not even pres- ent at the convention. Senator Proctor had perhaps confused the declaration prepared by Hoisington's committee with the declaration incorporated in the petition to the Continental Congress. See H. Hall's Early History of Vermont, p. 463.
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was personally known to the Continental Congress, while Jacob Bayley was favorably known by reputation. Bayley probably would have been described as "General" Bayley, except that his rank as a general had been recently derived from New York State authority and recognition of it by this convention of secession might have proved embarrassing. The mere inclusion of his name is one more mark of the anxiety constantly felt by the New Staters lest, without the moral support of General Bayley's character, their cause would be thought weak.1
The manuscript record of the convention as subsequently copied by Doctor Jonas Fay from notes kept by the clerk and assistant clerk, seems at this point to have omitted one mea- sure which constituted the fifteenth item. This possibly was a resolution recommending to the several towns that they organize or reorganize themselves according to their original New Hampshire town charters rather than pursuant to New York law or any New York township patents. As will appear by subsequent Windsor town records a convention had so rec- ommended, but whether such recommendation was made at Westminster on January 17 or at a convention at Dorset in the following month it is impossible to state.
The next item was the appointment of nine men as an east- side "Committee of War." Except for the inclusion of Colonel Thomas Johnson, of Newbury, the personnel was political rather than military. Ebenezer Hoisington was a member. In size it equalled a similar committee appointed for the west side the previous year, thus furnishing another example of the tendency to maintain equality in the distribution of offices on the two sides of the Green Mountains. The ignoring of such men as General Bayley, Colonel Joseph Marsh, Colonel William Williams, Colonel Jacob Kent, Colonel Peter Olcott, Major Joab Hoisington, and Captain Benjamin Wait as military ad- visers, indicated a desire to erect a new military department distinct from that already in the field under New York authori- ty. Similar motives appeared in a recommendation to the several towns to choose new committees of safety if not satis- fied with those already in office.
1 For a copy of the credentials issued to this delegation, see 3 Gov. & Coun., 499.
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The convention next appointed agents to raise four hundred dollars on each side of the Green Mountains, to defray the ex- penses of the committee that should wait on the Continental Congress, passed a resolution exhorting all towns to be repre- sented at the next convention, appointed Ebenezer Hoisington chairman of a committee to draft a letter "forbidding the del- egates from Cumberland County sitting in the Honble Provin- cial Congress of the State of New York" and adjourned to June 4th to convene "at the Meeting House in Windsor."
Ebenezer Hoisington's letter to Colonel Joseph Marsh, Major Simon Stevens, and Captain John Sessions, as Cumber- land County's delegates to the New York State Convention, is found in the records of the last day's session at Westminster and reads as follows:
Westminster, 17th Jany 1777.
Gentlemen :- The General Convention consisting of Dele- gates from the Several Counties and Towns through the tract of Land known by the name of the New Hampshire Grants have met according to adjournment at Westminster the 16th inst. and have resolved and declared the above District of Land shall hereafter be a distinct State or Government, and the Inhabitants thereof shall have full authority to make such laws as they shall from time to time think fit.
The said Convention therefore desire and request that you will on sight hereof withdraw yourselves from the Convention of the State of New York and appear there no more in the character of Representatives for the County of Cumberland; as you were not chosen by a Majority of the people at large. Gentlemen, I am you most obedient Humble Servant
Ebenezer Hoisington, Chairman Sub. Committee1
The concluding clause of the letter hardly sounds like Hois- ington. Doubtless it was somebody's afterthought. Besides being a non sequitur it was a weak and dangerous suggestion, since it at once invited attention to the number of people who
1 In all the copies this letter appears to be addressed merely to Stevens and Sessions. They were then in actual attendance at the New York Convention, while Colonel Marsh was on military duty in command of his regiment.
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had voted to elect the twenty-four Westminster delegates. Small as had been the total vote cast for Marsh, Stevens, and Sessions, they had at least been chosen at a general election.
The abandonment of Westminster as a convention town and the selection of Windsor was probably prompted by a desire to make more easy the attendance of delegates from Gloucester County and the hope that General Jacob Bayley could be won over to the New State scheme. Another reason lay in the fact that Westminster itself now showed marked evidence of loyalty to New York.
