USA > Vermont > Rutland County > Middletown > The history of Middletown, Vermont, in three discourses, delivered before the citizens of that town, February 7 and 21, and March 30, 1867 > Part 4
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care of some of the Hessian wounded who were left in the hands ' of the Americans as prisoners.
Jonathan Haynes left a large family, all of whom, except Hese- kiah, removed from Middletown many years ago. Hezekiah Ilaynes had a large family, of whom six sons and two daughters are now living. The oldest, a daughter, lives in Michigan; the second, Aaron, is a baptist minister, and lives in Western New York ; the second son, Alpheus, resides here, and has been a dea- con of the baptist church since 1836; the third son, Arus, died some years since. He was also a baptist minister, and stood high in his denomination. He was for several years pastor of the bap- tist church in Rutland. The next two sons, Bacchus and Sylva- nus II., are physicians. They received their diplomas as carly as 1841. Bacchus is in practice at Rutland, and Sylvanus in his native town. Jonathan, the next son, is a farmer, and resides on the old homestead. Hezekiah, the youngest, is a mechanic, and resides in this village. The youngest daughter is also living here, and is unmarried.
Ephraim, Jacob and Philemon Wood, whose names appear on that roll, were among the active men of the first settlers ; but we shall reserve what we have to say of them, until we come to give an account of the " Wood Ferape," so called, which happened about the year 1800. The others, not mentioned, whose names are on the roll were not long here, and very little is now known of them ; most of them proved to be " good men and true" while they remained here.
Perhaps it would not be in accordance with the taste and judgment of good writers to occupy as much space as I shall in biographies, but it is one of my ways in giving you a history of the town ; and if it is an error, it is one of judgment on my part, but one which will not be liable to do any harm to the present or future generations, provided facts only are given. To me, it is a matter of great interest to know the kind of men who cleared up and put under cultivation this once wilderness, and laid the foundation of society here. I would not over estimate the character and worth of those men, but in my opinion it was fortunate (if I may so say) that it was not for their grandchildren
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to do the work which they did. With all our advantages at this advanced age, I honestly think we are inferior to our grandfathers . and grandmothers, physically, morally and intellectually. The popular opinion that they surpassed us only in their physical strength and endurance, is a mistake. It is in their moral power that they appear to the best advantage ; their zeal and steadfast- ness, their unbending energy, their devotion to principle, has not since been equalled -- so I think.
I might here say that those men who came to this place soon after the spring of 1785, were of the same stamp ; the Clarks, the Caswells, the Loomises, the Oatmans, Moses Leach, Russel Barber, and others, of whom I shall have more or less to say before I close.
The town early made provision for a burial ground. The first ground used for that purpose was owned by Increase Rudd-now owned by Mrs. Green, and lies nearly north and on the opposite side of the stream from the " nail factory." There are appear- ances of graves there, but no monuments.
" At a town meeting, holden July 3d, 1787, Joseph Spaulding, . moderator ; Asher Blunt, Jonathan Brewster, Gideon Miner, Selah Hubbard and Jacob Wood, were chosen a committee to look out a spot for a burying ground."
At an adjourned meeting, on the recommendation of that committee, it was " Voted, To purchase an acre of ground of Luther Filmore for that purpose." " Voted, To raise one penny on the pound on the grand list of 1786, to be paid in wheat, at four shillings per bushel, by the first of September next."
On the 30th of July, 1787, Mr. Filmore executed a deed of the acre to the town. We give the description from Mr. Filmore's deed, as it locates the " old school house," the fust one built in the town :
" Beginning at the corner of the road, four rods west of the " school house in the centre of the town at a stake and stones, " thence running west sixteen rods, thence south ten rods to & " stake and stones, thence sixteen rods to a stake and stones, " thence ten rods to first mentioned bounds."
