USA > Vermont > Windsor County > Windsor > The birthplace of Vermont; a history of Windsor to 1781 > Part 8
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Among the signers of the petitions and powers of attorney the writer has found the name of no Windsor settler. How far, if at all, the sympathies of the inhabitants of Windsor and other Connecticut Valley townships supported the movement is not known. With the support of the Society for the Prop- agation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the effect was to make useless any further application for township re-grants for some years and also temporarily to relieve apprehension that the townships might be granted to other than the inhabitants. Robinson sailed on Christmas Day, 1766, and, as a result of his representations and those of the Propagation Society, Lord Shelburne wrote Governor Moore on April 11, 1767,2 to make no new grants on the west side of Connecticut River, which instruction was followed by a more explicit order of the King in Council on July 24, 1767, to the same purport.3 To this
1 1 Vt. Hist. Soc. Coll. 4.
2 4 Doc. Hist. 365.
3 4 Doc. Hist. 375. Historically, the importance of the Robinson application lay less in the impression it created abroad and in the response it elicited than in showing the state of mind of the purchasers of New Hampshire titles. That the comparatively poor settlers on the New Hampshire Grants actually sent one of their neighbors across the sea to seek redress is eloquent evidence of the gravity of their cause and their confidence in its justness.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
instruction and this order Governor Moore yielded com- pletely, and the practice of issuing grants or re-grants in the Vermont region was consequently suspended until after his death, which occurred on September 11, 1769.
The proprietors of Windsor having been disappointed in the efforts to secure the delivery of a township charter or patent from the Province of New York now turned their attention to their own organization. Thomas Frink, of Keene, still con- tinued as their clerk, but so many of the proprietors had set- tled in Windsor that it seemed best to choose in his stead a resident of the township. Under date of October 5, 1767, there was posted a notice of a proprietors' meeting to be held "at the House of Thomas Cooper in said Town on Tuesday the third Day of November Next at Ten o'clock in the fore- noon" for the purpose, among other things, "to chuse a pro- prietors Clerk."
At this meeting, which is the first recorded meeting of any kind in Windsor, and which took place at Thomas Cooper's bachelor quarters on the day appointed in the notice or warn- ing, Israel Curtis was chosen as Moderator and Thomas Cooper as Proprietors' Clerk. Other matters disposed of at the meeting were the relocation of the "Minister's house lot" north of Zedekiah Stone's farm, a readjustment of Israel Cur- tis's holdings, the acceptance of "a new Parchment Plan" of the township, and the appointment of "Benjamin Wait, Israel Curtis Esq: & Col. Nathan [Stone] a Comitee to Except of what Roads hath been Layd [out and] to Lay out Roads for the Benefit of the town." The paper containing the record of this meeting is so mutilated that its contents are not wholly discoverable, but it shows besides the items mentioned above the peculiar practice of drawing for lots in the names of the original proprietors named in the New Hampshire Charter in- stead of in the names of those who had acquired proprietary rights by purchase from the original grantees. This practice was continued as long as any land remained to be allotted. Thus, Zedekiah Stone, being an original proprietor, drew lots in his own name. On the other hand, Steel Smith, not being an original proprietor, but having purchased the proprietary rights belonging to Jacob Cummings, Simeon Smeed, Joseph
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SETTLING THE GOSPEL IN WINDSOR
Stevens, and Thomas Frink, would be entitled to draw lots, not in his own name but in the names of each of those four original grantees, until he sold the rights to others.
Another item of importance touched on at this meeting was a provision for a "public yard" comprising three acres, the location of which is not clearly described but which may well have been the area now comprising the Old South churchyard and church precincts. Since the meeting voted to return to Israel Curtis his bond for building the mills in the town, it may be inferred that he had performed his agreement to con- struct a grist-mill and a saw-mill on the Mill Brook. Military titles had by this time become so common in consequence of the organization of a militia regiment in Cumberland County that we find that "Lieut. David Stone, Sergt. Joab Hoisington, Ensin Benjamin Wait, Solomon Emmons and Ensin Steel Smith" were chosen a committee to lay out the town.