At the conclusion of the session on January 17, Ira Allen busied himself for nine days at Westminster and elsewhere in collaboration with others in writing "a declaration for a state and other pieces for the Hartford papers."1 The autobio- graphical item from which the foregoing quotation is extracted refers to the second revised Declaration of Independence2 as printed in the Hartford Courant, of March 17, 1777, the ad- vertisement3 of the adjournment to Windsor and the long- delayed "manifesto" 4 which Colonel William Marsh, Solo- mon Phelps, and Ira Allen had been directed to prepare on the last day of the session of October 30, 1776. All of these arti- cles subsequently appeared in the Hartford Courant. With whom Ira Allen worked in the preparation of these publica- tions he does not state. Since his name as "clerk " is appended to all three, he obtained no little notoriety as they severally and separately appeared in print the following spring. They thus served to advertise him as a public character and secured circulation for his Miscellaneous Remarks and Short Argu- ments,5 published as a pamphlet by Ebenezer Watson, of Hart- ford, Connecticut, "about the month of May," 1777.
What we have termed the second revised Declaration of In- dependence omitted all reference to the resolution of the Con- tinental Congress of May 15, 1776. It placed Vermont's right to independent statehood on the fact that the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, had declared the Colonies indepen- dent of the Crown and had thereby rendered the "arbitrary" acts of the Crown, including the establishment of the Connec-
1 Thompson's Vermont, part II, p. 107, note.
3 Id., pp. 52-53. 4 Id., pp. 390-393.
2 1 Gov. & Coun., 51.
5 Id., pp. 376-389.
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ticut River as the boundary between New Hampshire and New York, null and void. Such an argument by itself, of course, proved too much, for it would either make the Grants a part of New Hampshire or would invalidate the granting of the town charters by Benning Wentworth. The second revised Declaration seems to go even to this extreme by the assertion that the inhabitants of the Grants "may be truly said to be in a state of nature," yet they illogically thought themselves possessed of "property" and representing not only "towns" but "counties." This Declaration added one important fea- ture to the two previous ones in fixing the boundaries: "South on the North line of Massachusetts Bay; East on Connecticut River; North on Canada line; West as far as the New Hamp- shire Grants extends." 1
The third revised Declaration of Independence,2 which is really the fourth declaration, was incorporated in the petition to the Continental Congress. Though couched in more mod- erate language, it follows the plan of the next preceding dec- laration. It re-states the western boundary as a line twenty miles east of the Hudson River. The petition of which it is a part is erroneously dated January 15, 1777. The very first Declaration of Independence was not made until the day fol- lowing, while the one contained in the petition to the Con- tinental Congress was prepared subsequent to that date and was not delivered to the Continental Congress until April 8.
The news of what had been done at Westminster reached the New York Committee of Safety at Fishkill in three days. The first reports were exaggerated and gave the impression that the revolt was a complete and general success. From what has been shown in a previous chapter, it is clear that New York expected as much. Later reports of the small attendance at Westminster and the total failure to enlist Gloucester County in the movement for secession gave grounds for believing that the whole of the Grants might not soon throw off their allegiance to New York. General Abraham Ten Broeck, president of the New York Committee of Safety, was encouraged to belittle the whole movement. He wrote to John Hancock that out of eighty men who were expected at the 1 1 Gov. & Coun., pp. 50-51. 2 Id., pp. 48-50.
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Westminster Convention but twenty attended, and that Gloucester County and a great portion of Cumberland re- mained firm in their allegiance. He admitted, however, that the insurrection was dangerous. His information consisted, in part, of a letter written under date of February 19, 1777, by General Jacob Bayley, whose comments on the situation were singularly entertaining and illuminating.