Here, then, we have the time, the way and manner in which
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the town procured their burial ground. In less than seventy years, that acre, purchased and set apart for that purpose, was almost entirely occupied with the graves of those men and of their descendants. General Jonas Clark saw the necessity of enlarging the ground, and on the 15th day of October, 1853, he conveyed to the town a piece of land of an acre, or thereabouts, adjoining the old burial ground on the west. It was about three months before his death. He was so feeble that he could not then write his name, but was obliged to make his mark when he executed the deed. It was a gift to the town, with a condition that the town should keep it fenced.
In 1791, when the first census was taken, the population of Middletown was six hundred and ninety-nine-nearly as many inhabitants as there are in the town now-there were but seven hundred and eleven by the census of 1860. Rapid progress had been made, not only in clearing up lands and putting up buildings, but two churches had become firmly established and prosperous ; schools had been organized, I think, in every district ; roads had been made and by the united effort of a hardy, intelligent and industrious population, they were moving along harmoniously.
Another grist and saw mill had been erected by Nathan Record, near where the road which runs to the " Barber place," crosses the race way that now carries the water to Gray's mills, on land now owned by Mrs. Auna Clark. A blacksmith's shop, and one or two other shops had been built in the village. Mr. Filmore had begun to keep tavern, and John Burnam, who had moved into this town some time during the season of 1785, at about this time (1791) commenced building mills and dwelling houses at the place, since known as " Burnam hollow." Mr. Burnam removed from Shaftsbury to Middletown, and first purchased largely of real estate in the south part of the town. His purchases included what has been known as the "Burnam farm," now owned and occupied by Mr. S. W. Southworth ; also the Whiting Merrill farm, lying west of Mr. Southworth's, and also a large tract of land lying south of the Merrill farm. He first put up a log house in what is now called the " upper orchard " on Mr. Southworth's farm, the road then ran in that vicinity. The next year, (1786,)
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he put up a frame house, the same now occupied by Mr. South- worth ; it has since been repaired. In the year 1791, (if we are not mistaken as to the time,) Mr. Burnam again made large purchases of real estate in the west part of the town. He commenced at once in putting up, a dwelling house, afterwards known as the " Sam. Willard house." After that house was completed, he left his son Jacob on his premises, in the south part of the town, and moved into the Willard house. He then went extensively into building mills, also in farming, and built several dwelling houses. He built a forge, foundry, grist and saw mills, an oil mill, carding machine and clothier's works, and a distillery. All of these he put into successful and active operation and carried on here an extensive business until 1811, when his mills were all swept away by the freshet of that year. He afterwards rebuilt his forge and saw mill, but he did not do a large amount of business after this disaster in 1811.
John Burnam was a man of uncommon ability, and of great business capacity. For the success of the religious interests in town, perhaps not much was due to him, although he paid some- thing for such purposes and was in the habit of attending meetings on the Sabbath. Ile did not believe in the immortality of the soul, but it must be conceeded that for the success of business enterprises at that early day, the town were much indebted to him.
Mr. Burnam was a lawyer, and the first one who settled in this town. We have quoted the larger portion of a biographical sketch of him, from Williams' statistics of the Rutland County Bar :
" John Burnam was born in Old Ipswich, Mass., in 1742, and " came to Bennington the first year of its settlement, 1701, this " being our oldest town. He was one of the first settlers of the " State. He was at the time but nineteen years old, previous to " which time his education had been wholly neglected, having " never, on account of indigence of his parents, received 'but a " . few weeks schooling?' For his subsequent attaiments, he was " wholly indebted to his exertions put forth after this time. In " 1766, he removed to Shaftsbury, and located himself near
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" Squire Monroe, ' a Yorker,' who had received the appointment " of Justice of the Peace from New York, and who, by his exer- " tions in behalf of that governmont, was a source of trouble, and " became very obnoxious to the New Hampshire grantees. Some " dispute arising between this Squire Monroe and Mr. B., the " former prevailed in consequence of his presumed legal knowl- " edge, when Mr. B. determined to inform himself on the subject " of law, so at least to know and understand his rights. There " were at this time no attornies in the territory, comprising the " State of Vermont, or nearer to it than the new city, (now " Lansingburgh, N. Y.) Thither Mr. B. went and procured " Blackstone's Commentaries, and one or two volumes of the N. Y. " Colony Laws. These he so attentively studied during his leisure " time, that he soon became familiarly acquainted with them, and " began to put his knowledge in practice, and soon became . quite " 'a pettifogger for his times and a new country.' He removed " to Bennington in 1771, and engaged in the mercantile business " and continued in it until 1.779, when he returned to Shaftsbury " where he resided until 1785. During this time he was a " member of the conventions of 1776 and '77, which declared our " independence of New York, formed our State constitution, &c. " Hle was one of the committee who draughted the declaration of " our independence, and existence as a separate State. He also " represented Bennington, then our largest town, in the first " General Assembly, or Legislature of the State. During the " Revolutionary War, he was commissary of the northern army, " and a commissioner for the sale of confiscated estates.