On December 17 of the same year the proprietors held a second meeting at Thomas Cooper's. "Ins" Benjn Wait" was chosen moderator, "Cap" Sam1 Stone, Israel Curtis Esqr and Serjt Andrew Norton, assessors, Thomas Cooper, treasurer, and Col. Nathan Stone, collector." The committee which had been chosen at the preceding meeting was directed to lay out ten acres for a "public yard" at such place as they considered most advantageous and also, for each proprietary right, a tract of fifty acres as near as practicable to this public yard.1 With some further instructions to the committee and having decided to "pass by" the question of reimbursing their agent (Colonel Nathan Stone) for his expenses at New York, the proprietors took up the subject of building a bridge "acrost the Mill Stream in Windsor." They voted to pay Joseph King twenty pounds in day's labor to build such bridge "be- tween the dam of the Grist Mill and Saw Mill Standing on said Stream" provided that King would give bond in the sum of one hundred pounds "to build the said Bridge Good and well as followeth: Viz: fourteen feet wide and to be well Plankt so far as Shall be thought proper with Plank two inches and a half thick and Said bridge to be built by Said
1 This yard probably included the West Parish (Sheddsville) cemetery and the meeting-house property nearby.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
bond by the first Day of July in the year 1768 and to be Ex- cepted by the Committee appointed for the purpose of High- ways."
Although it would appear from subsequent proceedings that King never built the proposed bridge, the location se- lected by the proprietors indicated that a highway then in existence or presently contemplated ran approximately north and south through Windsor about on the lines of the present main street in Windsor village. Another highway (for there was then more than one) must have extended into the west part of the township and a third must have led to the Con- necticut River which was the principal route for trade with the south. The reader, of course, should not form too large an opinion of these "highways." They had length, probably width, a bridle path in the center and, perhaps, a surface over which an ox team might be driven. For journeys of great distance the winter time, when the sleighing was good, was for many years the favored season at this period and for years after.
A meeting on July 18, 1768, over which Hezekiah Thomson presided, voted the acceptance of a plan of the fifty-acre lots, a tax of three dollars and a half on each right to defray the charges for highways and other necessary charges, and a tax of two dollars and a half for the necessary charges of surveying. Exclusive of the "Minister's right" and other public rights and the reservation for Benning Wentworth there thus were fifty-nine rights to contribute six dollars apiece or an aggregate fund of three hundred and fifty-four dollars for the expenses of the township. Those of the proprietors who lived in Windsor probably paid this tax chiefly by day's labor. Those who lived elsewhere paid in cash if at all. That there had been delinquency in the matter of paying previous taxes or charges voted by the proprietors is clear from the warning or warrant for the next meeting on October 3, 1768.
On the date last mentioned there was a meeting at which Joab Hoisington acted as Moderator. The taxes recently voted were then apportioned to house lots, meadow lots, fifty- acre house lots of the second division and undivided common. A further tax or charge was voted and Joab Hoisington,
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Solomon Emmons, Benjamin Wait, and Steel Smith were chosen as a committee with the proprietor's clerk to sell lands "of the Delinquent Proprietors to defray the charges." The question of building a bridge across the Mill Brook having again been agitated was now left to a committee consisting of Joab Hoisington and Andrew Norton. Though the settle- ment was but four years old this meeting contains a reference to the "original highway" across house lot number fifty- three. This original highway was ordered given to Joab Hoisington in lieu of land to be taken for a new highway across the meadow lots numbers forty-one and forty-two. Where this original highway ran can only be conjectured. The various parchment plans referred to in the proprietors' records have long since disappeared and the oldest map in the pos- session of the town bears evidence that it was prepared, at least in part, subsequent to March, 1772. If the parcels of land on such map are numbered and located according to the previous parchment plans it would indicate that the change in highway above mentioned took place near the north end of the present main street in Windsor village and resulted in the abandonment of a road running parallel to the present main street and a little further to the west.