General Bayley's letter, addressed to the New York Con- vention as "Dear Brethren," was written with what he termed "the utmost Concern for the Publick welfare of the United States and this in particular." By "this," he meant New York. He realized "the Absolute nessecty of an Intiere Union of all the Friends of truth" and of "the American cause." He saw great danger in the action of the delegates at Westminster, whom he described as "all the Friends of hell Combined and using all their Deiabolicall Arts to Disunite us." He repre- sented the secessionists as acting on the cry "Now is the time to separate." He expressed the belief that the "Chieff of Cumberland" would go in for the New State movement but that none from Gloucester would follow suit. Lamenting that his neighborhood was so remote from the centre of New York's government, he was in doubt whether it might not be better for Gloucester's soldiers to serve with the troops of Massachu- setts or New Hampshire. Of course he would decline to wait on the Continental Congress as one of the committee ap- pointed by the Westminster Convention. In the schism thus wrought between New York and the New Hampshire Grants he predicted very accurately the risk of the latter coming under the influence of Great Britain. His own view of adjust- ing matters he had endeavored to impress on Ira Allen and other New Staters when they sought his co-operation during the preceding November, and they had promised to adopt his suggestion of applying by petition to the New York Conven- tion for relief.1 The whole of General Bayley's letter, although atrociously spelled and in places somewhat incoherently ex- pressed, is worth reading if one will patiently work out its
1 This suggestion, it will be remembered, had been made by others. Compli- ance with it, even if promised, was probably never seriously intended.
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meaning. It is printed in full in the fourth volume of the Documentary History of New York, at pages 560 to 561.
Two other letters written by General Bayley on February 26, throw further light on his appraisal of the situation. "I wrote you," he says, "last week Peticular Concerning our New State. I am afraid Cumberlin will not make any Draft of Men. Shall know to-morrow as I am now on my journey their." 1 And again: "Disordered men has Disordered Great Part of Cumberlin and the lower towns of Gloucester and by applying Proper Medicine they are in a hopefull way. ...
"I do not look on myself a member of any State but New York." 2
General Bayley's letter of February 19 contained an allu- sion to a convention of all the New Hampshire Grants called to meet at Dorset for the purpose of filling up Colonel Seth Warner's regiment. Of this convention, summoned by Na- than Clark in a notice dated January 30, Mr. B. H. Hall found mention in the town records of Chester.3 E. P. Walton, in a note in the first volume of Governor and Council,4 reluctantly verified Mr. Hall's reference; but neither a record of the min- utes of such a convention nor a statement that such a con- vention was actually held has come to light. The Windsor town records, however, corroborate those of Chester in show- ing that notice of such a convention was issued. On February 13 there was a town meeting in Windsor, over which Captain William Dean presided. It was there "put to vote whether the town would send delegates to a Convention to be held at Dorset on the 19th day of February instant." The meeting voted in the affirmative on this question and chose Deacon Hezekiah Thomson and Ebenezer Curtis "delegates to attend at said Convention."
General Bayley's statement of the object of this Dorset Convention is very likely correct. Nathan Clark, who issued the call for it, was a member of the west-side Board of War. Warner, much to the distress of New York's Committee of Safety, had secured a commission as Colonel from the Conti-
2 Id.
1 Calendar N. Y. Rev. Papers, vol. 2, p. 642.
3 B. H. Hall's History of Eastern Vermont, p. 283, note.
4 1 Gov. & Coun., pp. 51-52, note.
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nental Congress with authority to recruit and command a regiment independently of New York's authority. It is sug- gestive that, following the date of the Dorset Convention, the freeholders and inhabitants of Windsor spent a part of two days-February 27 and 28-at a town meeting, at the Town House, devoted to the single subject of tendering an Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America to every inhabitant of the town. Not only the length of time consumed but the employment of agents indicates that certain of the inhabitants were reluctant in yielding to this appeal to their patriotism.
As at the meeting on February 13, Captain William Dean, a member of Windsor's Committee of Safety, was in the chair on the 27th and 28th. Ebenezer Curtis, who had been elected one of the delegates to Dorset, was chosen to administer the oath of allegiance. Richard Wait "and others" were instruct- ed "to wate on a number of Delinquants att the west part of the town & Desire their attendance att the meeting." Cap- tain John Packard and others were similarly employed to round up recalcitrants in the east part of the town. Recesses were taken and then final adjournment without written men- tion of the names of any who took or who declined to take the oath. Windsor possibly verified General Bayley's prediction that "Cumberlin will not make any Draft of Men."