" Ilis connection with the execution of Redding was perhaps the " most notorious event of his life. Redding had been convicted of " " criminal conduct ' by a jury of six persons, and was sentenced " to be executed on the 14th of June, 1778. Upon the appointed " day, and after a vast multitude had assembled to witness " the execution, Mr. B. disclosed to the council that, by the " common law of England, no man could be sentenced but upon " conviction by twelve of his peers, whereupon a reprieve was " granted. This was the cause of great disappointment to the " people who had assembled to witness the execution, to appease
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" whom, Ethan Allen mounted a stump, and exclaimed ' Attention " ' the whole,' and informed them that 'on a certain future day " 'some one should be hung, and if Redding was not, he would be " ' himself.' Redding was again tried, convicted and executed."
Mr. Burnam seems to have been engaged as counsel in many of the first cases tried in the County Court, in Bennington County, and " being successful," was induced by Stephen R. Bradley and Nathaniel Chipman to take the attorney's oath. Dr. Graham, in his " Letters upon Vermont," published in 1797, thus speaks of him : " Mr. Burnam, of Middletown, possesses large iron foundries " and forges. This gentleman was one of the practising lawyers " of the State, but of late years has wholly declined the profession. " He is a man of real abilities and great scientific knowledge." .
We should add here that Mr. B. represented the town of Middletown six years, the first time in 1788. He died in Middletown, August 1st, A. D. 1829, aged 87. His father died in Middletown, in 1811, at the age of 97.
John Burnam left four sons and two daughters, none of whom are now living. Nathan, the oldest son, removed from here at an early day. Ile left a family, as we are informed, who had a good standing and influence. Jacob, the second son, remained on the old homestead until a short time before he died. Jacob has three children now living : Jacob, Jr., and Eveline, the widow of Johnson Cook, both of whom now reside in Sturges, Michigan, and Harry, who is an attorney and judge of probate, and resides in Indiana. Of the other two sons of John Burnam, were John the third, as he was called, who died about 1835, and Sylvester, who died about 1860-both died poor ; of the two daughters, one married Jeremiah Leffingwell, the other Samuel Willard. They had the reputation of being worthy women, and were active members of the Methodist denomination. Mr. Leffingwell was a man of considerable notoriety in his time, and was engaged in a good deal of business. One of his daughters married the late Nathan Allen of Pawlet, who has left a family strongly marked with the energy and business tact of their maternal ancestors.
There were other men who came here at about the time and soon after Mr. Burnam, who were strongly identified with the
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growth and prosperity of the town, at that early day, of whom, for my own convenience, I shall speak in the latter part of my discourse.
At the census of 1800, we find the population of the town to be 1066, a gain of 367 in nine years ; and again we can see that rapid progress had been made in the settlement. A village had sprung up with about as many inhabitants, and probably more business than it now has. John Burnam had a village of his own in " Burnam Hollow," and the Miners were doing quite a business in the east part of the town ; every part of the town was settled and the farms were cleared up and under cultivation.
About the year 1800, occurred what we have before alluded to., as the " Wood scrape," a term not expressive perhaps of what is meant by it, but a name which has always been given by the people to a strange affair in which the Wood families, then living here, were the leading actors. It was a religious delusion, and at the time was the cause of great excitement here, and of a good deal of notoriety in this part of the State. That there were other denouements besides delusion in the affair is true, but it had its origin, I have no doubt, in a false religion of which Nathaniel Wood was the author, and was sustained and enabled to become what it did by delusion.