Windsor was now sharing the flow of emigration to the New Hampshire Grants from Connecticut and Massachusetts. The widow Isabel and Samuel Patrick, Samuel Seers, Caleb and John Benjamin, Elnathan Strong, Enoch Judd, Ezra Gilbert, Simeon Mills, David and Jacob Getchell, Andrew Blunt and Captain William Dean were among those who soon followed the first settlers and established abodes within the township limits. Of these recruits to the little community Captain William Dean was the most important and, after sen- sational experiences, became for a time the leading citizen. The natural increase through the birth of children began within a year of Steel Smith's settlement. The first birth in Windsor was that of Samuel, son of Steel and Lois Smith on July 2, 1765. The first girl born in Windsor was Polly (Mary), daughter of Colonel Nathan and Mary Stone, on April 26, 1767. The first death in Windsor was that of Elizabeth, wife of Captain William Dean, on December 22, 1766.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
More than four years elapsed after Steel Smith's settlement in Windsor before there was a church or church society in the neighborhood. No place of business except the saw-mill and the grist-mill had been established, but these were of great importance not only to Windsor but to neighboring settle- ments. No schoolhouse had been built and, so far as the records show, there had been no organization of a town gov- ernment other than the proprietors' meetings. The inhabi- tants were occupied in husbandry and lumbering. There was neither physician nor clergyman among the inhabitants nor, until the arrival of John Grout at the end of 1768 or the early spring of 1769, any lawyer. Consistently with the habits of the stock of which they came the Windsor settlers' first effort after providing the bare means of sustenance and their unsuc- cessful attempt to confirm their land titles by a New York charter was to secure the services of a minister of the Gospel. Too poor and few to consider supporting by themselves a clergyman, they hit on the plan of combining with the settlers just across the Connecticut River in Cornish, who were per- haps in somewhat less straitened circumstances, and joined with their New Hampshire neighbors in a call to the Reverend James Wellman.
The call, executed by eleven Windsor settlers, and still pre- served among the papers of the Wellman family, reads as follows:
"Wee the Subscribers being Desiurous to Promote the Settle- ment of the Gospell in the Towns of Cornish and Windsor and in a particular Manner for the Incouragement of Settling the Rev'd Mr. James Wellman in the Town of Cornish, afore- said: wee say, being the Inhabitants of Windsor, on the Con- sideration of the preaching being one third of the Time in Windsor for the Terme of five years that wee will as soone as conveniency will admit Give our Respective Obligations to the Rev'd Mr. Wellman for the Severall Sums to be paid to the Rev'd Mr. Wellman yearly for the Said Terme of five years (to be paid in Grain, beef or porke or Labour at the Set prices as shall be Reasonably agreed uppon hearafter) as
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Shall be Enex'd to our Names on this paper being understood Lawfull money of New Hampshire. "Windsor, July 21st 1768"
pounds
Israel Curtis
1 . 10
: 00
Hez'k Thomson
1
: 10
: 00
Joab Hoisington
1
: 10 : 00
Sam'l Seers
0
10
. 00
Caleb Benjamin 1 : 00 : 00
Elnathan Strong
0
: 18
. 00
Enoch Judd 1
: 00 ยท 00
Ebenezer Hoisington 1
: 00
: 00
Steel Smith
1
: 12
: 00
Thomas Cooper
1
: 00
. 00
Elisha Hawley
1 : 00
: 00
In this respectfully worded appeal, in which devotion, fru- gality, and caution are pathetically combined, it is to be noted that no member of the several Stone, Wait, or Dean families joined. Steel Smith offered a little more than anybody else. Seers and Strong were the smallest contributors.
Mr. Wellman's salary was to be forty pounds per annum so that the aggregate sum of the Windsor underwriting-twelve pounds ten shillings-was a fair proportion of contribution to the stipend of a clergyman who was to preach in Windsor but one third of the time and was to live in Cornish all the time. Windsor and Cornish each gave him a piece of land.
In the archives of the Old South Church of Windsor, is a bond of tenor similar to the foregoing call and signed by the same people excepting Hawley and Strong. In the spring of 1771 seventeen more Windsor settlers gave their undertaking to contribute annually toward Mr. Wellman's salary until September 29, 1773, viz.,
Samuel Patrick 5 shillings
Peter Leavens 6 shillings
Ebenezer Howard 4 shillings
William Smeed 12 shillings
John Smeed 6 shillings
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
Ebenezer Curtis 12 shillings
Benjamin Wait 10 shillings
William Smeed, Jr. 6 shillings
Andrew Blunt 6 shillings
Nathaniel Atkins
6 shillings
Jacob Hastings 10 shillings
Benjamin Bishop
4 shillings
Joseph Powers 6 shillings
Matthew Hammond
3 shillings
John Evans
3 shillings
Jonathan Burk
8 shillings
Jeremiah Bishop
6 shillings
Here again we notice the absence of the names of the Stones, the Deans, and Joseph Wait. The fact that Colonel Nathan Stone was a member of the Church of England may indicate that his relatives as well as his brother-in-law, Joseph Wait, were of that communion and did not feel called on to subscribe to the maintenance of a Congregationalist parson.