Before the date of the last meeting Ebenezer Curtis had al- ready posted "by request from a number of the freeholders and inhabitants of the town of Windsor" a notice of a town meeting to be held at the Town House on March 11. The re- quest evidently emanated from Ebenezer Hoisington, who had decided to test some of the policies of the Westminster Convention in his home town. That he had secured local backers is evident from Curtis's statement that "a number" joined in the request. The following warning of the meeting shows Hoisington's plan.
"Whereas the New Hampshire Grantees on the west side of Connecticut River in General Convention judged it most ex- pedient to transact all the public and political affairs in con- formity to the Original Charter of the several towns granted under the Great Seal of Newhampshire,
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"These are therefore to Notify and warn all the freeholders and inhabitants of the Town of Windsor to meet at the Town house in Windsor on the Second Tuesday of March next at ten o'clock beforenoon which is the Day appointed for the Annual Meeting according to the Newhampshire Charter, then and there to act on the following Articles, viz.,
"1ly to Chuse a Moderator to Govern said meeting.
"2ly to Chuse all Town Officers according to Law directed by the Charter.
"3dly to see if the Town will Chuse a Committee of Safety for the town.
"4ly to see if the Town will let the swine run at large the ensuing year.
"5ly to act on any other articles the town shall think proper. Given under my hand this 25th day of February, 1777.
By a request from a number of the freeholders and in- habitants of the town of Windsor
Eben' Curtis, Town Clark."
The reader will note that the town meeting was called for the regular day of New Hampshire town meetings.
For the third time in succession Captain William Dean acted as moderator. His election to this office shows that he had outlived the enmity of the previous decade or that the partisans of Israel Curtis and Benjamin Wait were no longer in the majority. The portion of the townspeople who still fol- lowed the leadership of Colonel Nathan Stone now made their last determined stand. They succeeded in defeating the proj- ect to reorganize the township under New Hampshire laws, and, no doubt, accomplished their purpose without great difficulty. They could at least point to the fact that by Wind- sor's confirmation patent from New York the titles to Wind- sor real estate were now perfectly secure. They could show that the town was legally organized under New York law and already had a full set of town officers whose terms did not expire until the following May. Above all remained the point that Declarations of Independence voted by twenty-four dele- gates at Westminster had not accomplished the erection of a new State government. Why should land titles and the exist-
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ing regularity of municipal organization be put in possible jeopardy by attempting to reconstruct the town as a part of a new State which had not yet been born? These arguments prevailed; but the victory won by Colonel Nathan Stone was not personal. He fell in the contest. When it came to consid- ering names for Windsor's Committee of Safety his name, al- though up to that time he had been chairman of the Com- mittee, was rejected.
Windsor's new Committee of Safety as elected on March 11 consisted of Captain William Dean, Lieutenant Thomas Cooper, Ebenezer Curtis, Richard Wait, Jeremiah Bishop, Lieutenant Samuel Cook, and Joel Ely. The rejection of Colonel Stone might have indicated that he was to be replaced by Ebenezer Hoisington as Windsor's exponent of the New State idea and the man who was largely responsible for Wind- sor's selection as the place for the next adjourned session of the Convention, but evidently there were reasons why such a course seemed for the moment inexpedient.
CHAPTER XXXVII
WINDSOR IN THE YEAR 1777
LOOKING back at Windsor through a century and a half of perspective, we can see that before the year 1777 the town was a place of historic importance. If to no Windsor inhabi- tant nor to anybody else had this thought occurred before the year 1777, the events of that year must have impressed even the most stolid of Windsor's citizens with the fact that the town was destined to be noted if it had not already become so. Instead of being merely of the type of the neighboring towns -an area of mountains, hills, and meadows, with here and there a clearing and a farm amid the forests-Windsor must have acquired early in 1777 in the estimation of the towns- people a political tone or importance that distinguished it from all other towns on the New Hampshire Grants. At least, they knew in January that their town was to be the scene of a notable convention in the following June.