Before 1860, I had conversed with more than thirty old men and women who were living here in 1800, and then supposed I had obtained all the information that could be had on that subject, the substance of which was that the Woods dug for money in various parts of the town, and were engaged in this for nearly a year ; that they used hazel rods which they pretended would lead them to places where money had been buried, and that they finally predicted that there would be an earthquake on a future day by them named, and that when that day arrived there was great excitement and commotion among the people, such as was never known here before or since.
About the year 1862, some facts new to me came into my possession, since which time I have made use of all the means in my power to collect all the information connected with that matter which could possibly be obtained. On this thorough investigation,
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or at least an investigation which has taken much of my time, I have become convinced that the narrations given me by the old people were correct, so far as they went, and they went so far as to include nearly all the open transactions of the Woods ; but the origin of that affair and the results are, in my judgment, import- ant and the facts bearing upon these I have obtained, for the most part, since 1862.
The Woods were among the early settlers of the town. They came here from Bennington, had not been there long ; they came to this State from Norwick, Conn. ; some of them were here as early as 1782. In 1800, they had become more numerous than any family or families of the same or of one name in the town. There were here at this time : Nathaniel Wood, Nathaniel Wood, Jr., Ephraim Wood, Jacob Wood, Ebenezer Wood, Ebenezer Wood, Jr., John Wood, John Wood, Jr., Philemon Wood, Lewis Wood, David Wood and Moseley Wood.
Nathaniel Wood, " the old man of all," as he was called, was the father of Nathaniel Wood, Jr., and of Jacob and Ephraim Wood. Nathaniel Wood was a preacher. After the Congrega- tional Church was organized, he offered himself to them as their minister, but Deacon Jonathan Brewster, having known him in Connecticut, opposed it. Wood persisted for a considerable length of time in his efforts to become their pastor, but Deacon Brewster determinedly opposed it and succeeded in carrying the church with him ; but either to gratify some of Mr. Wood's friends in the church, or to appease him, they passed a vote in which they recognized him " as a leader " in the church. He was a member of the church, as would appear from the records, although he never signed the articles, as did others of that time. The records of that church show that for four or five years, commencing in 1784, there was an almost uninterrupted controversy going on between Mr. Wood and the church, or between him and some one or more of its members. In 1789, the church passed the following :
" That Joseph Spaulding, Lewis Wood and Increase Rudd, be " a committee to confer with Mr. Nathaniel Wood, and tell him " his fault, viz : of saying one thing and doing contrary, and
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" persisting in contention, and saying in convention that he wished " for a council; and when the church, by their committee, " proposed to have a council to settle the whole matter, he utterly " refused."
He seemed to have treated this action of the church with con- tempt, and in October, 1789, the church excommunicated him. It does not appear from the records of the church, that there was any controversy between him and them upon doctrines, but the disputes arose mostly from his charges against members, and against the church, in which he claimed that injustice had been done to him in their action on several occasions. He was a very ambitious man, fond of contention, and had an indomitable will that could not endure defeat ; a man of great mental power, and, allowing me to judge from information I have obtained, was as dis- honest and unscrupulous in matters of religion as any modern pol- itician has been in politics. When he found he could not rule the congregational church, he seemed determined to ruin it. IIe was a formidable antagonist ; but with such men as Jonathan Brews- ter, Joseph Spaulding and Gideon Miner in that church, he could make but little progress in that direction.