Mr. Wellman's little house, the red cottage with the gambrel roof, on the east side of the river road in Cornish about a mile south of Cornish Bridge, is still standing. It is one of the oldest landmarks built by human hands within sight of Wind- sor although probably not dating back to the beginning of Mr. Wellman's pastorate. It probably stood originally on the west side of the highway near the present railroad track.
Of the Reverend James Wellman himself, a man of attain- ments and education, the first person above the farmer, lumberman, or mechanic class to become a familiar figure in Windsor, a few words should be said. There is a pleasant notice of him in the Reverend Ezra Hoyt Byington's History of the First Congregational Church of Windsor, Vermont. To that valuable work we refer as one of the few meritorious re- searches into Windsor history.
The Reverend James Wellman was born at Lynn in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, May 10, 1723, was graduated at Harvard College in 1744, was ordained as minister in Sutton, Massachusetts, October 7, 1747, was dismissed July 11, 1768, and settled in Cornish September 29, 1768. He was "a man of good abilities," says Mr. Byington, "a fine scholar, ... a
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SETTLING THE GOSPEL IN WINDSOR
good preacher and a faithful pastor." His invitation to Cornish had been prompted by some of the Cornish settlers who had been his parishioners at Sutton. "It is said," observes Mr. Byington, "that his theological opinions were more liberal than those of some of his parishioners." The covenant of the new church of Cornish and Windsor, adopted at Windsor September 21, 1768, and at Cornish a week later, "recognized the doctrines which are now held by the orthodox Congrega- tional churches." By a slight majority vote the church of Cornish and Windsor adopted what were then known as lib- eral views and required no "relation of religious experiences from persons desirous of uniting with the church" and per- mitted "parents who were not members of the church to pre- sent their children for baptism." But a large minority of the church members were strict Calvinists and their beliefs hastened the division of the church which came in the spring of 1774. It is also fairly to be inferred that the liberals of the church were not mainly to be found in Windsor.
Although little has been preserved to show what was the personal or human side of the Reverend James Wellman one cannot but feel that if in the long life of the Congregational church in Windsor there could have been more pastors of the liberal views of Mr. Wellman and Mr. Byington more happiness and less gloom would have been the lot of the inhabitants. For more than one hundred years the manifestations of narrow Calvinism survived in Windsor. There are now living many people of Windsor birth who, like Mrs. Judge Lyman, could "feel the cloud of Calvinism that enwrapped the whole valley of the Connecticut in spiritual gloom." 1 It was a part of the life of Windsor until comparatively recent years. Town his- tories usually omit to deal broadly with the religious atmos- phere, yet such an omission leaves so much unwritten that one feels the inadequacy of town histories which in the matter of religion merely mention the erection of church edifices and give lists of the pastors. Though written of life in North- hampton, Massachusetts, and at a period fifty years after the founding of Windsor, Mrs. Susan Lesley's description of the outward signs of Calvinism is illuminating. "In revival times,"
1 Recollections of My Mother, by Susan I. Lesley, p. 173.
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
said she, "the evidences of conversion were discussed, much as the symptoms of a fever would be; and the deep things of God,-the soul's union with Christ, the 'obtaining a hope,' as it was called,-were bandied about without reserve and without joy. In infant schools, babies wept over their 'wicked hearts'; and the children in older schools were separated into 'sheep and goats,' and sat on 'anxious seats.' If they died early, the little prigs had their memoirs written, in which they im- plored the good old people, who had borne the burden and heat of the day in faith and patience, 'to come to Christ.'"' 1
This was the temper and quality of religious belief among the Congregationalists in Windsor. Strong in inherited hatred of the Church of England from which their ancestors had been dissenters, strong in their abhorrence of the Roman Catholic Church which they considered as holding Canada "priest- ridden" and in a condition of heathenism, ignorant of the Unitarian views which, when brought before them, affected them like heady wine and made friends or enemies accordingly, the good Congregationalists of Windsor saw but one permissible variation from their own beliefs and that was adult baptism by immersion. On this mere distinction in the form of a sym- bol and the time of administering it their strong and narrow minds could take sides intelligently and without rancor. But even this limited liberality was not always in evidence. The Reverend Aaron Hutchinson of Pomfret who preached to the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Windsor in July, 1777, once quoted from the pulpit of the Congregational Church at Hanover an authority to the effect that "the same spirit which drove the herd of swine into the sea drove the Baptists into the water, and that they were hurried along by the devil until the rite was performed." 2
To the people of Windsor Mr. Wellman preached on one third of the Sundays from the autumn of 1768 to the spring of 1774. There was no bridge on which to cross the Connecticut and tradition has it that at seasons of comparatively low water when he forded the stream on horseback he sometimes entered the pulpit dripping wet. There must have been Sundays at