Let us here pause to review the township. Nothing, in all probability, that would now be called a village then existed. True, there were the grist-mill and the saw-mill just north of Mill Brook, on opposite sides of the main highway. Two hundred yards further north and on the west side of the main highway were the graveyard and the meeting-house. Prob- ably just north of the meeting-house was the schoolhouse. On the east side of the highway between the grist-mill and the meeting-house yard was Reuben Dean's little dwelling and shop. With these exceptions, there was hardly anything but a succession of farms from south to north, along the main Connecticut River road. There were a few farms on the hills to the immediate west, up what is now State Street and along what we now call the County Road, a few more on the hills around that center later known as Sheddsville, and two or three others near the present site of Brownsville.
In the southeast corner of the town was the tract of five hundred acres which Benning Wentworth had reserved for
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himself. Whether the Wentworth tract had been cultivated or inhabited in 1777 the writer has no means of knowing. To the north of it was property of Captain William Dean, who owned other lands throughout the township. Since the death of his wife Elisabeth he had married one named Abigail. His son Willard, whose wife's baptismal name was Parnel, lived with or near the captain. Among Willard Dean's children was a baby boy who was to be the first native of Windsor to graduate at a college. This was James Dean, who became the holder of professorships at both the University of Vermont and Dartmouth.
Between two of the Dean tracts on the Lower Meadow was the farm of the widow Isabel Patrick and her sons. Without asserting that they were all of the same family, we find Samuel Patrick, Benoni Patrick, Jacob Patrick, and Matthew Patrick in Windsor at an early date. Samuel, in the year 1773, had married Ama, daughter of Zephaniah Spicer, of Windsor and Cornish. There was also a Jane Patrick, who in the same year became the wife of Stephen Cady, of Cornish, long the town constable of Windsor. From Samuel Patrick descended a line of Windsor men and women who were held in esteem for many years.
North of the Dean and Patrick holdings came a large tract owned by Samuel Chase, of Cornish, and a small lot of river meadow belonging to the Reverend James Wellman, also of Cornish. Then we reach the region which now is known as Buena Vista. This was included in Captain Zedekiah Stone's large farm, which extended from the river westward across the Mill Brook and the site of the present Mill Pond and up on to the western hills. With the venerable Captain lived his young- est son, Caleb, who succeeded to most of his father's estate. Their house may have been the large dwelling, sometimes called the Denison place and in the writer's youth the home of the Teahan family, which stood south of the Mill Brook on the east side of the river road.
On the north slope of Buena Vista, west of the river road, and on both sides of the Mill Brook, though chiefly on the south, was a part of the farm of Captain Alexander Parmelee. He soon became one of Windsor's pushing and prosperous
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men. To the west of the Mill Brook bridge and on the north bank of the stream, near the corner of Union and Main Streets, was Thomas Cooper's saw-mill. On the east side of the river road, as already stated, was the grist-mill of Elisha Hawley, whose property extended down the brook to the river and northward across the present Bridge Street and beyond. Be- sides being a miller, Elisha Hawley was a shoemaker. His wife was Azubah Russell. After her death he married Hannah, widow of another pioneer Windsor shoemaker, Duty Sayles. North of Hawley's was another tract belonging to Captain Parmelee, extending from the main thoroughfare to the river.
North of Parmelee's, on the east side of the road, was a lot belonging to Reuben Dean, who had learned the trade of sil- versmith and goldsmith. How he could have had patronage in Windsor is a puzzle. His title to fame rests on his having been employed by Ira Allen to make the first seal for the State of Vermont. North of Reuben Dean's the writer has not discovered the names of the early occupants or owners, until we strike several lots belonging to Watts Hubbard, Watts Hubbard, junior, and the estate of Israel Curtis. Then comes the lot just south of the road which now leads to the railroad station. On this lot stood the "Old Constitution House," which at that time, according to local tradition, was Elijah West's tavern.1 Next north we strike a small lot belonging to Hannah West, and then the large farm of Jacob Hastings. Opposite Reuben Dean's, on the west side of the highway, was perhaps a piece of Parmelee's land, but just to the northward we meet the land occupied by the Meeting House and grave- yard. We have been told that this Meeting House, or town house, stood to the south of the present Old South Church. Probably to the north of it, as has previously been suggested, was the schoolhouse. Bounded south by the graveyard, east by the river road, and north by the "road leading to the west part of the town" was the property of Gideon Cowles. This piece, as will be seen, was the land on which the Windsor Savings Bank, the Davis Block, the old Isaac Green and the
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