After Mr. Wood was excluded from the church, he set up meet- ings of his own, and preached to those who came to hear him, and succeeded, after awhile, in getting quite a congregation, consisting of his own family and family connections, and some others. IIo held his meetings mostly at the dwelling houses of his sons. l'is religious doctrines, whatever they might have been while in the congregational church, appeared to be far from orthodox after his independent organization, if organization it was. He professed to believe in supernatural agencies, and dwelt very much in his preaching on the judgments of God, which he claimed would visit the people by the special acts of Providence, as did the destruc- tion of Sodom and Gomorrah and the plagues of Egypt. The judgments of God were his favorite themes. At first his own fam- ily did not appear to adopt his new doctrines; but such was his tenacity and perseverance, that by the year 1800 he had drawn them all in, with many others outsi le of his family and family con- nections, so that he had at this time a number nearly equal to
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either of the other denominations in town. His peculiar religious doctrines will appear as we proceed. Suffice it to say, for the present, that he regarded himself and his followers as modern Israelites or Jews, under the special care of Providence ; that the Almighty would not only specially interpose in their behalf, but would visit their enemies, the Gentiles (all outsiders), with his wrath and vengeance.
In this condition we find Nathaniel Wood and his followers when the hazel rod was introduced, and the money digging commenced ; but the Woods did not commence it, that honor belongs to a man of another name ; but they were in a condition to adopt this man's rod notions, which they did with great effect in their work of deluding the people.
A man by the name of Winchell, as he called himself when he came here, was the first man who used the hazel rod. From what we have learned of him, he was, undoubtedly, an expert villain. He sought to accomplish his purposes by working upon the. hopes and fears of individuals, and by a kind of sorcery, which he per- formed with great skill. The time he came here I cannot give, but it was, undoubtedly, sometime in the year 1799. He was a fugitive from justice from Orange county, Vermont, where he had been engaged in counterfeiting. He first went to a Mr. Cow- dry's, in Wells, who then lived in that town, near the line between Wells and Middletown, in the house now owned and occupied by Robert Parks, Esq. Cowdry was the father of Oliver Cowdry, the noted Mormon, who claimed to have been one of the witnesses to Joe Smith's revelations, and to have written the book Mormon, as it was deciphered by Smith from the golden plates. Winchell, I have been told, was a friend and acquaintance of Cowdry's, but of this I cannot be positive, they were intimate afterwards; but Winchell staid at Cowdry's some little time, keeping himself con- cealed, and it is the opinion of some with whom I have conversed that he commenced his operations of digging for money in Wells, but I have been unable to determine as to that. It is well known that there was a good deal of money digging in that part of Wells. Whether it commenced at the time spoken of, when Winchell went there, or afterwards, is, to my mind, unsettled.
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Winchell next turns up in Middletown, at Ezekiel Perry's, in the fall or forepart of the winter of 1799. Perry lived at the extreme south part of the town, on the road to Pawlet. Here he staid all winter, keeping himself from the public eye, practicing his arts of deception as he had opportunity to do so, without attracting too much attention ; and here he began to use the hazel rod (whether he had before used it at Cowdry's, in Wells, I can- not say). He would tell fortunes, and do other wondrous things with it. In the spring of 1800, feeling, perhaps, a little more secure from those who desired to find him and bring him to justice, he gathered quite a number about him from the immediate neigh- borhood, and told them there was money buried in that region, and with his rod he could find it; and told them if they would assist in digging it out, and forever keep it a secret, he would give them a part of the money. This they agreed to, and were all eager to commence digging.
Before we go any further, we should, perhaps, say a word about this rod, which played such a part in Middletown in this eventful year. The best description we can give of it is this: It was a stick of what has been known as witch hazel -a small bush or shrub very common in this vicinity. It was cut with two prongs, in the form of a fork, and the person using it would take the two prongs, one in each hand, and the other end from the body. From the use of this stick Winchell and the Woods pretended to divine all sorts of things to suit their purposes. It is probably true that a hazel stick, or perhaps any green stick, cut in this form, and held in this manner by some persons, will sometimes move without any apparent cause. There is some natural cause for it. Whether it is attracted by water or mineral substances in the earth; or moved by the imagination of the person holding it, is a matter for the philosopher, not for me. This much is quite certain, it was then a very effectual implement with which to practice deception.
After Winchell had made his proposals to those whom he gath- ered about him, and they had been accepted, he had recourse to his rod to determine whether they were sincere in their promises to keep the money digging a secret. The rod, as he pretended, told him they were, and then he sallied out; went on to the hill
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