1 Id., pp. 173-174.
2 Life of Ariel Kendrick, p. 15.
-
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the season of the spring freshet when he could not cross at all on account of the current and the floating ice. In the dead of winter and in the summer and autumn his crossing was simple. The "pulpit" to which he came was any of the cabins, houses, or barns which was appointed to receive him, for the "town- house" or "meeting-house" was not built until the last year of his Windsor pastorate. His "diary," which was interleaved in his almanacs, mentions preaching at Joab Hoisington's oftener than anywhere else in Windsor.
Of course, Mr. Wellman had to farm to eke out a living. He kept and bred horses, cattle, sheep, and swine. He raised geese. He cultivated his Windsor meadow with rye. In the fall he sometimes pastured cattle there. One year he made two hundred and twenty-eight pounds of maple sugar. In the year 1772 he had finished planting corn by May 15. His boys, James, Isaac, and Solomon, worked for him and he had the somewhat irregular help of John Andrews, Jerusha Lynd, Betty Chase, and one Plaistridge. Israel Curtis presumed suffi- ciently on his friendship to borrow of him twenty-two shillings. Mr. Wellman occasionally accommodated others with small loans of money and seemed always ready to lend books from his library. To Joab Hoisington he lent his copy of Bates's Harmony of Divine Attributes and to Andrew Blunt a set of Flavel's Works. Items such as these, picked from Mr. Well- man's "diary," give hints of his life and of that of his Windsor neighbors. Unfortunately only fragments of the "diary" are preserved.
The year 1768, besides bringing the Gospel to Windsor, also brought to the attention of Eleazar Wheelock the upper part of the valley of the Connecticut as affording a possible new location for the Indian School he was conducting at Leba- non in the Colony of Connecticut. In that year Colonel Alexander Phelps wrote of the settlers of influence on both sides of the river whom it would be worth while to interview on the subject of a new location for the school. He mentioned particularly Colonel Josiah Willard at Winchester, Colonel Bellows at Walpole, Captain Stevens at Number Four, "Es- quire" Chase and his brother at Cornish, Israel Morey at Orford, Colonel Bayley at Newbury, Major Oliver Willard at
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THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT
Hartland, Judge Wells at Brattleboro and Colonel Nathan Stone at Windsor.1 The letter is important as showing who were the men of consequence in the region at that early period.
1 1 Chase's Hist. Dartmouth College, pp. 102-103, note.
CHAPTER XIII
JOHN WENTWORTH VISITS WINDSOR
GOVERNOR BENNING WENTWORTH'S marriage to young Martha Hilton did not rejuvenate him. Old, gouty, becoming indolent as he aged, he did not continue to administer his office in vigorous fashion. He neglected particularly the enforce- ment of the law respecting timber depredations and in other respects he was criticised for failure or misconduct. Charges against him were lodged in England in or before the year 1765. Precisely what these charges were has never been published, but it is clear that his practices in granting townships on the west side of the Connecticut River in what is now Vermont had long been regarded in England as deserving of censure. For instance, in a representation by the Lords of Trade and Plantations, signed by Lord Hillsborough and others, and addressed to the Lords of the Privy Council under date of June 6, 1771, there is pointed allusion to the "extraordinary circumstances" and the "many irregularities and improprie- ties" attending Benning Wentworth's township grants.1 In fact the Lords of Trade thought that these grants would, on examination, without doubt be found void.
Again, on December 3, 1772, in a further representation to the Privy Council, signed on behalf of the Lords of Trade and Plantations by the Earl of Dartmouth and others, it is pointed out how, after Governors Clinton and Wentworth had re- ferred the boundary dispute to the Crown, "the Governor of New Hampshire had taken the opportunity pendente lite to grant away a very considerable number of Townships, of six miles square each, in this county to the Westward of Connecticut River." The representation then proceeds thus: "This proceeding accompanied as it was with other disrep- utable circumstances was fully stated in a representation made to His Majesty by this Board in 1764 . . . " 2 Plainly,
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